Memory Blank

by John Stith

  The young boy on the bicycle seemed just as surprised as Edmund must have been, but he had slightly more warning. He turned slightly in from the short rock wall at the lip of the street.

  Edmund careened into the boy and his bicycle, bouncing off him and toward the wall. For an instant Cal thought the man could regain his balance. He was wrong.

  Edmund first flailed his arms, then grasped at the rock wall, which hit him at the knees. But it did no good. He was unable to recover his balance.

  It was all over too quickly. Edmund’s body was visible for only another second before he fell over the edge, out of sight.

  Cal was astonished. He had never intended to cause Edmund to fall. He had wanted only to slow him down. He cut his run to a jog to avoid standing out and kept on moving, past the point where the man had fallen.

  Cal took the next set of stairs down two at a time and doubled back. By the time he neared the terrace below, a couple of people were already kneeling by Edmund, trying to help him recover.

  At least that’s what Cal thought at first. But as he slowed and came closer still, he realized that Edmund seemed to be unconscious.

  Cal waited several meters away, watching the woman kneeling next to the body make a call on her wristcomp. Even at that distance, he heard her words clearly. “He’s dead,” she said.

  Cal’s stomach suddenly hurt as disbelief and guilt rose up within him. He had never intended this. Edmund must have been the man on the tubeway, but still, Cal hadn’t ever thought about doing any more than turning him over to the police.

  Cal tried not to panic and began moving again, through the small crowd that had begun to form. The farther away he got, the faster he moved, jogging and then finally running. He couldn’t change what had happened, but he could at least try to learn something from the man’s apartment before the police arrived.

  He slowed again as he approached Edmund’s building, not wanting to attract attention. The apartment door was still open, so Cal hurried inside and closed it.

  The apartment was filthy. Encrusted food lined the sink. Used cups lay everywhere. Dirty handprints marred the wall surfaces around all the light switches.

  It took Cal several minutes to find anything other than dirty clothes and discarded packing cartons with the name Fargo Edmund scrawled on them. In the bottom drawer of a file were items that would seem innocent enough to the police if they looked, but meant more to Cal.

  Along with wire cutters and a screwdriver, lay two rolls of tape. One was standard electrical black, and the other was tan. Some of Cal’s feeling of guilt dissipated right then.

  Cal continued his search. He didn’t worry about fingerprints. The police shouldn’t have any reason to think that Edmund’s death was any more complex than the accident it was. In another drawer he found a long, narrow gas canister labeled Lendomen.

  A moment later, Cal whistled softly and said, “Well, reverse my charges.”

  On Edmund’s desk, in the middle of a stack of unrelated papers, was a picture of Cal. It wasn’t a very good picture. It had been taken outside. His face consumed most of the picture, but the background made him think it had been taken near his Vittoria office.

  It had been taken within the last few days, but he couldn’t tell when. The bruise over his eyebrow was there, and the scene was in daylight, but that’s all he knew. Almost anyone could have taken a picture like that from a distance without him even noticing. Edmund himself could have taken it.

  But Cal got the distinct feeling that it hadn’t been Edmund who had taken the picture. It was more likely that someone else, perhaps Tolbor, had taken it to give to a hired hand who had no grudge of his own.

  Cal idly wondered how much Edmund had been paid. And if he had been paid in advance. At least this should stop the attempts, for a while.

  A closer look at the picture revealed a feature he hadn’t noticed before. In the upper right of the picture was a small defect in the image. Three closely spaced dots marred the otherwise acceptable photo. They could have been introduced by small imperfections in the digitizing element in the wristcomp of whoever took the picture, or in the reproduction process. There was no way to tell more just by looking.

  “You’ve got a call,” said Vincent, startling him. “Michelle.”

  Cal thought about ignoring it but decided he couldn’t risk it.

  “News flash,” she said when Cal answered. “One of the guys on your list just died.”

  “I know. I’m in his apartment, entertaining myself. Can I call you back in just a few minutes?”

  “What? Ah, sure.”

  Conscious of the time, Cal pocketed the picture and hurried to complete his search. Unfortunately, he found another half a worm.

  It was a partly used container labeled Caution—Explosives. The canister was underneath Edmund’s bed. Cal couldn’t tell how long it had been there. If only he knew if it had recently been used.

  Two failed attempts certainly implied the possibility of a third, but had Edmund already known the second attempt was unsuccessful? It was possible that he set up numbers two and three without waiting, to maximize his chances.

  Cal found nothing more in the balance of his search. He closed the door behind him and hurried away, seeing no signs of the police yet. From a bench eight blocks away, he called Nikki.

  “Do something for me, will you?” Cal asked. “Be careful. Very careful. I don’t want you hurt.” He explained about the possibility of explosives and told her about Edmund’s accident.

  “But can’t you go to the police now?” she asked. “Maybe they could help.”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Why not? That’s their business.”

  “I think they’d be much more interested in asking me about my purchases yesterday, or about breaking into people’s apartments. For all I know, they might think I killed Edmund. The other problem is that the trail is cold. With Edmund dead, I don’t have a link back to whoever hired him.”

