To The Dark Star

by Silverberg, Robert

  A voice in the crowd called, “If you’ve forgotten all about it, how come you’re telling the story to us?”

  “A good question! An excellent question!” Haldersen felt sweat bursting from his pores, adrenaline pumping in his veins. “I know the story only because a machine in the hospital told it to me, yesterday morning. But it came to me from the outside, a secondhand tale. The experience of it within me, the scars, all that has been washed away. The pain of it is gone. Oh, yes, I’m sad that my innocent family perished, but a healthy man learns to control his grief after eleven years, he accepts his loss and goes on. I was sick, sick right here, and I couldn’t live with my grief, but now I can, I look on it objectively, do you see! And that’s why I say there’s a blessing in being able to forget. What about you, out there? There must be some of you who suffered painful losses too, and now can no longer remember them, now have been redeemed and released from anguish. Are there any? Are there? Raise your hands. Who’s been bathed in holy oblivion? Who out there knows that he’s been cleansed, even if he can’t remember what it is he’s been cleansed from?”

  Hands were starting to go up.

  Freddy Munson had spent Thursday afternoon, Thursday night, and all of Friday holed up in his apartment with every communications link to the outside turned off. He neither took nor made calls, ignored the telescreens, and had switched on the xerofax only three times in the thirty-six hours.

  He knew that he was finished, and he was trying to decide how to react to it.

  His memory situation seemed to have stabilized. He was still missing only five weeks of market maneuvers. There wasn’t any further decay—not that that mattered; he was in trouble enough—and, despite an optimistic statement last night by Mayor Chase, Munson hadn’t seen any evidence that memory loss was reversing itself. He was unable to reconstruct any of the vanished details.

  There was no immediate peril, he knew. Most of the clients whose accounts he’d been juggling were wealthy old bats who wouldn’t worry about their stocks until they got next month’s account statements. They had given him discretionary powers, which was how he had been able to tap their resources for his own benefit in the first place. Up to now, Munson had always been able to complete each transaction within a single month, so the account balanced for every statement. He had dealt with the problem of the securities withdrawals that the statements ought to show by gimmicking the house computer to delete all such withdrawals provided there was no net effect from month to month; that way he could borrow 10,000 shares of United Spaceways or Comsat or IBM for two weeks, use the stock as collateral for a deal of his own, and get it back into the proper account in time with no one the wiser. Three weeks from now, though, the end-of-the-month statements were going to go out showing all of his accounts peppered by inexplicable withdrawals, and he was going to catch hell.

  The trouble might even start earlier, and come from a different direction. Since the San Francisco trouble had begun, the market had gone down sharply, and he would probably be getting margin calls on Monday. The San Francisco exchange was closed, of course; it hadn’t been able to open Thursday morning because so many of the brokers had been hit hard by amnesia. But New York’s exchanges were open, and they had reacted badly to the news from San Francisco, probably out of fear that a conspiracy was afoot and the whole country might soon be pushed into chaos. When the local exchange opened again on Monday, if it opened, it would most likely open at the last New York prices, or near them, and keep on going down. Munson would be asked to put up cash or additional securities to cover his loans. He certainly didn’t have the cash, and the only way he could get additional securities would be to dip into still more of his accounts, compounding his offense; on the other hand, if he didn’t meet the margin calls they’d sell him out and he’d never be able to restore the stock to the proper accounts, even if he succeeded in remembering which shares went where.

  He was trapped. He could stick around for a few weeks, waiting for the ax to fall, or he could get out right now. He preferred to get out right now.

  And go where?

  Caracas? Reno? Sao Paulo? No, debtor sanctuaries wouldn’t do him any good, because he wasn’t an ordinary debtor. He was a thief, and the sanctuaries didn’t protect criminals, only bankrupts. He had to go farther, all the way to Luna Dome. There wasn’t any extradition from the moon. There’d be no hope of coming back, either.

  Munson got on the phone, hoping to reach his travel agent. Two tickets to Luna, please. One for him, one for Helene; if she didn’t feel like coming, he’d go alone. No, not round trip. But the agent didn’t answer. Munson tried the number several times. Shrugging, to decided to order direct, and called United Spaceways next. He got a busy signal. “Shall we wait-list your call?” the data net asked. “It will be three days, at the present state of the backlog of calls, before we can put it through.”

  “Forget it,” Munson said.

  He had just realized that San Francisco was closed off, anyway. Unless he tried to swim for it, he couldn’t get out of the city to go to the spaceport, even if he did manage to buy tickets to Luna. He was caught here until they opened the transit routes again. How long would that be? Monday, Tuesday, next Friday? They couldn’t keep the city shut forever—could they?

  What it came down to, Munson saw, was a contest of probabilities. Would someone discover the discrepancies in his accounts before he found a way of escaping to Luna, or would his escape access become available too late? Put on those terms, it became an in interesting gamble instead of a panic situation. He would spend the weekend trying to find a way out of San Francisco, and if he failed, he would try to be a stoic about facing what was to come.

