Memory
Date: 2023-01-07T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science fiction; Short stories; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Business intelligence -- Fiction

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Memory

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Title: Memory

Author: Theodore Sturgeon

Release date: January 7, 2023 [eBook #69733]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: Standard Magazines, Inc, 1948

Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net.

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MEMORY ***

MEMORY

A NOVELET

By THEODORE STURGEON

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Thrilling Wonder Stories August 1948.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

CHAPTER I

Trouble on Mars

Jeremy Jedd stood in the igneous dust of the spaceport margin, staring into the sky and shading his eyes with his arm. Occasionally he checked the time by his ristkron, shaking it to make sure it was wound, craning back toward the hunched Customs House and the great clock. The sign there announced placidly that the Pinnacle had reported, was overdue, and would discharge passengers at Gate Three.

Jeremy shook his head and took the letter from Mars out of his pocket again. Slowly he unfolded it and read, in the manner of a man checking his mnemonics. He was certainly familiar enough with it, after so much re-reading. The letter said:

You must have heard by this time that General Export has installed a fabricating plant here, just outside Fort Wargod. It cost them plenty in time and money to get it set up—actually most of it was shipped as hand luggage because of the shipping space situation.

Like a lot of other people, I thought it was a foolish move, because the finished piping they could have shipped in the space is at such a premium on Mars, and because their plant is going to require power—a hard thing to get here. I didn't worry too much, though. Why should we care what our competitors do with their money?

But here's the joker. In spite of the fact that the plant is small and comparatively crude, it will fabricate pipe. And the material is plastic, chum, and they can now ship it in sheets! I don't have to tell you what that means to us. We only got our cargo-space contracts from General Export because the Government okayed our shipping system—nesting the smaller diameters of pipe inside the larger ones. Genex's own pipe is shipped that way now, too. The idea isn't patentable.

So unless we find a patentable way to ship pipe in less space, finished, than Genex is taking for their sheet-stock, we're done, brother—wiped out. Genex means to get everything in the Colonial System—you know that. They have all the ships now, and most of the goods and services. I'm afraid we're going on the long list of small operators who have tried to buck them.

Jeremy lowered the letter and rubbed his eyes again. They ached. Since he had received it a week ago, he hadn't slept much. Supplying pipe for the Mars project was work enough without these long nights in the laboratory trying to figure a way out of this spot. Everything he and Hal had in the world was in this deal. They had worked together ever since they left school, right up until the time Hal went up to handle the Mars end.

Fervently he wished it were the other way around. If Hal were here, he'd dope out something. He had always been the real brains of Jedd & Jedd. And as a matter of fact, Hal already had doped out something. What an irony! Whatever his process or system was, he couldn't write it or wire it. General Export carried the mails too, and if they wanted to find something out, it would be only too easy.

Jeremy looked up again. There was a growing, gleaming dot in the sky. He glanced at the building. Near it, men were manning the heatproof launch. He turned back to the letter, to read the cryptic part about Phyllis Exeter:

I know a way to whip this, bud. I'm not telling you about it in a letter—you know why. I'm hoping and praying that you'll figure it out yourself. The new hauling contracts are coming up, and priorities for shipping space go to the pipe company that can pack the most in. My process is very simple, really. It's nothing that Budgie couldn't have told you. You have three weeks to figure it out after you get this note, and don't forget it takes ten days to file a patent application.

And in connection with this idea, Phyllis Exeter is due to arrive on the Pinnacle. I'd like you to meet her when the rocket-ship docks. She really has what it takes. I got quite chummy with her while she was out here in Thor City. She'll probably have a lot to say about it. She'll have a lot to say, period. She talks more than Budgie. Be good, little man.

Jeremy's brows matted together as he folded the note and put it away. There was more than met the eye in those last two paragraphs—much more. He got some of it. "Be good, little man." And the references to Budgie—he wasn't too sure, but he had the idea they weren't in there for the purpose of using up ink. And the specific mention of Phyllis Exeter and her arrival. Now, that was something.

If Hal wanted to be absolutely positive Phyllis Exeter would see him, he'd sure picked the right way. Just that line in the letter would be enough to have Phyllis hunt him up anywhere on Earth, even if he hid. General Export carried the mails. But why Phyllis? After all, Hal and Phyllis had been—He shrugged. If Hal wanted to throw them together again, all right. He began to get the old, familiar feeling, just thinking about it.

From overhead came the blow-torch susurrus of the Pinnacle's braking and hovering jets. Down she came on her bed of fire, until she hesitated at five thousand feet. He distinctly heard the sudden shift to cold-jets, and in another minute the dust-cloud was piled up to receive her.

Jeremy stepped into the waiting room of Number Three Gate, just avoiding the sudden angry gusts of dust-laden air. He shouldered past the chattering crowd inside and got to a port, which was covered with a disc of transparent plastic whirling at high speed to afford clear vision through the mucky dust which hurtled so violently about the building. From the spaceport central, the little heatproof drifted toward the grounding liner, waiting its chance to settle on the huge hull and sink its extensible airlock into the monster like an ovipositor.

