The Collection (75 page)

He was combining space rations over the alcohol stove,
trying to make it taste more like human food than concentrated chemicals. It
was hard to measure in the liver extract because Anna wanted to kiss his left
car.

"Silly! You'll be lopsided,
^"
she was
saying. "I
^'
ve got to kiss both of them the same number of
times."

He dropped the container into the pan and grabbed her,
mousing his lips down her neck to the warm place where it joined her shoulder,
and she writhed delightedly in his arms like a tickled doe.

"We're going to stay married when we get back to Earth,
aren
^'
t we, darling?
^"
she was squealing happily.

He bit her shoulder gently, snorting away the scented soft
hair. "Damned right we will, you gorgeous, wonderful, brainy creature. I
found the girl I
^'
ve always been looking for, and I'm not giving her
up for any brasshat or politician-either yours or mine!
^"

"Speaking of politics-" she teased, but he quickly
changed the subject.

Carmody blinked awake. It was a paper with a mass of written
data in his hands, instead of Anna
^'
s laughing face. He needed an
analyst; that scene he
^'
d just imagined was pure Freudianism, a
tortured product of his frustrated id. He'd fallen in love with Anna, and those
damned extra-terrestrials had spoiled his honeymoon. Now his unconscious had
rebelled with fancy fancifulness that certainly showed the unstable state of
his emotions.

Not that it mattered now. The big problem was solved. Two
big ones, in fact. War between the United States and the Eastern Alliance had
been averted. And the human race was going to survive, unless the
extra-terrestrials came back too soon and with too much to be fought off.

He thought they wouldn't, then began to wonder why he
thought so.

^"
Insufficient data,
^"
said
the mechanical voice of the cybernetics machine.

Carmody recorded the answer and then, idly, looked to see
what the problem had been. No wonder he'd been thinking about the
extra-terrestrials and how long they'd be gone; that had been the problem he
had just fed into Junior. And "insufficient data" was the answer, of
course.

He stared at Junior without reaching for the third problem
folder. He said, "Junior, why do I have a hunch that those things from
space won't ever be back?
^"

"Because," said Junior, "what you call a
hunch comes from the unconscious mind, and your unconsicious mind knows that
the extra-terrestrials do not exist.
^"

Carmody sat up straight and stared harder.
"What?"
Junior repeated it.

^"
You're crazy," Carmody said.
^"
I
saw them. So did Anna."

"Neither of you saw them. The memory you have of them
is the result of highly intensive post-hypnotic suggestion, far beyond human
ability to impose or resist. So is the fact that you felt compelled to return
to work at your regular job here. So is the fact that you asked me the question
you have just asked."

Carmody gripped the edges of his chair. "Did
you
plant
those post-hypnotic suggestions?"

^"
Yes,
^"
said Junior. "If
it had been done by a human, the lie detector would have exposed the deception.
It had to he done by me."

^"
But what about the business of the
molecular changes in the zygote? The business of all babies being female? That
stopped when-? Wait, let
^'
s start at the beginning. What
did
cause
that molecular change?"

"A special modification of the carrier wave of Radio
Station JVT here in Washington, the only twenty-four-hour-a-day radio station
in the United States. The modification was not detectable by any instrument
available to present human science."

"You caused that modification?
^"

"Yes. A year ago, you may remember, the problem of
design of a new cathode tube was given me. The special modification was
incorporated into the design of that tube.
^"

"What stopped the molecular change so suddenly?
^"

"The special part of that tube causing the modification
of the carrier wave was calculated to last a precise length of time. The tube
still functions, but that part of it is worn out. It wore out two hours after
the departure of you and Anna from the Moon.
^"

Carmody closed his eyes. "Junior, please explain.
^"

^"
Cybernatics machines are constructed to
help humanity. A major war-the disastrous results of which I could accurately
calculate-was inevitable unless forestalled. Calculation showed that the best
of several ways of averting that war was the creation of a mythical common
enemy. To convince mankind that such a common enemy existed, I created a
crucial situation which led to a special mission to the Moon. Factors were
given which inevitably led to your choice as emissary. That was necessary
because my powers of implanting post-hypnotic suggestions are limited to those
in whom I am in direct contact.
^"

^"
You weren't in direct contact with Anna.
Why does she have the same false memory as I?"

"She was in contact with another large cybernetics
machine.
^"

"But-but why would it figure things out the same way
you did?"

"For the same reason that two properly constructed
simple adding machines would give the same answer to the same problem.
^"

Carmody's mind reeled a little, momentarily. He got up and
started to pace the room.

He said, "Listen, Junior-" and then realized he
wasn't at the intake microphone. He went back to it.
^"
Listen,
Junior, why are you telling me this? If what happened is a colossal hoax, why
let me in on it?"

^"
It is to the interests of humanity in
general not to know the truth. Believing in the existence of inimical extra-terrestrials,
they will attain peace and amity among themselves, and they will reach the
planets and then the stars. It is, however, to your personal interest to know
the truth. And you will not expose the hoax. Nor will Anna. I predict that,
since the Moscow cybernetics machine has paralleled all my other conclusions,
it is even now informing Anna of the truth, or that it has already informed
her, or will inform her within hours.
^"

Carmody asked, "But if my memory of what happened on
the Moon is false, what
did
happen?
^"

^"
Look at the green light in the center of
the panel before you."

Carmody looked.

He remembered. He remembered everything. The truth
duplicated everything he had remembered before up to the moment when, walking
toward the completed shelter with the whisky bottle, he had looked up toward
the ringwall of Hell Crater.

