Chapter 1 — SUB

I woke in squalor. The stench tried to choke me; I found myself trying to breathe only out, never in, but of course, that was futile.

Where was I? Darkness pressed in about me, absolute, impenetrable, horrifying. Slowly my disgust at the odor faded as my alarm at the gloom gained. Was I incarcerated in some deep subterranean cell, doomed never to see light again?

My panic gave way in turn to some common sense. Subterranean cells were rare, for in this age of space, mankind existed mostly in pressurized bubbles that orbited in interplanetary reaches or floated in planetary atmosphere or adhered to the surfaces of moons or fragments. Only in the last case was there any terrain to delve beneath—and that was generally used only for secure anchorage, being too precious to waste on mere people. If someone needed confinement it was easier to put him in a cage than to excavate a hole in a frozen moon. I was not even cold; the temperature was neutral. So, if I was buried it was in the bowel of some city or ship, and others of my kind were close by.

My mind focused on this problem, as I seemed to have nothing better to do at the moment, and it distracted me from the discomfort of my situation. If I assumed I was in a city—what city might that be?

Well, where had I last been? Again panic welled up. I could not remember! My past was blank. I had a general knowledge of solar geography but could not place myself within it. It was as if I did not exist.

Of course I existed, I reassured myself. I was here, wasn't I? Surely I had not formed spontaneously in the sludge of the Nile! I was an adult human being.

The Nile—that was on Planet Earth, the location of the origin of man. My kind had evolved there, learned to prevail over the restrictions of nature, and increased its population at the expense of other creatures and the natural environment until over five billion human beings crowded the single planet. Then the development of gravity shielding had enabled man to travel cheaply to other parts of the Solar System and to colonize them. It was simply a matter of building bubbles, which were giant spheres, hermetically sealed, pressurized to normal Earth-surface atmosphere, spun to generate centrifugal pseudogravity—simply termed gee—and stocked with necessary equipment and supplies. Then these bubbles were loaded with people and shielded from the effect of planetary gravity so that they floated free of the ground and, indeed, free of the atmosphere. If gravity diffusion is sufficient to reduce the effective weight of an object to one percent of its normal weight, a propulsive force of one percent will do the job of lifting that otherwise requires a hundred percent. That makes it relatively easy to escape the gravity well of a planet. Of course, mass, as contrasted to weight, is unchanged; acceleration in space still requires full force. But the enormous problem of planetary escape had been solved. Man utilized gravity shielding to spread explosively across the Solar System. He has not spread out into the wider galaxy because the shielding does not facilitate that; the ancient Einsteinian limits hold.

When the flow of gravitrons is focused instead of diffused, the effective weight of an object in that field of focus is increased. In this manner man was able to generate full Earth-gee in selected spots on the surfaces of smaller bodies, such as the moons of Jupiter. The city of Maraud, on Callisto, is an example; I had spent my childhood there....

Callisto! I had just located myself on a body in the Solar System. My obscure past was beginning to clarify!

But my memory remained fogged. I had, as it were, spied Callisto peripherally; when my full mental gaze fixed on it, I could not perceive it. But at least I had gained something. Obviously I had been memory-washed....

Memory-washed! Why should such a thing have happened to me? I was just a poor Hispanic serf who had lost his parents in space, and...

Lost my parents? Sudden sorrow swept over me. But again, as I focused it was gone. Memory-wash is like that; it blots out all recent experience, leaving only the early, and even that suffers depletion. The victim remembers the language, culture, schooling, and childhood, but not the events immediately preceding the wash. Only time could restore it all; months and years are required for the final details. Mem-wash is an electrochemical treatment that stuns rather than obliterates the key processes of recollection, but in the first few weeks it really makes little difference to the subject. He has been born again in innocence.

Such treatment is, of course, illegal. That meant that I was the victim of pirates or foreign agents, because ordinary people did not have the equipment or expertise for such a procedure. I must have done something or known something that—no, the wash is not a good interrogative technique, since it obliterates anything an interrogator might wish to know. So it wasn't any secret that my captor wanted of me.

What, then? It had to be something important but not anything ordinary. Had I learned something, such as a military secret, that had to be erased? Surely it would have been easier to kill me. Was I a criminal being reconditioned? That did not account for the filth I was mired in, for no legitimate rehabilitation institution would have permitted this. I was being deliberately degraded.

Well, in time I would remember. Meanwhile my best prospect seemed to be to figure out my present location, as that might offer some insight. I had started to do that before, but my mind had wandered, as a washed brain is apt to do. Suppose I was in a city? Maybe one of the bubble-cities of the Jupiter atmosphere, floating a current. If so, I should be able to tell my general location within it by my weight. A spinning sphere is not a perfect place to reside. Only a narrow band around the inside of the equator of the bubble can be set at gee; that is, precisely Earth gravity. Of course, this can be broadened by using a secant, cutting off a segment with a curved plane—um, I see that seems nonsensical. It's a plane running east-west but curved north-south or vice-versa; an effectively level band circling the inside of the bubble, really a cylinder. That cylinder can vastly increase the area of gee within the bubble, and all of the residential section of a city is on it. The heavy machinery is mostly below (i.e., farther from the center), occupying the region of gee-plus, while the gee-minus region above is left for air and light. So if I were in a cell in such a city, I would be normal weight only on that surface. In the upper section of a tall structure (one reaching in toward the bubble-center) I would weigh less, and down in the nether region I would weigh more. In a small bubble the divergence from gee is sharp; in a large one, slight. But it is detectable, for the human body is a finely tuned apparatus and quickly feels the effect of changed gee.