Fifteen minutes later the heatproof whickered slowly down to the roof of the gate building. The crowd pressed toward the elevators and was shunted back by the page-boys and officials. Jeremy stood on the fringes, trying to look indifferent and doing a very poor job of it.

The first load came down. A heavy-set man with a dark, rocky face. A quick, slender, cold-eyed man. These two stood aside and let a woman with two children and an aged couple pass them. And then Phyllis stepped out.

He wondered again, looking at her, what a man would have to do to ruffle that sleekness, to crumple the brilliant mask she seemed to wear. Throw a kiss or a fist in that face, and there would be little difference. Her hair was soft, and iridescent green, now. She smoked with a long holder, and the smoke matched her hair. Her voice was as lustrous, as colorful as ever, when she saw him.

"Jeremy!" she said. "Jeremy Jedd! How are you, darling?"

"Jeremy Jedd!" Phyllis said, "How are you, darling?"

"Don't call me darling," he said.

"Oh, these people won't think anything of me that they don't think already," she said.

"They might think it of me," he said grimly. He took her arm, while she laughed as if trying to find out whether she could. She could.

"Come on," he said. "I need a drink. Before, I just wanted one."

She hung back and pouted. "You seem quite sure I'll come."

"You've been reading my mail!" he quipped grimly. She stopped hanging back. They moved toward the door and down the short path to the Customs House. Jeremy glanced back. The two men he had noticed at the elevators were following them. He gestured slightly with his head. "Yours?"

She shrugged. "Oh, you know how it is."

"No," he said, "I don't. Not altogether. But I'll learn the rest of it."

She laughed again, and hugged his elbow close to her body. "Jeremy," she said cozily, "do you still feel the same way about me?"

He glanced down into her wide gray-green eyes. "Yup. Always will, I guess. Worse luck."

"Worse luck?"

"It gets in my hair," he grumbled. "When I think of all the time I've spent thinking about you when I could've been making pipe—"

"That's what I like about you," she flashed. "You make a person feel so welcome." She released his arm. "What makes you think you can treat me like that?"

"Several things. They all add up to the fact that you won't walk away from me until you find out what you think I know about stowing pipe. No matter what I say or do to you, you'll tag right along."

"All right," she said, in quite a new, matter-of-fact voice. "I'd just as soon play that way then. All the cards face up, and such sordidness. It could have been pleasant, too."

"Not with me. Not with you and me."

"That's what I meant."

Inside the building they turned to the right elevator bank and dropped to the cafeteria two levels below. There was no conversation in the elevator due to the silent presence of the two men who had followed them from the gatehouse. Jeremy glared at them, but the younger man refused to catch his eye and stared at the ceiling, whistling softly. The other man gazed at Phyllis's feet.

"I think," Jeremy said, as they emerged, "that you have hired these pugs just to bolster your ego. You'll have men following you whatever you have to do."

"It isn't necessary to hire them for that," she said coldly. "I'm sorry you find this unpleasant, Jeremy. But please don't make it any more so than you have to. Strangely enough, there are lots of places I'd rather be than with you. Alone, for example."

"You know," he said, as he politely pulled out a chair for her, "I like you like this. I mean, I could if I tried. This is the first time I have ever seen you when you weren't swinging the figurative female lasso round and round."

"Compliments from you are more unpleasant than anything else could be. Light the menu, will you?"

He touched the stud that illuminated the menu screen. She studied it for a moment, and then dialed the code numbers of the items she wanted. Jeremy studied her as she did so.

She was an amazing girl, he admitted grudgingly. How she looked, what she did, what she was—amazing. Her smooth brow was crinkled a bit now, between the eyes. She used to look like that in college once in a while. It generally signified that she was out of her depth, and it also meant that she was about to do something about it, like flapping her eyelids at a vulnerable professor, or cribbing from someone else's paper.

CHAPTER II

Bulldozer Treatment

Frowning, Jeremy studied Phyllis for several minutes more. Then he spoke.

"Tell me something," he said. "Exactly how was this thing supposed to go?"

"I don't know what you mean."

His voice tuned itself to his strained patience. "I mean, what was supposed to happen here? You would meet me at the gate, or you would hunt me up, and then what?"

"You seem to know everything. Answer your own questions."

"All right. You were going to overcome my time-honored distaste of you and give me the business—most likely the remorse angle. The time you pulled that factory-lease out from under us for the benefit of a cosmetic factory—and General Export, who were starting in the pipe business—you are sorry about that. The time Hal fell for Dolly Holleson and you told her so many lies about him that she up and married somebody else—you're sorry about that too. The time you—" His voice got thick—"accepted my ring, all of my grand old 'forgive and forget' attitude, and a third of our company stock, only to turn the stock over to Genex and tell me to go fly it—that was an awful misunderstanding!

"You know, Phyl, if I had known when I gave you the stock that Hal had phonied up the stock certificate, I'd have killed him, I think. He took the chance. Felt that if you were on the up-and-up he could straighten out the stock later. If you weren't—well, nothing would be lost but a little peace of mind. Mine." He breathed very deeply, once. "Anyhow, Hal thinks you're poison, and I think you're poison, and I don't know what in the universe you think you are, but certainly it isn't anything that will get a new pipe-stowage process out of me."

