"I think you might have something there," I heard myself say. "Uh, don't touch any of those computers in the storeroom. Try some unused dialectric mix and start from scratch. Get to work on it right away."
I waited until he had gone back to his bench—the one I had considered mine when I was so sure I was Fred Martin. I was trembling in every muscle as I stood up, even though I knew that outwardly I appeared to be a bored and indifferent lab boss.
I crossed over to the door to the storeroom where the abandoned computers were stored. When I reached it I paused and looked around the lab. My two new assistants were busy at their benches. They weren't looking my way.
I went in and closed the door, placing my back to it. In front of me was an aisle. Walling the aisle were two tiers of open box storage spaces. Some of them were empty. In several dozen were computers, all constructed in this lab, all identical, and all unusable because they held random charges that produced errors in mathematical calculations.
It was like a tomb here in the storeroom. Quiet. The computers rested in their niches like bodies in a morgue. And one of them was me.
Here, somewhere, was my body. It was a neat body with its brown crackle finish and orderly keyboard. But it was like all the others and there was no way of telling which one was me.
I took step after slow step, pausing at each one, trying to probe with mental fingers and find some indication of which I was. I paused at each, and when I was through I still didn't know.
There was a way of finding out. My new assistant had mentioned it. I could take each of these computers and shield the wires that served as antennae, transmitting my thoughts and receiving those of Mintner.
But how could I be sure that he would unshield my antenna wires once he had covered them and severed my contact with him? It was a risk I was going to have to take. I started to tremble again. Somewhere in this storeroom, in one of these sepulchral niches, was I! I had to know which one.