I concluded that I was at or very near gee, for my body felt normal in this respect despite my discomfort. I must have been here for several days, at least, for it was my own excrement that I squatted in. Each person's stink of refuse is different, and I knew my own. I had had time to feel any divergence from the Earth norm, and there seemed to be none.

If the excrement was my own, why had it so assaulted my nostrils as I woke? If I had been here for days, my nose should have been numb long since, as it was numbing now. Therefore I must have been away and then abruptly returned here—immediately after my memory-wash. Was that useful information? Perhaps not, but I would file it for reference.

The residential level of a city is not a place for private incarceration. For one thing gee-level is expensive real estate—about a dollar per square foot per month. That's just for the area, before charges for air, water, light, and services. Very few individuals would care to waste such area on excrement. Also, the smell, if it got out, would quickly attract the attention of a sanitation squad. And what if the prisoner banged on the wall? A secret operation could not remain secret long.

I was, therefore, probably not in an occupied city. However, there were agricultural bubbles with animals and manure. One of these might—

Light flared blindingly. I cowered away from it, clamping my eyes shut, covering them with soiled hands.

A panel above had abruptly opened, illuminating my cell.

"Out, Hubris," a man's voice called. "Time for treatment."

Hubris! That was my name! I knew it, of course, yet had not thought of it. But what was this "treatment"? I distrusted that. Obviously I had already had the mem-wash treatment.

"Move it, Hubris," the voice snapped. I realize it isn't quite correct to personify the voice that way, but that was all I had to go on. It was masculine and unfamiliar.

No hand touched me. I suspected this was because I was naked and filthy, an untouchable. I pushed myself slowly to my feet, my eyes adjusting. My cell was small, a cube about four feet on a side. I had not tried to stand or stretch before; if I had done so I would have banged into the unseen limits.

As I got upright I felt light-headed. This could have been from the release from a cramped position, of course, but it could also signify a lessened gee. In that case this was no large city or agricultural sphere; it was a small bubble or a ship. Could I be aboard a naval vessel?

Goaded by the voice, I climbed out of the cell, into a passage. Yes, it was a ship, gee lessened in the walkway above the cells. I proceeded to a shower stall where I was efficiently hosed down. All water is recycled, so there is no waste in a liquid shower, though normally sonic cleaning is used instead. Obviously strenuous cleansing was required for me. In a moment I was free of filth. Then the sonics came on, prying free whatever contamination might remain.

Next, still naked, I was taken to a clean cell whose walls were padded. I was strapped into a padded chair. I did not like this at all, but it seemed pointless to resist until I knew more about my situation. If I broke and ran where could I run to on a ship in space?

The man who had seen to my preparation departed, and a new one entered the chamber. Evidently he was of greater authority. He fetched a small console that had buttons and dials. He twisted a dial and punched a button—and suddenly I was in pain. It felt as if my left foot were being crushed under an immense crate. I cried out and looked at it, for I could not jerk it away. There was nothing. Just the confining strap and the pain.

The man touched another button, and the agony shifted to my right foot, easing in my left. "That's a torture console!" I gasped, catching on.

The man did not respond. He touched another button, and the pain was in my right hand. Another, and the left hand. It felt as if my fingers were being pressed in a vice; in my mind's eye I almost saw the flesh splitting open and the blood bursting out. Yet I was not being touched.

"You don't need to do that!" I cried. "Just tell me what you want of me!"

The man ignored me. He changed the setting, and it was like being punched in the stomach. I gasped and fought for breath and tried to retch all at once, but only succeeded in drooling on myself.

"Why?" I rasped as the pain eased, but there was no answer.

The agony moved into my chest, and I thought I was having a heart attack. I strained at my bonds, unable even to scream. It felt like eternity but must have been only a few seconds.

Finally the torture struck my head. The brain feels no pain, but the blood vessels do. The pain blossomed in my skull like bursting arteries, and I sank into an agony of darkness.

 

I woke in my filthy cell, in more darkness. I did not know how long the interval had been; perhaps only a few minutes. Almost worse than the memory of the pain was the bafflement. Why had the torture been inflicted? I had offered no resistance, not even verbal retort, yet I had been tortured. In what way had I gone wrong? How could I avoid further pain? I did not know.

Why was I here? I did not know that, either. What was my position in life? That, too, was opaque. My captors seemed to be interested only in degradation and agony.

