Collected Short Fiction, page 604
“I guess I do.”
“Fellow over there, he’ll give you the best deal.” Storm pocketed his validated ticket and crossed over to see the dealer in used ships. It didn’t pay to try to pilot a one-man or two-man ship from Earth to Mars or back again. It was a whole lot cheaper to take a commercial space-liner out to. Mars, buy an old heap of a used two-hammer, and sell it again after exploring the asteroid belt.
Half an hour of haggling and Storm had sold his ship. All in all, he was pleased with the deal. He had paid 20 thousand for it, and sold it for 15.
But now he was stuck in Marsville for three days—three Martian days, the colonist had told him with a kind of provincial arrogance. Each Martian hour was only a minute and a half longer than an Earth hour, but oh, how fussy they were about their extra 37 minutes a day!
He took a look around town. He saw the shacks, and the hopefully marked-out places where the civic buildings would rise, and the tool dumps and all the rest. It was only ten years since women had been allowed to settle here, making Marsville a true colony. The first Mars-baby was six years old—
There were no real native Martians. Nothing lived in the wind-swept red deserts except stunted, scrubby little plants and a few animals somewhat less impressive than mice. The “Martians” were the Earth-born colonists. Storm wondered what Mars would be like a couple of generations from now.
But right now Mars held no fascination for him at all. He was itching to get home. With a roar., and a blaze, the ship broke free of Mars’ feeble grasp, and carried John Storm and a 100 other passengers back to the mother world.
chapter 2
THE Hall of Records in Greater New York was a good deal more imposing than its counterpart on Mars. It was a towering skyscraper on the banks of the Hudson, the tallest building in the suburb of Nyack. John Storm had lost no time getting there, and had phoned Liz to let her know he was home. They had agreed to meet at the Hall of Records.
“Is it true?” she had kept asking. “Did you really find something out there?”
“I really did,” he said. “Look, it’s too big to tell you about this way. Come meet me, and I’ll give you the whole story.”
She hadn’t arrived yet. Storm waited none too patiently in an endless line on the 30th floor of the Hall of Records, moving up a painful notch at a. time. His muscles were no longer adjusted to-Earth gravity, and he felt his body sagging against the unaccustomed pull.
He reached the front of the line, finally.
“Validation of mining claim,” Storm said to the thin, harried-looking clerk. He slipped the copy of the form he had filled out on Mars through the wicket. “Would you check that, please?”
“Certainly, sir.” Vague, gray noises. A pallid, hand took the form, laid it face down on a glowing scanner plate. This was the moment he had. been losing sleep over for days.
The clerk was frowning. A strip of tape came clicking out of the machine. Storm could not read the words on it.
“I’m sorry, sir,” the clerk was saying. “There’s no record of any such claim having been made on Mars.”
The quiet, impersonal words hit Storm like a sledgehammer in the teeth.
“That’s impossible!” Storm blurted. “Look, here’s the duplicate? It’s been stamped, hasn’t it? That means the claim was recorded and transmitted.”
“I’m sorry, sir. The computer says it hasn’t been filed, sir. I’m very sorry. Next, please?”
“Hold it!” Storm bellowed, and heard people muttering angrily behind him in line. His hands trembled and his face grew red. He had been prepared for almost any eventuality, but not something like this. “You mean to tell me that the claim. I filed got lost on the way to Earth?”
“No, sir. Claims never get lost. The transmittal process is automatic and failure-proof.”
“But what about this copy I’ve got here? It’s got a claim number on it! Can’t you check and—”
“I have checked, sir.” The wan figure behind the counter looked at Storm reproachfully, and tapped a bell. It tinkled gently. Storm turned, halt expecting to be collared by guards and roughly shown the gate. Instead, a slick, supervisory-looking woman appeared, with a thorny glint in her eye.
“Yes?” she asked. “Is there any difficulty?”
