"Just a minute, sir. I'll connect your audio with Professor Baarslag's study."
He knew he would get results with that line about new psychological discoveries concerning native behavior patterns. Their mental processes were quite a mystery. Not a mystery to Owen any more. As far as he was concerned, they didn't have any mental processes at all.
Owen waited for Albert's voice. His twin still had a soft spot in his heart for him, he was pretty certain of that. A desperate appeal of the kind he intended to make would move his brother emotionally--get the sympathetic reaction he needed to complete his rather fantastic plan.
His brother's voice startled him. It was a perfect replica of his own. Soft, cultured and low. "Yes?"
He heard a catch, a pause from the other end of the audio.
"I--yes--why hello, Owen. Where are you? Wha--what do you want?"
Owen grinned coldly, but his voice was warm with repentant emotion. "Albert. I--I'm giving myself up. I've had enough. It's been a noble and futile life for me anyway. You know that it's always been just a matter of time before I would give myself up. Well, this is it. I'm--just outside the City now. At Swamper Swhin's Dive. But Albert--"
The Chief of Psychometry's voice was low, hoarse. "Yes, Owen."
"I want to see you first, Albert. I'll probably never get to see you again. I'll be a completely new personality when they release me from the reconditioning processes. I'd like to have a good talk with you before I turn myself in. Just a brother-to-brother talk, like old times, Albert. With me, it'll be a sort of cathartic, a confession. I've sinned, sinned terribly. I'd like to get it all out of my system, and you're the only one who might understand. Can I come up and see you tonight in your lab, Albert?"
There was a long pause. "Why--why, I guess so, Owen. Yes, yes of course you may."
"How can you get up here without being detected by the Scanner Guard?"
"I have the identification disks of Jonathon Graem. They'll pass the Scanner Guard. I--Jonathon Graem died in the swamp two years ago."
"By accident," said Albert Baarslag pointedly.
"Naturally," said Owen with apparent sincerity, forgetting to add: "--after I pushed him into a bog and kept him there too long for his continued survival."