Then what? He would want to make certain that his victims did not
trace their former lives. And he would be inconspicuous in so doing.
Again Luis turned to the screen, but this time he dialed the news
service. He found what he was looking for in the advertisements of an
issue a month old. It was very neat:
DO YOU REMEMBER EVERYTHING--or is your mind hazy? Perhaps my
system can help you recall those little details you find it
so annoying to forget. MEMORY LAB.
That was all. No name. But there was an address. Hurriedly Luis
scanned every succeeding issue. The advertisement was still there.
He was coming closer, very close. The ad was clever; it would attract
the attention of Luise and himself and others like them, and almost no
one else. There was no mention of fees, no claim that it was operated
by a psychologist, nothing that the police would investigate.
Night after night Luise had sat alone; sooner or later, watching the
screen, she had to see the ad. It was intriguing and she had answered
it. Normally, so would he have: but now he was forewarned.
Part of the cleverness was this: that she went of her own volition.
She would have suspected an outright offer of help--but this seemed
harmless. She went to him as she would to anyone in business. A very
clever setup.
But who was behind MEMORY LAB? Luis thought he knew. A trained
psychologist with a legitimate purpose would attach his name to the
advertisement.
Luis patted the retro gun in his pocket. Dorn Starret, criminal, and
inventor of a fictitious memory system, was going to have a visitor.
It wasn't necessary to go to Ceres to see him.
* * * * *
It was the only conclusion that made sense. Dorn Starret had retroed
him--the gun proved that--and Luise as well. Until a few minutes ago,
he had thought that she had been first and he later, but that was
wrong. They had been retrogressed together and Dorn Starret had done
it; now he had come back to make certain that they didn't trace him.
Neat--but it wasn't going to work. Luis grinned wryly to himself. He
had a weapon in his pocket that was assurance it wouldn't work.
He got off the belt near the building he had seen Luise leaving
yesterday. He went into the lobby and located MEMORY LAB, a suite on
the top floor. It wasn't necessary, but he checked rental dates. The
lab had been there exactly three weeks. This tied in with Luise's
release from retro-therapy. Every connection he had anticipated was
there.
He rode up to the top floor. There wasn't a chance that Starret would
recognize him; physically he must have changed too much since the
criminal had last seen him. And while Luise hadn't concealed that she
was a retro and so had given herself away, he wasn't going to make
that mistake.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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