“How did he find out?” I asked.
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Did he talk about anything else, any restricted data that might have been impressed on his drums?”
“No. He was just obsessed with the idea that he was—nothing.”
I glanced down at my watch. And I regretted having allotted myself only ten minutes for this face-to-face. “Time’s up,” I said, heading back for the videophone booth. “I’ll drop down and see you again.”
“No!” Phil Ashton called after me. “For God’s sake, don’t!”
I pressed back in the booth, closed the door and watched the second hand of my analog watch creep up on the minute.
With two seconds to go, I glanced out into the lobby. And I almost shouted at what I saw.
Fighting a sickening sense of loss because I knew I couldn’t stop retransfer, I watched the familiar figure of Morton Lynch—an
analog
Morton Lynch—crossing the hotel lobby.
I spent the rest of that afternoon figuratively cowering from the simulator. Now it was something fearful and ominous—an electronic ogre that had breathed purpose into its own soul and had somehow charged into my world to slay Fuller and seize Lynch.
Eventually, it occurred to me that the Morton Lynch I had sighted in the analog hotel lobby might have been a reactional unit who only
resembled
him. It wasn’t until the next morning, however, that I realized there was a simple check I could make. With that objective in mind, I hurried to the ID indexing department.
In the “Occupation” file I searched under “Security.” No entry. Under the theory that Lynch’s simulectronic vocation might be a near equivalent of his real one, I looked under “Police.” Still no results.
Then, conceding that I might be suspecting subterfuge where none had been intended, I decided on a more direct approach and crossed over to the nominal files.
The last entry under the L’s was: “LYNCH, Morton—IDU-7683.”
My hand trembled as I scanned the notations on the card. IDU-7683 had been programmed into the simulator three months earlier by Dr. Fuller himself!
Abruptly, curtains parted on indistinct memory and I recalled the incident, made obscure by its insignificance. As a practical joke, Fuller had modeled a unit trait for trait after the real Lynch. Then he had treated the security director to a shocking look-see into the simulator, where Lynch had observed-himself.
I was elated. I had proved, to myself at least, that there had once been a Morton Lynch!
Or
had
there?
Hopelessly, I shrank once again before the reasonable alternative, the redeeming circumstance: Couldn’t the entire basis of my belief in Lynch’s former existence have been the subconscious knowledge that such a character had been programmed into the machine? Had that buried memory festered until I created an imaginary Lynch in real life?
Despondent, I wandered out of the building. I went aimlessly past the row of ARM pickets, remaining on the static-strip where I could feel the reassuring solidity of concrete beneath my feet. I just wanted to walk until I ran out of city and lost myself in silent, desolate fields. But then I thought of my last venture into the country and banished both the memory and the wishful intent.
At the corner a pollster stopped me. “I’m sampling reaction to fall styles in men’s clothing,” he announced.
I only stared through him.
“Do you approve of the broad lapel?” he began.
But when he reached for his pad I stumbled on down the street.
“Hey, come back!” he shouted. “I’ll have you fined!”
Under the pedistrip overpass at the corner an automatic news vendor blared: “Reaction Monitors in Trouble! Legislation Offered to Ban Public Polling!”
Even that—even the fact that Siskin had already started pulling his strings against ARM —made no impression on me.
While I stood there another pollster drew up before me. Softly, out of the side of his mouth, he said, “For God’s sake—for your own sake, Hall—forget about the whole damned thing!”
Jolted by the naked pertinence of the warning, I made a stab for his arm but came up with only his CRM sleeve band as he whirled and disappeared into the throng.
It
hadn’t
happened, I told myself numbly. I’d only
imagined
the presence of the pollster. But my lack of conviction was understandable as I stuffed his cloth badge into my pocket.
An air car detached itself from the swift, smooth traffic flow and pulled up at the curb.
“Doug!” Jinx called out cheerfully. “I was just going to see if you’d have lunch with me.”
Then she discovered the blankness on my face. “Get in, Doug.”
Submissively, I climbed into the car and she maneuvered onto a liftoff island. In a moment we were soaring up.
We roofed out through the highest regulated level and she adjusted the autosystem for drift compensation. We sat there, high above the city.
“Now,” she said tentatively, “what’s the trouble? Have a run-in with Siskin?”
