Part 2
Even this action wouldn't have given her away, however, if the office hadn't constituted a sentimental memory. Whenever Blake accepted a case he invariably thought of the bleak and lonely little room with its thin-gauge steel desk and battered filing cabinets, and when he had done so after accepting his case--or was it before? He couldn't quite remember--the mental picture that had come into his mind had revealed open drawers, scattered papers and a general air of disarray.
He had suspected the truth immediately, and when he had seen the woman's handkerchief with the initials "SB" embroidered on it lying by one of the filing cabinets he had known definitely that his quarry was hiding out in his mind. Retiring to his bachelor quarters, he had entered at the same place-time and set off in pursuit.
Her only advantage lost, Sabrina York was now at his mercy. Unless she discovered his presence and was able to locate his most recently materialized place-time before he over-took her, her capture was assured.
Only two things bothered Blake. The little office was far in his past, and it was unlikely that anyone save the few intimate acquaintances whom he had told about it were aware that it had ever existed. How, then, had a total stranger such as Sabrina York learned enough about it to enable her to use it as a point of entry?
The other thing that bothered him was of a much more urgent nature. He had been in enough minds and he had read enough on the subject of Trevorism to know that people were sometimes capable of creating beings considerably higher on the scale of mind-country evolution than ordinary memory-ghosts. One woman whom he had apprehended in her own mind had created a walking-talking Virgin Mary who watched over her wherever she went. And once, after tracking down an ex-enlisted man, he had found his quarry holed up in the memory-image of an army barracks with a ten-star general waiting on him hand and foot. But these, and other, similar, cases, had to do with mal-adjusted people, and moreover, the super-image in each instance had been an image that the person involved had _wanted_ to create. Therefore, even assuming that Blake was less well-adjusted than he considered himself to be, why had he created three such malevolent super-images as Miss Stoddart, Officer Finch, and Vera Velvetskin?
* * * * *
They followed him off the campus into a vicarious memory-image of Walden Pond, Thoreau's shack, and the encompassing woods. Judging from the ecstatic "oh's" and "ah's" they kept giving voice to, the place delighted them. Once, glancing back over his shoulder, he saw them standing in front of Thoreau's shack, looking at it as though it were a doll's house. Not far away, Thoreau was sitting in under a tall pine, gazing up into the branches at a bird that had come through only as a vague blur of beak and feathers.
Blake went on. Presently the Walden Pond memory-image gave way to a memory-image of an English park which the ex-Earth government had set aside as a memorial to the English poets and which had impressed Blake sufficiently when he had visited it in his youth to have found a place for itself in the country of his mind. It consisted of reconstructions of famous dwellings out of the lives of the poets, among them, a dwelling out of the life of a poet who was not in the strictest sense of the word English at all--the birthplace of Robert Burns. Oddly enough, it was Burns's birthplace that had impressed Blake most. Now the little cottage stood out in much more vivid detail than any of the other famous dwellings.
Sabrina York must have been attracted to the place, for her footprints showed that she had turned in at the gate, walked up the little path and let herself in the door.
They also showed that she had left by the same route, so there was no reason for Blake to linger. As a matter of fact, the fascination that had brought the place into being had been replaced by an illogical repugnance. But repugnance can sometimes be as compelling a force as fascination, and Blake not only lingered but went inside as well.
He remembered the living room distinctly--the flagstone floor, the huge grill-fronted hearth, the deeply recessed window, the rack of cups and platters on the wall; the empty straight-backed chair standing sternly in a corner, the bare wooden table--
He paused just within the doorway. The chair was no longer empty, the table no longer bare.
A man sat on the former and a bottle of wine stood on the latter. Moreover, the room showed signs of having been lived in for a long time. The floor was covered with tracked-in dirt and the walls were blackened from smoke. The grill-work of the hearth was begrimed with grease.
