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Anything You Can Do ..., a novel by Randall Garrett |
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Chapter 13 |
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_ He was walking again. He didn't quite remember how he had left the automat, and he really didn't even try to remember. He was trying to remember other things--further back--before he had ... Before he had _what_? Before the Institute. Before the beginning of the operations. The memories were there, all right. He could sense them, floating in some sort of mental limbo, just beyond the grasp of his conscious mind, like the memories of a dream after one has awakened. Each time he would try to reach into the darkness to grasp one of the pieces, it would shatter into smaller bits. The big patterns were too fragile to withstand the direct probing of his conscious mind, and even the resulting fragments did not want to hold still long enough to be analyzed. And, while a part of his mind probed frantically after the elusive particles of memory, another part of it watched the process with semi-detached amusement. He had always known there were holes in his memory (_Always? Don't kid yourself, pal!_), but it was disconcerting to find an area that was as full of holes as a used machine-gun target. The whole fabric had been punched to bits. No man's memory is completely available at any given time. Whatever the recording process is, however completely every bit of data may be recorded during a lifetime, much of it is unavailable. It may be incompletely cross-indexed, or, in some instances, labeled DO NOT SCAN. Or, metaphorically, the file drawer may be locked. It may be that, in many cases, if a given bit of data remains unscanned for a long enough period, it fades into illegibility, never reinforced by the scanning process. Sensory data, coming in from the outside world as it does, is probably permanent. But the thought patterns originating within the mind itself, the processes that correlate and cross-index and speculate on and hypothesize about the sensory data, these are much more fragile. A man might glance once through a Latin primer and have each and every page imprinted indelibly on his recording mechanism and still be unable to make sense out of _Nauta in cubitu cum puella est_. Sometimes a man is aware of the holes in his memory. ("What _was_ the name of that fellow I met at Eddie's party? Can't remember it for the life of me.") At other times, a memory may lay dormant and completely unremembered, leaving no apparent gap, until a tag of some kind brings it up. ("That girl with the long hair reminds me of Suzie Blugerhugle. My gosh! I haven't thought of her in years!") Both factors seemed to be operating in Bart Stanton's mind at this time. Incredibly, he had never, in the past year at least, had occasion to try to remember much about his past life. He had known who he was without thinking about it particularly, and the rest of his knowledge--language, history, social behavior, politics, geography, and so on--had been readily available for the most part. Ask an educated man to give the product of the primes 2, 13, and 41, or ask him to give the date of the Norman Conquest, and he can give you the answers very quickly. He may have to calculate the first, which will make him pause for a second before answering, but the second will come straight out of his memory records. In neither case does he have to think of where he learned the process or the fact, or who taught it to him, or when he got the information. But now the picture and the name in the paper had brought forth a reaction in Stanton's mind, and he was trying desperately to bring the information out of oblivion. Did he have a mother? Surely. But could he remember her? _Yes!_ Certainly. A pretty, gentle, rather sad woman. He could remember when she died, although he couldn't remember ever having actually attended the funeral. What about his father? Try as he might, he could find no memory whatever of his father, and, at first, that bothered him. He could remember his mother--could almost see her moving around in the apartment where they had lived in ... in ... in Denver! Sure! And he could remember the big building itself, and the block, and even Mrs. Frobisher, who lived upstairs! And the school! And the play area! A great many memories came crowding back, but there was no trace of his father. And yet ... Oh, of _course_! That was it! His father had been killed in an accident when Martinbart were very young. _Martinbart!_ The name flitted through his mind like a scrap of paper in a high wind, but mentally he reached out and grasped it. Martinbart. Martin-Bart. Mart 'n' Bart. Mart _and_ Bart. The Stanton Twins. It was very curious, he thought, that he should have forgotten his brother. And even more curious that the name in the paper had not brought him instantly to mind. Martin, the cripple. Martin, the boy with the poor, weak, radiation-shattered nervous system. The boy who had had to stay in a therapeutic chair all his life because his efferent nerves could not control his body. The boy who couldn't speak. Or, rather, _wouldn't_ speak because he was ashamed of the gibberish that resulted. Martin. The nonentity. The nothing. The nobody. The one who watched and listened and thought, but could do nothing. Bart Stanton stopped suddenly and unfolded the newspaper again under the glow of the streetlamp. His memories certainly didn't jibe with _this_! His eyes ran down the column of type:
He chuckled a little at the irony of it. It looked as though they hadn't been able to make a superman of Martin, but they _had_ been able to make a normal and extraordinarily capable human being of him, he thought. Now it was Bart who was the freak, the odd one. _Turn about is fair play_, he thought. But somehow it didn't seem quite fair. He crumpled the newspaper, dropped it into a nearby waste chute, and walked on through the night toward the Neurophysical Institute.
