Fredric Brown - The Fredric Brown Megapack

Abruptly she stood up. “Let’s get back, George.” He stood beside her. “But it’s early.”

“I know, but sometimes—Well, there’s a psychological moment to end a date, George. I know that sounds silly, but after what we’ve said, wouldn’t it be—uh—anticlimactic—to—”

He laughed a little. He said, “I see what you mean.”

They walked back to her home in silence. He didn’t know whether it was happy or unhappy silence; he was too mixed up for that.

On the shadowed porch, in front of the door, she turned and faced him. “George,” she said. Silence.

“Oh, damn you, George; quit being so noble or whatever you’re being. Unless, of course, you don’t love me. Unless this is just an elaborate form of—of runaround you’re giving me. Is it?”

There were only two things he could do. One was run like hell. The other was what he did. He put his arms around her and kissed her. Hungrily.

When that was over, and it wasn’t over too quickly, he was breathing a little hard and not thinking too clearly, for he was saying what he hadn’t meant to say at all, “I love you, Clare. I love you; I love you.”

And she said, “I love you, too, dear. You’ll come back to me, won’t you?” And he said, “Yes. Yes .”

It was four miles or so from her home to his rooming house, but he walked, and the walk seemed to take only seconds.

He sat at the window of his room, with the light out, thinking, but the thoughts went in the same old circles they’d gone in for three years.

No new factor had been added except that now he was going to stick his neck out, way out, miles out. Maybe, just maybe, this thing was going to be settled one way or the other.

Out there, out his window, the stars were bright diamonds in the sky. Was one of them his star of destiny? If so, he was going to follow it, follow it even into the madhouse if it led there. Inside him was a deeply rooted conviction that this wasn’t accident, that it wasn’t coincidence that had led to his being asked to tell the truth under guise of falsehood.

His star of destiny.

Brightly shining? No, the phrase from his dreams did not refer to that; it was not an adjective phrase, but a noun. The brightly shining? What was the brightly shining?

And the red and the black? He’d thought of everything Charlie had suggested, and other things, too. Checkers, for instance. But it was not that.

The red and the black.

Well, whatever the answer was, he was running full-speed toward it now, not away from it. After a while he went to bed, but it was a long time before he went to sleep.

Charlie Doerr came out of the inner office marked Private and put his hand out. He said, “Good luck, George. The doc’s ready to talk to you now.”

He shook Charlie’s hand and said, “You might as well run along. I’ll see you Monday, first visiting day.”

“I’ll wait here,” Charlie said. “I took the day off work anyway, remember? Besides, maybe you won’t have to go. He dropped Charlie’s hand, and stared into Charlie’s face. He said slowly, “What do you mean, Charlie—maybe I won’t have to go.”

“Why—” Charlie looked puzzled. “Why, maybe he’ll tell you you’re all right, or just suggest regular visits to see him until you’re straightened out, or—” Charlie finished weakly, “—or something.”

Unbelievingly, he stared at Charlie. He wanted to ask, am I crazy or are you, but that sounded crazy to ask under the circumstances. But he had to be sure, sure that Charlie just hadn’t let something slip from his mind; maybe he’d fallen into the role he was supposed to be playing when he talked to the doctor just now. He asked, “Charlie, don’t you remember that—” And even of that question the rest seemed insane for him to be asking, with Charlie staring blankly at him. The answer was in Charlie’s face; it didn’t have to be brought to Charlie’s lips.

Charlie said again, “I’ll wait, of course. Good luck, George.”

He looked into Charlie’s eyes and nodded, then turned and went through the door marked Private. He closed it behind him, meanwhile studying the man who had been sitting behind the desk and who had risen as he entered. A big man, broad shouldered, iron gray hair.

“Dr. Irving?”

“Yes, Mr. Vine. Will you be seated, please?”

He slid into the comfortable, padded armchair across the desk from the doctor.

“Mr. Vine,” said the doctor, “a first interview of this sort is always a bit difficult. For the patient, I mean. Until you know me better, it will be difficult for you to overcome a certain natural reticence in discussing yourself. Would you prefer to talk, to tell things your own way, or would you rather I asked questions?”

He thought that over. He’d had a story ready, but those few words with Charlie in the waiting room had changed everything.

He said, “Perhaps you’d better ask questions.”

“Very well.” There was a pencil in Dr. Irving’s hand and paper on the desk before him. Where and when were you born?”

He took a deep breath. “To the best of my knowledge, in Corsica on August 15th, 1769. I don’t actually remember being born, of course. I do remember things from my boyhood on Corsica, though. We stayed there until I was ten, and after that I was sent to school at Brienne.”

Instead of writing, the doctor was tapping the paper lightly with the tip of the pencil. He asked, “What month and year is this?”

“August, 1947. Yes, I know that should make me a hundred and seventy-some years old. You want to know how I account for that. I don’t. Nor do I account for the fact that Napoleon Bonaparte died in 1821.”

He leaned back in the chair and crossed his arms, staring up at the ceiling. “I don’t attempt to account for the paradoxes or the discrepancies. I recognize them as such. But according to my own memory, and aside from logic pro or con, I was Napoleon for twenty-seven years. I won’t recount what happened during that time; it’s all down in the history books.

“But in 1796, after the battle of Lodi, while I was in charge of the armies in Italy, I went to sleep. As far as I knew, just as anyone goes to sleep anywhere, any time. But I woke up—with no sense whatever of duration, by the way—in a hospital in town here, and I was informed that my name was George Vine, that the year was 1944, and that I was twenty-seven years old.

“The twenty-seven years old part checked, and that was all. Absolutely all. I have no recollections of any parts of George Vine’s life, prior to his—my—waking up in the hospital after the accident. I know quite a bit about his early life now, but only because I’ve been told.

“I know when and where he was born, where he went to school, and when he started work at the Blade. I know when he enlisted in the army and when he was discharged—late in 1943—because I developed a trick knee after a leg injury. Not in combat, incidentally, and there wasn’t any ‘psycho-neurotic’ on my—his—discharge.”

The doctor quit doodling with the pencil. He asked, “You’ve felt this way for three years—and kept it a secret?”

“Yes. I had time to think things over after the accident, and yes, I decided then to accept what they told me about my identity. They’d have locked me up, of course. Incidentally, I’ve tried to figure out an answer. I’ve studied Dunne’s theory of time—even Charles Fort!” He grinned suddenly. “Ever read about Casper Hauser?”

Dr. Irving nodded.

“Maybe he was playing smart the way I did. And I wonder how many other amnesiacs pretended they didn’t know what happened prior to a certain date—rather than admit they had memories at obvious variance with the facts.”