+--------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | Transcriber's note. | | | | This story was published in _Galaxy_ magazine, June 1960. | | Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the | | U. S. Copyright on this publication was renewed. | | | +--------------------------------------------------------------+

[Illustration]

By CHARLES V. DE VET

monkey on his back

 Under the cloud of cast-off identities lay the shape of another man-- was it himself?

Illustrated by DILLON

He was walking endlessly down a long, glass-walled corridor. Brightsunlight slanted in through one wall, on the blue knapsack across hisshoulders. Who he was, and what he was doing here, was clouded. Thetruth lurked in some corner of his consciousness, but it was not reachedby surface awareness. 

The corridor opened at last into a large high-domed room, much like arailway station or an air terminal. He walked straight ahead. 

At the sight of him a man leaning negligently against a stone pillar, tohis right but within vision, straightened and barked an order to him, "Halt!" He lengthened his stride but gave no other sign. 

Two men hurried through a doorway of a small anteroom to his left, calling to him. He turned away and began to run. 

Shouts and the sound of charging feet came from behind him. He cut tothe right, running toward the escalator to the second floor. Anotherpair of men were hurrying down, two steps at a stride. With no break inpace he veered into an opening beside the escalator. 

At the first turn he saw that the aisle merely circled the stairway, coming out into the depot again on the other side. It was a trap. Heglanced quickly around him. 

At the rear of the space was a row of lockers for traveler use. Heslipped a coin into a pay slot, opened the zipper on his bag and pulledout a flat briefcase. It took him only a few seconds to push the caseinto the compartment, lock it and slide the key along the floor beneaththe locker. 

There was nothing to do after that--except wait. 

The men pursuing him came hurtling around the turn in the aisle. Hekicked his knapsack to one side, spreading his feet wide with aninstinctive motion. 

Until that instant he had intended to fight. Now he swiftly reassessedthe odds. There were five of them, he saw. He should be able toincapacitate two or three and break out. But the fact that they had beenexpecting him meant that others would very probably be waiting outside. His best course now was to sham ignorance. He relaxed. 

He offered no resistance as they reached him. 

They were not gentle men. A tall ruffian, copper-brown face damp withperspiration and body oil, grabbed him by the jacket and slammed himback against the lockers. As he shifted his weight to keep his footingsomeone drove a fist into his face. He started to raise his hands; and ahard flat object crashed against the side of his skull. 

The starch went out of his legs. 

"Do you make anything out of it?" the psychoanalyst Milton Bergstrom, asked. 

John Zarwell shook his head. "Did I talk while I was under?"

"Oh, yes. You were supposed to. That way I follow pretty well whatyou're reenacting. "

"How does it tie in with what I told you before?"

Bergstrom's neat-boned, fair-skinned face betrayed no emotion other thanan introspective stillness of his normally alert gaze. "I see noconnection, " he decided, his words once again precise and meticulous. "We don't have enough to go on. Do you feel able to try anothercomanalysis this afternoon yet?"

"I don't see why not. " Zarwell opened the collar of his shirt. The daywas hot, and the room had no air conditioning, still a rare luxury onSt. Martin's. The office window was open, but it let in no freshness, only the mildly rank odor that pervaded all the planet's habitable area. 

"Good. " Bergstrom rose. "The serum is quite harmless, John. " Hemaintained a professional diversionary chatter as he administered thedrug. "A scopolamine derivative that's been well tested. "

The floor beneath Zarwell's feet assumed abruptly the near transfluentconsistency of a damp sponge. It rose in a foot-high wave and rolledgently toward the far wall. 

Bergstrom continued talking, with practiced urbanity. "When psychiatrywas a less exact science, " his voice went on, seeming to come from agreat distance, "a doctor had to spend weeks, sometimes months or yearsinterviewing a patient. If he was skilled enough, he could sort therelevancies from the vast amount of chaff. We are able now, with thehelp of the serum, to confine our discourses to matters cogent to thepatient's trouble. "

The floor continued its transmutation, and Zarwell sank deep intoviscous depths. "Lie back and relax. Don't ... "

The words tumbled down from above. They faded, were gone. 

