Various Fiction

by Robert Sheckley

  “Perfectly true,” Loomis agreed.

  “Then—”

  “No,” said Loomis. “I have an urge toward self-completion. But I have a much stronger urge to go on living exactly as I am living, in a manner I find eminently satisfactory. Luxury has its compensations, you know.”

  “Perhaps you’ve forgotten,” Crompton said, “that you are living in a Durier chassis which has an estimated competence of twelve years. Five of them are gone. If you don’t reintegrate, you have a maximum of seven more years of life. A maximum, mind you. Durier chassis have been known to break down in less.”

  “THAT’S true,” Loomis admitted, frowning slightly. “Reintegration won’t be so bad,” Crompton said, in what he hoped was a winning manner. “Your pleasure impulse won’t be lost. It’ll merely be put into better proportion.”

  Loomis thought hard, drawing on his pale ivory cigarette. Then he looked Crompton full in the face and said, “No.”

  “But your future—”

  “I’m simply not the sort of person who can worry about the future,” Loomis said, with a smug smile. “It’s enough for me to live through each day, savoring it to the fullest. Seven years from now—why, who knows what will happen seven years from now? Seven years is an eternity! Something will probably turn up.”

  Crompton resisted a strong desire to throttle some sense into Loomis. Of course the pleasure-principle lived only in the everpresent now, giving no thought to a distant and uncertain future. Seven years’ time was unthinkable to the now-centered Loomis. He should have thought of that.

  Keeping his voice calm, Crompton said, “Nothing will turn up. In seven years—seven short years—you will die.”

  Loomis shrugged. “It’s my policy never to worry past Thursday. Tell you what, old man. I’ll look you up in three or four years and we’ll discuss it then.”

  “It’ll never work,” Crompton told him. “You’ll be on Mars, I’ll be on Earth, and our other component will be on Venus. We’ll never get together in time. Besides, you won’t even remember.”

  “We’ll see, we’ll see,” Loomis said, glancing at his watch. “And now, if you don’t mind, I’m expecting a visitor soon—”

  Crompton arose. “If you change your mind, I’m staying at the Blue Moon Motel. I’ll just be here for another day or two.”

  “Have a pleasant stay,” Loomis said. “Be sure to see the Xanadu Caverns. Fabulous sight!”

  Thoroughly numbed, Crompton left Loomis’ ornate suite and returned to his motel.

  THAT evening, Crompton ate at a snack counter, consuming a Marsburger and a Red Malted. At a newsstand, he found a book of acrostics. He returned to his room, filled in three puzzles, and went to sleep.

  The next day, he tried to decide what to do. There seemed to be no way of convincing Loomis. Should he go to Venus and find Dan Stack, the other missing portion of his personality? No, that would be worse than useless. Even if Stack were willing to reintegrate, they would still be missing a vital third of themselves—Loomis, the all-important pleasure-principle. Two-thirds would crave completion more passionately than one-third, and be in more desperate straits without it. And Loomis would not be convinced.

  Under the circumstances, Crompton’s only course was to return to Earth un-reintegrated, and make whatever adjustments he could. There was, after all, a humorless joy in hard, dedicated work, a grim pleasure in steadiness, circumspection, dependability. The frugal virtues of the superego were not to be overlooked.

  But he found it difficult to convince himself. And with a heavy heart he telephoned Elderberg Depot and made a reservation on the evening rapido to Port Newton.

  As he was packing, an hour before the rapido left, his door was suddenly flung open. Edgar Loomis stepped in, looked quickly around, shut the door behind him and locked it.

  “I’ve changed my mind,” Loomis said. “I’ve decided to reintegrate.” Crompton’s first feeling of joy was stifled in a wave of suspicion.

  “What made you change your mind?” he asked.

  “Does it really matter?” Loomis said. “Can’t we—”

  “I want to know why.”

  “Well, it’s a little difficult to explain. You see, I had just—” There was a heavy rapping on the door. Loomis turned pale under his orange tan. “Please!”

  “Tell me,” Crompton implacably insisted.