At least I now had a clearer notion where I was. Definitely a ship and not a civilian one. I had spent time in the Jupiter Navy, and...

There was another fragment of memory. The Navy! But that awareness, like the others, faded as I realized it. Now all I had was the memory of my recollection; it was as if someone had told me, "You were once in the Navy," without providing further detail, so that I had no context.

At any rate, I knew ships, and the little I had seen of this one was enough to narrow the possibilities considerably. It was a military vessel but not a standard one. It was too small to be a battleship, cruiser, or carrier; too big for a gunboat. It was silent; no motors hummed. That was peculiar. The only small ship designed for silence while in operation was—

A sub.

A sub was a very special type of ship. It was a military vessel dedicated to secrecy, to virtual invisibility in space. In the historic days, most naval vessels floated on the surface of Earth's oceans of water (what a mind-staggering concept: all that water!), plainly visible, protecting themselves with armor and armament. Subs—actually, originally, submarines, being submersible in the fluid of the sea—were largely undetectable and so represented a formidable menace to surface ships. They carried torpedoes that could hole other vessels that never perceived the threat against them until too late, and later they carried missiles that even menaced land targets. This was especially true in the nuclear age of the twentieth century, about seven hundred years ago—how time flies!—and I suspect was one of the factors that spurred man's colonization of the Solar System. After all, what sensible person would care to reside on a planet whose cities were subject to obliteration by missiles launched elsewhere on that same planet? It's bad enough as it is now, when the threat of annihilation is merely interplanetary. Today we have greater warning.

Or do we? Today's subs are very similar to the ancient waterbound ones. In fact, any spaceship resembles the old. submarine, in that it is tightly sealed against a hostile exterior environment. Then that environment was water under high pressure, always threatening to implode the vessel and crush everything inside to pulp. Today it is the vacuum of space, threatening, as it were, to suck everything out. In each case, the occupants cannot depart their ship without employing protective gear, and few care to go out, anyway. Modern subs are specifically similar to their ancestral vessels in that they still carry torpedoes and missiles and remain concealed in the depths of the environment.

How is this possible in bright open solar space? Oh, yes, it's always sunshine here; only on the limited backsides of planets does natural darkness occur. We become so accustomed to our structured cycles of day and night, patterned exactly after those of old Earth, that we tend to forget that it is not that way naturally. The murk of the ocean water concealed the ancients, but there is little murk for the moderns. The subs of either age make themselves physically quiet by damping down the sounds they generate and, when pressed, turning off all power and drifting "dead" in water or space. It is difficult to spot a small dead object in space, for space is immense. There may still be uncharted planetoids orbiting the sun. Consider how long it took for Earthly telescopes to identify our companion star, Nemesis. But in the vicinity of an inhabited planet a sub's mere silence is not sufficient, for the space there is constantly explored by radar. Nevertheless, subs often evade detection. To understand how this is possible, it is necessary to grasp the general nature of radar and similar systems.

Radar is simply an electronic signal broadcast into space. When it encounters an object, it bounces back to its source. A receiver notes that returning signal and calculates the distance by the time required for the signal to return. This is normally a reliable procedure, except when the region is crowded with a confusing number of objects, such as the particles of a planetary ring system. Even then, a properly programmed computer can identify all of the natural and "friendly" objects in the vicinity and highlight the suspicious ones. But the principle remains: The computer depends on the returning signals to spot the objects. If no signal returns the machine assumes that region of space is clear. This seems reasonable enough.

But suppose you could evade or divert the signal, so that it did not bounce back? Reflect it to the side instead of back? Or simply absorb it? That is what a sub does. It uses a special gravity shield to form a black-hole effect that absorbs all incoming energy, including the radar signals. That makes it effectively invisible to radar. Of course some care is necessary; if a sub passes between a person and the sun, it will show up as a dark blot. It also blots out the light of any star it occludes. Parties watching for subs are alert for this and pay close attention to what isn't visible, such as a particular star, as well as what is. Again, a programmed computer can constantly verify the positions of all light sources and signal alarm when any fail even momentarily. But a carefully maneuvered sub can avoid occluding any sufficiently bright stars while it floats near a planet and so remain invisible—up to a point. Close to a planet there are too many watching satellites, and the silhouette of the sub looms proportionately larger until concealment is impossible.

So most subs remain deep enough in space to hide but as close to the target planet as feasible, covering it with their deadly missiles. Jupiter subs surround Saturn, and Saturnine subs surround Jupiter. If war should break out the planet-to-planet missiles might well be intercepted before scoring, but sub-to-planet missiles could devastate any city on any planet. That is the true balance of terror. Subs, more than any other factor, contribute to the general feeling of insecurity on every planet; no one can be sure that his city would survive a third System war—and there is a general fear that such a war is inevitable. It makes planetary populations edgy, in much the way that a man threatened with arbitrary execution might be edgy. There are reasonably frequent flare-ups of protest and even violence scattered around the System, but no one has found a way to diffuse the threat. Perhaps one of the major appeals of the difficult life in the Belt is that the widely scattered settlements there would be most likely to survive a System war.

