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When he told her of his errand, she held out her hand cordially. “So you were one of our boys? I thinkyou must have been before my time. Your name is—?”

“Jefferson Andrew Kerwin, Junior.”

Her forehead ridged in a polite effort at concentration. “I may possibly have seen the name in Records, Idon’t remember offhand. I think you must have been before my time. When did you leave? At thirteen? Oh, that is unusual. Mostly our boys stay until they are nineteen or twenty; then, after testing, we findthem work here.”

“I was sent to my father’s family on Earth.”

“Then we will surely have records on you, Jeff. If your parents are known— ” She hesitated. ”Of course, we try to keep complete records, but it’s possible we may only have one parent’s name; there have been— ” She hesitated, trying to find a courteous way to phrase it. “—unfortunate liaisons—”

“You mean, if my mother was one of the women of the spaceport bars, my father may not have

bothered telling you who she was?”

She nodded, looked ruffled at this plain speaking. “It does happen. Or one of our young women maychoose to have a child without informing us of the father, though in your case that wouldn’t seem toapply. If you’ll wait a minute.” She went into a little side office. Through the open door he caught aglimpse of office machines and a trim Darkovan girl wearing Terran uniform. After a few minutes the ladycame back looking puzzled and a little annoyed, and her voice was curt.

“Well, Mr. Kerwin, it seems there is no record of you in our orphanage. It must have been some other

planet.”

Kerwin stared, in amazement. “But that’s impossible,” he said reasonably. “I lived here until I wasthirteen years old. I slept in Dormitory Four, the matron’s name was Rosaura. I used to play ball on thatfield back there.” He pointed.

She shook her head. “Well, we certainly have no records of you, Mr. Kerwin. Is it possible you wereregistered here under another name?”

He shook his head. “No, I was always called Jeff Kerwin.”

“Furthermore we have no record of any of our boys being sent to Terra in his thirteenth year. That would be very unusual, not our regular procedure at all, and it would certainly have been carefully recorded. Everyone here would certainly remember it.”

Kerwin took a step forward. He leaned over the woman, a big man, menacing, furious. “What are youtrying to say? What do you
mean
 
, you have no records on me? In God’s name, what possible reasonwould I have for lying about it? I tell you, I lived here thirteen years, do you think I don’t
 
know
 
? Damnit, I can prove it!”

She shrank away from him. “Please—”

“Look,” Kerwin said, trying to be reasonable. “There has got to be some kind of mistake. Could the

name be misfiled, could your computer have malfunctioned? I need to know what kind of records were

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kept on me. Will you check the spelling again, please?” He spelled it again for her, and she said coldly, “I checked that name, and two or three possible spelling variations. Of course, if you had been registered here under another name—

“No, damn it,” Kerwin shouted. “It’s
Kerwin
 
! I learned to
 
write
 
my name—in that schoolroom right at

the end of that corridor, the one with a big picture of John Reade on the north wall!”

“I am sorry,” she said. “We have no record of anyone called Kerwin.”

“What kind of half-headed, fumbled-fingered idiot have you got tending your computer, then? Are they filed under names, fingerprints, retinal prints?” He had forgotten that. Names could be altered, changed, misfiled, but fingerprints did not change.

She said coldly, “If it will convince you, and you know anything about computers…”

“I’ve been working in CommTerra with a Barry-Reade KSO4 for seven years.”

Her voice was icy. “Then, sir, I suggest you come in here and check the banks yourself. If you feel thename may have been misrecorded, misspelled, or misfiled, every child who has passed through the

Orphanage is coded for fingerprint access.” She bent silently and handed him a card form, pressed hisfingers, one by one, against the special molecular-sensitive paper that recorded, invisibly, the grooves andwhorls of the raised lines, pore-patterns, skin type and texture. She faced the card into a slot. Hewatched the great silent face of the machine, the glassy front, like blind eyes staring.

