Chapter 10 — CONFESSION

Now I knew I could help Dorian Gray; a simple personal request to the premier of Ganymede would produce that baby in hours. Dorian must have known this; that was why she had been so ready to enlist my aid. My captors might not choose to honor their promise, but I, Hope Hubris, the former ambassador to Ganymede, would certainly honor my promise. I had become a better bet for Dorian's purpose than my captors were. Suddenly it all fell into place, and I believed I could trust her. True, she might be covering all bases, ready to collect from my captors if they prevailed, and from me if I prevailed, but she would probably elect to go with me if she could. That was a comfort to me, because I suspected I would have to tell her more of my memories than I had hitherto, if I was to make further progress. And I did have to make progress, for I didn't know how much time I had or what my captors really wanted of me. I only knew I had to thwart their plans, and I couldn't do that if I didn't know enough.

In due course I was released from the cell, cleaned up, and taken to Scar. "If I may inquire," I said cautiously, "in what way did I transgress this time? I had not intended to."

"You play the innocent with me?" Scar demanded curtly. "Confess your crime and I'll let it go without further ado."

Was he fishing for something? I gave him the minimum, hoping that was what he wanted. "Then you found out how I escaped my cell at night."

He nodded. "How long did you think you could fool us about that, Hubris?"

Of course, he had known about it all along, so this was merely a pretext. But I had to play it through, relieved that my true secrets had not been exposed. There was no evidence that Dorian had betrayed me; certainly they would not have punished me openly if she had, for that would have given her away. Why had Scar chosen this time to brace me with this?

"I didn't tell you because I knew you'd stop it," I said with genuine regret. It was not for the discovery but because now he would surely have to cut off my contact with Dorian, to maintain appearances, and I did indeed value that contact. "My only female companionship. I hoped she wouldn't turn me in."

"She didn't," he said.

"Don't punish her!" I exclaimed with suitable feeling. "She didn't start it! I used a plumbing rod to jimmy the doors—it was so hard to be alone."

"Evidently she felt the same way," he said grimly. "We put her back in the stink-cell too, but she hasn't talked."

"Let her out!" I pleaded. "I won't do it anymore. Maybe she didn't dare say anything for fear I'd get out again and attack her!"

"You seem quite interested in the slut's welfare," he remarked with satisfaction.

"She's no slut!" I protested, showing exactly that commitment he wished.

"You like her so well?"

I spread my hands as if caught in an awkward admission. "She... gave me comfort."

"Considerably more than comfort!" he exclaimed with righteous indignation.

"Please, just tell me what you want, and I'll give you no trouble. Only don't hurt her anymore."

Scar grimaced, but he was well pleased. I was giving every evidence of the very sort of attachment he had wanted. It seemed that the woman was now an excellent lever on me.

"I'll do better than that," he decided. "I'll put you in a cell together, as long as you both cooperate completely." I gaped, showing my amazement at his generosity. He had, indeed, surprised me. This was definitely the carrot instead of the stick. I had been careful to maintain the pretense of increasing addiction to the beverage-drug, so now he believed he had another excellent lever on me.

Dorian Gray was moved into my cell, and the plumbing was fixed so that escape from the cell was no longer possible. Now we had light and saw each other for the first time.

She was exactly as beautiful as I had judged. Her hair was jet-black and hung in gently curving hanks to her armpits. Her face was elfin, but her body was as finely formed as any could be without requiring an entry to starlet career. Surely she had no need of this sort of employment. But, of course, folk of either sex can be foolish in their teens and get themselves trapped in situations that greater experience would have enabled them to avoid. Dorian, by her own account, had been as foolish as any.

"They found out," I said somewhat awkwardly. "So they put us together, but if either of us fail to cooperate with their program completely—"

"I know," she agreed. Then she moved to me, and I took her in my arms. "I did not tell on you; I don't know how they found out." She raised her lips to kiss me, and her tongue darted through to caress mine, twice. Of course, she knew how they knew; we were being watched now!

We undressed and squeezed into my hammock, not turning off the light. Actually we couldn't; the day/night switching was automatic. That didn't bother me; it was a treat to handle her body when I could see it.