“There sure is,” Storm said. “I’m trying to check on this mining claim. The fellow here buzzed the computer, and got told no claim was ever filed. There’s been some kind of error in the computer.” She glanced at Storm’s document and flashed a smile as warm as. a glacier’s core. “Of course, Mr.—ah—Storm. If you’ll come with me.”
Feeling very much as though they were humoring him. as though they regarded him as some kind of crank. Storm followed her.
She waved him into a seat in front of her desk. She studied his claim sheet for a moment. “It looks perfectly genuine,” she said.
“It ought to. It is.”
Behind her desk was a machine very much like the one the clerk had used. Motionless, hardly even breathing, Storm watched her place his claim sheet over the glowing scanner plate. A long moment ticked by, and then a ribbon of tape extruded itself . . . from the machine. This time Storm was able to read what it said. It said 324.
“What does that mean?” Storm asked.
Miss Vyzinski looked at him sternly. “It means, I’m afraid, that no such claim has been recorded.”
“One moment,” she said. “I’ll run some further checks. The first thing to do is see if your claim has somehow been misfiled. It’s a one-in-a-billion possibility, but, even so—”
“It’s worth checking,” Storm said, dry-throated.
She punched something out on a keyboard, and put the claim sheet on the scanner again. Another, strip of tape emerged from the machine.
“No. Your claim’s not in current, and it’s not in dead storage, and it’s not in pending. That means it’s not anywhere, Mr. Storm.”
“But—how—?”
“Let’s attack it from another angle,” she said crisply. “There’s a claim number on this paper, right? Very well. Let’s run a check and see what’s entered for this claim number, shall we?”
“Go ahead,” Storm said hollowly.
It took three or four minutes, this time. Storm wondered if Liz had arrived by now.
A yellow facsim sheet came popping out of the slot. Storm had to restrain himself from lunging across the desk and seizing it. Miss Vyzinski’s manicured fingers tugged it free.
“It’s my claim, isn’t it?” Storm said.
She was glancing from Storm’s paper to the new one, and frowning furiously now. “No,” she said in an odd voice. “No. It isn’t.”
She passed the two sheets over to him. Storm studied them in. rising bewilderment. They were identical in every way, the same form even to the imprinted identifying number, six digits and four letters, in the upper left hand corner. Both had been filed from the office on Mars, on the same day.
The only thing wrong was that the claim on record wasn’t his. The sheet had been filled out in, a different handwriting, by someone named Richard F. McDermott, and he had filed a claim on an asteroid within Mars’ orbit, nowhere near Storm’s. “I don’t get it,” Storm said. “Are you trying to tell me that two different people filed two different claims on the same machine at the same time?”
“I’m not trying to tell you anything, Mr. Storm. I’m simply showing you what the computer has on file. If you press me to interpret the evidence, I’d have to say that you’re attempting some kind of game.”
Storm stared at her in silence for a long moment. He felt as though he were strangling in red tape.
“All right,” he said finally. “I don’t understand any of this, but let’s just skip it. I’ll pretend that I never filed my claim at all, which is what you’re trying to tell me. Okay?”
“Very well. But—”
He cut her off. “Now, let’s start all over again. I’ve been prospecting out in space and I’ve found something I want to claim. Since the machinery got fouled up the first time, I’ll file a brand new claim. Is that permissible?”
“Of course.”
“I’ll have a witness this time in case the computer loses the record again,” he said.
Her grin was frosty. “I assure you everything will go smoothly this time. If you’d really like to file a new claim, please come with me.”
She led him to an adjoining office. There was a different sort of machine in there, the twin of the one he had used on Mars. She stood by while Storm laboriously copied on to a new-form everything he had written on the first one.
When he had finished, she pressed the actuating button for him. “In just a moment,” she said, “your claim will be recorded, and you’ll get your duplicate copy. I’ll countersign it, just to be certain. After that, it’ll simply be a matter of time before your claim can be processed, and—”
She stopped. His claim sheet had come popping out of the machine, and stamped across it in big red characters were the numbers 217 and the letters XX.