She cracked open the dome and a sighing penetration of refreshing wind wafted the cobwebs from my entangled thoughts. But they were thoughts that were still too inchoate to wrestle with imponderables.
“Doug?” She questioned my silence as the draft caught a tress of lustrous hair and splayed it against the plexidome.
If I was certain of anything, it was that the time was past for intrigue. I had to know whether she had actually been devious with me or whether I had only imagined that too.
“Jinx,” I asked her outright, “what are you hiding?”
She glanced away. And my suspicions were strengthened.
“I’ve got to know!” I exclaimed. “Something’s happening to me. God, I don’t want you to be involved too!”
Her eyes moistened and her lips trembled imperceptibly.
“All right,” I went on stubbornly. “I’ll come to the point. Your father was murdered because of some secret information he had. The only man who knew anything about it has disappeared. Two attempts were made on my life. I watched a road vanish. A pollster I never saw before just walked up and told me to forget about it.”
She began crying openly. But I felt no sympathy. Everything I had said had meant something to her. I was sure of that. Now she had only to admit that, somehow, she too was part of the picture.
“Oh, Doug,” she pleaded. “Can’t you just
forget
about it?”
Wasn’t that what the reaction monitor had just proposed?
“Don’t you see you can’t go on like that?” she begged. “Don’t you realize what you’re doing to yourself?”
What
I
was doing to
myself!
Then I understood. She hadn’t been hiding
anything!
All along, what I had interpreted as duplicity had actually been compassion. She had only been trying to steer me calmly away from my unreasonable suspicions, my obsessions!
She had sensed my irrational behavior. Perhaps Collingsworth had told her about the incident at Limpy’s. And her deep solicitude had been founded on a structure of crumbling dreams. She had nurtured her childhood “crush” through adolescence and into maturity, only to find fulfillment blocked by what she must have imagined was mental instability.
“I’m sorry, Doug,” she said hopelessly. “I’ll take you down.”
There wasn’t anything I could say.
I spent the afternoon at Limpy’s, smoking enough cigarettes to leave my mouth tasting like burnt rag but cooling it off more than occasionally with a Scotch-asteroid.
At sundown I started walking purposelessly through the almost deserted heart of the city.
Eventually I moved onto the automatic sidewalk and wound up on an express strip whose destination I hadn’t even noticed.
At length the chill of night revived me to a vague awareness of where my indefinite flight had been taking me. As I reached the terminal platform, I glanced up to find myself in a residential section not too far from Avery Collingsworth’s home. What better destination, under the circumstances, than a psychological consultant?
Naturally, Avery was surprised.
“Say, where have you been?” He ushered me in. “I looked for you all afternoon to get your okay on another batch of reactional units.”
“I had some business outside the office.”
Of course, he had noticed my haggard appearance. But, tactfully, he said nothing.
Collingsworth’s home bore profuse evidence of his status as a bachelor. His study had apparently not been straightened out in weeks. But somehow I felt at ease confronted by the disarray of books, his cluttered desk and a floor strewn with crumpled paper.
“Drink?” he invited, after I had sunk into a chair.
“Scotch. Straight.”
The order came promptly out of his autotender and he brought it over. Smiling, he ran a hand through his silken white hair. “Along with this goes the offer of a shave and a fresh shirt.”
I grinned and downed the drink.
He drew up a chair. “You can tell me about it now.”
“It won’t be easy.”
“Zeno? Someone named Morton Lynch? That sort of stuff?”
I nodded.
“I’m glad you came, Doug. Damned glad. There’s more than just the sketch and Lynch, isn’t there?”
“A lot more. But I don’t quite know how to get into it.”
He leaned back. “I remember a week or so ago in Limpy’s I said something about mixing psychology with simulectronics and getting a lot of oddball convictions. Let me quote myself: ‘You can hardly stuff people into machines without starting to wonder about the basic nature of both.’ Suppose you take it from there.”
I did. I told him everything. And throughout the account his expression didn’t change.
When I had finished, he rose and paced.
“First,” he offered, “don’t try any self-depreciation. Look at it objectively. Fuller had his troubles too. Oh, not as developed as yours. But then, he didn’t take the simulator to as advanced a stage as you have.”
“What are you trying to say?”
