A Trace of Memory. Keith Laumer
Читать онлайн книгу.
Foster nodded. “Perhaps,” he said. “Perhaps we should go there.”
I groaned, then caught myself. “No, I’m not in pain,” I said. “But don’t take me so literally, Foster.”
We rode along in silence for a while.
“Say, Foster,” I said. “Have you still got that notebook of yours?”
Foster tried several pockets, came up with the book. He looked at it, turned it over, frowning.
“You remember it?” I said, watching him.
He shook his head slowly, then ran his finger around the circles embossed on the cover.
“This pattern,” he said. “It signifies....”
“Go on, Foster,” I said. “Signifies what?”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t remember.”
I took the book and sat looking at it. I didn’t really see it, though. I was seeing my future. When Foster didn’t turn up, they’d naturally assume he was dead. I’d been with him just before his disappearance. It wasn’t hard to see why they’d want to talk to me—and my having vanished too wouldn’t help any. My picture would blossom out in post offices all over the country; and even if they didn’t catch me right away, the murder charge would always be there, hanging over me.
It wouldn’t do any good to turn myself in and tell them the whole story; they wouldn’t believe me, and I wouldn’t blame them. I didn’t really believe it myself, and I’d lived through it. But then, maybe I was just imagining that Foster looked younger. After all, a good night’s rest—
I looked at Foster, and almost groaned again. Twenty was stretching it; eighteen was more like it. I was willing to swear he’d never shaved in his life.
“Foster,” I said. “It’s got to be in this book; who you are, where you came from—It’s the only hope I’ve got.”
“I suggest we read it, then,” Foster said.
“A bright idea,” I said. “Why didn’t I think of that?” I thumbed through the book to the section in English and read for an hour. Starting with the entry dated January 19, 1710, the writer had scribbled a few lines every few months. He seemed to be some kind of pioneer in the Virginia Colony. He complained about prices, and the Indians, and the ignorance of the other settlers and every now and then threw in a remark about the Enemy. He often took long trips, and when he got home, he complained about those, too.
“It’s a funny thing, Foster,” I said. “This is supposed to have been written over a period of a couple of hundred years, but it’s all in the same hand. That’s kind of odd, isn’t it?”
“Why should a man’s handwriting change?” Foster said.
“Well, it might get a little shaky there toward the last, don’t you agree?”
“Why is that?”
“I’ll spell it out, Foster,” I said. “Most people don’t live that long. A hundred years is stretching it, to say nothing of two.”
“This must be a very violent world, then,” Foster said.
“Skip it,” I said. “You talk like you’re just visiting. By the way; do you remember how to write?”
Foster looked thoughtful. “Yes,” he said. “I can write.”
I handed him the book and the stylus. “Try it,” I said. Foster opened to a blank page, wrote, and handed the book back to me.
“Always and always and always,” I read.
I looked at Foster. “What does that mean?” I looked at the words again, then quickly flipped to the pages written in English. I was no expert on penmanship, but this came up and cracked me right in the eye.
The book was written in Foster’s hand.
*
“It doesn’t make sense,” I was saying for the fortieth time. Foster nodded sympathetic agreement.
“Why would you write out this junk yourself, and then spend all that time and money trying to have it deciphered? You said experts worked over it and couldn’t break it. But,” I went on, “you must have known you wrote it; you knew your own handwriting. But on the other hand, you had amnesia before; you had the idea you might have told something about yourself in the book....”
I sighed, leaned back and tossed the book over to Foster. “Here, you read a while,” I said. “I’m arguing with myself and I can’t tell who’s winning.”
Foster looked the book over carefully.
“This is odd,” he said.
“What’s odd?”
“The book is made of khaff. It is a permanent material—and yet it shows damage.”
I sat perfectly still and waited.
“Here on the back cover,” Foster said. “A scuffed area. Since this is khaff, it cannot be an actual scar. It must have been placed there.”
I grabbed the book and looked. There was a faint mark across the back cover, as though the book had been scraped on something sharp. I remembered how much luck I had had with a knife. The mark had been put here, disguised as a casual nick in the finish. It had to mean something.
“How do you know what the material is?” I asked.
Foster looked surprised. “In the same way that I know the window is of glass,” he said. “I simply know.”
“Speaking of glass,” I said. “Wait till I get my hands on a microscope. Then maybe we’ll begin to get some answers.”
Chapter IV
The two-hundred pound señorita with the wart on her upper lip put a pot of black Cuban coffee and a pitcher of salted milk down beside the two chipped cups, leered at me in a way that might have been appealing thirty years before, and waddled back to the kitchen. I poured a cup, gulped half of it, and shuddered. In the street outside the cafe a guitar cried Estrellita.
“Okay, Foster,” I said. “Here’s what I’ve got: The first half of the book is in pot-hooks—I can’t read that. But this middle section: the part coded in regular letters—it’s actually encrypted English. It’s a sort of résumé of what happened.” I picked up the sheets of paper on which I had transcribed my deciphering of the coded section of the book, using the key that had been micro-engraved in the fake scratch on the back cover.
I read:
For the first time, I am afraid. My attempt to construct the communicator called down the Hunters upon me. I made such a shield as I could contrive, and sought their nesting place.
I came there and it was in that place that I knew of old, and it was no hive, but a pit in the ground, built by men of the Two Worlds. And I would have come into it, but the Hunters swarmed in their multitudes. I fought them and killed many, but at last I fled away. I came to the western shore, and there I hired bold sailors and a poor craft, and set forth.
In forty-nine days we came to shore in this wilderness, and there were men as from the dawn of time, and I fought them, and when they had learned fear, I lived among them in peace, and the Hunters have not found this place. Now it may be that my saga ends here, but I will do what I am able.
The Change may soon come upon me; I must prepare for the stranger who will come after me. All that he must know is in these pages. And say I to him:
Have patience, for the time of this race draws close. Venture not again on the Eastern continent, but wait, for soon the Northern sailors must come in numbers into this wilderness. Seek out their cleverest metal-workers, and when it may be, devise a shield,