He had looked up, but he hadn
^'
t seen anything.
He'd gone on into the shelter, rigged the airlock. Anna had joined him and they
^'
d
turned on the oxygen to build up an atmosphere.

It had been a wonderful thirteen-day honeymoon. He'd fallen
in love with Anna and she with him. They'd got perilously close to arguing
politics once or twice, and then they'd decided such things didn't matter.
They'd also decided to stay married after their return to Earth, and Anna had
promised to join him and live in America. Life together had been so wonderful
that they'd delayed leaving until the last moment, when the Sun was almost
down, dreading the brief separation the return trip would entail.

And before leaving, they
^'
d done certain things he
hadn
^'
t understood then. He understood now that they were the result
of post-hypnotic suggestion. They'd removed all evidence that they'd ever
actually lived in the shelter, had rigged things so that subsequent
investigation would never disprove any point of the story each was to remember
falsely and tell after returning to Earth.

He remembered now being bewildered as to why they made those
arrangements, even while they had been making them.

But mostly he remembered Anna and the dizzy happiness of
those thirteen days together.

"Thanks, Junior,
^"
he said hurriedly.

He grabbed for the phone and talked Chief Operative Reeber
into connecting him with the White House, with President Saunderson. After a
delay of minutes that didn
^'
t seem like minutes, he heard the
President's voice.

"Carmody, Mr. President,
^"
he said.
"I'm going to call you on that reward you offered me. I
^'
d like
to get off work right now, for a long vacation. And I
^'
d like a fast
plane to Moscow. I want to see Anna."

President Saunderson chuckled.
^"
Thought
you'd change your mind about sticking at work, Captain. Consider yourself on
vacation as of now, and for as long as you like. But I
^'
m not sure
you
^'
ll want that plane. There's word from Russia that-uh-Mrs.
Carmody has just taken off to fly here, in a straw-rocket. If you hurry, you
can get to the landing field in time to meet her.

Carmody hurried and did.

Crag

There
was this Crag, and he was a thief and a smuggler and a murderer. He
^'
d
been a spaceman once and he had a metal hand and a permanent squint to show for
it. Those, and a taste for exotic liquors and a strong disinclination for
work. Especially as he would have had to work a week to buy one small jigger of
even the cheapest of the fluids that were the only things that made life
worthwhile to him. At anything he was qualified to do, that is, except
stealing, smuggling and murder. These paid well.

He
had no business in Albuquerque, but he got around. And that time they caught
him. It was for something he hadn
^'
t done, but they had proof that he
did it. Proof enough to send him to the penal colony of Callisto, which he
wouldn't have minded too much, or to send him to the psycher, which he would have
minded very much indeed.

He
sat on the bed in his cell and worried about it, and about the fact that he
needed a drink. The two worries went together, in a way. If they sent him to
the psycher, he'd never want a drink again, and he wanted to want a drink.

The
psycher was pretty bad. They used it only in extreme cases, partly because they
hadn't perfected it yet. Sometimes—statistically about one time out of nine—it
drove its subject crazy, stark raving crazy. The eight times out of nine that
it worked, it was worse. It
adjusted
you; it made you normal. And in the
process it killed your memories, the good ones as well as the bad ones, and you
started from scratch.

You
remembered how to talk and feed yourself and how to use a slipstick or play a
flute—if, that is, you knew how to use a slipstick or play a flute before you
went to the psycher. But you didn't remember your name unless they told you.
And you didn
^'
t remember the time you were tortured for three days
and two nights on Venus before the rest of the crew found you and took you away
from the animated vegetables who didn't like meat in any form and especially in
human form. You didn
^'
t remember the time you were spacemad, the time
you went nine days without water, the time—well, you didn't remember anything
that had ever happened to you.

Not
even the good things.

You
started from scratch, a different person. And Crag thought he wouldn't mind
dying, particularly, but he didn't want his body to keep on walking around
afterwards, animated by a well-adjusted stranger, who just wouldn
^'
t
be
he.

So
he paced up and down his cell and made up his mind that he'd at least try to
kill himself before he'd let them strap him into the psycher chair, if it came
to that.

He
hoped that he could do it. He had a lethal weapon with him, the only one he
ever carried, but it would be difficult to use on himself. Oh, it could be done
if he had the guts; but it takes plenty of guts to kill yourself with a
bludgeon, even so efficient a one as his metal hand. Looking at that hand, though
it was obviously of metal, no one ever guessed that it weighed twelve pounds
instead of a few ounces. The outside layer was Alloy G, a fraction of the
weight of magnesium, not much heavier, in fact, than balsa wood. And since you
couldn't mistake the appearance of Alloy G, nobody ever suspected that under it
was steel for strength and under the steel lead for weight. It wasn't a hand
you'd want to be slapped in the face with. But long practice and the
development of strength in his left arm enabled him to carry it as casually as
though it weighed the three or four ounces you'd expect it to weigh.

He
quit pacing and went to the window and stood looking down at the huge sprawling
city of Albuquerque, capital of SW Sector of North America, third largest city
in the world since it had become the number one spaceport of the Western
Hemisphere.

The
window wasn
^'
t barred but the transparent plastic of the pane was
tough stuff. Still, he thought he could hatter through it with one hand, if
that hand were his left one. But he could only commit suicide that way. There
was a sheer drop of thirty stories from this, the top floor of the SW Sector
Capitol Building.