"You really slug when you start, don't you?" she whispered. He had never seen her eyes so big, nor her face so white. "And you don't mind lowering your sights, to mix a metaphor."

"I adjust to the most obvious target," he said bluntly. "Why don't you get sore? Why don't you leave?"

Slowly, with a small, tragic smile, she rose. "Watch," she said.

She turned toward the door. At a far table, a man rose and sauntered toward the exit. Behind Jeremy, there was a scraping of chairs on the glossy flooring, and the two men who had followed her from the ship went past.

The man at the door, a suave-looking individual, lean and white-templed, folded his arms and leaned against the wall just out of range of the photocell which opened the door. When Phyllis drew abreast he spoke softly to her. She stopped and shook her head. He smiled then, and shook his. She bit her lip, lowered her head a little and moved toward the door again. So smoothly that it did not seem swift at all, he blocked her.

The other two men reached them, greeted her effusively, took an arm each and led her back toward their table, talking and laughing. When they neared Jeremy's place, they released her and went back to their own table, leaving her standing alone, staring at Jeremy with angry and terrified eyes. The whole thing was done so smoothly that no occupant of the restaurant seemed to notice.

"I have just seen something very lovely," said Jeremy happily. "A pushing-around with you involved, where you are getting pushed for a change. Now come and sit down and tell me all about it in a sisterly fashion."

She came. Again he was struck with the difference in her, the air of being out of her depth. She sank into her chair, her eyes averted from his. She put her hands tight together on the table, but they would not stop shaking. She volunteered nothing.

He reached over the centerpiece of the table and opened the cold-chamber on her side, removing the drink she had ordered. Pushing it across to her, he said gently:

"Gulp some of that and for once in your life give me a straight story. Whose side are you on besides your own? How did it happen? And why do these dawn-men take such an interest in leaving you alone, providing it's with me?"

"Everything's gone wrong. You—you know too much, Jeremy. And you don't know enough. All right, I'll tell you. Telling you won't help me—I mean, you won't help me, no matter what. I thought I could get what I wanted out of you without your ever knowing that they—that I—"

"That they have the heat on you," supplemented Jeremy. "Source, Genex. Temperature, high." He shook his head wonderingly. "That's always been the trouble with you, Phyl. So self-sufficient. Never asked anyone for help in your life. There was always a way out, generally paved with somebody's face. I gather that Genex is as wise to you as I am."

She nodded, with a submissiveness which wrung something within him. His hand went out toward her. He drew it back without touching her.

He said, "Talk, now."

"I was doing all right," she said in a low voice. "I pulled lots of—of deals for General Export. They want everything. They want the entire Colonial trade—ships, supplies, personnel, everything. They're getting it, too, any and every way they can. They'll have Mars when they're through."

"Then what? They're still under government authority."

"Oh, it's long-range, Jeremy. You remember your history. There's a colonial phase, after discovery and exploration. Colonizing is a job in itself—development doesn't really set in for quite a while. Nowadays, of course, the whole process is enormously speeded up. You know the potentialities of Mars. Uranium, iron, diamond-coal and drugs. Why, it's an unlimited opportunity for whoever controls it. For perhaps two generations, Mars will look to Earth for government and guidance. But then there will be patriots, Jeremy. Earth will find herself with a competitor instead of a dominion. And the way that competitor will be run will gradually swing the direction of control the other way—or else. Genex isn't out after a world. Genex wants two worlds—the system—the galaxy, if you like. But it will be for Genex and its heirs; it won't be for the little guy."

Jeremy sat back and stared at her, amazed. "You figured all that out yourself? I can't believe it. No, by heaven, I don't believe it. Whom are you quoting?"

"Hal Jedd," she said with an effort.

"Well, well, well!" He took out Hal's letter and opened it. Her eyes darted to it, to his face, and down again. "Don't play," Jeremy said grimly. "I know you've seen this. You and every stooge Genex could put on it." He glanced through the letter, speared a sentence with his finger, and read aloud: "'Phyllis Exeter due. I got quite chummy with her while she was out here in Thor City.'"

"That's what put me in this spot," she said with sudden bitterness. "Yes, I saw him. Lots. The word got around that he had developed something radical in the line of pipe stowage. He has a suitcase-size lab back of his office, you know. Well, I was put on it."

"You volunteered—isn't that more like it? You said, 'Let me at the sucker. I've been able to wind him and his dopey brother around my finger since we were kids; and besides, I have a little score to settle. They're one up on me.' That right?"

She almost laughed. "I didn't call him a sucker," she said faintly. She took a swallow of her drink. "Take care of the steak, will you, Jeremy? I'm hungry."

Jeremy took the raw steak out of the cold compartment. It was tenderized and seasoned. He slid it into the induction-heater.

"How do you like it?" he asked.

"Seared and rare," she answered.

He adjusted the controls and closed the drawer, while she continued.

"I saw a lot of Hal. He got under my skin, Jeremy. Not anything about him personally—I don't go for his type. These scholarly boys leave me cold. I like big men with blond hair, strong enough to smack a gal down when she deserves it, or even to keep their hands off her. And maybe with a little cleft in a square jaw—"

Unconsciously fingering just such a concavity on his chin, Jeremy threw back his blond head and snapped, "Baloney to you and your shopping lists! Go on with the yarn. What did get under your skin?"