“What now?” he asked.
She looked at him in an indescribably peculiar way. “Mr. Storm, when was the last time you were on Earth?”
“About two years ago. Why?”
“Are you sure you copied your identifying numbers properly on to the claim sheet?”
“Of course I’m sure.”
“Would you let me see your identity cards?”
There was no refusing the schoolmarmish command. Numbly, Storm surrendered his documents. She compared them.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes. the numbers are the same. But your claim was returned in Category 217-XX. Which means that there’s no record of you in the computer.”
“No record of me?” he repeated blankly.
“That’s right,” she said, watching him more closely than ever. “No one named John Storm who matches these particular identity numbers. Mr. Storm—if that’s your name—I can’t imagine what sort of prank you think you’re pulling, but we don’t have time for jokes here.”
“Give me my papers!” Storm said in a strangled voice.
He grabbed them from her, and strode quickly toward the door. The choking sensation grew almost overpowering.
Storm emerged in the crowded main hall. Half dazed, he came to a halt, stared around like an elephant at bay.
“Johnny! Johnny, there you are at last!”
It was Liz. She saw him, and came running toward him, her shoes clattering on the stone floor, her face aglow, he eyes shining.
“Johnny!”
Storm didn’t budge. She came running up, her arms wide as though to embrace him. But when she was still a few yards away she stopped and looked up at him.
“Johnny, what’s the matter?” she said. “Your face—you look so strange—”
“I don’t exist,” he said in a hoarse, stupefied voice. “They just told me I don’t exist!”
It took her a couple of minutes to get him calmed down, and a couple of minutes more before he could communicate to her the nature of the trouble. She looked at him blankly.
“But that’s impossible, Johnny!”
“Try to tell her that,” Storm said.
“Let’s go in to see her.”
Storm nodded. He smiled at Liz, touched her hand briefly. Her fingers were cold. She looked thinner than he remembered her. and older.
Miss Vyzinski was waiting.
“So you’ve come back,” she said triumphantly.
Liz said, “I’ll vouch for him. His name’s John Storm, and I’ve known him for years. He—”
“The computer doesn’t seem to have any record of him,” Miss Vyzinski said. “At least, not under that name, not under those numbers.”
“But it is my name,” Storm said doggedly. “I know it. And those are my identity numbers. Look, the computer records can slip up once in a while. The scanners aren’t infallible.”
“We like to think they are,” Miss Vyzinski said. “But we’ll check. We’ll see, Mr. Storm.”
She closed her office door and made some calls, and the bureaucrats began to gather.
Storm watched tensely. He was as baffled as they were, but much more worried. A man without an official existence cannot fight to defend a mining claim. A man without an official existence is like a ghost.
With Earth crowded and getting more, crowded every second, the only way to keep track of people was by computer. Everyone had a number, assigned at birth, and everyone acquired other numbers as he went along.
He was outside the system. Alone among Earth’s swarming billions, he had no number. It made no sense, and small wonder the bureaucrats looked pale and worried.
A round-faced, melancholy-looking man in late middle age confronted Storm and said, “My name is Dawes. I’m the regional supervisor. May I see your documents, please?”
Storm handed them over. Another conference began.
Liz whispered, “Johnny, what did you find out there?”
“An asteroid full of goodies. Eight miles in diameter, and the whole blasted thing commercialgrade ore.”
Dawes came over. “According to these papers,” he said, “you were born on 6 May 1992. Is that right?”
“Right.”
“We’re running a check on births for the whole year 1992. We’re also checking your other records. If nothing checks—”
“What if nothing checks?” Storm asked tightly.
“I don’t know,” Dawes said. “I simply don’t know, Mr. Storm. I don’t know at all.”
They bad their answer in a dozen minutes. Nothing checked.
