I said, “Mr. Faulkner?”
He sat very erect, palms pressed against his desk. “I am,” he said crisply. “And you claim to be James Eden.”
I looked at him curiously. “I am James Eden,” I corrected. “You radioed me several times about my uncle’s estate, Mr. Faulkner. I told you I was coming here to claim it. Did you get my radio?”
His stare remained cold. “Hum,” he said. And then, obliquely, “Why didn’t you keep your appointment yesterday?”
I said, with some irritation, “Because I was mugged and robbed, Mr. Faulkner. I’m sorry if it inconvenienced you.”
“Hum,” he said. His hawklike face expressed neither surprise nor sympathy. “What do you want?”
“Why—well, as I wrote you, I want to take possession of my uncle’s estate.”
He said disagreeably, “Do you indeed! And just who might your uncle be?”
I stared at him, hardly believing I was hearing right. “My uncle Stewart Eden,” I said in some confusion. “You know him, Mr. Faulkner!”
“I knew him. Stewart Eden is dead, young man.” I started to say something, but he clipped on, one hand raised to restrain me: “Furthermore, I should like to see some identification from you.”
I said hotly: “I told you, Mr. Faulkner—I was robbed! All my identification is gone.”
He looked skeptical. He said: “Hum!”
“But that’s what really happened,” I insisted. “I—”
The hand was raised again. “Enough, young man!” he said sharply. “There is no point in continuing with this. As an attorney, permit me to acquaint you with the law. Imposture for the purpose of criminal gain—posing as the heir to an estate, for instance—is a serious offense. My advice to you is to give it up.”
I was stunned. “What?” I demanded.
“You understood me, I believe. You are not James Eden. I do not know who you are, but it is certain that him you are not.”
I cried, “Listen, Mr. Faulkner, you’re making a mistake! I am James Eden.”
He shouted, “And I say you are not! I have met James Eden—right here, in this office! You look no more like him than you do like me!”
I gaped at him. “Wh-what?”
“Impostor!” he raged. “Get out of my office! Now—and get down on your knees and thank me for not turning you over to the police!”
I burst out, “See here, Mr. Faulkner, this is ridiculous. Of course I’m James Eden—I can prove it!”
He said explosively, “Do so!”
I hesitated. “Well,” I admitted, “it will take a little time. I’ll have to send back to the States for my papers.
“Liar!” he cried. “You dare say that, when I have in my desk here the identification book of the real James Eden, with his picture, fingerprints and all the rest!”
I gaped. “You—you what?” I asked feebly.
He thrust a hand into a drawer. “See for yourself,” he said harshly, tossing a familiar little red book before me. I picked it up apprehensively…
Familiar?
I had carried it for many years. It was not an imitation of my book—it was my book, to the last crease and ink spot and blurred line.
But the picture in it was not of me. The man was a total stranger; the description fit him, not me; the signature was not my own.
Faulkner snatched the book away from me. “Bishop!” he called.
The Neanderthaler rolled in from the other room, and stood regarding me eagerly. To me, Faulkner said coldly: “Get out!”
What else could I do?
Gideon explained it—perhaps. “Your friend Mr. Faulkner must have had you mugged,” he speculated. “I would imagine, Jim, that he wants you out of the way pretty badly, to go as far as murder.”
“But the identification book, Gideon!” I said.
He shook his head. “Jim,” he said patiently, “there are men in Thetis who could forge any document the world has ever seen. It isn’t hard for someone who knows how. The question isn’t ‘how’; the question is ‘why.’ I don’t like to leap at conclusions, but the one that suggests itself most quickly is: Marine Mines Limited are worth more than they seem to be.”
I shook my head bewilderedly. “But they can’t be,” I said. “It’s all below the depth limit, the whole prospect—even if Uncle Stewart had found something there, there’s no way of getting it out.”
Gideon shrugged. “Have you a better idea?”
I had to confess I didn’t. We sat wordless for a moment. Then I said: “Well, what shall I do? Go back and get thrown out of Faulkner’s office again?”
Gideon shook his head, and a gleam of anticipation came into his eye. “Not this time, Jim. First you establish your identity—go to the consul here in Thetis, get a duplicate of your papers. Then we go back to see Faulkner. You and me both. And I would like to see us get thrown out; it would be quite a spectacle, Jim.”
I did as Gideon suggested.
The office of the immigration inspector was up with the other government buildings, on Level Twenty-one.
I stated my case to an assistant at the passport window. He nodded non-committally, excused himself, then returned to take me to the office of the Inspector himself.
He was a plump, bald, brisk-mannered little man named Chapman. He shook my hand pleasantly, listened to my story and nodded understandingly.
“That sort of thing happens,” he said. “Pity, but it does. We can help you, young man.” He rang a bell; his secretary showed me the way to the laboratory.
I was stripped, measured, weighed, fingerprinted, retina-printed, photographed with natural light, fluorescence and X-rays.
I was examined, poked and probed; my teeth were counted and charted; the pores on the soles of my feet were located and graphed. The process took well over an hour.
When it was finished, a white-smocked lab attendant brought me back to the Inspector.
Inspector Chapman handed me a passport, which bore in scarlet letters the legend TEMPORARY. “Carry this for the next two weeks,” he instructed. “By then we will have word from the United States; if your statistics match the information our laboratory sends them, we’ll issue you a new permanent passport. This one, I’m sorry to say, will not do you much good except to permit you to travel about Thetis. You can’t leave without a permanent passport.”
“And you’ll have that in two weeks?” I asked. “Thank you very much, sir.”
He escorted me to the door. “Not at all,” he said. “It’s part of our job to help out when someone loses an important document.” He looked at me levelly. “Always assuming,” he added, “that the document is really theirs to begin with.”
The door closed on his last words.
14
The Outcasts of Marinia
So we had to wait—wait until the mixup on my papers could be straightened out, wait until we could have a showdown with Faulkner, wait until I could learn the answers to many questions.
We had time to kill, Gideon and I. We spent it looking around the dome-city of Thetis. Gideon knew it well, from the high administrative levels to the sub-cellars below the very sea floor. And he showed me everything there was.
He took me to the great submarine quays, not the liner terminals where I had docked in the Isle of Spain, but the freight ports where the commerce of the sub-sea world was carried on. Through the view ports in the side of the dome we could see, floodlighted, a busy hustle of ungainly freighters and tiny, porpoiselike sea cars, nuzzling down to the discharge ports, slipping up and away to the other cities of Marinia. We watched a lumbering tanker as it made five unsuccessful passes at the port—“Tough job for them,” Gideon chuckled; “they’re lighter than the water, and it’s hard to swim them in just right.” I nodded and stared, wide-eyed. Lighter than the water! Yet it was obvious—their cargoes of petroleum and its products needed more than the mere weight of the cargo hulk to equal an identical volume of sea water. Through the view ports one was hardly aware of the water outside: it looked like some curious scene of interplanetary space, with the sub-sea ships taking the parts of rockets. The muck in suspension in the water around Thetis made it cloudy, but it was more like a land fog than an undersea view. I could even see, dimly, the face of the tanker-pilot as he raged at his engineer through the intercom as they made their fruitless passes—and then his smile of triumph as the grapples locked, and they were moored. He was not alone in die bridgehouse; beside him were men in the uniform of the Maritime Service—