Zarwell found himself standing on a vast plain. There was no sky above, and no horizon in the distance. He was in a place without space ordimension. There was nothing here except himself--and the gun that heheld in his hand. 

A weapon beautiful in its efficient simplicity. 

He should know all about the instrument, its purpose and workings, buthe could not bring his thoughts into rational focus. His foreheadcreased with his mental effort. 

Abruptly the unreality about him shifted perspective. He wasapproaching--not walking, but merely shortening the space betweenthem--the man who held the gun. The man who was himself. The other"himself" drifted nearer also, as though drawn by a mutual attraction. 

The man with the gun raised his weapon and pressed the trigger. 

With the action the perspective shifted again. He was watching the faceof the man he shot jerk and twitch, expand and contract. The face wasunharmed, yet it was no longer the same. No longer his own features. 

The stranger face smiled approvingly at him. 

"Odd, " Bergstrom said. He brought his hands up and joined the tips ofhis fingers against his chest. "But it's another piece in the jig-saw. In time it will fit into place. " He paused. "It means no more to youthan the first, I suppose?"

"No, " Zarwell answered. 

He was not a talking man, Bergstrom reflected. It was more thanreticence, however. The man had a hard granite core, only partiallyconcealed by his present perplexity. He was a man who could handlehimself well in an emergency. 

Bergstrom shrugged, dismissing his strayed thoughts. "I expected asmuch. A quite normal first phase of treatment. " He straightened a paperon his desk. "I think that will be enough for today. Twice in onesitting is about all we ever try. Otherwise some particular episodemight cause undue mental stress, and set up a block. " He glanced down athis appointment pad. "Tomorrow at two, then?"

Zarwell grunted acknowledgment and pushed himself to his feet, apparently unaware that his shirt clung damply to his body. 

The sun was still high when Zarwell left the analyst's office. The whitemarble of the city's buildings shimmered in the afternoon heat, squatand austere as giant tree trunks, pock-marked and gray-mottled withwindows. Zarwell was careful not to rest his hand on the flesh searingsurface of the stone. 

The evening meal hour was approaching when he reached the Flats, on theway to his apartment. The streets of the old section were near-deserted. The only sounds he heard as he passed were the occasional cry of a baby, chronically uncomfortable in the day's heat, and the lowing of importedcattle waiting in a nearby shed to be shipped to the country. 

All St. Martin's has a distinctive smell, as of an arid dried-out swamp, with a faint taint of fish. But in the Flats the odor changes. Here isthe smell of factories, warehouses, and trading marts; the smell ofstale cooking drifting from the homes of the laborers and lower classtechmen who live there. 

Zarwell passed a group of smaller children playing a desultory game oflic-lic for pieces of candy and cigarettes. Slowly he climbed the stairsof a stone flat. He prepared a supper for himself and ate it withouteither enjoyment or distaste. He lay down, fully clothed, on his bed. The visit to the analyst had done nothing to dispel his ennui. 

[Illustration]

The next morning when Zarwell awoke he lay for a moment, unmoving. Thefeeling was there again, like a scene waiting only to be gazed atdirectly to be perceived. It was as though a great wisdom lay at theedge of understanding. If he rested quietly it would all come to him. Yet always, when his mind lost its sleep-induced lethargy, the momentof near understanding slipped away. 

This morning, however, the sense of disorientation did not pass withfull wakefulness. He achieved no understanding, but the strangeness didnot leave as he sat up. 

He gazed about him. The room did not seem to be his own. Thefurnishings, and the clothing he observed in a closet, might havebelonged to a stranger. 

He pulled himself from his blankets, his body moving with mechanicalreaction. The slippers into which he put his feet were larger than hehad expected them to be. He walked about the small apartment. The placewas familiar, but only as it would have been if he had studied it fromblueprints, not as though he lived there. 

The feeling was still with him when he returned to the psychoanalyst. 

