by Anthology
"So I did," said Holati. "Did he?"
"He tried, I think. But it's like you say. I got lost in about three sentences and never caught up." She looked curiously at the Commissioner. "I didn't have a chance to talk to Major Quillan alone, so I'm wondering why Mantelish was told the I-Fleets in the Vishni area are hunting for planets with plasmoids on them. I thought you felt he was too woolly-minded to be trusted."
"We couldn't keep that from him very well," Holati said. "He was the boy who thought of it."
"You didn't have to tell him they'd found some possibles did you?"
"He did, unfortunately. He's had those plasmoid detectors of his for about a month, but he didn't happen to think of mentioning them. The reason he was to come back to Manon originally was to sort over the stuff the Fleets have been sending back here. It's as weird a collection of low-grade life-forms as I've ever seen, but not plasmoid. Mantelish went into a temper and wanted to know why the idiots weren't using detectors."
"Oh, Lord!" Trigger said.
"That's what it's like when you're working with him," said the Commissioner. "We started making up detectors wholesale and rushing them out there, but the new results haven't come in yet."
"Well, that explains it." Trigger looked down at the desk a moment, then glanced up and met the Commissioner's eye. She colored slightly.
"Incidentally," she said, "I did take the opportunity to apologize to Major Quillan for clipping him a couple this morning. I shouldn't have done that."
"He didn't seem offended," said Holati.
"No, not really," she agreed.
"And I explained to him that you had a very good reason to feel disturbed."
"Thanks," said Trigger. "By the way, was he really a smuggler at one time? And a hijacker?"
"Yes--very successful at it. It's excellent cover for some phases of Intelligence work. As I heard it, though, Quillan happened to scramble up one of the Hub's nastier dope rings in the process, and was broken two grades in rank."
"Broken?" Trigger said. "Why?"
"Unwarranted interference with a political situation. The Scouts are rough about that. You're supposed to see those things. Sometimes you don't. Sometimes you do and go ahead anyway. They may pat you on the back privately, but they also give you the axe."
"I see," she said. She smiled.
"Just how far did we get in bringing you up to date yesterday?" the Commissioner asked.
"The remains that weren't Doctor Azol," Trigger said.
If it hadn't been for the funny business with Trigger, Holati said, he mightn't have been immediately skeptical about Doctor Azol's supposed demise by plasmoid during a thrombosis-induced spell of unconsciousness. There had been no previous indications that the U-League's screening of its scientists, in connection with the plasmoid find, might have been strategically loused up from the start.
But as things stood, he did look on the event with very considerable skepticism. Doctor Azol's death, in that particular form, seemed too much of a coincidence. For, beside himself, only Azol knew that another person already had suddenly and mysteriously lost consciousness on Harvest Moon. Only Azol therefore might expect that the Commissioner would quietly inform the official investigators of the preceding incident, thus cinching the accidental death theory in Azol's case much more neatly than the assumed heart attack had done.
The Commissioner went on from there to the reflection that if Azol had chosen to disappear, it might well have been with the intention of conveying important information secretly back to somebody waiting for it in the Hub. He saw to it that the remains were preserved, and that word of what could have happened was passed on to a high Federation official whom he knew to be trustworthy. That was all he was in a position to do, or interested in doing, himself. Security men presently came and took the supposed vestiges of Doctor Azol's body back to the Hub.
"It wasn't until some months later, when the works blew up and I was put on this job, that I heard any more about it," Holati Tate said. "It wasn't Azol. It was part of some unidentifiable cadaver which he'd presumably brought with him for just such a use. Anyway, they had Azol's gene patterns on record, and they didn't jibe."
His desk transmitter buzzed and Trigger took it on an earphone extension.
"Argee," she said. She listened a moment. "All right. Coming over." She stood up, replacing the earphone. "Office tangle," she explained. "Guess they feel I'm fluffing, now I'm back. I'll get back here as soon as it's straightened out. Oh, by the way."
