Memory Blank

by John Stith

  Bitterly depressed, Cal walked back into the living room. He looked again at the pictures of Earth and Daedalus, wondering how Tolbor could possibly think that he was doing God’s will.

  And, as he looked, it hit him. The bacteria had to be near the pictures.

  He could imagine Tolbor feeling secure with the container hidden here. With the rent paid up, no one should enter the apartment. And Tolbor had no reason to believe that anyone would even be searching for the container.

  Cal moved to the pictures and gingerly removed them from the wall. There was no wall safe behind either.

  But there was a faint seam in the wall, and several small holes, as though someone had tried several times to find exactly the right location to hang the pictures.

  “Grab a knife or a screwdriver,” Cal shouted to Dobson, who was in the kitchen.

  Working rapidly but cautiously, they succeeded in prying away a wall panel. Behind it lay a silver test tube.

  A quiet fan blew air past the tube, directing it toward the vent holes in the wall. And adjacent to the tube was what had to be a detonator and timer.

  Gingerly Dobson removed the timer package. Only when it was outside of the apartment did Cal actually begin to relax.

  “‘Thanks’ is a pretty weak word,” Dobson said, wiping his forehead.

  “Thanks for believing me. I’m going home.”

  “What about that?” Dobson pointed to the burn hole where Tolbor had shot him.

  “It doesn’t hurt too badly. I’ll see to it soon.” Fortunately, the wound was in the fleshy area in Cal’s waist, and it had stopped bleeding.

  “Okay. We’ll notify the Vittoria that they’ll be needing a new commander.” Dobson tipped two fingers toward Cal in a salute.

  Filled with a weary sense of relief, Cal started to leave, but paused. “Oh, one more thing. I think the guy who helped Tolbor is Paulo Frall. He was an attendant at Forget-Me-Now. He’s probably on Luna right now. Tolbor must have warned him that I was suspicious, but he almost certainly doesn’t know what Tolbor was concealing.”

  The tubeway was much busier than normal, so Cal couldn’t board the first car along. As he waited Vincent told him that a public announcement was being broadcast, announcing a stop to the partial evacuation.

  “I haven’t been thinking,” Cal said. “Call Michelle, would you, Vincent?”

  “Am I glad to see you,” Michelle said when she answered. “Have you talked to Nikki yet? She’s worried sick. And give me the details on what happened. I’ve got a newscast to prepare for.”

  “In order, no, I haven’t talked to Nikki. I wanted to do it in person. And Tolbor did it.”

  “Come on. Come on.”

  “Okay. I’ll give you as much as I can before I get home. And if I don’t finish, I’ll give you the rest at least four hours before I agree to talk to anyone.”

  “Better. Go ahead.”

  Cal talked quietly into Vincent’s microphone for almost the whole trip.

  As he neared the house he wondered the same thing he had wondered several times lately. Would Nikki be home?

  “Wish me luck, Vincent,”

  “You’ll need it.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  Nikki was there. She sat stiffly in one of the living room chairs, her eyes seeming darker than usual. She held a hot drink in her hands, as though trying to warm herself.

  “Hello, Nikki.” He tried to keep his voice calm.

  “Hello, Cal.” She matched his tone.

  “I need to talk to you.”

  “I wasn’t sure if you still would.”

  Cal was taken aback. “You mean because of what you said in the hospital?”

  “What else?” Nikki sniffed and drew in a deep breath.

  Cal stepped closer. “You know now why I couldn’t talk then?”

  “Yes. I knew it when I saw the note. I felt even worse than I did when I talked to you in your room.”

  “Can you forgive me, then?”

  “God, you ask silly questions sometimes. Of course.”

  “If you can forgive me for seeming to do the wrong thing when you didn’t know all the reasons, I’d be a pretty small person if I couldn’t do the same.”

  Nikki’s face lit up, but she stayed seated. “But you haven’t talked about wanting me at all in the last few days.”

