III

Lewis Briggs and I regarded one another across the remains of dinner and the wide table they occupied. His identification papers informed me that he was an agent of Earth's Central Intelligence Department. He looked like a shaved monkey. He was a wizened little guy with a perpetually inquisitive stare, and it seemed as if he must be pushing retirement age. He'd stuttered just a bit when he'd introduced himself, but the dinner appeared to have relaxed him and the falter had halted.

"It was a very pleasant meal, Mister Sandow," he acknowledged. "Now, if I may, I'd like to discuss the business that brought me here."

"Then let's adjourn to the upstairs, where we can get some fresh air while we talk."

We arose, taking our drinks with us, and I led him to the elevator.

Five seconds later, it admitted us to the roof garden, and I gestured toward a couple lounging chairs set beneath a chestnut free. "How about there?" I asked. He nodded and seated himself. A cool breeze came out of the twilight and we breathed it in and gave it back.

"It's quite impressive," he said, looking around the garden shadows, "the way you satisfy your every whim."

"This particular whim in which we're relaxing," I said, "is landscaped to make this place virtually undetectable by means of aerial reconnaissance."

"Oh, the thought hadn't occurred to me."

I offered him a cigar, which he declined. So I lit it for myself and asked him, "So what is it you want of me?"

"Will you consent to accompany me back to Earth and talk to my chief?" he asked.

"No," I said. "I've answered that question a dozen times, in as many letters. Earth grates on my nerves, it gives me a big pain these days. That's why I live out here. Earth is overcrowded, bureaucratic, unhealthy, and suffering from too many mass-psychoses to bother classifying. Whatever your chief wants to say, you can say for him; and I'll answer you, and you can take it back to him."

"Normally," he said, "these matters are handled at the Division level."

"Sorry about that," I replied, "but I'll foot the bill for a coded courier-gram from here, if it comes to that."

"The reply would cost the Department too much," he said. "Our budget, you know."

"For Chrissake, I'll pay it both ways then! Anything to stop cluttering my incoming basket with what is still strangely referred to as surface-carrier mail."

"God! No!" A tone of panic clung to his words. "It's never been done before, and the man-hours involved in determining how to bill you would be prohibitive!"

Inwardly, I wept for thee, Mother Earth, and the prodigies that had been wrought upon thee. A government is born, it flourishes, strong is its nationalism and great its frontiers, then comes a time of solidification, division of labor unto specialization, and the layers of management and chains of command, yes, and Max Weber spoke of this. He saw bureaucracy in the necessary evolution of all institutions, and he saw that it was good. He saw that it was necessary and good. While it may be necessary, put a comma after that word and after the last one add "God" and an exclamation point. For there comes a time in the history of all bureaucracies when they must inevitably parody their own functions. Look what the breakup of the big Austro-Hungarian machine did to poor Kafka, or the Russian one to Gogol. It drove them out of their cotton-picking minds, poor bastards, and now I was looking at a man who had survived an infinitely more inscrutable one until the end of his days was in sight. This indicated to me that he was slightly below average intelligence, emotionally handicapped, insecure, or morally suspect; or else he was an iron-willed masochist. For these neuter machines, combining as they do the worst of both father-image and mother-image--i.e., the security of the womb and the authority of an omniscient leader--always manage to attract the nebbish. And this is why, Mother Earth, I wept inwardly for thee at that moment of the immense parade called Time: the clowns were passing, and everybody knows that inside, somewhere, their hearts are broken.

"Then tell me what you would like of me and I'll answer you now," I said.

He reached into his inside pocket and withdrew a sealed envelope bearing various security stamps, which I didn't bother examining too closely, even when he handed it to me.

"Should you not consent to accompany me back to Earth, I was instructed to deliver this to you."

"If I had agreed to go along, what would you have done with it?"

"Returned it to my chief," he said.

"So that he could hand it to me?"

"Probably," he said.

I tore it open and withdrew a single sheet of paper.

I held it close and squinted through the dim light. It was a list of six names. I kept my face under control as I read them.

They were all names of people I had loved or hated, and they were each of them, somewhere, the subject of a moldering obituary.

Also, they had all figured prominently in some recent photography I had been called upon to witness.

I puffed smoke, refolded the list, replaced it in the envelope and dropped it on the table between us.

"What does it signify?" I asked, after a time.

"They are all potentially alive," he said. "I request that you destroy the list at your earliest convenience."

"Okay," I said, and, "Why are they potentially alive?"

"Because their Recall Tapes were stolen."

"How?"

"We don't know."

"Why?"

"We don't know that either."

"And you came to me ... ?"

"Because you are the only link we could find. You knew all of them--well."

My first reaction was disbelief, but I concealed it and said nothing. Recall Tapes are the one thing in the universe which I had always considered inviolate, unreachable, for the thirty days of their existence--and then they were gone forever. I tried to get hold of one once and failed. Their guardians were incorruptible, their vaults impenetrable.

And this was part of another reason why I don't visit Earth much any more. I don't like the idea of wearing a Recall Plate, even temporarily. Persons born there have them implanted at birth and they are required by law to wear them for as long as they remain on Earth. Persons moving to Earth for purposes of residing there are required to have them installed. Even a visitor must bear one for the duration of his stay.

What they do is monitor the electromagnetic matrix of the nervous system. They record the shifting patterns of a man's being, and each is as unique as a fingerprint. Their one function is to transmit that final pattern, at the moment of death. Death is the trigger, the shot is the psyche, the target's a machine. It's an enormous machine, and it records that transmission on a strip of tape you can hold in the palm of your hand--all that a man ever was or hoped to be--weighing less than an ounce. After thirty days, the tape is destroyed. That's it.

