victims. “Save as many as you can,” he said. “Find those who are in complete despair and get them into the park before they can take their own lives. Explain that the loss of one’s past is not the loss of all things.”
The disciples went forth. And came back leading those less fortunate than themselves. The group grew to more than one hundred by nightfall. Someone found the extruder again and blew twenty more bubbles as shelters for the night. Haldersen preached his sermon of joy, looking out at the blank eyes, the slack faces of those whose identities had washed away on Wednesday. “Why give up?” he asked them. “Now is your chance to create new lives for yourself. The slate is clean! Choose the direction you will take, define your new selves through the exercise of free will—you are reborn in holy oblivion, all of you. Rest, now, those who have just come to us. And you others, go forth again, seek out the wanderers, the drifters, the lost ones hiding in the corners of the city —”
As he finished, he saw a knot of people bustling toward him from the direction of the South Drive. Fearing trouble, Haldersen went out to meet them; but as he drew close he saw half a dozen disciples, clutching a scruffy, unshaven, terrified little man. They hurled him at Haldersen’s feet. The man quivered like a hare ringed by hounds. His eyes glistened; his wedge of a face, sharp-chinned, sharp of cheekbones, was pale.
“It’s the one who poisoned the water supply!” someone called. “We found him in a rooming house on Judah Street. With a stack of drugs in his room, and the plans of the water system, and a bunch of computer programs. He admits it. He admits it!”
Haldersen looked down. “Is this true?” he asked. “Are you the one?”
The man nodded.
“What’s your name?”
“Won’t say. Want a lawyer.”
“Kill him now!” a woman shrieked. “Pull his arms and legs off!”
“Kill him!” came an answering cry from the other side of the group. “Kill him!”
The congregation, Haldersen realized, might easily turn into a mob.
He said, “Tell me your name, and I’ll protect you. Otherwise I can’t be responsible.”
“Skinner,” the man muttered miserably. “Skinner. And you contaminated the water supply.” Another nod.
“Why?”
“To get even.”
“With whom?”
“Everyone. Everybody.”
Classic paranoid. Haldersen felt pity. Not the others; they were calling out for blood.
A tall man bellowed, “Make the bastard drink his own drug!”
“No, kill him! Squash him!”
The voices became more menacing. The angry faces came closer.
“Listen to me,” Haldersen called, and his voice cut through the murmurings. “There’ll be no killing here tonight.”
“What are you going to do, give him to the police?”
“No,” said Haldersen. “We’ll hold communion together. We’ll teach this pitiful man the blessings of oblivion, and then we’ll share new joys ourselves. We are human beings. We have the capacity to forgive even the worst of sinners. Where are the memory drugs? Did someone say you had found the memory drugs? Here. Here. Pass it up here. Yes. Brothers, sisters, let us show this dark and twisted soul the nature of redemption. Yes. Yes. Fetch some water, please. Thank you. Here, Skinner. Stand him up, will you? Hold his arms. Keep him from falling down. Wait a second, until I find the proper dose. Yes. Yes. Here, Skinner. Forgiveness. Sweet oblivion.”
It was so good to be working again that Mueller didn’t want to stop. By early afternoon on Saturday his studio was ready; he had long since worked out the sketches of the first piece; now it was just a matter of time and effort, and he’d have something to show Pete Castine. He worked on far into the evening, setting up his armature and running a few tests of the sound sequences that he proposed to build into the piece. He had some interesting new ideas about the sonic triggers, the devices that would set off the sound effects when the appreciator came within range. Carole had to tell him, finally, that dinner was ready. “I didn’t want to interrupt you,” she said, “but it looks like I have to, or you won’t ever stop.”
“Sorry. The creative ecstasy.”
“Save some of that energy. There are other ecstasies. The ecstasy of dinner, first.”
She had cooked everything herself. Beautiful. He went back to work again afterward, but at half past one in the morning Carole interrupted him. He was willing to stop, now. He had done an honest day’s work, and he was sweaty with the noble sweat of a job well done. Two minutes under the molecular cleanser and the sweat was gone, but the good ache of virtuous fatigue remained. He hadn’t felt his way in years.
He woke to Sunday thoughts of unpaid debts.
“The robots are still there,” he said. “They won’t go away, will they? Even though the whole city’s at a standstill, nobody’s told the robots to quit.”
“Ignore them,” Carole said.
“That’s what I’ve been doing. But I can’t ignore the debts. Ultimately there’ll be a reckoning.”
“You’re working again, though! You’ll have an income coming in.”
“Do you know what I owe?” he asked. “Almost a million. If I produced one piece a week for a year, and sold each piece for twenty bigs, I might pay everything off. But I can’t work that fast, and the market can’t possibly absorb that many Muellers, and Pete certainly can’t buy them all for future sale.”
He noticed the way Carole’s face darkened at the mention of Pete Castine.
He said, “You know what I’ll have to do? Go to Caracas, like I was planning before this memory thing started. I can work there, and ship my stuff to Pete. And maybe in two or three years I’ll have paid off my debt, a hundred cents on the dollar, and I can start fresh back here. Do you know if that’s possible? I mean, if you jump to a debtor sanctuary, are you blackballed for credit forever, even if you pay off what you owe?”
“I don’t know,” Carole said distantly.
“I’ll find that out later. The important thing is that I’m working again, and I’ve got to go someplace where I can work without being hounded. And then I’ll pay everybody off. You’ll come with me to Caracas, won’t you?”
“Maybe we won’t have to go,” Carole said.
“But how—”
“You should be working now, shouldn’t you?”
He worked, and while he worked he made lists of creditors in his mind, dreaming of the day when every name on every list was crossed off. When he got hungry he emerged from the studio and found Carole sitting gloomily in the living room. Her eyes were red and puffy-lidded.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “You don’t want to go to Caracas?”
“Please, Paul—let’s not talk about it—”
“I’ve really got no alternative. I mean, unless we pick one of the other sanctuaries. Sao Paulo? Spalato?”
“It isn’t that, Paul.”
“What, then?”
“I’m starting to remember again.”
The air went out of him. “Oh,” he said.
“I remember November, December, January. The crazy things you were doing, the loans, the financial juggling. And the quarrels we had. They were terrible quarrels.”
“Oh.”
“The divorce. I remember, Paul. It started coming back last night, but you were so happy I didn’t want to say anything. And this morning it’s much clearer. You still don’t remember any of it?”
“Not a thing past last October.”
“I do,” she said, shakily. “You hit me, do you know that? You cut my lip. You slammed me against that wall, right over there, and then you threw the Chinese vase at me and it broke.”
“Oh. Oh.”