* * * * *
Whatever else he might be the man sitting at the table was not an image out of the past. He was too vividly real. He was around Blake's age, and about Blake's height and build. However, he was given to fat. His paunch contrasted jarringly with Blake's trim waist. His vaguely familiar face was swollen--probably from the wine he had drunk--and his too-full cheeks were well on the way to becoming jowls. His bloodshot eyes were underscored with shadows, and his clothing consisted of odds and ends out of Blake's past: a tattered, too-tight pullover with the letter "L" on the front, a pair of ragged red-plaid hunting breeches and a pair of cracked riding-boots.
Blake advanced across the room and picked up the bottle. One sniff told him that it came from a memory-image of a Martian wine-cellar. He set the bottle back down. "Who are you?" he demanded.
The man looked up at him sardonically. "Call me Smith," he said. "If I told you who I really am, you wouldn't believe me."
"What are you doing in my mind?"
"You should know the answer to that one. You put me here."
Blake stared "Why, I've never even seen you before!"
"Granted," Smith said. "But you used to know me. As a matter of fact, you and I used to get along together famously." He reached around and got a cup off the wall-rack. "Pull up a chair and have a drink. I've been expecting you."
Bewildered, Blake sat but shoved the cup aside. "I don't drink," he said.
"That's right," Smith said. "Stupid of me to forget." He took a swig out of the bottle, set it back down. "Let's see, it's been seven years now. Right?"
"How the devil did you know?"
Smith sighed. "Who should know better than I? Who indeed? But I guess I can't kick too much. You certainly materialized enough of the stuff in your--shall we say 'wilder'?--days." He shook his head. "No, I can't say I've suffered in that respect."
Comprehension came to Blake then. He had heard of the parasites who lived in other person's minds, but this was the first time he had ever happened to run across one. "Why, you're nothing but a mind-comber," he said. "I should have guessed!"
Smith looked hurt. "You do me a grave injustice, friend. A very grave injustice. And after my being so considerate of this cottage and using the back door and everything! The young lady who stopped by a little while ago was much more understanding than you are."
"You talked with her then?" Blake asked. He suppressed a shudder. For some reason it horrified him that his quarry should be aware that so despicable a creature inhabited his mind. "What--what does she look like?"
"_You_ know what she looks like."
"But I don't. I took the case on such short notice that I didn't have a chance to get a picture or even a description of her."
Smith regarded him shrewdly. "What did she do?"
"She murdered her father," Blake said.
Smith guffawed. "I should have known it would be something like that. Ties in perfectly. By the way, what's her name?"
"Sabrina York--not that it's any of your business."
"Oh, but it is my business--as much my business as yours. As a matter of fact, I'm going to help you find her."
Blake stood up. "No, you're not," he said. "You're going to get out of my mind and you're going to stay out--"
He paused as a knock sounded on the door. Smith answered it, and a moment later Miss Stoddart, Officer Finch and Vera Velvetskin filed into the room and arrayed themselves before Blake. Again three arms were raised; again three forefingers were pointed accusingly at his chest. "Wretched creature!" said Miss Stoddart. "Consorting with so foul a fiend!" said Officer Finch. "And in so vile a den of iniquity!" said Vera Velvetskin.
* * * * *
For a while Smith just stood there staring at the three visitors. Then he turned toward Blake. "Well, I'll be damned!" he said. "You really do have an overactive conscience, don't you!" He faced the three women again. "Get off his back, you creeps! Can't you see he's got enough troubles without you dogging his footsteps?" He opened the door. "Out, all of you, before I throw you out!"
Three frightened looks settled on the three thin faces, but neither Miss Stoddart nor Officer Finch nor Vera Velvetskin made a move in the direction of the door till Smith advanced upon them with lowering countenance. Then they fairly scampered from the room. Officer Finch was the last in line, and Smith helped her along with the toe of one of Blake's cracked boots. The shriek she emitted coincided with the slamming of the door.
Smith leaned weakly against the door and began to laugh. "Shut up," Blake said, "and tell me who they are!"
Tears were rolling down Smith's blotchy cheeks. "_You_ know who they are. You created them, didn't you? The skinny one is the one who told you about Moses in the bulrushes and the husky one is the one who saw to it that you didn't step out of line in school and the one with the nice shape is the one you associate with the immaculateness of your mother's kitchen sink. Spiritual virtue, civil virtue--and physical virtue!"
