-~ I’ll make a deal with you, he thought to himselfand to them. Can’t you imprint a false-memory template on me again, as you did before, that I lived an average, routine life, never went to Mars? Never saw an Interplan uniform up close and never handled a gun?
A voice inside his brain answered, “As has been carefully explained to you: that would not be enough.”
Astonished, he halted.
“We formerly communicated with you in this manner,” the voice continued. “When you were operating in the field, on Mars. It’s been months since we’ve done it; we assumed, in fact, that we’d never have to do so again. Where are you?”
“Walking,” Quail said, “to my death.” By your officers’
guns, he added as an afterthought. “How can you be sure it wouldn’t be enough?” he demanded. “Don’t the Rekal techniques work?”
“As we said. If you’re given a set of standard, average memories you getrestless. You’d inevitably seek out Rekal or one of its competitors again. We can’t go through this a second time.”
“Suppose,” Quail said, “once my authentic memories have been cancelled, something more vital than standard memories are implanted. Something which would act to satisfy my craving,” he said. “That’s been proved; that’s probably why you initially hired me. But you ought to be able to come up with something elsesomething equal. I was the richest man on Terra but I finally gave all my money to educational foundations. Or I was a famous deep-space explorer. Anything of that sort; wouldn’t one of those do?”
Silence.
“Try it,” he said desperately. “Get some of your top-notch military psychiatrists; explore my mind. Find out what my most expansive daydream is.” He tried to think. “Women,” he said. “Thousands of them, like Don Juan had. An interplanetary playboya mistress in every city on Earth, Luna and Mars. Only I gave that up, out of exhaustion. Please,” he begged. “Try it.”
“You’d voluntarily surrender, then?” the voice inside his head asked. “If we agreed to arrange such a solution? If it’s possible?”
After an interval of hesitation he said, “Yes.” I’ll take the risk, he said to himself. That you don’t simply kill me.
“You make the first move,” the voice said presently. “Turn yourself over to us. And we’ll investigate that line of possibility. If we can’t do it, however, if your authentic memories begin to crop up again as they’ve done at this time, then”
There was silence and then the voice finished, “We’ll have to destroy you. As you must understand. Well, Quail, you still want to try?”
“Yes,” he said. Because the alternative was death now and for certain. At least this way he had a chance, slim as it was.
“You present yourself at our main barracks in New York,”
the voice of the Interplan cop resumed. “At 580 Fifth Avenue, floor twelve. Once you’ve surrendered yourself we’ll have our psychiatrists begin on you; we’ll have personality-profile tests made. We’ll attempt to determine your absolute, ultimate fantasy wishand then we’ll bring you back to Rekal, Incorporated, here; get them in on it, fulfilling that wish in vicarious surrogate retrospection. Andgood luck. We do owe you something; you acted as a capable instrument for us.” The voice lacked malice; if anything, they the organizationfelt sympathy toward him.
“Thanks,” Quail said. And began searching for a robot cab.
“Mr. Quail,” the stern-faced, elderly Interplan psychiatrist said, “you possess a most interesting wish-fulfillment dream fantasy. Probably nothing such as you consciously entertain or suppose. This is commonly the way; I hope it won’t upset you too much to hear about it.”
The senior ranking Interplan officer present said briskly, “He better not be too much upset to hear about it, not if he expects not to get shot.”
“Unlike the fantasy of wanting to be an Interplan undercover agent.” the psychiatrist continued, “which, being rela-tively speaking a product of maturity, had a certain plausibil-ity to it, this production is a grotesque dream of your childhood; it is no wonder you fail to recall it. Your fantasy is this: you are nine years old, walking alone down a rustic lane. An unfamiliar variety of space vessel from another star system lands directly in front of you. No one on Earth but you, Mr. Quail, sees it. The creatures within are very small and helpless, somewhat on the order of field mice, although they are attempting to invade Earth; tens of thousands of other such ships will soon be on their way, when this advance party gives the go-ahead signal.”
“And I suppose I stop them,” Quail said, experiencing a mixture of amusement and disgust. “Single-handed I wipe them out. Probably by stepping on them with my foot.”