So I was in a sub. What was the significance of that? This was surely not a missile sub; those were too precious for the mere torturing of mem-washed captives. But escape from any sub was hopeless to the n^th power. I couldn't flash a light out a porthole, for the signal-damping field would extinguish that. Theoretically I might surprise someone, grab a weapon, and take over the ship, but that sort of heroic is feasible only in fiction, and not the best fiction at that. In real life ships have safeguards, such as automatic sleep gas released into the air when unauthorized personnel step onto the bridge, and secret codes for the life systems support and drive computers. Only the regular personnel could operate this ship; I knew that without needing verification. It was one of the advantages of my Navy experience: I knew what wasn't practical. All I could do was try to steal a suit and escape the ship—and outside was only the void.

My presence here also meant that some military outfit was in charge, for civilians did not have subs of any kind and neither did pirates. Only governments. That meant I was the captive of a nation. Was I a hostage? Then why the mem-wash, degradation, and torture? That didn't seem to make a lot of sense. It would help if I could remember my position in life, but evidently they didn't want me to know it. Maybe I was some high military officer who knew something about an enemy nation's covert operations; they had kidnapped me and now were trying to erase that knowledge from my mind. Yet the torture wouldn't help do that....

The panel opened again, blindingly. I clamped my eyes shut again. Something dropped beside me; then the panel closed.

I felt about me and found a soiled package. It was a loose net enclosing a hard loaf of bread and a soft plastic bottle of fluid. This was my meal, and it was already soiled with my own excrement.

I discovered I was ravenous. But how could I eat bread smeared with fecal matter? If I did it would only process through my system to become more excrement. Yet what choice did I have? If I did not eat I would starve.

I wiped off the bread as well as I could against my upper arm. In the darkness I couldn't see how well I was doing, but when I bit into it, I could tell that the job was incomplete; some refuse had been absorbed by the crust. I controlled my finicky reflex, uncertain how long it would be before I received anything more to eat. I drank the fluid; it seemed to be straight water.

As I finished the bread, I chewed down on something hard. Startled and pained, though the sensation was only a whisper of what I had felt during the torture session, I dropped my jaw reflexively without opening my mouth. The object jumped to my throat and I swallowed it before I could control myself. The thing tried to catch in my throat, scraping it; I had to gulp the last of my water to get it clear.

How had something like that, whatever it was, gotten into my bread? Were they trying to break my teeth? That didn't make much sense; they could break my teeth directly if they wanted to. Evidently they didn't want to; they preferred to torture me in various ways without physically injuring me. So this had to be poor quality control. Henceforth I would chew more carefully.

I tried to move about, to get more comfortable, but there was no comfortable position in the limited cell. I drifted off to sleep, steeped in my own manure.

It was hard to judge time in this eternal opacity. In due course I woke, feeling the urge of nature, and had no choice but to contribute to the refuse already all around me. Well, perhaps I could judge the passage of time by the level of organic matter. That indicated perhaps one more day, added to the several that had preceded my present awareness. I slept again.

More time passed, and the darkness remained, broken only by the periodic openings of the bright panel for food and, again, my removal for cleaning and a torture session. I feared and hated that pain, finding no rationale for it; apparently my captors simply wanted me to hurt. Hurt I did, though there was no mark on my body.

I had to do something to preserve my sanity, for the deprivation of comfort, light, and memory was getting to me, as it surely was supposed to. I explored my cell, discovering only blank walls. No help there, either physical or mental. I sank slowly into apathy.

Then I became aware of a presence. There was someone in the chamber with me! The panel had not opened, but somehow an entrance had been made.

"Who...?" I asked.

A warm hand came to touch my arm. "Don't you remember me, Hope? I am Helse."

Helse! I remembered her but without context. I loved her.

I took her in my arms. I was covered with slop, while she was clean, but she did not protest. She moved her sleek body to accommodate me and spread her finely fleshed thighs to embrace me, and she was as naked as I, and the shape of man's desire. She leaned forward to kiss me, and her lips were honey and her breasts touched me with electrifying sensation. Suddenly I was in her, penetrating more deeply than I had thought possible, and my essence was pumping into her with an almost intolerable pleasure.

Then she was gone, and I was left spent, my substance dribbling into the muck. Helse had not been real; she had been a succubus, a phantom of my desire.

Yet I knew I had loved her in reality, once. Where and when and how had that been? What had become of her? What had become of me?

Dispirited, I tried again to remember my situation but could not. All I remembered was my distant past. I had grown up on Callisto, part of a family of five. Two sisters, one older, one younger, but I could not recall their names. Mem-wash does tend to eradicate specifics, such as names, more than generalities, such as being part of a family.

I wrestled with that, annoyed that my own family names should be lost. I was sure that if I could once catch a name, I would retain it. Helse had given me my own, Hope, though I seemed to have little hope at the moment. My father had been... surely my own surname should—ah, I had it! Major Hubris, who worked at the coffee plantation. My mother, his wife, Mrs.... Charity Hubris! And...