  Beads of sweat appeared on Loomis’ forehead. “Just one of those things,” he said quickly. “Sometimes husbands don’t appreciate one’s little attentions to their wives. Even the rich can be shockingly bourgeois at times. So, once or twice a year, I find it expedient to take a little vacation in a cave I’ve furnished at All Diamond Mountain. It’s really very comfortable, though the food is necessarily plain. In a few weeks, the whole thing blows over.”

  AS the knocking at the door grew louder, a bass voice shouted, “I know you’re in there, Loomis! Come out or I’ll break down this damned door and wrap it around your slimy neck!”

  Loomis’ hands were trembling uncontrollably. “I have a dread of physical violence. Couldn’t we simply reintegrate and then I’ll explain—”

  “I want to know why you didn’t go to your cave this time,” Crompton said.

  They heard the sound of a body slamming heavily against the door.

  Loomis said shrilly, “It was all your fault, Crompton! Your coming here unsettled me. Me, caught in the act! I barely escaped, with that fantastic muscular neanderthal idiot of a husband following me around town, searching the saloons and hotels, threatening to break my limbs. I didn’t have enough ready cash to hire a sandcar and there was no time to pawn my jewelry. And the police just grinned and refused to protect me! Crompton, please!”

  The door bulged under repeated blows, and the lock began to give. Crompton turned to his personality component, grateful that Loomis’ essential inadequacy had shown up in time.

  Quickly, he unzipped his briefcase and removed the Mikkleton Projector. He fastened the main electrodes to his forehead, while Loomis plugged his own connections into the tiny holes behind each ear which had been left for that purpose. Crompton adjusted the similarity-patterns on the control board until they were in phase.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  Loomis nodded.

  CROMPTON closed the switch. Loomis gasped and his Durier chassis collapsed, folding in on itself. At the same moment, Crompton’s knees buckled as though a weight had landed on his shoulders.

  The lock gave way and the door slammed open. A short, red-eyed, thickly constructed, black-haired man came into the room.

  “Where is he?” the man shouted.

  “Reintegrated,” said Crompton, letting him see the projector before it was packed into its briefcase.

  “Oh,” said the black-haired man, caught between rage and shock. He goggled down at the body stretched on the floor. “Pretty hard to realize it’s just a deactivated chassis . . .”

  Crompton zipped the briefcase. “That’s all it is.”

  “But reintegration . . .” said the man. He shuddered, looked at Crompton with concern. “You all right?”

  “As well as can be expected. One down, one to go.”

  “Then you must be damned uncomfortable. Anything I can do?”

  Using Crompton’s lips, Loomis unexpectedly spoke up. “Well, yes, if you’d be so good.” Crompton tried to shut him up, but Loomis pushed right on. “I understand your wife liked to come here because of the decor.”

  “So what?” demanded the man, starting to bristle again.

  “It made him look good,” Loomis said, nodding Crompton’s head at the inert chassis. “A handsome setting like this would make any man look good.”

  The man glanced around. “I guess it would. What have you got in mind?”

  “I have no use for these furnishings and jewelry, and you—well, lets say you might benefit by them. Sure to, as a matter of fact. If you could see your way toward taking them off my hands . . .”

  Crompton stayed out of
the bargaining, which, after the chassis’ cremation and payment of Loomis’ bills, provided him with nearly three thousand badly needed dollars. Instead of having to hang around straightening out the financial mess Loomis had left, Crompton, with the help of his wily pleasure-principle, was able to catch the evening rapido.

  THE long ride across the Martian plains came as a much needed breathing spell. It gave Crompton and Loomis a chance to make a true acquaintance, and to settle basic problems which two minds in one body are bound to encounter.

  There was no question of ascendency. Crompton was the basic personality; under normal circumstances, Loomis could not take over, and had no desire to do so. Loomis accepted his passive role and resigned himself, with typical ease, to the status of commentator, adviser and general well-wisher.

  But there was no reintegration. Crompton and Loomis existed in the one mind like planet and moon, independent, but closely related entities, cautiously testing each other out, unwilling and unable to relinquish personal autonomy. A certain amount of seepage was taking place, of course; but the fusion of a single stable personality out of its discrete elements could not take place until Dan Stack, the third component, had entered.

