They have been kept fully informed of our plans and our progress, as a matter of courtesy, the wonderful child assured me. The United Nations of Earth will send a delegation to attend the awakening of Adam Zimmerman, as will the Outer System Confederation. If their deceleration patterns proceed according to plan, the ships carrying the delegations will both arrive within a hundred hours time.
So youre still going to wake Zimmerman, even though my memory is impaired?
Yes. We shall continue to monitor your progress, and if we can find a way to help you recover your lost memories well do it. If Adam Zimmerman suffers similar problems, well counter them as best we can.
Hows the second test subject doing?
We hope to awaken the second subject in seven hours time. Everything has gone well so far, but her state of mind remains to be ascertained.
Who is the other trial subject? I asked, not really expecting to hear a name I knew.
A woman named Christine Caine, was the reply I got.
Like most of the other names which figure in this lostory, that one had a tale attached one which bore a decidedly sinister significance.
Four
Bad Karma
The single most astonishing aspect of my return to consciousness, a thousand years later than could ever have been expected, was that the one thing that tangibly astonished me during that first interview with the child-who-wasnt-a-child was the sound of Christine Caines name. Id just been informed that Id missed out on a millennium of human history, including the advent of universal emortality and the temporary devastation of the Gaean ecosphere, and the news that actually threw me way off-balance was hearing that the other person appointed to share my fate I didnt, at that time, regard the legendary Adam Zimmerman as a partner in my fate was the most notorious mass murderer of my parents lifetime.
You mean Christine Caine as in Bad Karma , I said to Davida Berenike Columella, just in case the name had become fashionable after 2202.
Davida seemed to have no idea what I was talking about, and her data feed obviously wasnt helping. Apparently, it wasnt just my record that had been erased.
Again I was seized by the conviction that it had to be a joke. Id almost given up hoping that it was all a VE drama, but the reference to the most notorious VE drama of my own era seemed too surreal to be anything but contrivance. Except that it wasnt really a reference, from the viewpoint of Davida Berenike Columella. If appearances could be trusted, she had never heard of
Bad Karma and knew no more about Christine Caine than she knew about me.
I remembered the way that the seeming child had flinched when she realized that I was going to touch her. Shed had no idea who I was. Given that Id been committed to prison a thousand years before, with the record of my crime obliterated, I might easily have been a mass murderer. As it happened, I wasnt, although Davida couldnt be entirely prepared to take my word for it.
But Christine Caine really was a monster, by all accounts. She was also the subject of the most notorious illegal VE drama of all time or had been, when all time had only extended as far as July 2202.
Suddenly, I was forced to contemplate the exact terms of the trial run of which I was now a part.
Youve tried to bring me back exactly as I was when I was put away, I said, by way of clarification. You wanted to be as certain as you can be that you could do a good job of restoration, because thats what you hope to do with Adam Zimmerman. So youve also tried as hard as you can to put Christine Caine back together exactly as she was when she went into the freezer, right?
Thats correct, the wonderful child agreed.
And so far as I can tell, I reported, youve done a reasonably good job on me, save for a few recent memories. Not that Id be consciously aware of any differences, I suppose, and I havent had time to check my other memories as closely as I might, and I really dont quite feel like myselfbut even so, Im perfectly prepared to accept me as I am. In which case, you might want to take a few extra precautions with Christine Caine.
Why?
Well, I said. For one thing, she was convicted of murdering thirteen people, ten of whom were her adoptive parents. For another, although opinions varied as to the exact nature and extent of her mental illness, nobody doubted that she was barking mad.
Did you know her? Davida Berenike Columella inquired, innocently.
Know her? Of course I didnt know her. She was frozen down when I was four years old. But I was in the illicit VE business for a while and I knew all about Bad Karma . I suppose I even wished Id made it, or had been capable of making it.
I could tell that Davida had known full well that Christine Caine had been frozen down in 2167, thirty-five years before me. That had been another little test, which Id obviously passed. But I could tell, too, that she really didnt have a clue what Bad Karma was. Classic of early VE or not, it was one work of art that hadnt stood the test of time. It had been lost or successfully suppressed.