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He found himself on a paved boulevard. To the northwest, starting at about a quarter of a mile from the Machine, other buildings began. They were geometrically arranged in clusters around the boulevard, at the far end of which, amid embanked flowers and trees, stood the palace of the Machine.
The palace was not tall; its stately contours nestled among the vivid green and brilliance of its verdant environment. But that wasn’t what held Gosseyn. His mind was reaching, visualizing, comprehending. President Hardie and his daughter Patricia lived there. If he was deeply involved, then so must they be. What had made them plant in his mind the conviction that he was married to a dead Patricia? It seemed futile. Any hotel-group lie detector would have found him out even if Nordegg hadn’t been around to accuse him.
Gosseyn turned and strode around the base of the Machine back toward the city proper. He ate lunch in a small restaurant near the river, then began to thumb through the yellow pages of a telephone directory. He knew the name he was looking for, and he found it almost right away:
ENRIGHT, DAVID LESTER, psychologist
709 Medical Arts Building
Enright had written several books which were prescribed reading for anyone who hoped to get beyond the tenth day in the games. It was a pleasure to remember the crystal-like clarity of the man’s writing, the careful semantic consideration given to every multi-ordinal word used, the breadth of intellect and understanding of the human body-and-mind-as-a-whole.
Gosseyn closed the directory and went out into the street. He felt at ease; his nerves were calm. Hope was surging in him. The very fact that he remembered Enright and his books in such detail showed how lightly the intruding amnesia rested on his memory. It shouldn’t take long once the famous man began to work on him. The reception clerk in the doctor’s office said, “Dr. Enright can be seen by appointment only. I can give you an hour three days from now; that is, Thursday at two P.M. You must, however, make a twenty-five-dollar deposit.”
Gosseyn paid the money, accepted his receipt, and went out. He was disappointed, but not too much so. Good doctors were bound to be busy men in a world that was still far from having attained null-A perfection.
On the street again, he watched one of the longest, most powerful cars he had ever seen slide past him and draw up at the curb a hundred feet away. The car gleamed in the afternoon sun. A liveried attendant leaped smartly from beside the driver and opened the door.
Teresa Clark stepped out. She wore an afternoon dress of some dark, rich material. The ensemble did not make her appear less slim, but the dark coloring of the dress made her face seem a little fuller and, by contrast, not so heavily ta
“Who,” Gosseyn asked a man who had stopped beside him, “is that?”
The stranger glanced at him in surprise and then he spoke the name Gosseyn had already guessed. “Why, that’s Patricia Hardie, daughter of President Hardie. Quite a neurotic, I understand. Look at that car, for instance. Like an oversize jewel, a sure sign of—”
Gosseyn was turning away, turning his face from the car and its recent occupant. No sense in being recognized until he had thought this through. It seemed ridiculous that she would actually come again that very night to a dark lot to be alone with a strange man.
But she was there.
Gosseyn stood in the shadows staring thoughtfully at the shadow figure of the girl. He had come to the rendezvous very skillfully. Her back was to him and she seemed to be unaware of his presence. It was possible, in spite of his careful reco
She was sitting, in the begi
She hadn’t been so nervous the night before. She hadn’t, except for the little period when she was acting fearful of the men who were supposed to have been chasing her, seemed nervous at all. It was the waiting, Gosseyn decided. She was geared to meeting people, and to handling them. Alone, she had no resources of patience.
What was it the man had said that afternoon? Neurotic. There was no doubt of it. As a child she must have been denied that early null-A training so necessary to the development of certain intelligences. Just how such training could have been neglected in the home of a superbly integrated man such as President Hardie was a puzzle. Whatever the reason, she was one human being whose thalamus was always in full control of her actions. He could imagine her having a nervous breakdown.
He continued to watch her there in that almost darkness. After ten minutes, she stood up and stretched, then she sat down again. She took off her shoes, and, rolling over toward Gosseyn, lay down on the grass. She saw Gosseyn.
“It’s all right,” Gosseyn assured her softly. “It’s only me. I guess you heard me coming.”
He guessed nothing of the kind, but she had jerked to a sitting position, and it seemed the best way to soothe her.
“You gave me a start,” she said. But her voice was calm and unstartled, properly subdued. She had suave thalamic reactions, this girl.
He sank down on the grass near her and let the feel of the night creep upon him. The second policeless night! It seemed hard to believe. He could hear the noises of the city, faint, unexciting, quite unsuggestive. Where were the gangs and the thieves? They seemed unreal, examined from the safety of this dark hiding place. Perhaps the years and the great educational system had wi
Gosseyn looked at the girl. Then very softly he began to talk. He described his plight—the way he had been kicked out of the hotel, the amnesia that hid his memory, the curious delusion that he had been married to Patricia Hardie. “And then,” he finished ruefully, “she turned out to be the daughter of the president and very much alive.”
Patricia Hardie said, “These psychologists, such as the one you’re going to—is it true that they’re all people who have won the trip to Venus in the games, and have come back to Earth to practice their profession? And that actually no one else can go in for psychiatry and the related sciences?”
Gosseyn hadn’t thought of that. “Why, yes,” he said. “Others can train for it of course, but—”
He was conscious of a sudden eagerness, a desire for the moment of the interview with Doctor Enright to arrive. How much he might learn from such a man! Caution came then, wonder as to why she had asked that question instead of commenting on his story as a whole. In the dark he stared at her searchingly. But her face, her expression, was nightwrapped. Her voice came again.