Martian Knightlife Read online

  "Acute stress and anxiety," he answered. "Patches of memory loss with no coherent pattern. I interpreted it as a subconscious attempt to disown the old personality, anticipating the need to identify with the new one. The problem was reconciling internally what he had convinced himself he believed consciously."

  "Hmm." Perrel looked perplexed. "It seems strange that none of this showed up in our tests." He was probably also put out at Sarda's having consulted an outsider and not the project's physician. "Did you know Leo previously, or something?"

  "He was introduced by my professional partner, Elaine Corley. They had been friends for a while."

  "He's never mentioned any such person to me."

  "That was one of the things he'd forgotten when he appeared at my office. I attributed it to a complete breakdown."

  "So it would seem. . . . And is she helping in any of this?"

  Balmer fidgeted uncomfortably. "I, er, haven't heard from her for two days. She doesn't return calls."

  "Strange," Perrel commented. He shook his head, seemingly not knowing what to make of it.

  Balmer shrugged. "She was a highly strung woman under a lot of stress, if you want my opinion. A lot of this Sarda business was affecting her too. She'd been acting erratically in a number of ways. I can't say I'm totally surprised."

  Herbert Morch began, "This is all very well, but the main—" then stopped as a commotion of rising voices culminating in protests from his secretary came from the outer office. Moments later, Sarda burst in, bulging-eyed and purple-faced. He glared around the room for a second, and then leaped at Balmer, seizing him by the lapels with both hands. "It was a trick!" he shouted. "The whole thing was a setup! Where is it? You'll tell me, Balmer, or I'll wring your neck!"

  Perrel stepped forward to separate them, while Herbert jumped up and came around the desk. Delia, Herbert's secretary, watched helplessly from the doorway. "Get Sam Eason up here," Herbert called to Max. Max nodded, white-faced, and pulled out his comset.

  "He's mad! Get him off!" Balmer yelled.

  Herbert and Perrel pulled at Sarda's arms. "Let go of him, Leo!" Herbert barked. They dragged Sarda off, but he lunged back again as soon as they loosened their grip. Herbert forced himself between Sarda and Balmer, planting both hands restrainingly on Sarda's chest. "What are you raving about, Leo? What's gone?"

  Sarda pointed an accusing finger over Herbert's shoulder. "The five million advance money that I banked! He knew about it! It's gone! He got the codes out of me while I was under. That's what it was all about!"

  "You're insane! I don't know what you're talking about," Balmer bellowed back over Herbert's other shoulder. The duplicate Sarda who had vanished would already have known about that, of course. This one had evidently only just found out. That must have been another item included in the lost memories. The whole thing was preposterous. Sarda had robbed himself and didn't even know it.

  "Well, this isn't the way to solve anything," Herbert said, half turning between them to address both. "Calm down, Leo. If it's true, I know it must be a shock. But I don't think Dr. Balmer would have appeared here like this if he were responsible, do you? Now why don't we sit down and discuss this like civilized people?"

  "Who else could have done it?" Sarda seethed, but drew back grudgingly. Herbert had a point.

  "Now," Herbert said, "tell us from the beginning, Leo. What's happened?"

  Sarda glanced balefully at Balmer, who was edging away. "You know what the arrangement was, Herbert. Long before the experiment took place, we acknowledged that there were certain unique risks involved that . . ." He broke off as Sam Eason, Quantonix's security officer, appeared in the doorway behind Delia.

  "What have we got? Some kind of a problem here?"

  "Oh, I think everything's under control now, Sam," Herbert said. "There was some misunderstanding for a moment. Perhaps, if you'd just stick around outside with Delia for a few minutes . . ."

  "Sure thing." Sam gave Sarda and Balmer a stern look to let them know the situation was entrusted to his department now, and withdrew, leaving the door ajar.

  "If we—" Herbert began again, but Balmer put up a hand.

  "It's no good trying to go over what we know," he said. "The answers are in the huge gaps of missing things that Leo doesn't know."

  "It's going to take a lot of time and patience, Leo," Perrel told Sarda.

