Robert Silverberg - The Second Trip

Lissa seemed troubled by the Hamlin group too. Remembering a jollier past, perhaps. The happy days of first love. The awesome sensation of being chosen by Nathaniel Hamlin for his bed, for his studio. A world of endless sunrises before her. All highways open. And to have come to this. How great the contrast Macy could see the bleakness spreading across her face. A mistake to inflict Hamlin’s art on her? Or maybe she merely felt oppressed by the museum’s Sunday throng. We will go now, I think.

Midmorning, Monday, Macy hard at work. Griswold had just assigned him to a new story. Preliminary charisma-level statistics for the 2012 election came out last night, late; let’s do a feature on all the candidates, run up a chart of pulse-figures, hormone counts, recognition profile, the whole multivalent works, right? Right. And so to the task. Research assistants scurrying madly. Their pretty pink boobies hobbling. Stacks of documents. Fredericks stopping by to offer bland, useless suggestions. Loftus staggering in with a load of simulations and color overlays for his approval. The hours whisking swiftly by; the mind fully engaged in purposeful activity.

And then an unscheduled interruption. Someone down here to see you, Mr. Macy. No appointment. A visitor for me? Who? Image of Lissa, bedraggled, obsessed, freaking out in the reception hall. Please, I must see him, matter of life and death, I’m going to snap, I’m going to blow, let me go upstairs! A messy scene. Only his visitor wasn’t Lissa. His visitor turned out to be a Dr. Gomez.

Panic. Gomez, here? Hamlin’ll kill me!

After the first quick surge of fright, some rethinking. Hamlin had warned him not to go to the Rehab Center, or to telephone his doctors, yes. But the doctor had come to him. Was that covered by the threat? A debatable point. In any case, Hamlin didn’t seem to be raising objections. Macy waited a long troubled moment, expecting a sign from within, a squeeze of his heart, a pinching of his nerves, some sort of don’t-fool-around signal. Nothing. He sensed Hamlin’s presence like a dull heavy weight in his gut, but he got no specific instructions about seeing Gomez. Perhaps Hamlin wants to find out what Gomez will say. Maybe he’s still recovering from the jolt Lissa gave him. Anyway. Tell Dr. Gomez he can come up.

Gomez, out of context, looked unfamiliar. At the Rehab Center, surrounded by his phalanxes of computers and his electronic pharmacopoeia, Gomez was dynamic, formidable, aggressive, indomitable, confidently vulgar. Entering Macy’s sleek office he was almost meek. Without his throne and scepter a king’s but a bifurcated radish. Gomez came slipping hesitantly through the fancy sliding door. Dressed in excessively contemporary business clothes, greens and reds, much too young for him, instead of the customary monochrome lab outfit. Looking shorter and more plump than in his own domain. His thick drooping mustache seedy and in need of trimming. The weakness of his chin somehow mattering much more here. Ten feet apart; eyes meet eyes. Gomez moistening his lips. How strange to see him on the defensive.

Macy said, “I guess you’ve decided to believe me after all.”

“We’ve been discussing your case nonstop for three days,” said Gomez hoarsely. “But I had to have firsthand data. And since you wouldn’t come to us—”

“Couldn’t.”

“Couldn’t.” Gomez nodded. Scowled. Not at Macy but at himself. His distress was apparent. Coming here today was a considerable gesture. The cocky doctor eating crow. He said, voice ragged, “I didn’t want to chance phoning you. In case it might provide too much time for the former ego to build up negative reactions. Is my presence here causing any repercussions?”

“Not so far.”

“If it does, tell me and I’ll leave. I don’t want to endanger you.”

“Don’t worry, Gomez, I’ll tell you fast if anything begins.” Checking to see if Hamlin is stirring. All calm. “Hamlin hasn’t been very active since Thursday night.”

“But he’s still there?”

“He’s there, all right. Despite your loud assurance that it wasn’t possible for him to come back.”

“We all make mistakes, Macy.”

“That was a pretty fucking big one. I asked you to run an EEG. You said no, I was merely hallucinating, merely having a fantasy, there was no chance in the world that Hamlin was intact and surfacing. And then you said—”

“All right. Let’s not go into that now.” Dabbing at his sweaty forehead. “I’m concerned with therapy for this, not with placing blame. When did it start?”

“The day I left the Center. When I met the girl, Hamlin’s old model, mistress, the one you spoke to a couple of times on the telephone.”

“Miss Moore.”

“Yes. Bumped into her, literally, on the street. I told you all this. She kept calling me Nat, ignoring my badge—you remember?”

“I remember.”

“I saw her again, last Monday. She said she was in trouble and wanted me to help her. I didn’t want to get involved and started to leave. She hit me with a two-pronged blast of telepathy. Which woke him up fully, completing the job of arousing him that had started when—”

“Telepathy?”

“ESP. Communication between minds. You know.”

“I know. This girl’s a telepath?”

“I’m trying to tell you.”

“You knew she was a telepath, and also that she was a figure out of Hamlin’s past who you therefore were under instructions not to see, and nevertheless you arranged to meet her and—”

“I didn’t know she was a telepath. Until it was too late. Not that I’d have had any particular reason to avoid her because of that You never said anything about telepaths, Gomez. I didn’t even know there were such things as telepaths, not real ones, not walking around in New York City.”

Gomez closed his eyes. “All right. I get the picture. What we have here is an apparent case of induced identity reestablishment under telepathic stimulus. Of all the shit. A minute theoretical possibility, but who ever expected to run into an actual case of—no fucking literature on the whole subject—no tests, no background, no data—”

“You can write a wonderful paper on me some day,” Macy said bitterly.

“Spare me the crap. You think I’m happy about this?” Indeed genuine agony was visible in Gomez’ fleshy features. “Okay, so she woke Hamlin. Meaning what? Give me the symptomology.”

“He talks to me.”

“Out loud?”

“In my head. A silent voice, but it doesn’t seem silent. Twice now he’s tried to grab my speech centers. All he can say is gibberish, though, and I knock him away. He also took hold of the muscles of the right side of my face once. I made him let go. Two or three times he’s given me a physical shock, a jolt, knocked me down. Last Tuesday, when I set out to the Rehab Center, he staged a little heart attack for me, telling me that he’d give me a niftier one if I persisted in going to the Center. This is no goddam hallucination, Gomez. I’ve had conversations with him, long rational conversations. He’s got very ambitious ideas.

He’s been inviting me to let him finish me off so he can have his body back.”

“Obviously we can’t allow that.”

“Obviously there isn’t a fucking thing you can do. If I let you make any hostile moves toward him at all, he’ll kill me. It’s like I’m carrying a bomb inside me.”

“He’s bluffing.”

“You’re very sure of that,” Macy said.

“If your body dies, he’ll die with it. Whatever he is, he can’t survive the decay of your brain cells.”

“He can’t survive another round in the Rehab Center, either. So he’d be willing to take any step to keep me from going there, right up to and including killing us both. If I go to you, he dies. Why shouldn’t he kill me anyway and take me along? Or at least threaten to, knowing it’ll stop me from going to the Center?”