The Currents of Space Read Free Page A

perfectly clean to her.
    He said, “Where did you meet this man?”
    She had told him the circumstances cautiously, reducing itto the very barest essentials and leaving out all mention of the Townman and the patrollers.
    “Then you know nothing about him?”
    She shook her head. “Nothing before that.”
    He said, “This man has been treated with a psychic probe. Do you know what that is?”
    At first she had shaken her head again, but then she said in a dry whisper, “Is it what they do to crazy people, Doctor?”
    “And to criminals. It is done to change their minds for their own good. It makes their minds healthy, or it changes the parts that make them want to steal and kill. Do you understand?”
    She did. She grew brick-red and said, “Rik never stole anything or hurt anybody.”
    “You call him Rik?” He seemed amused. “Now look here, how do you know what he did before you met him? It’s hard to tell from the condition of his mind now. The probing was thorough and brutal. I can’t say how much of his mind has been permanently removed and how much has been temporarily lost through shock. What I mean is that some of it will come back, like his speaking, as time goes on, but not all of it. He should be kept under observation.”
    “No, no. He’s got to stay with me. I’ve been taking good care of him, Doctor.”
    He frowned, and then his voice grew milder. “Well, I’m thinking of you, my girl. Not all the bad may be out of his mind. You wouldn’t want him to hurt you someday.”
    At that moment a nurse led out Rik. She was making little sounds to quiet him, as one would an infant. Rik put a hand to his head and stared vacantly, until his eyes focused on Valona; then he held out his hands and cried, feebly, “Lona——”
    She sprang to him and put his head on her shoulder, holding him tightly. She said to the doctor, “He wouldn’t hurt me, no matter what.”
    The doctor said thoughtfully, “His case will have to be reported, of course. I don’t know how he escaped from the authorities in the condition he must have been in.”
    “Does that mean they’ll take him away, Doctor?”
    “I’m afraid so.”
    “Please, Doctor, don’t do that.” She wrenched at the handkerchief, in which were the five gleaming pieces of credit-alloy. She said, “You can have it all, Doctor. I’ll take good care of him. He won’t hurt anyone.”
    The doctor looked at the pieces in his hand. “You’re a millworker, aren’t you?”
    She nodded.
    “How much do they pay you a week?”
    “Two point eight credits.”
    He tossed the coins gently, brought them together in his closed palm with a tinkle of metal, then held them out to her. “Take it, girl. There’s no charge.”
    She accepted them with wonder. “You’re not going to tell anyone, Doctor?”
    But he said, “I’m afraid I have to. It’s the law.”
    She had driven blindly, heavily, back to the village, clutching Rik to her desperately.
    The next week on the hypervideo newscast there had been the news of a doctor dying in a gyro-crash during a short failure in one of the local transit power-beams. The name was familiar and in her room that night she compared it with that on the scrap of paper. It was the same.
    She was sad, because he had been a good man. She had received his name once long before from another worker as a Squire doctor who was good to the mill hands and had saved it for emergencies. And when the emergency had come he had been good to her too. Yet her joy drowned the sorrow. He had not had the time to report Rik. At least, no one ever came to the village to inquire.
    Later, when Rik’s understanding had grown, she had told him what the doctor had said so that he would stay in the village and be safe.
     
    _______
     
    Rik was shaking her and she left her reveries.
    He said, “Don’t you hear me? I couldn’t be a criminal if I had an important job.”
    “Couldn’t you have done wrong?” she began hesitantly. “Even if you were