With uncanny speed a card was released, slid down into a tray; Kerwin snatched it up before thewoman could give it to him, disregarding the cold outrage on her face. But as he turned it over his triumphand assurance that she had, for some reason, been lying to him, drained away. A cold terror gripped athis stomach. In the characterless capitals of mechanical printing it read

NO RECORD OF SUBJECT

She took the card from Kerwin’s suddenly lax fingertips.

“You cannot accuse a machine of lying,” she said coldly. “Now, if you please, I’ll have to ask you to

leave.” Her tone said clearer than words that unless he did she would have someone come and put him

out.

Kerwin clawed desperately at the counter edge. He felt as if he had stepped into some cold and reelingexpanse of space. Shocked and desperate, he said, “How could I be mistaken? Is there another Spacemen’s Orphanage on Darkover? I—I
 
lived
 
here, I tell you—”

She stared at him until a sort of pity took the place of her anger. “No, Mr. Kerwin,” she said gently. “Why don’t you go back to the HQ and check with Section Eight there? If there is a—a mistake—maybe they could help you.”

Section Eight. Medic and Psych
. Kerwin swallowed hard and went, without any further protest. Thatmeant she thought he was deranged, that he needed psychiatric help. He didn’t blame her. After what hehad just heard, he kind of thought so himself. He stumbled out into the cold air, his feet numb, his headwhirling.

They were lying, lying. Somebody’s lying. She was lying and he knew it; he could feel her lying…

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No; that was what every paranoid psychotic thought; somebody was lying,
 
they were all lying, therewas a plot against him
 
… Some mysterious and elusive
 
they
 
was conspiring against him.

But how could he have been mistaken? Damn it, he thought as he walked down the steps, I used to playball over there; kickball and catch-the-monkey when I was little, more structured games when I wasolder. He looked up at the windows of his old dormitory. He had climbed into them often enough aftersome escapade, aided by convenient low branches of that very tree. He felt like climbing up into thedormitory to see if the initials he had carved into the windowframe were still there. But he abandoned thenotion; the way his luck was running, they’d just catch him and think he was a potential child molester. He turned and stared again at the white walls of the building where he had spent his childhood… or
hadhe
 
?

He clasped his hands at his temples, searching out elusive memories. He could remember so much. Allhis conscious memories were of the orphanage, of the grounds where he stood now, running aroundthese grounds; when he was very small he had fallen on these steps and skinned his knee… how old hadhe been then? Seven, perhaps, or eight. They had taken him up to the infirmary and said they were goingto sew up his knee, and he had wondered how in the world they would get his knee into a sewingmachine; and when they showed him the needle, he had been so intrigued at how it was done that he hadforgotten to cry; it was his first really clear memory.

Did he have any memories
 
before
 
the orphanage? Try as he might, he could remember only a glimpse ofviolet sky, four moons hanging like jewels and a soft woman’s voice that said, “Look, little son, you willnot see this again for years…” He knew, from his geography lessons, that a conjunction of the fourmoons together in the sky did not come very often; but he could not remember where he had been whenhe saw it, or when he had seen it again. A man in a green and golden cloak strode down a long corridorof stone that shone like marble, a hood flung loose over blazing red hair; and somewhere there had beena room with blue light… and then he was in the Spacemen’s Orphanage, studying, sleeping, playing ballwith a dozen other boys his age, in a cluster of kids in blue pants and white shirts. When he was ten, hehad had a crush on a Darkovan nurse called— what had been her name? Maruca. She moved softly inheelless slippers, her white robes moving around her with fluid grace, and her voice was very gentle andlow.
 
