But at least they would know that they were conspirators. Hop laughed at what he would think when he woke on the colony planet. For he had known nothing of a conspiracy before he went to sleep. And this time there wouldn't even be a note between his buttocks to hint that something was wrong. He alone, of all of them, would understand nothing. Oh well, Noyock decided, what the hell. I'll survive.
And then he realized that he would remember nothing of Arran Handully beyond the actress he had seen in the lifeloops. A shallow, seductive, empty woman who mouthed insincere words and made phony love to paying lovers. Not the woman who had come to him in his prison and asked for his help in escaping her (suddenly their) enemies. He wouldn't remember the heart–stopping moment when she had descended past him on the ladder, hysterically closing her eyes and plunging deeper into the smoke of the exhaust duct. She wouldn't remember, either, nor would she recall whose voice had called her to come back up. Whose hand had led her to safety.
It was a little harder to say What the hell now.
As abruptly as it had gone out, the sun lit up again, and the light was dazzling. Hop closed his eyes entirely, as all around him he could hear people beginning to call out to each other again. Given their vision, they found their voices, and began calling out names.
Hop left his eyes closed. He would have closed his ears, too, since he wished very much to be alone, but the sounds of the crowd wouldn't leave him alone. Snatches of grief, worry, anger — "What right do they have!" said one, and the answer, "We are traitors, after all." (How philosophical.)
"I have three children! Do they ever think of that?" (Do you? Hop thought. Doubtless she was on somec — it was unlikely that a conspiracy made up of somec users would include a non–sleeper. How much did she think of her children as the drug took her away from them for years at a time?
And then a voice calling, from a distance, "Hop!" and then closer, saying, "Hop, there you are, I've looked everywhere."
He opened his eyes. Arran was at the foot of the tree.
"Hi," he said stupidly.
"What are you doing up there, Hop? I couldn't find you. I walked by here a dozen times at least —"
"I think I was hiding," Hop said. He pushed off and jumped to the ground, landing awkwardly on all fours.
"Hop," Arran was saying, as he got to his feet, "Hop, I had to find you, I had to talk to you — why didn't you stay with me? — never mind, nobody could expect you to follow along like a pet or a husband or something — Hop, they've posted a roster at the doors. All the colonists, in their groups of ten and hundred."
"And?"
"Well, for one thing, you're a mayor of three hundred, Hop."
"Me?" Hop laughed. "What a joke! Just what I was cut out for."
"Well, I'm an alderman, which is just as funny. In your group, for luck! But Hop — it's the captain."
"Who is it? Anybody I know?" As if it would be.
"It's Jazz Worthing, Hop. Jason Harper Worthing."
And Hop couldn't think of anything to say to that.
"Hop, he's supposed to be crazy."
"That's all right. We're supposed to be sane."
"Don't you see, Hop? He's your friend. The notice said that anyone with a question could sign up for an appointment to see him. I signed us up, and it's only fifteen minutes or so from now." "What do you want to see him for?" "Us, Hop! We've got to see him. He's got to arrange it for us." "Arrange what?"
"To keep our memories, Hop! If they take away my memory of this waking, I won't love you. I won't even know you. You'll just be the manager of that despicable bastard Jazz Worthing, and I'll be a disgusting, cheap little tart."
And suddenly Hop felt very good. She wanted to remember him. He took Arran's hand, and she led him along to the door. On the way it occurred to him that he would see Jazz again — that it had been two days since he last saw him — that the world had changed since then — that he and Jazz were now on opposite sides of a very high fence. Would they be friends? Had they ever been? (Is there anything that can't be called into question, eventually?)
It is ironic that science itself, so long the graverobber of all the gods, should have proved conclusively the existence of the soul. It was certainly not intended, and judging from the acute embarrassment of the team the developed somec when they subsequently discovered the soul effect, they would have avoided discovery at all, if that had been possible. But somec had first been used to prolong the lives of the mortally ill in hopes of a cure for them. It was only afterward that somec's memory–erasing effect was noticed, leaving the first somec sleepers as mindless vegetables. George Rines was the first to make the connection between the new braintaping techniques and the disaster of ignorant and premature use of somec. When he tried to resurrect the sleepers by playing someone else's tape into their heads, the result was madness within a few days. There is something not part of memory (and therefore not learned but rather innate in the individual) that remains even after the somec has taken everything else, something that refuses to accept the implanted memories of another person for the simple reason that the new memories are of actions and decisions that the wakened sleeper himself would never have done or made. Rines reported that as an inevitable reaction: The wakened sleepers invariably said, "I remember doing it, but I would never have done it." They could not accept memories that they had no way of knowing were not their own. For lack of a better word, Rines whimsically named this property of the human individual the soul. Doubtless he meant to be ironic. But further research has borne out the fact that his irony was really accuracy.
The Souclass="underline" Awake in the Age of Sleep, 2433, preface ii.
The woman was crying, and, as she left, Jazz wondered why he was doing all this. As Doon had so aptly pointed out, any comfort Jazz might give them, any answers to questions he might offer would all be swept away by somec. They'd remember nothing so why waste time trying to help them?
But Jazz didn't see it that way. Though the memory would be gone, these people were still people. They deserved to be treated humanely. "Memory disappears with death, too," Jazz had pointed out to Doon, "but we still let old people ask questions." So Doon had consented, laughing, and now Jazz found himself unable to help after all. His gift to see into people's minds was no particular boon — in this extremity, they willingly unfolded all their thoughts to him, and he could give them no comfort. The decision was made to wipe out their knowledge of this waking; that decision would stand. Yet that decision was the cause of their distress.
"Next," Jazz said, bracing himself for another ordeal. But this time, he heard a familiar voice. "Jazz, you hunk of cooler grease! How the hell are you doing?" and then Hop's arms were around him, and Jazz hugged him back, not the artificial, is–everybody–watching kind of hug they had shared at every docking of Jazz's ship, but a sincere embrace of friendship. Out of a long–standing habit, Jazz looked into Hop's mind, and heard there an absurd quotation: "For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found." Jazz found the quotation in his memory — a snatch from on old religious book that still haunted Noyock from the time his mother had drummed it into his head in childhood. Jazz smiled, and finished the passage, though Noyock hadn't spoken it aloud. "And they began to be merry."