"What he had to say about Genex. I don't know—maybe I never bothered to take it apart before. Maybe my paychecks and bonuses kept me from thinking. Whatever it was that happened, it happened so gradually that I didn't notice it. But the things he said about long-range thinking—well, here I was on the inside and knowing even more about what went with Genex than he did. The more I looked at it, the less I liked it. Maybe I should have left Hal alone. Maybe I should have tuned him out while he talked. But, as I said before, he had me before I knew what was happening."

Jeremy smiled. "Hal's like that. He has a theory that a quiet voice in a noisy room is louder than a shout. He thinks quietly and loud that way too." The centerpiece chimed softly and the drawer slid out. Jeremy took the plate-tongs from the rack and lifted the steak and its perfectly cooked side-dishes over to Phyllis.

"Thanks. Well, I met a boy at Fort Wargod. A blue-eyed innocent of a cadet. Maybe it was moonlight. Moonlight's twice as tricky on Mars, you know. Maybe it's because I'm a little crazy, and can't resist trying things out on people. Well, this kid needed to be impressed worse than anyone I ever met. Before I knew it we were on the parapet looking at Earth, hanging out there so bright and blue, and I was spilling all this stuff about colonies, dominions, and the patriotism of the second-generation Martian. Loose talk. Really, I don't know how much of it I believed myself."

She shook herself suddenly, all over, as if trying to wriggle out of something tight and hot. Pulling herself together with an effort, she cut into her steak busily.

"Well," she said after she had swallowed the first bite, "my blue-eyed babe in the woods turned out to be a Genex man, put there for the specific purpose of finding out where my indoctrination stood."

Jeremy roared with laughter, a great cruel burst of it. He cut it off instantly and leaned forward. "So it happened to you," he said viciously. "I'm mighty glad to hear it. Some sweet and gentle character made you open up your heart, did he? Tell me something, slicker—did you try to give him some of your company's stock?"

This hit home. In sudden anger she stopped eating and cursed Jeremy. Then all at once, she smiled and shrugged. It was an odd little gesture, and the resignation in it made that something within him flinch again. Phyllis had tried so hard, for so long, to cover up that soft, lost part of her. She had succeeded so well, until now. She was such a magnificent product of her own determinations, and it hurt him to see such a product spoiled, even though he hated everything it represented. So he said, "I'm sorry," and to his surprise, the words tasted good in his mouth.

"So here I am," she said in a low voice. "I failed with Hal, as I should have expected. I got quite a carpeting for it, and for that business with the cadet. And then Hal wrote that letter. Genex carries the mails. Every big brain in the place, and a lot of little ones, has been racking over it ever since. And they put me on to you. This is supposed to be my last chance—my double or nothing play. If I get that process from you, I get back where I was. On probation, of course, but I'll string along with Genex. If I fail, I'm done. Outside of Genex there isn't much doing, and I don't doubt that I'm pretty thoroughly blacklisted."

"You are," he said flatly. "I get the score now. These plugs around here are supposed to keep you with me until you get the info. Hmm. Suppose I leave?"

"I go with you. I keep after you, I catch up with you some way, I keep trying."

"How long is this supposed to go on?"

"Until I get the process. Or until Genex gets the pipe hauling contract from the Government. In which case I'm automatically out."

"Suppose you quit trying?"

"Then I'm out, as of that moment."

"In other words, your fate is in my hands, to coin a phrase."

"I guess it is, Jeremy." And to his utter astonishment, she began to cry with her mouth open. For such an accomplished actress, she did it very badly indeed. Her heart was in it.

Jeremy sat back and watched her, his brain racing. Hal's letter had taken on a few new meanings, but not enough. "Be good, little man." The rest of that old routine was, "And if you can't be good, be careful." Well, maybe he could have been more careful, but Phyllis seemed to have responded well enough to the bulldozer treatment. Jeremy knew what was the matter with her. She was scared. She had lived by her not inconsiderable wits for a long time, and the clear picture of the end of the line she was facing was a frightening one.

But what about the process? Now it was up to Jeremy to figure it out!

CHAPTER III

Plastic Compact

Hal had done his astute best to explain the process to Jeremy Jedd in that letter. Somewhere in that letter, somewhere in the odd fact of Phyllis's being here—in these three places were components of the process.

She was quieter now.

"Sorry," she sniffled. "I'm in a bad way, I guess. Do you know why I was crying? It was because you didn't get up and leave when I told you all this. You will help me, Jeremy? You will?"

"Help you? How can I?"

"Tell me the process." She leaned closer, excitedly. "Or tell me something almost as good as your process, but better than what Genex has."

"You're very flattering." She really thought he had the process, then. Be good, little man. He'd have to be. But good. "I gather Genex has set up a welding plant on Mars. Why are they worried?"

"Power," she answered. "There are only two power-piles on Mars, and they're worked to the limit. They're so heavy, with the shielding and all. Shipping space is so scarce, with foodstuffs, development equipment and so on, that piles aren't set up until they are absolutely essential. Power is rationed, and it is costing Genex a fortune for the piddling amount they need to process sheet-stock into pipe. Their advantage, of course, is to procure the space for themselves and get rid of one more independent outfit."

