Robert Sheckley: Mindswap

In New York, Marvin went directly to the body-brokerage house of Otis, Blanders and Klent. He was sent to the office of Mr Blanders, a tall, athletic man in the prime of life at sixty-three, and a full partner in the firm. He explained to this man his purpose in coming.

'Of course,' Mr Blanders said. 'You have reference to our advertisement of Friday last. The Martian gentleman's name is Ze Kraggash, and he is very highly recommended by the rectors of East Skern University.'

'What does he look like?' Marvin asked.

'See for yourself,' Blanders said. He showed Marvin a photograph of a being with a barrel chest, thin legs, slightly thicker arms, and a small head with an extremely long nose. The picture showed Kraggash standing knee-deep in mud, waving to someone. Printed on the bottom of the photograph were the words: 'Souvenir of Mud Heaven – Mars' Year – Round Vacationland, highest moisture content on the planet!'

'Nice-looking chap,' Mr Blanders commented. Marvin nodded, even though Kraggash looked just like any other Martian to him.

'His home,' Blanders continued, 'is in Wagomstamk, which is on the edge of the Disappearing Desert in New South Mars. It is an extremely popular tourist area, as you probably know. Like you, Mr Kraggash is desirous of travelling and wishes to find a suitable host body. He has left the selection entirely up to us, stipulating only mental and physical health.'

'Well,' Marvin said, 'I don't mean to boast, but I've always been considered healthy.'

'I can see that at a glance,' Mr Blanders said. 'It is only a feeling, of course, or perhaps an intuition, but I have come to trust my feelings in thirty years of dealing with the public. Purely on the basis of my feelings, I have rejected the last three applicants for this particular Swap.'

Mr Blanders seemed so proud of this that Marvin felt impelled to say, 'Have you really?'

'Most certainly. You can have no conception of how frequently I must detect and eliminate misfits in this line of work. Neurotics who seek ugly and illicit thrills; criminals who wish to escape the purview of local law; the mentally unstable, trying to escape their internal psychic pressures. And many more. I cull them all.'

'I hope that I don't fit any of those categories,' Marvin said, with an embarrassed little laugh.

'I can tell at once that you do not,' Mr Blanders said. 'I would judge you as an extremely normal young man, almost excessively normal, if that were possible. You have been bitten by the travel bug, which is very suitable for your time of life, and is a passion akin to failing in love, or fighting an idealistic war, or becoming disillusioned with the world, and other postures of the young. It is very fortunate that you had either the native wit or the good luck to come to us, the oldest and most reliable brokerage house in the Swap business, rather than to some of our less scrupulous competitors, or, worst of all, to the Open Market.'

Marvin knew very little about the Open Market; but he remained silent, not wishing to betray his ignorance by asking.

'Now then,' Mr Blanders said, 'we have certain formalities which we must go through before we can gratify your request.'

'Formalities?' Marvin asked.

'Most certainly. First, you must have a complete examination, which will produce an operational judgement of your physical, mental, and moral standing. This is quite necessary, since bodies are swapped on an equal basis. You would be quite unhappy if you found yourself stuck in the corpus of a Martian suffering from sandpest or tunnel syndrome. Just as he would be unhappy if he found that you had rickets or paranoia. By the term of our charter, we must attempt as complete a knowledge of the health and stability of the Swappers as possible, and apprise them of any discrepancies between real and advertised condition.'

'I see,' Marvin said. 'And what happens after that?'

'Next, you and the Martian Gentleman will both sign a Reciprocal Damage Clause. This states that any damage to your host body, whether by omission or commission, and including Acts of God, will, one, be recompensed at the rate established by interstellar convention, and, two, that such damage will be visited reciprocally upon your own body in accordance with the lex talionis .'

'Huh?' Marvin said.

'Eye for eye, tooth for tooth,' Mr Blanders explained. 'It's really quite simple enough. Suppose you, in the Martian corpus, break a leg on the last day of Occupancy. You suffer the pain, to be sure, but not the subsequent inconvenience, which you avoid by returning to your own undamaged body. But this is not equitable. Why should you escape the consequences of your own accident? Why should someone else suffer those consequences for you? So, in the interests of justice, interstellar law requires that, upon reoccupying your own body, your own leg be broken in as scientific and painless a manner as possible.'

'Even if the first broken leg was an accident?'

' Especially if it were an accident. We have found that the Reciprocal Damage Clause has cut down the number of such accidents quite considerably.'

'This begins to sound sorta dangerous,' Marvin said.

'Any course of action contains an element of danger,' Mr Blanders said. 'But the risks involved in Swapping are statistically unimportant, assuming that you stay out of the Twisted World.'

'I don't know very much about the Twisted World,' Marvin said.

'Nobody does,' Blanders said. 'That's why you're supposed to stay out of it. That's reasonable enough, isn't it?'

'I suppose so.' Marvin said. 'What else is there?'

'Nothing to speak of. Just paperwork, waivers of special rights and immunities, that sort of thing. And, of course, I must give you the standard warning about metaphoric deformation.'

'All right,' Marvin said. 'I'd like to hear it.'

'I just gave it,' Blanders said. 'But I'll give it again. Watch out for metaphoric deformation.'

'I'd be glad to,' Marvin said, 'but I don't know what it is.'

'It's really quite simple,' Blanders said. 'You might consider it a form of situational insanity. You see, our ability to assimiliate the unusual is limited, and these limits are quickly reached and surpassed when we travel to alien planets. We experience too much novelty; it becomes unbearable, and the mind seeks relief through the buffering process of analogizing.

'Analogy assures us that this is like that ; it forms a bridge between the accepted known and the unacceptable unknown. It attaches the one to the other, imbuing the intolerable unknown with a desirable familiarity.

'However, under the continued and unremitting impact of the unknown, even the analogizing faculty can become distorted. Unable to handle the flood of data by the normal process of conceptual analogizing, the subject becomes victim to perceptual analogizing. This state is what we call "metaphoric deformation". The process is also known as "Panzaism". Does that make it clear?'

'No,' Marvin said. 'Why is it called "Panzaism"?'

'The concept is self-explanatory,' Blanders said. 'Don Quijote thinks the windmill is a giant, whereas Panza thinks the giant is a windmill. Quijotism may be defined as the perception of everyday things as rare entities. The reverse of that is Panzaism, which is the perception of rare entities as everyday things.'

'Do you mean,' Marvin asked, 'that I might think I was looking at a cow, when actually it was an Altairian?'

'Precisely,' Blanders said. 'It's simple enough, once you apply yourself. Just sign here and here and we will get on with the examinations.'

There were many tests, and endless questions. Flynn was poked and probed, lights were flashed in his face, sudden noises were broadcast at him, and strange smells assailed his nostrils.