"I suppose so. I'm sorry, Doctor," said Mrs. Stanton. Her manner betrayed weariness and pain. "It was so ... so difficult. Martin could never talk very well, you know, and he just talked less and less as the years went by. It was so slow and so gradual that I never really noticed it." _Poor woman_, the doctor thought. _She's not well, herself. She should have married again, years ago, rather than force herself to carry the whole burden alone. Her role as a doting mother hasn't helped either of the boys to overcome the handicaps that were already present._ "I've honestly tried to do my very best with Martin," Mrs. Stanton went on unhappily. "And so has Bart, I know. When they were younger, Bart used to take him out all the time. They went everywhere together. Of course, I don't expect Bart to do that so much any more. He has his own life to live. He can't take Martin out on dates or things like that. He has interests outside the home now, like other boys his age. That's only normal. But when he's at home, Bart helps me with Martin all the time." "I understand," said the psychiatrist. _This is no time to tell her that Bartholomew's tests indicate that he has subconsciously resented Martin's presence for a long time_, he thought. _She has enough to worry about._ "_I_ don't understand," said Mrs. Stanton, breaking into sudden tears. "I just don't understand why Martin should behave this way! Why should he just sit there with his eyes closed and ignore everybody? Why should he ignore his mother and his brother? Why?" The doctor comforted her in a warmly professional manner, then, as her tears subsided, he said, "We don't understand all the factors ourselves, Mrs. Stanton. At first glance, Martin's reactions appear to be those one would expect of schizophrenic withdrawal. But there are certain aspects of the case that make it unusual. His behavior doesn't quite follow the pattern we usually expect from such cases as this. His extreme physical disability has drastically modified the course of his mental development, and, at the same time, made it difficult for us to make any analysis of his mental state." _If only_, he added to himself, _she had followed the advice of her family physician, years ago. If she had only put the boy under the proper care, none of this would have happened._ "Is there _any_thing we can do, Doctor?" she asked. "We don't know yet," he said gently. He considered for a moment, then said: "Mrs. Stanton, I'd like for you to leave both of the boys here for a few days, so that we can perform further tests. That will help us a great deal in evaluating the circumstances, and help us get at the root of Martin's trouble." She looked at him with a little surprise. "Why, yes, of course--if you think it's necessary. But ... why should Bart stay?" The doctor weighed his words carefully before he spoke. "Bart will be what we call a 'control', Mrs. Stanton. Since the boys are genetically identical, they should have been a great deal alike, in personality as well as in body, if it hadn't been for Martin's accident. In other words, our tests of Bart will tell us what Martin _should_ be like. That way, we can tell just how much and in what way Martin deviates from what he should ideally be. Do you understand?" "Yes. Yes, I see. All right, Doctor--whatever you say." After Mrs. Stanton had left, the psychiatrist sat quietly in his chair and stared thoughtfully at his desk top for several minutes. Then, making his decision, he picked up a small book that lay on his desk and looked up a number in Arlington, Virginia. He punched out the number on his phone, and when the face appeared on his screen he said, "Hello, Sidney. Busy right now?" "Not particularly. Not for a few minutes. What's up?" "I have a very interesting case out here that I'd like to talk to you about. Do you happen to have a telepath who's strong enough to take a meshing with an insane mind? If my suspicions are correct, I will need a man with an absolutely impregnable sense of identity, because he's going to get into the weirdest situation I've ever come across." _ |
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