Various Fiction

by Robert Sheckley

  And Crompton also knew that Stack was completely and absolutely unable to reform, to exercise self-control, to practice moderation.

  Even now, in spite of his efforts, Stack was filled with a passionate desire for revenge. His mind rumbled furiously, a deep counterpoint to Loomis’ shrill babbling. Great dreams of revenge swam in his mind, gaudy plans to conquer all Venus. Do something about the damned natives, wipe them out, make room for Terrans. Rip that damned Tyler limb from limb. Machine-gun the whole town, pretend the natives had done it. Build up a body of dedicated men, a private army of worshipers of STACK, maintain it with iron discipline, no weakness, no hesitation. Cut down the Vigilantes and no one would stand in the way of conquest, murder, revenge, fury, terror!

  Struck from both sides, Crompton tried to maintain balance, to extend his control over libido and id. He fought to fuse the components into a single entity, a stable whole. But the minds struck back, refusing to yield their autonomy.

  The lines of cleavage deepened, new and irreconcilable schisms appeared, and Crompton felt his own stability undermined and his sanity threatened.

  DAN Stack, with his baffled and unworkable reforming urge, had a moment of lucidity.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Can’t help. You need the other.”

  “What other?” asked Crompton in bewilderment.

  “I tried to reform! But there was too much of me, too much conflict, hot and cold, on and off. Thought I could cure it myself. So I Split.”

  “You what?”

  “Can’t you hear me?” Stack moaned. “Me, I Split. When I went back to Port New Haarlem, I got another Durier chassis, stole a projector and Split. I thought everything would be easier. But I was wrong!”

  “There’s another of us?” Crompton cried. “That’s why we can’t reintegrate! Who is it? Where is he?”

  “We were like brothers, him and me! I thought I could learn from him, he was so quiet and good and patient and calm! I was learning! Then he started to give up.”

  “Who was it?” Crompton pursued.

  “So I tried to help him, tried to shake him out of it. But he was failing fast; he just didn’t care to live. My last chance was gone and I went a little crazy and shook him and broke up Moriarty’s Saloon. But I didn’t kill Barton Finch! He just didn’t want to live!”

  “Finch is the last component?”

  “Yes! You must go to Finch before he lets himself die, and you must reintegrate him. He’s in the little room in back of the store. You’ll have to hurry . . .”

  Stack fell back into his dreams of red murder, while Loomis babbled about the blue Xanadu Caverns.

  Crompton lifted the Crompton body from the cot and dragged it to the door. Down the street, he could see Stack’s store. Reach the store, he told himself, and staggered out into the street.

  HE walked a million miles. He crawled for a thousand years, up mountains, across rivers, past deserts, through swamps, down caverns that led to the center of the world and out again to immeasurable oceans, which he swam to their farthest shore. And at the long journey’s end, he came to Stack’s store.

  In the back room, lying on a couch with a blanket pulled up to his chin, was Finch, the last hope for reintegration. Looking at him, Crompton knew the final hopelessness of his search.

  Finch lay very quietly, his eyes open and unfocused and unreachable, staring at nothing. His face was the great, white, expressionless face of an idiot. Those placid Buddha features showed an inhuman calm, expecting nothing and wanting nothing.

  Crompton crawled to the bedside. With infinite weariness, he took the projector from his shirt and fastened the electrodes to Finch’s head and to his own. He set the controls and threw the switch.

  Nothing happened. Finch was too far gone to respond.

  Crompton felt his tired, overstrained body slump by the idiot’s bedside.

  Finch was bound to die; reintegration would never be achieved. There was nothing Crompton could do about it.

  Then Stack, with his despairing reformer’s zeal, emerged from his dream of revenge. Together with Crompton, he willed the idiot to look and see. And Loomis searched for and found the strength beyond exhaustion, and joined them in the effort.

  Three together, they stared at the idiot. And Finch, evoked by three-quarters of himself, parts calling irresistibly for the whole, made a rally. A brief expression flickered in his eyes. He recognized.

  Crompton closed the switch again.

  And Finch entered.

  Reintegration at last! But what was this? What was happening? What force was taking over now, driving everything remorselessly before it?

  Crompton shrieked, tried to rip his throat open with his fingernails, nearly succeeded, and collapsed on the floor near the dead chassis of Finch.

  WHEN the body opened its eyes again, it yawned and stretched copiously, enjoying the sensation of air and light and color, content with itself and thinking that there was work for it to do, and love to be found, and a whole life to be lived.