"But why did I create them?" Blake demanded. "And why are they following me around like a bunch of vindictive harpies?"
"There!" Smith said. "You almost had it. Not harpies, though--Furies. Erinyes. Tisiphone, Megaera, Alecto. You created them because you wanted to punish yourself. You created them because you can't accept yourself for what you are. You created them because even after putting me in exile you're still conscience-crazy, and they're following you around and bugging you because you want them to follow you around and bug you--because you want to be reminded of what a heel you think you are! You always were a Puritan in wolfs clothing, Blake."
The remark angered Blake to the extent that it dispelled his amazement. He shoved Smith away from the door and opened it. "All that may be," he said, "and maybe I did know you once upon a time. But don't let me find you here when I get back. Understand?" He paused in the doorway, frowning. "Tell me one more thing, though. Why Burns's birthplace? Why should a memory-image like this appeal to a mind-comber?"
Smith grinned. "Bobby Burns has always fascinated me--just as he has you. Or should I say 'us'?" The grin turned into a leer, and he picked up the bottle and waved it back and forth like a baton--
My love, she's but a lassie yet, My love, she's but a lassie yet; We'll let her stand a year or twa, She'll no be half sae saucy yet; I rue the day I sought her O! I rue the day I sought her O! Wha gets her needs na say he's woo'd, But he may say he has bought her O.
Furious, Blake strode down the path. Smith's taunting laughter sounding in his wake.
The three Erinyes were waiting for him at the gate, and fell in behind him when he turned down the lane. He lost Sabrina's trail in front of the farmhouse where Coleridge wrote _Kubla Khan_, picked it up again opposite the Mitre Tavern. Presently it veered right, passed between Milton's birthplace and Stratford-on-Avon, and entered a night-image. He was halfway down a dim-lit street, the Erinyes just behind him, before he realized where he was.
* * * * *
Disciplined trees stood at attention along two suburban strips of lawn. Beyond them, half-remembered houses showed. One of them stood out vividly--a round, modernesque affair surrounded by a quarter-acre of grass and shrubs and flowers. It was the house he had rented while Deirdre Eldoria was attending high school. It was a house he had hoped never to see again.
He was seeing it now, though, and he was going to see it at much closer quarters, for Sabrina's footprints led straight across the remembered lawn to the very doorstep. She had not gone in, however, he discovered presently; instead, she had forsaken the door for a concave picture window through which bright light streamed out onto the grass. The depth of a pair of her footprints showed that she had stood there for a long time, peeking into his past. Despite himself, Blake peeked too. So did the three Erinyes.
The room was a far cry from the one he had just left. The hearth was built of meticulously mortared red bricks. The thick rug was a two-dimensional garden of multicolored flowers. There were exquisite tables and flower-petal stools. There were deep chairs that begged to be sat in. A sybaritic sofa occupied an entire wall.
On the sofa sat a man and a girl. The man was himself at the age of thirty-four. The girl was Deirdre Eldoria at the age of seventeen.
Blake Past was helping her with her lessons. The moment was a composite of a hundred similar scenes. Now she raised her eyes from the book on her lap, and Blake Past caught her girlish profile ... and Blake Present, standing in the soft and scented darkness of the remembered spring night with the three Erinyes breathing down the back of his neck, caught it too, and both Blakes knew pain. Now she returned her attention to the book, and Blake Past leaned forward in order to read the passage that she was in doubt about. And as he did so, her copper-colored hair touched his cheek and the warm tingle of the contact traveled down through the years to Blake Present.
Overcome by the poignancy of the moment, he stepped back from the window, colliding with the three Erinyes as he did so. They moved a little distance away, arrayed themselves, and started to raise their right arms. "Oh, can it!" Blake said disgustedly. In the darkness behind him, someone laughed. "_My love, she's but a lassie yet_," Smith sang in a cracked baritone. "_We'll let her stand a year or twa, she'll no be half sae saucy yet!_"
Blake whirled, and flashed his light into the shadows. The light picked up Smith's retreating figure. "Get out of my mind!" Blake shouted. "Do you hear me? Get out of my mind!"
