Janus (22 page)

After his last session with the memory machine, Grebbel had gone down to the river. Twice he had flung stones into the dark for minutes at a time until his arms felt like jelly. Once he caught himself screaming something. But as soon as he stopped, with his throat still aching, the words vanished from his mind and there was just the cold, the wind and the alien night.

Finally he had gone back to the lab, spent half an hour inoculating water samples onto culture plates, then sat at his computer and logged on to the main database. He searched for data on his past. Street names, restaurants, newspapers. Nothing brought a thrill of recognition. He gave up and walked back to the truck park. When a truck came free he worked the rest of the morning, trying to put all his energy into the job and ignore the confusion in his mind. But when he went for lunch, nothing had resolved itself.

Outside the cafeteria, he met Partridge swaying along in his black exoskeleton.

“How’s tricks?”

Partridge pivoted to face him. “Fine. Just great. See, I’m turning somersaults, I’m so pleased.”

“What’s up, then?”

“Nothing’s up, except bits of the generating station, maybe. These joints are wearing again. Grating. Hard on my nerves, that’s all. I used to see a man about some—graphite lubricant, I think he called it. But now he can’t get it for me. I’m down here, just where I always wanted to be, stirring the mud with my tin toes. People keep treating me as some sort of free bulletin board, when they don’t think I’m the greatest guinea pig for new inventions. The sky’s up, five hundred klicks up, and I’m not. There’s a saboteur on the loose trying to kill us all. Everything’s great.”

Grebbel saw the tremor in the man’s hand, the tight muscles in his neck and cheeks.
Withdrawal symptoms,
his mind said, and began to calculate.

“There’s something you need?” Grebbel asked. “Something like ‘graphite lubricant’ to make life go more smoothly.” He had the sense he’d done this before, finding a cure for people’s ills.

“That won’t fix anything. It won’t get me out of here any more than your memory’s gonna be brought back tomorrow.” Partridge squinted around at the shadows and the long swathes of light from the cafeteria windows. “But it would help. Keep away some of the night sweats.”

“Any preference?”

“All right! The man’s only been here a couple of hours and he’s got the whole pharmacy dropping into his hands. How about you find out what there is first, then what you can get a hold of, before you start trying to do business? Advice from a pro—more than you deserve . . . At any rate, that’s what they tell me. I don’t know anything, except what I hear. Clean freebase, that’s good enough.”

“Right,” Grebbel said. “But who says I’m trying to do business?”

Partridge shrugged. “Sure. You’re just making idle conversation, same as usual.” He peered down the valley, at the aurora and moonlit snow streaming across the mountain peaks. “Real nice weather we’re having, wouldn’t you say?”

“If I were trying to do business, would it be worth my while? What could you have that I might want?”

“Me? All I’ve got is what’s common knowledge. Like the fact that some folk here don’t have all their memories; and what they get given back in return isn’t always a good imitation—but sometimes it is. And some farmer types know more than they need just to keep the turnips growing. Or so people say. I don’t necessarily believe a word of it. But then my thoughts don’t flow as smooth as they did when they were properly lubricated.”

“Okay,” said Grebbel. “I can take a hint.”

Elinda watched the recovery party come down from the valley wall with Erika Frank’s body wrapped up on a stretcher. She attended the memorial service, where Dr. Henry talked about the dangers of exploring a world that was perhaps less well understood than it seemed. She listened to the gossip and debate that briefly flared afterwards but did not participate. The fragility of human relationships oppressed her. She could not understand how anything human could survive its own internal changes and conflicts, let alone the threats from a mostly hostile outside world. Remembering Robert Strickland’s desperate need and what it had led to, she wanted to weep.

She visited Barbara twice, and came away depressed after finding only silence and blank unawareness. She remembered Barbara scrambling out on a spur of rock over a hundred-metre drop, to where an iridescent insect was shrilling its life out in the webs of a carnivorous plant. She had worked the trap apart and eased the dark living jewel into her hands, almost undamaged. She had lifted her cupped hands to hear it whirring against her palms. Then she had flung it into the air and spread her arms, and laughed at Elinda’s concern as the wind fluttered her jacket like wings.

