Doctor Pollard nodded in silent agreement. He faced the well-dressed man seated asprawl in the chair before him and asked, "You have never heard of James Forrest Carroll?"
"No," said the other man.
"But you are James Forrest Carroll."
"No."
The laboratory director shrugged. "This is no place for me," he said. "If I can do anything -- ?"
"You can do nothing, Majors. As with the others this case is almost complete amnesia. Memory completely shot. Even the trained-in mode of speech is limited to guttural monosyllables and grunts."
John Majors shook his head, partly in pity and partly in sheer withdrawal at such a calamity.
"He was a brilliant man."
"If he follows the usual pattern, he'll never be brilliant again," Doctor Pollard continued. "From I. Q. one hundred and eighty down to about seventy. That's tough to take -- for his friends and associates, that is. He'll be alone in the world until we can bring his knowledge up to the low I. Q. he owns now. He'll have to make new friends for his old ones will find him dull and he'll not understand them. His family -- "
"No family."
"None? A healthy specimen like Carroll at thirty-three years? No wife, chick nor child? No relations at all."
"Uncles and cousins only," sighed John Majors.
The psychologist shook his head. "Women friends?"
"Several but few close enough."
"Could that be it? " mused the psychologist. Then he answered his own question by stating that the other cases were not devoid of spouse or close relation.
"I am about to abandon the study of the Lawson Radiation," said Majors seriously. "It's taken four of my top technicians in the last five years. This -- affliction seems to follow a set course. It doesn't happen to people who have other jobs that I know of. Only those who are near the top in the Lawson Laboratory."
"It might be sheer frustration," offered Dr. Pollard. "I understand that the Lawson Radiation is about as well understood now as it was when discovered some thirty years ago."
"Just about," smiled Majors wearily. "However, you know as well as I that people going to work at the Lawson Laboratory are thoroughly checked to ascertain and certify that frustration will not drive them insane.
"Research is a study in frustration anyway, and most scientists are frustrated by the ever-present inability of getting something without having to give something else up for it."
"Perhaps I should check them every six months instead of every year," suggested the psychologist.
"Good idea if it can be done without arousing their fears."
"I see what you mean."
Majors took his hat from the rack and left the doctor's office. Pollard addressed the man in the chair again.
"You are James Forrest Carroll."
"No."
"I have proof."
"No."
"Remove your shirt."
"No."
This was getting nowhere. There had to be a question that could not be answered with a grunted monosyllable.
"Will you remove your shirt or shall I have it done by force?"
"Neither!"
That was better -- technically.
"Why do you deny my right to prove your identity?"
This drew no answer at all.
"You deny my right because you know that you have your name, blood type, birth-date and scientific roster number tattooed on your chest below your armpit."
"No."
"But you have -- and I know it because I've seen it."
"No."
"You cannot deny your other identification. The eye-retina pattern, the Bertillion, the fingerprints, the scalp-pattern?"
"No."
"I thought not," said the doctor triumphantly. "Now understand, Carroll. I am trying to help you. You are a brilliant man -- "
"No. " This was not modesty cropping up, but the same repeating of the basic negative reply.
"You are and have been. You will be once again after you stop fighting me and try to help. Why do you wish to fight me?"
Carroll stirred uneasily in his chair. "Pain," he said with a tremble of fear in his voice.
"Where is this pain? " asked the doctor gently.
"All over."
The doctor considered that. The same pattern again -- a psychotic denial of identity and a fear of pain at the dimly-grasped concept of return. Pollard turned to the sheets of notes on his desk. James Forrest Carroll had been a brilliant theorist and excellent from the practical standpoint too.
Thirty-three years old and in perfect health, his enjoyment of life was basically sound and he was about as stable as any physicist in the long list of scientific and technical men known to the Solar System's scientists.
Yesterday he had been brilliant -- working on a problem that had stumped the technicians for thirty years. Today he was not quite bright, denying his brilliance with a vicious refusal to help. He remembered nothing of his work, obviously.
