worry, it’s certainty.
My hand is starting to shake, and I take a firm grip on myself. I have to take control. I have to take myself firmly in hand. I can get through it—I know I can—if I only go carefully and do everything right. No one must know, but no one has to know, if only I’m careful.
The last thing I remember is the stupid party. New Year’s Eve. Happy Birthday, 2444...you couldn’t possibly tell me what happened to the last few hours of 2443?
I thought not.
It wasn’t the drink. I only had one glass. I only remember one glass...but whatever else is wrong with me I’ve no hangover. Blackouts don’t drive me to drink. Whatever Mr. Hyde gets up to, it isn’t swilling alcohol or popping pills. Zeno was there...hell, everyone was there, from Schumann down. It can’t have been more than an hour. What can you do in an hour, especially at a party? Even if I did something really crazy, who’d care? A party is protective camouflage. You can do anything at a party. Pretty well anything. Big joke, though, if they caught Lee Caretta off guard. Probably go up six points in their estimation...and come down seven when I revert to type.
I thought I’d left it behind me on Earth. I really did. Sule is so goddam far away. Fifty-six million kilometers at the closest pass. You’d think you’d be safe sharing an orbit with a dead world, three HSBs and Stepping Stone. You’re supposed to leave lunacy under the moon. Nobody must know! Can’t be sent home now. Not now. I got away with it before, I can get away with it now. If in doubt, bluff. I can do it. I know I can. What’s an hour of your memory, when you’re among friends?
I put my head back on the pillow, not really trying to get back to sleep. I couldn’t, and anyway, what’s so great about sleep? Sleep is where the nightmares are.
What a way to see the new year in!
End of nightmare?
Well, maybe.
And maybe not.
CHAPTER ONE
I was sitting in front of the TV, flipping the pages of the latest bulletin, when Zeno knocked on the door. He came in without waiting for an invitation.
He looked over my shoulder to see what was on the screen.
“It’s a holiday,” he said. “You’re supposed to be taking a break, no?”
“You have holidays on Calicos?” (It was one of those silly thoughts that just seemed suddenly odd, for no good reason. Somehow, I hadn’t thought of alien beings, however nearly human, having holidays.)
“Of course,” he replied. “Even this holiday—the beginning of the new year.”
“But not Christmas?”
“No,” he said. “Not Christmas.” He would have smiled, I’m sure, if he could. Anatomy, ever the comedian, had made sure that from a human point of view, he always looked doleful. He had a range of expressions, of course, that meant a lot to his own kind, but by our criteria they only varied his mien from slightly doleful all the way to extremely doleful. It was appropriate, in its way. His view of the world was not redolent with what you or I would call joi de vivre. He was dark green in color, with diamond-shaped scales distributed in a tough tegument, and a few eccentric cartilaginous extrusions here and there, but apart from that he was ordinary enough.
“It’s not work,” I assured him. “I’m just catching up on the latest squabbles between Biochemistry and Taxonomy. We’re bound to be called upon to referee. Genetics always has to arbitrate, in the long run. Good party last night, wasn’t it?”
I had to admire the way I’d slipped it in like that. I had to begin investigations quickly.
“I’m not sure,” he replied cautiously. “It’s difficult to know where goodness resides, from the human point of view.”
Zeno wasn’t his “real” name. It was just the name he’d adopted in order to live among humans. He sometimes said that he’d rather have selected the name of a more recent philosopher, but that “Schopenhauer” was too cumbersome and after studying the implications he’d regretfully declined the opportunity of calling himself “Kant.”
“I think I may have had too much to drink,” I said. “My memories are a little hazy.”
That was playing safe. Always construct an alibi.
“That’s strange,” he said. “I thought that you drank very moderately, and that you retired early to bed.”
I frowned. That didn’t sound too hopeful. Perhaps, for the period of the lost memory, I wasn’t at the party at all. If so, then where the hell was I? And what had I been doing?
“I see Scarlatti thinks he’s got a virus hook-up in some of his mice,” I said, pointing to the page of the Bulletin that was on the screen. “More power to the paranoids, I suppose.”
Zeno accepted the change of subject gracefully. “I don’t think the mice are suffering too terribly,” he said. “Last time I spoke to Scarlatti they were in the best of health. Nevertheless, it’s a serious matter. Cross-systemic infection isn’t to be taken lightly, even as a remote possibility. However....”
He cleared his throat politely, and I remembered that he must have come for a purpose. After all, as he said, it was a holiday. He hadn’t dropped in to discuss nucleic acid ubiquity or the progress of the induction experiments.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“Schumann wants to see you.”
“Why couldn’t he use the phone?”
“He did. He called me. He wants to see us both.”
For a moment, I’d been very worried. Now I was just worried. At least, if it was something I’d done, Schumann didn’t yet know it was me. I swallowed anxiously. What on Earth could I have done in an hour, late on New Year’s Eve, that could have attracted the attention of the director so quickly? But then, we weren’t on Earth, were we? We were on Sule, where a man who does strange things and fails to remember them the next morning might be a very dangerous man to have around.
“Okay,” I said. I switched off the display and stood up. Zeno was taller than me by about a head. Whether he was exceptionally tall by the standards of his own people, or whether the Calicoi are a race of giants, I didn’t know. Zeno was the only one I’d ever met—the only one on Sule. There were half a dozen Calicoi in Marsbase, and maybe three times as many on Earth, but his was a unique position. He was the only alien helping us in our studies of alien biology. He was very useful, not just because he was good at his job, but also because he had a whole tradition of scientific inquiry to draw on that was differently directed than our own. Without Zeno as collaborator, I couldn’t have been anywhere near as successful as I was. We were a good team.
“What kind of holidays do you have, on Calicos?” I asked, as we walked along the corridor toward the administration section.
“Are there different kinds?” he asked. “I suppose there are, in a way. They become established by tradition—it is far easier to make a holiday than to cancel it. Like yours, our days of rest are the legacy of the past. Some are religious festivals, some commemorate important historical events.”
One