In a small and classified number of cases over the past several centuries, however, that wasn't it. The purpose for the whole strange and costly setup is this: there are some individuals who, dying suddenly, on the planet Earth, at crucial points in significant lives, depart this lachrymose valley with information vital to the economy! technology/national interest of Earth. The whole Recall System is there for the purpose of retrieving such data. Even the mighty machine is not sufficiently sophisticated to draw this information from the recorded matrix, however. That is why every wearer of the Plate has a frozen tissue culture, somewhere. This culture is associated with the tape and held for thirty days subsequent to death, and both are normally destroyed together. Should Recall be necessary, an entire new body is grown from the culture, in an AGT (that's an accelerated growth tank), and this body duplicates the original in all things, save that its brain is a tabula rasa. On this clean plate, then, is superimposed the recorded matrix, so that the recalled individual possesses every thought and memory which existed in the original up until the moment of death. He is then in a position to supply the information which the entire World Congress has deemed to be of sufficient value to warrant Recall. An iron-clad security setup guards the entire system, which is housed in a quarter-mile square fortress in Dallas.

"Do you think I stole the tapes?" I asked.

He crossed and uncrossed his legs, looked away.

"You'll admit there's a pattern, and that it seems somehow related to you?"

"Yes. But I didn't do it."

"You'll admit that you were investigated and charged at one time for attempting to bribe a government official in order to obtain the tape for your first wife, Katherine?"

"It is a matter of public record, so I can't deny it. But the charges were dismissed," I said.

"True--because you could afford a lot of bad publicity and good lawyers, and you hadn't succeeded in obtaining the tape, anyway. It was later stolen, though, and it was years before we discovered that it hadn't been destroyed on the scheduled date. There was no way of linking it to you, or of obtaining jurisdiction in the place you were then residing. There was no other way of reaching you, either."

I smiled at his accent on the word "reaching." I, too, have a security network.

"And what do you think I would have done with the tape, had I obtained it?"

"You're a wealthy man, Mister Sandow--one of the few who could afford to duplicate the machinery necessary for Recall. And your training--"

"I'll admit I once had that in mind. Unfortunately, I didn't obtain the tape, so the attempt was never made."

"Then how do you explain the others? The subsequent thefts which occurred over several centuries, always involving friends or enemies of yours."

"I don't have to explain," I said, "because I don't owe you an explanation for anything I do. But I will tell you this: I didn't do it. I don't have the tapes, never had them. I had no idea up until now that they were missing."

But, Good Lord! _They_ were the six!

"Then accepting that as true, for the moment," he said, "can you supply us with any sort of lead as to who might have had sufficient interest in these people to go to such extremes?"

"I cannot," I said, seeing the Isle of the Dead in my mind's eye, and knowing that I would have to find out.

"I feel I should point out," said Briggs, "that this case will never be closed on our books until we have been satisfied as to the disposition of the tapes."

"I see," I said. "Would you mind telling me how many unclosed cases you're carrying on your books at the present time?"

"The number is unimportant," he said. "It's the principle involved. We never give up."

"It's just that I heard there were quite a few," I said, "and that some of them are getting pretty moldy."

"I take it you won't cooperate?"

"Not 'won't.' Can't. I don't have anything to give you."

"And you won't return to Earth with me?"

"To hear your chief repeat everything you've just said to me? No thanks. Tell him I'm sorry. Tell him I'd help if I could, but I don't see any way I can."

"All right. I guess I'll be leaving then. Thanks for the dinner."

He rose.

"You might as well stay overnight," I said, "and get a decent night's sleep in a comfortable bed before you shove off."

He shook his head.

"Thanks, but I can't. I'm on per diem, and I have to account for all the time I spend on a job."

"How do they calculate per diem when you're in subspace?"

"It's complicated," he said.

So I waited for the mailman. He's a big fac-machine who picks up messages beamed to Homefree and turns them into letters and gives them to S & F, who sorts them and drops them into my basket. While I waited, I made my preparations for the visit to Illyria. I'd followed Briggs every step of the way. I'd seen him to his vessel and monitored its departure from my system. I supposed I might see him again one day, or his chief, if I found out what had really happened and made it back home. It was obvious that whoever wanted me on Illyria had not set the thing up for purposes of throwing a party on my behalf. That's why my preparations mainly involved the selection of weapons. As I picked and chose from among the smaller of the deadlies in my arsenal, I thought some thoughts of Recall.

Briggs had been right, of course. Only a wealthy man could afford to duplicate the expensive Recall equipment housed in Dallas. Some research would be involved, too, for a few of the techniques were still classified. I sought candidates from among my competitors. Douglas? No. He hated me, but he wouldn't go to such elaborate ends to nail me if he ever decided it was worthwhile. Krellson? He'd do it, if he could; but I kept him under such close surveillance that I was certain he hadn't had the opportunity for anything of this magnitude. The Lady Quoil of Rigel? Virtually senile by now. Her daughters ran her empire and wouldn't humor such an expensive request for revenge, I was sure. Who then?

I checked my records, and they didn't show recent transactions. So I sent a courier-gram to the Central Registration Unit for that stellar district. Before the answer came back, however, I received Marling's reply to my message from Driscoll.

"_Come to Megapei immediately_," it said, and that was all. None of the formal flourishes characteristic of Pei'an writing style were present. Only that single, bald statement. It was the keynote of urgency. Either Marling was worse off than he'd suspected or my query had struck something big.

I arranged for CRU's message to be forwarded to me in Megapei, Megapei, Megapei, and then I was gone.