Robert Silverberg - The Second Trip

But no. It seemed that he had been awake for most of the period of Hamlin’s dominance, missing only the first eight hours or so after the takeover. Some comfort in that. Where had Hamlin been in those eight hours? Most likely at my place, getting some rest. And the mugging? It couldn’t have been too serious. Macy patted his pocket. Wallet gone. Okay, so he must have collapsed at the moment of takeover, the mugger cleaned him out, then Hamlin picked himself up and left unharmed. The wallet was no big loss. Identity papers, credit cards—all replaceable, all useless to the assailant Macy didn’t even need them himself, so long as he had a thumb with a fingerprint on it. Why, Hamlin had even managed to rent this car using only his thumbprint, not even his, my thumbprint. Ours, I guess. But the charge is debited to me. Macy felt vaguely sorry for the mugger, living a squalid lower-class life on a level of society where cash still called the tune. Fine lot of good it must have been for him to lift an executive’s wallet, the wallet of a thumb-tripper, five or six dollars in it at most. Oh, well.

Moving more easily now, Macy reached the car and thumbed the doorplate. The door slid open. He got behind the controls and tentatively grasped the steering-stick. The prospect of having to drive scared him. Suddenly. They had taught him how to drive at the Rehab Center, a couple of years ago, but he hadn’t had much chance to practice lately; and just now there was the special risk that Hamlin might surface and screw him up on the highway. I hit him pretty hard when I grabbed control, but even so.

Hamlin? You awake?

No reply from the depths. Macy felt his other self’s presence, though: a tinny faint reverberation out of the far-below, like the cries of an angry djinn who has been conjured back into his bottle.

Good. Stay like that. I don’t need any static from you while I’m driving.

If only I can keep the goddam stopper in place on the bottle this time.

He put his thumb to the ignition panel, and the car, scanning the print and finding it to be that of its duly licensed present master, came to life. Warily Macy let out the brake. Cautiously he rolled forward. The car responded well, great snorting beast under harness. Which way New York, now? Long afternoon shadows. The sun halfway down the sky on his right. Pick a direction, any direction. He found his way out of the residential area, cut off two drivers as he blurted into the business road, was rudely but deservedly screeched at, and discovered a green-on-white sign directing him to the city. Onward. Homeward. A ticklish trip. He survived it.

He hoped to find Lissa waiting for him at his apartment, slouched in bed in her pleasant wanton way, music playing, her hair a tangle, the aroma of pot in the air. Throw himself wearily down on top of her, bury his aching head between her bouncy boobs. Some chance. The apartment, empty, deserted for a mere twenty-odd hours, had the forlorn and abandoned look of a fifth-rate catacomb. Off with the sweaty crumpled clothing. Shower. Shave. Vague thoughts of dinner. The last meal he remembered having eaten was lunch on Thursday. Now it was dinnertime on Friday. Had Hamlin bothered to refuel their body at all during his eighteen hours on top? Macy wasn’t particularly hungry. All this shuttling about of identities. It must have wrecked my appetite. Odd. You’d think that much mental exertion would have burned up a lot of energy. A drink might be in order, though.

He poured himself a hefty bourbon and, naked, flopped down in a chair. A little of the liquor went sloshing out onto his thigh. Cold brown drops on the golden hairs. He felt not at all triumphant at having ousted Hamlin from control. What good was it, being in charge again? Who was he, anyway, that he needed so badly to live? An oppressive sense of having come to the end of the line grew in him. Paul Macy, born 1972 Idaho Falls, Idaho, father a propulsion engineer mother a school teacher, no brothers no sisters.

False. False. False shit. I wasn’t born anywhere. I am a thing out of a testube: I am a golem, a dybbuk, a construct. Without friends, without family, without purpose. At least he was real. He’d fuck his kid sister, he’d steal toys from a baby, but he had an identity, a personality that he had earned by living. An artistic gift.