Laughter danced in the darkness, silence ensued. Turning back toward the window, Blake saw that Blake Past and Deirdre Yesterday were leaving the living room. He watched them come out the front door, walk around the corner of the house and start down a starlit garden path.
Forsaking Sabrina's trail, he followed them along the path, the Erinyes at his heels, and watched them sit down on a little white bench beside a rose-riotous trellis. As he watched, Blake Past broke one of the roses free and pinned it in Deirdre's cupreous hair.
Blake Present plunged away from the moment and picked up Sabrina's trail again. _Why did I sit there beside her?_ he demanded silently of the remembered stars. _Sit there beside her like her lover when the roses were in bloom? Father-protector--father-fool! I slept with her mistress, and I would have been her Naoise! Within earshot of her conched ear I lay with her black whore-mother, and when the satyr in me was replete I stepped over her thin child's body and ran away!_
Behind him in the night, the Erinyes hissed and murmured to each other gloatingly.
* * * * *
Sabrina's trail had been erratic before. Now it became even more so. It approached this boundary and that, only to veer off in another direction. Sometimes it doubled back upon itself, and each time Blake was able to cut down on her lead. He should have been elated. Strangely, however, he was not. Instead, a feeling of uneasiness afflicted him, increasing as the distance between them shrank.
At length, after detouring around an impassable memory-image of deep space, the trail extended into what at first appeared to be a vast woodland park. It was not a park, though. It was a Dubhe 4 rubber plantation. Blake groaned. Did he have to relive this sequence too?
Apparently he did. Sabrina's footprints were deep and undeniable in the soft earth. They pointed unerringly in the remembered direction. Had she discovered that he was following her? Was she deliberately torturing him by making him back-track along a mental trail that he wanted desperately to avoid? It would certainly seem so.
He forced himself to move forward among the gray ghosts of trees. He crossed a shallow, scum-covered stream, leaping from rock to rock, and afterward climbed a hill. Hearing a loud splash behind him, he turned and looked back.
Miss Stoddart, in trying to cross the stream, had lost her balance and fallen in, and Officer Finch and Vera Velvetskin were trying to help her to her feet. As he watched, they too lost their balance and joined their companion in the greenish water. There followed a period of hysterical floundering, after which the trio waded dripping and bedraggled to the bank.
Blake would have laughed, had not the place-time oppressed him. Descending the opposite slope of the hill, he entered a wide valley. Presently he glimpsed the buildings of the Great Starway Cartel processing plant through the trees.
The overseer's bungalow was visible just to the left, and it was toward this latter structure that Sabrina's footprints pointed. The original clearing had swarmed with chocolettos. Blake's, however, did not. In his single-mindedness of six years ago he had had eyes for only two people--the overseer and Deirdre.
Stepping into the clearing, he saw the man now--the bearded bestial face, the long arms, the large and hairy hands--and he saw the fifteen-year old girl lying on the ground where the man had thrown her after she had slapped his face. After a moment he saw himself of six years ago step out of the grove of rubber trees and advance white-faced into the scene.
"No!" the girl lying on the ground cried. "He'll kill you!"
Blake Past ignored her. The overseer had drawn a knife. Now the knife flashed, and a streak of crimson appeared on Blake Past's arm. The knife flashed again, but this time it described a large arc and landed a dozen feet away. Now the overseer's throat was between Blake Past's hands, and the bearded face was changing colors. It grew green first, then blue. Blake Past shook the man several times before letting him slip to the ground. He dropped a handful of _quandoe_-notes on the heaving chest.
"That's what you paid for her," he said. He withdrew a paper from his breast pocket, unfolded it and held it before the gasping overseer's eyes. "Sign it," he said, handing it to him.
