And sat back, looking pleased with himself.
And we all sat back too. We looked at each other. But I do not think any of us really were looking pleased.
Even that might not have sold the committee, except for the one big fact. I've mentioned it already: If this program didn't work, as all of us thought, and most of us hoped, it wouldn't, very little would be lost. For it, like Psi-War, was very, very cheap.
Well, they finally brought this guy in, and I have to say it was one of the most unpleasant experiences of my life. Not painful. Not intolerable. But nonpleasant, wholly without pleasure in any way.
Like most men, I really dislike shopping. Especially for clothes. And one of the principal reasons for that is that I detest those threeway mirrors they have in clothing stores. They are simply unfair. They catch you by surprise. You try on a suit; the salesperson tells you lyingly that it fits as though custom-tailored; he walks you down the store to where three mirrors are linked together, like a medieval triptych. You look into them all unaware, and the first thing you know you're staring at your own profile. I never voluntarily look at my profile. I consider the idea almost obscene. It is not the way God intended me to see myself, and the proof of that is that when I do see myself that way I look perfectly terrible. I don't even recognize that simpering fellow with the funny-shaped nose and the stick-out chin. How he got into the mirror that should have been reflecting me is always a great mystery ... and yet I am not wholly lost to reality. I know that person is really me. I just don't want to know it.
That's how it was in the Cathouse at Sandia.
When they brought this person in he didn't look at me. He didn't look at anybody. They'd let him splash water on his face, at least, but then they'd handcuffed his arms behind his back. Maybe one reason he kept his eyes on the ground was fear of falling. I don't think so. I think there was only one reason, and that was that he knew if he raised them the eyes he would be looking into would be his own. Or my own. Ours.
I hated it.
It was a thousand times worse than the three-way mirrors in the clothing stores. It was as bad as it could be.
This other I had my face, my hair color, even my little thinning patch on top. My everything. Almost everything, for there were small differences—he was maybe six or eight pounds lighter than I, and what he was wearing was no garment I had ever owned. It was a one-piece coverall made out of some shiny forest-green fabric, with pockets all over the chest, and where trouser pockets would have been if there had been separate trousers. There were even pockets on the sleeves and over the right thigh. Perhaps all those pockets once had held my other self's valued possessions. No more. They had been searched and rifled, no doubt by the colonel's troops.
I made myself say, "Dominic. Look at me."
Silence. The other Dominic didn't answer, didn't look up, didn't respond at all—though I could tell from the stubborn way he set his head that he had heard me clearly enough. No one else in the room spoke, either. The colonel watched closely but was silent; and while Colonel Martineau didn't speak none of his men were likely to.
I tried again. "Dominic! For God's sake tell me what's happening."
The other I kept his eyes on the floor for a while longer. Then he looked up, but not at me. He gazed over Martineau's head at the clock on the wall, making some sort of calculation. Then he turned to me and spoke. "Dominic," he said, "for God's sake, I can't."
It was not a satisfying answer. Colonel Martineau opened his mouth to say something, but I waved it shut again. "Please," I said.
That other me said regretfully, "Well, Dom, old buddy, as a matter of fact the reason I'm here is that I wanted to tell you something. By 'you,' " he explained, "I don't mean second-person-plural or even single-other-person-than-myself. I mean you-Dominic-DeSota, who is, as you know, also me."
The colonel was looking suddenly furious. It took me a different way. "Oh, Dom," I said sorrowfully to myself, "how many times I've wished to myself that I'd outgrow playing that sort of game. Spit out what you wanted to tell me, why don't you?"
"Because it's too late, Dom," he said. "Too late for goddam what?"
"The thing I was going to warn you about, you know?"
"I don't know!"
"But you will. It's happening. And the next time we meet"—he offered a grin, but it looked more as though he were crying—"it won't be me you are meeting." He stopped there, started to speak again, hesitated, glanced at the clock— And then he disappeared.
When I say he "disappeared" that is the exact right word, but it may give the wrong image. The other Dominic DeSota didn't "disappear" by ducking out of sight into a closet or something. Nor did he turn transparent like an actor in a TV sci-fi show. He just disappeared. At one instant he was there. At the next he was not.
And a pair of handcuffs, locked around no wrists at all, clattered to the floor where he had been.
Things like that simply do not happen in my life. I had no reactions preprogrammed for flagrant violations of natural law, and neither did Colonel Martineau. He looked at me. I looked at him.
Neither of us said a word about the disappearance, unless "Holy shit!" is a word. I think I heard that whisper from the colonel.
"Any idea what he was talking about, Colonel?" I asked—just to make sure. "No? I thought not. Well, what do we do now?"
"Beats the hell out of me, Senator," he said. But although a commanding officer of the Army is allowed to say that, he is not allowed to mean it. I-Ic called in a sergeant and issued orders for search parties to look for my missing other self; the sergeant looked bewildered and the colonel looked resigned, because we all knew how little use that was going to be. "Do it, Sergeant," he said, and watched the noncom start off. "Well," he said to me at last, "one good thing. He said whatever it was was happening already, so we're sure to find out before long what this is all about."
"I wish I were sure that was a good thing," I said. And, as a matter of fact, when it turned out to be true, ten minutes later, it also turned out not to be a good thing in any way at all. Out of the room we went and down the hall, the colonel's little detachment of troops following in hangdog route step, wondering where they'd screwed the bird. And coming toward us was another detachment of troops, a dozen of them or so. They were in route step, too, but not the least hangdog. They were wearing combat fatigues instead of dress sun-tans, and they carried funny-looking, short-barreled carbines slung over their shoulders. The carbines didn't stay slung. "Hup," said a noncom when they were half a dozen yards away. The detachment stopped. The troopers sank to their knees. The carbines revolved off their straps and were aimed right at us.
An officer stepped forward from the middle of the detachment. "Holy shit," said Colonel Martineau again, and I didn't have to ask why.
The officer was wearing the same combat gear as the troops, but you could tell he was an officer because he carried a pistol instead of a carbine. There was something else I could tell about him right away, and he confirmed it when he spoke. "I'm Major Dominic DeSota of the United States Army," he said, in a voice I knew very well, "and you are all my prisoners of war."
He said it clearly enough, but there was a strain in his voice. I knew why. The words were addressed to the colonel, but the man's eyes were stuck on me, and the expression on his face was one I knew well. It was the same expression I wore myself. I said, "Hello, me." The other guy's expression hardened. "I thought you'd disappeared," I went on. "Was that some kind of a joke?"
He jerked his head at a soldier, who stepped up behind me and grabbed my arms. Something cold and harsh bit into my wrists, behind my back, and I knew I'd been handcuffed. "I don't know what you mean about disappearing," the other me said, "but there's no joke. You're all in protective custody."