She went on, “I remember how good Pete was to me, too. I think I can almost remember marrying him, being his wife. Paul, I’m scared. I feel everything fitting into place in my mind, and it’s as scary as if my mind was breaking into pieces. It was so good, Paul, these last few days. It was like being a newlywed with you again. But now all the sour parts are coming back, the hate, the ugliness, it’s all alive for me again. And I feel so bad about Pete. The two of us, Friday, shutting him out. He was a real gentleman about it. But the fact is that he saved me when I was going under, and I owe him something for that.”
“What do you plan to do?” he asked quietly.
“I think I ought to go back to him. I’m his wife. I’ve got no right to stay here.”
“But I’m not the same man you came to hate,” Mueller protested. “I’m the old Paul, the one from last year and before. The man you loved. All the hateful stuff is gone from me.”
“Not from me, though. Not now.”
They were both silent.
“I think I should go back, Paul.”
“Whatever you say.”
“I think I should. I wish you all kinds of luck, but I can’t stay here. Will it hurt your work if I leave again?”
“I won’t know until you do.”
She told him three or four more times that she felt she ought to go back to Castine, and then, politely, he suggested that she should go back right now, if that was how she felt, and she did. He spent half an hour wandering around the apartment, which seemed so awfully empty again. He nearly invited one of the dun-fling robots in for company. Instead, he went back to work. To his surprise, he worked quite well, and in an hour he had ceased thinking about Carole entirely.
Sunday afternoon, Freddy Munson set up a credit transfer and managed to get most of his liquid assets fed into an old account he kept at the Bank of Luna. Toward evening, he went down to the wharf and boarded a three-man hovercraft owned by a fisherman willing to take his chances with the law. They slipped out into the bay without running lights and crossed the bay on a big diagonal, landing some time later a few miles north of Berkeley. Munson found a cab to take him to the Oakland airport, and caught the midnight shuttle to L.A., where, after a lot of fancy talking, he was able to buy his way aboard the next Luna-bound rocket, lifting off at ten o’clock Monday morning. He spent the night in the spaceport terminal. He had taken with him nothing except the clothes he wore; his fine possessions, his paintings, his suits, his Mueller sculptures, and all the rest remained in his apartment, and ultimately would be sold to satisfy the judgments against him. Too bad. He knew that he wouldn’t be coming back to Earth again, either, not with a larceny warrant or worse awaiting him. Also too bad. It had been so nice for so long, here, and who needed a memory drug in the water supply? Munson had only one consolation. It was an article of his philosophy that sooner or later, no matter how neatly you organized your life, fate opened a trapdoor underneath your feet and catapulted you into something unknown and unpleasant. Now he knew that it was true, even for him.
Too, too bad. He wondered what his chances were of starting over up there. Did they need stockbrokers on the Moon?
Addressing the citizenry on Monday night, Commander Braskett said, “The committee of public safety is pleased to report that we have come through the worst part of the crisis. As many of you have already discovered, memories are beginning to return. The process of recovery will be more swift for some than others, but great progress has been made. Effective at six A.M. tomorrow, access routes to and from San Francisco will reopen. There will be normal mail service and many businesses will return to normal. Fellow citizens, we have demonstrated once again the real fiber of the American spirit. The Founding Fathers must be smiling down upon us today! How superbly we avoided chaos, and how beautifully we pulled together to help one another in what could have been an hour of turmoil and despair!
“Dr. Bryce requests me to remind you that anyone still suffering severe impairment of memory—especially those experiencing loss of identity, confusion of vital functions, or other disability— should report to the emergency ward at Fletcher Memorial Hospital. Treatment is available there, and computer analysis is at the service of those unable to find their homes and loved ones. I repeat—”
Tim Bryce wished that the good commander hadn’t slipped in that plug for the real fiber of the American spirit, especially in view of the necessity to invite the remaining victims to the hospital with his next words. But it would be uncharitable to object. The old spaceman had done a beautiful job all weekend as the Voice of the Crisis, and some patriotic embellishments now were harmless.
The crisis, of course, was nowhere near as close to being over as Commander Braskett’s speech had suggested, but public confidence had to be buoyed.
Bryce had the latest figures. Suicides now totaled ~oo since the start of trouble on Wednesday; Sunday had been an unexpectedly bad day. At least 40,000 people were still unaccounted for, although they were tracing i,ooo an hour and getting them back to their families or else into an intensive-care section. Probably 750,000 more continued to have memory difficulties. Most children had fully recovered, and many of the women were mending; but older people, and men in general, had experienced scarcely any memory recapture. Even those who were nearly healed had no recall of events of Tuesday and Wednesday, and probably never would; for large numbers of people, though, big blocks of the past would have to be learned from the outside, like history lessons.
Lisa was teaching him their marriage that way.
The trips they had taken—the good times, the bad—the parties, the friends, the shared dreams—she described everything, as vividly as she could, and he fastened on each anecdote, trying to make it a part of himself again. He knew it was hopeless, really. He’d know the outlines, never the substance. Yet it was probably the best he could hope for.
He was so horribly tired, suddenly.
He said to Kamakura, “Is there anything new from the park yet? That rumor that Haldersen’s actually got a supply of the drug?”
“Seems to be true, Tim. The word is that he and his friends caught the character who spiked the water supply, and relieved him of a roomful of various amnesifacients.”
“We’ve got to seize them,” Bryce said.
Kamakura shook his head. “Not just yet. Police are afraid of any actions in the park. They say it’s a volatile situation.”
“But if those drugs are loose—”
“Let me worry about it, Tim. Look, why don’t you and Lisa go home for a while? You’ve been here without a break since Thursday.”
“So have—”
“No. Everybody else has had a breather. Go on, now. We’re over the worst. Relax, get some real sleep, make some love. Get to know that gorgeous wife of yours again a little.”
Bryce reddened. “I’d rather stay here until I feel I can afford to leave.”
Scowling, Kamakura walked away from him to confer with Commander Braskett. Bryce scanned the screens, trying to figure out what was going on in the park. A moment later, Braskett walked over to him.
“Dr. Bryce?”
“What?”
“You’re relieved of duty until sundown Tuesday.”
“Wait a second—”
“That’s an order, Doctor. I’m chairman of the committee of public safety, and I’m telling you to get yourself out of this hospital. You aren’t going to disobey an order, are you?”
“Listen, Commander—”
“Out. No mutiny, Bryce. Out! Orders.”
Bryce tried to protest, but he was too weary to put up much of a fight. By noon, he was on his way home, soupy-headed with fatigue. Lisa drove. He sat quite still, struggling to remember details of his marriage. Nothing came.
She put him to bed. He wasn’t sure how long he slept; but then he felt her against him, warm, satin- smooth.
