Who had sent this man, then? The Society of Ancients in secret? In order to test Shekt's reliability?
Or was Shekt a traitor? He had been closeted with someone earlier in the day-someone in bulky clothes, such as Outsiders wore in fear of radioactive poisoning.
In either case Shekt might go down in doom, and why should he himself be dragged down as well? He was a young man with nearly four decades of life before him. Why should he anticipate the Sixty?
Besides, it would mean promotion for him...And Shekt was so old, the next Census would probably get him anyway, so it would involve very little harm for him. Practically none at all.
The technician had decided. His hand reached for the communicator, and he punched the combination that would lead directly to the private room of the High Minister of all Earth, who, under the Emperor and Procurator, held the power of life and death over every man on Earth.
It was evening again before the misty impressions within Schwartz's skull sharpened through the pink pain. He remembered the trip to the low, huddling structures by the lakeside, the long crouching wait in the rear of the car.
And then-what? What? His mind yanked away at the sluggish thoughts...Yes, they had come for him. There was a room, with instruments and dials, and two pills... That was it. They had given him pills, and he had taken them cheerfully. What had he to lose? Poisoning would have been a favor.
And then-nothing.
Wait! There had been flashes of consciousness...People bending over him...Suddenly he remembered the cold motion of a stethoscope over his chest...A girl had been feeding him.
It flashed upon him that he had been operated upon and, in panic, he flung the bed sheets from him and sat up.
A girl was upon him, hands on his shoulders, forcing him back onto the pillows. She spoke soothingly, but he did not understand her. He tensed himself against the slim arms, but uselessly. He had no strength.
He held his hands before his face. They seemed normal. He moved his legs and heard them brush against the sheets. They couldn't have been amputated..
He turned to the girl and said, without much hope, "Can you understand me? Do you know where I am?" He scarcely recognized his own voice.
The girl smiled and suddenly poured out a rapid patter of liquid sound. Schwartz groaned. Then an older man entered, the one who had given him the pills. The man and the girl spoke together, the girl turning to him after a while, pointing to his lips and making little gestures of invitation to him.
"What?" he said.
She nodded eagerly, her pretty face glowing with pleasure, until, despite himself, Schwartz felt glad to look at it.
"You want me to talk?" he asked.
The man sat down upon his bed and motioned him to open his mouth. He said, " Ah-h-h," and Schwartz repeated "Ah-h-h" while the man's fingers massaged Schwartz's Adam's apple.
"What's the matter?" said Schwartz peevishly, when the pressure was removed. " Are you surprised I can talk? What do you think I am?"
The days passed, and Schwartz learned a few things. The man was Dr. Shekt-the first human being he knew by name since he had stepped over the rag doll. The girl was his daughter, Pola. Schwartz found that he no longer needed to shave. The hair on his face never grew. It frightened him. Did it ever grow?
His strength came back quickly. They were letting him put on clothes and walk about now, and were feeding him something more than mush.
Was his trouble amnesia, then? Were they treating him for that? Was all this world normal and natural, while the world he thought he remembered was only the fantasy of an amnesic brain?
And they never let him step out of the room, not even into the corridor. Was he a prisoner, then? Had he committed a crime?
There never can be a man so lost as one who is lost in the vast and intricate corridors of his own lonely mind, where none may reach and none may save. There never was a man so helpless as one who cannot remember.
Pola amused herself by teaching him words. He was not at all amazed at the ease with which he picked them up and remembered. He remembered that he had had a trick memory in the past; that memory, at least, seemed accurate. In two days he could understand simple sentences. In three he could make himself understood.
On the third day, however, he did become amazed. Shekt taught him numbers and set him problems. Schwartz would give answers, and Shekt would look at a timing device and record with rapid strokes of his stylus. But then Shekt explained the term "logarithm" to him and asked for the logarithm of two.
Schwartz picked his words carefully. His vocabulary was still minute and he reinforced it with gestures. "I-not-say. Answer-not-number."
Shekt nodded his head excitedly and said, "Not number. Not this, not that; part this, part that."
Schwartz understood quite well that Shekt had confirmed his statement that the answer was not an even number but a fraction and therefore said, "Point three zero one zero three -and-more-numbers."
"Enough!"
Then came the amazement. How had he known the answer to that? Schwartz was certain that he had never heard of logarithms before, yet in his mind the answer had come as soon as the question was put. He had no idea of the process by which it had been calculated. It was as if his mind were an independent entity, using him only as its mouthpiece.
Or had he once been a mathematician, in the days before his amnesia?
He found it exceedingly difficult to wait the days out. Increasingly he felt he must venture out into the world and force an answer from it somehow. He could never learn in the prison of this room, where (the thought suddenly came to him) he was but a medical specimen.
The chance came on the sixth day. They were beginning to trust him too much, and one time when Shekt left he did not lock the door. Where usually the door so neatly closed itself that the very crack of its joining the wall became invisible, this time a quarter inch of space showed.