What about it, Hamlin? You want to have it all back? Why do I insist on getting in your way? Maybe you’re right: maybe I should let you win.

Hamlin respondeth not. Only the tinny echoes, de profundis. He must be dormant worn out by everything he was doing. Well, fuck him. He’s no good. His soul is full of poison. Damned if I’ll step aside for him, genius or no genius. The world has enough great artists. It’s only got one Paul Macy, for what that’s worth. This would be a good moment to go to the Rehab Center, while Hamlin’s groggy. Get him carved out of me for once and all. And if he surfaces? And if he gives me that coronary he’s been threatening? Fuck him. If he wants to, he can. So go ahead, coronary. So we’ll both be dead. Pax vobiscum. We shall sleep the eternal sleep, he and I. Anything would be better than this. Nodding solemnly, Macy reached for the phone to call Gomez.

The phone rang with his arm still in midstretch.

Lissa, he thought. Calling to find out where I’ve been, asking if she can come back!

Joy. Excitement. That startled him: the intensity of his wish that it be Lissa calling. What was all this crap about dying? He wanted to live. He had someone to look after. And to look after him. They needed each other.

“Hello?” he said eagerly.

On the green screen bloomed the swarthy face of Dr. Gomez. The angel of death himself. Speak of the devil.

“I’ve been phoning all day,” Gomez said. “Where the fuck have you been?”

“Driving around the suburbs. Weren’t you supposed to be keeping me under surveillance?”

“We lost track of you.”

“Is that a fact?” Macy said harshly. “Well, let me be the first to tell you, then. Hamlin got me last night and kept control until late this afternoon.”

Gomez made elaborate facial gestures of exasperation. “And did what?”

“Visited his dealer, his old studio, and his former wife. Who he was in the process of raping when I got control again.”

“He’s still a psychopath, you mean?”

“He still gets a kick out of manhandling women, anyway.”

“All right All right. Too fucking much, Macy. Taking you over, running around the countryside. I’m having the van sent for you. Sit tight and if Hamlin makes another try at you, fight him off somehow. We’ll have you safe inside the Center under sedation in an hour and a half, and then—”

“No.”

“What, no?”

“Keep away from me if you want me to go on living. I tell you, Gomez, he’s a wild man. If he thinks you’re seriously after him he’ll shut off my heart.”

“That isn’t a realistic fear.”

“It’s realistic enough for me.”

“I assure you, Macy, he wouldn’t do any such thing. We’ve let this situation drag on too long as it is. We’ll come and get you, and we’ll do a proper job of deconstructing Hamlin, and I assure you—”

“Shove your assurances, Gomez. We’re talking about my survival that’s being gambled with. My survival. I refuse to let you have me. Where’s your authority for picking me up without my consent? Where’s your court order? No, Gomez. No. Keep away.”

Gomez was silent a moment. A crafty look flickered into his eyes; he immediately tried to hide it, but not before Macy had picked it up. At length Gomez said in his heaviest I-know-this-will-hurt-but-it’s-for-the-general-welfare manner, “You realize, Macy, that your safety isn’t the only thing we have to consider here. A court has ruled that society must be protected against Nat Hamlin. The moment you notified me that Hamlin wasn’t entirely gone, it became my obligation to take him into custody and carry out the court’s sentence the right way. Okay, so you said you felt you were in jeopardy, you asked me to leave you alone until we worked out some sure-thing way of coping, and I let you have your way. It was against every rule, but I gave in. Out of friendship for you, Macy. Will you buy that? Out of friendship. Out of concern. And we’ve been trying since Monday to figure out a way of handling the situation without endangering you. But now you tell me that Hamlin actually regained command of his body for a little while, for long enough to commit an assault against a human being. Okay. Friendship can go only so far. Can you guarantee Hamlin won’t take you over again half an hour from now? Can you guarantee he won’t be out banging housewives tomorrow? We have to seize him now, Macy, we have to finish him off.”