'Oh, come now! I remember that year pretty well. I was a kid then on a farm in Nebraska. I used to hunt and fish. I had fun. More than I have now.'
'Well, to each his own. I like it now. But look, Doc, I didn't call up just to talk philosophy; I've got a little problem.'
'Well, let's have it. It ought to be a relief; most people have big problems.'
'Doc? Is it at all possible for the Long Sleep to cause amnesia?'
He hesitated before replying. 'It is conceivably possible. I can't say that I've ever seen a case, as such. 1 mean unconnected with other causes.'
'What are the things that cause amnesia?'
'Any number of things. The commonest, perhaps, is the patient's own subconscious wish. He forgets a sequence of events, or rearranges them, because the facts are unbearable to him. That's a functional amnesia in the raw. Then there is the old-fashioned knock on the head-amnesia from trauma. Or it might be amnesia through suggestion... under drugs or hypnosis. What's the matter, bub? Can't you find your checkbook?'
'It's not that. So far as I know, I'm getting along just fine now. But I can't get some things straight that happened before I took the Sleep... and it's got me worried.'
'Mmm ... any possibility of any of the causes I mentioned?'
'Yes,' I said slowly. 'Uh, all of them, except maybe the bump on the head... and even that might have happened while I was drunk.'
'I neglected to mention,' he said dryly, 'the commonest temporary amnesia-pulling a blank while under the affluence of alcohol. See here, son, why don't you come see me and we'll talk it over in detail? If I can't tag what is biting you-I'm not a psychiatrist, you know-I can turn you over to a hypno-analyst who will peel back your memory like an onion and tell you why you were late to school on the fourth of February your second-grade year. But he's pretty expensive, so why not give me a whirl first?'
I said, 'Cripes, Doe, I've bothered you too much already and you are pretty stuffy about taking money.'
'Son, I'm always interested in my people; they're all the family I have.'
So I put him off by saying that I would call him the first of the week if I wasn't straightened out. I wanted to think about it anyhow.
Most of the lights went out except in my office; a Hired Girl, scrubwoman type, looked in, twigged that the room was still occupied, and rolled silently away. I still sat there.
Presently Chuck Freudenberg stuck his head in and said, 'I thought you left long ago. Wake up and finish your sleep at home.'
I looked up. 'Chuck, I've got a wonderful idea. Let's buy a barrel of beer and two straws.'
He considered it carefully. 'Well, it's Friday ... and I always like to have a head on Monday; it lets me know what day it is.'
'Carried and so ordered. Wait a second while I stuff some things in this brief case.'
We had some beers, then we had some food, then we had more beers at a place where the music was good, then we moved on to another place where there was no music and the booths had hush linings and they didn't disturb you as long as you ordered something about once an hour. We talked. I showed him the patent records.
Chuck looked over the Eager Beaver prototype. 'That's a real nice job, Dan. I'm proud of you, boy. I'd like your autograph.'
'But look at this one.' I gave him the drafting-machine patent papers.
'Some ways this one is even nicer. Dan, do you realize that you have probably had more influence on the present state of the art than, well, than Edison had in his period? You know that, boy?'
'Cut it out, Chuck; this is serious.' I gestured abruptly at the pile of photostats. 'Okay, so I'm responsible for one of them. But I can't be responsible for the other one. I didn't do it... unless I'm completely mixed up about my own life before I took the Sleep. Unless I've got amnesia.'
'You've been saying that for the past twenty minutes. But you don't seem to have any open circuits. You're no cra2ier than is normal in an engineer.'
I banged the table, making the stems dance. 'I've got to know!'
'Steady there. So what are you going to do?'
'Huh?' I pondered it. 'I'm going to pay a psychiatrist to dig it out of me.'
He sighed. 'I thought you might say that. Now look, Dan, let's suppose you pay this brain mechanic to do this and he reports that nothing is wrong, your memory is in fine shape, and all your relays are closed. What then?'
'That's impossible.'
'That's what they told Columbus. You haven't even mentioned the most likely explanation.'
'Huh? What?'
Without answering he signaled the waiter and told it to bring back the big phone book, extended area. I said, 'What's the matter? You calling the wagon for me?'
'Not yet.' He thumbed through the enormous book, then stopped and said, 'Dan, scan this.'
I looked. He had his finger on 'Davis.' There were columns of Davises. But where he had his finger there were a dozen 'D. B. Davises'-from 'Dabney' to 'Duncan.'
There were three 'Daniel B. Davises.' One of them was me.
'That's from less than seven million people,' he pointed out. 'Want to try your luck on more than two hundred and fifty million?'
'It doesn't prove anything,' I said feebly.
'No,' he agreed, 'it doesn't. It would be quite a coincidence, I readily agree, if two engineers with such similar talents happened to be working on the same sort of thing at the same time and just happened to have the same last name and the same initials. By the laws of statistics we could probably approximate just how unlikely it is that it would happen. But people forget-especially those who ought to know better, such as yourself-that while the laws of statistics tell you how unlikely a particular coincidence is, they state just as firmly that coincidences do happen. This looks like one. I like that a lot better than I like the theory that my beer buddy has slipped his cams. Good beer buddies are hard to come by.'
'What do you think I ought to do?'
'The first thing to do is not to waste your time and money on a psychiatrist until you try the second thing. The second thing is to find out the first name of this `D. B. Davis' who filed this patent. There will be some easy way to do that. Likely as not his first name will be `Dexter.' Or even `Dorothy.' But don't trip a breaker if it is `Daniel,' because the middle name might be `Berzowski' with a social-security number different from yours. And the third thing to do, which is really the first, is to forget it for now and order another round.'
So we did, and talked of other things, particularly women. Chuck had a theory that women were closely related to machinery, but utterly unpredictable by logic. He drew graphs on the table top in beer to prove his thesis.
Sometime later I said suddenly, 'If there were real time travel, I know what I would do.'
'Huh? What are you talking about?'
'About my problem. Look, Chuck, I got here-got to `now' I mean-by a sort of half-baked, horse-and-buggy time travel. But the trouble is I can't go back. All the things that are worrying me happened thirty years ago. I'd go back and dig out the truth if there were such a thing as real time travel.' He stared at me. 'But there is.'
'What?'
He suddenly sobered. 'I shouldn't have said that.'
I said, 'Maybe not, but you already have said it. Now you'd better tell me what you mean before I empty this here stein over your head.'
'Forget it, Dan. I made a slip.'
'Talk!'
'That's just what I can't do.' He glanced around. No one was near us. 'It's classified.'
'Time travel classified? Good God, why?'
'Hell, boy, didn't you ever work for the government? They'd classify sex if they could. There doesn't have to be a reason; it's just their policy. But it is classified and I'm bound by it. So lay off.'
'But-Quit fooling around about it, Chuck; this is important to me. Terribly important.' When he didn't answer and looked stubborn I said, 'You can tell me. Shucks, I used to have a 'Q' clearance myself. Never suspended,
