Memory Blank

by John Stith

  “I love a mystery,” she said simply.

  “What makes you think there’s a mystery?”

  “I think it was you who told me I’m good at my job,” she said. “I’m also surprised that you didn’t know about Faceup. Especially with your computer background.”

  “You have been busy.”

  “You were easy. You’ve been in the news a few times. Your picture makes me think the last year has been a rough one.”

  “I think you must be right.”

  “There you go again, being mysterious.”

  Cal was silent. He had come in with the idea of his anonymity protecting him while he solicited her help. The protection was gone, but he was impressed with her ability to make deductions. She obviously had a large information pool available, and she knew how to use it quickly. She could be a great ally, if only he could trust her.

  But if he couldn’t trust her, he was already at an overwhelming disadvantage.

  “How much can I tell you in private?” Cal asked, arriving at a decision.

  “As much as you want.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I can’t make any guarantees. You’d better not tell me if it’s illegal.”

  Cal studied her eyes for a long moment before he took a deep breath. “I paid Forget-Me-Now for their services the night Domingo died. When I woke up, I had blood on my clothes and Vital Twenty-Two in my pocket. But I don’t think I’m guilty. If I find out I am, or if I find out what really happened, you’ll be near the front of the line to be told.”

  “Whew.”

  “My sentiments exactly.”

  “Will there be any newspeople closer to the front?”

  “No. You have my word.”

  “You want something in return,” she said.

  “Information. You seem to have wider access than I do.”

  Michelle leaned back in her chair. “So the mystery gets deeper. Exactly what kind of information?”

  “I want to know who Domingo really was. I’m not convinced he was a simple construction engineer. And I want to use your talents with Faceup. Someone tried to kill me yesterday morning. I’d like to find him and say hello.”

  “Cancel all my calls,” she exclaimed. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  “Maybe too serious.” Cal caught her questioning look. “Nothing. That’s a different problem.”

  “How about something to drink?” she asked.

  As they went to the station cafeteria, Cal filled in more of the details, stopping whenever someone else came near. Cal was talking about Forget-Me-Now when he smelled an odor that scared him badly. Mint.

  He backed away too fast, almost losing his balance. And then he realized where the odor came from. Michelle’s tea.

  “Do you have mint leaves in your tea?” he asked shakily.

  Michelle was speechless, obviously confused. She nodded quickly.

  “Let’s go back to your office and I’ll explain.”

  She nodded again, probably wondering if she had agreed to help a maniac. “You must have a hell of an allergy,” she said, trying to make a joke out of it.

  On the way back Cal told her quietly why he had reacted that way.

  “You had me really worried there for a minute,” she said, holding the office door open for Cal. In the office Michelle sat at her desk and motioned Cal to come and stand behind her.

  “Okay,” she said. “Some of the parameters, age for example, won’t show up on Faceup. They’re just for the search once we’re done. He was about twenty-five?”

  “Right. This is going to be hard though. I paid almost no attention to him.”

  “Maybe as we get a picture started that will help jog your memory. Hair?”

  “Black. It hung over his forehead, cut all about the same length.” Cal watched as the blank, head-shaped form on the screen sprouted black hair. “A bit shorter. And I think it lay against his head more. Longer over the ears. That’s it.”

  Michelle continued, explaining the choices as she went. Slowly the mannequin head looked more and more like the young man with a mustache.

  “That’s it,” she said. “But I don’t think it will let us narrow it down to fewer than maybe twenty-five to fifty people. Not unless you can remember more specifics.”

  “That’s as good as I can do. Even looking at it now, I can’t decide if it’s him or not.”

  “Okay.” She tapped another few keys and drummed her fingers on the desktop. “This will probably take an hour or two at least, depending on priorities of whatever else is happening today. We’ll get pictures of every match unless they find over a hundred. What next?

  “Domingo. Can you look him up in your database? See what his history is?”

  She tapped at the keyboard for another moment. When she stopped, on the screen was a short summary of Gabriel Domingo’s vital statistics. Born twenty-eight years ago, on Earth. Died two days ago. Unmarried, no living relatives. There was a brief description of his employment history: eight years in construction. There was almost no other information. It seemed to Cal almost obscene that there was so little record of the dead man.

  “I see what you mean,” Michelle said. “I’ve hardly ever seen one this short. Usually children have longer summaries.”

  “How about Leroy Krantz,” Cal asked.

  Leroy’s summary was significantly longer than Domingo’s, but held no obvious clues. He was one half of a two-person company specializing in communications systems. The other half was a man named David Ledbetter. They had been in business almost six years with no complaints.

  “Could we look at someone else, as long as we’re here?” Cal asked.

  “By all means.” She looked up over her shoulder, and the excitement was unmistakable. “Who?”

  “Russ Tolbor.”

  This time when she looked up, it was a slow, deliberate motion. Then she swung back to the keyboard without a word and typed some more.

  Tolbor’s file was long. Born on Earth, in London, forty-one years ago. The file traced the highlights of a man who had to be brilliant and motivated. He had received a loan from his parents before college, and, while he was one of the youngest-ever graduates from the Astronautics Academy, the licensing fees from the patents his loan had paid for covered all his expenses.