  The body, former possession of Alistair Crompton, Edgar Loomis, Dan Stack and Barton Finch, stood up. The amalgam of separately evolved super-ego, libido and split id had, under extreme stress, produced a new ego—and therefore a new man.

  He walked to the door, realizing that he would have to think up a new name for himself.

  TIME KILLER

  THIRD PART OF FOUR

  Hunted by the living and haunted by the dead . . . Blaine had to do a lot better than merely look alive to stay alive in this grim world!

  SYNOPSIS

  THOMAS BLAINE, a young yacht designer, is killed in a car crash while driving home to New York. He comes to life 158 years in the future, in a different body. He is questioned by

  MR. REILLY, a choleric old man, president of the Rex Corporation, which has snatched Blaine’s mind into the future. Reilly learns that Blaine is not the man that Rex was trying to save. Blaine is saved from Reilly’s wrath by

  MARIE THORNE, a cold and beautiful young woman employed by Reilly, who tells Blaine about

  THE HEREAFTER CORPORATION, of which Rex is a subsidiary. This corporation guarantees, for a high fee, the certainty of life after death. Blaine also learns about

  THE THRESHOLD, a region between Earth and the hereafter, inhabited by advisory spirits not yet ready for full transition to the hereafter, and by minds which have gone insane during the trauma of death.

  The Hereafter Corporation has been trying to sell their life-after-death insurance to the organized religions, which do not accept the scientific hereafter. Reilly hoped to open this large potential market by bringing a religious leader from 1958 to 2112. Instead, he got Blaine—who remembers nothing about the Threshold through which he passed.

  Blaine is asked to commit suicide in exchange for the precious hereafter insurance. He refuses. Reilly thinks he will change his mind, and allows Blaine to witness his reincarnation into a younger body which he has bought on the open market.

  The reincarnation is begun, but a spirit fights Reilly for possession of the host body, and wins.

  SMITH, as the new possessor comes to be called, can remember nothing. He is barely able to control the corpselike host body, which had remained dead too long for successful integration. Smith has, therefore, a disease of the times, known as Zombieism. Although he remembers nothing else, the zombie Smith thinks he knows Blaine—and plans to see him again.

  Marie Thorne takes Blaine away from Rex for his safety, and turns him over to

  CARL ORC, for safekeeping. But Orc, with the aid of a Transplant steerer named Joe, drugs Blaine. Orc is leader of a gang of body snatchers. Blaine learns this from

  RAY MELHILL, another prisoner. Legal bodies are scarce, so there is a thriving black market in them for reincarnation purposes. Blaine is chloroformed and comes to consciousness in Marie Thorne’s apartment.

  She didn’t know that Orc was a body snatcher. When she found out, she bought Blaine back. Blaine asks her to rescue his friend Ray
Melhill, but it’s too late. Melhill is already dead and his body inhabited by another man.

  Blaine goes out in search of work, but finds no jobs he can perform in the complex world of 2112. Even the position of man from the past is filled—by a fraud named Ben Therler. Blaine keeps looking, and learns something about life in this world where some have the assurance of life after death. He sees the public suicide booths, and watches a Berserker slash through a crowd until the police kill him. And Blaine receives a call from

  THE SPIRITUAL SWITCHBOARD, an organization which maintains contact with the minds in the Threshold. At the Switchboard, Blaine speaks with Ray Melhill, who has survived the death trauma. Melhill, with a spirit’s clairvoyant powers, warns Blaine that he is in danger of being haunted. This is a serious matter, for ghosts, werewolves, vampires are minds that have survived the death trauma, but have gone insane during it. From Melhill, Blaine gets a job lead. He is employed by

  HULL, a wealthy man planning a Hunt. In 2112, rich men frequently arrange suicides when boredom becomes oppressive, and one of their gaudier methods is to employ men to hunt them down with antique weapons such as swords and spears. Hull is also armed, with a rapier, and plans to fight to the death.

  SAMMY JONES, a veteran hunter, befriends Blaine. Jones kills Hull on the third day of the Hunt. Blaine returns to his room. There he discovers what haunting is like. A poltergeist blocks his retreat and prepares to kill him with a levitated chair.

  17.

  AS the chair moved through the air toward him, Blaine shouted for help in a voice that made the window rattle. His only answer was the poltergeist’s high-pitched laugh.

  Were they all deaf in the hotel? Why didn’t someone answer?

  Then he realized why no one would even consider helping him. Violence was a commonplace in this world and a man’s death was entirely his own business. There would be no inquiry. The janitor would simply clean up the mess in the morning and the room would be marked vacant.

