Counterfeit World (9 page)

I headed back for the door.

Then, crowning her inconsistency, she called out in a small, uncertain voice, “I will see you again, won’t I, Doug?”

When I finally turned around, however, she had already gone in.

I couldn’t let the evening end on this completely irrational note. There was only one thing to do—go back and insist on her explaining why she had been so distant.

Striding ahead, I reached for the buzzer. Before I could touch it, though, the door swung open. I had forgotten that Dr. Fuller had keyed it to my capacitance.

I stood on the threshold. “Jinx.”

There was no answer.

I went through the living room and dining room and into the study. “Jinx?”

I checked the other rooms, then went through the entire house once more, looking behind doors, in closets, under beds.

“Jinx! Jinx!”

I sprinted to the back door and felt its servo unit. Cold. It hadn’t been opened in the last half hour, at least.

But Jinx was gone. It was as though I had only imagined seeing her enter the house.

Again the equally untenable alternatives. Either Collingsworth was wrong in his conviction that cure of pseudoparanoia lay merely in its recognition. Or Jinx Fuller
had
vanished.

Hours after my frantic search of her home, I parked the car in the garage, then lingered irresolutely in the sulking shadows outside my apartment building. Without even realizing I had stepped onto the low-speed pedistrip, I soon found myself belting through quiet, desolate sections of the city.

Inadequately, I tried to cope with my dilemma. There
had
been disappearances. Jinx’s had proved that much. And that same impossible fate
had
befallen Morton Lynch, a sketch of Achilles and the tortoise, a trophy plaque bearing Lynch’s name, a stretch of road together with the countryside through which it ran.

With Lynch and the drawing, it was still as though they had never existed. The road and the countryside had returned. What about Jinx? Would she be back—leaving me to wonder whether I had actually searched her house and failed to find her? Or would I soon begin learning that nobody else had ever heard of her?

During early morning I left the pedistrip twice to call Jinx’s home. But each time there was no answer.

Gliding again through deserted downtown sections, I could almost feel the dreadful presence of an Unknown Force closing in on me—a determined, malevolent Agency that lurked behind every shadow.

Before dawn I had phoned three more times. And each futile call drove home the awful suspicion that I would never hear of her again. But why? Lynch’s disappearance was logical. He had been acting in defiance of the Unknown Force. Jinx, on the other hand, had insisted her father’s death was an accident.

Yet now she was gone.

Shortly after sunrise, I had coffee at an automat, then belted unhurriedly to Reactions. There I found an apprehensive group of ARM pickets huddling on the staticstrip and protected by riot squad members from scores of angry Siskin supporters.

Someone raised a length of pipe to hurl it at the reaction monitors. But one of the officers leveled his laser gun. A cone of crimson light stabbed out and the man collapsed, temporarily paralyzed. The demonstrators retreated.

In my office I spent the next hour wearing a path around the desk. Eventually, Dorothy Ford came in, drew back in surprise on seeing me there so early, then continued on over to the closet.

“I’m having a hard time keeping tabs on you,” she said, delicately removing a small, pointed hat without disturbing the pageboy. “And that’s bad because the Great Little One probably figures that by now we ought to be nesting together.”

She studded the closet door closed. “I tried to reach you during the night. You weren’t home.”

“No explanations necessary. I wasn’t looking for you for myself. Siskin just wanted to make certain you’d be down early this morning.”

“I’m down early,” I said flatly. “What’s on his mind?”

“He doesn’t confide
everything
in me.” She headed back toward the reception room, but paused. “Doug, was it that Fuller girl?”

Facing the window at the moment, I spun around. The very mention of Jinx’s name had had that effect. It had assured me that, thus far at least, Jinx wasn’t following in Lynch’s footsteps. As yet, the evidences of her existence weren’t being obliterated.

Before I could answer, Siskin swept into the office, frowned up at me, and exclaimed, “You look like you spent the night ESB-ing!”

Then he saw Dorothy and his expression softened. He stared back and forth between us. For me, his gaze, beneath slightly raised eyebrows, was calculative. For her, it was one of subtle approbation, not without its sensual implications—a tactful pat on the back for services effectively rendered.

Crossing behind him, she shrugged and cast me a there-you-see-what—
he
—thinks glance.

As she studded the door open he called after her, “I left a gentleman in the reception room. Will you show him in?”

“Another party man?” I asked.

“No. Someone in
your
line of work. You’ll recognize him.”

