“There are laws against harboring certain diseases, nevertheless,” said Donovan automatically, but he waved that aside. “Public policy. No, the question here is more serious. Essentially, two things about you alarm us. One is that you do not remember your past. The other is that you are not on Earth.”
Derec gaped at him, almost started to ask exactly where St. Louis was.
“Officially, I mean,” said Donovan, frowning in irritation. “We’ve done a thorough computer check, and we find no sign of you before you appeared here a couple of weeks ago, eating at the section kitchen, big as life and twice as natural. This was brought to our attention by the hospital’s accountants and computer operators, who have never discovered how your partner’s records vanished out of the hospital’s computer.”
The Terry looked at him again. “Normally I wouldn’t reveal so much, but there’s a good deal of alarm in Washington. It’s considered that you are not the source of the mystery, and may in fact be unaware of it. Who sent you to Earth, and why?”
Derec’s mind was spinning like a wheel, but he managed to say, “I suppose you figure the ones who sent us have done this computer trick. How could they possibly have?”
Donovan shrugged angrily. “Any number of ways, I suppose. There’s talk of bandit programs that take over computers. More realistically, there’s talk of disappearing programs, that automatically wipe themselves after a certain time-that is, they contain instructions that cause the computer to wipe them, do you see?”
Derec nodded, a memory clicking into place. He’d heard of such programs as toys, but a good computer could usually retain them. And a network of computers…if you were getting food or lodging with your ration tag, that allocation would have to be routed through so many computers that though the first computer might lose the program, the memory of the transaction would remain. His little erasure at the hospital had been simple, and he’d caught the accounting trail early, so there was no trace.
But of course there was no memory of their arrival in any Earthly computer. Only in one Earthly positronic brain.
“Violation of the Immigration Act can be charged against you,” said Donovan chattily. “We couldn’t make it stick without proof that you knowingly and deliberately invaded without the legal formalities. But we could hold you pending an investigation.”
“We couldn’t go far in any case,” said Derec. “Earth is one big jail.”
Donovan nodded. “ Any planet is.”
Derec tried to imagine how many computers in how many bureaus and branches of government would have to be foxed to slip a spy in. His mind boggled; no wonder they were concerned. Far easier to believe that a ship sneaked in and dropped someone, despite orbital radar and other detection devices.
They were overreacting: easier to slip in spies in other guises, like traveling sociology students. Except that Spacers never went anywhere on Earth, and now here were two of them.
“How many of you are there, on Earth?” Donovan asked casually.
It hit Derec that he didn’t really know. He had supposed that Dr. Avery worked alone, but his belief that it was so didn’t make it so. Besides, Dr. Avery worked through robots, and there could be any number of them
“I don’t know,” he said frankly. “We were told little. I have reason to think that we are the only two.” He shrugged. “It’s hard to find volunteers for social studies on Earth. Too few Spacers care about the subject in the first place; they’d rather study robotics.”
Donovan nodded, sitting leaning slightly toward him, not at all relaxed. There was so much energy and sheer competence in that pose that Derec had the sudden realization that if he were to attack the Earthman, the other would pinion him as efficiently as any robot. If not quite as gently. The idea of concealing the location of R. David and the apartment seemed silly. This man represented a planetwide investigative organization.
“Most of their agents are robots,” he said, and that got an instant response, instantly blanked.
A nice fat red herring for you to follow,he thought gleefully, and then idly wondered what a red herring was, and on what planet the phrase had originated.
“Any idea who they are?” Donovan asked, casual again.
Very little. “Only that it’s a sociological investigation. There’s been some talk about Laws of Humanics, the mathematical expressions that describe how human beings relate to each other. Studies of society have been made on various Spacer worlds, as disparate as Aurora and Solaria.” Derec was detailing the theories of certain of the robots of Robot City.
He finished with a shrug. “I suppose that they find Earth the best case study, it having the densest population and the longest cultural history.”
“It seems odd that they’d memory-wipe their agents just for a cultural study,” said Donovan dubiously. “What were you instructed to look for?”
Derec thought fast, holding his face as nearly expressionless as he could. He felt that he was sweating. Keep it close to the truth, he told himself. “The study’s not so important, but uncontaminated data is. If we entered openly, we’d be under the surveillance of your Bureau. Understandable enough; Spacers aren’t common on Earth.”
“Especially not in the Cities,” said Donovan dryly.
“The knowledge that we were being watched, followed, even protected, would affect what we observed. It would be an emotional wall between us and Earth people. It would be a safety net. It would prevent us from living like Earthers.”
“And that’s what you were sent here to do?” The TBI man was skeptical, but not closed-minded.
“Yes. We weren’t told to look for anything specific; that would have warped our data. We were simply told to go to St. Louis, to settle in, to spend some time, and to record our impressions.” The moment he spoke the last four words Derec realized how big an error he’d made.
Then he thought of an explanation. But he was still sweating when the Terry said, “But that doesn’t explain why your memories were erased.”
“Oh. To prevent us from telling anything about the techniques by which our IDs were wiped from your computers. You see, they wanted us to disappear completely, to prevent contamination. “
Donovan nodded slowly. Derec couldn’t tell how much of it he had swallowed.
“I see. Well, you have not yourself violated any law that we know of, except as accessory to violation of the Immigration Act, and computer fraud. The last of which can ‘t be proven, because we have no records to cite! We’ve found platinum and iridium that we think must have been dumped by your organization to pay for your support here. There’s also some hafnium we can’t trace a source for. You, or they, have more than paid for all you’ve consumed, so there are no complaints on that score.”
Donovan looked severely at him. “You understand that there are a lot of red faces at the TBI, and some angry ones elsewhere in Washington. I’m just the A-in-C of the local office, and even I felt the heat. They don ‘t, we don’t, like having our computers messed with so freely, gato. But nobody wants trouble either-certainly we don’t want to see you lynched. Sorry about your wife. Hope she gets better. We suggest that you leave as soon after that as possible.”
Derec nodded, gulping, glad the other didn’t ask to see the “impressions” they were supposedly recording. He could say she’d been taken sick so rapidly they hadn’t had time-true enough, too. Leaving when Ariel got better was a good idea, too-and not just because of the sternly repressed dislike on the special agent’s face.
After that, things got worse. For five days in a row they refused to let Derec see Ariel. Afterward, he could see her, but only her trimensional image; he wasn’t allowed in the room. She passed through the crisis of the disease during that time, and they began to implant the earliest memories. That left her in an hypnotic state most of the time, and when she wasn’t in it she was asleep or on the verge of sleep.