“In an hour or so we’ll give you the first vial of nanomachines,” Margery said. “They’ll take a few hours to work into your system. You’ll be asleep. At first your brain activity will be electronically controlled and then the nano will take charge, bringing you down to a level of what we call neutral sleep. You won’t be consciously aware of anything after that until we wake you up again.
“Do you have any questions?”
Goldsmith shook his head. “Let’s go.”
“Is there anything more you’d like to tell us? Anything you think is important?”
“I don’t know. It’s all kind of scary now. Do you know what you’ll look for, what you might find? You’ll learn whether or not I’m deranged?”
“We know that already,” Erwin said. “You’re not ‘deranged’ in any biological sense. Within certain limits your brain and body functions are normal.”
“I don’t sleep as much as I used to,” Goldsmith said.
“Yes.” They knew that already.
“Is this my time to confess again? I’m not sure what you want to know.”
“If there’s anything important you’ve left out, tell us,” Erwin reiterated.
“Well, Jesus, how can I know what’s important?”
“Is there any question we haven’t asked that you think we should?”
Expression of deep thought. “You never asked what was thinking about while killing the friends,” he said.
“(Did you catch that?” Martin asked Carol in the observation chamber.
“No personal pronouns at all,” Carol said.
“Admitting nothing, not really, damn him,” Martin said. “Where’s Albigoni? He was supposed to be here by nine hundred.”)
“What were you thinking about?” Margery asked.
“They refused to see the way really am. They wanted somebody else. Don’t understand that, but it’s true. Defense. They were trying to kill.”
“Is that why you killed them?”
Goldsmith shook his head stubbornly. “Why not just put me to sleep now and let’s get on with it.”
“We have another fifty minutes,” Margery said. “It’s all on schedule. Is there anything more you’d like to tell us?”
“I’d like to tell you how miserable it is,” Goldsmith said. “I don’t even feel as if I’m alive now. I don’t feel any guilt or responsibility. I’ve tried to write poetry while being stuck in here and I can’t. I’m dead inside. Is this remorse? You’re psychologists. Can you tell me what I’m feeling?”
“Not yet,” Erwin said.
Lascal stood watching in the corner, saying nothing. He held his chin in one cupped hand, elbow resting in the other hand.
“You asked me who I am. Well, I’ll tell you what I’m not. I’m not even a human being now. I have no sense of direction. I’ve screwed up everything. Everything is gray.”
“It’s not uncommon when someone is under severe stress—” Margery began.
“But I’m in no danger now. I trust Tom. I trust you folks. He wouldn’t have hired you if you weren’t good.”
Erwin inclined with professional modesty. “Thank you.”
Goldsmith looked around the room. “I’ve been stuck here for over a day now and I don’t really care. I could stay here forever and it wouldn’t bother me. Am I being punished? Am I getting depressed?”
“I don’t think so,” Erwin said. “But—”
Goldsmith held up his hand and leaned forward as if to confide. “Killed them. Deserve some punishment. Not just this. Something much worse. Should have gone to the Selectors. I agreed with John Yardley all the way. What would he do now? If he was a friend, he’d punish me.” Goldsmith’s voice did not rise in volume or tone.
(“Flat affect,” Martin said, muffling his words with two liptapping fingers. He lifted the fingers away. “That’s all for now. They can withdraw.”)
A signal light came on in Goldsmith’s room. Margery and Erwin said good bye to Goldsmith, folded their slates shut and stepped through the open door. Lascal followed them.
Martin and Carol continued watching for a few moments after Goldsmith was alone. He sat on the bed, hands clasping the edge of the mattress, one hand slowly clenching and releasing. Then he stood up and began to exercise.
Carol swiveled on her chair to face Martin. “Any clues?”
Martin grimaced doubtfully. “Clues in abundance, but they contradict. We’re handicapped by not having studied multiple murderers before. I know the flat affect is meaningful. I’m puzzled by his willingness to admit involvement in the murder, but to avoid using the personal pronoun. That might be protective evasion.”
“Doesn’t sound like a very specific diagnosis,” Carol said. Lascal, Margery, and Erwin came into the observation room. Erwin laid his slate on the desk and stretched his arms over his head, sighing deeply. Lascal looked uncomfortable but said nothing. He folded his arms and stood near the door.
“He’s a glacier,” Erwin said. “If I’d just murdered eight people I’d be uno pico upset. That man is covered over by deep arctic ice.”
Margery agreed. She removed her lab coat and sat on the desktop beside Erwin. “Only my love for science could keep me in the same room with that man,” she said.
“We may have a trapdoor personality,” Carol said. “Someone in hiding.”
“It’s possible,” Martin concurred. He addressed the room manager. “I’d like to run a vid of Goldsmith taken several years ago. Vid library personal tape two.” The wall display illuminated and a flat picture filled the screen: Goldsmith standing at a podium before a packed lecture hall. “This was shot at UC Mendocino in 2045. His famous Yardley speech. Got him more publicity and sold more books than anything he had ever done before. Notice the mannerisms.”
Goldsmith smiled at the overflow audience, shuffled a small stack of papers on the podium and lifted his hand as if he were a conductor about to begin a piece of music. He nodded to himself and said,
“I am a man without a country. A poet who does not know where he lives. Now how did this come about? Black people are economically integrated in our society; I cannot say I face any more social discrimination for my race than a poet does for being a poet or a scientist for being a scientist. But until last year I have always known a deep feeling of spiritual isolation. If you’ve read my recent poems—”
“Pause vid,” Martin said. “Notice. He’s smooth, energetic, alive. He could be a different man from the one we have here. His face is active. It’s thoughtful, worried and animated. There’s somebody at home.”
Carol nodded. “Maybe we have a traumatized primary personality.”
Martin nodded. “Now watch. Resume vid play.”
“—you’ve noticed my concern for a place that doesn’t exist. I call it Guinée, just as my friends in Hispaniola do; it’s the home, the father and motherland none of us can return to, the Africa of our dreams. For blacks in the New World modern Africa bears no resemblance to the land we imagine. I don’t know how it is for a Caucasian or an oriental or even for other blacks but this dissociation, this cutting off of my mind from its home distresses me. You see, I believe that there was a beautiful place once called Africa, before the slavers came, no better perhaps than any other home, but where I would feel I belonged; a place with little industrialization, no machinery to speak of, a place of farmers and villagers, tribes and kings, nature religions, a place where gods came and spoke to the people directly through one’s own mouth.”
“The dream he now denies,” Margery said. Martin agreed but held his finger to his lips and pointed to the screen.
“But I must say this dream is not clear to me all the time. Mostly when I think about living in such a place I am torn and bewildered. I wouldn’t know how to live there. I was born in the real world of machines, a world where god never speaks to us, never makes us dance or act foolish, a land where religions must be sedate and solemn and inoffensive; where we pour our energies into monuments of intellect and architecture while neglecting the things we truly need: solace for our pain, a connection with the Earth, a feeling of belonging. And yet I do not belong in this world either. I have no home except for the one I describe in my poetry.”