"That pit-cell was awful; I hated it in there again," she told me as she signaled "no." I understood; she was supposed to be their agent, hiding the truth from me. She would hardly be punished for doing what she was supposed to do. Naturally she had been reporting on our encounters all along—up to a point. Now she was supposed to make me believe she had suffered, to intensify, my sympathy and feeling for her.

I responded as I was supposed to. "I dread the thought of your being put in there because of me! After this, anything they ask you to do, do without question; it's the only way."

"The only way," she agreed, kissing me again and tonguing me twice.

As we proceeded toward the love act, discovering it to be a new experience in the light, she informed me by words and signals what had really happened. There had been a sudden visit by an officer not in the know about the program here, so that they had had to scramble to make things appear routine. I had been dumped out of sight, and she had been put in a uniform and put to work again in the galley. After the officer left things had returned to normal, except that they had had to cobble up a pretext for my apparent punishment. It seemed to have worked out all right. Scar had tricked me into confessing, so that he did not have to reveal his connivance. It had also shown how effectively Dorian had hooked me; Scar was pleased with her.

"But you know," she said in un-talk. "You are married, Hope. When your memory catches up—"

"I know," I agreed in the same way.

"You know?"

I had decided to tell her part of my secret, because I was sure I would need her help to return to the smell-cell, and I wanted to be sure she remained in good repute as a spy. "I discovered a key term that triggered a segment of my lost memory: how I married Megan."

"A key term?" She was genuinely surprised. "You knew—before you made love to me?"

"I knew. I, too, am a professional."

She was abruptly angry. "How could you!" I was lucky she hadn't bitten me instead of tonguing me!

"I love her. I would do anything to return to her, just as you would do to recover your baby."

She considered that, shaken. "I suppose turnabout is fair. But you will help me if you can?"

"Yes. And now I know I can—if I get free of this captivity."

"Then I will do whatever you ask of me." We continued on to the culmination, for such coded discourse took time, and there was only so much seemingly idle dialogue we could indulge in without arousing suspicion. Then we slept.

I had implied that I had no real feeling for Dorian, but that was not true. I was doing what I was doing with her because I had to, but I did enjoy it on its own level. It was becoming more difficult to reconcile this with my memories.

Next day I went through the routine indoctrination and performed well. Next night I talked further with Dorian, not making love but spending the night in her embrace. I told her that she would have to betray my secret: my keyed memory.

I cupped her ear with my hands and whispered directly into that enclosure: nonsense syllables that would seem to the recording mike like not-quite-distinguishable information. I was officially telling her my secret, and my captors, when they reviewed this portion of the record, would be desperate to know what it was. She would tell them and thus prove herself to be even more useful to them. But she had yet to find out exactly where I had seen the key term, though the implication was that it was in this cell.

In return I needed to know exactly what my captors really wanted of me. She would have to ask them, in the guise of discovering how dangerous my returning memories might be to their objective. If she could get me that information I might have a chance to counter it.

She made her report—and suddenly I was back in the hole. This time I knew why: They were going over my regular cell with as fine a brush as possible. They were desperate to find and eliminate anything that would cause my memories to return prematurely. That confirmed a suspicion I had. Their mission for me involved something recent, and if I remembered that thing I would probably be able to counter it.

Why didn't they simply mem-wash me again? That, too, was now clear: they didn't have time. I needed to have a substantial portion of my memories so that I could function without obvious incapacity—without the key memory that would give me too much information. They were fine-tuning me for their purpose.

As much by luck as by planning, I had a tool to counter their program. I had the memory-evoking key terms.

I felt under the muck for the scratches, finding my place. I had gotten to the H in WHO before; now I had to resume there. WHO ENTER HERE. The symbol for the O-space was a square, . That was the number 5. Count off five in the mental alphabet, O, P, Q, R, S—the first letter was S. The next symbol was , 12 from the space after O. That took me through the punctuation portion and back to the beginning of the alphabet, A. Then , 16, counting from the E, to T. And , 8 from the N, to U. Then , 36 from the T—simply count back 2, for R. , 10 from the E, or N. And , again, 10 from the R, taking me to the end of the letters, the space, making the end.

The word was SATURN.