I did. It was Marcus Heath. He was short, though not nearly as diminutive as Siskin. Stout, but not solidly packed. Thick-lensed glasses only magnified the restlessness in his gray eyes.

“Hello, Hall,” he said. “It’s been some time, hasn’t it?”

It had at that. I hadn’t seen him since the trouble at the university. But it wasn’t likely he had spent the entire ten years in prison. Then I remembered his sentence had been for only two years.

“Heath will be your assistant,” Siskin explained. “But we’re going to give him the run of the place.”

I laced the man with a critical stare. “Have you been keeping up with developments in simulectronics?”

“I’ve stayed a step ahead of them, Hall. I’ve been in charge of technical work for Barnfeld.”

“I bought him off,” Siskin boasted. “Now he’s with us.”

Barnfeld was the only other private organization that had been rivaling Reactions in simulectronics research.

I leaned back against the desk. “Heath, does Mr. Siskin know all about you?”

“About that thing at the university?” Siskin interrupted. “Of course I do. Enough to realize Heath was the goat.”

“Dr. Heath,” I reminded him, “was convicted of fraud in the misuse of public research funds.”

“You didn’t
believe
that, did you, Doug?” Heath pleaded.

“You confessed to it.”

Siskin stepped between us. “I’m not stupid enough to hire a man without fully investigating his background. I turned my entire staff loose on it. Heath was covering up for—somebody else.”

“That’s a lie!” I protested. “Fuller didn’t have a penny when he left the University.”

Siskin’s tiny white teeth showed. “I said I was satisfied with Heath’s credentials. That’s all that’s necessary.”

With that, he led the man out. At the same moment I realized the reason behind this latest maneuver. Dorothy Ford
had
tapped in telepathically, over the tandem ESB circuit, on my intentions to sabotage the Siskin-party tie-up and block his political ambitions.

And now Siskin was preparing to get along without me. Heath would be expected to learn as much as he could. Then the necessary strings would be pulled and I would be arrested for Fuller’s murder.

Late that morning the 1C buzzer sounded and an elderly, stout-faced woman’s image flared on the screen. Dorothy had evidently left her desk and had switched incoming calls onto the direct circuit.

“CRM 10421-C,” the woman began. “I’m sampling opinion on—”

“I’ll take the fine,” I broke in rudely, switching her out.

The buzzer went off again and I flipped the intercom back on. “I said I’d—
Jinx!
”

“Morning, Doug,” she greeted, the orderly setting of Dr. Fuller’s study visible in the background. “I had to call. I know I acted so peculiar last night.”

“Jinx! What happened? Where did you go? How—
?
”

Her brow furrowed with puzzlement. Or was it fear?

“I went into the house right after you did,” I recounted. “You weren’t there. I couldn’t find you anywhere!”

She smiled. “You should have looked more closely. I was exhausted. I threw myself across the couch and that was that.”

“But I
looked
there!”

“Of course you’re mistaken.” She dismissed the matter with a laugh. “As for last night: I
was
worried about you. But I’m not now. Not after thinking it over. You see, I had waited so long. And, over the past few days, I had been so disappointed.”

I sat back and stared through the screen.

“What I’m trying to say,” she added, “is that I
do
love you.”

After a moment she asked, “I’ll see you this evening?”

“I’m going to be working late,” I lied.

“Then I’ll pick you up at the office.”

“But—”

“Don’t argue. I’ll wait there all night if I have to.”

I didn’t argue. I broke the connection, trying desperately to apply reason to what had just happened. She would have me believe she was prepared, last night, never to see me again because she was afraid of me. But now she was ready to accept me, despite the fact I had just given her even
more
reason for concern over my condition!

On the other hand, if she had actually vanished, where had she gone? What had she done during those twelve hours?

Moreover, it was apparent she
hadn’t
been running from anything. For if it had overtaken her, only to lose its grip on her, she wouldn’t be acting now as though nothing had happened.

That afternoon I spent half an hour staring down into a cold cup of coffee in the REIN automat and trying to reconcile myself to the idea that Jinx’s disappearance
had
been only another hallucination.

“Looks like some awfully profound cogitation.”

Starting, I glanced up at Chuck Whitney, realizing he had been standing there for some time. “Just routine problems,” I managed.

“I’ve got this guy Heath in my department. Can’t shake him.”

“Don’t try. You’d be bucking Siskin. But if he gets in your way, let me know.”

