Hidden Variables (47 page)

"For rehab?"

He nodded. "First level erasure. You'll lose memories, but little change to your personality. You'll still be you."

I lay back on my pillow and looked up at Quake again. Memories, those I certainly had. Rebka knew his job better than anyone. But it seemed to me that memories were all that I had. Take those away, and what was left? Nothing.

I shook my head. "I need no rehabilitation. I'll stay here on Egg, and keep an eye on the traffic with Quake."

He did not appear at all surprised. "Very well," he said quietly. "I told you, I have no control of that. You have committed no crime that I can document. We will go, Jilli and I."

He stood up, gingerly on his swaddled feet.

"She will be cured?" I said.

He nodded. "She will be in treatment for one hundred Earth-days. When that is complete, she will be very confused about everything. In order for her rehab to succeed completely, she will need help in the year or two after that."

I lifted my head up from the pillow so that I could look at him properly. "I'm sure you will succeed." It was hard to believe that he had given up on me.

"We may succeed with Jilli." he said. "I hope so. But I cannot be involved in that phase of her treatment. I must go to another case on Peacock A—a bad one. I will go with Jilli as far as Earth, for the first rehab phase, then I must leave her."

I looked down at his bandaged feet. "No rest for you, eh? When do you get your own rehab treatment, Councilman? No one is more driven than you."

He smiled. I had tried to get in a low blow, and it had bounced off him. "Drives in a good cause are all right," he said. "In any case, I am not the subject of the discussion. I want to talk about Jilli Carmel. As I told you, I have authority only in certain areas, but one of those is the decision as to where subjects who have been rehabilitated will receive Phase Two of their treatment. On that, I have full authority. I have decided that Jilli will spend that time here, on Quakeside."

"You can't do that," I said. My throat was constricted and I had to choke the words out. I had enough problems already.

"I'm afraid that I can, Captain," he said. "Check it if you wish, but you'll find that your cooperation is obliged by Sector law."

"You can't go away and dump this in my lap," I began, but Rebka had turned and was walking towards the door.

"I can," he said. He turned in the doorway and pulled something from his pocket. "By the way, you might want to keep this." He lobbed it through the air and it landed lightly on my chest as he walked out of the room.

I picked it up. It was the ID pack of Jilli Carmel, smiling as she had been before they had landed on Delta Pavonis. I stared at it for a long time, then put it under my pillow. I wondered just how well Rebka knew his job. Was it possible that he knew it so well that the rehab center on Earth was something that he could dispense with if he had to?

I moved the dome to its opaque setting and the image of Quake slowly dimmed above me and disappeared. I couldn't answer my own question. Not yet. Did Rebka know me, after a few Days, better than I knew myself? Perhaps in another year I might have some kind of answer.

AFTERWORD: SUMMERTIDE.

About a year ago I was sitting in a bar in Brighton, drinking beer with Bob Forward. His first novel, "Dragon's Egg", was finished but not yet published, and we were chatting randomly about exotic stellar and planetary settings for stories. We had known each other long before either one of us published a word of fiction, so we tended in our conversation to dwell on the science side of sf plotting.

Bob mentioned that he had come up with a rather interesting planetary system and he was going to build a novel around it. Naturally, I asked for details. He didn't want to give them. He said that he preferred not to talk until he had everything plotted out to a conclusion. I quite understand that attitude—some writers go further, and will never say a word about a story until the last sentence has been typed and the finished story is away in the hands of an editor. So I just nodded, and instead I started to describe the planetary doublet system that I developed for use in "Summertide," which I had finished and sold just a couple of months earlier for publication in DESTINIES.

I described the twin planets of Quake and Egg, rotating just outside the Roche limit, and I mentioned the big tidal effects that would be generated if we had a highly eccentric orbit for the pair about their sun.

Bob didn't seem too responsive, so at last I stopped talking. Long silence. Then he said: "I was thinking that my novel would probably be called ROCHE WORLD." It would be about—you are allowed one guess—a planetary pair that rotates about each other just outside the Roche limit. The eccentric orbit of the doublet around their sun would produce huge tidal forces . . .