  That was the last thing Balmer needed. He shook his head. "Not here. I was on the right track before the experiment happened and brought about the crisis. We need to get him away from here, back to my office—a different environment and associations, away from all the negative triggers that are operating here."

  Herbert looked at Sarda appealingly. "Will you do that, Leo? It sounds as if it might be the best chance of getting a lead on what happened to your money."

  "It might work . . . I guess." Sarda looked suspicious but apparently couldn't argue.

  "Maybe Stewart should go too—to keep us involved, as it were," Max suggested. It was a veiled way of asking if Balmer would feel safe working with Sarda alone.

  Balmer raised a hand hastily. "I appreciate the offer, gentlemen, but I have my own methods. They work best when fully removed from extraneous influences." Perrel seemed a bit disgruntled but left it at that.

  "When would you want to start?" Herbert asked Balmer.

  "The sooner, the better," Balmer replied. "Is there any reason why Dr. Sarda couldn't come back with me now?" Herbert looked inquiringly at Sarda. Sarda returned a resigned shrug.

  "Sam," Herbert called to the outer office. Eason stuck his head in. "Leo Sarda will be leaving with Dr. Balmer right away. Could you go with them to reception, just to make sure they get off the premises okay?"

  "Sure thing," Sam said, holding open the door.

  * * *

  Sarda opened his eyes and looked around. He was in the consulting room at Balmer's office, sitting in the black leather recliner that Balmer used for his patients. Balmer was standing in front of him, peering at him intently. Sarda was confused. He remembered coming here with Balmer from Quantonix, and acrimonious exchanges between them all the way. What Balmer had been doing at Quantonix, he wasn't sure. He remembered being enraged at discovering that the five million was gone from the account at the Lowell Barham Bank, and accusing Balmer of taking it. It didn't make any sense. That was the other Sarda's loss: the copy's—which had been the whole idea. It had been his own plan. Why would he accuse Balmer? Stewart Perrel had been there with the Morches, expressing concern at his supposedly forgetting things. Nothing made any sense.

  "Leo?" Balmer's voice was curiously anxious. Sarda focused on him. "How are you feeling?"

  "I feel . . . strange—as if I've been confused over things, but I'm not sure why." Sarda realized he had just awakened from a trance. This hadn't been scheduled. He also realized with alarm that he had no recollection of closing the deal—the big one. His expression darkened. He had never liked Balmer or trusted him. "What's going on?" he demanded.

  "Just bear with me, Leo. What are the last things you remember?"

  "Being back in Quantonix for the last couple of days before you showed up . . . That's crazy. What was I doing back there? Why wasn't the copy around? Lots of questions from Stewart, Tom Norgent, others . . . Stupid questions. It seems like I was having trouble remembering a lot of things. I don't know why. What have you been doing, Henry?"

  Balmer seemed encouraged. He raised his hands placatingly. "Let's go back a bit further—before the experiment. You remember the plan to appropriate the five million? It was your fixation, Leo—after you and Elaine came to me with the proposal for resuscitating you. And then the more worthwhile one of cutting our own deal . . . ?"

  Sarda nodded. "I went into the process. Then, I guess, there were a couple of days blank." That would have been while he was in stasis suspension.

  "Yes, yes. Go on."

  "I remember coming out of resuscitation; leaving the building with Elaine. . . . We met you, came
back here for a while, and then you took me to that crummy place out at the end of Gorky, where I was holed up for days."

  "I'm sorry, but it was necessary, Leo. We couldn't risk your being recognized and mistaken for the copy at that point."

  Sarda looked around. "So where is Elaine?"

  "Er, not here. She's out of town right now. We'll come to that later. So you remember the exchanges over technical details, setting up the meeting at Zodiac to close the deal. . . ."

  "I left on time, went down to the maglev terminal . . ."

  "And . . . ?" Balmer was taut, like an overwound spring on the verge of flying apart. He made tiny, impatient, circular motions with his hands.

  Sarda frowned. That was where it got screwy. "I never got to the maglev. There was a guy there, turned out in a suit, like a lawyer or something. He gave some name—I don't remember it; `Tune' or something. Said he was from Zodiac and would drive me there. It was supposed to have been your idea."

