Odyssey

Chapter 14. Kate

“How interesting!” Dr. Galen exclaimed. “Do you mean to say that you have no personal memories whatsoever?”

Derec repeated the now familiar litany of events which began with his waking in the survival capsule. Partly because he was growing weary of the tale himself and partly to minimize questions, he glossed over some of the details, including the fact that the raider had been screwed by aliens.

“I will have to amend your chart to reflect this state of retrograde amnesia,” Dr. Galen said when Derec was through. “This is a much more fascinating problem than your other injuries. As a matter of fact, amnesia is a hobby of mine.”

“What do you mean, a hobby?”

“Perhaps I should say specialty, but that does not convey the deep intellectual satisfaction it gives me.”

“How many cases have you treated?”

“You will be my first,” Dr, Galen said. “I am tremendously pleased by the opportunity.”

“Your first?” Derec said, incredulous. “How can you call yourself a specialist, then? And what do you mean saying that you’re ‘fascinated’ or ‘pleased’? You’re not programmed to experience emotion.”

“Strictly speaking, that is correct,” Dr. Galen agreed. “But the concept of losing one’s sense of identity has always created the kind of positive positronic state which I associate with the termfascination. You see, due to the memory structure of the positronic brain, it is quite impossible for a robot to forget anything, least of all its own identity. Amnesia represents a state for which robot experience offers no analogue.”

“The lure of the unknown.”

“Diagnostic robots such as myself are constructed with a reinforced curiosity integral,” Dr. Galen said. “Perhaps that is a contributing factor.”

Derec felt as though he were being lectured in his own specialty. “But positronic brains go south all the time,” he protested. “They’re vulnerable to hard radiation, to glitches in the power supply-lots of things can go wrong.”

“That is correct, Derec. But those conditions you describe would result in mental shutdown, and in some instances the complete destruction of the positronic brain. However, humans are frequently able to continue to function with such a major system failure. That is what I find fascinating. Beyond that, I believe that robots have much to contribute to the investigation of human brain function, including memory defects.”

“Why is that?”

“I note that many human philosophers have recognized that the search for self-knowledge is the hardest search of all. It is extremely difficult for the human brain to contemplate and analyze the human brain. Its limitations make it impossible to see its limitations.”

Derec found himself in agreement with the robot. “The only thing a camera can’t see is itself. The only thing a ruler can’t measure is itself.”

“Quite. Questions of human brain functions have therefore been the slowest to yield to investigation by human researchers. Many aspects of human behavior are still puzzles despite centuries of neurological and biochemical studies.”

“So what do you thinkyou can do?”

Dr. Galen spread his hands wide. “Positronic brains were not developed by copying how human brains function. They were developed by copying how human beings behave. Therefore, though the positronic brain is the product of the human brain, it represents a distinct form of intelligence and a different perspective.”

“Are you saying that positronic brains are more capable than human brains?”

“The key is that a robot does what it does differently than a human brain,” Dr. Galen said diplomatically. “I am convinced that it is an invention of the human brain which will eventually unlock the secrets of the human brain. So I am pleased to have the opportunity to do more than study and speculate.”

Derec shook his head. “Forget it. I don’t want to be a lab animal.”

“Forgive me,” Dr. Galen said. “In my enthusiasm I neglected to make clear that my primary interest is to help you. There are tests which I can perform to determine the cause of your condition. Depending on the cause, there may be measures which can be taken to reverse your condition.”

“Do you mean you can bring my memory back?”

“I will not know the likelihood of that until I have examined you.”

Derec regarded the promise of a magic cure with skepticism. “Look, I’m not going to be here very long,” he said. “Let’s not start something we won’t have time to finish.”

“I do not understand.”

“You said that ships call here every two months. If I’ve been here six weeks, my ride out of here should show up in two weeks-probably less.”

“No, Derec,” Dr. Galen corrected. “Fariiscame and went while you were recovering. The next vessel, theHeritage, is due in six weeks, three days.”

Derec stared. “A ship’s already been here? Then why am I still here?” he demanded.

