the Adjustment. Legal Affairs office. I signed the commitment papers.”
There was then a little flinching. The car arrived; Damon put his hand inside to
hold the door. “You gave me the papers,” Talley said. He stepped inside, and
Damon followed, let the door close. The car started moving to the green he had
coded. “You kept coming to see me. You were the one who was there so
often—weren’t you?”
Damon shrugged. “I didn’t want what happened; I didn’t think it was right. You
understand that.”
“Do you want something of me?” Willingness was implicit in the tone—at least
acquiescence—in all things, anyway.
Damon returned the stare. “Forgiveness, maybe,” he said, cynical.
“That’s easy.”
“Is it?”
“That’s why you came? That’s why you came to see me? Why you asked me to come
with you now?”
“What did you suppose?”
The wide-field stare clouded a bit, seemed to focus. “I have no way to know.
It’s kind of you to come.”
“Did you think it might not be kind?”
“I don’t know how much memory I have. I know there are gaps. I could have known
you before. I could remember things that aren’t so. It’s all the same. You did
nothing to me, did you?”
“I could have stopped it.”
“I asked for Adjustment… didn’t I? I thought that I asked.”
“You asked, yes.”
“Then I remember something right. Or they told me. I don’t know. Shall I go on
with you? Or is that all you wanted?”
“You’d rather not go?”
A series of blinks. “I thought—when I wasn’t so well—that I might have known
you. I had no memory at all then. I was glad you came. It was someone… outside
the walls. And the books… thank you for the books. I was very glad to have
them.”
“Look at me.”
Talley did so, an instant centering, a touch of apprehension.
“I want you to come. I’d like you to come. That’s all.”
“To where you said? To meet your wife?”
“To meet Elene. And to see Pell. The better side of it.”
“All right.” Talley’s regard stayed with him. The drifting, he thought… that was
defense; retreat. The direct gaze trusted. From a man with gaps in his memory,
trust was all-encompassing.
“I know you,” Damon said. “I’ve read the hospital proceedings, I know things
about you I don’t know about my own brother. I think it’s fair to tell you
that.”
“Everyone’s read them.”
“Who—everyone?”
“Everyone I know. The doctors… all of them in the center.”
He thought that over. Hated the thought that anyone should submit to that much
intrusion. “The transcripts will be erased.”
“Like me.” The ghost of a smile quirked Talley’s mouth, sadness.
“It wasn’t a total restruct,” Damon said. “Do you understand that?”
“I know as much as they told me.”
The car was coming slowly to rest in green one. The doors opened on one of the
busiest corridors in Pell. Other passengers wanted in; Damon took Talley’s arm,
shepherded him through. Some few heads turned at their presence in the crowd,
the sight of a stranger of unusual aspect, or the face of a Konstantin… mild
curiosity. Voices babbled, undisturbed. Music drifted from the concourse, thin,
sweet notes. A few of the Downer workers were in the corridor, tending the
plants which grew there. He and Talley walked with the general flow of traffic,
anonymous within it
The hall opened onto the concourse, a darkness, the only light in it coming from
the huge projection screens which were its walls: views of stars, of Downbelow’s
crescent, of the blaze of the filtered sun, the docks viewed from outside
cameras. The music was leisurely, an enchantment of electronics and chimes and
sometime quiver of bass, balanced moment by moment to the soft tenor of
conversation at the tables which filled the center of the curving hall. The
screens changed with the ceaseless spin of Pell itself, and images switched in
time from one to another to the screens which extended from floor to lofty
ceiling. The floor and the tiny human figures and the tables alone were dark.
“Quen-Konstantin,” he said to the young woman at the counter by the entry. A