A Stage of Memory Read online

  A Stage of Memory

  David Brin

  Daniel Brin

  A Stage of Memory

  by David Brin and Daniel Brin

  1

  Fine, crystalline powder lay scattered along the cracked molding between the mattress and the wall. The tiny white grains met crumpled tissues and hairballs under the lip of a dingy fitted sheet. They sparkled incongruously along a thin trail across the floor of Derek’s shabby room, reflecting where, it seemed to Derek, there wasn’t any light.

  The ripped windowshade cast a jagged knife of daylight on faded Variety clippings taped to the opposite wall. The outline looked like the tapering gap between a pair of legs… the legs of a runner in mid-stretch, making time against the plaster.

  Derek Blakeney contemplated the runner.

  Headless, torsoless, it had started over near his closet, narrow and slow. As the afternoon wore on, the shadow widened and the jogger seemed to catch its stride, legs reaching like a steeplechaser’s. Its progress across the wall became terrific… a yard, at least, in the last twenty minutes.

  At last Phiddipides crossed the finish line and expired in the shadow of the closet door.

  Evening. A time for decisions.

  He had known all along what his choice would be. Derek’s hands trembled as he reached for the shoebox by the foot of the bed, his unbuttoned cuffs revealing an uneven chain of needle tracks.

  Bless the mercy law, he contemplated as he opened the box and took out a sterilized package. Bless the legislators who legalized the paraphernalia, the syringes and needles, so those on the low road won’t have to share it with hepatitis and tetanus.

  He broke the sealed wrapper and pushed the bright needle through the rubber cap of a tiny bottle of amber fluid.

  Bless those who legalized the new drugs, so an addict needn’t commit crimes to support his slow road to hell. He doesn’t have to drag others with him, anymore.

  He wrapped rubber tubing around his arm and held it tight with his teeth as he posed the needle’s tip over the chosen spot. Derek’s way of dealing with short-term pain was to make a dramatic moment of it. When he pierced the protruding vein, his face contorted as if to highlight the pain for the back-row balcony.

  Even an out-of-work actor had his pride. Derek had never believed in cheating those in the cheap seats, even if some selfish front-row critic thought one was hamming it up a bit.

  A small bead of milky liquid welled from the entry hole as he withdrew the syringe and laid it aside. Derek sighed and sank back against his pillow. If he had calculated it right, this time he would go back! This time he’d return to the good days, long before…

  He closed his eyes as a cool numbness spread up his arm and across his chest. His scalp tingled.

  Derek could feel the here and now start to slip away. He tried to concentrate, determined not to let this trip get away from him!

  Envision a small frame house on Sycamore Street, he told himself, in Albany, New York…

  Sycamore Street, so long ago… Mother would be cooking a Sunday supper, Father is reading the paper, and my old room is a clutter of plastic airplane models, touching the air with a faintly heady scent of glue.

  The numbness spread down his jaw and spine, and he willed himself back through the files of his cortex, back to Sycamore Street, back to being twelve years old again… back to where a familiar female voice was about to call out…

  “Supper’s ready!”

  It had worked! The new dose had worked! Those were exactly the words he had willed his mother…

  “Come on, Lothario! Get your ass out here. I’ve whipped together a simple, nutritious meal for you. You’ve got ten minutes to eat and still get to the theater on time!”

  The alto voice carried a quaver of emotion, barely suppressed. Derek realized with a sinking feeling that it was not his mother, after all.

  His eyes opened. The drug had worked. The dingy little fleabag room had been replaced by much richer surroundings. But here were no plastic model airplanes. Rather, drifting glass and metal mobiles reflected opal gleams from two garish lavalamps. A row of plaques and statuettes glittered in a mahogany ego-shrine across from the bed. Underneath he felt the warm vibrations of an expensive automassage oil-bed.

  Derek felt that strange/familiar pressure as his midbrain surged forward to take over. From now on he would be only an observer, unable even to make his eyes blink while the triggered memories replayed perfectly, vividly, out of his control.

