He tried making his arms move, and found that they accepted the rhythm, the right arm moving forward with the left leg, giving a feeling of balance. It was nice to feel the movement, and nice to know that he could walk so smoothly.
His eyes tired of the motion quickly, however, and he glanced along the hall where he was moving. There were innumerable doors along it; it was a long hall, with a bend at the end. He reached the bend, and began to wonder how he could make the turn. But his feet seemed to know better than he, since one of them shortened its stride automatically, and his body swung right, before picking up the smooth motion again.
The new hallway was like the old one, painted white, with the long row of doors. He began to wonder idly what might lie behind all the doors. A universe of hallways and doors that branched off into more hallways? It seemed purposeless to him. He slowed his steps, just as a series of sounds reached him from one of the doors.
It was speech—and that meant there was someone else in this universe in which he had found himself. He stopped outside the door, turning his head to listen. The sounds were muffled, but he could make out most of the words.
Politics, his mind told him. The word had some meaning to him, but not much. Someone inside was talking to someone else about the best way to avoid the battle on the moon, now that both powers had bases there. There was a queer tone of fear to the comments on the new iron-chain reaction bombs and what they could do from the moon.
It meant nothing to him, except that he was not alone, and that it stirred up knowledge in his head of a world like a ball in space with a moon that circled it. He tried to catch more conversation, but it had stopped, and the other doors seemed silent. Then he found one where a speaker was cursing at the idea of introducing robots into a world already a mess, calling someone else by name.
That hit the listener, sending shocks of awareness down his consciousness. He had no name! Who was he? Where was he? And what had come before he found himself here?
He found no answers, savagely though he groped through his reluctant mind. A single word emerged—amnesia, loss of memory. Did that mean he had once had memories? Then he tried to reason out whether an amnesiac would have a feeling of personality, but could not guess. He could not even be sure he had none.
He stared at the knob of the door, wondering if the men inside would know the answers. His hand moved to the knob slowly. Then, before he could act, there was the sudden, violent sound of running footsteps down the hall.
He swung about to see two men come plunging around the corner and toward him. It hadn’t occurred to hfm that legs could move so quickly. One man was thicker than he was, dressed in a dirty smock of some kind, and the other was neat and trim, in figure and
dress, in a khaki outfit he wore like a badge. The one in khaki opened his mouth.”
“There he is! Stop him! You—Expeto! Haiti George…”
Expeto… George Expeto! So he did have a name—unless the first name belonged to the other man. No matter, it was a name. George accepted it and gratitude ran through him sharply. Then he realized the senselessness of the order. How could he halt when he was already standing still? Besides, there were those rapid motions….
The two men let out a yell as George charged into motion, finding his legs could easily hold the speed of a running motion. He stared doubtfully at another corner, but somehow his responses were equal to it. He started “to slow to a halt—just as something whined by his head and spattered against a white wall. His mind catalogued it as a bullet from a silent zep-gun, and bullets were used in animosity. The two men were his enemies.
He considered it, and found he had no desire to kill them; besides, he had no gun. He doubled his speed, shot down another hall, ran into stairs and took them at a single leap. It was a mistake. They led to a narrower hallway, obviously recently blocked off, with a single door. And the man with the zep-gun was charging after him as he hesitated.
He hit the door with his shoulder and was inside, in a strange room of machinery and tables and benches. Most of it was strange to his eyes, though he could recognize a small, portable boron-reactor and generator unit. It was obviously one of the new hundred-kilowatt jobs.
But the place was a blind alley! Behind him, the man in khaki leaped through the busted door, his zep-gun ready. But the panting, older figure of the man in the smock was behind him, catching his arm.
“No! Man, you’d get a hundred years of Lunar Prison for shooting Expeto. He’s worth his weight in general’s stars! If he…”
“Yeah, if! George, we can’t risk it. Security comes
first. And if he isn’t, we can’t have another paranoiac running around. Remember the other?”
Expeto dropped his shoulders, staring at them and the queer fear that was in them. “I’m not George?” he asked slowly. “But I’ve got to be George. I’ve got to have a name.”
The older man nodded. “Sure, George, you’re George—George Expeto. Take it easy, Colonel Kallik! Sure, you’re George. And I’m George—George Enders Obanion. Take it easy, George, and you’ll be all right. We’re not going to hurt you. We want to help you.”
It was a ruse, and Expeto knew it. They didn’t want to help—he was somehow important, and they wanted him for something. His name wasn’t George—just Expeto. The man was lying. But there was nothing else to do; he had no weapons.
He shrugged. “Then tell me something about myself.”
Obanion nodded, catching at the other man’s hand. “Sure, George. See that chart on the wall, there behind you… Now!”
Expeto had barely time to turn and notice there was no chart on the wall before he felt a violent motion at his back, and a tiny catching reaction as the other’s hand hit him. Then he blanked out.
He came back to consciousness abruptly, surprised to find that there was no pain in his head. A blow sufficient to knock him out should have left afterpains. He was alone with his thoughts.
They weren’t good thoughts. His mind was seizing on the words the others had used, and trying to dig sense out of them. Amnesia was a rare thing—too rare. But paranoia was more common. A man might first feel others were persecuting him, then be sure of it, and finally lose all reality in his fantasies of persecution and his own importance. Then he was a paranoiac, making np fantastic lies to himself, but cunning enough, and seemingly rational at times.
But they had been persecuting him! There’d been the man with the gun… and they’d said he was important! Or had he only imagined it? If someone important had paranoia, would they deliberately induce amnesia as a curative step?
And who was he and where? On the first, he didn’t care—George Expeto would do. The second took more care, but he had begun to decide it was a hospital—or asylum. The room here was whitewashed, and the bed was the only furniture. He stared down at his body. They’d strapped him down, and his arms were encased in thin metal chains!
He tried to recall all he could of hospitals, but nothing came. If he had ever been sick, there was no memory of it. Nor could he remember pain, or what it was like, though he knew the word.
The door was opening then, cautiously, and a figure in white came in. Expeto stared at the figure, and a slow churning began in his head. The words were reluctant this time, but they came, mere surface whispers that he had to fight to retain. But the differences in the figure made them necessary. The longer hair, the softer face, the swelling at the breast, and something about the hips stirred his memories just enough.
“You’re—woman!” He got the word out, not sure it would come.