  “I still think you should talk to them, but okay. You don’t have any idea whether he’s already put explosives somewhere or not?”

  “No,” Cal said, watching Nikki’s worried face on Vincent’s screen. “So be careful.”

  “You, too.”

  Cal hung up. No one seemed to be taking an undue interest in his activity. “Vincent?”

  “At your service. Today has sure turned out busy, hasn’t it?”

  “Have you picked up your ability of understatement from me? Never mind. I want you to save some of your video from around the time Edmund opened his apartment door until he fell. Let’s say one frame every second. I may have to prove I didn’t kill him if this gets much more complicated.”

  “I’ll vouch for you.”

  “Would that help?” Cal asked.

  “Only your feelings.”

  “Call Michelle, would you?”

  When Michelle answered, she looked concerned. “I suppose I heard you right a few minutes ago?”

  “I imagine so.” Cal repeated most of what he had told Nikki, including a caution about watching for indications of explosives.

  “Well,” Michelle said, once she had heard his story. “I’ve been busy, too. I had another interview with Russ Tolbor this morning.”

  “And?”

  “And he now has some extra equipment in his office.” Michelle was smiling again, apparently recovering from the jolt of new information.

  “Have you heard anything interesting yet?”

  “Not yet. He seems to be more quiet than I had expected. He’s talked to four people with quick status reports on the final preparations for Vittoria, but nothing else so far. I’ll call you if I hear anything that seems important.”

  “Great. Before you go, can you tell me how to find Tolbor’s Vittoria apartment?”

  After a short search she gave him an address. Cal was saying good-bye when Vincent told him he had another message coming in.

  “Let’s have it.”

  “Y
ou’re not going to like it, but here goes. It’s text, without identification of the sender. It says, ‘Stay home for a week, or you’ll be dead.’” Only after the silence lengthened did Vincent add, “There wasn’t even a complimentary close.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Hypnosis

  “Stay home for a week, or you’ll be dead?” Cal repeated finally. “It all seems a bit superfluous after the gas on the tubeway and the rewiring at my desk.”

  “Maybe someone doesn’t like you,” said Vincent.

  “Perhaps. Or maybe someone is panicking, and he or she doesn’t know I had anything to do with Edmund’s death.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “I mean he doesn’t know I saw Edmund, and doesn’t know I searched his apartment. And if he believes I’m all that oblivious, then he figures I need it spelled out for me. But it still doesn’t explain why I’m supposed to stay out of the way.” Cal realized he had raised his voice, and promptly lowered it. No one near seemed to be paying him undue attention, but, if someone were, he wouldn’t be wanting to advertise the fact.

  “So, what are you going to do next?” Vincent asked.

  “Well, I’m damn well not going to stay home for a week playing solitaire.”

  “You’re right. There’s bound to be a few two-handed games we could both enjoy.”

  “That’s not what I meant. Vincent, I have to force my memories back faster. There has to be more I can do. Show me the directory of places advertising anything memory-related.”

  A directory came up on Vincent’s screen. “Forward,” Cal said a couple of times. “Wait.”

  “Which one are you looking at?”

  “Hypnotism. Maybe that could help.”

  “Or maybe it could make it worse. Those people are a little like witches and warlocks, aren’t they?”

  “You’re thinking of astrologers.”

  “Now there’s a group that’s taken abuse. Did you know that they accurately predicted the personality types of—”

  “I don’t have time for that now. Can you tell me who’s closest of the people listed in this section?”

  Vincent did so. A few minutes later Cal entered a modest-looking building that housed a few professionals and several paraprofessionals. A Dr. Thacken was almost at the end of the carpeted hall. Next to his door was a notice that said his doctorate was not a medical degree.

  Dr. Thacken was his own receptionist. He was also immediately available.

  Calmly Cal allowed himself to be ushered to the inner office. It was more somber than the waiting area, and Cal felt soothed almost immediately. He settled into a comfortable chair.

  “Now, sir. How can I be of service?” Dr. Thacken asked. He was a man whose age was hard to gauge accurately. Initially he had seemed to be in his forties, but now Cal revised his estimate up into the fifties. The man’s forehead sloped gradually up to wispy, swept-back hair that curled behind his ears. He had better eye contact than Cal was used to in medical doctors.

  Cal began to feel he had done the right thing in coming here. He introduced himself. “I’d like to prod some memories loose, if I can. I thought perhaps some regression might help.”

  “I hesitate to voice the thought, but have you been to Forget-Me-Now?”

  “So I’m told.”

  A pained expression came over Thacken’s face. “I’ll do my best, sir. I just wish I could deal with the problem rather than the symptom.”

  “Meaning you don’t like the erasure parlor concept.”

  “About as well as an M.D. likes applying a bandage to a chest wound.”

  “Well, at the moment, I’m not one of their strongest supporters either.”

  “But you say you paid for their services?”

  “I’m convinced I went through the process. I’ve yet to satisfy myself that it was voluntary.”

  “My, this is interesting. You’re suggesting that your session was against your will?”

  “I don’t know,” said Cal. “I do know that I don’t recall anything immediately after waking in the parlor.”

  “Very interesting. Why do you suppose that is?”