"Uh-huh. The fight is really over a much bigger thing than pipe. Hmm. And the outfit that finds a way to ship pipe in less space than sheet-stock, gets the contract and for once has a solid footing against the corporation's expansion."

"But how can you do it, Jeremy? How can you possibly ship pipe in less space than stacks of plastic sheet?"

He smiled. "You really think I'll tell you, don't you? I have no reason to trust you. You have thrown yourself on my mercy, more or less, and given me the choice of saving your skin—your career, anyway—I suppose you call it that—at the risk of having you hand the process to Genex and not only kill off Jedd and Jedd but also kill the brightest chance in fifty years of checking the monopoly. Nope. I'm telling you nothing." I wish someone would tell me, he added to himself.

"But you still stick around," she said thoughtfully. "You met me at the spaceport, you don't throw me to the wolves when you have a chance, you—why, you don't know the process yourself!"

"On the contrary. I'm just sitting here cruelly amusing myself. I've waited years to see you crawl."

"I'm not going to listen to you," she said tightly. "I think I'm right. The only thing I can do is to help you to figure it out. That letter. You. Me. The process is right here at this table, if we can only find out how to put it together."

"This is going to be very entertaining," said Jeremy, far more jovially than he felt. How could this girl, who in the long run operated so stupidly, be so incredibly sharp in detail? "Where would you start?"

"With the letter," she said promptly. She closed her eyes and her lips moved. It dawned on him that she had thoroughly memorized the letter. She opened her eyes wide and asked, "Who is Budgie?"

"A childhood companion," he said, a little taken aback.

"That's a lie. Every fairly close associate you have ever had in your life has been checked."

Jeremy's mouth slowly opened. Then he brought a hand crashing down on the table and bellowed with laughter.

"Do you mean to tell me," he gasped, "that Genex's investigators have been gravely looking through lists of my schoolmates, cousins, bartenders and dates looking for Budgie?"

"We—they tried everything," she said, and added, "Stop that silly cackling. Who was it?"

He held up an irritating forefinger. "Ah-ah! Manners, now. Let us act like ladies and gentlemen, chicken, or I send you to the salt mines."

"I'm sorry," she said angrily. He set his mouth. "I'm sorry," she said with a great deal more sincerity.

"Better," he said. "Now then, I don't think it'll hurt to tell you. Budgie was a parakeet we used to have. He was around very nearly twenty years. We gave him a fine funeral."

The girl stared at him, her eyes glittering with disbelief.

"And yet, according to that letter, the process is nothing Budgie couldn't have told you. Jeremy, I don't believe you. Who was Budgie?"

"So help me, the only Budgie I ever knew was that bird. He swore like a soybean farmer in a urea factory, he did. We called him Budgie because he was a budgerigar, or, to you, a Zebra Parakeet. A budgerigar is the talkingest bird that ever lived."

"What?" she said in disgust. "A creature with memory and no brains could tell you what the process is?" Jeremy started, and she asked, "What's the matter? Have a rush of brains to the head?"

While he fumbled for an answer, she leaned back with narrowed eyes. "I came awfully close to it that time, didn't I? Come clean, Jeremy. You've known about the process ever since you were a kid, now, haven't you?"

"You've got it," he mumbled. She's got it? Who's got what? He clapped his hand to his head. "Memory without brains. That's me."

They stared at each other. "If only I knew a little more about plastics," she breathed. "Or even about your brother. I'll bet if I knew as much about the way Hal's mind works as you do, I could sit right down and write that process out."

Jeremy stared at her and knew she told the truth. His was a quick mind as well as an encyclopedic one, but she was his master at quick intuitive reasoning. A wild plan flitted through his mind—to leap up and rush out, to draw an attack from one of the Genex men who waited patiently for Phyllis to do her work; to prefer charges against the corporation, perhaps. But he rejected it instantly.

They were too clever for that. They would let him go. One of their plastics engineers would work with Phyllis until some hunch she had gotten made sense to him. Then what? Well, either he would figure it out in time or he wouldn't. If not, he was sunk. If so, Genex would so radically underbid his pipe to drive him out that he would be sunk anyway.

"Hal!" The name slipped from his lips, so profound was his sudden wish for his brother. Hal could set him straight with a word, if only he could send the word.

"Me too," whispered Phyllis. "If only I could see Hal once, only for a minute, I'll bet I could—" Suddenly she dived into her handbag, clawing out a pot-pourri of feminine conglomerata. "Where is it? Where is—oh—here." She held a rectangular piece of plastic in her hand. It was blue, smooth, heavy.

"What's that?"

"Just a compact. A lighter. A torch. One of those things. But Hal gave it to me. And I'm just mystic enough to think it'll help me think. He had his hands on it. Didn't you know that all women—even modern women—are witches?" She closed her eyes, clutching the compact, frowning in concentration.

Staring at her, Jeremy frowned too, and thought harder than ever in his life before. Something about memory without brains. Something—and then a line in the letter swam before his mind's eye.

I'd like you to meet her when the rocket-ship docks. She really has what it takes.