  Derek felt a silent, internal cry of despair.

  This is where I left off last time! I didn’t want to come back here. This is too close to the present. I wanted to go hack to when I was twelve!

  He heard footsteps approach. The door slid swiftly along its rails to bang as it hit the stops. A bright trapezoid of light spilled from the hallway, eclipsed by a slender shadow.

  “Well, Derek? Are you going to shave that famous puss and get dressed for the show? Or shall I call Peter and tell him to get your understudy ready again?”

  Even the injected form of the damned drug is sequential! I knew it. The thrice-damned stuff takes me forward, one step at a time. I have no choice but to start off each trip reliving where the last one ended!

  “Derek?” the figure in the doorway demanded.

  “I’ll be out in a frigging minute,” his midbrain answered—controlling his voice—making it happen exactly as it had three years ago. The playback was adamant, unchangeable.

  “Shit!” he growled. “A guy can’t even enjoy a little grass in peace, in his own goddamn apartment.” He had to fight the cannabis languor to pull himself up onto one elbow, squinting at the brightness from the hall.

  “And speaking of piece, where does a bird like you get off talking to me like that? I picked you out of a bloody chorus line, gave you your first frigging break, and the best frigging time in your life.”

  Tall and slender, the woman in the doorway had braided black hair and a dancer’s body. He knew that body and the smell of that hair as well as he knew his own. Right now he radiated a loathing tailored by his knowledge of her, enjoying the carefully chosen words with an actors pride.

  “If I weren’t so goddamn stoned, I’d show you what an ungrateful bitch like you can do with her frigging nagging!”

  There was a long silence. Then the woman nodded resignedly.

  “Right,” she said softly. Then, with a note of tight control, “All right, Derek. Have it your own way. I’ve taken on a wife’s duties, and for more than a year that’s included picking up after your increasingly sloppy body and mind. I thought it worthwhile, and imagined you’d get over your grief like a man. But this time I’m taking you at your word.

  “Thanks for the break, Derek. You did get me that first part, and you’ve paid the rent. I’ll only take my clothes with me, and I’ll have my agent forward yours a percentage of my next gig.”

  She paused, as if half hoping against hope that he would speak. But he did not. His eyes were unfocused, following the shimmering globs in the lavalamp.

  “Good-bye, Derek.”

  He had to shade his eyes from the light as her eclipse vanished. He lay back in a floating torpor and a short time later heard the front door slam.

  Good frigging riddance, he thought. I can pick up any one of a dozen young things after the show tonight without her around. Life is definitely about to take a turn for the better!

  He turned to pick up his smoldering reefer from the ashtray, totally oblivious to a little voice from another time, which cried out plaintively, hopelessly, “Melissa, please… don’t go…”

  2

  The waiting room was stark and depressing… paint peeling under sharp fluorescents. The pungency of dis
infectant failed to disguise the distinct aroma of urine. Every now and then some waiting client fell into a fit of dispirited coughing. Nobody talked.

  Derek hunched in a cracked corner seat, hoping to avoid being noticed. Not that many recognized Derek Blakeney anymore. It had been more than two years since the last spate of scandals and scathing reviews had banished him from the theater columns.

  The only serious threat to his apathetic downward spiral had come when a certain critic compassionately eulogized “a lost giant of the stage.” Derek had tried to build up a rage over it, but torpidity had prevailed in the end. Now he was thirty pounds lighter and indifferently washed, and it was unlikely anyone would even recognize a onetime star of Broadway. He was probably safe.

  A gaunt woman in a white smock periodically emerged to call out numbers. Clients followed her one at a time to a row of cubbyholes against the wall. From the booths came a low mutter of alternating wheedling and officialese. Derek overheard snatches of conversation.

  “…You won’t get any more Tripastim until your amino acid balance is better, Mr. Saunders… How? By improving your diet of course…”

  And another.

