Eh? Huh?
—Wake up, Macy.
What’s the matter?
—I want to talk to you. You’ve been dozing.
Okay. So talk. I’m listening.
—Let’s make a deal. Let’s share the body on an alternating basis. First you run it, then me, then you again, then me again, and so on indefinitely. Operating it under the Paul identity, naturally, so we don’t get into legal difficulties.
You mean we switch every day? Monday Wednesday Friday it’s me in charge, Tuesday Thursday Saturday it’s you, Sunday we hold dialogs?
—Not exactly like that. You need the body four days a week to do your job, right? Those four days it’s yours. Saturdays and Sundays and holidays are mine. Weekday evenings we divide in such a way that you get some, I get some. We can work out ad-hoc arrangements for swapping time back and forth as the occasion demands.
I don’t see why I have to give you any time at all, Hamlin. The court awarded your body to me.
—But I’m still in it. And I’m prepared to be a mammoth pain in the ass unless I’m allowed to take charge some of the time.
You want me to yield half my lifespan to you under duress.
—I want you to be sensible and cooperative, that’s all. Can you function freely with me playing games inside your nervous system? Do you enjoy being harassed? I can cripple your life, Macy. And what about me? Must I be condemned to be bottled up without any autonomy, with my gifts? Listen, even if you run the body for half the time, that’s three and a half days a week more than fate originally intended. By rights you shouldn’t be here at all. So why not accept a reasonable compromise? Half the time you’ll be you, and you can do any fucking thing you please. The other half you’ll surrender autonomy and ride as a passenger while I go about my business. Sculpting, screwing, eating, whatever I feel like doing. We’ll both benefit. I’ll get to live again, a little, and you’ll be free from the annoyance of having me constantly interfering with you.
Well—
—Another incentive. I’ll give you the free run of my memory bank. What you were asking for a little while ago. You can find out who you really were, before you became you.
Get thee behind me, Satan!
—Will you tell me what’s wrong with the goddam deal?
Nothing wrong with it. It’s too damned tempting, that’s what.
—Then why not go along with it?
A taut uneasy moment. Considering, weighing, mulling. Blinking his eyes a lot. Aware that his head is really too foggy now for such perilous negotiations. Why surrender a chunk of his life to a condemned criminal? Wouldn’t it be better to fight it out, to try to expel Hamlin altogether, to break his grip once and for all? Maybe I can’t. Maybe when the showdown comes he’ll expel me. Perhaps it makes more sense to accept the half-and-half. But even so—a flood of suspicions, suddenly—
How would we work this switch?
—Easy. I’d penetrate the limbic system. You know what that is? Down underneath, in the depths of the folds. Controls your pituitary, your olfactory system, a lot of other things, blood pressure, digestion, and so forth, Also the seat of the self, so far as I can tell. You have it pretty well guarded, whether you know it or not. A wall of electrical charge sealing it off. But I could come in by way of the thalamus, reverse the charge—if we cooperate, it would be just a matter of a few seconds and we’d have our shift of identity polarity—I’ve worked out the mechanisms, I know where the levers are—
All right. Let’s say I cooperate and you take over. What assurance do I have that you’d let me back on top again when your time was up?
—Why, if I didn’t, you could pull all the stuff I’ve been pulling on you! The situations would be entirely reversed. You could mess around with my heart, my sex life—you’d learn the right linkups fast, Macy, you aren’t dumb—
I’m not convinced what you say is true. Maybe you’d have a natural advantage, because it was your body originally. Maybe when you were in charge again you could evict me altogether.
—What an untrusting bastard you are.
My life’s at stake.
—All I can say is you’ve got to have more faith in my good intentions.
How can I?
—Look, I’ll open wide to you for a minute. I’ll give you a complete unshielded entry into my personality. Poke around in there, make your own evaluation of my intentions—you’ll see them right up front—decide for yourself whether you can trust me. Okay?
Go ahead. But no funny stuff.
—I’m baring my soul to him, and he’s still suspicious as hell.
Go ahead, I said. How do we work this?
—First, we make some little electrical adjustments in the corpus callosum—
Odd sensations along the back of the neck. Prickling, tingling, a mild stiffening of the skin. Not entirely unpleasant; a certain agreeable feel to it, in fact. Unseen fingers stroking the lobes of his brain, caressing the prominences and corrugations. A tickling on the underside of the skull. Moss beginning to sprout between the white jagged cranial ridges and the soft cerebral folds below. And the oozing of warm fluids. Pulse. Pulse. A wonderful sleepy feeling. Passivity, yes, how splendid a thing is passivity. We are merging. We are opening the gates. How could one have thought that this admirable human being meant to do one harm? When now his soul is thuswise displayed. Its peaks and valleys. Its exaltations and depressions. Its hungers and fears. See, see, I am as human as thou! And I yearn. And I lament. Come let me enfold you. Come. Put aside these unworthy untrustingnesses. Open. Open. Open. Bathed in the warm river. Lulled on the gentle tide. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. This is how we come together. The avoidance of all friction. The total lubrication of the universe. And we dissolve into one another. And we dissolve.
What’s that sound?
Buzz saw at work in the forest! Dentist’s drill raping a bicuspid! Jackhammers unpeeling the street! Braked wheels squealing! The fury of clawed cats!
Key turning in the lock!
Lissa! Lissa! Lissa!
Standing on the threshold. Fingertips pressed to lips in alarm. Body curved backward, recoiling in shock. Then the scream. And then:
“Leave him alone! Get your filthy hands off him, Nat!”
Followed by a sudden instinctive bombardment of mental force, a single massive jolt out of her that sent Macy crumpling stunned to the floor. Blackout Internal churning. Clicking of defective gears. Slow return to semiconsciousness. Lissa embracing him, cradling his throbbing head. A coppery taste in his throat. Incredible lancing pain between the eyes. Her face, smudged, strained, close to his. Her faint worried smile. And Hamlin nowhere within reach. There was in Macy’s head that strange blessed aloneness that he had experienced so few times since the first awakening of his other self. Alone. Alone. How quiet it is in here.
10
“Paul? Can you hear me?”
“From a million miles away.”
“Are you all right?”
“Dazed. Groggy. Jesus, groggy!” Trying to sit up. She tugging him back into his chair. Surprising how strong she is. He looked at his hands. Quivering and twitching. As if a powerful electrical current had passed through his body and was still recycling itself through the peripheral circuits, touching off a muscular spasm here and here and here.
Searching for Hamlin. No, not in evidence. Not at the moment.
“What happened?” he said.
“I was at the door,” said Lissa. “And from outside, I could feel the waves coming from his mind and yours. Mostly from his. You were—asleep, drugged, drunk, I don’t know. Passive, anyway. And he was taking you over, Paul. His mind was wrapped around yours, and he was turning you off switch by switch—that’s the only way I can describe it—and you were about half gone already. Submerged, dismantled, switched off, whatever word is best.”