The scene this time was more kaleidoscopic, less personal. 

A village was being ravaged. Men struggled and died in the streets. Zarwell moved among them, seldom taking part in the individual clashes, yet a moving force in the conflict. 

The background changed. He understood that he was on a different world. 

Here a city burned. Its resistance was nearing its end. Zarwell wasriding a shaggy pony outside a high wall surrounding the strickenmetropolis. He moved in and joined a party of short, bearded men, directing them as they battered at the wall with a huge log mounted on amany-wheeled truck. 

The log broke a breach in the concrete and the besiegers chargedthrough, carrying back the defenders who sought vainly to plug the gap. Soon there would be rioting in the streets again, plundering andkilling. 

Zarwell was not the leader of the invaders, only a lesser figure in therebellion. But he had played a leading part in the planning of thestrategy that led to the city's fall. The job had been well done. 

Time passed, without visible break in the panorama. Now Zarwell wasfleeing, pursued by the same bearded men who had been his comradesbefore. Still he moved with the same firm purpose, vigilant, resourceful, and well prepared for the eventuality that had befallen. Hemade his escape without difficulty. 

He alighted from a space ship on still another world--another shift intime--and the atmosphere of conflict engulfed him. 

Weary but resigned he accepted it, and did what he had to do ... 

Bergstrom was regarding him with speculative scrutiny. "You've had quitea past, apparently, " he observed. 

Zarwell smiled with mild embarrassment. "At least in my dreams. "

"Dreams?" Bergstrom's eyes widened in surprise. "Oh, I beg your pardon. I must have forgotten to explain. This work is so routine to me thatsometimes I forget it's all new to a patient. Actually what youexperienced under the drug were not dreams. They were recollections ofreal episodes from your past. "

Zarwell's expression became wary. He watched Bergstrom closely. After aminute, however, he seemed satisfied, and he let himself settle backagainst the cushion of his chair. "I remember nothing of what I saw, " heobserved. 

"That's why you're here, you know, " Bergstrom answered. "To help youremember. "

"But everything under the drug is so ... "

"Haphazard? That's true. The recall episodes are always purely random, with no chronological sequence. Our problem will be to reassemble themin proper order later. Or some particular scene may trigger a completememory return. 

"It is my considered opinion, " Bergstrom went on, "that your lost memorywill turn out to be no ordinary amnesia. I believe we will find thatyour mind has been tampered with. "

"Nothing I've seen under the drug fits into the past I do remember. "

"That's what makes me so certain, " Bergstrom said confidently. "Youdon't remember what we have shown to be true. Conversely then, what youthink you remember must be false. It must have been implanted there. Butwe can go into that later. For today I think we have done enough. Thisepisode was quite prolonged. "

"I won't have any time off again until next week end, " Zarwell remindedhim. 

"That's right. " Bergstrom thought for a moment. "We shouldn't let thishang too long. Could you come here after work tomorrow?"

"I suppose I could. "

"Fine, " Bergstrom said with satisfaction. "I'll admit I'm considerablymore than casually interested in your case by this time. "

A work truck picked Zarwell up the next morning and he rode with a techcrew to the edge of the reclam area. Beside the belt bringing ocean muckfrom the converter plant at the seashore his bulldozer was waiting. 

He took his place behind the drive wheel and began working dirt downbetween windbreakers anchored in the rock. Along a makeshift road intothe badlands trucks brought crushed lime and phosphorus to supplementthe ocean sediment. The progress of life from the sea to the land was amechanical process of this growing world. 

Nearly two hundred years ago, when Earth established a colony on St. Martin's, the land surface of the planet had been barren. Only its seasthrived with animal and vegetable life. The necessary machinery andtechnicians had been supplied by Earth, and the long struggle began tofit the world for human needs. When Zarwell arrived, six months before, the vitalized area already extended three hundred miles along the coast, and sixty miles inland. And every day the progress continued. A largepercentage of the energy and resources of the world were devoted to thatessential expansion. 