  The rapido reached Port Newton, and Crompton shuttled to Mars Station One. He went through customs, immigration and health, and caught the hopover to Exchange Point. There he had to wait fifteen days for a Venus-bound ship to depart. The brisk young ticket clerk spoke about the problems of “opposition” and “economical orbits,” but neither Crompton nor Loomis understood what he was talking about.

  At last the Venus ship lifted. Crompton set to work learning Basic Yggdra, root language of the Venusian aboriginals. Loomis, for the first time in his life, tried to work too, tackling the complexities of Yggdra. He quickly became bored with its elaborate conjugations and declensions, but persisted to the best of his ability, and marveled at the studious, hard-working Crompton.

  In return, Crompton made a few tentative advances into the appreciation of beauty. Aided and instructed by Loomis, he attended the ship’s concerts, looked at the paintings in the main salon, and stared long and earnestly at the brilliant glowing stars from the ship’s observation port. It all seemed a considerable waste of time, but he persevered.

  ON the tenth day out, their co-operation was threatened by the wife of a second-generation Venusian planter whom Crompton met in the observation port. She had been on Mars for a tuberculosis cure and now was going home.

  She was small, bright-eyed and vivacious, with a slender figure and glistening-black hair. She was bored by the long passage through space.

  They went to the ship’s lounge. After four martinis, Crompton was able to relax and let Loomis come to the fore, which he did with a will. Loomis danced with her to the ship’s phonograph, then generously receded, leaving Crompton in command, nervous, flushed, tanglefooted and enormously pleased. And it was Crompton who led her back to the table, Crompton who made small talk with her, and Crompton who touched her hand, while the complacent Loomis looked on.

  At nearly two a.m., ship’s time, the girl left, after pointedly mentioning her room number. Crompton reeled deliriously back to his own room on B deck, and collapsed happily on the bed. “Well?” Loomis asked.

  “Well what?”

  “Let’s go. The invitation was clear enough.”

  “There was no invitation,” Crompton said, puzzled.

  “She mentioned the room number,” Loomis pointed out. “That, together with the other events of the evening, constitutes almost a command.”

  “I can’t believe it!”

  “Take my word,” Loomis told him. “The invitation is clear, the course is open. Onward!”

  “No, no,” Crompton said, flooded with his own super-ego. “I wouldn’t—I mean I don’t—I couldn’t—”

  “Lack of experience is no excuse,” declared Loomis. “Nature is exceedingly generous in helping one to discover her ways. Consider also the fact that creatures without a hundredth of your intelligence manage to perform in exemplary fashion what you find so baffling. Surely you won’t let a mouse outdo you!”

  Crompton got to his feet, wiped his glowing forehead, and took two tentative steps toward the door. Then he wheeled and sat down on the bed.

  “Absolutely not,” he said firmly. “But why?”

  “It would be unethical. The young lady is married.”

  “Marriage,” Loomis said patiently, “is a man-made institution. But before marriage there were men and women, and certain modes between them. Natural laws always take precedence over human legislation.”

  “It’s immoral,” Crompton said, without much vigor.

  “NOT at all,” Loomis assured him. “You are unmarried, so no possible blame can attach to you for your actions. The young lady is married. That’s her responsibility, perhaps also her problem. But remember, she is a human being capable of making her own decisions, not some mere chattel of her husband. Her decision has been made and we must respect her integrity in the matter; to do otherwise would be insulting. Finally, there is the husband. He will know nothing of this and therefore will not be injured by it. In fact, he will gain. For his wife, in recompense, will be unusually pleasant to him. He will assume that this is because of his appealing qualities and his ego will be bolstered thereby. So you see, Crompton, everyone will gain and no one will lose.”

  “Sheer sophistry,” Crompton said, standing up again and moving toward the door.

  “Atta boy,” Loomis cheered him on.

  Crompton grinned idiotically and opened the door. Then a thought struck him and he slammed the door shut and lay down on the bed.

