“Hello,” she said. “Remember me?”
“Yes,” he lied gratefully. “Oh, yes, yes, yes!”
Working right through the night, Mueller finished his armature by dawn on Monday. He slept a while, and in early afternoon began to paint the inner strips of loudspeakers on: a thousand speakers to the inch, no more than a few molecules thick, from which the sounds of his sculpture would issue in resonant fullness. When that was done, he paused to contemplate the needs of his sculpture’s superstructure, and by seven that night was ready to move to the next phase. The demons of creativity possessed him; he saw no reason to eat and scarcely any to sleep.
At eight, just as he was getting up momentum for the long night’s work, he heard a knock at the door. Carole’s signal. He had disconnected the doorbell, and robots didn’t have the sense to knock. Uneasily, he went to the door. She was there.
“So?” he said.
“So I came back. So it starts all over.”
“What’s going on?”
“Can I come in?” she asked.
“I suppose. I’m working, but come in.”
She said, “I talked it all over with Pete. We both decided I ought to go back to you.”
“You aren’t much for consistency, are you?” he asked.
“I have to take things as they happen. When I lost my memory, I came to you. When I remembered things again, I felt I ought to leave. I didn’t
“Really,” he said.
“Really. I went to Pete, but I didn’t want to be with him. I wanted to be here.”
“I hit you and made your lip bleed. I threw the Ming vase at you.”
“It wasn’t Ming, it was K’ang-hsi.”
“Pardon me. My memory still isn’t so good. Anyway, I did terrible things to you, and you hated me enough to want a divorce. So why come back?”
“You were right, yesterday. You aren’t the man I came to hate. You’re the old Paul.”
“And if my memory of the past nine months returns?”
“Even so,” she said. “People change. You’ve been through hell and come out the other side. You’re working again. You aren’t sullen and nasty and confused. We’ll go to Caracas, or wherever you want, and you’ll do your work and pay your debts, just as you said yesterday.”
“And Pete?”
“He’ll arrange an annulment. He’s being swell about it.”
“Good old Pete,” Mueller said. He shook his head. “How long will the neat happy ending last, Carole? If you think there’s a chance you’ll be bouncing back in the other direction by Wednesday, say so now. I’d rather not get involved again, in that case.”
“No chance. None.”
“Unless I throw the Ch’ien-lung vase at you.”
“K’ang-hsi,” she said.
“Yes. K’ang-hsi.” He managed to grin. Suddenly he felt the accumulated fatigue of these days register all at once. “I’ve been working too hard,” he said. “An orgy of creativity to make up for lost time. Let’s go for a walk.”
“Fine,” she said.
They went out, just as a dunning robot was arriving. “Top of the evening to you, sir,” Mueller said.
“Mr. Mueller, I represent the accounts receivable department of the Acme Brass and—”
“See my attorney,” he said.
Fog was rolling in off the sea now. There were no stars. The downtown lights were invisible. He and Carole walked west, toward the park. He felt strangely light-headed, not entirely from lack of sleep. Reality and dream had merged; these were unusual days. They entered the park from the Panhandle and strolled toward the museum area, arm in arm, saying nothing much to one another. As they passed the conservatory Mueller became aware of a crowd up ahead, thousands of people staring in the direction of the music shell. “What do you think is going on?” Carole asked. Mueller shrugged. They edged through the crowd.
Ten minutes later they were close enough to see the stage. A tall, thin, wild-looking man with unruly yellow hair was on the stage. Beside him was a small, scrawny man in ragged clothing, and there were a dozen other flanking them, carrying ceramic bowls.
“What’s happening?” Mueller asked someone in the crowd.
“Religious ceremony.”
“Eh?”
“New religion. Church of Oblivion. That’s the head prophet up there. You haven’t heard about it yet?”
“Not a thing.”
“Started around Friday. You see that ratty-looking character next to the prophet?”
“Yes.”
“He’s the one that put the stuff in the water supply. He confessed and they made him drink his own drug. Now he doesn’t remember a thing, and he’s the assistant prophet. Craziest damn stuff!”
“And what are they doing up there?”
“They’ve got the drug in those bowls. They drink and forget some more. They drink and forget some more.”
The gathering fog absorbed the sounds of those on the stage. Mueller strained to listen. He saw the bright eyes of fanaticism; the alleged contaminator of the water looked positively radiant. Words drifted out into the night.
“Brothers and sisters… the joy, the sweetness of forgetting come up here with us, take communion with us… oblivion redemption… even for the most wicked… forget… forget…”
They were passing the bowls around on stage, drinking, smiling. People were going up to receive the communion, taking a bowl, sipping, nodding happily. Toward the rear of the stage the bowls were being refilled by three sober-looking functionaries.
Mueller felt a chill. He suspected that what had been born in this park during this week would endure, somehow, long after the crisis of San Francisco had become part of history; and it seemed to him that something new and frightening had been loosed upon the land.
“Take… drink… forget…“ the prophet cried.
And the worshipers cried,
“What’s it all
“Take… drink… forget…“
“Sweet it is to lay down the burden of one’s soul.”
“Joyous it is to begin anew.”
The fog was deepening. Mueller could barely see the aquarium building just across the way. He clasped his hand tightly around Carole’s and began to think about getting out of the park.
He had to admit, though, that these people might have hit on something true. Was he not better off for having taken a chemical into his bloodstream, and thereby shedding a portion of his past? Yes, of course. And yet—to mutilate one’s mind this way, deliberately, happily, to drink deep of oblivion—
“Blessed are those who are able to forget,” the prophet said.
“Blessed are those who are able to forget,” Mueller heard his own voice cry. And he began to tremble. And