  “The attendant attributed it to scrambling of my short-term memory. He said it was typical.”

  “He was ill-informed.”

  Cal looked at Thacken questioningly.

  “The process has an effect on short-term memory,” Thacken said. “But the effect lasts less than an hour. By law, Forget-Me-Now is required to keep you under observation until your retention is back to normal.”

  “If that’s so—” Cal began.

  “You have been lied to,” finished Thacken. He waited a moment and then said, “You don’t seem too surprised, I must say.”

  “Strangely enough, I don’t feel too surprised. It seems there’s a lot of that going around.”

  “Well, sir, I want to warn you up front that the likelihood of my being able to help you very much is not great. But I am intrigued. I would like to try. There aren’t too many people I see who activate my curiosity this way.”

  “You’ve already helped me. I now know at least one person who has lied to me. Also, that helps me resist the urge to write off some of my recent experiences to paranoia.”

  Thacken smiled. “Paranoia perceived, at least in my limited experience, is seldom true paranoia. Would you like to begin?”

  “I’ve got a question first. Are you bound to any particular code of ethics?”

  “Regarding professional confidences?”

  “Exactly.”

  “None except the ones I build. But I believe them to be adequate. You need not fear that possibility.”

  Cal believed him. He hadn’t much choice anyway. “All right. I’m ready.”

  “I might be able to work better with a focus. Rather than simply trying to find a key to unlock all your memories, I could concentrate my efforts in a critical spot.”

  Cal thought for a moment. “How about starting with the recent past? Three nights ago, when I went into the erasure parlor.”

  Thacken agreed and settled back into a large, comfortable chair. He swung a small keyboard over his lap and said, “Ready, Mr. Donley?”

  When Cal nodded, Thacken pushed a key, and one wall turned into an enormous motion view of Jupiter. The speed was adjusted to make the scene seem leisurely. “Watch the red spot for me, will you, Mr. Donley?”

  The red spot drifted laterally as the whorls and swirls slowly distorted it, and still it kept returning to its initial appearance. Cal was vaguely aware that the magnification of the view was increasing. The red spot slowly took up more and more of the wall, and Cal began to feel that it was pulling him in, as though it were a giant whirlpool, turning around him slowly, inexorably. Drawn in, Cal began to lose interest in his surroundings.

  The spot grew larger, broiling with increasing movement. Now Cal heard the sound. It was like the distant rumble of a storm. The sound intensified. Roaring winds whipped at Cal, and the storm rose in a crescendo about him.

  Some time later, without remembering a lag, Cal found himself reclining in a comfortable lawn chair. He seemed to be on the beach, and it was calm near him. Off shore in the distance, as though a hurricane spun around him, giving him a wide berth, winds carried debris aloft in constant motion, with him at the center.

  Dr. Thacken was beside him now, in a similar chair. He looked relaxed, as if the raging force of the nearby hurricane held no interest for him. Like the eye of the hurricane, he was calm.

  “I think we should talk,” he said at last.

  Cal said nothing.

  “I think we should talk about the other night. The one when you visited Forget-Me-Now.”

  “I didn’t kill him,” Cal heard his voice say.

  “You didn’t kill who?”

  “Angel. Domingo.”

  “The man they found dead? That was the night you lost your memories?”

  “It’s not just my memories,” said Cal.

  “What do you mean by that?”
<
br />   Cal said nothing.

  “What else do you have to lose?” the older man asked.

  Nikki? Lynn? No. He had already lost Lynn. He’d probably lost Nikki long ago, without even trying. What had he meant?

  “You’re going back in time. You’re going back to the evening before you lost your memory. What do you see?”

  Cal screamed. A moment earlier he and the doctor had been alone on the beach. But now there was a body lying at Cal’s feet.

  It was Domingo. A river of blood flowed from a large wound over one ear. The blood gushed into the sand and was totally absorbed. The shiny red blood kept flowing, kept streaming into the sand, yet the sand around the body remained white and clean.

  “What do you see?” Thacken prodded.

  “Gabriel’s dead.” Cal looked at the horizon, to the edge of the storm, averting his gaze from Domingo’s battered body. Against his will, he looked back. This time Domingo had a gaping chest wound. It looked as though his thick chest had been crushed to half its normal thickness, with bloody ribs protruding. “Gabe, don’t die,” Cal cried. “Damn it all, don’t die. I did this to you. This is all my fault.”

  Cal was on his knees, Domingo’s bloody head on his lap. The next thing he knew, he was dragging Domingo through the sand.

  “Where are you going?” asked Thacken.

  “For a doctor. Why do you ask such stupid questions?”

  “To find out the answer,” the older man said patiently.

  “He’s hurt. He needs attention.”

  “Isn’t he beyond attention?”

  “That doesn’t matter. It’s all my fault. I’ve got to do something.” Cal stopped, puzzled. Domingo’s heels lay stretched out where they had cut twin furrows in the sand. But the furrows extended through a doorway Cal couldn’t remember. An airlock door stood there on the beach, looking as out of place as Domingo’s body. The furrows went just through the open doorway, as though Cal had dragged Domingo’s body through it, but he hadn’t noticed it earlier.