Suddenly I had it all, as if the memories had been accumulating in the course of the recent hours, awaiting this effort. We three children—Faith, Hope, and Spirit. We had had to leave Callisto and had suffered disaster.

Almost, I wished that memory had remained obscure. My father, my mother—brutally dead in space. My older sister raped. Our friends and associates perished. I alone had survived that terrible journey. No—some children had been taken as slaves perhaps. And my sisters had not died, that I knew of, but perhaps they might as well have. They had been taken aboard pirate ships. And my girl friend, my woman, my beloved Helse...

I screamed, but it did no good. Still I saw Helse's corpse. I had survived but at what price? My love had perished.

I banged my fist against the wall, trying to stifle the pain of memory; that was as bad in its fashion as the physical agony of the torture. But there was no escaping this horror. I sank back into the muck, my mind feeling as soiled as my body. The guilt of Helse's death lay on me.

Yet she had returned to me, here in this hole, to love me one more time. How much better her love had been than mine!

Finally I slept, dreamed, and woke in an agony of remorse. Whatever had happened after Helse died hardly mattered. If it had led me to this hole, well, here was my punishment, fitting enough. Helse had forgiven me, but I had not forgiven myself.

At some point the panel opened and another meal plopped down. Another six hours gone, perhaps. I ate, having no resistance, and chewed on another object. This time I fished it out of my mouth and felt it with my fingers. It was a sharp-edged fragment of metal, a rivet or nail. It must have been a similar object that I had swallowed before. I hoped it wasn't chewing up my insides, then realized that it didn't matter; what was a little more punishment to one who deserved it?

Yet the sharpness of it gave me a notion. Was it enough to scratch the metal wall? I could mark off meals, keeping track of time more precisely....

Time? Why bother. I was here as long as my captors decreed. Better to write myself a message of consolation.

I propped myself up, slid my fingers along the wall to verify that it was smooth—and discovered that it wasn't. There were scratches already on it, perhaps made by a prior prisoner. Not large or obvious—of course, they were invisible in the pitch darkness—but clearly the handiwork of some person. I traced to the upper left and found the edge of the scratches, licking my fingertips to make them more sensitive, never mind what they tasted of. Could it be?

Yes! There was a number there. The figure 1. Next to it, the figure 2, and on, proceeding to the right, a continuing series. There were four lines of numbers, and when I had traced them all, this was the pattern:

1 2 1 14 4 15 14 27 8

15 16 5 29 27 1 12 12 25

5 27 23 8 15 27 5 14 20

5 18 27 8 5 18 5 28 27

 

I sat back and pondered. Obviously someone had used a pointed bit of metal, like the one I had recovered from the bread, to scratch this series. Why?

Why else? A message! In code, so the captors would not realize. A message to whomever followed. A camaraderie of prisoners, the first extending this tiny fragment of comfort to the next.

Code. Would the numbers simply stand for letters of the alphabet? That seemed too easy, but I tried it. Let 1 be A, 2 be B, 3 be C, and so on through. What was the result?

I worked it out, and was amazed at the confirmation and ease of translation. I had hit it right the first time. 27 was a space, 28 a period, 29 a comma. The message said: ABANDON HOPE, ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE.

My enthusiasm collapsed. This was no communication of encouragement—it was counsel for defeat! Who would do such a thing?

I pondered, still bemused at how readily I had unriddled the sequence. It was almost as if my thoughts were identical to those of the prior occupant. And the message itself, so simply coded—any guard could have translated it almost as readily as I had. This could hardly be expected to remain secret.

Then I suffered a new revelation: It was supposed to be easy! This was an open code, intended for the guards to decipher; therefore its message was spurious.

Yet what was the point? The captors had complete control, anyway; what did it matter whether they were fooled by a pseudosecret message?

I rolled it over in my mind. I was a creature of reason; I believed in cause and effect and in purpose in everything, however devious. If I assumed the prior prisoner had a mind like mine, then he certainly had had reason to plant that message. What would my reason be if I were to do such a thing?

Well, confusion. That is, I would try to fool the captors into believing I had capitulated, when in fact I had not. That way they might go easy on me. That was certainly a worthwhile effort.

Still, it wasn't enough. What other reason might there be?

A diversion. Like sleight of hand, an action of one type that diverted attention from a more important action elsewhere.

What else could there be, here in the dark, in accumulated excrement?

I mulled it over. Then, cautiously, I slid my hands along the floor beneath me, under the slop.

Sure enough—there were scratches. A hidden message!

But these were neither letters nor numbers. They seemed to be a pattern of boxes, like the border of embroidery, some complete, some partial, some with dots or circles inside, some empty. What did it mean?

It meant a more sophisticated code, obviously. One that would not yield readily to simple analysis. One the captors could not decipher, assuming they became aware of it at all. A double baffle: concealment where they would be least likely to look, and an almost impossible code to crack!

