Дэймон Найт - Orbit 11

But I’d beaten the mourning-period game. I’d hardly had time to accept the loss of Shelley, and here I was a few days later sharing bed and board with her exact duplicate.

I loved Shirley. In a way it was a love for the image in the mirror, the affectionate awe due a superb imitation. But it was sincere—something like, I suppose, the luxurious contentment men of earlier times felt when they bought their second brandnew Model T Ford.

Shirley seemed happy. I felt ecstatic all the time. I had the world on a string and could bounce it off the moon.

Like I said, you tend to overlook hubris.

I was not a complete selfish cad. I mourned the loss of Shelley. How could I help it while Shirley was a walking playback of her? I checked often by phone with the Erie police for progress reports. They had the same message always. Nothing new, no reports of her in the continental U.S.A. or Canada.

I did my duty sacredly, though I must admit I don’t know what I’d have done if they had turned Shelley up.

I arranged with my brother to take over the administration of our business in Rochester. (We had converted my father’s sedate clothing store into a mindblowing head shop.) He hated the extra work but liked getting more than half the profits. In return he sent me adequate if not abundant monthly stipends, which I supplemented with an occasional odd job.

I promised Shirley a wedding. She was too nice a girl to toy with, and I couldn’t risk losing her. Later I realized that, if I did marry her, I’d be liable for bigamy charges. If I told her I had a wife, she’d split. If I just forgot to marry her, she might notice.

One day, several months after I found Shirley, I came home from an active day at the Family Billiards Parlor, where I hustled young mothers and old widows for fifty cents a rack. I’d had a good day until a paper boy on a break from his route took me for all my profits. I pranced out of the parlor, muttering to the owner that such riffraff would bring down his enterprise’s good name.

Shirley sat on the living room couch. Stiffly. Ignoring the odor of déjà vu, I sat beside her and tried to kiss her. She offered my lips the back of her neck.

“Something the matter?” I said, rushing-in fool that I am.

In a series of choked phrases she told me. Canton’s crusading chief of detectives had paid an official call, because he’d discovered my dual identity and wanted to be a nosy prick about it.

“Why did you come here,” she said, “specifically to look for me? Why me? What were your purposes?”

I tried to think of answers that might work. Whatever I stammered out, it was completely unintelligible, a string of pronouns and disconnected verbs.

“How in bloody hell could you move in here when your wife had disappeared just a week before? Your wife! What kind of monster are you?”

“A phoenix, if you’ll give me the chance.”

“I’ll build you a fire.”

At that moment I wished I had a duplicate, one who would click on in a crisis, solve the problem with the proper selection of reason and emotion, then turn the field back to me for the easy stuff.

“Do you want to know my side?” I asked.

“I know your side. That’s why I’m crying.”

“How could you know? That motherloving cop only knows part of it himself.”

“I know. I have abilities.”

“Tell me what you know.”

“No, not yet. I need a few more minutes.”

We sat in silence for a half hour or more.

“Are you ready?” I finally said.

“Ready for what?”

“To tell me my side.”

“Bastard!”

“You girls change personality quickly. Too fast for me.”

“Yes.”

“Aren’t you going to ask me what I meant by ‘you girls’?”

“I know what you meant. All I needed was your wife’s name which was on the missing persons report he showed me. Give me a few more minutes.”

“For what?”

“Breathing.”

Another long silence. Then she spoke first for a change.

“Poor Shelley. Poor uncompromising Shelley.”

“Poor Shelley? What do you mean, uncompromising?”

“What it usually means. She didn’t bargain. Apparently she barely hesitated.”

“What’s the connection between you and Shelley? Why are you two so much alike in looks, manner, temperament?”

“We’re identical robots manufactured by a mad scientist. One of us tripped and fell into a Xerox machine. We’re one time traveler existing concurrently in two trips to the same time period. We’re the Doublement twins. Any of the above, some of the above, none of the above.”

“Tell me.”

“No.”

“Damn it, you owe me an explanation.”

“Eat. Molten. Lava.”

Silence, my turn to speak first.

“Shelley—is she dead?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes.”

“Quit toying with me!”

“I’m not. That was truth.”

“Suicide?”

“Yes and no.”

“Yes? . . .”

“She no longer exists.”

“No? . . .”

“Her power of choice was restricted.”

I couldn’t make sense out of Shirley’s cryptic statements. The truth seemed to be there somewhere, just outside the reach of my comprehension. Shirley stood up.

“Where are you going?” I said.

“I must leave.”

“Why?”

“For the same reason Shelley left you.”

“Stay.”

“I’d like to. I can’t.”

“It’s not fair.”

“What isn’t?”

“You duplicates always walking out on me. Both you and Shelley made me happy, idyllically so. I don’t deserve such treatment.”

“Sure you do. Don’t be so petulant. Anyway, you’re lucky.”

“Lucky?”

“You’ve lived with the two of us, a mathematical possibility we hadn’t taken into account. And I know exactly our capabilities. You’re lucky. It computes, baby doll.”

She walked toward the door, a stiffness in her movements. “I must leave now,” she said.

“There are differences, you know, between you and Shelley. She played this bit hysterically.”

“There’s more than one kind of hysteria. But you’re correct, there are differences. Shelley had her world disintegrate suddenly, I suspect, judging by what I could infer from the missing persons report. I’ve had all afternoon.”

“What are you going to do now? Bargain?”

“Probably. Another difference for you: I consider compromise.”

We stared at each other. Outside it was that gray period between sunset and the dawn of streetlights. I could not see Shirley’s face very well. A thick black line seemed drawn around her.

“Can I go now?”

“Could I stop you?”

“No.”

“A last request?”

“Sure.”

“Withdraw with a good exit line.”

She smiled. A uniquely Shirley smile.

“You were a pretty good fuck,” she said.

“What do you mean, pretty good?”

“Have I ever lied to you?”

She left the house. I heard the hedges beside the house rustle as she took the path to the backyard. I couldn’t keep from going to the kitchen and watching her through a window. She didn’t do much. She looked around the yard, up at the darkened sky, down at the row of plastic garbage cans, level at the small clump of trees which passed for a woods in the suburbs.

Maybe her outline became shimmery. Maybe not.

She went into the woods; I mentally collected womb symbols while looking out at nothing.

I packed and left town that night. I had plans.

Charlotte was difficult to locate. I’d been bombed the night I talked with the waiter and I couldn’t recall the name of the bar. All I remembered was red-velvet walls and a flashy Western layout. The number of Denver restaurants with red-velvet walls and Old West decor has at least one comma in it. But I really didn’t mind the search. I am an authority on red-velvet walls. Anything becomes relevant if your life has direction.