“That the type of work you’re doing can’t be pursued without unavoidable psychological consequences.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Doug, you’re a god. You have omnipotent control over an entire city of pseudo people—an analog world. Sometimes you have to take actions that don’t square with your moral convictions, like wiping off an ID entity. Results? Pangs of conscience. So, in essence, what do we have? Ups and downs. Phases of lofty exhilaration, followed by descent into the depths of self-incrimination. You ever experience that type of reaction?”
“Yes.” I realized only then that I had.
“And do you know what condition I’ve just described?”
I nodded and whispered, “Paranoia.”
He laughed quickly. “But just a false paranoia—an
induced
condition. Oh, it’s a valid, convincing thing. Has all the earmarks too: delusions of grandeur, loss of contact, suspicions of persecution, hallucinations.” He paused. Then, even more sincerely: “Don’t you see what’s happening? You wipe off an analog reactional unit and you fancy someone in your own world vanishing. You reprogram the past experiences of a counterfeit population and you think your own background is being tampered with.”
Even confused as I was, I could appreciate the logic in his explanation. “Let’s suppose you’re right. What do I do about it?”
“You’ve already done ninety per cent of what has to be done. The most important things are realization and self-confrontation.” He rose suddenly. “Dial yourself another drink while I make a videocall.”
When he returned I had not only finished the drink, but was also half through shaving in the bathroom adjoining the study.
“That’s the spirit!” he encouraged. “I’ll get the shirt.”
But when he came back I was frowning again. “What about those blackouts?
They
are real, at least.”
“Oh, I’m sure they are, in a psychosomatic sense. Your integrity revolts against the idea of psychosis. So you look for a face-saving excuse. Blackouts put the whole thing on an organic plane. You don’t feel so humiliated.”
When I had finished dressing he led me to the door and suggested, “Make good use of that shirt.”
His advice was meaningless until I found Dorothy Ford parked in front of the house. Then even the purpose behind his videocall became clear. Good old Dorothy—all too ready to give me the “lift” Collingsworth had apparently suggested I needed. Whether she was disposed to run a mercy mission made no difference. Here was an opportunity to keep her eye on one of Siskin’s assets.
But I didn’t mind.
We speared into the silent blackness and sat suspended between a panoply of cold stars and the brilliant carpet of city lights. Against the graceful curve of the plexidome, Dorothy was a warm, soft picture, full of vitality and eagerness. Her hair, fluorescing with the reflected glow of the instrument panel, was a flaxen backdrop for a smile both vivid and anxious.
“Well,” she said, elevating flawlessly rounded shoulders, “shall I submit a plan of action? Or do you have ideas of your own?”
“Collingsworth call you into the picture?”
She nodded. “Thought you needed a bracer.” Then she laughed. “And I’m just the gal who can give it to you.”
“Sounds like interesting therapy.”
“Oh, but it is!” Her eyes glistened with mock suggestiveness.
Then, suddenly, she was serious. “Doug, we both have our jobs. It’s more than obvious mine is to see that you stay tucked safely in the Great Little One’s pocket. But there’s no reason why we can’t have fun at the same time. Agreed?”
“Agreed.” I accepted her hand. “So what’s on the program?”
“How about something for real?”
“Like what?” I asked cautiously.
“A shot or two of cortical current.”
I smiled tolerantly at her.
“Well don’t look so damned reserved,” she quipped. “It’s not illegal, you know.”
“I didn’t figure you for the type who might need an ESB fix.”
“I don’t.” She reached over and patted my hand. “But, darling, Dr. Collingsworth says
you
do.”
The Cortical Corner was a modest, one-story building nestling between two soaring obelisks of concrete and glass on the northern fringe of the downtown section. Outside, impulsive and boisterous teen-agers jostled one another, surging occasionally against their parked air jalopies and spilling frequently into the almost abandoned traffic lanes. Eventually, they would pool their resources and finance a cortical-kicks session for a select member of the group.
Inside, in the waiting lounge, clients sat around with patient politeness, listening to the music or sipping drinks. They were mostly elderly women, uncomfortable in their embarrassment but none the less eager. Few, including the men, were below their mid-thirties. Which attested to the fact that the youthful adult group generally didn’t require ESB escapism.
We waited only long enough for Dorothy to inform the hostess that we were interested in the triply-expensive tandem circuit.
Without delay we were admitted to a luxuriously appointed alcove. Omniphonic music susurrated against period tapestries. Poignant scents hung heavy in the warm air.