Metamorphosis — Key Ideas to Explore

There was only one way the job could be done: I had to make contact--even though I might not be aware of it at the time--reveal who I was, and hope he'd come out after me.

I rented a room in a cheap hotel. But not so cheap that it wouldn't have a grid connection with information service.

I wrote my name big on the register: MAX CALOF. There was always the chance that he would see it. He would remember the name.

The room was small, a standard "living-in" cubicle. Which was all right. I didn't intend to sleep here. I hadn't slept in nine years now--a year before the chase began. I kicked off my saddle shoes and walked on stockinged feet to the vid coin slot and dropped in a half dollar.

The screen flickered once and the face of a beautiful, smiling woman came into focus. "May I help you, sir?" she asked in a pleasant, very friendly voice.

I realized that the woman was not actually speaking, as she appeared to be doing. She was merely a woman image, with her voice and facial expressions synchronized in some way with the word impulses coming from information central.

I stretched out on the bed, folding the pillow under my head to have an unobstructed view of the screen. "Give me the names of the city's two hundred most prominent male citizens," I said.

There was no sign of surprise on the woman face, but I got the usual expressive long pause from central. The request was unusual. Central relays always had trouble with the proper definition of "prominent."

"Any particular category?" the woman image finally asked.

"All categories," I answered.

Another pause. Even a mechanical brain would take a bit of time to assemble that information, but get it I would.

After a while the woman began. "Edward Anderson. Russell Baker. Joseph Dillon. Francis...." As her gently modulated voice went on, I closed my eyes, keeping my mind blank, letting each name pass without resistance through my consciousness. Sometimes a hunch came that way. There was no need to make a written list. I had total recall.

I became aware that I had opened my shirt collar and that I was perspiring. I hadn't noticed how hot the day was or that the room had no air conditioning. I took a minute to concentrate. The perspiration dried and my body adjusted itself to the room's temperature and humidity. When I was comfortable again, I returned my attention to the woman's voice.

At the end of the reading, no name had stayed with me. I opened my eyes. "Eliminate all except those within the age range of twenty to forty," I said. Zealley would be thirty-seven by now--but probably appear younger. "Got that?"

"How many left?" I asked.

It was always a temptation to cut the list further. I was weary of the seemingly endless repetition of the same routine and the frustrating lack of any results. Eight years is a long time to search for a man. Yet I could not afford to be careless. I was gambling everything on my having figured out the way Zealley's mind operated, how he would act, where he would hide. When the woman finished speaking, I walked to the vid and switched it off.

I noted by the wall clock that it was almost noon. I hadn't had breakfast yet. In the back of my mind, as I ordered a meal, was the certainty that someday this appetite too would grow sated and dull. There were so few satisfactions left....

The first name on my list was Edward Anderson. The city's mayor. It took me two hours to get into his office, and two minutes to be on my way out again. I had asked my questions and met the usual blank response.

On the street I spent another hour strolling through the shopping district. No shadower picked me up.

Which pretty well eliminated Anderson--or anyone in close contact with him.

Second name, Russell Baker. Industrialist. Minneapolis Mining & Allied Products.

I got as far as his secretary, John Roesler.

"What can I do for you?" Roesler asked. He was a big-boned, handsome man, with an air of sleepy indolence. He cleaned and trimmed his fingernails with a small gold penknife.

"I'd like to see Mr. Baker," I said.

"Confidential business."

"No one gets in to see a man like Mr. Baker that easy. If they could, he'd be pestered by every crackpot in town."

This was as far as I was going to get. I had to make the best of it. "Will you give him a message then?" I asked.

Roesler shrugged. "If I think he should have it."