“What precipitated his wising up?”
“Someone spotted the ringer and asked him for the real one. When he looked it wasn’t there.”
“And he got dead.”
“You said the two men who questioned you in Australia as much as admitted having done him in as a by-product of questioning him.”
“Zeemeister and Buckler. Yes.”
“The undercover wombat told you they were hoodlums.”
“Doodlehums, but go ahead.”
“The UN informed the member nations-which is where the State Department comes into the picture in our case. Somewhere there was a tear in the beanbag, though, and Zeemeister decided to locate the stone first in order to claim a large ransom. Pardon me, a reward.”
“It does make a kind of surrealistic sense. Continue.”
“So we might have had it and everybody knows it. We don’t know where it is, but nobody believes us.”
“Who is everybody?”
“UN officials, the Foggy Bottom boys, the doodlehums and the aliens.”
“Well, granting that the aliens have been informed and are actually assisting in the investigation, Charv and Ragma become a little more understandable-with their thing about security and all. But then, something else bothers me. They seemed awfully sure that I knew more than I thought I did concerning the stone’s whereabouts. They even felt that a telepathic analyst might turn up some useful leads in my subconscious. I wonder what gave them that idea?”
“You’ve got me there. Perhaps they have eliminated almost everything else. And maybe they are right. It did seem to vanish rather strangely. I wonder … ?”
“What?”
“If you do know something useful, something you may have suppressed for some reason? Perhaps a good non-telepathic analyst could drag it out, too. Hypnosis, drugs … Who knows? What about that Doctor Marko you used to go to?”
“It’s a thought, but it would take a long while to convince him as to the reality of all the preliminaries he’d need to know before he could go to work. Might even think I’ve lost touch, trank me up and give me the wrong therapy. No. I’ll hold off on that angle for now.”
“Where does that leave us?”
“Drunk,” I said. “My higher cerebral centers all just moved off center.”
“Want me make some coffee?”
“No. Consciousness is losing six to nothing and I’d like to retire gracefully. Mind if I sleep on the couch?”
“Go ahead. I’ll get you a blanket and a pillow.”
“Thanks.”
“Maybe we’ll have some fresh ideas in the morning,” he said, rising.
“Thinking them will be painful, whatever they are,” I said, going over to the couch and kicking off my shoes. “Let there be an end to thought. Thus do I refute Descartes.”
I sprawled, not a cogito or a sum to my name.
Oblivion.
There was a teletype machine in a room at the back of my mind. It had never been used. Within the uncreation where the not-I didn’t exist for a peaceful interval of non-time, however, it stuttered and spewed, synthesizing some recipient who resembled myself for purposes of pestering him …
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DO YOU HEAR ME. FRED?
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DO YOU HEAR ME. FRED?
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YES
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GOOD
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WHO ARE YOU?
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I AMXXXXXXXXXXXXX
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DO YOU HEAR ME, FRED?
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YES. WHO ARE YOU?
I AMXXXXXX IXXXXXXXX ARTICLE 7224 SECTION C. I BROUGHT IT TO YOUR ATTENTION
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ALL RIGHT
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CAN YOU OBTAIN AN N-AXIAL INVERSION UNIT?
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NO
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