All My Sins Remembered Read Free Page A

microfiche viewer and stared at it for a long time. “According to this, you’re Isaac Crowell, out of Macrobastia, born on Terra. You’re sixty and look seventy. That don’t get you past the strip-down inspection.”
    “I demand to see your supervisor.”
    “Uncheck. Ain’t in today. You can wait for him in that little room there. It has a nice lock.”
    “But you—”
    “Ne gonna call my boss his one free day; ne an some shy offworld bloat. You can wait in the room. Ne’ll starve.”
    “Say, now, say.” A stocky little man with a headful of shellacked curls strutted over. “What seems to—Isaac! Isaac Crowell! What brings you back?”
    Crowell clasped the man’s hand—his palm damp and warm—and searched artificial memories for a fraction of a second until the face and name clicked into place. “Jonathon Lyndham. So good to see you. Especially now.”
    “What, there’s some kind of trouble?”
    “I don’t know, Jonathon. This… gentleman doesn’t want to let me through the turnstile. Not unless I do some sort of a, a striptease.”
    Lyndham pursed his lips and regarded the inspector. “Smythe. Don’t you know who
this man is?”
    “He’s… no, sah.”
    “Did you go to school?”
    “Yes, sah. Twelve years.”
    “Doctor Isaac Sebastian Crowell.” Lyndham reached awkwardly across the barrier and put his hand on Crowell’s shoulder. “Author of
Anomaly Resolved
—the book that put this planet on the regular spacelanes.”
    Actually, the book had sold well enough on Bruuch, and also on Euphrates, where the colonists faced a similar situation with regard to exploiting alien natives; but it was a failure everywhere else. Other anthropologists, while admiring Crowell’s tenacity, felt that he’d let sentiment interfere with objectivity. There’s an uncertainty principle in field work: it’s hard to analyze your subjects if you have too much affection for them.
    And as for being on the regular spacelanes, Bruuch had one cargo ship a week, usually late.
    “Here, let me see those papers.” The clerk gladly handed over the clearance forms. “I’ll take full responsibility.” He scrawled initials in a dozen places and handed them back. “This is no common tourist—without the influence of his book, you’d be working in the mines. Ne pushing paper once a week.”
    The clerk pushed a button and the turnstile buzzed. “Let’s go, Isaac. The Company’ll buy you a drink.”
    Crowell squeezed through the narrow opening and shuffled after Lyndham to the spaceport bar. The place was furnished with native handcrafts: tables and chairs carved from the dense black ironwood that resembled obsidian more than any other Terran material.
    Crowell had difficulty drawing the heavy chair out from under the table. He plopped down into it and wiped his face with an outlandishly large handkerchief.
    “Jonathon… I don’t know if I can handle this gravity. I’m not a young man anymore and…well, I’ve let myself go a little.” Ten per cent reminded itself: I’m
thirty-two and in superb physical condition
.
    “Oh, you’ll get used to it, Isaac. Let me enroll you in our health club—we’ll shrink those extra pounds off in no time.”
    “That would be nice,” Crowell said hastily (no amount of exercise will reduce plastiflesh), “but I doubt I’ll have the time. My publisher sent me here to gather material for an update of
Anomaly
… probably be here a month or less.”
    “Oh—that’s a pity. But I think you’ll find that things have changed enough to warrant a longer stay than that.” A woman came and took their drink orders, two brandies.
    “Changes? We don’t hear much of Bruuch on Macrobastia, where I’ve been teaching. Some changes are obvious—” with an economical gesture he indicated their surroundings—“this port was only packed earth and a metal hut when I left last time. But I’m more interested in the Bruuchians than you colonists. Are things much the same with