Who would devise such a thing? Offhand I had just one prospect: myself.

If I had been confined here and had known or suspected that I was to be subjected to memory-wash, this was what I would do. Leave a secret message to myself, to provide necessary information to confound my captors.

Well, had it been me? Quite possibly. As I explained, I know the smell of my own refuse; some practical calculation based on the estimated quantity of material suggested that I had spent about a week here before the mem-wash, and my memory would have been with me then. I had known or suspected what was coming, so it was only natural that I prepare for this post-wash period. My life and welfare probably depended on it.

It had to be me; I had used a quote drawn from Dante's Commedia that related most aptly to my situation: the soul's entry to hell. It even included my name: Hope. I was literally the Hope who had been abandoned. No one but me would have thought to use that particular reference.

This conclusion was exhilarating. Now I had, as it were, a companion in the cell whom I could trust absolutely: my former self. One who might not have known the future, but certainly knew the past, and would share it with me. Now I could tackle the problem of my captivity with confidence.

Why had my captors waited a week to mem-wash me? Not for psychological reasons, as the mem-wash would wipe out any attitude I developed. Probably the sub had taken time to work its way free of the planetary environment without risking discovery, so they had waited to give me the treatment until they were certain things were secure. If they got caught early they could be charged only with abduction. So they had locked me into this secret hole and allowed my filth to accumulate so that it would have the appropriate psychological effect after the mem-wash. There was no problem about illness deriving from the filth, as there were no applicable agents of disease here. Certainly they were putting pressure on me by keeping me in a degrading situation except when they actively tortured me. The average person would soon break down under such treatment and do anything the captors wanted, just to get free of it.

Unfortunately for them I was not an average person. I had prepared for my humiliation and incarceration, giving my mind something compelling to occupy it. And, surely, some advice on how to deal with this situation.

Well and good. Now all I had to do was crack my own code. Doubtless I had learned its elements somewhere during the period of my life now washed out of memory. Or had I? Surely I would have anticipated that forgetting, so would have made it a point to draw from my early memories, giving myself a chance while keeping it difficult for any other person.

I felt again for the scratches—and realized that I might be under observation now, or at least monitored by recording. The cell was quite dark to me, but might not be so to my captors. That meant I should be careful how I approached the message below, so as not to give away its presence. Indeed, why had I hidden it so carefully, unless concealment were necessary? The "open" message on the wall suggested that I should at least seem to abandon hope. I had to seem to be sleeping or mulling fatalistically on my fate.

I reached up and retraced the message on the wall. I shook my head in obvious frustration. "But I don't even know what they want!" I muttered. "I have no hope, but they pay no attention!" It was easy to say; the isolation and degradation and torture sessions were intended to make me feel that way, and to an extent they did. The pattern was beginning to make sense.

I settled back with obvious resignation, one hand supporting my body partially upright. It was almost impossible to get comfortable here, physically, which was part of the point. Break a man down physically and you're on the way to breaking him down emotionally. The linkages are stronger than many people choose to realize. But I had experienced privation before; this really wasn't that bad.

My fingers slowly traced the scratches. I found where they began—I hoped. The first six were as follows:

That was two , a , a , and two 's, one with an X in it. Probably orientation and the addition of an X made them different symbols, so only two were really the same: the first and sixth. What did they mean?

Now I remembered. My little sister Spirit and I had had a code game we had learned from a friend when we were children on Callisto. The letters of the alphabet were charted in grids, and segments of those grids became the representations of those letters. I think such games have been around for centuries. One grid had nine combinations, so that it translated into nine letters, in this manner:

The second grid had dots in the figures, for the next nine letters, and a third grid, with X's in the figures, finished out the alphabet. A fairly easy translation had produced a marvelously hierographic rendition, fascinating us. We had had quite a fling with it, in English and in Spanish, when I was twelve and she was nine. Somehow it was usually Spirit I was closest to, rather than my older sister Faith. Spirit always joined me in childish pastimes while Faith found them—and us—beneath her. I had evidently drawn on that old code for this occasion.

For a moment I paused, savoring the strengthening memory of Spirit. What an engaging child she had been! Not beautiful like her older sister but spunky, always full of fight and humor, always there in my support. Some boys have contempt for their little sisters; not me. Spirit had always been my complementary aspect, a girl who was a better friend than any boy had been. Where was she now? My memory did not say, but surely she was looking out for me as she always had.

If I had used that code, translation would be easy. I pictured the grids in my mind; the pattern of them made visualization feasible. would be the second grid, fourth section, or the thirteenth letter of the alphabet: M. was in the first grid, the fourth square: D. And so on, spelling the word MDGYBM.

I considered that, disappointed. Obviously that wasn't it. Yet I was sure I was on the right track.

Well, perhaps a direct translation was too simple; the captors could intercept it too readily. What else was there?

An indirect translation, of course. One that required an additional key, that no other person had. Something I carried in my head. A key phrase or sentence—that was the way my mind worked.