So of course we
had
to talk plots, and it fortunately turned out that they were completely different. Thank Heaven. I had just been through a similar experience a few months earlier, with THE WEB BETWEEN THE WORLDS and Arthur Clarke's THE FOUNTAINS OF PARADISE. Coincidences lose their charm if they begin to happen regularly.

I really shouldn't have worried. A system like Dumbbell has enough strange properties to provide a hundred different story settings. Keep your eyes open for ROCHE WORLD, it will be interesting.

THE MARRIAGE OF TRUE MINDS

It was one of those mornings where Nature seemed to have gone overboard in her desire for perfection. The sun was shining cheerfully from a sky of cloudless blue. Summer flowers nodded their heads with proper appreciation of the light breeze, birds sang, bees droned smiling in and out of the blossoms, and lambs skipped through the long grass. A morning, in short, where man and setting were in tune. So it seemed to Clarence, ninth Earl of Emsworth, as he leaned over the side of the pigsty, silent and admiring.

The object of his devotion looked to be full of the same blithe spirit. She was standing contentedly at the trough, busily working her way through the fifty-seven thousand, eight hundred calories that Wolff-Lehmann assures us is the appropriate daily intake for any pig who insists on the silver medal and will not take no for an answer. Turnip tops, bran mash, potato peelings and windfall apples were falling before her onslaught, like the Assyrian after a bad night out with the Angel of Death. The Empress of Blandings was in rare form, and the Earl watched in fascination. With that inspired attack, he felt, next week's contest in Bletchingham would be no more than a formality, a simple matter of a rubber stamp on an already assured decision. God's in his Heaven, all's right with the world, thought Lord Emsworth; or at any rate he might have, if his memory for poetry had been a little better.

Which shows that even ninth earls can be wrong and that there may be a worm in the most attractive apple. The Blandings worm, in fact, had just popped his head up over a hedge forty yards from the sty and was watching closely. Observers familiar with the local scene might point out that the newcomer, worm or no worm, bore an amazing physical resemblance to George Cyril Wellbeloved, late pigkeeper at Blandings Castle, and but recently removed from the Earl's employ for the ghastly deed of pig nobbling. George Cyril, although he had encountered no difficulty in finding alternative employment, did not look happy with his new position. All may have been sunshine and brightness in the world at large, but in the heart of the pig man there was no light, save what from heaven was with the breezes blown. He had the look of a man whose employer had ordered him to win the Bletchingham Fat Pigs' Contest with a mere shadow of a pig, a puny porker whom the Empress of Blandings outweighed by a good ten stone.

It could not be done, thought G.C. Wellbeloved. Judging from the sounds that came from the sty, the contest was becoming more one-sided every minute. He ducked below the hedge and snaked back to the gate, where his new employer, Sir Hamish Mackay, was awaiting his return.

"Noo, whut's 'a seetuation, mon?"

Sir Hamish had spent most of his life harassing the unfortunate natives on the Afghanistan border, which was doubtless character-building but offered a Highland Scot no opportunity to learn more than a feeble approximation to spoken English.

"No."

"Nae what?"

"No." George Cyril was not a man to waste words.

"Ye mean we canna win?"

"Yes."

"The Empress is fatter than the Jewel o' Kabul?"

"Yes."

Sir Hamish was also sparing in his words. He retreated briefly behind his substantial whiskers for a moment's thought, then stepped closer to Wellbeloved. He faltered before the effluvium of pig manure that clung to George Cyril like a guardian angel, then firmed his resolve and pressed closer.

"Ye see whut that means?"

"Yes."

"We'll hafta pinch her."

"Yes."

Wellbeloved considered his last response for a moment. It was missing an important element.

"But I'll need a hundred pounds. Service beyond the usual duties."

"A hundred!"

"One hundred."

"Poonds!"

"Pounds," corrected George Cyril.

