Luke hesitated at the top of the steps, then remembered that he was now a normal citizen again, and walked in.
The effect of his new appearance was immediately apparent. A grey-haired librarian behind the counter stood up and said: 'Can I help you, sir?'
Luke was pathetically grateful to be treated so courteously. 'I want to look at books on memory,' he said.
'That'll be the psychology section,' she said. 'If you like to follow me, I'll show you where it is.' She led him up a grand staircase to the next floor and pointed to a corner.
Luke looked along the shelf. There were plenty of books on psychoanalysis, child development, and perception, none of which were any use. He picked out a fat tome called The Human Brain and browsed through it, but there was not much about memory, and what there was seemed highly technical. There were some equations, and a certain amount of statistical material, which he found easy enough to understand; but much of the rest assumed a knowledge of human biology he did not have.
His eye was caught by An Introduction to the Psychology of Memory by Bilhah Josephson. That sounded more promising. He pulled it out and found a chapter on disorders of the memory. He read:
The common condition in which the patient 'loses his memory' is known as 'global amnesia'.
Luke was elated. He was not the only person to whom this had happened.
Such a patient does not know his identity and will not recognize his own parents or children. However, he remembers a great deal else. He may be able to drive a car, speak-foreign languages, strip down an engine, and name the Prime Minister of Canada. The condition would be more appropriately called 'autobiographical amnesia'.
This was exactly what had happened to him. He could still check whether he was being tailed and start a stolen car without the key.
Dr Josephson went on to outline her theory that the brain contained several different memory banks, like separate filing cabinets, for different kinds of information.
The autobiographical memory records events we have experienced personally. These are labeled with time and place: we generally know not only what happened, but when and where.
The long-term semantic memory holds general knowledge such as the capital of Romania and how to solve quadratic equations.
The short-term memory is where we keep a phone number for the few seconds in between looking it up in the phone book and dialing it.
She gave examples of patients who had lost one filing cabinet but retained others, as Luke had. He felt profound relief, and gratitude to the author of the book, as he realized that what had happened to him was a well- studied psychological phenomenon.
Then he was struck by an inspiration. He was in his thirties, so he must have followed some occupation for a decade. His professional knowledge should still be in his head, lodged in his long-term semantic memory. He ought to be able to use it to figure out what line of work he did. And that would be the beginning of discovering his identity!
Looking up from the book, he tried to think what special knowledge he had. He did not count the skills of a secret agent, for he had already decided, judging by his soft indoor skin, that he was not a cop of any kind. What other special knowledge did he have?
It was maddeningly difficult to tell. Accessing the memory was not like opening the refrigerator, where you could see the contents at a glance. It was more like using a library catalogue - you had to know what you were looking for. He felt frustrated, and told himself to be patient and think this through.
If he were a lawyer, would he be able to remember thousands of laws? If a doctor, should he be able to look at someone and say: 'She has appendicitis'?
This was not going to work. Thinking back over the last few minutes, the only clue he noticed was that he had easily understood the equations and statistics in The Human Brain, even though he had been puzzled by other aspects of psychology. Maybe he was in a profession that involved numbers: accountancy or insurance, perhaps. Or he might be a math teacher.
He found the math section and looked along the shelves. A' book called Number Theory caught his attention. He browsed through it for a while. It was clearly presented, but some years out of date...
Suddenly he looked up. He had discovered something. He understood number theory.
That was a major clue. Most pages of the book in his hand contained more equations than plain text This was not written for the curious layman. It was an academic work. And he understood it He had to be some kind of scientist With mounting optimism, he located the chemistry shelf and picked out Polymer Engineering. He found it comprehensible, but not easy. Next he moved to physics and tried A Symposium on the Behaviour of Cold and Very Cold Gases. It was fascinating, like reading a good novel.
He was narrowing it down. His job involved math and physics. What branch of physics? Cold gases were interesting, but he did not feel that he knew as much as the author of the book. He scanned the shelves and stopped at geophysics, remembering the newspaper story headlined U. S. MOON STAYS EARTHBOUND. He picked out Principles of Rocket Design.
It was an elementary text, but nevertheless there was an error on the first page he looked at Reading on, he found two more--
Yes!' he said aloud, startling a nearby schoolboy who was studying a biology text If he could recognize mistakes in a textbook, he had to be an expert He was a rocket scientist He wondered how many rocket scientists there were in the United States. He guessed a few hundred. He hurried to the information desk and spoke to the grey-haired librarian. 'Is there any kind of list of scientists?'
'Sure,' she said. 'You need the Dictionary of American Scientists, right at the beginning of the science section.'
He found it easily. It was a heavy book, but nevertheless it could not include every single American scientist It must just be the prominent ones, he thought Still, it was worth looking at He sat at a table and went through the index, searching for anyone named Luke. He had to control his impatience and force himself to scan carefully.
He found a biologist called Luke Parfitt, an archaeologist called Lucas Dimittry, and a pharmacologist called Luc Fontainebleu, but no physicist Double-checking, he went through geophysicists and astronomers, but found no one with any version of Luke as a first name. Of course, he thought despondently, he was not even certain that Luke was his name. It was only what he had been called by Pete; For al he knew, his real name might be Percival.
He felt disappointed, but he was not ready to give up.
He thought of another approach. Somewhere, there were people who knew him. The name Luke might not be his own, but his face was. The Dictionary of American Scientists carried photos of only the most prominent men, such as Dr Wemher von Braun. But Luke figured he must have friends and colleagues who would recognize him, if only he could find them. And now he knew where to start looking - for some of his acquaintances must be rocket scientists.
Where did one find scientists? At a university.
He looked up Washington, DC in the encyclopedia. The entry included a list of universities in the city. He picked Georgetown University because he had been in Georgetown earlier and knew how to get back there. He looked for the university on his street map, and saw that it had a large campus covering at least fifty city blocks. It would probably have a big physics department with dozens of professors. Surely one of them would know him?
Full of hope, he left the library and got back into his car.
.
2.30 P. M.
The igniters were not originally designed to be fired in a vacuum.' For the Jupiter rocket, they have been redesigned so that: (i) the entire motor is sealed in an airtight container; (ii) in case that container should be breached, the igniter itself is also in a sealed container; and (in) the igniter should fire in a vacuum anyway. This multiple fail-safe is an application of a design principle known as 'redundancy'.
The Cuba meeting took a coffee break, and Anthony ran back to Q Building for an update, praying his team would have come up with something, any clue to Luke's whereabouts.
Pete met him on the stairs. 'Here's something weird,' he said.
