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37.
As she entered the Bit Cave area, for a moment Tedda thought nothing had changed. Heart pounding, she walked from the exchange area out to the work area. Eduard trailed close behind. She half expected to see empty cubicles, and maybe some flowers in memory of those who had perished.
People sat at their desks and worked as if nothing had happened. A few looked up and nodded or smiled or waved hello. Lindy stepped out from behind her cubicle carrying a thick printout, and looked surprised. "Oh, Tedda, where have you been? I was looking for you so we could go to lunch."
"I was—busy," Tedda said cautiously. "What time is it?"
"Almost time to go home. I figured you must have been wandering around in the halls near your office. Say, who's your friend?"
"Eduard."
Eduard said politely: "We work together—down below."
"Oh." Lindy shrugged, accepting that information. "Okay. Let me know when you are ready to head home." She strode off with her printouts.
"My roommate," Tedda told Eduard. "I see some of the people that were killed below. Am I dreaming?"
Eduard whispered: "Rules. They are replacements. Your fatherland doesn't want to let on that anything has happened. It's knee-jerk secrecy. The first instinct is always to lie, to deny, to cover up. Truth is the last option when all else fails."
Tedda nodded to Jakko, or his rule, and he waved back. He looked preoccupied—a far more serious and toned-down Jakko than the joker she'd left among the street of bodies in a Monopol City suburb.
Out lumbered Wally (or his rule). "Hi, Tedda. Glad to see you made it back. Who is your friend?"
"One of the techs down in my area."
He nodded and said to Eduard: "Next time, wear your badge or the guards are likely to lock you up."
"Oh darn." Eduard made a pretense of patting the pockets of his herringbone jacket. "I'll have to go back and get it."
"Get a visitor pass for now. Tedda, you'll need to vouch for him."
"Sure, Wally. Do you happen to have one handy?"
"Here." Wally rummaged in his upper desk tray, found a plain badge with Visitor printed on it, and threw it on the desk. "You can turn it in for me."
"Thanks."
Tedda and Eduard stepped into an empty cubicle that she chose at random. She sat on the desk, he in the chair. "What now?" she asked.
"I've never been in West Gotha," he said.
"And I've never been in East Gotha."
"I think you have. You just don't remember."
She held her head in her hands and shook it. "What am I going to do? What?"
"I think we must figure out how to get your identity back. We must get your memories back, and maybe that involves getting you back to your work place. You were in charge of a large building of laboratories and test facilities on the edge of the city. Maybe if we go there?"
"How would I get in?"
"We have to try something. Even if you just see the building from outside, it might jog you into remembering more. We could try taking it one step at a time, one little memory after the other, until it's all back."
She embraced him, kissing him on each cheek. He squeezed back affectionately, with that mild lack of arousal she'd been noticing. He reminded her almost of a neutered cat. Apparently the real Hedrock was an acrobat of sensuality and seduction. This derivative of his must have been designed not to wrestle her into bed at first sight. She grinned privately at the thought. She could not even remember what Hedrock looked like, and she only vaguely felt herself feeling heated up at the thought of an amorphous someone whose name happened to be Alton Hedrock, to whom she apparently was married and with whom she was supposedly trying to save the world. It all sounded so crazy that some of it might actually be true. Curiosity was beginning to be her dominant passion—a sure sign that some of the fatherland's medicines were continuing to wear off.
"Should I tell Lindy that I am working late and she should go home by herself?"
"You mean Moira?"
This struck an odd, disturbing note in her. "What?"
Eduard looked confused also. "I think she is called that. Moira Lindy. She is Wally Tonsonby's assistant in real life. I remember that from my formation. Your name is actually Amy Tedda, but secretly you married Alton and are now Amy Hedrock." He looked apologetic and pained. "I'm sorry, it's just disjointed information I can't explain except to regurgitate."
"Oh God." Tedda sat down hard. "Amy Tedda. Yes, that's me. Amy von Tedda. My family owned large land holdings that were confiscated by the Moss Syndicate decades ago. There was a lot of bitterness in the family about it, but then as the Moss Group took over the global trade, nobody could stop them, and there was a lot of bitterness everywhere, so my family weren't alone."
