Tomorrow Is Too Far (15 page)

‘There isn’t much that you wouldn’t notice,’ she said, ‘and false modesty doesn’t become you.’

Carson tried not to lose his temper. He said, ‘Why do you always try to start a fight? You’re beginning to analyse the wrong patient, Jean ...’

‘Very well,’ she broke in, ‘I’ll stick to the other one. In my professional opinion John Pebbles is a very frightened man. At the moment he does not know what exactly it is that is frightening him. I would say that this is because the person or thing or event which is frightening him has not yet appeared or happened. It is possible, even highly probable, that he is only beginning to realise consciously that something is threatening him--but his subconscious is screaming blue murder! Are they really planning a dangerous mission for him and beginning, perhaps, to hint at what the risks might be?’

‘He is going to be, or he may already have been, asked to do something very risky indeed,’ Carson said. ‘Wayne Tillotson was killed doing it. But I’m pretty sure that they haven’t told him about the risks.’

‘Then he is beginning to suspect,’ she said seriously, ‘that his friends aren’t really his friends. He may even be beginning to suspect you, Joe. And don’t shake your head--you’ve admitted that your suspicions have caused a change of feeling towards him and he is sensitive, as sensitive as a child.’

Carson leaned forward to rewind the tape, for no other reason than to avoid her eyes while he was speaking. He was beginning to feel like something that had crawled from under a damp stone, and he was afraid that her expression would show that she agreed with him.

He said, ‘It’s your whole theory I’m shaking my head at. It’s a good theory, full of common sense and it seems to fit all the facts. But just suppose that your theory is completely wrong and you were asked to think of one a little bit far-fetched, ridiculous even ...?’

‘How ridiculous would you like it to be?’ She paused then added drily, ‘Perhaps you could tell me about your own ridiculous theory and give me some sort of guide.’

‘I don’t have enough information to form a theory,’ Carson said angrily. ‘I need the sort of data which is not found in psychological texts and periodicals for interested laymen like myself, but reports of experimental and probably dangerous work, so far as the patients would be concerned. It might be the psychological equivalent of nerve gas, the kind of thing that is hinted at or mentioned speculatively in the more restricted journals. New methods of brainwashing, drug-reinforced hypnotic techniques, that sort of thing. The truth is that I’m not quite sure what sort of information I’m looking for.’

‘I see,’ she said.

Carson kept his eyes on the tape deck while the silence began to drag. Finally he said, ‘Some things go out of fashion faster than others. Take patriotism, for instance. The out-and-out “my country-right-or-wrong” type of patriot is very rare these days--which is a good thing, because fanaticism of any kind is not a good thing. In its place we have intelligent self-interest. This is much better, I suppose, than blind patriotism. But self-interest and selfishness are synonymous so far as I’m concerned--I mean, who ever heard of intelligent self-interest winning someone the Victoria Cross or the Congressional Medal?’

It was a purely rhetorical question so he did not wait for an answer. ‘Something more than intelligent self-interest motivates the feelings of parents and children, relatives and friends, for each other. A self-interested and really intelligent man could find lots of ways of not doing anything but enjoying himself all his life by using the mental shortcomings or sympathy or generosity or love of those around him. But very few people live this way. They prefer to work because, in my opinion, they feel that they owe something to the people and country where they were born--even though they disagree with the politics of the government in power, and insist that the Russians or the Japanese manage things so much better, and complain bitterly about the proportion of their income tax which goes to defence and generally carry on as if they were on the verge of rebellion. I’m over-simplifying, but do you see what I mean?’

He was still staring at the recorder, his right index finger moving around the dimpled top of the Hold button.

‘I can see that you have a perhaps juvenile hankering for the days of cavalry charges and deeds of derring-do, but you are too intelligent to ignore the spitted and dismembered people, disembowelled horses and the other gory by-products of that romantic age. I can also see you trying hard to put up very good reasons for doing something which you yourself feel is very wrong, and the fact that you are an open-eyed patriot is keeping you from taking the easy way out. Or am I analysing the wrong patient again?’

‘You are,’ said Carson.

‘Maybe the reason,’ she said, in a surprisingly gentle tone, ‘is that you are supplying me with more material on Joe Carson than on John Pebbles.’

‘I was simply trying to make the point,’ said Carson, ‘that it is possible to like a man or love a girl and still feel angry because he or she is something different.’

‘All right, Joe. But you started to tell me about a ridiculous theory you had. Maybe you should stick to that point instead of trying to make another one ...’

They were both sitting tense and upright on a couch which was designed to topple the occupants backwards into its deep, soft upholstery and enfold them so comfortably that they would feel it impossible to climb out again without the help of ropes. The muscular strain involved in fighting that seductive piece of furniture was considerable. Carson flopped back and tried to relax mentally as well as physically before he spoke.

‘Very well. My ridiculous theory is that Dreamy Daniels is heading a Most Secret project which requires guinea-pigs with a high degree of flying aptitude and no close relatives or friends. John Pebbles is a natural choice--simple-minded in practically everything other than aeronautics, impressionable, nobody really to care what happens to him and, with his background, completely above suspicion so far as the security of the project is concerned.

‘Someone has been very clever with their John Pebbles,’ Carson continued. ‘He or they have displayed considerable finesse by so arranging things that it has been project men who have actually invited him in instead of putting the spy to the trouble and risk of penetrating project security. They have been even cleverer by sending in an agent whose cover cannot possibly be blown because he does not even know that he
is
a spy, and won’t until they contact him and play back the organic tape-recorder that is John Pebbles’s mind.’

He paused, waiting for a reaction which did not come, then went on, ‘The way I see it, John Pebbles had a normal childhood. He was fit and intelligent and probably wanted to be a pilot when he grew up, and eventually he did. I would say that flying was probably the biggest thing in his life, that he really loved being a pilot and that he was certainly one of the best--a top-level test pilot, at least, possibly a potential or actual cosmonaut.

‘Then a little over four years ago someone wiped his memory clean ...’

They had left him on a beach before first light, at a spot where rocky outcroppings made it difficult and uncomfortable for him to crawl into the sea and drown. There was not much risk of his dying from exposure--they could not, of course, dress him because of the risk of the clothing being traced--since they would have already been aware of the habits of the clinic personnel.

The result was that a mature, physically fit and highly trained man with the mind of a new-born baby was brought to the clinic and the process of re-education was begun. John Pebbles learned fast because, apart from the fact that it was completely empty, there was nothing at all wrong with his mind.

And sometimes, when the wind was in the right quarter, aircraft from the club would slide in over the hospital grounds on finals ...

‘... It was all carefully planned from the very beginning,’ Carson went on angrily. ‘His memory was wiped clean, but his training and aptitudes remained to nag at his subconscious and gradually break the conditioning which had made him forget. But they must have planned even this as well … ‘

‘There’s no need to shout, Joe.’

‘... Doctor Morris and Nurse Sampson were right when they thought he might be an amnesia victim,’ Carson went on in a calmer tone. ‘He was the most complete amnesia case they are ever likely to meet. And the cure for amnesia is to surround the patient with familiar people, places and things, remember. The trips to the club airfield were the beginning of his “cure” and the process accelerated rapidly when he joined Hart-Ewing’s--familiar surroundings, you see. But the familiar faces and spoken or written language he did not have, so he had to learn to read and write from scratch.

‘But now his virtual return to normal in the aviation area is causing the rest of the conditioning to crack. He’s beginning to dream about people talking to him in another language and have nightmares because he has begun to remember what it was they were going to do to him--destroy his memory! Very soon he will remember who he is and which country he belongs to. He will probably feel grateful to us and will not want to pass on all the very valuable information he has absorbed to his own people, and for a while he will be very confused and unhappy and not quite sane. So if his own people are going to finish this job as cold-bloodedly as they began it, they may send someone to contact him and secure his knowledge before he recovers his memory completely.

‘I would say,’ Carson ended grimly, ‘that the contact could occur any day now.’

Jean Marshall was silent for a moment, then she said quietly, ‘Everything you’ve said is possible, Joe, if a little melodramatic. But what are you going to do? Denounce him?’

Carson shook his head. ‘It’s what I should do. Not that they would shoot him--that is very rarely done these days. But they would subject him to continuous and intensive interrogation, most of it in his own language. His memory would come back and he would realise that he was in fact the spy that they accused him of being, and that there was nothing he could do about it.’

‘I would hate anything like that to happen to him,’ he went on, ‘because he is innocent--at least, he is at the moment. And even if I did decide to turn him in and put my country’s security above personal feelings, it is still not that simple.’

‘You must remember that the project is secret,’ Carson continued, ‘
really
secret. I am not supposed to know that it exists and can therefore expect serious trouble if I reveal a threat to something which is not supposed to exist. You could expect serious trouble, too, because I did not keep my knowledge of it to myself. There is also the fact that this penetration was planned five or more years ago at a time when the project was just getting under way. This means that the project already may have contained someone sympathetic to the other side, in which case why should they go to all the trouble of setting up the Pebbles operation--they already
knew
about the project! You see, even now I could be entirely wrong about John Pebbles ...’

‘But what
are
you going to do, Joe?’

She was still sitting upright on the edge of the couch, looking straight ahead so that all he could see was the line of her cheek, jaw and neck which showed as a complex pink curve against the dark bookcases on the other side of the room. One ear-lobe showed below the sweep of rich auburn hair, a very nice ear-lobe but not exactly expressive.

Why did she have to fight with him over Pebbles all the time? Surely he was doing enough fighting with himself over the man.

He said, ‘I don’t know what to do, Jean. The project is too important for me to forget it and do nothing. I think that we should continue working on him until we find out who and what he is. Is it possible to cure or de-condition him before his own people make contact?’

Still she did not look at him. ‘And if we did bring back his memory, then what?’

‘Then I’ll have the slightly comforting knowledge that he as well as we knew that he was a spy. I would find out a lot more about the project. I might not have to turn him in after all, if he was angry enough at his own people for what they did to him and, of course, grateful enough to us. If I did denounce him we might find ourselves locked away for the rest of our lives or until the project was declassified, a very long time in either event. I would also get some idea of the methods used by these people to produce a Pebbles-type agent so that we would be on the lookout for them in the future.

‘I would also,’ he ended worriedly, ‘get rid of this very strong feeling I have that this business is even more important and complex than it looks at the moment...’

He broke off as Jean relaxed and lay back in the couch beside him. Her expression, when she looked at him, was sympathetic but not at all clinical.

‘Let’s have the tape again,’ she said, ‘but later...’

It was a cold, wet, blustery Sunday afternoon. The dull grey breakers thumped steadily against the rocky beach, sending up thick clouds of spray to join the slightly thinner curtain of falling rain. As they picked their way over the rocks the drops rattled against their macs like hail and the wind was a great soft pillow pushing against their faces and muffling everything they said.

‘Here,’ said Nurse Sampson, stopping suddenly and pointing. Despite her heavy coat the cold had made her face closer to grey than chocolate brown. ‘You were curled up behind this rock when I found you. But can you remember anything before that time, anything at all, John?’

‘I seem to remember your finding me,’ Pebbles replied, ‘although at the time I was too stupid to know what it was I was remembering. Before that...’ He stared hard at the dark, wet sand and dripping rock for several minutes, then went on, ‘Water. I can remember being in the water, swallowing some of it and being frightened. Nothing else, I’m afraid ...’

‘You might have accidentally crawled into the water,’ said Jean Marshall, ‘or crawled
out
of it. Can you remember being on any kind of boat?’