Robert Sheckley: Mindswap

He passed everything with flying colours. Some hours later he was taken to the Transfer Room, and was seated in a chair that looked alarmingly like an old electric chair. The technicians made obligatory jokes: 'When you wake up, you'll feel like a new man.' Lights flashed at him, he was getting sleepy, sleepier, sleepiest.

He was thrilled by the imminence of travel, but appalled by his ignorance of the world beyond Stanhope. What was the Open Market, anyhow? Where was the Twisted World located, and why was he supposed to avoid it? And finally, how dangerous was metaphoric deformation, how often did it occur, and what was the recovery rate?

Soon he would find the answers to these questions, as well as the answers to many others that he hadn't asked. The lights were hurting his eyes, and he closed them for a moment. When he opened them again, everything had changed.

Despite a bipedal frame, the Martian is one of the strangest creatures in the galaxy. Indeed, from a sensory viewpoint, the Kvees of Aldeberan, despite their double brains and special-function limbs, are closer to us. Accordingly, it is a disturbing thing to Swap directly and without initiation into the corpus of a Martian. And yet, no amelioration is possible.

Marvin Flynn found himself in a pleasantly furnished room. There was a single window; through it, he gazed with Martian eyes upon a Martian landscape.

He closed his eyes, since he could register nothing except a dismaying confusion. Despite innoculations, he was beset by the nausea-producing waves of culture-shock, and he had to stand very still until it subsided. Then, cautiously, he opened his eyes and looked again.

He perceived low, flat sand dunes, which were made up of a hundred or more distinct hues of grey. A silvery-blue wind was running across the horizon, and an ochre counter-wind seemed to be attacking it. The sky was red, and many indescribable hues were visible in the infra-red scale. In everything, Flynn saw spidery spectrum lines. Earth and sky presented him with a dozen separate palettes, some complementary, more of them clashing. There was no harmony in nature's colours on Mars; these were the colours of chaos.

Marvin found a pair of glasses in his hand, and slipped them on. Immediately, the roar and clash of colours was reduced to manageable proportions. The numbness of shock receded, and he began to perceive other things.

First, a heavy booming in his ear, and a quick rattle beneath it, like the tattoo of a snare drum. He looked around for the source of this noise, and saw nothing except earth and sky. He listened more carefully, and found that the sounds were coming from his own chest. They were his lungs and heart, sounds that all Martians lived with.

Now Marvin was able to take stock of himself. He looked at his legs, which were long and spindly. There was no knee joint; instead, the leg was pivoted at the ankle, shin, midthigh, and upper thigh. He walked, and admired the fluid motion of his movements. His arms were slightly thicker than his legs, and his double-jointed hands had three fingers and two opposable thumbs. He could bend and twist these in a surprising number of ways.

He was dressed in black shorts and a white jumper. His chest-prop was folded neatly and covered with an embroidered leather case. He was amazed at how natural it all seemed.

And yet, it was not surprising. The ability of intelligent creatures to accommodate to new environments was what made Mindswap possible. And the Martian frame, despite certain striking morphological and sensory differences, was easy to get used to, unlike some of nature's more perverse creations.

Flynn was musing on this when he heard a door open behind him. He turned and saw a Martian standing in front of him, dressed in a government uniform of green and grey stripes. The Martian had reversed his feet in greeting, and Marvin quickly responded in kind.

(One of the glories of Mindswap is 'automatic education'. Or, in the amusing jargon of the trade: 'When you take over a house, you get the use of the furnishings.' The furnishings, of course, are the use of primary available knowledge in the host brain, knowledge such as language, customs, mores and morals, general information about the area in which one lives, and so forth. This is primary-environment information, general, impersonal, useful as a guide, but not necessarily reliable. Personal memories, likes, dislikes are, with certain exceptions, unavailable to the occupier, or available only at the cost of considerable mental effort. Again, in this area there is what appears to be a type of immunilogical reaction, which allows only a superficial degree of contact between disparate entities. 'General knowledge' is usually exempt; but 'personal knowledge', involving beliefs, prejudices, hopes and fears is sacrosanct.)

'Soft wind,' the Martian said, in the classic old-Martian greeting form.

'And cloudless sky,' Flynn replied. (To his annoyance, he found that his host body had a slight lisp.)

'I am Meenglo Orichichich, of the Tourist Bureau. Welcome to Mars, Mr Flynn.'

'Thanks,' Flynn said. 'Awfully good to be here. It's my first Swap, you know.'

'Yes, I know.' Orichichich said. He spat on the floor – a sure sign of nervousness – and uncurled his thumbs. From the corridor there came a sound of heavy voices. Orichichich said, 'Now then, concerning your stay on Mars-'

'I want to see the Burrow of the Sand King,' Flynn said. 'And, of course, the Talking Ocean.'

'Both excellent choices,' the official said. 'But first there are one or two minor formalities.'

'Formalities?'

'Nothing too difficult,' Orichichich said, his nose twisting to the left in the Martian smile. 'Would you look over these papers and identify them, please?'

Flynn took the proffered papers and scanned them. They were replicas of the forms he had signed on Earth. He read them through, and found that all the information had been sent correctly.

'These are the papers I signed on Earth,' he said.

The noise from the corridor grew louder. Marvin could make out words: 'Scalded egg-laying son of a frostbitten tree stump! Gravel-loving degenerate!'

Those were very strong insults indeed.

Marvin raised his nose quizzically. The official hastily said, 'A misunderstanding, a mix-up. One of those unfortunate occurrences which occur even to the best run of government tourist services. But I am quite sure that we can straighten it out in five gulps of a rapi, if not sooner. Permit me to ask you if-'

There was the sound of a scuffle in the corridor. Then a Martian burst into the room, with a Martian sub-official clinging to his arm and trying to stop him.

The Martian who had burst in was extremely old, as could be told by the faint phosphorescence of his skin. His arms quivered as he pointed both of them at Marvin Flynn.

'There!' he shouted. 'There it is, and by tree-stumps I want it now!'

Marvin said, 'Sir, I am not in the habit of being addressed as "it".'

'I am not addressing you' the old Martian said. 'I do not know nor care who or what you are. I am addressing the body which you are occupying, and which is not yours.'

'What are you talking about?' Flynn asked.

'This gentleman,' the official said, 'claims that you are occupying a body which belongs to him.' He spat twice on the floor. 'It is a mix-up, of course, and we can straighten it out at once …'

'Mix-up!' howled the old Martian. 'It's an out-and-out fraud!'

'Sir,' Marvin said, with cold dignity, 'you are under a grave misapprehension; either that, or you are engaging in this slander for reasons I cannot hope to fathom. This body, sir, was legally and fairly rented by me.'

'Scaly-skinned toad!' the old man shouted. 'Let me at him!' He struggled with circumspection against the restraining grip of the guard.