Sir Hamish looked at the pig man's stubborn countenance and fought a mighty battle within himself. To understand the baronet, it is first necessary to realize that he had not been a lifelong admirer of pigs. Most of his existence, he would frankly admit, had been a sordid waste, pottering about collecting medals and honors. Only recently had the overwhelming attraction of black Berkshire sows pierced his heart, and now he was trying to make up for lost time. If money were needed, money would be used. After all, what else was money for? But that decision had to win out over the native thriftiness of a true Scotsman, and the battle was of epic proportions within his sturdy breast.

"Fifty," he said at last.

"No. One hundred."

Sir Hamish sought to look Wellbeloved straight in the eye, with the expression that had in the past quelled the playful spirit of wounded Bengal tigers, but he was defeated by the pig man's sinister squint, which never permitted him to look into more than one eye at a time.

"Grrarrr," said Sir Hamish.

"Right," said George Cyril, recognizing a growl of assent when he heard one. "Eight o'clock tonight, after she's had her linseed meal. She gets quiet then. Money in advance. Don't forget it. I'll bring the van."

He turned and hurried away along the ditch, before Sir Hamish could offer a counterproposal. The latter stood there, fists clenched and whiskers vibrating. Like the poet Keats, he could not see what flowers were at his feet, or what soft incese hung upon each bough. He was thinking of his hundred pounds, and already he was suffering separation pains. No bloodthirsty Pathan, seeing Sir Hamish at that moment, would have risked an appearance before him; and in fact the head that popped up from behind the nearby hedge was not that of an Asian warrior. It belonged to George, the eleven-year-old grandson of Lord Emsworth, and it was clear from his expression that he had overheard the lot.

Under normal circumstances, the lad's reaction would have been to lie low until Sir Hamish had gone, then run off to spill the beans to his grandfather. He got along famously with Lord Emsworth, although the latter sometimes seemed unsure who he was.

Today, however, George had retired behind the hedgerow to brood over the unfairness of the world in general, and of Lord Emsworth in particular. When the editors of a recent issue of the
Champion Paper for Boys
gave full and explicit directions for the construction of a bow and arrow, presumably they expected their readers to follow them. And having followed them to the letter, it was not reasonable to suppose that an enterprising youth should leave the bow untested.

It was blind fortune that decreed that the household cat, after receiving an arrow amidships (fired, George estimated, from not less than twelve paces) should have chosen to leap through the open window, demolishing in transit three potted begonias and a china bust of Narcissus.

Lord Emsworth, under strong pressure from his sister, Lady Constance, had confiscated the bow and a bag of toffees and garnisheed George's allowance until the plants were paid for. The lad had retired to the hedge to seek solace from the latest copy of the
Champion Paper
and had been there, alone and palely loitering, when Sir Hamish and his pig man appeared on the scene.

What, you may ask, could an eleven-year-old do with the information he had overheard, other than take it to his older and wiser relatives? Setting aside any question of Lord Emsworth's wisdom, the problem is still a good one. It was pure coincidence that the latest issue of George's magazine should contain an article on becoming a millionaire in six months or less. The men who write for the
Champion Paper
are of catholic tastes—today the key to great wealth, tomorrow perhaps a novel and improved method of catching rats. The fact that the author of the latest article had never managed to make more than twelve shillings and sixpence a week was not mentioned in the magazine.

George's recent studies had told him exactly what to do. He stood up straight and looked calmly at Sir Hamish Mackay.

"I heard everything," he said. "The price for my silence is ten pounds."

Logically, George should have asked for more. Wellbeloved had set his fee at a hundred. On the other hand, ten pounds was the largest sum of which George had any personal acquaintance, and amounts beyond that felt vague and insubstantial. One hundred pounds would have raised questions within him, that logically should have troubled seekers of the Holy Grail, but apparently never did; to wit, what would one do with it if he had it? Ten pounds, on the other hand, would buy an excellent airgun and leave enough over for riotous living. More than that, despite the written advice he had just received, would make George uneasy.

"Grrrrrrr," said Sir Hamish.

It was not this time a growl of assent, but one of frustration. One does not make arrangements for a criminal act, only to have them overheard by a small boy who is the grandson of the victim. Sir Hamish would have sworn that there was no one around when he and George Cyril Wellbeloved had begun their brief conversation, and the boy's ectoplasmic manifestation had been a nasty shock.