  He hadn’t shown much interest in the church until after his mission to Jupiter. Tolbor had lost a brother and sister on Earth, as well as his parents. Other details matched what Vincent had already told him. The wealth of praise shook Cal’s feeling that the man might somehow be doing something he shouldn’t.

  “Care to explain?” Michelle asked.

  “Maybe it’s nothing. But I still have the impression that this involves him. It could be only peripherally, but it seems he’s a factor. Can you get reports on institutions as well as individuals?”

  “Try me.”

  “Let’s see what you have on the Presodist church.”

  “You must be joking.”

  “I’m deadly serious.”

  The summary told Cal nothing he could see was valuable. Dry details included dates of the most recent changes in policies, and short descriptions. Church officers were listed, but none of the names were familiar.

  “I think it’s time you told me some more,” Michelle said accusingly.

  “I’m afraid it’ll all seem too bizarre. And I don’t know anything. It’s all guesses.”

  “Give. I’ll worry later about whether I believe it.”

  “This is only a faint possibility. I don’t have a shred of real data that supports it—”

  “Okay. Okay. Disclaimers accepted.”

  “Well, there’s a chance, a tiny one, that the disaster on Earth two years ago wasn’t an accident. It could have been the result of someone’s badly warped idea of making life imitate the Bible.” Cal gave her a few details about the Sodom and Gomorrah references.

  Michelle said nothing when he was finished. She just got up from her chair and walked
to the window, where she could watch the Earth in its silent journey.

  “I could easily be wrong about this,” Cal said. “There are lots of other explanations I could invent to fit what I’ve learned so far.”

  “What else are you holding back?” Michelle asked finally, her cheerfulness gone.

  Cal knew that nothing less than complete honesty could keep Michelle helping. “My wristcomp tells me that the night Domingo was murdered, I said something that implies I might be guilty of his murder.” He waited until Michelle turned back to face him. “But I think there must be more to the situation that I don’t know yet. I’m not a murderer. I think my wife believes that.”

  “I think I believe it, too,” Michelle said slowly. “All right. Whatever help you need, I’ll give. I want the story first, but that’s no longer my main reason for helping. But I swear to God, if you’re lying to me, I’ll roast you. You’ll wish you were on Earth.”

  Cal didn’t ask her who she had lost on Earth. He said, “I won’t conceal anything from you. But I need your commitment not to go to the police if you find out something that incriminates me. If I’ve done something wrong, I’ll give myself up and let you have the story, but I’ve got to have time to find out exactly what’s happened.”

  She nodded. “Let me do some more checking on Domingo and get those pictures of people who might have sat next to you on the tubeway. I’ll call you when I get anything.”

  “Michelle, I appreciate this.”

  “Just don’t be lying to me.”

  “I’m not.”

  “I knew you were in trouble when you came in here yesterday,” she said. “I’m not sure whether or not to be happy that my instincts are still working.”

  “Be thankful. We’ll probably need them again.”

  CHAPTER10

  Hardware

  Michelle was still in a sober mood when Cal left the news station. He couldn’t tell how good a judge of character he had been before, but he felt Michelle was honest.

  He had been intending to go to work, at least briefly, but along the way he noticed a store named Big Ears. It sold items that looked quite useful in his current search for information.

  Inside the showroom was a wide variety of elaborate electronic products, but Cal approached the display showing the item that had caught his eye from the window. He was reading the advertising literature when a plump, middle-aged salesman came up.

  “Those are the best pickups you can buy without a license,” the salesman said, handling a tiny microphone-transmitter combination. It was minuscule in his pudgy palm.

  “What’s the range?”

  “Half a kilometer, line of sight. Ten to twenty percent of that through walls.”

  It might be revealing to be able to hear what was going on in Tolbor’s apartment, or in the meeting room at Galentine’s. “What if I need a longer range?”

  “Simple. You buy one of these—a repeater. It can be set to call directly in to your wristcomp.”

  “These things are rather expensive. What about a lease plan?”

  “Sorry. They have a way of getting damaged.” The man gave Cal a sidelong glance.

  “I see what you mean.” Cal asked several more questions and in the end bought three pairs of listeners. He had been about to buy a device that would eliminate periods of no noise before he realized that Vincent could probably do that and five other jobs concurrently.

  “What about door locks?” Cal asked finally. “My door at home has been acting up. Do you have anything that might help?”

  The salesman gave Cal a knowing grin. “If you don’t mind a temporary loss of privacy, you can use one of our high-tech specials.” The man led Cal to a nearby shelf and handed him a small package.

  Cal examined the unit, trying to determine what it did. It consisted of a small flat pad with what looked like pressure adhesive and a short lever on a spring.

  “It works like this,” said the man, demonstrating. He pulled the lever back and held the base near a door mockup. As the door slid open, the lever sprang into the doorway. As the door closed, the lever blocked the last few millimeters of travel. “Once the lever has flipped, the latch can’t properly seat. After you get your door fixed, you can remove it. And, in the meantime, it’s small enough that it’s not likely to tip off your visitors that your door isn’t really locked.”

