Marune: Alastor 933 Read Online Free PDF

administrative decks, which house the government agencies and the offices of the Twenty-Four Agents .
    . . Now we pass the Ring of Worlds, and up to the College of Anthropological Sciences, and here is our destination. Ollave is a man most knowledgeable and, if anything can be learned he will learn it.”
    They stepped forth into a lobby tiled in blue and white. Kolodin spoke the name Ollave toward a black disk, and presently Ollave appeared. He was a man of undistinguished appearance, his face sallow and pensive, with a long thin nose and black hair receding from a narrow forehead. He greeted Kolodin and Pardero in a voice unexpectedly heavy and took them into a sparsely furnished office.
    Pardero and Kolodin sat in chairs and Ollave settled behind his desk. Ollave addressed Pardero: “As I understand the situation, you remember nothing of your early life.”
    “This is true.”
    “I cannot give you your memory,” said Ollave, “but if you are native to Alastor Cluster, I should be able to determine your world of origin, perhaps the precise locality of your home district.”
    “How will you do that?”
    Ollave indicated his desk. “I have on record your anthropometry, physiological indices, details as to your somatic chemistry, psychic profile - in fact all the information Technicians Rady and Kolodin have been able to adduce. Perhaps you are aware that residence upon any particular world in any specific society, and participation in any way of life leaves traces, mental and physical. These traces unfortunately are not absolutely specific, and some are too subtle to be reliably measured. For instance, if you are characterized by blood type RC3, it is then unlikely that your home world is Azulias. Your intestinal bacteria furnish clues, as does the musculature of your legs, the chemical composition of your hair, the presence and nature of any body fungus or internal parasite; the pigments of your skin. If you make use of gestures these may be typified: Other social reflexes such as areas and degrees of personal modesty are also indicative, but these require long and patient observation and again may be obscured by the amnesia. Dentition and dental repairs sometimes offer a clue, as does hairstyling. So now: do you understand the process? Those parameters to which we can assign numerical weights are processed in a computer, which will then present us a list of places in descending order of probability.
    “We will prepare two other such lists. To those worlds most convenient to Carfaunge Spaceport we will assign probability factors, and we will try to codify your cultural reflexes: a complex undertaking, as the amnesia no doubt has muted much of this data, and you have in the meantime acquired a set of new habits. Still, if you will step into the laboratory, we will try to make a reading.”
    In the laboratory Ollave sat Pardero in a massive chair, fitted receptors to various parts of his body, and adjusted a battery of contacts to his head. Over Pardero’s eyes he placed optical hemispheres and clamped earphones to his ears.
    “First we establish your sensitivity to archetypal concepts. Amnesia may well dampen or distort the responses, and according to M.T. Rady yours is an extraordinary case. Still; if the cerebellum only is occluded other areas of the nervous system will provide information. If we get any signals whatever, we will assume that their relative strength has remained constant. The recent overlay we will try to screen out. You are to do nothing, merely sit quiet; attempt neither to feel nor not to feel; your internal faculties will provide us all we want to know.” He closed the hemispheres over Pardero’s eyes. “First, a set of elemental concepts.”
    To Pardero’s eyes and ears were presented scenes and sounds: a sunlit forest, surf breaking upon a beach, a meadow sprinkled with flowers, a mountain valley roaring to a winter storm; a sunset, a starry night, a view over a calm ocean, a city street,