Then I caught the express Way for Riverside. When I reached the sanctuary it was lust daylight.
There was nobody there but the night technician I had talked to and his wife, the night nurse. I’m afraid I didn’t make a good impression. I had a day’s beard, I was wild-eyed, I probably had a beer breath, and I had not worked out a consistent framework of lies.
Nevertheless, Mrs. Larrigan, the night nurse, was sympathetic and helpful. She got a photograph out of a file and said, “Is this your cousin, Mr. Davis?”
It was Ricky. There was no doubt about it, it was Ricky! Oh, not the Ricky I had known, for this was not a little girl but a mature young woman, twentyish or older, with a grown-up hairdo and a grown-up and very beautiful face. She was smiling.
But her eyes were unchanged and the ageless pixie quality of her face that had made her so delightful a child was still there. It was the same face, matured, filled out, grown beautiful, but unmistakable.
The stereo blurred, my eyes had filled with tears, “Yes,” I managed to choke. “Yes. That’s Ricky.”
Mr. Larrigan said, “Nancy, you shouldn’t have showed him that.”
“Pooh, Hank, what harm is there in showing a photograph?”
“You know the rules.” He turned to me. “Mister, as I told you on the phone, we don’t give out information about clients. You come back here at ten o’clock when the administration office opens.”
“Or you could come back at eight,” his wife added. “Dr. Bernstein will be here then.”
“Now, Nancy, you just keep quiet. If he wants information, the man to see is the director. Bernstein hasn’t any more business answering questions than we have. Besides, she wasn’t even Bernstein’s patient.”
“Hank, you’re being fussy. You men like rules just for the sake of rules. If he’s in a hurry to see her, he could be in Brawley by ten o’clock.” She turned to me. “You come back at eight. That’s best. My husband and I can’t really tell you anything anyhow.”
“What’s this about Brawley? Did she go to Brawley?”
If her husband had not been there I think she would have told me more. She hesitated and he looked stern. She answered, “You see Dr. Bernstein. If you haven’t had breakfast, there’s a real nice place lust down the street.”
So I went to the “real nice place” (it was) and ate and used their washroom and bought a tube of Beardgo from a dispenser in the washroom and a shirt from another dispenser and threw away the one I had been wearing. By the time I returned I was fairly respectable.
But Larrigan must have bent Dr. Bernstein’s ear about me. He was a young man, resident in training, and he took a very stiff line. “Mr. Davis, you claim to be a Sleeper yourself. You must certainly know that there are criminals who make a regular business of preying on the gullibility and lack of orientation of a newly awakened Sleeper. Most Sleepers have considerable assets, all of them are unworldly in the world in which they find themselves, they are usually lonely and a bit scared-a perfect setup for confidence men.”
“But all I want to know is where she went~ I’m her cousin. But I took the Sleep before she did, so I didn’t know she was going to.”
“They usually claim to be relatives.” He looked at me closely. “Haven’t I seen you before?”
“I strongly doubt it. Unless you just happened to pass me on the Ways, downtown.” People are always thinking they’ve seen me before; I’ve got one of the Twelve Standard Faces, as lacking in uniqueness as one peanut in a sackful. “Doctor, how about phoning Dr. Albrecht at Sawtelle Sanctuary and checking on me?”
He looked judicial. “You come back and see the director. He can call the Sawtelle Sanctuary . . . or the police, whichever he sees fit.”
So I left. Then I may have made a mistake. Instead of coming back to see the director and very possibly getting the exact information I needed (with the aid of Albrecht’s vouching for me), I hired a jumpcab and went straight to Brawley.