“This station’s medical facilities are superior to those on boardFariis. It was not possible to release you to them in your condition.”

Derec closed his eyes and sighed. “All right. Probe away.” His eyes opened and he struggled to a seated position. “But I want to know what you’re doing before you do it, do you hear?”

“Thank you, Derec,” Dr. Galen said politely. “What do you know of amnesia?”

“Just what I see on the hypervision.”

“That is unfortunate,” Dr. Galen said.

“It’s just a saying. Actually, I don’t even remember that.”

“That is just as well,” Dr. Galen replied. “Amnesia has been used as a convenient device in fiction for centuries, usually in defiance of known facts. A common plot is for a victim to suffer a blow to the head, forget everything and everyone and begin leading a new life, then be restored in the closing scene by another blow.”

“That does sound sort of familiar. Maybe I have seen one or two like that,” Derec admitted.

“Please do your best to forget them,” Dr. Galen said disapprovingly. “They will only hinder understanding.”

Over the next three days, Derec learned a great deal about amnesia. He had had no idea how many kinds of amnesia there were and how many different causes had been identified. Under other circumstances, it would have been more than he wanted to know. But since he was personally affected, he avidly absorbed everything Dr. Galen told him.

Amnesia could affect the past (retrograde) or the present (anterograde). It could have physical causes (organic) or emotional ones (psychogenic). Some amnesiacs were unable to remember anything for more than a few seconds, while others would forget everything for only a few seconds at a time. Some victims knew that they were having difficulty, while others passionately denied it.

Nine out of every ten cases of amnesia, Derec learned, had some specific physical cause. Those causes were as different as inflammation of the whorled and folded outer layer of the brain, hardening of the cerebral arteries, electric shock, and deficiency of B vitamins. (Also on the list, but nowhere near the top, was a blow to the head.)

“In more primitive times, many cases of true organic amnesia were wrongly diagnosed as psychogenic,” Dr. Galen said as though outraged by the fact. “Patients who needed drugs or surgery were offered hypnosis and psychotherapy.”

“Maybe all amnesias have some physical cause,” Derec suggested. “Maybe the ten percent we still think are psychogenic are the ones we just haven’t found the organic cause for.”

But Dr. Galen dissented. “The distinction between mind and brain has not been completely erased by medical science. The mind is more than the sum of the brain’s parts. There are things that happen at that level of synergy which cannot be traced to specific physical events.”

Even so, the testing focused first on the possible physical causes. Dr. Galen subjected him to cortical analysis, an endorphin response test, three different nondestructive scans of his brain, and even a biopsy and culture for encephalitis.

“Your own awareness of your loss of memory is a clue, as your apparently unimpaired intelligence,” Dr. Galen told Derec. “You retain your sense of time and of the connectedness of events. All of these things are meaningful.”

But the unhappy truth was that all the clues added up to naught, and all the tests revealed nothing. Derec learned several new words to describe his condition-”fractionated retrograde hypnosis-resistant psychogenic amnesia”-but he learned nothing about himself.

“I can find no physical cause,” Dr. Galen concluded reluctantly at the end of a week. “Your cortex, thalamus, mammillary bodies, and fornix bundle are all normal. And yet you have not responded to any psychogenic therapy I am aware of. I am sorry, Derec, I have failed you.”

“Don’t take it so hard,” Derec said, sighing. “I’m beginning to get used to life in the dark.”

In the course of the testing, Dr. Galen had gradually allowed Derec more and more freedom of movement until he had the run of the small hospital complex. Physically, he was nearly completely restored. His new skin was no longer painful to the touch and was gradually becoming less sensitive to variations in temperature. His ribs had knitted while he was kept unconscious, and the only sign they had even been broken was an occasional stitch of dull pain when he drew a deep breath or stretched the wrong way.

Despite that progress, Dr. Galen resisted releasing Derec from his care. The furthest he would go was to allow Derec to move from the ICU to a private room with more traditional accommodations. But the robot’s recalcitrance was not entirely a surprise. With their special First Law responsibility as healers, robot doctors were notorious for their caution.