She tousled my hair and called me Tallo, though it was against the rules, and once when Ihad some kind of fever, she sat by me all night in the infirmary, and put cold cloths on my head,and sang to me. Her voice was deep contralto, very sweet
 
. And when he was eleven he’d bloodiedthe nose of a boy named Hjalmar for calling him
 
bastard
 
, yelling that at least he
 
knew
 
his father’s name,and they’d been pulled apart, kicking and spitting gutter insults at each other, by the grey-hairedmathematics teacher. And just a few weeks before they bundled him, scared and shaking and listlessfrom the drugs, aboard the starship that would take him to Terra, there’d been a girl named Ivy, in a classhigher than his. He had hoarded his allotment of sweets for her, and they had held hands shyly, walkingunder those trees at the far edge of the playground; and once, awkwardly, he had kissed her, but she hadturned away her face so that he had kissed only a mouthful of fine, pale-brown, sweet-scented hair.

No, they couldn’t tell him he was crazy. He remembered too much. He’d go to the HQ, as the womansaid, only not to Medic and Psych, but Records. They had a record there of everyone who had everworked in the Empire service. Everyone. They’d know.

The man in Records sounded a little startled when Kerwin asked for a check, and Kerwin couldn’texactly blame him. After all, you don’t usually walk up and ask for your own record, unless you’reapplying for a job transfer. Kerwin fumbled for an excuse.

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“I was born here. I never knew who my mother was, and there might be records of my birth and

parentage…”

The man took his fingerprint and punched buttons disinterestedly. After a time a printer began clattering,and finally a hard copy slid out into the tray. Kerwin took it up and read it, at first with satisfactionbecause it was obviously a full record, but with growing disbelief.

KERWIN, JEFFERSON ANDREW. WHITE. MALE. CITIZEN TERRA. HOME MOUNT DENVER. SECTOR Two. STATUS single. HAIR red. EYES grey. COLORING fair. EMPLOYMENT HISTORY age twenty apprentice CommTerra. PERFORMANCE satisfactory. PERSONALITY withdrawn. POTENTIAL high.

TRANSFER age 22. Sent as warranted CommTerra certificate junior status, Consulate Megaera. PERFORMANCE excellent. PERSONALITY acceptable, introverted. POTENTIAL very high. DEMERITS none. No entanglements known. PRIVATE LIFE normal as far as known. PROMOTIONS regular and rapid.

TRANSFER age 26. Phi Coronis IV. CommTerra ratings expert. Legation. PERFORMANCEexcellent; commendations for extraordinary work. PERSONALITY introverted but twice reprimandedfor fights in native quarter. POTENTIAL very high, but in view of repeated requests for transfer possiblyunstable. No marriages. No liaisons of record. No communicable diseases.

TRANSFER age 29, Cottman IV, Darkover, (requested for personal reasons, unstated.) Requestapproved, granted, suggest Kerwin not be transferred again except at loss of accumulated seniority. PERFORMANCE no records as yet, one reprimand for intrusion into quarter off limits. PERSONALITY APPRAISAL excellent and valuable employee but significant personality and stabilitydefects. POTENTIAL excellent.

There was no more. Kerwin frowned. “Look, that’s my employment record; what I wanted was birthrecords, that kind of thing. I was born here on Cottman IV.”

“That’s your official transcript, Kerwin. It’s all the computer has on you.”

“No birth records at all?”

The man shook his head. “If you were born outside the Terran Zone—and your mother was a native —well, it wouldn’t be recorded. I don’t know what kind of birth records they keep out there—” Hewaved an inclusive hand at the view of distant mountains—“but it’s for sure they’re not in
 
our
 
computer. I’ll try you in Birth Records; and I can try pass rights for orphans. If you were sent back to Terra atthirteen, that would be under Section Eighteen, the Repatriation of Spacemen’s Orphans and Widows Act.” He punched buttons for several minutes, then shook his head.

“See for yourself,” he said. It kept coming up: NO RECORD OF SUBJECT.

“Here are all the birth records we have for Kerwin; we have an Evelina Kerwin, born to one of our nurses here, died at six months. And there’s an employment record on a Henderson Kerwin, black, male, age 45, who was an engineer in Thendara spaceport and died of radiation burns after an accident to the reactor. And under pass rights for orphans I found a Teddy Kerlayne, who was sent to Delta Ophiuchi four years ago. Not relevant, huh?”

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