Somewhere along the way I had learned about binary codes—systems in which two elements were required to encrypt and decrypt messages. One part might contain the letters of the words, and the other part the mechanism for putting those letters and words in proper order. That's an oversimplification, but it suffices for now. If you have a mere jumble or a simple listing of thirty As, five Bs, eight Cs, ten Ds, one hundred and four Es, and so on, you are hard-put to interpret the message. But if all you know is the order, not the letters—one letter from the fifth group followed by one from the sixth and so on—and the sample is brief, you can't decipher it, either. I knew that the first and sixth letters of this hieroglyphic message were the same, but which letter might that be? It could be almost anything. I needed both parts of the code, and all I had was one. I had MDGYBM—how did it translate?

Where was the other part? It had to be accessible to me or the exercise was pointless. I pondered awhile and concluded that it had to be in my head. Some key that only I would know, that would survive a memory-wash. The hieroglyphic code was an example: a person who lacked my childhood experience with that code would not be able to make sense of those symbols. Even so, I had made only partial sense of them. The letters could be filled into that pattern in any order, and my sample wasn't large enough to analyze for any recurring pattern, not even if I translated all the characters on the floor.

Recurring pattern? There might not be any! Now another aspect of coding came back to me: the variable displacement. The first and sixth symbols might not stand for the same letter! There could be a translation key that said the first symbol stood for the tenth letter of the alphabet, and the second stood for the fifteenth. Yes, this was the way I would have done it. I could not remember when or where or from whom I had learned of this type of coding, but I remembered the fact of it. I definitely needed the key to that translation.

I pondered some more and was interrupted for another outside session. I was cleaned and conducted to the torture chamber, but this time they did not use the box. Instead a new man was there to ask questions. I knew that if my answers did not satisfy him they would use the pain-box again; that was a powerful inducement for me to provide acceptable answers.

"What is your name?" the man asked. He was moderately heavyset, with musculature remaining in the upper arms; he might have been an athlete in youth but was so no longer. There were old scars on his arms, neck, and face, including one that nicked his left ear; he had fought with blades and had a close call. Maybe he had been a pirate. I did not know his name and did not intend to inquire; I simply thought of him as Scar, for private convenience, and let it go at that.

"Hope Hubris," I answered promptly enough.

"How do you know?"

"The guard called me Hubris, and then I remembered."

Scar nodded. "What else do you remember?"

I shrugged. "My childhood on Callisto. We fled in a bootleg bubble, but my parents died—" I broke off, the memory hurting again.

"What do you remember after your arrival at Jupiter?"

I concentrated, but it wouldn't come. "I... don't think we ever got to Jupiter. They—they turned us away. Everyone died—"

"Where did you go then?"

Again I concentrated. "I... think to... to Leda. The Naval station. They—they let me stay because I was literate in English. Not all Hispanics are. Then..." I shook my head; it wouldn't come.

"You are not cooperating," Scar said. He nodded to the other man in the chamber, who picked up the pain-box.

"I don't remember!" I cried. "It—I need more time! I didn't remember even this much before!"

"Where did you work?" Scar demanded.

Yet again I concentrated. As in a fog, I perceived something. "I—the farm-bubbles—migrant labor!" I exclaimed. "The only work I could get at that age. I was... fifteen."

"And after that?"

"It's blank. I just don't know—"

The pain came on, deep in my abdomen, making me nauseous. It was as if my gut were rupturing. My hands became damp with cold sweat, and I started to shiver, though I was sweating.

"How do you feel?" Scar inquired as the agony abated.

"Intoxicado!" I gasped.

"You're not drunk," he snapped. "Don't try to play games with me, Hubris!"

"I—I spoke in Spanish, my mother tongue," I explained quickly. "It means nauseous. From the pain."

"Oh." Scar half-smiled. "That figures. We gave you a stone."

A stone. The effect of a gallstone or kidney stone. Such blockages could generate a certain nausea in addition to the pain at the site, whether the obstruction was real or phantom, as in this case. "But why?" I asked plaintively. "When you know I can't answer your questions?"

"Do you not remember joining the Jupiter Navy?" he asked.

"The Navy!" Suddenly I did remember—and, indeed, I had realized before that I must have been in it. "Yes, there was trouble among the immigrant workers, and I was drafted...." I shook my head. "Basic training, I think. But it's misty."

"Try to clarify it," he suggested.

When I hesitated, the pain came on again, worse than before. This time I did retch, regurgitating on my body.

The pain eased. "Do you remember now?" Scar asked.

"I wish I could," I gasped.

He nodded, satisfied. He walked to a counter and picked up a cup of fluid. He brought it to me. "Drink this. It will make you feel better."

I didn't even question its nature. If they wanted to poison me they could do so anytime they chose. I took the cup with a shaking hand and brought it to my mouth and drank. It was some kind of beverage, pleasant enough, with a tangy aftertaste.

Then I was conducted back to my filthy cell and locked in. I was alone again, my new vomit only adding to the stench.

