“I wonder who she was?” Burton muttered. “Some Irishwoman?”
He had a vague memory of his mother having mentioned the nurse’s name once. A Mrs. Riley? Kiley?
He was shocked but not so much that he could not think clearly. The Computer had read his memory from his body-recording, reeling it up as a fisherman did a trout. After storing it in a separate file, the Computer was feeding it back to him via the wall-screen. The showing of the whole of it, if done in the same time as that in which the events had occurred, would take a lifetime. However, no one’s memory held everything that the person had seen, heard, tasted, felt and thought. Memory was selective and there were great gaps when the person was sleeping, except when he was dreaming, of course. Thus, it did not take as much time as might have been expected to display all that was in the subject’s memory bank.
The film, it was a film of sorts, could be speeded up or slowed down or run backward. The Computer might be doing this now. On the other hand, he could have fallen asleep shortly after birth.
Burton, now watching his diapers being changed by another servant, a maid, wondered why this memory display had been commanded. And by whom?
Before he could question the Computer, several small screens whitened wall areas. Frigate’s, Turpin’s, and de Marbot’s faces appeared. They looked shocked.
“Yes,” he said before they could begin talking, “I’m being visited by the past, too. From bloody birth onward.”
“It’s terrible,” Alice said. “And wonderful, too. Awesome. I feel like crying.”
Frigate said, “I’ll call the others and see if they’re going through the same thing.” His screen dimmed to gray.
Tom Turpin was weeping.
“I’m telling you, seeing my own momma and poppa and that old shack … I don’t think I can take it.”
Burton glanced at the big screen. There he was again, being lifted towards that titanic breast. He could hear his infant’s cry of hunger. The scene faded and was replaced by a view of a blue canopy, and the room rocking. No, a great hand was rocking his cradle.
The screens of the others came on. Seven faces with various emotions looked at him.
Li Po, grinning, said, “It is something indescribable, except for a poet, of course, to see yourself suckled by your mother. But … who ordered this?”
“Wait a moment,” Burton said, “and I’ll ask the Computer.”
“I have done that,” Nur said. “It says that the who and the why are unavailable. But it did not refuse to tell me the when. The order was given two days ago to start the memory-display this morning.”
“Then it must have been given by the woman you killed,” Burton said.
“She’s the most likely candidate.”
“I’m completely at sea about why she ordered this memory-display,” Burton said.
“Obviously,” Nur said, “it was done to accelerate our ethical advancement. If we’re forced to know our past, how we behaved, how others behaved, we’ll see our weaknesses, faults, and vices in all their details. Like it or not, we’ll have what we were, exactly what we were, rubbed into our noses. Ground into our souls. By watching that inescapable drama and comedy, we might be so strongly affected that we’ll take steps to eliminate our undesirable character traits. And then become better human beings.”
“Or it might drive us mad,” Frigate said.
“More likely it will drive us to ingenious methods to shut it out,” Burton said. “Nur, did you ask the Computer to stop the display?”
“Yes. The Computer did not reply. Obviously, the woman’s command is another override.”
“Just a minute,” Burton said.
He walked out of the room into the corridor. The screen had slid along the wall of the big room until he left the room. Now it appeared on the corridor wall opposite him. He cursed and spun on his heels and walked back into the room. The screen accompanied him.
He told the others what had happened. “Apparently, we can’t get rid of it. It’s like the albatross around the ancient mariner’s neck.”
Burton shut his eyes. He heard himself screaming. Opening his eyes, he saw the canopy above him and then heard, faintly, the maid’s voice. “Saints presarve us! What is it now?”