  “Now who’s silly? I was afraid that if I did, it would drive you further away.” Cal moved another step closer. “I want you more than I’ve ever wanted you. I love you.”

  Nikki scrambled out of the chair, and Cal moved to join her. The strength of her arms as they embraced put too much pressure on his ribs, but he didn’t complain.

  “I want you, too,” she said into his ear. “I’m glad you’re back.”

  “Me, too. In more ways than one.”

  After a few minutes Cal’s cheeks began to hurt from smiling. “Lieutenant Dobson told me you were the driving force behind the search for me after I disappeared,” he said. “I thought you would be busy apartment hunting.”

  “I just couldn’t accept it all. I really thought you were trying to pull closer, and then you wouldn’t talk. The more I thought about it, the more I was convinced that something was wrong. I wanted to come with Dobson, but he takes a hard line on risk and police responsibilities.” Nikki backed up a few centimeters and said, “Tell me what happened.” She straightened Cal’s hair. “God, you look terrible.”

  He told her, finishing with, “When Jones originally asked me to make covert checks, he gave me a severe warning about telling anyone. But I found I didn’t want to anyway. I felt dirty, spying on my friends. Anyway, I started listening to people’s conversations. Sodom and Gomorrah came up in a couple of Tolbor’s conversations—he didn’t know he was being listened to then. He obviously felt it was God’s plan, not some horrible accident. He talked a lot about how Jupiter had been so clean and unspoiled. I started wondering.

  “I’m still not sure about the Vital Twenty-Two, but I think one of Tolbor’s friends gave him some, figuring it wouldn’t be any crime for him to use it himself. Anyway, I eventually found out Tolbor was one of the original owners of Linewold Lab, and went to check it out.”

  “But why did you suspect Tolbor when you came to?” she asked. “What made you so sure it was him?”

  “I wasn’t sure. It was just that most of the indications pointed to him. Tolbor was the person I had bad feelings about when I walked around that first day after Gabe died. I think Leroy and Dave decided to embark on their plan only after they realized Tolbor wasn’t paying much attention to the Vittoria-to-Daedalus communications equipment.”

  “Why was that? Because calling back to Daedalus would be like Lot’s wife looking back at Sodom and Gomorrah?”

  “That’s my theory, too. And there were some small things that I finally realized in Tolbor’s lab. When I tried out Fargo Edmund’s name on Tolbor, he said he didn’t know him. But Fargo could be a woman’s name, too.”

  “I don’t understand why Tolbor wasn’t going to kill you outright while he had the chance,” Nikki said, shivering and wincing as she spoke.

  “I’m not entirely sure myself. My best guess is that Tolbor saw himself as a tool of God, responding to gentle nudges, setting clockwork devices in motion. As long as he didn’t take any final, direct action, there was always the possibility of change. If he was misinterpreting God’s will, there was always the chance of God arranging for someone else to upset his efforts. And, if no one did, well, Tolbor was right all along.”

  “But why did you think to look behind the pictures?” asked Nikki.

  “Because I had seen those same two pictures, already moved, at Tolbor’s Vittoria home. So there had to be two sets, or he moved the one set back. Either way, it didn’t make sense.”

  Nikki looked at him intently, her eyes warm, her cheeks flushed. “How much of your memory has come back?”

  “Almost all, I think. I guess when Tolbor told the Forget-Me-Now attendant to d
o it fast, and to blank as much as possible, he made a mistake. They blanked more memory than usual, but they did it too lightly. Tolbor must have really been in a panic when he heard how much I was able to recall or stumble over.” Cal hesitated. “Now I even remember that frilly blue negligee.” He grinned.

  Nikki grinned right back. “After this, you’re going to have to leave Vincent outside when you come to bed. Who knows who he’ll broadcast to next time?”

  “One teeny problem,” said Vincent, breaking his long silence. “One little faux pas, and they hold it against you forever. It wasn’t even my fault.”

  Still smiling, Nikki calmly covered Vincent with one hand and kissed Cal.