Sc far as the computer banks knew, he had; never been born, had never gone to school, had never occupied a residential unit, had never been tallied in a census, had never paid a cent in tax to any revenue agency. He had never been inside a hospital, never been vaccinated, never voted.
“You explain it,” Storm said.
Dawes sputtered and fussed. “There are-two possible explanations,” he said limply. “One is improbable and the other is inconceivable. The improbable one is that the computer somehow dropped a stitch accidentally erased your entire record. The inconceivable one is that you never had a record—that you’re some sort of being from another world, some creature of fantasy trying to bluff his way into official existence on Earth.”
Storm laughed coldly. “You’re overlooking the most likely explanation of all, Mr. Dawes—that my records have been tampered with. That someone managed to obliterate me entirely.”
Dawes began to look greenish.
“Look,” Storm said, “I went out to the asteroids and I made a valuable find. Now I come home to sew up my claim and I find the claim’s been erased from the computer, and so have I. I’m entitled to suspect something fishy.”
“And you think someone is trying to cut you out of this claim, Mr. Storm?”
“It’s the only possible answer.”
“Is it widely known that you were successful in space?”
Storm shook his head. “I didn’t tell a soul. But someone might have found out. Someone on Mars, where I filed my claim. I don’t know. All I know is I’m a rich man if I can get my claim validated. I want to file that claim so that it sticks, Dawes. We can worry about my identity records later.”
“I’m sorry. Only a person with official existence can file a claim, Mr. Storm. So far as the computer is concerned, you don’t exist.”
“But the asteroid—”
“I’m terribly sorry. It’s getting late, don’t you see? If you’ll come back tomorrow, we’ll try to get to the bottom of this. There’s nothing I can do for you tonight, Mr. Storm. Absolutely nothing.”
A ghost has a hard time of it in Greater New York, John Storm found out that night. He had only five dollars in actual currency on him, and the rest in travellers’ cheques. But part of the chequecashing process is a split-second computer call to validate signature and number. Storm borrowed $10 from Liz, and hoped it would see him through.
There was no place he could stay for the night, either. Not legally.
Two years had distributed his classmates all over the world, it seemed. Storm felt more forlorn than ever. It was a lucky thing Liz had still been around to greet him, he thought. He could cope with a couple of years of total solitude in the asteroid belt, but not in Greater New York.
Liz said, “I’ll find a place for you to say. There’s this fellow my roommate Helene sees. He’ll put you up. I know he will.”
Two phone calls and it was arranged.
“Where can we go to eat?” Liz asked. “Some, place fancy. To celebrate your return.”
“I don’t feel much like celebrating.”
“Cheer up! We’ll get this stupid business cleared up in the morning. And then you’ll claim your asteroid, and you’ll be rich and famous, and all this trouble will seem like a lot of nonsense. Where is the asteroid? Show me!”
He looked up. City glow and city haze blotted out the stars. Squinting, Storm searched for the red dot of Mars, but failed to find it. “I don’t know,” he said wearily. He flung a hand at the stars. “Somewhere out there. Somewhere. It’s just a little hunk of rock.”
“Your hunk of rock, Johnny.”.
“I can’t be sure of that, even.”
She looked at him sharply. “Johnny, are you sure you didn’t tell anyone what you found?”
“Sure I’m sure.” He took her hand in his, squeezed it lightly, and managed a faint smile. They were after him, he thought, and he didn’t even know who they were.
Storm shook his head and tried to brush the irrational thoughts away.
“Let’s just walk,” he said. “I haven’t seen a city in two years. We’ll walk, and then we’ll eat somewhere, and then we’ll take in a show.”
It was good to be walking down a city street again, good to be seeing lights and activity and people, the overhead glow of a commuter-copter and the sour drone of a Europe-bound strato-rocket. It was good to feel the honest tug of Earth’s gravity again, and the warmth of Liz at his side, and good to be able to breathe real air out under the open sky. The noise of the city, the filth, the crowdedness—all these were good to have again, after the silent emptiness up there.