"Give me that," he spat, and snatched it roughly out of her grasp. Instinctively, she reached for it. He batted her hand out of the way, hard. She sat on the edge of her chair, her nostrils dilated, rubbing her hand and watching him like a cat.

He turned it over and over, shook it, smelled it, felt it. He opened it, shook out the tinted powders, cracked the mirror retainer with his thumb and slid the glass out. There was nothing unusual about the compact. A little expensive, perhaps, but not unique at all. There was no trademark.

"Where did Hal get this?"

"He didn't say. Bought it, perhaps. Maybe he made it. He has a little outfit. Give it back to me!"

"I will not." Jeremy fell to studying it again.

"Jereee," she said sweetly.

He looked up. She was her old self. She was erect and beautiful and the color was back in her cheeks. Somewhere in a side corner of his mind, he deeply regretted the fact that he admired her so much. She put out her hand. "Give."

"Nope."

She glanced around. "It's evidence. I've been robbed. The property was forcibly taken from me by that man, officer," she said, mimicking a sweet, wronged young thing. "There we were, sitting peacefully over a drink and a snack, when he went berserk and took it away from me and began tearing it apart." Her face went cold and direct again. "Would you tell the nice policeman exactly why you wanted to keep it, Jeremy?"

"Not while Genex and the police get along so nicely," he said grudgingly. "Okay. I'm open to compromise. You don't know the significance of this piece of plastic. You just might be wrong. If Genex's plastics division can't find out anything about it, you're away out of luck."

"Oh," she said. She glanced around at the Genex watchdogs and shivered. "What's your proposition?"

"I have to find out something more. Just what, I'm not sure. Now think carefully. Exactly what do you remember Hal's saying about this compact?"

"Why, he never said anything, much. Just some philosophical quip about women, about me and plastics. I don't remember it exactly."

"Try."

"It was—it was something like this." She paused, and he knew she was running over and over it in her mind, poking and prodding at it for hidden meanings. Finally she shrugged, and quoted, "'I like giving you plastics, Phyl. Plastics are an analogical approach to women, and some of 'em come pretty close. Some day maybe we'll all be familiar with a plastic that will react differently under the same stimulus, the way you do. Laughter this time, tears the next, whichever seems to be expected.' I didn't think it was very flattering."

Jeremy stared at her, comprehension sparking, flaming, coruscating in his brain. He said hoarsely:

"Give me the compact. I've got to get it to a lab."

"No," she said firmly. She took it out of his unwilling hands. "Frankly, I don't know what you've figured out. But I will, if I kick it around long enough. If I can't, I know those who can. Well," she purred, arching her body, "I'd better run along, Jerry darling. Thank you so much for everything."

The hand that closed on her wrist seemed to be made of beryl steel. "Don't you move," Jeremy said. He said it in a way which kept her from moving. "You can't take that chance. You don't know enough. If you take that away, I'll never know either, and I'd see both of us dead first. I'll make a bargain. Once more. I must make a test on that compact. I can do it right here. Let me do it. You can watch. Whatever happens, your description will be enough for a plastics engineer. It will give us both a break. And if there really is a secret there, you'll have a chance of getting what you want. You'll know. You don't know now—you only guess."

It was a long time before she nodded her head.

When she did, he took the compact and, with his knife, scraped off a shaving and dropped it into the ash tray. He took a plate-handler from the warm rack and touched the shaving. Then he put his cigarette to it. Then he held it with the plate-handler and held it in the flame of his cigarette lighter. Part of it burned. He sniffed the smoke, nodded, and set the temperature regulator on the induction-heater.

He dropped the compact in and closed the drawer.

"No!" she shouted. "You're burning it! You've got the process, and you're destroying it so I won't have a chance!" She lunged for the drawer. He caught her wrists, transferred them both to one of his powerful hands, and shook his head.

"Sit tight," he snapped.

The centerpiece chimed, and the drawer popped open. Their heads cracked together painfully as they bent to look inside. Neither noticed the pain.

In the bottom of the pan lay a twisted piece of blue plastic. It spread almost all the way across the roomy drawer. It was flat, and followed a series of regular convolutions. It dawned on both of them at the same moment what it was.

Script.

As if the plastic itself were the track of a writing-brush, it spelled the two words:

I REMEMBER

"That's for me," breathed Phyllis. "And I'm a dope. The memory without brains—even I know about that phenomenon. Now that I see it done, I remember a demonstration in school, where a cube was compression-molded into a spool-shape. When it was heated again, it slumped together and formed the original cube. A little sloppy, but a cube nevertheless. With a little refinement, I don't see why extruded pipe shouldn't be compression-molded into rods, bricks, or book-ends and still come out pipe when it's heated. Beats sheet-stock welding a mile. Jeremy, my boy, you may have my melted-up old compact with my blessings. You may frame it and hang it over your lab bench when you come to work for Genex, as you must or starve. 'I remember.' I like that."

"You don't remember how badly you needed help, Phyllis," he said hoarsely. "My help."

"Plastics and women, my boy. Remember?" She rose like a queen, gathered up her belongings and drifted doorward, beckoning imperiously to the watchdogs. Ignoring Jeremy Jedd completely, they followed her out.