Now, looking down at her, Elinda felt a crippling sense of loss, as though something small and achingly precious were sinking away into darkness.

Grebbel had become quiet and withdrawn, seemingly unwilling to do more than the work he had agreed to. Whenever she found him in the lab he was busy running tests with Osmon, the paper-maker. But she saw that his computer was connected to the library database, as if he was still searching for his past. She visited him once in his room and they made love that night, with a cold urgency that left her feeling bruised and empty the next morning.

At work, Larsen deflected her questions about helping Grebbel. Now that the injured were being released from the overflow rooms in the clinic and there was more room to work, he spent several afternoons in the lab helping set up the germination experiments. Chris passed on the news that Freya, the head of the Factory, had changed lovers, and the chief of Security was said to be pregnant.

Elinda met Louise for lunch one day when the sun was up, and they were outside, watching a dirigible taking video pictures of the settlement when the contrail of an incoming shuttle split the sky like a knife-cut. “Just like home,” Louise said, as the tiny spearhead of light vanished beyond the mountains and a sound like distant thunder filtered down to them. “Well, almost.” The two raptors had reappeared and were mobbing the dirigible.

Then came the weekly dance at the tavern.

She had told Grebbel about it; they had arranged to meet. She had put on her best black jeans and some makeup. And he was late. She sat at one of the tables that had been pulled near the wall. Coloured lanterns hung from the ceiling, branches that looked something like evergreens had been pinned to the walls, and gave off a faint, slightly metallic aroma. At the far end, the band was setting up: a short, intense-looking man with pale vivid eyes was tuning a violin. He produced two or three screeching sounds and then something that sounded like two cats in heat or in agony. Behind him were a couple of guitars, a small drum set, an accordion no one had claimed yet. The tune-up went on with abrupt bursts of jagged rhythm interspersed with squawks and whines from the amplifiers; she was reminded of more creatures in distress or ecstasy.

The room was filling up around her. She scanned faces coming in, and Grebbel was not among them. In the crowd she thought she saw Carlo, and then she did see Chris with a short, dark girl in a white sweater. She even thought she spotted Dr. Henry. The band had assembled and seemed to have finished their preparations. The lights dimmed. A yellow spot lit the stage, and the first chords crashed out. After a minute, Elinda got up and worked her way to the bar.

When she came back with a whiskey sour, the dance floor was full. She sipped her drink and looked around for Grebbel again. At the end of one number, Chris and his girl caught sight of her, came and sat down. He introduced the girl as Marsha, and she smiled vaguely at Elinda, who tried to estimate how much of their pupil size was due to the subdued lighting.

“You hear the latest about the guy who did the generators?” Chris asked.

“I saw them get him,” she reminded him for Marsha’s benefit. “What else?”

“They think he did the power line last winter, too,” Marsha said.

“And probably the leaflets,” said Elinda, “and the last five computer crashes; I expect he spent his weekends blocking drains, pushing kids in the fishpond and corroding the water pipes.”

If the others caught her sarcasm, they gave no sign of it.

“Guy was nuts,” Chris said, “a real wig. Gotta be. Deserved all he got.”

“I thought,” said Elinda, “they would be looking for accomplices. He might not have done it by himself.”

“Nah, they’re easing off,” Chris said expansively. “They got what they wanted, probably his accomplice too, they can’t afford to keep half the labour pool playing watchdog.”

“Chris, who tells you these things?” she said, trying to sound amused.

“Oh, just things you hear.”

“When I was fixing the motherboard in Nixie’s terminal,” said Marsha, “Gerry—you know Gerry Sugamoto? Oh, well, he’s the technical officer in Admin, and he told me there was a new message going on the Security computer net about the leaflets—they’re writing it off, too much bad publicity. I hear lots of things like that.”

“Maybe I’m in the wrong career,” Elinda said, and wondered if she could glean anything else without seeming too inquisitive. But then the band started again, and the other two got up to dance.