The reclam crews filled and sodded the sterile rock, planted bindinggrasses, grain and trees, and diverted rivers to keep it fertile. Whenthere were no rivers to divert they blasted out springs and lakes in thefoothills to make their own. Biologists developed the necessary germ andinsect life from what they found in the sea. Where that failed, theyimported microorganisms from Earth. 

Three rubber-tracked crawlers picked their way down from the mountainsuntil they joined the road passing the belt. They were loaded with orethat would be smelted into metal for depleted Earth, or for othercolonies short of minerals. It was St. Martin's only export thus far. 

Zarwell pulled his sun helmet lower, to better guard his hot, dryfeatures. The wind blew continuously on St. Martin's, but it furnishedsmall relief from the heat. After its three-thousand-mile journey acrossscorched sterile rock, it sucked the moisture from a man's body, bringing a membrane-shrinking dryness to the nostrils as it was breathedin. With it came also the cloying taste of limestone in a worker'smouth. 

Zarwell gazed idly about at the other laborers. Fully three-quarters ofthem were beri-rabza ridden. A cure for the skin fungus had not yet beenfound; the men's faces and hands were scabbed and red. The colony hadgrown to near self-sufficiency, would soon have a moderate prosperity, yet they still lacked adequate medical and research facilities. 

Not all the world's citizens were content. 

Bergstrom was waiting in his office when Zarwell arrived that evening. 

He was lying motionless on a hard cot, with his eyes closed, yet withhis every sense sharply quickened. Tentatively he tightened smallmuscles in his arms and legs. Across his wrists and thighs he feltstraps binding him to the cot. 

"So that's our big, bad man, " a coarse voice above him observedcaustically. "He doesn't look so tough now, does he?"

"It might have been better to kill him right away, " a second, lessconfident voice said. "It's supposed to be impossible to hold him. "

"Don't be stupid. We just do what we're told. We'll hold him. "

"What do you think they'll do with him?"

"Execute him, I suppose, " the harsh voice said matter-of-factly. "They're probably just curious to see what he looks like first. They'llbe disappointed. "

Zarwell opened his eyes a slit to observe his surroundings. 

It was a mistake. "He's out of it, " the first speaker said, and Zarwellallowed his eyes to open fully. 

The voice, he saw, belonged to the big man who had bruised him againstthe locker at the spaceport. Irrelevantly he wondered how he knew nowthat it had been a spaceport. 

His captor's broad face jeered down at Zarwell. "Have a good sleep?" heasked with mock solicitude. Zarwell did not deign to acknowledge that heheard. 

The big man turned. "You can tell the Chief he's awake, " he said. Zarwell followed his gaze to where a younger man, with a blond lock ofhair on his forehead, stood behind him. The youth nodded and went out, while the other pulled a chair up to the side of Zarwell's cot. 

While their attention was away from him Zarwell had unobtrusivelyloosened his bonds as much as possible with arm leverage. As the big mandrew his chair nearer, he made the hand farthest from him tight andcompact and worked it free of the leather loop. He waited. 

The big man belched. "You're supposed to be great stuff in a situationlike this, " he said, his smoke-tan face splitting in a grin thatrevealed large square teeth. "How about giving me a sample?"

"You're a yellow-livered bastard, " Zarwell told him. 

The grin faded from the oily face as the man stood up. He leaned overthe cot--and Zarwell's left hand shot up and locked about his throat, joined almost immediately by the right. 

The man's mouth opened and he tried to yell as he threw himselffrantically backward. He clawed at the hands about his neck. When thatfailed to break the grip he suddenly reversed his weight and drove hisfist at Zarwell's head. 

Zarwell pulled the struggling body down against his chest and held itthere until all agitated movement ceased. He sat up then, letting thebody slide to the floor. 

The straps about his thighs came loose with little effort. 

The analyst dabbed at his upper lip with a handkerchief. "The episodesare beginning to tie together, " he said, with an attempt atnonchalance. "The next couple should do it. "

Zarwell did not answer. His memory seemed on the point of completereturn, and he sat quietly, hopefully. However, nothing more came and hereturned his attention to his more immediate problem. 