CHAPTER IV

Surprise for Genex

Abruptly Jeremy came to his senses with an inarticulate, animal noise and raced to the door. The lithe man with white hair at his temples stepped in front of him.

"Want something, chum?" he asked softly.

Jeremy raised a hand to sweep the man aside but his eye fell on what the man was holding in his hand. It was a rectangular leatherette needle case. Jeremy had seen them before. A touch of the case, a little pressure on a stud, and you were needled. And the variety of hypos used was peculiarly horrible.

They stood there, frozen, for a long instant. Then someone passed.

A spaceport guard.

"Guard!" Jeremy rapped, leaping backward. "This man's threatening me. Needle!"

The guard bobbled a remarkable Adam's apple at them and then strode toward the white-templed man.

"Give it here, bud."

The man smiled, raised the case, snapped it open and extracted a cigarette. "A joke, guard. Perfectly harmless."

"Ha-ha!" said the guard with his mouth only. He clicked his lips shut and looked at Jeremy with one eyebrow raised. "You sure are jumpy, Blondy," he remarked, and strode off.

Jeremy controlled himself with a prodigious effort and swung on the older man. "Listen, you—"

The man blew smoke at Jeremy. "Better cool down, son," he said kindly. "We joke often, but not always. Hold it!" he snapped, watching Jeremy's darkening face. "You can butter me up and down these walls, but I'm only one of a couple of thousand that you'd have to whip afterward. Better go on back now and have another drink." And before Jeremy could move so much as a lip, the man was striding up the corridor in that way which did not seem to be swift.

Balked, frustrated, furious, Jeremy stood for a while and then turned back into the restaurant. He slouched back to his table, kicked the chair out and dropped into it. He could use that plastic-memory stunt to stow pipe. Sure. And when he thought of the low bid that Genex would put up against him, his stomach turned over.

He glowered into the heater drawer, where the blue plastic script told him placidly what he would never forget:

I REMEMBER

And then he thought of Hal's words to Phyllis.

The demonstrations supporting registered bids were made in a public hearing, in the vast offices of the Shipping Space Priority Board. The Space Commissioner, an oldster with a snowy lion's mane and the eyes of an eight-year-old child, had his wattles in his palms and his elbows on his desk. He was flanked by the featureless protocolloids of his well-peopled bureau.

In the wide area before him were three groups of people, each hovering over a tangle of apparatus. Behind them were the rows of seats for the interested public, one third of the seats occupied. The second demonstration was in progress. The first demonstrator and his helpers were dismantling their bulky machine—part brake, part automatic welder, it had produced several hundred feet of inch-and-a-half pipe out of a long and compact bale of sheet-stock.

The galleries had regarded the performance as quite impressive, whether or not they knew that Winfield and Shock, who presented the process, was a General Export affiliate, brought in to establish a figment of competition.

General Export's management had shrewdly chosen a presentable demonstration by a more than presentable demonstrator. She was slender, poised, clear-eyed, clear-voiced, and her hair was green. She was saying:

"—and in spite of the question of simultaneous patent application, General Export will offer this pipe at a lower price per unit shipped than any competitor could conceivably meet, due to a secret treatment of the original plastic."

"Due to the secret mistreatment of competition," growled a man in the gallery, who had once owned a space-line.

The demonstrator walked gracefully to a stack of long, slender plastic rods beside her machine and lifted one. "Mr. Commissioner, this rod is twelve feet long and one sixteenth of an inch square. As you will observe, the rod is extremely flexible. Stowage of these rods will therefore be compact and economical, since rectangular holds are not necessary. Bundles of these rods will follow the curves, if any, of the retaining bulkheads, and therefore use every cubic inch of space economically. I shall now demonstrate the creation of usable seamless pipe from these rods."

She stepped over to her machine, slid the rod in at one end, and threw a lever. "This is a very simple heater. On Earth or Mars, particularly on Mars, it may be adequately operated by sun-mirrors, thereby tapping no local power-source."

There was a faint hiss. A small motor whined, and a twelve-foot length of pipe shot out with a dry clatter. She repeated the performance twice more and then bowed respectfully to the Commissioner, who said:

"Thank you very much, Miss Exeter. Next!"

A clerk sang, "Mr. Jeremy Jedd, of Jedd and Jedd! Process, pipe stowage, interplanetary!"

Jeremy stood up, ran off the customary courtesies of the applicant, and then said:

"I am deeply grateful to Miss Exeter for many things. One of these is her concise and well-presented description of the advantages of General Export's plastic-memory process. She has saved me much explanation, for my process is precisely the same. The difference lies in the plastic treatment before and after the processing you see here. I will say at the start that as regards price of the rods I am demonstrating, they cost at least five times as much as those shown by Miss Exeter. I am, apparently, drastically underbid."

Jeremy had to pause then to duck under the wave of comment that swept over the huge room. The Commissioner cleared his throat and raised a forefinger without moving his hand from his chin. A clerk raised a gavel without moving anything but his arm, and brought it down with a crash.

"Get on with it," growled the Commissioner. His tone said, If you can't compete with the other bids, you idiot, why waste my time, or even that of these thousand-odd other people?

