Robert Silverberg - The Second Trip

Each time she said the name he felt the needles wiggle behind his eyeballs.

“Macy. Paul Macy.”

“I don’t like this game. It’s a cruel one, Nat. Where have you been? What is it, five years?”

“Won’t you please try to understand?” he asked. He glanced meaningfully at his Rehab badge. Her eyes didn’t follow his.

“I understand that you’re trying to hurt me, Nat. It wouldn’t be the first time.”

“I don’t know you at all, miss.”

“You don’t know me at all. You don’t know me at all.”

“I don’t know you at all. Right.”

“Lissa Moore.”

“I’m sorry.”

“What kind of trip are you on, Nat?”

“My second one,” Macy said.

“Your—second—one?”

He touched the badge. This time she saw it.

“Rehab?” she said. Blinking a couple of times: obviously adjusting her frame of reference. Color in her cheeks now. Biting her lip, abashed.

He nodded. “I’ve just come out. Now do you understand? I don’t know you. I never did.”

“Christ,” she said. “We had such good times, Nat.”

“Paul.”

“How can I call you that?”

“It’s my name now.”

“We had such good times,” she said. “Before you went away. Before I came apart. I’m not working much now, you know. It’s been pretty bad.”

“I’m sorry,” he told her, shifting his weight uneasily. “It really isn’t good for me to spend much time with people from my first trip. Or any time at all with them, actually.”

“You don’t want to go somewhere and talk?”

“I can’t. I mustn’t.”

“Maybe some other time?” she asked. “When you’re a little more accustomed to things?”

“I’m afraid not,” he said. Firmly but politely. “The whole point is that I’ve made a total break with the past, and I mustn’t try to repair that break, or let anyone repair it for me. I’m on an entirely new trip now, can you see that?”

“I can see it,” she murmured, “but I don’t want it. I’m having a lot of trouble these days, and you can help me, Nat. If only—”

“ Paul. And I’m not in any shape for helping anybody. I can barely help myself. Look at how my hand is shaking.”

“And you’ve started to sweat. Your forehead’s all wet.”

“There’s a tremendous strain. I’m conditioned to keep away from people out of the past.”

“It kills me when you say that. People out of the past. Like a guillotine coming down. You loved me. And I loved you. Love. Still. Love. So when you say—”

“Please.”

“You, please.” She was trembling, hanging onto his sleeve. Her eyes, going glassy, flitted and flickered a thousand times a second. “Let’s go somewhere for a drink, for a smoke, for a talk. I realize about the Rehab thing, but I need you too much. Please. Please.”

“I can’t.”

“Please.” And she leaned toward him, her fingertips clutching hard into the bones of his right wrist, and he felt a baffling sensation in the top of his skull. A sort of intrusion. A tickling. A mild glow of heat Along with it came a disturbing blurring of identity, a doubling of self, so that for a moment he was knocked free of his moorings. Paul Hamlin. Nat Macy. In the core of his mind erupted a vivid scene in garish colors: himself crouched over some sort of keyboard, and this girl standing naked on the far side of a cluttered room with her hands pressed to her cheeks. Scream, he was saying. Go on, Lissa, scream. Give us a good one. The image faded. He was back on a street in Manhattan North, but he was having trouble seeing, everything out of focus and getting more bleary each second. His legs were wobbly. A spike of pain under his breastbone. Maybe a heart attack, even. “Please,” the girl was saying. “Don’t turn me away, Nat Nat, what’s happening? Your face is so red!”

“The conditioning—” he said, gasping.

The pressure eased. The girl backed away from him, touching the tips of her knuckles to her lips. As the distance between them increased he felt better. He clung to the side of the building with one hand and made a little shooing gesture at her with the other. Go on. Away. Out of my life. Whoever you were, there’s no room now. She nodded. She continued to back away. He had a last brief glimpse of her tense, puffy-eyed face, and then she was cut off from him by a stream of people. Is this what it’s going to be like every time I meet somebody from the old days? But maybe the others won’t be like that. They’ll respect my badge and pass silently on. Give me a chance to rebuild. It’s only fair. She wasn’t being fair. Neurotic bitch, putting her troubles above mine. Help me, she kept saying. Please. Please, Nat. As if I could help anybody.

Twenty minutes later he arrived at the network office. Ten minutes overdue, but that was unavoidable. He had needed some time to recover after the encounter with the girl on the street. Let the adrenalin drain out of the system, let the sweat dry. It was important for him to present an unruffled exterior; more important, in fact, than showing up on time the first day. The network people were probably prepared to be tolerant of a little unpunctuality at first, considering all that he had been through. But he had to demonstrate that he had the professional qualities the job demanded. They were hiring him as an act of grace, yes, but it wasn’t pure charity: he wouldn’t have been accepted if he hadn’t been suitable for the job. So he needed to show that he had the surface slickness, the smoothness, that a holovision commentator had to have. Pause to catch the breath. Get the hair tidy. Adjust the collar. Give yourself that seamless, sprayed-on look. You had a nasty shock or two in the street, but now you’re feeling much better. All right. Now go in. A confident stride. One-and-two-and- one -and-two.

The lobby was dark and cavernous. Screens everywhere, a hundred sensors mounted in the onyx walls, anti-vandal robots poised with bland impersonality to come rolling forth if anybody tried anything troublesome. Standing beneath the security panel, Macy activated one of the screens and a cheery female face appeared. Just a hint of plump bare breasts at the bottom of the screen, cut off by the prudish camera angle. “I have an appointment,” he said. “Paul Macy. To see Mr. Bercovici.”

“Certainly, Mr. Macy. The liftshaft to your right. Thirty-eighth floor.”

He stepped into the shaft. It was already programmed; serenely he floated skyward. At the top, another screen. Face of an elegant haggard black girl, shaven eyebrows, gleaming cheekbones, no flesh to spare. The expectable gorgeous halo of shimmering hair. “Please step through Access Green,” she said. A throaty, throbbing contralto. “Mr. Fredericks is expecting you in Gallery Nine of the Rotunda.”

“My appointment is with Mr. Bercovici—”

Too late. Screen dead. Access Green, an immense oval doorway the color of a rhododendron leaf, was opening from a central sphincter, like the irising shutter of an antique camera. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. Macy stepped hastily through, worrying about having the sphincter reverse itself when he had one leg on each side. Beyond the doorway the air was soft and clammy, heavy with a rain-forest warmth and humidity, and mysterious fragrances were adrift. He saw low, dim passages radiating in a dozen directions. The walls were pink and rounded, no corners anywhere, and seemed to be made of some spongy resilient substance. The whole place was like one vast womb. Trapped in the fallopian tubes. Macy tried to persuade himself not to start sweating again. There was a popping sound, of the sort one could make by pushing a fingertip against the inside of one’s cheek and sliding it swiftly out of one’s mouth, and the black girl emerged from a gash in the wall that promptly resealed itself. She was sealed too, encased in purple plastic from throat to toes, like a chrysalis, everything covered but nothing concealed: her tight wrap startlingly displayed the outlines of her bony body. Superb skeletal structure. She said, “I’m Loftus. I’ll show you to Mr. Fredericks’ office.”