She closed her eyes and shook, trying to hold on to the edge of the desk beside her as fragments of memory roiled up. "I was being taken to prison for murder, and the person I murdered was Moira Lindy. Much as he professed to love me, and I believe he did, he couldn't stay out of other women's knickers. I think he was still spying for the East while I was working on him, trying to convince him to take my warnings back to his superiors in East Gotha. I caught him in bed with her, and I ran her through with a kitchen knife. He managed to escape, but I was tried and imprisoned for her murder. I was being transported in a prison van, when we were washed away during a flood, and I ended up breaking free and wound up at this institute."
She broke free and ran, out into the graying dawn. She ran, a lone figure fleeing uphill on the cobblestone street between high walls where she and Lindy walked every day. The university on her left, the walled fortress of her prison on her right, she ran up the hill, curving right where the high grass blew in the wind by the old fortress gate. She ran into the fortress grounds, across the ancient green parade fields that were now parks. She ran among the whispering trees whose huge crowns bent down sadly. She ran down the crunching pathway along the white wall until she came to the Confessor's recess in the wall. There she stopped, heart beating wildly, and leaned against the wall to catch her breath. She heard him stirring inside, making questioning groans. "Is someone out there?" his deep voice rumbled.
She forced herself around the corner and entered the long, narrow room with its high ceiling. Before her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she saw what looked like a waxy moon gleaming. As she approached, the moon seemed to rise. It was the Confessor, raising his head from a sleeping state to look at her. He smiled with mysterious warmth. "Come in, child. I am always here to hear your confessions."
She stood before him, knees trembling, but regarding him with the utmost courage. She understood that this thing imprisoned in here, wrapped in silk robes and attached to the wall like a slug though it had a human torso, was a rule. "I have come to ask about Moira Lindy," she said.
"Ah yes," Confessor Gruen said. He leaned back under his robes and folded his arms. She noticed he had long fingers with mandarin-like fingernails that had never been clipped. "Did you come to confess the truth and seek fatherland's absolution?"
"No, I came to find the truth, but I'm not sure I'll find it here."
The Confessor slapped a panel at his side, probably to summon help. "You must kneel down and show respect."
"I'm happy standing. Now why don't you tell me the truth for once? What is this place? Why am I here?"
"Why, this is West Gotha, my child. You are a loyal and patriotic citizen of our beloved fatherland."
She advanced on the thing. "You have kept me here, drugged and oblivious. Why?"
"Tedda!" said Lindy's voice behind her.
"Stay back, Lindy," Tedda said. She pointed at the Confessor. "End this now!"
The Confessor grinned smugly. "My dear, nobody can end what is happening. We are about to finally defeat East Gotha and save the world."
"And rule the world," she said, "the Moss Syndicate wants to rule the world for its own purposes."
"How dare you!" the voice rumbled, and the Confessor's face contorted with outrage as his eyes grew wide.
"Tedda, no!" Lindy screamed.
Moving slowly as if in a dream, Tedda looked back at her roommate. Lindy could not possibly know the truth, or she would already have hinted at something. No, they must have her more doped up than they'd had Tedda.
"Please," a man's voice cried out. It was Eduard, who had found them and now stood frozen in the doorway for a moment, a shadowy figure arrested in motion, with one hand on the stone lintel. "Come out of there."
"Stop, Tedda!" Lindy cried.
"How dare you!" the Confessor boomed.
Tedda stooped down to pick up a melon-sized boulder.
Eduard rushed into the passageway and restrained Lindy, who kicked and screamed in her efforts to reach Tedda.
"You cannot win," said Confessor Gruen, reaching toward Tedda in his (or its) black silk robes while its long-nailed fingers writhed in eager anticipation of wringing her neck or gouging her eyes out.
Tedda raised the stone high. Confessor Gruen shrank back and tried to shield his face.
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