But Derec suspected that it was not the injuries to his body that concerned Dr. Galen, but the injury to Derec’s mind. The real reason for keeping Derec nearby was to keep him under observation while he treated Katherine. Since Dr. Galen could not be in two places at once, he was keeping his two patients in one place.

Derec could not order Dr. Galen to stop worrying about him, so he resigned himself to living within the robot’s restrictions. In some ways, Derec welcomed the vacation from responsibility. His body had had time to heal, but his mind still vividly remembered the erupting surface of the asteroid, the electric blue pain from Aranimas’s stylus, the sudden flash of the booby trap exploding in his face. He had a right to a few days of peace.

Or so Derec thought. But one day of idleness was enough to satisfy that need. The next morning he did not wait for Dr. Galen’s ritual visit and examination, but went looking for the robot himself. He found him standing at the biomedical monitor at the foot of Katherine’s bed in the ICU.

“Good morning, Derec,” the robot said. “I am sorry that I was delayed. How are you feeling today?”

“Restless,” Derec said. “I’m ready to get back to a normal life.”

“But you are in the fugue state of an amnesiac episode,” Dr. Galen said. “A normal life is not possible for you now.”

“I’ll settle for the substitute at hand,” Derec said. “I can’t just sit around here hoping my memory will come back.”

“What is it you wish to do?”

“I guess I won’t know until I find out what’s already been done for me,” Derec said. “Outside of the robots on the station, who knows that I’m here? Is anybody trying to find out who I am?”

“I cannot say,” Dr. Galen said. “I am certain that the station manager reported your arrival to the district supervisor at Nexon, as I did to the medical supervisor. That information may have been passed to any number of interested parties in the interval since. Why, is there someone you would like to contact?”

Derec pointed across the room at the sleeping Katherine. “Her. How much longer till you bring her out?”

“I concluded some days ago that she might hold the key to unlocking your loss of memory, and decided to allow her to wake at the earliest opportunity when her own health and comfort would not be at risk,” said Dr. Galen. “She was taken off the sleep-inducing drug at midnight. According to her brain waves, she is dreaming now. I expect her to wake sometime this morning.”

Derec glanced around the ward. There was nowhere to sit except the floor.

“There is no need for you to conduct a vigil,” Dr. Galen said as though reading his thoughts.

“I want to be here when she wakes up.”

Dr. Galen nodded understandingly. “I promise, I will call you.”

Derec whiled away one hour, then another, with a bookfilm titled “The Architects of the Machine.” He hoped to find among its profiles of notable designers and engineers a clue as to who the “minimalist” behind the asteroid colony might have been. With all the more tangible evidence lost or destroyed, it was one of the few unexplored leads left to him. Genius of that sort had to have left a trail.

But only three of the biographies were of contemporary designers, and the choices were entirely predictable. The roboticist Fastolfe. March, the Havalean wizard of micromagnetics. The human ecologist Rutan, whose services were so much in demand by the wealthy on a dozen Spacer worlds.

All three had become celebrities, acclaimed by those who knew nothing about what it took to do what they did. But the engineering community had its own celebrities, based on its own standards. Every exclusive group did-those persons who had won the respect and admiration of their peers but were completely unknown outside the circle. Fastolfe ranked here, too, but March was regarded as a toy-maker and Rutan as a joke.

Yes, he needed an insider’s perspective. Someone would know Derec’s mysterious genius-

“Master Derec, if I may interrupt.”

Derec’s head jerked up. It was the medical orderly. Like Dr. Galen, the orderly had fallen victim to the supervisor’s perverse sense of humor. “Yes, Florence.”

“Dr. Galen said that you should come right away.”

Pushing back the viewer, Derec jumped to his feet. “Coming.”

When he reached the ICU, the sterilization lights were already off and Katherine was beginning to stir. She now wore an ankle-to-neck beige gown, etiquette having changed along with Dr. Galen’s changing perception of their relationship. Derec hung back as Dr. Galen bent over Katherine and spoke softly to her.

“Good morning,” he said. “Don’t try to move.”

But she lifted her head a few centimeters all the same and surveyed the room. “Hospital?” she asked hoarsely.