"Yes?"
"The Psychology Service ship messaged in during the morning. It'll arrive some time tomorrow and wants a station assigned to it outside the system, where it won't be likely to attract attention. Are they really as huge as all that?"
"I've seen one or two that were bigger," the Commissioner said. "But not much."
"When they're stationed, they'll send someone over in a shuttle to pick me up."
The Commissioner nodded. "I'll check on the arrangements for that. The idea of the interview still bothering you?"
"Well, I'd sooner it wasn't necessary," Trigger admitted. "But I guess it is." She grinned briefly. "Anyway, I'll be able to tell my grandchildren some day that I once talked to one of the real egg heads!"
The Psychology Service woman who stood up from a couch as Trigger came into the small spaceport lounge next evening looked startlingly similar to Major Quillan's Dawn City assistant, Gaya. Standing, you could see that she was considerably more slender than Gaya. She had all of Gaya's good looks.
"The name is Pilch," she said. She looked at Trigger and smiled. It was a good smile, Trigger thought; not the professional job she'd expected. "And everyone who knows Gaya," she went on, "thinks we must be twins."
Trigger laughed. "Aren't you?"
"Just first cousins." The voice was all right too--clear and easy. Trigger felt herself relax somewhat. "That's one reason they picked me to come and get you. We're already almost acquainted. Another is that I've been assigned to take you through the preliminary work for your interview after we get to the ship. We can chat a bit on the way, and that should make it seem less disagreeable. Boat's in the speedboat park over there."
They started down a short hallway to the park area. "Just how disagreeable is it going to be?" Trigger asked.
"Not at all bad in your case. You're conditioned to the processes more than you know. Your interviewer will just pick up where the last job ended and go on from there. It's when you have to work down through barriers that you have a little trouble."
Trigger was still mulling that over as she stepped ahead of Pilch into the smaller of two needle-nosed craft parked side by side. Pilch followed her in and closed the lock behind them. "The other one's a combat job," she remarked. "Our escort. Commissioner Tate made very sure we had one, too!" She motioned Trigger to a low soft seat that took up half the space of the tiny room behind the lock, sat down beside her and spoke at a wall pickup. "All set. Let's ride!"
Blue-green tinted sky moved past them in the little room's viewer screen; then a tilted landscape flashed by and dropped back. Pilch winked at Trigger. "Takes off like a scared yazong, that boy! He'll race the combat job to the ship. About those barriers. Supposing I told you something like this. There's no significant privacy invasion in this line of work. We go directly to the specific information we're looking for and deal only with that. Your private life, your personal thoughts, remain secret, sacred and inviolate. What would you say?"
"I'd say you're a liar," Trigger said promptly.
"Of course. That sort of thing is sometimes told to nervous interviewees. We don't bother with it. But now supposing I told you very sincerely that no recording will be made of any little personal glimpses we may get?"
"Lying again."
"Right again," said Pilch. "You've been scanned about as thoroughly as anyone ever gets to be outside of a total therapy. Your personal secrets are already on record, and since I'm doing most of the preparatory work with you, I've studied all t
he significant-looking ones very closely. You're a pretty good person, for my money. All right?"
Trigger studied her face uncomfortably. Hardly all right, but....
"I guess I can stand it," she said. "As far as you're concerned, anyway." She hesitated. "What's the egghead like?"
"Old Cranadon?" said Pilch. "You won't mind her a bit, I think. Very motherly old type. Let's get through the preparations first, and then I'll introduce you to her. If you think it would make you more comfortable, I'll just stay around while she's working. I've sat in on her interviews before. How's that?"
"Sounds better," Trigger said. She did feel a good deal relieved.
They slid presently into a tunnel-like lock of the space vehicle Holati Tate had described as a flying mountain. From what Trigger could see of it in the guide lights on the approach, it did rather closely resemble a very large mountain of the craggier sort. They went through a series of lifts, portals and passages, and wound up in a small and softly lit room with a small desk, a very large couch, a huge wall-screen, and assorted gadgetry. Pilch sat down at the desk and invited Trigger to make herself comfortable on the couch.