  "Me? I don't know anything about it. What then?"

  "I didn't believe him. But when I tried to pass, this other guy appeared from somewhere—huge guy, black. And they had a dog."

  "Dog?"

  "Big, black, like a police dog, or military. Mean looking. It belonged to the guy in the suit. He gave it orders. There was no way I could argue. They took me down to the traffic level. They had a car waiting. And then . . ." Sarda frowned. It was clear up to that point, but then everything became fragmented, like a jigsaw picture breaking up into pieces and gaps.

  "What?" Balmer prompted.

  "I'm not sure. . . . We sat in the car. There was another car parked not far away. Elaine was in it. She came across and looked in at me." Sarda drew a hand across his forehead as if wiping a piece of hair away. "She was upset. I'm not surprised. It's crazy—I didn't know who she was. She went back to the other car with the guy in the suit. . . . And the black guy from the car brought me here, to this office. You were in a panic, talking to Walworth at Zodiac. I couldn't understand what was going on then, but it's clear now. The deal went through, but we weren't a part of it." Something sickening seemed to open up in Sarda's stomach, and his anger came flooding back. He started to rise from the recliner. "What's happened, Henry? If you're pulling some kind of double-cross—"

  "No, no, I assure you." Balmer eased him back down. "The man with the dog. He's the one we have to find."

  "Are you telling me the money from that deal has gone missing too?" Sarda asked menacingly. "You'd better not be, because—" A call tone sounded from the comset in Balmer's jacket pocket. He snatched it out and answered.

  "Yes? . . . Yes." Balmer's face paled. "I'm working on it now. I think we have the answer. It just needs a little time. . . ." He listened, then gulped visibly. "Yes, I understand. . . . No, of course not. . . . Three days."

  "What—" Sarda began. Balmer cut him off with a wave. Sarda saw that he was sweating.

  "This man with the dog. Can you describe him?"

  "Well, as I said, he had a suit—dark; black, or maybe navy. Tall, with wavy hair. Easygoing, smiling kind of person. He had clear eyes, like blue ice—the kind that seem to look right through you."

  Balmer gesticulated nervously. "Anything else? What about the person who was driving the car? Can you recall anything more about him or her? Or the car itself? Did you get its registration?"

  "The driver was all wrapped up. I don't go around memorizing the registrations of every car I see. Do you?" Sarda thought back. "It was classy looking, dark colored. Not sure of the type . . ." Then Sarda remembered something. "But there was a sort of chrome logo on the trunk. It said something Machine. Funny name. Alice, or something like that." Sarda cast his mind back, trying to visualize it. Balmer fished out his comset again, activated it, and brought up a directory listing of vehicle dealers and renters in Lowell.

  "Alazahad?" he offered.

  Sarda nodded. "Good thinking, Henry. Yes, I'm pretty sure that was it: Alazahad Machine."

  "Let's try their web link, just out of curiosity," Balmer murmured. He operated the comset again and watched for a response. "Hm. Owner and proprietor, Mahom Alazahad." He entered another command, studied the result, and then directed a copy to the larger screen on the desk to one side of the room. Then he looked at Sarda inquiringly.

  Sarda took in the face: coal black, massively proportioned, smiling broadly beneath a red fez nesting in a wild bush of fuzzy hair. The caption beneath read: THE MR. WHEELS OF UNBEATABLE DEALS. When Sarda had seen him, he was wearing a silky green coat.

  "That's him!" he pronounced without hesitation.

  3

  Solomon Leppo had been born on Mars and raised in a settlement called Americyon, founded among the southern highlands in the early days to put into practice the ideals of communal living and sharing. There, apart from household furnishings and personal effects, the community had owned everything. Private quarters were allowed only for married couples and families; the rest slept in dormitories, ate together, relaxed and exercised together, and worked together in roles assigned via a military-style command system that employed ranks and uniforms. The expectation was that everyone would find fulfillment through universal recognition of their contributions according to their inclinations and abilities, great or humble. Solomon departed at the age of fifteen by stowing away with a passing Arab caravan of surface crawlers and trailers that had camped nearby on their way to make a home somewhere. He eventually ended up at Lowell, where he found work as a trainee fitter in a machine shop. From there he had progressed to equipment servicing and repair, and now, at nineteen, was making good money as Mahom Alazahad's resident mechanic.

