_[13]_
He was walking again.
He didn't quite remember how he had left the automat, and he reallydidn't even try to remember.
He was trying to remember other things--further back--before he had ...
Before he had _what_?
Before the Institute. Before the beginning of the operations.
The memories were there, all right. He could sense them, floating insome sort of mental limbo, just beyond the grasp of his conscious mind,like the memories of a dream after one has awakened. Each time he wouldtry to reach into the darkness to grasp one of the pieces, it wouldshatter into smaller bits. The big patterns were too fragile towithstand the direct probing of his conscious mind, and even theresulting fragments did not want to hold still long enough to beanalyzed.
And, while a part of his mind probed frantically after the elusiveparticles of memory, another part of it watched the process withsemi-detached amusement.
He had always known there were holes in his memory (_Always? Don't kidyourself, pal!_), but it was disconcerting to find an area that was asfull of holes as a used machine-gun target. The whole fabric had beenpunched to bits.
No man's memory is completely available at any given time. Whatever therecording process is, however completely every bit of data may berecorded during a lifetime, much of it is unavailable. It may beincompletely cross-indexed, or, in some instances, labeled DO NOT SCAN.Or, metaphorically, the file drawer may be locked. It may be that, inmany cases, if a given bit of data remains unscanned for a long enoughperiod, it fades into illegibility, never reinforced by the scanningprocess. Sensory data, coming in from the outside world as it does, isprobably permanent. But the thought patterns originating within the minditself, the processes that correlate and cross-index and speculate onand hypothesize about the sensory data, these are much more fragile. Aman might glance once through a Latin primer and have each and everypage imprinted indelibly on his recording mechanism and still be unableto make sense out of _Nauta in cubitu cum puella est_.
Sometimes a man is aware of the holes in his memory. ("What _was_ thename of that fellow I met at Eddie's party? Can't remember it for thelife of me.") At other times, a memory may lay dormant and completelyunremembered, leaving no apparent gap, until a tag of some kind bringsit up. ("That girl with the long hair reminds me of Suzie Blugerhugle.My gosh! I haven't thought of her in years!") Both factors seemed to beoperating in Bart Stanton's mind at this time.
Incredibly, he had never, in the past year at least, had occasion to tryto remember much about his past life. He had known who he was withoutthinking about it particularly, and the rest of his knowledge--language,history, social behavior, politics, geography, and so on--had beenreadily available for the most part. Ask an educated man to give theproduct of the primes 2, 13, and 41, or ask him to give the date of theNorman Conquest, and he can give you the answers very quickly. He mayhave to calculate the first, which will make him pause for a secondbefore answering, but the second will come straight out of his memoryrecords. In neither case does he have to think of where he learned theprocess or the fact, or who taught it to him, or when he got theinformation.
But now the picture and the name in the paper had brought forth areaction in Stanton's mind, and he was trying desperately to bring theinformation out of oblivion.
Did he have a mother? Surely. But could he remember her? _Yes!_Certainly. A pretty, gentle, rather sad woman. He could remember whenshe died, although he couldn't remember ever having actually attendedthe funeral.
What about his father?
Try as he might, he could find no memory whatever of his father, and, atfirst, that bothered him. He could remember his mother--could almost seeher moving around in the apartment where they had lived in ... in ... inDenver! Sure! And he could remember the big building itself, and theblock, and even Mrs. Frobisher, who lived upstairs! And the school! Andthe play area! A great many memories came crowding back, but there wasno trace of his father.
And yet ...
Oh, of _course_! That was it! His father had been killed in an accidentwhen Martinbart were very young.
_Martinbart!_
The name flitted through his mind like a scrap of paper in a high wind,but mentally he reached out and grasped it.
Martinbart. Martin-Bart. Mart 'n' Bart. Mart _and_ Bart.
The Stanton Twins.
It was very curious, he thought, that he should have forgotten hisbrother. And even more curious that the name in the paper had notbrought him instantly to mind.
Martin, the cripple. Martin, the boy with the poor, weak,radiation-shattered nervous system. The boy who had had to stay in atherapeutic chair all his life because his efferent nerves could notcontrol his body. The boy who couldn't speak. Or, rather, _wouldn't_speak because he was ashamed of the gibberish that resulted.
Martin. The nonentity. The nothing. The nobody.
The one who watched and listened and thought, but could do nothing.
Bart Stanton stopped suddenly and unfolded the newspaper again under theglow of the streetlamp. His memories certainly didn't jibe with _this_!
His eyes ran down the column of type:
Mr. Martin has, in the years since he has been in the Belt, run up an enviable record, both as an insurance investigator and as a police detective, although his connection with the Planetoid Police is, necessarily, an unofficial one. Probably not since Sherlock Holmes has there been such mutual respect and co-operation between the official police and a private investigator.
There was only one explanation, Stanton thought. Martin, too, had beentreated by the Institute. His memory was still blurry and incomplete, heknew, but he did suddenly remember that a decision had been made forMartin to take the treatment.
He chuckled a little at the irony of it. It looked as though they hadn'tbeen able to make a superman of Martin, but they _had_ been able to makea normal and extraordinarily capable human being of him, he thought. Nowit was Bart who was the freak, the odd one.
_Turn about is fair play_, he thought. But somehow it didn't seem quitefair.
He crumpled the newspaper, dropped it into a nearby waste chute, andwalked on through the night toward the Neurophysical Institute.