  “…Here is your allotment, Mrs. Fine. No, first you sign here. Yes, here. And you must drink this vitamin supplement… I’ve already explained, Mrs. Fine. The government doesn’t subsidize your habit because it’s your right, but in order to drive the Black Chemists out of business. We can undercharge them and see to it you have every chance to kick it if you decide to. Part of the deal is making sure you get the nutritional…”

  Derek closed his eyes. The Liberal-Libertarian coalition had trounced the old Republicans and Democrats in the last election, and Drug Centers like this one were among their first steps on taking office. It had been a good move. Too bad Libertarians were so stingy, though, and the Liberals so damned sanctimonious. If only they’d just give over the doses and shut their bloody—

  “Number eighty-seven.” The nurse’s sharp voice made Derek feel brittle. But it was his number, at last! He stood up.”

  “I’m number eighty-seven.”

  The nurse’s look seemed to say that what she saw was both pitiable and vaguely loathsome. “Go to station twelve, please,” she said, referring to her clipboard. “Ms. Sanchez has your chart.”

  Derek shook his head. “I wish to see Dr. Bettide. It is a matter of some urgency, requiring the attention of someone with his expertise.”

  The woman looked up, surprised. Derek felt a moment’s satisfaction. He might look like a derelict, but the voice was still Derek Blakeney’s. It commanded attention.

  “Dr. Bettide is very busy,” the nurse began uncertainly. “He’s good enough to volunteer his time as it is. We only send him referrals from—”

  “Just convey him my name, if you please.” He handed her one of his last few cards, certain he could recover it. “The doctor will see me, I am certain of it.” He smiled, a relaxed expression of assurance and patience.

  “Well…” She blushed slightly and decided. “Wait here, please. I’ll ask the doctor.”

  When she had gone, Derek let his expression sag again. Without an audience he folded in upon himself.

  Lord, he thought. I hate this overlit, stinking pesthole. I hate the world for having such places in it. And most of all I hate having to beg for the stuff I need in order to get the hell out of this goddamn turn-of-the-century world.

  It isn’t fair. All I want to do is go home again! Is that too much to ask? Frigging scientists work wonders these days. Why can’t they just send me home again?

  3

  “It’s not fair, I tell you. The injection and the new dose should have taken me back to age twelve! Not thirty-five, but twelve! What’s the matter with the damn stuff?”

  It never occurred to Derek to present a false face to Dr. Melniss Bettide. He acted the age he wanted to be in the presence of the man he hoped would make it possible.

  A small, dark man, Dr. Bettide regarded Derek through thick-lensed glasses. Derek grew uncomfortable under the physician’s unblinking stare. At last Bettide pressed a button on his intercom.

  “Steve, please bring in a double shot of health supplement four.”

  “Yes, Doctor.”

  “Hey! I don’t want vitamins! I want—”

  Bettide silenced Derek with a bored wave. “And Steve, please also bring me a carton of the new samples of Temporin B.”

  Now, that was different! A new type of Temporin? Of Time-Jizz? The possibilities were exciting.

  Bettide examined Derek’s file. “You’ve been to group therapy regularly, I see.”

  “They won’t give you a drug card if you don’t go. It’s worth sitting around with a bunch of whining marks for an hour a week, in order not to have to go to the Black Chemists for the stuff.”

  “Hmmm, yes. But you’re still refusing individual treatment?”

  “So what? It’s not mandatory. Why should I go and spill my guts to some shrink? There’s nothing wrong with me.”

  Derek stopped abruptly, blinking as a flashback hit—a brief, sudden image of a trapezoid of light, then the sound of a slamming door…

  He looked down and spoke again in a lower tone. “At least there’s nothing wrong with me that the right change of environment wouldn’t cure,” he muttered.