Trigger lay down on the couch. She had a very brief sensation of falling gently through dimness.
Half an hour later she sat up on the couch. Pilch switched on a desk light and looked at her thoughtfully. Trigger blinked. Then her eyes widened, first with surprise, then in comprehension.
"Liar!" she said.
"Hm-m-m," said Pilch. "Yes."
"That was the interview!"
"True."
"Then you're the egghead!"
"Tcha!" said Pilch. "Well, I believe I can modestly describe myself as being like that. Yes. You're another, by the way. We're just smart about different things. Not so very different."
"You were smart about this," Trigger said. She swung her legs off the couch and regarded Pilch dubiously. Pilch grinned.
"Took most of the disagreeableness out of it, didn't it?"
"Yes," Trigger admitted, "it did. Now what do we do?"
"Now," said Pilch, "I'll explain."
The thing that had caught their attention was a quite simple process. It just happened to be a process the Psychology Service hadn't observed under those particular circumstances before.
"Here's what our investigators had the last time," Pilch said. "Lines and lines of stuff, of course. But here's a simple continuity which makes it clear. Your mother dies when you're six months old. Then there are a few nurses whom you don't like very much. Good nurses but frankly much too stupid for you, though you don't know that, and they don't either, naturally. Next, you're seven years old--a bit over--and there's a mud pond on the farm near Ceyce where you spend all your vacations. You just love that old mud pond."
Trigger laughed. "A smelly old hole, actually! Full of froggy sorts of things. I went out to that farm six years ago, just to look around it again. But you're right. I did love that mud pond, once."
"Right up to that seventh summer," Pilch said. "Which was the summer your father's cousin spent her vacation on the farm with you."
Trigger nodded. "Perhaps. I don't remember the time too well."
"Well," Pilch said, "she was a brilliant woman. In some ways. She was about the age your mother had been when she died. She was very good-looking. And she was nice! She played games with a little girl, sang to her. Told her stories. Cuddled her."
Trigger blinked. "Did she? I don't--"
"However," said Pilch, "she did not play games with, tell stories to, cuddle, etcetera, little girls who"--her voice went suddenly thin and edged--"come in all filthy and smelling from that dirty, slimy old mud pond!"
Trigger looked startled. "You know," she said, "I do believe I remember her saying that--just that way!"
"You remember it," said Pilch, "now. You never saw her again after that summer. Your father had good sense. He didn't marry her, as he apparently intended to do before he saw how she was going to be with you. You went back to your old mud pond just once more, on your next vacation. She wasn't there. What had you done? You waded around, feeling pretty sad. And you stepped on a sharp stick and cut your foot badly. Sort of a self-punishment."
She flipped over a few pages of some record on her desk. "Now before you start asking what's interesting about that, I'll run over a few crossed-in items. Age twelve. There's that Maccadon animal like a dryland jellyfish--a mingo, isn't it?--that swallowed your kitten."
"The mingo!" Trigger said. "I remember that. I killed it."
"Right. You kicked it apart and pulled out the kitten, but the kitten was dead and partly digested. You bawled all day and half the night about that."
"I might have, I suppose."
"You did. Now those are two centering points. There's other stuff connected with them. No need to go into details. As classes--you've stepped now and then on things that squirmed or squashed. Bad smells. Etcetera. How do you feel about plasmoids?"
Trigger wrinkled her nose. "I just think they're unpleasant things. All except--"
Oops! She checked herself.
"--Repulsive," said Pilch. "It's quite all right about Repulsive. We've been informed of that supersecret little item you're guarding. If we hadn't been told, we'd know now, of course. Go ahead."
"Well, it's odd!" Trigger remarked thoughtfully. "I just said I thought plasmoids were rather unpleasant. But that's the way I used to feel about them. I don't feel that way now."
"Except again," said Pilch, "for that little monstrosity on the ship. If it was a plasmoid. You rather suspect it was, don't you?"
Trigger nodded. "That would be pretty bad!"
"Very bad," said Pilch. "Plasmoids generally, you feel about them now as you feel about potatoes ... rocks ... neutral things like that?"
"That's about it," Trigger said. She still looked puzzled.
"We'll go over what seems to have changed your attitude there in a minute or so. Here's another thing--" Pilch paused a moment, then said, "Night before last, about an hour after you'd gone to bed, you had a very light touch of the same pattern of mental blankness you experienced on that plasmoid station."
"While I was asleep?" Trigger said, startled.
"That's right. Comparatively very light, very brief. Five or six minutes. Dream activity, etcetera, smooths out. Some blocking on various sense lines. Then, normal sleep until about five minutes before you woke up. At that point there may have been another minute touch of the same pattern. Too brief to be actually definable. A few seconds at most. The point is that this is a continuing process."
She looked at Trigger a moment. "Not particularly alarmed, are you?"
"No," said Trigger. "It just seems very odd." She added, "I got rather frightened when Commissioner Tate was first telling me what had been going on."
"Yes, I know."
20
Pilch was silent for some moments again, considering the wall-screen as if thinking about something connected with it. "Well, we'll drop that for now," she said finally. "Let me tell you what's been happening these months, starting with that first amnesia-covered blankout on Harvest Moon. The Maccadon Colonial School has sound basic psychology courses, so there won't be much explaining to do. The connection between those incidents I mentioned and your earlier feeling of disliking plasmoids is obvious, isn't it?"
Trigger nodded.
"Good. When you got the first Service check-up at Commissioner Tate's demand, there was very little to go on. The amnesia didn't lift immediately--not very unusual. The blankout might be interesting because of the circumstances. Otherwise the check showed you were in a good deal better than normal condition. Outside of total therapy processes--and I believe you know that's a long haul--there wasn't much to be done for you, and no particular reason to do it. So an amnesia-resolving process was initiated and you were left alone for a while.
"Actually something already was going on at the time, but it wasn't spotted until your next check. What it's amounted to has been a relatively minor bu
t extremely precise and apparently purposeful therapy process. Your unconscious memories of those groupings of incidents I was talking about, along with various linked groupings, have gradually been cleared up. Emotion has been drained away, fixed evaluations have faded. Associative lines have shifted.
"Now that's nothing remarkable in itself. Any good therapist could have done the same for you, and much more rapidly. Say in a few hours' hard work, spread over several weeks to permit progressive assimilation without conscious disturbances. The very interesting thing is that this orderly little process appears to have been going on all by itself. And that just doesn't happen. You disturbed now?"
Trigger nodded. "A little. Mainly I'm wondering why somebody wants me to not-dislike plasmoids."
"So am I wondering," said Pilch. "Somebody does, obviously. And a very slick somebody it is. We'll find out by and by. Incidentally, this particular part of the business has been concluded. Apparently, somebody doesn't intend to make you wild for plasmoids. It's enough that you don't dislike them."
Trigger smiled. "I can't see anyone making me wild for the things, whatever they tried!"
Pilch nodded. "Could be done," she said. "Rather easily. You'd be bats, of course. But that's very different from a simple neutralizing process like the one we've been discussing.... Now here's something else. You were pretty unhappy about this business for a while. That wasn't somebody's fault. That was us. I'll explain.
"Your investigators could have interfered with the little therapy process in a number of ways. That wouldn't have taught them a thing, so they didn't. But on your third check they found something else. Again it wasn't in the least obtrusive; in someone else they mightn't have given it a second look. But it didn't fit at all with your major personality patterns. You wanted to stay where you were."
"Stay where I was?"
"In the Manon System."
"Oh!" Trigger flushed a little. "Well--"