“No,” the psychiatrist said patiently. “You halt the invasion, but not by destroying them. Instead, you show them kindness and mercy, even though by telepathytheir mode of communicationyou know why they have come. They have never seen such humane traits exhibited by any sentient organism, and to show their appreciation they make a cove-nant with you.”
Quail said, “They won’t invade Earth as long as I’m alive.”
“Exactly.” To the Interplan officer the psychiatrist said, “You can see it does fit his personality, despite his feigned scorn.”
“So by merely existing,” Quail said, feeling a growing pleasure, “by simply being alive, I keep Earth safe from alien rule. I’m in effect, then, the most important person on Terra.
Without lifting a finger.”
“Yes indeed, sir,” the psychiatrist said. “And this is bedrock in your psyche; this is a life-long childhood fantasy. Which, without depth and drug therapy, you never would have recalled. But it has always existed in you; it went underneath, but never ceased.”
To McClane, who sat intently listening, the senior police official said, “Can you implant an extrafactual memory pattern that extreme in him?”
“We get handed every possible type of wish-fantasy there is,” McClane said. “Frankly, I’ve heard a lot worse than this.
Certainly we can handle it. Twenty-four hours from now he won’t just wish he’d saved Earth; he’ll devoutly believe it really happened.”
The senior police official said, “You can start the job, then.
In preparation we’ve already once again erased the memory in.
him of his trip to Mars.”
Quail said, “What trip to Mars?”
No one answered him, so, reluctantly, he shelved the question. And anyhow a police vehicle had now put in its appearance; he, McClane’ and the senior police officer crowded into it, and presently they were on their way to Chicago and Rekal, Incorporated.
“You had better make no errors this time,” the police officer said to heavy-set, nervous-looking McClane.
“I can’t see what could go wrong,” McClane mumbled, perspiring. “This has nothing to do with Mars or Interplan.
Single-handedly stopping an invasion of Earth from another star-system.” He shook his head at that. “Wow, what a kid dreams up. And by pious virtue, too; not by force. It’s sort of quaint.” He dabbed at his forehead with a large linen pocket handkerchief.
Nobody said anything.
“In fact,” McClane said, “it’s touching.”
“But arrogant,” the police official said starkly. “Inasmuch as when he dies the invasion will resume. No wonder he doesn’t recall it; it’s the most grandiose fantasy I ever ran across.” He eyed Quail with disapproval. “And to think we put this man on our payroll.”
When they reached Rekal, Incorporated the receptionist, Shirley, met them breathlessly in the outer office. “Welcome back, Mr. Quail,” she fluttered, her melon-shaped breasts today painted an incandescent orangebobbing with agitation. “I’m sorry everything worked out so badly before; I’m sure this time it’ll go better.”
Still repeatedly dabbing at his shiny forehead with his neatly-folded Irish linen handkerchief, McClane said, “It better.” Moving with rapidity he rounded up Lowe and Keeler, escorted them and Douglas Quail to the work area, and then, with Shirley and the senior police officer, returned to his familiar office. To wait.
“Do we have a packet made up for this, Mr. McClane?”
Shirley asked, bumping against him in her agitation, then coloring modestly.
“I think we do.” He tried to recall; then gave up and consulted the formal chart. “A combination,” he decided aloud, “of packets Eighty-one, Twenty, and Six.” From the vault section of the chamber behind his desk he fished out the appropriate packets, carried them to his desk for inspection.
“From Eighty-one,” he explained, “a magic healing rod given himthe client in question, this time Mr. Quailby the race of beings from another system. A token of their gratitude.”
“Does it work?” the police officer asked curiously.
“It did once,” McClane explained. “But he, ahem, you see, used it up years ago, healing right and left. Now it’s only a memento. But he remembers it working spectacularly.” He chuckled, then opened packet Twenty. “Document from the UN Secretary General thanking him for saving Earth; this _isn’t precisely appropriate, because part of Quail’s fantasy is that no one knows of the invasion except himself, but for the sake of verisimilitude we’ll throw it in.” He inspected packet Six, then. What came from this? He couldn’t recall; frowning, he dug into the plastic bag as Shirley and the Interplan police officer watched intently.