Luis swallowed. Either he was mad or the man was, or perhaps it was
the society he was trying to adjust to. "Aren't you taking a chance,
doing this for me?"
The manager smiled. "You're joking. A tenth of the freezers we sell
are immediately converted into retrogressors. Who cares?" He became
serious. "Do you still want to know who bought it?"
Luis nodded--at the moment he didn't trust his voice.
"It will take several hours. No charge though, customer service. Tell
me where I can reach you."
Luis jotted down the number of the screen at the Shelter and handed it
to the manager. As he left, the manager whispered to him: "Remember,
the next time you buy a freezer--ours can be converted easier than the
one you have."
He went out into the sunlight. It didn't seem the same. What kind of
society was he living in? The reality didn't fit with what he had
re-learned. It had seemed an orderly and sane civilization, with
little violence and vast respect for the law.
But the fact was that any school child--well, not quite _that_ young,
perhaps--but anyone older could and did buy a freezer. And it was
ridiculously easy to convert a freezer into something far more
vicious. Of course, it was illegal, but no one paid any attention to
that.
This was wrong; it wasn't the way he remembered....
He corrected himself: he didn't actually remember anything. His
knowledge came from tapes, and was obviously inadequate. Certain
things he just didn't understand yet.
He wanted to talk to someone--but who? The counselor had given him all
the information he intended to. The store manager had supplied some
additional insight, but it only confused him. Luise--at the moment she
was suspicious of him.
There was nothing to do except to be as observant as he could. He
wandered through the town, just looking. He saw nothing that seemed
familiar. Negative evidence, of course, but it indicated he hadn't
lived here before.
Before what? Before he had been retrogressed. He had been brought here
from elsewhere, the same as Luise.
[Illustration]
He visited the spaceport. Again the evidence was negative; there was
not a ship the sight of which tripped his memory. It had been too much
to hope for; if he had been brought in by spaceship, it wouldn't still
be around for him to recognize.
Late in the afternoon, he headed toward the center of town. He was
riding the belt when he saw Luise coming out of a tall office
building.
* * * * *
He hopped off and let her pass, boarding it again and following her at
a distance. As soon as they were out of the business district, he
began to edge closer.
A few blocks from the Shelter she got off the belt and waited, turning
around and smiling directly at him. In the interim her attitude toward
him had changed, evidently--for the better, as far as he was
concerned. He couldn't ignore her and didn't want to. He stepped off
the belt.
"Hello," she said. "I think you were following me."
"I was. Do you mind?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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