  The key to everything that had appeal in life, he had decided, was money. Sure, like some people said, it wasn't everything; but all the other things depended on it. In all his long years of observing life and forming insights as to how the limited time that it offered could best be enjoyed, he had come to identify three things at the bottom of it all that mattered: girls—at Americyon, betrothals were by approval that depended more on social needs than what the individuals involved thought about it, and the likelihood of his getting approval of any kind had been a joke; things, like clothes he picked himself, a place to live that he'd decided he liked, or a snazzy set of wheels to drive around on—for instance, any of the numbers in the front row lined up across Mahom's lot; and freedom, which in Solomon's vocabulary meant being able to devote his energies to pursuing the first two, as opposed to having to do what somebody else—such as the superintending tribunal at Americyon—decided he would do. But simply being free to pursue one's ends didn't amount to much without the necessary wherewithal to achieve them. In short, it all boiled down to money. True, you couldn't take it with you at the end of the act; but where else could you go without it?

  He looked up from reconnecting the turbine compressor gearing in a Mars-assembled "Camel" tractor in the workshop, as the sound came of a car turning in from Beacon Way. A shiny black Metrosine, flashing silver and white wheels and outside trim, drew up in front of the door of the office building. Solomon had seen it around town a few times. Three men got out, all soberly and more expensively dressed than the norm for Mars, and went inside. Several seconds later, Phil Verlan, Mahom's sales manager, appeared from among some parked vehicles and sauntered in the side door, drawn by the scent of possible prospective customers.

  Now, that was what he meant by money, Solomon told himself as he settled back to what he was doing. Doing things in style was what pulled the interesting chicks. In a place like Mars, a good mechanic would always be able to pay the rent, take care of the bills, and would never need to look very long for a job; but it would never lead to the kind of life that had style. Working for Mahom, however, opened up other possibilities that went beyond just fixing trucks, autos, and other weird kinds of machines that appeared in the yard. The "Stores" building at the back contained enough hardware to equip a revolution. With his mechanical and workshop skills and some applied study, Solomon
could use his time here to start himself on the way to becoming a weaponry and ammunition expert. Now, that was something that could command really good money. The people who had what it took kept big places on their payrolls for those who helped them hang onto it.

  Having grown up on Mars, Solomon had difficulty imagining what life must be like on Earth, with every square inch of land controlled by a government that laid down rules you couldn't argue with, and nowhere much different for anybody to go. Here, there was an "Administrative Congress" in Lowell, a "Security Council" at Osaka, in the Tharsis region, a "Directorate" at Zerolon, on the planet's far side above Hellas, and other kinds of setups at other lesser places, all of which performed more or less the same kind of function in spelling out a few basic rules that few people would argue with, and backing them up with the muscle and firepower to make sure they stuck. For instance, you didn't walk in and take anything you fancied of anyone else's just because you happened to be bigger and meaner, or blow someone away for disagreeing with your opinions. And that seemed to make sense. It was businesses and industries that had built Lowell, so they should have the right to spend their money keeping enough law and order for people to want to live and work there. And anyone who didn't like it was free to find somewhere in the Outlands or self-run settlements—such as Americyon—that suited them, and take their chances.

  Some people said things couldn't last like this; that the territories being organized around places like Lowell, Osaka, Zerolon, and likewise the others, would expand outward bit by bit, maybe gobbling up the little guys, until their borders all met up and there wasn't anywhere left in between; then they'd either settle down, or that would be when the really serious trouble would start. But either way, the eventual appearance of the same general pattern that had taken over Earth would be only a matter of time—but that would be far in the future as far as Solomon Leppo was concerned. And in the meantime, for those with the savvy and expertise, there was money to be made hiring out to a hundred variants of the protection, security, and enforcement business. And making the right kind of name in that department could do wonders for supplying life with the chicks and the things too.