  Calm, now, he remembered that he had promised to lend Paul Mueller a few thousand dollars, to help him equip his studio again. Munson was unhappy over having let that slip his mind. He liked to be helpful. And, even now, what were two or three bigs to him? He had plenty of recoverable assets. Might as well let Paul have a little of the money before the lawyers start grabbing it.

  One problem. He had less than a hundred in cash on him—who bothered carrying cash?—and he couldn’t telephone a transfer of funds to Mueller’s account, because Paul didn’t have an account with a data net any more, or even a phone. There wasn’t any place to get that much cash, either, at this hour of evening, especially with the city paralyzed. And the weekend was coming. Munson had an idea, though. What if he went shopping with Mueller tomorrow, and simply charged whatever the sculptor needed to his own account? Fine. He reached for the phone to arrange the date, remembered that Mueller could not be called, and decided to tell Paul about it in person. Now. He could use some fresh air, anyway.

  He half expected to find robot bailiffs outside, waiting to arrest him. But of course no one was after him yet. He walked to the garage. It was a fine night, cool, starry, with perhaps just a hint of fog in the west. Berkeley’s lights glittered through the haze. The streets were quiet. In time of crisis people stay home. He drove quickly to Mueller’s place. Four robots were in front of it. Munson eyed them edgily, with the wary look of the man who knows that the sheriff will be after him too in a little while. But Mueller, when he came to the door, took no notice of the dunners.

  Munson said, “I’m sorry I missed connections with you. The money I promised to lend you—”

  “It’s all right, Freddy. Pete Castine was here this morning and I borrowed the three bigs from him. I’ve got my studio set up again. Come in and look?”

  Munson entered. “Pete Castine?”

  “A good investment for him. He makes money if he has work of mine to sell, right? It’s in his best interest to help me get started again. Carole and I have been hooking things up all day.”

  “Carole?” Munson said. Mueller showed him into the studio. The paraphernalia of a sonic sculptor sat on the floor—a welding pen, a vacuum bell, a big texturing vat, some ingots and strands of wire, and such things. Carole was feeding discarded packing cases into the wa
ll disposal unit. Looking up, she smiled uncertainly and ran her hand through her long dark hair.

  “Hello, Freddy.”

  “Everybody good friends again?” he asked, baffled.

  “Nobody remembers being enemies,” she said. She laughed. “Isn’t it wonderful to have your memory blotted out like this?”

  “Wonderful,” Munson said bleakly.

  Commander Braskett said, “Can I offer you people any water?”

  Tim Bryce smiled. Lisa Bryce smiled. Ted Kamakura smiled. Even Mayor Chase, that poor empty husk, smiled. Commander Braskett understood those smiles. Even now, after three days of close contact under pressure, they thought he was nuts.

  He had had a week’s supply of bottled water brought from his home to the command post here at the hospital. Everybody kept telling him that the municipal water was safe to drink now, that the memory drugs were gone from it; but why couldn’t they comprehend that his aversion to public water dated back to an era when memory drugs were unknown? There were plenty of other chemicals in the reservoir, after all.

  He hoisted his glass in a jaunty toast and winked at them.

  Tim Bryce said, “Commander, we’d like you to address the city again at half past ten this morning.”

  Braskett scanned the sheet. It dealt mostly with the relaxation of the order to boil water before drinking it. “You want me to go on all media,” he said, “and tell the people of San Francisco that it’s safe for them to drink from the taps, eh? That’s a bit awkward for me. Even a figurehead spokesman is entitled to some degree of personal integrity.”

  Bryce looked briefly puzzled. Then he laughed and took the text back. “You’re absolutely right, commander. I can’t ask you to make this announcement, in view of—ah—your particular beliefs. Let’s change the plan. You open the spot by introducing me, and I’ll discuss the no-boiling thing. Will that be all right?”

  Commander Braskett appreciated the tactful way they deferred to his special obsession. “I’m at your service, doctor,” he said gravely.

  Bryce finished speaking and the camera lights left him. He said to Lisa, “What about lunch? Or breakfast, or whatever meal it is we’re up to now.”

  “Everything’s ready Tim. Whenever you are.”

  They ate together in the holograph room, which had become the kitchen of the command post. Massive cameras and tanks of etching fluid surrounded them. The others thoughtfully left them alone. These brief shared meals were the only fragments of privacy he and Lisa had had, in the fifty-two hours since he had awakened to find her sleeping beside him.

  He stared across the table in wonder at this delectable blonde girl who they said was his wife. How beautiful her soft brown eyes were against that backdrop of golden hair! How perfect the line of her lips, the curve of her earlobes! Bryce knew that no one would object if he and Lisa went off and locked themselves into one of the private rooms for a few hours. He wasn’t that indispensable; and there was so much he had to begin relearning about his wife. But he was unable to leave his post. He hadn’t been out of the hospital or even off this floor for the duration of the crisis; he kept himself going by grabbing the sleep wire for half an hour every six hours. Perhaps it was an illusion born of too little sleep and too much data, but he had come to believe that the survival of the city depended on him. He had spent his career trying to heal individual sick minds; now he had a whole city to tend to.

  “Tired?” Lisa asked.

  “I’m in the tiredness beyond feeling tired. My mind is so clear it that my skull wouldn’t cast a shadow. I’m nearing nirvana.”

