Robert Silverberg - Multiples

“Software?”

“In a manner of speaking. Linguistics. Metalinguistics, actually. My field’s the language of language—the basic subsets, the neural co-ordinates of communication, the underlying programs our brains use, the operating systems. Mind as computer, computer as mind. I can get very boring about it.”

“I don’t find the mind a boring subject.”

“I don’t find real estate a boring subject. Talk to me about second mortgages and triple-net leases.”

“Talk to me about Chomsky and Benjamin Whorf,” she said.

His eyes widened. “You’ve heard of Whorf?”

“I majored in comparative linguistics. That was before real estate.”

“Just my lousy luck,” he said. “I get a chance to find out what’s hot in the shopping-center market and she wants to talk about Whorf and Chomsky.”

“I thought every other woman you met these days was a real-estate broker. Talk to them about shopping centers.”

“They all want to talk about Whorf and Chomsky.”

“Poor Van.”

“Yes. Poor Van.” Then he leaned forward and said, his tone softening, “You know, I shouldn’t have made that crack about Van meeting Cleo. That was very tacky of me.”

“It’s OK, Van. I didn’t take it seriously.”

“You seemed to. You were very upset.”

“Well, maybe at first. But then I saw you were just horsing around.”

“I still shouldn’t have said it. You were absolutely right: this is Judy’s time now. Cleo’s not here, and that’s just fine. It’s Judy I want to get to know.”

“You will,” she said. “But you can meet Cleo too, and Lisa, and Vixen. I’ll introduce you to the whole crew. I don’t mind.”

“You’re sure of that?”

“Sure.”

“Some of us are very secretive about our alters.”

“Are you?” Cleo asked.

“Sometimes. Sometimes not.”

“I don’t mind. Maybe you’ll meet some of mine tonight.” She glanced towards the center of the floor. “I think I’ve steadied up, now. I’d like to try the mirrors again.”

“Switching?”

“Doubling,” she said. “I’d like to bring Vixen up. She can do the drinking, and I can do the talking. Will it bother you if she’s here too?”

“Not unless she’s a sloppy drunk. Or a mean one.”

“I can keep control of her, when we’re doubling. Come on: take me through the mirrors.”

“You be careful, now. San Francisco mirrors aren’t like Sacramento ones. You’ve already discovered that.”

“I’ll watch my step this time. Shall we go out there?”

“Sure,” he said.

As they began to move out on to the floor a slender T-shirted man of about thirty came towards them. Shaven scalp, bushy moustache, medallions, boots. Very San Francisco, very gay. He frowned at Cleo and stared straightforwardly at Van.

“Ned?” he said.

Van scowled and shook his head. “No. Not now.”

“Sorry. Very sorry. I should have realized.” The shaven-headed man flushed and hurried away.

“Let’s go,” Van said to Cleo.

This time she found it easier to keep her balance. Knowing that he was nearby helped. But still the waves of refracted light came pounding in, pounding in, pounding in. The assault was total: remorseless, implacable, overwhelming. She had to struggle against the throbbing in her chest, the hammering in her temples, the wobbliness of her knees. And this was pleasure, for them? This was a supreme delight?

But they were multiples and she was only Cleo, and that, she knew, made all the difference. She seemed to be able to fake it well enough. She could make up a Judy, a Lisa, a Vixen, assign little corners of her personality to each, give them voices of their own, facial expressions, individual identities. Standing before her mirror at home, she had managed to convince herself. She might even be able to convince him. But as the swirling lights careened off the infinities of interlocking mirrors and came slaloming into the gateways of her reeling soul, the dismal fear began to rise in her that she could never truly be one of these people after all, however skilfully she imitated them in their intricacies.

Was it so? Was she doomed always to stand outside their irresistible world, hopelessly peering in? Too soon to tell—much too soon, she thought, to admit defeat—

At least she didn’t fall down. She took the punishment of the mirrors as long as she could stand it, and then, not waiting for him to leave the floor, she made her way—carefully, carefully, walking a tightrope over an abyss—to the bar. When her head had begun to stop spinning she ordered a drink, and she sipped it cautiously. She could feel the alcohol extending itself inch by inch into her bloodstream. It calmed her. On the floor, Van stood in a trance, occasionally quivering in a sudden convulsive way for a fraction of a second. He was doubling, she knew: bringing up one of his other identities. That was the main thing that multiples came to these clubs to do. No longer were all their various identities forced to dwell in rigorously separated compartments of their minds. With the aid of the mirrors, of the lights, the skilled ones were able briefly to fuse two or even three of their selves into something even more complex. When he comes back here, she thought, he will be Van plus X. And I must pretend to be Judy plus Vixen.

She readied herself for that. Judy was easy: Judy was mostly the real Cleo, the real-estate woman from Sacramento, with Cleo’s notion of what it was like to be a multiple added in. And Vixen? Cleo imagined her to be about twenty-three, a Los Angeles girl, a one-time child tennis star who had broken her ankle in a dumb prank and had never recovered her game afterwards, and who had taken up drinking to ease the pain and loss. Uninhibited, unpredictable, untidy, fiery, fierce: all the things that Cleo was not. Could she be Vixen? She took a deep gulp of her drink and put on the Vixen-face: eyes hard and glittering, cheek-muscles clenched.

Van was leaving the floor now. His way of moving seemed to have changed: he was stiff, almost awkward, his shoulders held high, his elbows jutting oddly. He looked so different that she wondered whether he was still Van at all.

“You didn’t switch, did you?”

“Doubled. Paul’s with me now.”

“Paul?”

“Paul’s from Texas. Geologist, terrific poker game, plays the guitar.” Van smiled and it was like a shifting of gears. In a deeper, broader voice he said, “And I sing real good too, ma’am. Van’s jealous of that, because he can’t sing worth beans. Are you ready for a refill?”

“You bet,” Cleo said, sounding sloppy, sounding Vixenish.

His apartment was nearby, a cheerful airy sprawling place in the Marina district. The segmented nature of his life was immediately obvious: the prints and paintings on the walls looked as though they had been chosen by four or five different people, one of whom ran heavily towards vivid scenes of sunrise over the Grand Canyon, another to Picasso and Miró, someone else to delicate impressionist views of Parisian flower-markets. A sunroom contained the biggest and healthiest houseplants Cleo had ever seen. Another room was stacked high with technical books and scholarly journals, a third was set up as a home gymnasium equipped with three or four gleaming exercise machines. Some of the rooms were fastidiously tidy, some impossibly chaotic. Some of the furniture was stark and austere, and some was floppy and overstuffed. She kept expecting to find roommates wandering around. But there was no one here but Van. And Paul.

Paul fixed the drinks. Paul played soft guitar music and told her gaudy tales of prospecting for rare earths on the West Texas mesas. Paul sang something bawdy-sounding in Spanish, and Cleo, putting on her Vixen-voice, chimed in on the choruses, deliberately off key. But then Paul went away and it was Van who sat close beside her on the couch, talking quietly. He wanted to know things about Judy, and he told her a little about Van, and no other selves came into the conversation. She was sure that that was intentional. They stayed up very late. Paul came back, towards the end of the evening, to tell a few jokes and sing a soft late-night song, but when they went into the bedroom she was with Van. Of that she was completely certain.