"You know what the Lawson Radiation is?"
"No," came the instant reply but a slight twinge of pain-syndrome crossed his face.
"You do not want to remember because you think you will have to go back to the Lawson Lab?"
"I -- don't know it -- " faltered James Forrest Carroll. It was obviously a lie.
"If I promise that you will never be asked about it?"
"No," said Carroll uneasily. Then with the first burst of real intelligence he had shown since his stumbling body had been picked up by the Terran Police, Carroll added, "You cannot stop me from thinking about it."
"Then you do know it?"
Carroll relapsed instantly. "No," he said sullenly.
Dr. Pollard nodded. "Tomorrow? " he pleaded.
"Why?"
Pollard knew that the wish to aid Carroll would fall on deaf ears. Carroll did not care to be helped. There were other ways.
"Because I must do my job or I shall be released," said Pollard. "You must permit me to try, at least. Will you?"
"I -- yes."
"Good. No one will know that I am not trying hard. But we'll make it look good?"
"Yes."
"Do you know where your home is? " asked Pollard with his mental fingers crossed.
"No."
Pollard sighed.
"Then you stay here. Miss Farragut will show you a quiet room where you can sleep. Tomorrow we'll find your home from the files. Then you can go home."
Pollard got out of there. He knew that Carroll would not leave -- could not leave. He prescribed a husky sedative to be put in Carroll's last drink of water for the night and went home himself, his mind humming with speculation.
The conference was composed of Pollard, Majors, and most of the other key men in the Lawson Laboratory. Pollard spoke first.
"James Carroll is a victim of a rather deep-seated amnesia," he said. "Amnesia is, of course, a mechanism of the mind set up to avoid some bitter reality. In Carroll's case, not only is the amnesia passive -- some warning agency in Carroll's amnesiac mind warns him that regaining his true identity will result in great pain.
"It is something concerned with his work. We'd like to know what about the study of the Lawson Radiation could produce such a painful reality."
"We all get a bit fed up at times," remarked Tom Jackwell. "It's heartbreaking to sit daily and try things that never do anything."
"We are like an aborigine, born on an isolated island three hundred yards in diameter who has just discovered that certain blackish rocks tend to attract one another and point north. Amusing for a time, but what is it good for and what ungodly mechanism causes it? " said Majors with a shrug.
"Just what is the latest theory on the Lawson Radiation? " asked Pollard.
"You guess," said John Majors ruefully. "We've had too many theories already. The Lawson Radiation is a strange creation out of Boötes by Arcturus, and borne like Zephyr on the wind.
"Certain elemental minerals, when in contact with other minerals, produce a pulsing radiofrequency current which can be detected after more amplification than the human mind can contemplate sensibly.
"The frequency output depends upon the type of minerals used, and it is completely random so far as any consistent pattern goes. Some elemental minerals are no good, some are excellent."
"You've made determinant charts?"
"Naturally. But there's no determinant. After I said elemental minerals, I should have said that this was the original premise. Now we have a detector working with helium gas surrounding a block of lead bromide.
"Lead and helium are no good, helium and bromine equally poor. Lead and bromide are no good -- as long as it lasts. Now don't ask me if the combination of the elements interferes. One good detector operates so wonderfully all the time, that a bit of yellow phosphorus is forming phosphorus pentoxid because it is suspended in an atmosphere of pure oxygen."
"No apparent determining factors, hey?"
"None. You might as well pick out the elements with six-letter names. The periodic chart looks like the scatter-pattern of an open-choke shotgun. Water works fine when it is contained in a glass vessel, but in anything else we know of -- no dice."
"You seem to have covered a multitude of things," said Dr. Pollard approvingly.
"We've had a corps of brilliant, imaginative technicians working on the theory and practise for thirty years. Every one of them has come up with a number of elemental detecting combinations. We're now working on four and five element permutations.
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