  Cal purchased one of the lever devices. He was tempted to buy a couple, just in case, but then he couldn’t have maintained the façade that it was for his door, even though he was sure the salesman wouldn’t care. He paid a slight extra fee for a bag without advertising on it and left.

  “No messages yet, Vincent?,” he asked once he was outside.

  “Negative. I’ll tell you if anyone calls. What are you going to do with all the stuff you bought?”

  “I don’t know about all of it, but right now I’ve got this silly urge to see what kind of place Vittoria’s new commander lives in. You understand me?”

  Tolbor’s apartment was less than half a kilometer from where Domingo had lived. The only outward sign that Tolbor’s apartment was more expensive was that the doors along the hallway were almost twice as far apart as they had been in Domingo’s building. Tolbor’s name was engraved on a metal plate on his door.

  As Cal slowed for a close examination, a man came out of an apartment down the hall. Cal resumed his pace, feigning nonchalance. Once the other man had left the building, Cal backtracked. Curious, he touched his thumb against the white square, but nothing happened.

  Cal quickly positioned his new purchase in the lower corner of the door and pressed. It stuck. A sideways push met strong resistance. Satisfied, Cal straightened up, thinking about how awkward it would have been if Tolbor had opened the door while Cal was kneeling in front. But he should be at work at this hour.

  From a standing position, Cal could barely detect the device, and he knew it was there. Perfect.

  Cal couldn’t keep postponing going to the Vittoria office. He skipped lunch to conserve time. The hallway in his building was noisier than the last time. Maybe last-minute preparations were running late.

  He glanced in at Leroy Krantz, thinking back to the test. Leroy was apparently engrossed in the contents of his desk screen and didn’t even seem to notice Cal. It was just as well.

  At his own desk, Cal sat down and started to see what incoming messages had been sent to his office. But his keyboard failed to respond to his thumb.

  “Vincent,” Cal said, starting to worry that someone might have found a way to lock him out of his desk computer. “My keyboard’s dead. Any suggestions?”

  “I can call maintenance. This is funny. Usually some small component fails, and the diagnostics find it, report it, and you never even hear about it. It’s odd to see one completely off.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Cal. “You gave me an idea.” He stood and leaned forward, trying to see behind the desk. “I see it. The cord just fell out of the wall. Maybe the cleaning staff moved the desk out too far.”

  Cal shoved on the edge of the desk, but it was far too heavy to move easily. There was just enough room to squeeze between the metal desk and the wall, and he started to do so before a sudden observation stopped him abruptly.

  From here he could see the power cord coiled behind the desk. It was a long cord. There wouldn’t be much excuse for a cleaning crew to have pulled out the plug. Cal felt a tickling at the back of his neck, and he thought about his tubeway ride yesterday morning. Something felt decidedly wrong.

  “Vincent, I’ve got another request.”

  “Ready.”

  “Take a look back here and turn on your magnification.” Cal moved Vincent to get a clear view.

  “That’s a pretty dull picture.” But Vincent’s screen now displayed a section of the desk and the wall, including the electrical outlet. “What are you looking for?”

  “Maybe nothing. Blow up the wall socket.”

  The image grew slowly until Cal said, “Hold it the
re.” Cal moved Vincent slightly, and the angle changed. He moved Vincent a bit more, and a shadow he hadn’t seen before was visible. “Blow it up a little more. Fine.” Cal drew in his breath. “Do you see what I see?”

  “The tape?”

  “Right.” A short piece of tape, the same color as the wall, ran from just below the outlet down to the floor. Nothing was visible on the floor, but, as Cal panned the view along the baseboard, farther away from the outlet, he saw a faint glint. “Blow up the bright point there.”

  The bright area was about a centimeter long. It ran from the baseboard out from the wall, where it was covered by another piece of tape. At the desk leg, there was another small portion of shiny narrow surface visible.

  “Focus on the plug,” said Cal, and on the screen was the image of the end of the coiled cord and the plug. This time Cal didn’t need to enlarge the image. Looking like silver ornamentation on the plug, circling the portion he would have to hold when he put the plug back into the socket, lay what he was now convinced was wire. Wire fastened to one of the power connections.

  Chilled, Cal closed the door to his office and sat in the chair. “Who the hell am I playing with, Vincent? All I needed to do was wedge myself between the desk and the wall, grab hold of the plug, insert it in the socket, and I wouldn’t be a worry to anyone.”

  “I don’t have any more clues than you do. But maybe we should take separate vacations this year.”

  “They shouldn’t have done this,” Cal said, unhearing. “Or they should have made it more foolproof. Given enough time, I might have been able to convince myself that the incident on the tubeway was a genuine medical rarity. But not this.”

  Anger displacing the fear, Cal pulled violently at the desk. At first it moved only a centimeter, but on the second forceful try it moved almost enough. A final shove gave it a good safety margin. Wondering if somehow a second booby trap were lying in wait, Cal tried not to touch anything more than necessary.

  The wire unwrapped easily. Once it was dangling, a few twists took it all the way off the plug. The other wire came free from the wall socket with the aid of a nonconducting ruler he found in his desk. Cal pulled up the length of wire running to the desk and threw the wire and tape into the trash.