“I’m letting you know now. I’m just getting ready to hit the couch for an empathy coupling with our Contact Unit. Heath wants a front row seat so he can see how I do it.”

“Then I suppose you’ll have to give him one.”

Puzzled, he asked, “You want me to fill him in on how the system works?”

“Volunteer nothing. But I don’t see how we can avoid answering his questions. Why the empathy check on Ashton?”

“Thought I’d see if he’s still as bitter as he was.”

Ten minutes later I was back at my desk. Staring absently at the blotter, I picked up a pen and let my hand fall mechanically into the motions of recreating Fuller’s sketch of Achilles and the tortoise.

Eventually I let the pen slip from my fingers and studied the crude product of my inartistic effort. That the name “Zeno” had been meant to suggest “C. No” was more than obvious. Especially since Cau No had been wiped just before I could reach him.

Zeno’s Paradox represented, fundamentally, the proposition that all motion is illusive. And it hadn’t taken me long to recognize that all motion
is
illusive—in a counterfeit simulectronic system.

Had the drawing contained possibly
another
concealed meaning? There was Achilles, a hundred feet from the turtle, both in motion. But by the time the Greek ran that hundred feet, the tortoise would have moved ahead, say, ten feet. While Achilles covered, in his turn, that ten feet, his competitor would have pushed on an additional foot. The runner would negotiate that one-foot distance, only to find that the turtle had, meanwhile, inched ahead another tenth of a foot. And so on,
ad infinitum.

Achilles could never overtake the tortoise.

Had Fuller’s sketch been intended to suggest a reduction into the infinite? Then something Fuller had said months earlier swam up in my memory:

“Wouldn’t it be interesting if one of our ID units suddenly decided to start building a total environment simulator?”

The side door swung open and hit its stop with a thud. I turned to see who had studded it with such force.

Whitney stood poised on the threshold, gulping air, glancing desperately back down the hallway.

“Chuck!” I exclaimed. “What happened?”

He started at the sound of my voice and cringed against the wall. Then, in an obviously supreme effort to compose himself, he slowed his breathing and steadied his eyes.

“Nothing, Mr. Hall.” He sidled toward the reception room door.

But Whitney had
never
called me “Mr. Hall.”

I took a step toward him and terror flared in his eyes as he burst for the door. Lunging, I got there first. He swore and swung at me, but I ducked under the hook. I seized his wrist and twisted the arm behind him.

“Let me go!” he shouted frantically.

It all became instantly clear.

“You’re
Phil Ashton!
” I whispered.

“Yes.” He sagged. “I almost made it. God, I
almost made it!
”

He wrenched free and came at me again, punching, clawing. I swung back with all I had. Then I picked him off the floor and carried his limp form over to the couch.

At the desk, I buzzed the peephole department on the intercom.

One of Whitney’s assistants came into focus, the recently used couch and empathy helmet visible in the background. “Yes, Mr. Hall?”

“Anything go wrong in there?”

He paused thoughtfully. “No, sir. Why?”

“Mr. Whitney around?” I glanced at Chuck—the
physical
Chuck, that is—still unconscious on the couch.

“No. But he just finished an empathy coupling with Ashton.”

“How did he act when he came out of it?”

“All right, I guess.” Then, “Say, he didn’t tape his report!”

“Anything else unusual happen?”

He looked confused. “We
did
have a little trouble with Heath. Tried to put in his two cents’ worth at the modulator panel.”

“He put in more than two cents’ worth. He monkeyed with the gain control and gave us a reciprocal transfer. I’ve got Ashton in my office. Whitney’s trapped down there in the simulator. Pick up a couple of the boys and get over here—quick!”

I stood over Ashton, studying Whitney’s limp features, hoping fervently that the retransfer process would work. There had been a cataclysmic upheaval of molecular structures in Whitney’s brain cells. Patterns etched there over a lifetime had been swept away, re-established among the memory drums and tapes of the Contact Unit’s subjective circuits. At the same time, all the data from Ashton’s circuits had surged into Whitney’s brain cells.

Only successful reversal of the process would bring Chuck back.

Ashton stirred and opened his—Whitney’s, that is—eyes.

“I almost made it,” he sobbed. “I almost took the
first
step.”

He rose shakily. “You can’t send me back down there!”

I seized his shoulders and steadied him. “It’s going to be all right, Phil. We’re going to do away with the Contact Unit system. We’ll reorient you. You won’t even know your world isn’t real.”