  “The worst is over, I think. The city’s settling down.”

  “It’s still bad, though. Have you seen the suicide figures?”

  “Bad?”

  “Hideous. The norm in San Francisco is 220 a year. We’ve had close to five hundred in the last two and a half days. And that’s just the reported cases, the bodies discovered and so on. Probably we can double the figure. Thirty suicides reported Wednesday night, about two hundred on Thursday, the same on Friday, and about fifty so far this morning. At least it seems as if the wave is past its peak.”

  “But why, Tim?”

  “Some people react poorly to loss. Especially the loss of a segment of their memories. They’re indignant—they’re crushed—they’re scared—and they reach for the exit pill. Suicide’s too easy now, anyway. In the old days you reacted to frustration by smashing the crockery; now you go a deadlier route. Of course, there are special cases. A man named Montini they fished out of the bay—a professional mnemonist, who did a trick act at nightclubs, total recall. I can hardly blame him for caving in. And I suppose there were a lot of others who kept their business in their heads—gamblers, stock-market operators, oral poets, musicians—who might decide to end it all rather than try to pick up the pieces.”

  “But if the effects of the drug wear off—”

  “Do they?” Bryce asked.

  “You said so yourself.”

  “I was making optimistic noises for the benefit of the citizens. We don’t have any experimental history for these drugs and human subjects. Hell, Lisa, we don’t even know the dosage that was administered; by the time we were able to get water samples most of the system had been flushed clean, and the automatic monitoring devices at the city pumping station were rigged as part of the conspiracy so they didn’t show a thing out of the ordinary. I’ve got no idea at all if there’s going to be any measurable memory recovery.”

  “But there is, Tim. I’ve already started to get some things back.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t scream at me like that! You scared me.”

  He clung to the edge of the table. “Are you really recovering?”

  “Around the edges. I remember a few things already. About us.”

  “Like what?”

  “Applying for the marriage license. I’m standing stark naked inside a diagnostat machine and a voice on the loudspeaker is telling me to look straight into the scanners. And I remember the ceremony, a little. Just a small group of friends, a civil ceremony. Then we took the pod to Acapulco.”

  He stared grimly. “When did this start to come back?”

  “About seven this morning, I guess.”

  “Is there more?”

  “A bit. Our honeymoon. The robot bellhop who came blundering in on our wedding night. You don’t—”

  “Remember it? No. No. Nothing. Blank.”

  “That’s all I remember, this early stuff.”

  “Yes, of course,” he said. “The older memories are always the first to return in any form of amnesia. The last stuff in is the first to go.” His hands were shaking, not entirely from fatigue. A strange desolation crept over him. Lisa remembered. He did not. Was it a function of her youth, or of the chemistry of her brain, or—?

  He could not bear the thought that they no longer shared an oblivion. He didn’t want the amnesia to become one-sided for them; it was humiliating not to remember his own marriage when she did. You’re being irrational, he told himself. Physician, heal thyself!

  “Let’s go back inside,” he said.

  “You haven’t finished your—”

  “Later.”

  He went into the command room. Kamakura had phones in both hands and was barking data into a recorder. The screens were alive with morning scenes, Saturday in the city, crowds in Union Square. Kamakura hung up both calls and said, “I’ve got an interesting report from Dr. Klein at Letterman General. He says they’re getting the first traces of memory recovery this morning. Women under thirty, only.”

  “Lisa says she’s beginning to remember too,” Bryce said.

  “Women under thirty,” said Kamakura. “Yes. Also the suicide rate is definitely tapering. We may be starting to come out of it.”

  “Terrific,” Bryce said hollowly.

  Haldersen was living in a ten-foot-high bubble that one of his disciples had blown for him in the middle of Golden Gate Park, just west of the Arboretum. Fif
teen similar bubbles had gone up around his, giving the region the look of an up-to-date Eskimo village in the plastic igloos. The occupants of the camp, aside from Haldersen, were men and women who had so little memory left that they did not know who they were or where they lived. He had acquired a dozen of these lost ones on Friday, and by late afternoon on Saturday he had been joined by some forty more. The news somehow was moving through the city that those without moorings were welcome to take up with the group in the park. It had happened that way during the 1906 disaster, too.

  The police had been around a few times to check on them. The first time, a portly lieutenant had tried to persuade the whole group to move to Fletcher Memorial. “That’s where most of the victims are getting treatment, you see. The doctors give them something, and then we try to identify them and find their next of kin—”

  “Perhaps it’s best for these people to remain away from their next of kin for a while,” Haldersen suggested. “Some meditation in the park—and exploration of the pleasures of having forgotten—that’s all we’re doing here.” He would not go to Fletcher Memorial himself except under duress. As for the others, he felt he could do more for them in the park than anyone in the hospital could.

  The second time the police came, Saturday afternoon when his group was much larger, they brought a mobile communications system. “Dr. Bryce of Fletcher Memorial wants to talk to you,” a different lieutenant said.

  Haldersen watched the screen come alive. “Hello, doctor. Worried about me?”

  “I’m worried about everyone, Nate. What the hell are you doing in the park?”