I returned to my reflections. Evidently my captors had merely been verifying the effect of the mem-wash. I had not been prevaricating; my direct memory beyond the migrant-labor period was hopelessly fogged. If they had mem-washed me to prevent me from testifying about some scandal of which I had had knowledge, this had been effective; certainly I could not remember it. Yet still it seemed simpler to kill me or to hold me incommunicado until the time for testimony was over. Evidently they wanted more from me than my silence.

Despite my isolation and physical discomfort, I experienced a burgeoning sense of well-being. Why was this? My suspicious mind wanted a reason.

That wasn't long in appearing. Obviously I had been drugged. That drink Scar had served me—not straight alcohol but something sinisterly potent.

Still, why? Why drug a helpless captive? That didn't make sense, unless...

Unless it was addictive. Hook a man on a drug, make him an addict, when you control the source of supply, and that man is yours. What had I fallen into?

I experienced rapid panic, then quelled it. The drug was making me emotionally unstable. Whatever was happening to me was happening, and I could not prevent it. They could dose me with the drug by force if I tried to resist; repeatedly, until the addiction was complete. I wasn't really worried, and though I knew this was probably false optimism sponsored by the drug and by my resignation to the situation, still I felt all right. For one thing I had a secret weapon: the coded message. Maybe that had the answer to my problem.

I concentrated on that. My mind seemed preternaturally sharp; my sensation of well-being seemed to extend into the brain tissues themselves. Was this a genuine enhancement of mental prowess or a hallucinogenic illusion? I tried multiplying numerical figures in my head and seemed to be facile at it. My more important challenge was to solve the riddle of the coded message. If the enhancement were real, this would be the best time to do it. If not—what did I have to lose?

—like a diminishing progression, one element of the figure deleted with each repetition. Then added again—no, that wasn't it. My original childhood chart did seem to be the likely key. Three grids could cover the alphabet, but what about spacing and punctuation? I checked further along the message and found some figures with little Os in them. So there was a fourth grid, making thirty-six representations. The alphabet, plus ten spots for other marks.

Then I had another notion. There was my alphabet—not in any direct ratio but in my head! A through Z and ten punctuation marks. There needed to be no symbol-letter connection; the symbols merely could be instructions on how to select the letters of the mental font. A simple displacement could do it, the symbols standing for numbers that showed how far to count for the proper letter:

And so on. The first, second, and third letter of the alphabet. So the message would be 13 4 7 25 11 13, translating to the corresponding...

Um, no. That was still a direct translation. It was pointless to interpose numbers if they only stood for letters. That was too easy to crack and needed no input from my unique experience.

Still, I felt that numbers were part of the answer. Displacement—not from a set alphabet but from a random one—that would be tough indeed to crack.

And, in my drugged brilliance I fathomed the next stage of the answer. That random alphabet—it didn't have to be an alphabet at all, just a series of starting points. P, Q, X, Y, Z—anything would do. Then the coded numbers could count off from those points. 13 4 7 25 11 13—count off thirteen from the first starting point, four from the second, seven from the third. Thirteen from the P would be off the end of the alphabet, into the punctuation. Did that make sense? Perhaps not, but that only meant that P wasn't the proper starting point; it was just my random guess. Find the correct starting points and the rest would follow.

How could I discover a random series of starting points? The answer was that I couldn't. So, they probably only seemed random. They could be represented by a key phrase or sentence—one that only I would devise. There was the true virtue of such a system: its personification. No one else could crack the code because no one else could think of my key sentence.

All well and good, but what was the sentence? I had no idea. Maybe too much of my memory had been washed, and the sentence was gone. Yet shouldn't I have anticipated that problem? I was an intelligent person, wasn't I? Surely I had allowed for it!

I pondered longer, but here at last I seemed to be balked. I was in a kind of hell, and part of that hell was my ignorance. What, in the period of my memory, would I have devised for my period of amnesia to recover?

Then I remembered the message on the wall: ABANDON HOPE, ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE. Could that be it? It would be just like me to plant the message of success under the noses of my captors, in the form of a message of defeat. Delicious irony!

I tried it. The first letter was A; count off thirteen, to N. Four from the second letter, B—it came to F. And so on, seven from A for H, twenty five from N—oops! That ran way off the alphabet. Well, skip that for now and go on to the next: eleven from D for O, and thirteen from O for punctuation. N F H ? O ? This couldn't be right, yet it had seemed like such a promising lead.

Wait—suppose the count started at the original letter, not next to it. That would change the displacement by one. I reviewed it in my mind, painstakingly recounting the letters. I had a good visual memory, but this was tricky to do. M E G ? N ? That was more like it. The final character could actually be a space, separating the word from the next; most words in the English language were short. The missing middle one...

Suddenly I had it. There were not thirty-six but thirty-seven characters in the original sentence, counting the space at the end. That might show how many there were in the alphabet/punctuation key. That brought the missing letter back around to A, and I knew that word.

MEGAN.