There was still no sign of Grebbel. The music drove at her like heavy surf. She picked up her glass and found it was empty. On her way to the bar, Jessamyn looked up from a corner table and watched her expressionlessly.

As she returned with her drink, a man moved to her table. “Do you mind if I join you for a moment or two?”

She turned, ready to object, and stopped. It was Dr. Henry.

“Just for a few moments,” he repeated, and smiled.

“I was waiting for someone—but no, of course, please sit down.”

“Thank you. I noticed you seemed restless. But I need to sit down for a while, and there aren’t that many tables available. Should we introduce ourselves? I’m never sure if it’s presumptuous of me to assume people know who I am when I’m out of my normal environment.”

“Oh, I recognised you, I’m sure everyone does,” she said, and told him her name.

“And you’re much too polite to ask, but you’re wondering whatever possessed me to come here like this. Actually, that reveals something about you. If you came here regularly, you’d know that I’m here quite often. Noblesse oblige. I’ll tell you in strictest confidence, I’m not much more comfortable here than you are. This isn’t my ideal kind of music, either.”

“What makes you say that about me?”

“I was watching you,” he said. “When the music starts, you look as though you’re riding punches. It’s doing something to you, but you’re not sure you like it.”

Defensively she said, “Is that what you come here for, to watch the other customers?”

“Well, some are more worth watching than others. But what sort of an official would I be if I didn’t take some democratic interest in the pleasures of the majority? One can’t listen to string quartets in the ivory tower all day, after all. And this is a strange society, given to all sorts of quirks and foibles. Individuals going off on strange tracks, following their own secret convictions, pursuing private needs and telling no one. It’s as well to have a finger on the pulse so to speak.

“And if you stay around, you’ll find the reason I’m here tonight.” He lowered his voice a little and leaned towards her as the music continued. “As your friend isn’t turning up, why don’t you tell me what you do?”

“I help feed us all, when there aren’t too many distractions in the way of sabotage threats.”

“Well, I think you’ll find that’s all taken care of now.”

“You think so?” She took a breath and plunged on. “Maybe he had help. Aren’t you trying to find out?”

He laughed. “Please don’t look at me as though I’m judge, jury and god almighty. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were trying to flatter me. I don’t have any final authority on what sort of investigation is carried out. I’m just an experimental psychologist who got kicked upstairs into administration. Thank god, they still let me find time for some research work now and then.”

“Is that what brings you here, then? Looking for experimental subjects?” She wondered if she could turn the talk back to the state of the investigation.

He laughed again and leaned back a little. “That makes me sound like one of those mad scientists in the horror films, prowling the night with evil eyes aglow. It’s true in a way, but I’ve found my subject for tonight—you’ll see. Actually, I’ve never really aspired as far as evil—just a little roguery now and then. I don’t suppose I could interest you—”

“In some roguery? Not tonight, thanks. Only on the sixth Thursday, provided there’s an
r
in the month.”

“Well, how about a little experimental mnemonic therapy?”

“That sounds very much like the same thing. What makes you think I’m in need of what you offer?”

“My dear, I’ve been what I am long enough to know the signs. I admit I wasn’t more than eighty percent sure until you asked just now, but that’s close enough. And I would like volunteers: I’m still modifying some of my procedures, and a willing subject is invaluable.” He waited until she nodded for him to go on. “Let me explain. That machine we use in the clinic is human in at least one respect—it has a great deal of unused potential. With the right software, and the right concepts behind that software, it’s not clear where its ultimate limits will lie. Right now, I’m exploring its possibilities as a therapeutic tool—a way of realising and adjusting the contents of an inaccessible mind. I like to think of it as the equivalent of the light-pipe that lets a surgeon explore the blood vessel he’s trying to unblock—the same light-pipe that then carries the laser beam that burns away the blockage. But at the moment, we’re still running tests and calibrations. So your help would be most welcome, and you’d be helping the advance of medical science. No, really.”