Opening a button on his shirt, he pulled back a strip of plastic clothjust below his rib cage and took out a small flat pistol. He held it inthe palm of his hand. He knew now why he always carried it. 

Bergstrom had his bad moment. "You're not going to ... " he began at thesight of the gun. He tried again. "You must be joking. "

"I have very little sense of humor, " Zarwell corrected him. 

"You'd be foolish!"

Bergstrom obviously realized how close he was to death. Yetsurprisingly, after the first start, he showed little fear. Zarwell hadthought the man a bit soft, too adjusted to a life of ease and someprestige to meet danger calmly. Curiosity restrained his trigger finger. 

"Why would I be foolish?" he asked. "Your Meninger oath of inviolableconfidence?"

Bergstrom shook his head. "I know it's been broken before. But you needme. You're not through, you know. If you killed me you'd still have totrust some other analyst. "

"Is that the best you can do?"

"No. " Bergstrom was angry now. "But use that logical mind you'resupposed to have! Scenes before this have shown what kind of man youare. Just because this last happened here on St. Martin's makes littledifference. If I was going to turn you in to the police, I'd have doneit before this. "

Zarwell debated with himself the truth of what the other had said. "Whydidn't you turn me in?" he asked. 

"Because you're no mad-dog killer!" Now that the crisis seemed to bepast, Bergstrom spoke more calmly, even allowed himself to relax. "You're still pretty much in the fog about yourself. I read more inthose comanalyses than you did. I even know who you are!"

Zarwell's eyebrows raised. 

"Who am I?" he asked, very interested now. Without attention he put hispistol away in a trouser pocket. 

Bergstrom brushed the question aside with one hand. "Your name makeslittle difference. You've used many. But you are an idealist. Yourkillings were necessary to bring justice to the places you visited. Bynow you're almost a legend among the human worlds. I'd like to talk morewith you on that later. "

While Zarwell considered, Bergstrom pressed his advantage. "One morescene might do it, " he said. "Should we try again--if you trust me, thatis?"

Zarwell made his decision quickly. "Go ahead, " he answered. 

All Zarwell's attention seemed on the cigar he lit as he rode down theescalator, but he surveyed the terminal carefully over the rim of hishand. He spied no suspicious loungers. 

Behind the escalator he groped along the floor beneath the lockers untilhe found his key. The briefcase was under his arm a minute later. 

In the basement lave he put a coin in the pay slot of a privatecompartment and went in. 

As he zipped open the briefcase he surveyed his features in the mirror. A small muscle at the corner of one eye twitched spasmodically. Onecheek wore a frozen quarter smile. Thirty-six hours under the paralysiswas longer than advisable. The muscles should be rested at least everytwenty hours. 

Fortunately his natural features would serve as an adequate disguisenow. 

He adjusted the ring setting on the pistol-shaped instrument that hetook from his case, and carefully rayed several small areas of his face, loosening muscles that had been tight too long. He sighed gratefullywhen he finished, massaging his cheeks and forehead with considerablepleasure. Another glance in the mirror satisfied him with the changesthat had been made. He turned to his briefcase again and exchanged thegun for a small syringe, which he pushed into a trouser pocket, and asingle-edged razor blade. 

Removing his fiber-cloth jacket he slashed it into strips with the razorblade and flushed it down the disposal bowl. With the sleeves of hisblouse rolled up he had the appearance of a typical workman as hestrolled from the compartment. 

Back at the locker he replaced the briefcase and, with a wad of gum, glued the key to the bottom of the locker frame. 

One step more. Taking the syringe from his pocket, he plunged the needleinto his forearm and tossed the instrument down a waste chute. He tookthree more steps and paused uncertainly. 

When he looked about him it was with the expression of a man waking froma vivid dream. 

"Quite ingenious, " Graves murmured admiringly. "You had your mindalready preconditioned for the shot. But why would you deliberately giveyourself amnesia?"

