Sarda’s hand flashed inside his jacket, but even as he drew out the phone, his thumb punching in the emergency code, an arm appeared from behind him, and a black fist the size of a boxing glove plucked the phone from his fingers. He turned to find a beaming giant in a silky green coat, his eyes and teeth standing out against a jet black face, his hair wild and frizzy. “What is this?” Sarda demanded, his gaze alternating nervously between one and the other.
“Shall we?” the man who had called himself Troon invited, indicating the stairs leading down to the road traffic level.
Troon led the way down, his manner as breezy as if he were trotting down steps to the beach for a swim. Sarda followed, with the huge black man keeping close behind, the evil-looking dog trailing. Who they were or what could be going on, Sarda couldn’t imagine. A rival outfit trying to steal the TX data wouldn’t make any sense. The part that Sarda was carrying to exchange for the initial payment wouldn’t be any use to them without the rest.
A car was standing in an open area to one side of the traffic lanes—dark blue, sleek and luxurious compared to the norm on Mars, looking out of place among the utility autos, dump trucks, and surface rovers in this part of town. Sarda didn’t recognize the model, but the trunk bore a chrome logo announcing the supplier. A woman—or, at least, a figure that Sarda took to be a woman from the little he could glimpse—wearing dark glasses, head wrapped in a scarf, and a fleece-lined suede jacket with the collar turned up, was at the wheel. Troon opened the rear door for Sarda to enter. The black slid in behind him, while Troon walked around to climb in the other side, and the dog hopped up beside the woman and turned to watch its charge dutifully. “There’s nothing to worry about, Dr. Sarda,” Troon assured him. “Just a few things we’d like you to identify.” He slid a folder out from the document case that he was carrying and passed it across. Sarda took it, opened it . . . and found himself staring at a strangely vivid graphic image which drew his gaze in a way he was incapable of resisting—a purple disk inside a silver outer ring containing a spiral pattern of red, yellow, and aquamarine. It was doing something to his mind; he could sense his thoughts coming apart, being rearranged like the image in a kaleidoscope, pieces of the picture disappearing . . . but he was unable to look away.
And then whatever had taken hold of him seemed to release its grip. He sat back in the seat, blinking and shaking his head bemusedly.
“An interesting design, don’t you think?” Troon said chattily beside him. “Ever seen it before, out of curiosity?”
At the sound of Troon’s voice, Sarda was able to tear his eyes away. But now his confusion was total and all-immersing. He knew Troon’s name, but he wasn’t sure why . . . or where he was, or how he had gotten here. The people with him had intercepted him upstairs and said something about going to a bank, but he had no idea why he should be going to a bank. He realized that he wasn’t even sure when this was. . . . He knew he had been holed up in a cheap room that he didn’t recognize, but didn’t know why; and there were disassociated recollections pertaining to the experiment. He could remember the preparations, and being wired up for the scanning procedure in the T-Lab. . . . But why couldn’t he remember emerging from the process in the R-Lab? There was nothing coherent after then. How long ago had it been? Did it mean that the experiment had failed, somehow? What had happened to him? Where was he now? Who were these people?
“Does the name Henry Balmer mean anything?” Troon asked, watching him intently. “How about Elaine Corley?”
Sarda crumpled up the graphic that he was holding and threw it savagely back in Troon’s lap. “What is this shit?” he demanded. “I don’t have to talk to you people.”