* * * * *
The overseer did so, lying on his side. Blake Past pocketed the paper and helped the girl to her feet. The tarn-blue eyes were wide in the thin child's face. "Eldoria died," she blurted. "They--"
Blake Past nodded. "I know. But they can't sell you any more. I own you now."
"I am glad," the girl said. "I knew from the first moment I saw you that you were noble. I shall like being your slave, and I will serve you very faithfully."
Blake Past looked away. Blake Present lowered his eyes. "Can you walk?" Blake Past asked.
"Oh, yes. I am very strong."
She took a step forward, swayed and would have fallen, had not Blake Past caught her. "I--I guess I am not quite as strong as I thought," she said. "But I shall recuperate swiftly. Why did you come back, _mensakin_ Blake?"
"I came back to buy you from Eldoria," Blake Past said. He did not add that the memory of her saintly face as he had seen it when he stepped over her had lasted a whole year, or that his dreams of her had made a mockery of his sleep. "When I found out that Eldoria had died and that you had been sold again, I came directly here."
"You will not be sorry. I will make you an excellent slave."
"I didn't buy you for that reason. I bought you to give you your--"
"There is one request I would like to make, however," the girl interrupted. "I would like to take 'Eldoria' as my surname. She was very kind to me, and I would like to repay her in some way."
"Very well," Blake Past said. "'Deirdre Eldoria' it will be, then."
He picked her up and carried her into the grove. Blake Present watched them till they disappeared among the trees. He knew where Blake Past was taking her--had taken her. Back to the settlement, and from there to the spaceport, and thence to Ex-earth. Ex-earth and high school, then college--
She had never been his slave, though. He had been hers.
* * * * *
Sabrina's trail circled back into the grove and left the place-time by a different route. Immediately it became erratic again. It was evident to Blake that she was searching for a particular memory-image and that she was having trouble finding it. Perhaps she knew of some moment in his past where she would be safe even from him.
When he stepped into the little Dubhe 4 settlement he instinctively assumed that it was on the same chronological plane as the plantation place-time. However, the darkness that instantly enclosed him and the stars that sprang to life in the sky apprised him that such could not possibly be the case. This was the Dubhe 4 settlement of seven years ago. This was the night he had sat in the chocoletto cafe and watched Eldoria dance--the night he had kept a tryst with her in her hut; the night he had first seen Deirdre.
But why had Sabrina come here? Where in this wretched little memory-image did she expect to find sanctuary?
Suddenly he knew. Eldoria's hut. He would rather die than enter it again, and somehow Sabrina must have discovered his attitude. Probably even now she was within those four remembered walls, laughing at him.
Anger kindled in him. The effrontery of her! Daring to pre-empt a moment that belonged solely to him! He would enter the hut if it killed him. If he had to, he would tear down its walls and banish its memory forever from the country of his mind.
With the aid of his pocket torch, he found her footprints in the dust. He followed them down the street, the three Erinyes tagging doggedly along behind him. The trail, erratic no longer, led straight to the labyrinthine alleys of the native sector and thence along the shortest route to Eldoria's hut. For a person who had never been to Dubhe 4, Sabrina York certainly knew her way around.
Maybe, though, she had been to Dubhe 4. He knew very little about her. He knew nothing at all, in fact, save that she had murdered her father. He did not even know how she had murdered him, or why. Abruptly Blake shoved the matter from his mind. It wasn't his business to know how or why she had done the deed. It was his business to find and apprehend her.
Presently, in the darkness before him, he made out a motionless white-robed figure. He approached it warily, found to his consternation that it was frozen in the act of taking a step forward. He shone his light into the face. It was dark bronze in hue. The eyes were wide apart, and the teeth showed in a vivid white line between half-parted purple lips. Eldoria, on her way to keep her tryst with him....
But why didn't she move on? Suddenly Blake knew. In treating a patient, Trevorite psychologists sometimes froze certain place-times in his past in order to study them in greater detail. The girl in Blake's mind had either frozen the Dubhe 4 place-time herself, then, or had hired a professional to do the job.
Clearly she had something up her sleeve about which Blake knew nothing.