Gulliver's Fugitives - Keith Sharee [57]
Back in her work room, she put the original Picard disk in the safe, and sat holding the duplicate disk in her lap. She’d taken the first step. The next would be a lot harder.
The sound of footsteps told her that Bussard was arriving for work. He was a good half-hour early. Maybe because he’d had to get a new key made …
She got up and carried the disk into the long storage hall, far back between the shelves and file cabinets.
After a moment she heard someone enter the work room, open the safe, close it, and then shuffle through papers on her desk.
“Marjorie?”
It was Bussard.
Holding the disk in her hand, she stepped into a large steel storage cabinet and silently shut the doors.
She heard the click of Bussard’s steps, and the hum of a one-eye passing the cabinet.
Then she heard Bussard’s voice coming from the direction of her own desk. She pressed her ear to the cold steel.
“Bussard for Mr. Hazlitt … How are you, Rob? … No, she’s not here—I’m standing at her desk. She couldn’t have left the building, though… . She looked at the disk all last night, unfiltered… . Yeah, I left my door open to see if she’d take the bait. A one-eye patrolling outside was attracted by the light… . She must have seen a lot; we’d already had the disk rated as High Crime. Bad as it gets … and after only one day. Looks like the blanking didn’t get rid of her Dissenter memories. She must have been a real sicko. We’ll have to put her to sleep for good… . Yeah. I’ll tell her she has to fill out some paperwork for a vacation… . Thanks.”
He hung up and went back into his office.
For many minutes Smith stood in the cramped closet, assimilating the news that she was once a Dissenter, and that she was now scheduled for bodily destruction.
She wasn’t Marjorie Smith. The realization exposed some buried memory fragments: sitting in a roomful of books, with other people who called her Amoret. Fleeing down a dark street, tracer bullets from a CS hovercraft flashing past her head. Writing something by the illumination of a penlight, a story she could no longer remember—a thought that made her oddly sad. And, as a little girl, chasing a ball into some bushes and finding a single wondrous ancient page, the contents of which were now lost to her …
Everything dovetailed neatly. Her doubts when she blanked Picard made perfect sense.
The death sentence gave her a feeling of freedom. She could do anything she wanted, because she was already dead. If she had been a Dissenter named Amoret, then her life was merely completing its proper trajectory. Although she would never remember most of that life, she knew what she could do to end it properly.
There was an electric van parked at the back entrance to the storage room. Her Marjorie programming told her that. There could still be a one-eye lurking in the room, but she’d have to make a dash for it. Delaying would get her nowhere.
She burst out of the tall cabinet and ran the few steps to the back entrance. The van was there. She opened the door and got in. She put the disk case under the seat and floored the pedal.
Ferris entered Crichton’s office.
“Morning, sir.”
“Morning, Major.”
“Glad to see you’re feeling better, sir.”
“Thank you. Just the old injury. Facial nerve. You’ve been briefed yet on what we’re doing with the captain of the Enterprise?”
“No, sir.”
“He was completely blanked clean yesterday. But
we’re going to put back some parts of his original mind. Just facts about the Enterprise and his crew, his speech patterns, and so forth. Just what we will need to fool the Enterprise.
Crichton’s laugh was short and mechanical.
“You wouldn’t believe the amount of obscene garbage in that man’s mind. The computer put it at ninety percent of total content. Fantasies about spacebeings and all that. All gone now, though, thrown out except for what we need.”
“What about the other captives, and the ship?”
“The ship will probably be destroyed by the