“Yes, Katherine. I am Dr. Galen.”

“On what station?”

“Rockliffe Station.”

She nodded and looked past Dr. Galen to Derec. “Some rescue,” she said.

Despite her hoarseness, there was a laughing note to her voice that Derec did not like. Taking a step closer, he said stiffly, “We’re both alive, aren’t we?”

“Which just goes to show that there’s no justice in the Galaxy,” she answered, closing her eyes. “I thought you’d have been smart enough to disable Aranimas’s security system before you started to poke around in his hidey-hole.”

“Look, I’m sorry it didn’t go more smoothly,” Derec said, coming to the side of the bed. “But we did get away. And there was something we were going to talk about once we did-”

Her eyes fluttered open and searched past Derec for the robot’s face. “Dr. Galen, the headaches are back,” she said. “Would you ask Derec to leave, please? I just don’t think I can deal with company now.”

“How long could it take to tell me my surname, my homeworld-”

But Dr. Galen intervened, gently pushing Derec back toward the door. “I understand your impatience, Derec. But I must consider Katherine’s health, too. Please leave. I will find out what I can. When she is stronger you can talk with her again, if she consents.”

Derec took his frustration for a walk, leaving the hospital by the main entrance. He was sure that Dr. Galen would report him or send a robot after him to bring him back, but he did not care. He simply could not calmly stay there and wait. To be so close to answers, to the promise of being whole again, was too great a test for his patience.

The section of the station where the hospital was located was a tomb. He walked dimly lit streets past ranks of closed stores and sealed residential blocks. Only the main throughway was even lit. The side streets and courtyards were black pits.

No robot pursued him. He walked and walked until the edge was off his jumbled emotions, and then he turned back. He stalked through the reception area and into Dr. Galen’s office.

“Did she tell you anything?”

“She was not able to offer any insight into your affliction.”

“You discussed my condition with her? But you wouldn’t tell me-”

“Correction. She was already aware of your condition.”

“What did she do, ask your advice on how to deal with me?”

“Derec, I promised Katherine that I would not discuss our conversation with you.”

Crossing his arms over his chest, Derec blew a sigh ceiling-ward. “I don’t understand why she’s being so secretive. If she knows something about me, she should just tell me.” He cast a raised-eyebrow glance in Dr. Galen’s direction. “Isn’t that right?”

“The advisability of that would vary from case to case, depending on the individual, the cause of the dysfunction, and the particular personal data concerned,” was Dr. Galen’s measured answer.

“You won’t even give me a hint, will you?” Derec said ruefully.

“I regret that I may not.”

Derec frowned. “Can I see her, at least?”

The robot turned to one of the two active displays on the wall behind him. “She is awake and her algesia has moderated. But she is the final arbiter.”

“Then I’m going to go see what she has to say.”

They found Katherine sitting up in her bed. “I was hoping someone would come to see me,” she said with a smile.

“You left me with some good reasons to,” Derec said, scanning the room fruitlessly for a chair to move beside the bed.

Her face clouded over. “Da-Derec,” she said, stumbling over his name as though she had forgotten it. “I’m afraid you’re going to be angry with me. We have a lot of ground to make up together-all the things that happened on the ship. I don’t think we should start with the little I know about you.”

The look that Derec shot at Dr. Galen was black and poisonous. “What is this? What did you tell her? I thought you were trying to help me-”

“I cannot do otherwise,” the robot said calmly.

The truth of that slowed Derec’s rush to anger. He turned back to Katherine and said, “So you’re going to keep secrets from me.”

She shook her head. “Derec-let’s say that you were President of New Liberty-”

“New Liberty has a council-manager government,” Derec interrupted.

“It doesn’t matter. Let’s say you were President of New Liberty and lost your memory. If I tell you that you’re the President, does that make you the President? Can you start acting like the person you used to be just because you know that?”

Derec avoided her eyes. “I suppose not. But hearing it could make me remember-”

“It is far more likely to cause you severe anxiety,” Dr. Galen began. “Most often-”

Derec opened his mouth to answer, but Katherine was faster. “Dr. Galen, go away,” she snapped. “Go back to your office and leave us alone. Don’t monitor me and don’t listen in. We’ll call you if we need you.”

