"We have records," the doctor admitted, recognizing Jomfri's humanity for the first time. "But there has never been a mistake yet, though many have claimed their innocence."
"Doctor, please find out. I am begging you. In the name of decency simply consult the records. The computer will tell you instantly."
The doctor hesitated a moment, then shrugged. "In the name of decency, then. I will do it while the dressings set. Your name and citizen's number."
He punched Jomfri's data into the computer, then looked expressionless at the screen.
"You see," Jomfri shouted happily. "It was a mistake. I'll file no complaints. Free me now, it is all I ask."
"You are guilty," the doctor said quietly. "You were sent here."
"Impossible!" Jomfri was justifiably angry. "Some trick. I demand you tell me what I have been charged with."
The doctors looked at his instruments. "Blood pressure, brain waves, normal for this situation. These instruments are as good as any lie detector. You are telling the truth. Traumatic amnesia, very possible in this situation. A good footnote for my book."
"Tell me what I have been accused of!" Jomfri was shouting and trying to move.
"It would be better if you did not know. I'll return you now."
"You must tell me first. I cannot believe you otherwise. I was on my way home to my wife—"
"You killed your wife," the doctor said, and actuated the return mechanism. The closing of the thick door cut off the hideous, wailing scream.
A single sharp memory of a blue face, staring eyes, blood blood blood….
The metal coffin lid opened, and Jomfri sat up, dizzy. They had drugged him; he was hazy; they had tended his wounds.
"But they wouldn't help me. They wouldn't even look in the records to prove my innocence. A mistake. A fault in the matter transmitter, and I am condemned because of it."
He looked at the bloodstained bandages, and some thinghurt in his head.
"Now I'll never get home to my wife," he sobbed.
The Life Preservers
RUBBLE AND DIRT had once been piled high to cover the object, then the resulting mound had been hidden beneath a stone cairn. Either the stones had been badly fitted together or the seasons had been most unkind, because the cairn was now only a tumbled ruin, an ugly jumble of rocks no higher than a man's waist. The rubble and dirt had been washed away by the rains of centuries so that now, rising from a foliage-covered hillock, there stood the object that great labor had worked to conceaclass="underline" a giant frame of pitted, corroded metal three meters high and twice as long. Set into this frame was what appeared to be a slab of slatelike material. It was hard, it had not been scratched or dented at all during the long years, and was coated with dust and adhesive debris. Around the tumbled stones and the framed slab stretched a tufted meadow bordered by a growth of stunted trees. Drab hills were visible in the distance, barely seen through a thin mist, merging into a sky of the same indifferent color. The white pebbles of a recent hail shower lay unmelted in the hollows. A bird, brown on the back and light gray below, pecked desultorily at the grasses on the mound.
The change was abrupt. In an instant, too small a measure of time to be seen, the framed slab changed color. It was now a deep black, a strange color that was more lack of color than anything else. At the same moment its surface must have altered because all of the dust and debris fell from it. A detached cocoon from some large insect dropped next to the bird, startling it, so that it flew away in a sudden flurry of motion.
From the blackness a man emerged, stepping out, three-dimensional and sound, as though he were stepping through a door. He emerged, suddenly, and crouched low, looked about suspiciously. He wore a sealed suit to which were attached many complex devices, his head was contained in a transparent helmet, and he held a pistol ready in his hand. After a moment he straightened up, still alert, and spoke into the microphone fixed before his lips. A length of flexible wire ran from the microphone, through a fixture in his helmet, and back to the black surface into which it vanished.
"First report. Nothing moving, no one in sight. Thought I saw something like a bird then, can't be sure. Must be winter or a cold planet, small growths and trees, low clouds, snow — no, I think it's hail — on the ground. All instruments recording well. I'm going to look at the controls now. They are concealed behind a mound of soil and rocks; I'll have to dig down for them."
After a last searching glance around, he slipped his weapon back into its holster on his leg and took a rodlike instrument from his pack. He held it at arm's length, switched it, on, and touched it to the ground where it covered the right-hand side of the frame. The soil stirred, boiling away in a cloud of fine particles, while pebbles and small stones bounced in all directions. With greater effort larger stones were moved, grating and crashing to one side when the metal tip was placed beneath them. More and more of the metal frame was revealed. It widened out below the ground and appeared to be marred by a gaping opening. The man stopped suddenly when he saw this and, after another searching look in all directions, he bent down for a closer examination.
"Reason enough here, looks like deliberate sabotage. Warped edges to the hole, an explosion, powerful. Blew out all the controls and deactivated the screen. I can fix a unit—"
His words ended in a grunt of pain as the short wooden shaft penetrated his back. It was feathered and notched. He dropped to his knees and turned about, painfully yet still quickly, and his pistol spat out a continuous stream of small particles that exploded with surprising power when they contacted anything. He laid down this curtain of fire twenty meters away, an arc of explosions and dust and smoke. There was something pressing up against the fabric of his suit over his chest and when he touched it with his fingertips he could feel a sharp point just emerging from his flesh. He was also aware of the seep of blood against his skin. As soon as the arc of explosions had cut a 180-degree swath he stood, stumbled, and half fell against the darkness from which he had emerged. He vanished into it as though into a pool of water and was gone.
A thin cold wind dispersed the dust and everything was silent once again.
The destroyed village was a place of revolting death. As always reality went far beyond imagination, and no director would have set his stage so clumsily. Untouched houses stood among the burnt ones. A draft animal lay dead between the poles of a farm wagon, its outstretched nose touching the face of a plague victim whose limbs had been gnawed by wild animals. There were other corpses tumbled clumsily about, and undoubtedly more of them mercifully out of sight inside the buildings. An arm hung down from behind the partially closed blinds of a window, a mute indication of what lay within. The projected scene was three dimensional, filling one entire wall of the darkened auditorium, real enough to shock. Which was its purpose. The commentator's voice was flat and emotionless, counterpoint to the horrors of the scene.
"Of course this occurred during the early founding days and our forces were spread thin. Notification was received and registered, but because of the deteriorating situation on Lloyd no teams were dispatched. Subsequent analysis proved that a single unit could have been spared without altering the Lloyd effort in any measurable manner, and this action would have altered drastically the results seen here. The death figures, as they stood at the end of the emergency, reached seventy-six point thirty-two of the planetary population…"
The communicator in Jan Dacosta's pocket hummed quietly and he placed it to his ear and actuated it.