  Dr. Bettide made an entry in Derek’s file, a sniff his only comment. Derek shrugged. So the man saw through his sophistries. At least Bettide never lectured like a lot of Liberals would. He suspected the doctor was a Libertarian.

  Yeah. Let us go to hell however we want to. It’s our own choice, after all.

  A pharmacology aide walked in and put down a plastic-capped beaker of orange fluid. Next to it he placed a cardboard box that clinked, the sound of many small bottles. Derek inspected his fingernails as the assistant passed out of the office, ignoring the aide’s expression of bored contempt.

  “So what’s this new type of Time-Jizz, Doctor? Will it work better?”

  “Drink.” Bettide gestured at the beaker without looking up. He took out a key and unlocked his briefcase, removing a small black ledger.

  Derek grimaced and reached for the vitamin suppliment, sighing for effect as he pried off the plastic cover. He drank the orange-flavored concoction, knowing Bettide wouldn’t help him until it was all gone.

  At last he put down the beaker and licked the orange coating from his ragged moustache. “Have they found any more cases like me, Doctor?” For a change his voice was serious, earnest.

  “A few,” Bettide answered noncommitally, still writing in the small black book.

  “Well? Have they found out why some of us get stuck in sequential time trips, instead of just accessing the memories we want at will?”

  Bettide closed the book and looked up. “No, Derek. We haven’t. But look on the bright side. At least you don’t suffer the worst syndrome. Some Temporin users with hidden masochistic tendencies send themselves right off to the worst moments of their lives. A few get into flashback loops where many times each day they relive those episodes in vivid detail, with or without the drug.”

  Derek blinked. “That’s terrible! But…”

  A crafty look spread across his face. “Oh, I get it. That’s one of those aversion stories, isn’t it? Part of trying to get your clients off the very drugs you pass out. Pretty clever. You almost scared me this time.”

  Bettide shrugged. “Have it your own way, Derek. As to your problem of sequential access, I believe we might have a possible solution.”

  For once Derek had no comment. He edged forward in his seat.

  “Your dilemma,” Bettide said, “is to choose the memory to be accessed through the drug. Other than volition—which seems to be locked in your case—the only other known way would be to use electronic probing. Unfortunately, that method is out.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the government is not in the business of pandering to destructive and expensive habits that don’t already have a cri
minal purveyor! We provide you Temporin to keep you out of the clutches of the Black Chemists and other underworld sources, and to see that you have every opportunity to freely choose a productive lifestyle again.”

  “But if this electrical gizmo is the only way…”

  “There might be another.” Bettide took off his glasses and wiped them. “It’s untried, and J certainly wouldn’t attempt it. But then, I would never have gotten myself in your fix in the first place. Once again I ask you to accept the coalition’s offer to send you to an ecology camp for a rest and work cure, instead.” Bettide made his entreaty as if he knew what the answer would be in advance.

  Derek felt tense under his scalp. He shook his head vigorously, as if to drive out a threatening uncertainty. “No!… If you won’t help me, I’ll go to the Black Chemists,” he threatened. “I swear, I’ll—”

  “Oh, stop.” Bettide sighed in tired surrender.

  Derek’s headache vanished just as quickly. “Okay.” He brightened. “What do we do?”

  “Well try you out on a potent new version of Temporin B the Black Chemists have just developed and we’ve managed to resynthesize. One hit drives the reliving process about five times longer on average, than the old drug, and at three times the subjective/objective rate.”

  “But—but that won’t help me get back to where I want to go. It’ll only make the sequences go by faster!”

  “True. However, some believe your strange type of locked, sequential recall will break down as more recent memories are accessed. You’ll have revisited your entire life, so to speak, and no long-term memory will have greater excitation potential than any other.”

  “I’ll have free access again after that?”

  “That’s my best guess, Derek.”

  Derek chewed on one end of his moustache. “I’ll have to go through some pretty rotten times,” he muttered.

  “Quickly, yes.” Bettide nodded.

  “I don’t know.” Derek knitted his brow.