"What better disguise than to believe the part you're playing?"

"A good man must have done that job on your mind, " Bergstrom commented. "I'd have hesitated to try it myself. It must have taken a lot of truston your part. "

"Trust and money, " Zarwell said drily. 

"Your memory's back then?"

Zarwell nodded. 

"I'm glad to hear that, " Bergstrom assured him. "Now that you're wellagain I'd like to introduce you to a man named Vernon Johnson. Thisworld ... "

Zarwell stopped him with an upraised hand. "Good God, man, can't you seethe reason for all this? I'm tired. I'm trying to quit. "

"Quit?" Bergstrom did not quite follow him. 

"It started on my home colony, " Zarwell explained listlessly. "A gang ofhoods had taken over the government. I helped organize a movement to getthem out. There was some bloodshed, but it went quite well. Severalmonths later an unofficial envoy from another world asked several of usto give them a hand on the same kind of job. The political conditionsthere were rotten. We went with him. Again we were successful. It seemsI have a kind of genius for that sort of thing. "

He stretched out his legs and regarded them thoughtfully. "I learnedthen the truth of Russell's saying: 'When the oppressed win theirfreedom they are as oppressive as their former masters. ' When they wentbad, I opposed them. This time I failed. But I escaped again. I havequite a talent for that also. 

"I'm not a professional do-gooder. " Zarwell's tone appealed to Bergstromfor understanding. "I have only a normal man's indignation at injustice. And now I've done my share. Yet, wherever I go, the word eventually getsout, and I'm right back in a fight again. It's like the proverbialmonkey on my back. I can't get rid of it. "

He rose. "That disguise and memory planting were supposed to get me outof it. I should have known it wouldn't work. But this time I'm not goingto be drawn back in! You and your Vernon Johnson can do your ownrevolting. I'm through!"

Bergstrom did not argue as he left. 

Restlessness drove Zarwell from his flat the next day--a legal holidayon St. Martin's. At a railed-off lot he stopped and loitered in theshadow of an adjacent building watching workmen drilling an excavationfor a new structure. 

When a man strolled to his side and stood watching the workmen, he wasnot surprised. He waited for the other to speak. 

"I'd like to talk to you, if you can spare a few minutes, " the strangersaid. 

Zarwell turned and studied the man without answering. He was mediumtall, with the body of an athlete, though perhaps ten years beyond theage of sports. He had a manner of contained energy. "You're Johnson?" heasked. 

The man nodded. 

Zarwell tried to feel the anger he wanted to feel, but somehow it wouldnot come. "We have nothing to talk about, " was the best he could manage. 

"Then will you just listen? After, I'll leave--if you tell me to. "

Against his will he found himself liking the man, and wanting at leastto be courteous. He inclined his head toward a curb wastebox with a flattop. "Should we sit?"

Johnson smiled agreeably and they walked over to the box and sat down. 

"When this colony was first founded, " Johnson began without preamble, "the administrative body was a governor, and a council of twelve. Theirsuccessors were to be elected biennially. At first they were. Thenthings changed. We haven't had an election now in the last twenty-threeyears. St. Martin's is beginning to prosper. Yet the only ones receivingthe benefits are the rulers. The citizens work twelve hours a day. Theyare poorly housed, poorly fed, poorly clothed. They ... "

Zarwell found himself not listening as Johnson's voice went on. Thestory was always the same. But why did they always try to drag him intotheir troubles?

Why hadn't he chosen some other world on which to hide?

The last question prompted a new thought. Just why had he chosen St. Martin's? Was it only a coincidence? Or had he, subconsciously at least, picked this particular world? He had always considered himself theunwilling subject of glib persuaders ... But mightn't some innercompulsion of his own have put the monkey on his back?

"... And we need your help. " Johnson had finished his speech. 

Zarwell gazed up at the bright sky. He pulled in a long breath, and letit out in a sigh. 

"What are your plans so far?" he asked wearily. 

 --CHARLES V. DE VET

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