The robot stared a moment, then lowered its head and exited.

“You didn’t have to get so personal,” Derec said, surprised at her forcefulness. “I’ll bet you put a kink in poor Dr. Galen’s self-worth integral that he’ll be an hour working out.”

“Oh, I don’t care,” Katherine said peevishly, staring at the empty doorway. “Medical robots are such busybodies. They’ve got ten thousand opinions but they don’t really know anything. And they can’t really understand what someone’s feeling when they’re sick, now, can they? Because they’re machines and they never get sick, or die.”

Is that what’s the matter with you? Derec wondered, looking at her face. Are you dying from something the doctors can’t cure? Is that what Dr. Galen wouldn’t talk about?

Before he could find the courage to ask her aloud, she looked toward him and patted the bed beside her. “Are you going to stand all the way over there? The field can hold both of us.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Derec settled on the edge of the bed by Katherine’s feet.

“There, that’s better,” she said. “Now I don’t feel so much like a prisoner being questioned.”

“I’m not sure what we have left to talk about.”

“Well-I’m sure there’s more to what happened on the asteroid than you told me on the ship. Then there’s the ship and what we went through there. And there’s me.”

“Let’s start there. Your name, for starters. The robot called you Katherine-”

“I am Katherine Ariel Burgess to my mother and the computers. Everyone else calls me Kate,” she said. “My father says that calling me Katherine is false advertising-that it doesn’t give people any warning what they’re in for. Katherine is please and thank you and dresses that cover you to the neck. Kate is-”

“Sharp-tongued and strong-willed and I-can-take-care-of-my-self-thank-you,” Derec supplied.

Katherine brightened as though she had been complimented. “Something like that. My father says that I have spice.”

“I think I’ll stick to Katherine. What were you doing on Aranimas’s ship?”

“Why, I was a prisoner just like you were. My robots and I were kidnapped off a courier ship.” She snapped her fingers. “I just remembered. Where’s the key? You didn’t let the robots have it, did you?”

“I don’t know where it is,” he said. “I don’t even know that it was ever where I thought it was.”

“Is the ship here? Have you been back in it?”

“Frost, I don’t know. I hadn’t even been out of the hospital until this morning,” Derec said, annoyed. “Will you tell me this-why is that key so important? What is it? What’s it the keyto? ”

“I don’t know,” Katherine said soberly. “I only know that Aranimas thought it was worth anything to get. Wait-I thought you said the key was your property. Don’t you know why it’s important?”

“It is my property,” Derec asserted. “Space salvage. Or a gift. Either way, I have the best claim to it.”

“But you don’t know what it is?”

“No.”

She seemed disappointed. “Maybe you do know-but it’s one of the things you’ve forgotten.”

“I guess that’s possible,” Derec acceded. “Did Aranimas come to the asteroid specifically looking for the key? Not because I was there?”

“I don’t think so-”

“You don’t think so what?”

“I think he went to the asteroid on purpose. I don’t think he knew the key was there. I’m almost positive he didn’t know you were there,” she said. “I think you were just lucky-or would it be unlucky?”

Derec considered. “Lucky, the way it fell out. I’d sure rather be here on Rockliffe Station than back on that asteroid.”

“Lucky, then.” She paused. “Look, if it is yours, maybe getting it back in your hands would help you remember something. And even if it doesn’t, we need to find out what happened to the key. Aranimas had to have some reason for wanting it.”

“Wolruf called it ‘the jewel’ when she talked to Aranimas,” Derec said thoughtfully. “But I don’t think she meant it literally.”

“Either way, it’s something valuable. Are we going to try to find it, or not?”

“We?” For a brief moment, Derec bristled defensively. Then he reminded himself what it had been like to be a loner on the raider ship. He felt at home here-but Katherine clearly didn’t. She was hurting, and she was alone, and she wanted to be his friend. And beyond that, she knew something about who he was-and wanted to help him remember.

“Sure,” he said. “Of course we are.”