  “Absolutely not,” Crompton said.

  “What’s the matter now?” asked Loomis in dismay.

  “The reasons you gave me may or may not be sound. At the present time, I can’t judge. But one thing I do know. I will not engage in anything of this sort while you’re watching!”

  “But—damn it, I’m you! You’re me! We’re two parts of one personality!”

  “Not yet, we aren’t,” Crompton said. “We exist now as schizoid parts, two people in one body. Later, after reintegration has taken place . . . But under the present circumstances, my sense of decency forbids me from doing what you suggest. It’s unthinkable! I don’t wish to discuss the matter any further.”

  At that, Loomis lost his temper. The pleasure-principle, thwarted from the fundamental expression of himself, raved and shouted and called Crompton many hard names, the least of which was “yellow-livered coward.”

  His anger set up reverberations in Crompton’s mind and echoed throughout their entire shared organism. The schism lines between the two personalities deepened; new fissures appeared, and the break threatened to isolate the two minds in true Jekyll-and-Hyde fashion.

  CROMPTON’S dominant personality carried him past that. But, in a furious rage at Loomis, his mind began to produce antidols. Those still not fully understood little entities, like leucocytes in the bloodstream, had the task of expunging pain and walling off the sore spot in the mind.

  Loomis shied back in fright as the antidols began building their cordon sanitaire around him, crowding him, folding him back on himself, walling him off.

  “Crompton! Please!”

  Loomis was in danger of being completely and irrevocably sealed off, lost forever in a black corner of the Crompton mind. And lost with him would be any chance for reintegration. But Crompton managed to regain his stability in time. The flow of antidols stopped; the wall dissolved, and Loomis shakily regained his position.

  For a while, however, they weren’t on speaking terms. Loomis sulked and brooded for an entire day, and swore he would never forgive Crompton’s brutality. But above all he was a sensualist, living forever in the moment, forgetful of the past, incapable of worry about the future. His resentments passed quickly, leaving him serene and amused as always.

  Crompton was not so forgetful, but he recognized his responsibilities as the dominant pa
rt of the personality. He worked to maintain the cooperation, and the two personalities were soon operating at their fullest potential sympathy.

  By mutual consent, they avoided the company of the young lady. The rest of the trip passed quickly, and at last Venus was reached.

  THEY were set down in Satellite Three, where they passed through customs, immigration and health. They received shots for Creeping Fever, Venus Plague, Knight’s Disease, and Big Itch. They were given powders in case of Swamp Decay and pills to ward off Bluefoot. Finally they were permitted to take the shuttle down to the mainland embarkation depot of Port New Haarlem.

  This city, on the western shore of the sluggish Inland Zee, was situated in Venus’ temperate zone.

  Still they were uncomfortably warm after the chill, invigorating climate of Mars. Here they saw their first Venusian aboriginals outside a circus; saw hundreds of them, in fact. The natives averaged five feet in height, and their scaly armored hides showed their remote lizard ancestry. Along the sidewalks they walked erect; but often, to avoid crowds, they moved across the vertical sides of buildings, clinging with the sucker disks on their hands, feet, knees and forearms.

  Many buildings had barbed wire to protect their windows, for these detribalized natives were reputed to be thieves, and their only sport was assassination.

  Crompton spent a day in the city, then took a helicopter to East Marsh, the last known address of Dan Stack. The ride was a monotonous whirring and flapping through dense cloud banks which blocked all view of the surface. The search-radar pinged sharply, hunting for the shifting inversion zones where the dreaded Venusian tornado, the zicre, sometimes burst into violent life. But the winds were gentle on this trip, and Crompton slept most of the way.

  East Marsh was a busy shipping port on a tributary of the Inland Zee. Crompton found the boarding house where Stack had lived, run by a couple now in their eighties and showing signs of senility. They had been very fond of Stack. Dan always meant well, though he was a bit hasty sometimes. They assured Crompton that the affair of the Morrison girl wasn’t true. Dan must have been falsely accused. Dan would never do such a thing to a poor defenseless girl.