Jeremy stepped to his machine, which was almost a duplicate of the one Phyllis Exeter had used, and lifted an end of one of his rods. He did not attempt to lift it all at once; apparently it was quite heavy.

What followed was the same as the previous showing, with one noticeable exception; the pipe came out in a twenty-foot length. Again the room buzzed. This time Jeremy held up his hand. "The greater length of the pipe is an advantage over these other methods, but not the greatest," he said calmly. He threw the heater-control over again—

Without loading in another rod!

A twenty-foot length of pipe joined its predecessor.

Again he pulled the control, and again. Each time a twenty-foot pipe was produced, until six of them lay side by side on the floor. The air above them shimmered very slightly. They were uniform and perfect.

"Mr. Commissioner, I ask that space for shipment of pipe to Mars be allotted to my company because the stowage is as compact as any product on the market, because I can ship approximately nine point three times as much pipe per cube unit as my nearest competitor, and because I can deliver pipe per unit length at eleven per cent cheaper than anyone else on earth! And that in spite of the apparently prohibitively low bid of Miss Exeter's most altruistic firm. Thank you, gentlemen."

"Just a minute, young man!" said the Commissioner. "You have a most remarkable process. I—ah—hear comments to the effect that the pipe was concealed in the machine. Can you give some layman's explanation of this extraordinary effect?"

Jeremy smiled as he glanced at the machine in front of him.

"Certainly, sir. My company, you may remember, secured a portion of the space allotted to pipe shipments during your last session, by devising the present method of nesting the smaller diameters of pipe inside the larger ones—a method which was not patentable, which my competitors were slow to discover, but quick to copy.

"In the present case, I very much fear that they have repeated their lack of—if I may say it—logical thoroughness. You see, my pipe is still nested, one inside the other, six taking the space of one, and the whole compressed into the rods you see here."

"You nest pipe of the same diameter?" said the Commissioner incredulously; and that odd, mad, detached part of Jeremy's mind noticed hilariously that the oldster's bright eyes blinked with repressed anger.

"Yes sir, I do, in effect. But it is a question of density. The inner pipe is a condensed plastic—a patented process, by the way. This plastic, while undergoing the 'memorizing' phenomenon so beautifully explained by Miss Exeter, restores its original density as well as its original form. The inner pipe, then, is simply condensed more than the one which surrounds it, and so on until the six are nested. Then the whole is compression, molded into rods of precisely the dimensions of those admirably compact ones produced by General Export.

"Now, when heat treated, the outer pipe returns to its original form and is automatically ejected from the machine. It has, of course, pre-heated the next pipe, which pre-heats the one after. It takes, actually, far less heat per unit length to restore my pipe than it does to restore the pipe of—ah—any of my competitors. A small advantage, however, and merely hair-splitting under the circumstances."

"I feel you deserve many congratulations, Mr. Jedd. Purely as a matter of personal interest, might I ask how you came to discover such a remarkable effect?"

"Indeed you may, Mr. Commissioner. The process was developed by my brother on Mars. He enlisted the courtesy and kindness of a messenger to send me a sample. It was in the form of a compact—a lady's compact—and when heat treated it separated into a plastic sheet which formed in script the words 'I remember.'"

Jeremy grinned broadly. "It was some time before I realized that there was anything more to be learned from the sample, for the words covered the rest of it. When I put this—this message into my pocket, I saw the rest of the plastic and, guided by a hint in a rather cryptic verbal message concerning women and plastics, I again treated the sample. I got more script. It read, 'Density Two.' Then I knew what he was driving at. I treated it again and got 'Density Three' and still again and got"—he smiled—"a length of pipe. After that it was little trouble for me to analyze the plastic and develop the condensing treatment—I beg your pardon. I think somebody had better get Miss Exeter a glass of water...."

They met that evening, and perhaps it was by accident. She was standing in the shadow near his apartment building when he came home from the lab.

"Jerry?"

"Phyllis! I—I'm sorry."

"Sorry? That's what you say when you realize you did a wrong. I don't think you mean that. Isn't it more a kind of—pity?"

He did not deny it. He said, "What can I do for you?"

"I—I need a job now."

He took her hand and drew her into the pale light. Her hand lay in his like something asleep. "I couldn't give you a job, Phyl."

"Yes, I know, I know. I have never been—faithful. Jerry, I haven't been faithful to myself."

"I don't understand. You've always—"

"Always thought I could take 'em or leave 'em alone. Not so, Jeremy."

"Oh," he said. "Oh, that." He squeezed her hand a little. "Your hands are soft. Maybe that's part of the trouble, Phyl."

"I think I know what you mean. There are jobs for me, but—"

"—not jobs for your wit or your wits."

"I see. I think I can—get there, Jerry."

"I know you can. Good-by, Phyllis."

"Good-by, Jeremy."

There is one job which centuries of human progress has not done away with. No one has developed a self-washing window. When one of mankind's monuments to himself reaches a thousand feet into the air, and its windows must be washed, that washing is a job for a rare type of human. He must be strong, steady, and brave. He must live, away from his job, in ways which do not unfit him for it.

Jeremy was glad when he heard Phyllis was doing this work. He knew then what he had always guessed—that some day she would "get there." He knew it in his heart.

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Table of Contents

- MEMORY

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE