All My Sins Remembered (2 page)

“Did she say anything specific?”

“Only that she thought she had evidence of a Charter violation. That would have to be offworld money going into police pockets. Let’s go out on the dock. Be sightseers.” They were walking along a bay whose shore was dominated by a huge electrolysis plant, churning out oxygen for spaceship resupply and hydrogen for local energy.

They moved to the end of the dock and sat there, watching a mat of purple seaweed lap against the pilings. There was a slight smell of chlorine in the air.

“She didn’t want to bring her evidence to Jonestown; didn’t want to take it from her office until she knew that she could be far away when the trouble starts.”

“Reasonable.”

“Sure. So I’ve got her booked on a two-week industrial sight-seeing tour of the Sleeper plants, under a false name. I’ll be taking her tickets to her, down in Silica, this afternoon.”

“Should I come with?”

“No, I’ll be back tonight sometime. What I want you to do is go back to the office and set up an all-contingencies algorithm.

“Look at the city and state tables of organization and figure out how many Confederacion administrators, and how much muscle, would be required to take over the police—quickly and, if possible, without bloodshed. Send in an order for them, under my name and with my scramble, to be filled if I don’t cancel within twenty-four hours. ‘Explanation to follow.’ Then get back to your place and lock the door until you hear from me. Clear?”

“I suppose… commandos for muscle?”

“Best; keep from wrecking the town. Are you dressed?”

“Uh, no.” The shoulder holster had given him a rash.

“Otto.” She put a hand on his knee. “I know you’re a gentle sort. But you saw what these bastards did to… the real Olivia.”

He nodded. Having seen a holo on Earth had kept him uncomfortable around Avery for the first few days. Seeing her face made him visualize the mutilated body.

“So go dressed, double-dressed. I want to keep you in one piece.” She stood up. “I’d rather not involve any other embassy people in this. Will you need any help with the technical end?”

“No, it’s the same kind of machine we used in training.” They started walking down the dock. “Should we split up?”

“Not if you’re not dressed.” She slid a hand lightly under his bicep and moved close to him, falling into step. “Act like we’re lovers, out for a stroll,” she said in a conspiratorial whisper.

An unsurprisingly easy act. “It won’t take you out of your way?”

“Shuttle to Silica won’t leave for six hours; gives me plenty of time ”

Plenty of time for what, Otto wondered, and subsequently found out. Avery made the shuttle with two minutes to spare.

The computation, coding, and message transmission took Otto until after midnight. Following Avery’s advice, he left the embassy through a secret entrance, took a roundabout way home, on foot, and snuck into his apartment via rooftop and service door. The only thing he was really worried about was being arrested as a burglar.

He slept fully dressed and armed, feeling ridiculous, and woke up with a rash. The phone was buzzing.

It wasn’t Avery; it was the embassy, wondering where she was. Otto said he didn’t know. The man complained that she had appointments all day. Would Otto come in and substitute until Avery showed up? Of course.

He took a direct route to the office and nobody tried to assassinate him. He sat behind Avery’s desk for eight hours, being polite to a succession of complainers, trying to find a comfortable position with a heavy-duty Westinghouse weighing down his left side and a small Walther neurotangler in a spring-sheath taped to the small of his back. He buzzed Avery’s apartment between interviews, and worried.

When the day was finally over, he hurried directly to Avery’s place. Knocked and rang and finally tried to pop the lock. TBII agents know a number of ways to subvert locks, but it works both ways; Avery evidently knew one more trick than Otto did. He considered using the Westinghouse on it, but instead found the supervisor and bullied him into opening it.

Nobody in the living room, but a window was missing, smoothly melted away around the edges. The supervisor demanded to know who was going to pay for it.

He followed Otto around from room to room, demanding, complaining. When Otto opened the bathroom door he smelled something odd, closed his eyes, said a three-word Buddhist prayer, stepped inside, and found Susan Avery lying naked in the tub, face-down in two centimeters of clotted blood.

Biographical check, please
, go:
I was born Otto Jules McGavin on 24 Avril AC 198, on Earth, with jus sanguinus citizenship to

Skip to age 22, please, go
:

Thought I was being trained for Confederatión xenosociology or diplomacy post but had been with TBII for two years, all the immersion therapy that I couldn’t remember, it was weapons and dirty tricks, wondered why the other students always had more to talk about but my counselor said it was normal, I tested out fine under hypnosis, it would all be clear and accessible by graduation, but all through my twenty-second year, I remember, felt like I worked harder than anyone else but

You did, Otto. Skip to age 25, please, go
:

I was a Class 2 operator until mid-223, when I went on probationary prime operator status and got my first personality overlay, impersonating Mercurio de Follette, a credit-union manager on Mundo Lagardo suspected of Article Three violation

Was he guilty? Please, go
:

Of course he was but we wanted to see which others were implicated, it turned out his whole surrogate-family

Skip to age
26,
please, go
:

That was the year I killed my first man, third assignment as a prime, it was self-defense in a way, in a way, he had me at his mercy if he only knew, I had to kill him or he would, in a way it was self-defense

Syzygy
.

in a way it was

Aardvark, worship-devil
.

self-defense.

Gerund. Now sleep
.

Every direction seems uphill in artificial gravity. Isaac Crowell, Ph.D., paused to get his breath, pushed damp hair back from his forehead, and tapped on the door of the psychiatrist’s stateroom. It slid open.

“Ah, Dr. Crowell.” The man behind the desk was as thin as Crowell was fat. “Please come in, sit down.”

“Thank you.” Crowell eased himself into the sturdiest-looking chair. “You, uh, you wanted…”

“Yes.” The psychiatrist leaned forward and spoke clearly: “Syzygy. Aardvark, worship-devil. Gerund.”

Crowell blinked one long slow blink. Then he looked down at the expanse of his belly and shook his head, amazed. He took a thumb and forefingerful of flab and pinched. “Ouch!”

“Good job,” the psychiatrist said.

“Wonderful. You couldn’t have had the old boy take off some weight first? Before I got stuck in him?”

“Necessary to the image, Otto.”

“Otto… yes. It comes back, all… now. I’m—”

“Wait!” The man pushed a button on his desk and the door whispered shut. “Sorry. Go on.”

“I’m Otto McGavin, a prime operator. A prime. For the TBII. And you’re no more a psychiatrist than I am a Dr. Isaac Crowell. You re Sam, uh, Nimitz. Used to be a section leader when I was stationed on Springworld.”

“That’s, right, Otto—you have quite a memory. I don’t think we met more than twice.”

“Three times. Two cocktail parties and a bridge game. Your partner had a grand slam and I still haven’t figured out how she cheated.”

He shrugged. “She was a prime, too.”

“ ‘Was,’ yeah. You know she’s dead now.”

“I don’t think I’m authorized to—”

“Sure. You my briefing officer this time?”

“That’s right.” Tibitz pulled a long envelope from an inside cape pocket. He broke the plastic seal and handed it to Otto. “Five-minute ink,” he said.

Otto scanned the three pages quickly and then read slowly from beginning to end. He handed it back just as the printing faded.

“Any questions?”

“Well… okay, I’m this fat old professor, Crowell. Or will be when you push me back through the mnemonic sequence. Can I speak the language as well as he could?”

“Probably not quite as well. There aren’t any learning tapes for Bruuchian; Crowell’s the only person who ever bothered to learn a dialect of the language.

“You were under mutual hypnosis with him for five weeks, learning it. Throat sore?”

Otto reached to touch his Adam’s apple and recoiled when he hit Crowell’s fourth chin. “God, this guy’s in lousy shape. Yeah, I feel a little hoarse.”

“The language is mostly growls. I learned a stock phrase in it.” He made a noise like a tenor rhinoceros in pain.

“What the hell does
that
mean?”

“It’s in the dialect you learned, a standard greeting in the informal mode: ‘Clouds are not for your family./ May you die in the sun.’ Of course, it rhymes in Bruuchian. Everything rhymes in Bruuchian; every noun ends in the same syllable. A protracted belch.”

“Wonderful. I’ll have laryngitis after a half hour of small talk”

“No. You’ll remember once you get back into the Crowell persona. You’ve got lozenges in your baggage that make it easier on your throat.”

“Good.” Otto kneaded one enormous thigh. “Look, I hope this job won’t call for any action. Must be carrying around my own weight in plastiflesh.”

“Very nearly.”

“That report said Crowell hadn’t been on the planet for eleven years—why couldn’t they just say he’d been on a diet?”

“No, you might run into some recent acquaintance. Besides, part of the job requires that you look as harmless as possible.”

“I don’t mind looking harmless… but in 1.2 gees I’m going to
be
harmless! I worked up a sweat walking down the corridor here—in less than one gee. How—”

“We have confidence in you, Otto. You primes always come through in a pinch.”

“…or die trying. Goddamn hypnoconditioning.”

“Your own best interests.” Nimitz began filling a pipe. “Syzygy. Aardvark. Worship-devil. Gerund.”

Otto slumped back in the chair; his next breath was a snore.

“Otto, when I awaken you, you will be about ten per cent Otto McGavin and ninety per cent your artificial personality overlay, Dr. Isaac Crowell. You will remember your mission and all of your training as a prime operator—but your initial reaction to any normal situation will be consistent with Crowell’s personality and knowledge. Only in stress situations will your reactions be those of a prime operator.

“Gerund. Devil-worship. Aardvark. Syzygy.”

Crowell/McGavin awoke in mid-snore. He pulled himself out of the chair and winked at Nimitz. In Crowell’s gravelly voice: “Thank you so much, Dr. Sanchez. The therapy was most soothing.”

“Think nothing of it, Dr. Crowell. That’s what the ship pays me for.”

2.

“This is a bloody outrage! Young man—do you know who I am?”

The customs inspector tried to look bored and hostile at the same time. He put Crowell’s ID capsule back into the microfiche viewer and stared at it for a long time. “According to this, you’re Isaac Crowell, out of Macrobastia, born on Terra. You’re sixty and look seventy. That don’t get you past the strip-down inspection.”

“I demand to see your supervisor.”

“Uncheck. Ain’t in today. You can wait for him in that little room there. It has a nice lock.”

“But you—”

“Ne gonna call my boss his one free day; ne an some shy offworld bloat. You can wait in the room. Ne’ll starve.”

“Say, now, say.” A stocky little man with a headful of shellacked curls strutted over. “What seems to—Isaac! Isaac Crowell! What brings you back?”

Crowell clasped the man’s hand—his palm damp and warm—and searched artificial memories for a fraction of a second until the face and name clicked into place. “Jonathon Lyndham. So good to see you. Especially now.”

“What, there’s some kind of trouble?”

“I don’t know, Jonathon. This… gentleman doesn’t want to let me through the turnstile. Not unless I do some sort of a, a striptease.”

Lyndham pursed his lips and regarded the inspector. “Smythe. Don’t you know who
this man is?”

“He’s… no, sah.”

“Did you go to school?”

“Yes, sah. Twelve years.”

“Doctor Isaac Sebastian Crowell.” Lyndham reached awkwardly across the barrier and put his hand on Crowell’s shoulder. “Author of
Anomaly Resolved
—the book that put this planet on the regular spacelanes.”

Actually, the book had sold well enough on Bruuch, and also on Euphrates, where the colonists faced a similar situation with regard to exploiting alien natives; but it was a failure everywhere else. Other anthropologists, while admiring Crowell’s tenacity, felt that he’d let sentiment interfere with objectivity. There’s an uncertainty principle in field work: it’s hard to analyze your subjects if you have too much affection for them.