  The door was impassable. The only chance Blaine could see was to jump over the bed and through the closed window. If he made the leap properly, he would fall against the waist-high fire escape railing outside. If he jumped too hard, he would go right over the railing and fall three stories to the street.

  The chair beat him across the shoulders, and the bed rumbled forward to pin him against the wall. Blaine made a quick calculation of angles and distances, drew himself together and flung himself at the window.

  He hit squarely—but he had reckoned without the advances of modern science. The window bent outward like a sheet of rubber, then snapped back into place. He was thrown against a wall and fell dazed to the floor. Looking up, he saw a heavy bureau wobble toward him and slowly tilt.

  As the poltergeist threw its lunatic strength against the bureau, the unwatched door swung open. Smith entered the room, his thick-featured zombie face impassive, and deflected the falling bureau with his shoulder.

  “Come with me,” he said.

  Blaine asked no questions. He scrambled to his feet and grabbed the edge of the closing door. With Smith’s help, he pulled it open again and the two men slipped out. From within the room, he heard a shriek of baffled rage.

  Smith hurried down the hall, one cold hand clasped around Blaine’s wrist. They went downstairs, through the hotel lobby and into the street. The zombie’s face was leaden white except for the purple bruise where Blaine had once struck him. The bruise had spread across nearly half his face, piebalding it into a Harlequin’s grotesque mask.

  “Where are we going?” Blaine asked.

  “To a safe place,” said Smith.

  They reached an ancient unused subway entrance, and descended. One flight down, they came to a small iron door set in the cracked concrete wall. Smith opened the door and beckoned Blaine to follow him.

  Blaine hesitated, caught the hint of high-pitched laughter. The poltergeist was pursuing him, as the Eumenides had once pursued their victims through the streets of ancient Athens. He could stay in the lighted upper world if he wished, hag-ridden by an insane spirit. Or he could descend with Smith, through the iron door and into the darkness beyond it, to some uncertain destiny in the underworld.

  The shrill laughter increased. Blaine hesitated no longer. He followed Smith through the iron door and closed it behind him.

  FOR the moment, the poltergeist had not chosen to pursue. They walked down a tunnel lighted by an occasional naked light bulb, past cracked masonry pipes and the looming gray corpse of a subway train, past rusted iron cables lying in giant serpent coils. The air was moist and rank, and a thin slime underfoot made walking treacherous.

  “Where are we going?” Blaine asked.

  “To where I can protect you from ghost attacks,” Smith said.

  “Can you?”

  “Spirits aren’t invulnerable. Exorcism is possible if the true identity of the ghost is known.”

  “Then you know who is haunting me?”

  “I think so. There’s only one person it logically could be.”

  “Who?”

  Smith shook his head. “I’d rather not mention his name yet. No sense calling him if he’s not here.”

  They descended a series of crumbling shale steps into a wider chamber, and circled the edge of a small black pond whose surface looked as hard and still as jet. On the other side of the pond was a passageway. A man stood in front of it, blocking the way.

  He was a tall, husky Negro, dressed in rags, armed with a length of iron pipe. From his look, Blaine knew he was a zombie.

  “This is my friend,” Smith said. “May I bring him through?”

  “You sure he’s no inspector?”

  “Absolutely sure.”

  “Wait here,” the Negro said. He disappeared into the passageway.

  “Where are we?” asked Blaine.

  “Underneath New York, in a series of unused subway tunnels, old sewer conduits, and some passageways we’ve fashioned for ourselves.”

  “But why did we come here?”

  “Where else would we go?” Smith asked, surprised. “This is my home. Didn’t you know? You’re in New York’s zombie colony.”

  BLAINE didn’t consider a zombie colony much improvement over a ghost; but he didn’t have time to think about it. The Negro returned. With him was a very old man who walked with the aid of a stick. The old man’s face was broken into a network of a thousand lines and wrinkles. His eyes barely showed through the fine scrollwork of sagging flesh and even his lips were wrinkled.

  “This is the man you told me about?” he inquired reedily.

  “Yes, sir,” said Smith. “This is the man. Blaine, let me introduce you to Mr. Kean, the leader of our colony. May I take him through, sir?”

  “You may,” the old man said. “And I will accompany you for a while.”

  They started down the passageway, Mr. Kean supporting himself heavily on the Negro’s arm.

  “In the usual course of events,” said Mr. Kean, “only zombies are allowed in the colony. All others are barred. But it has been years since I spoke with a normal and I thought the experience might be valuable. Therefore, at Smith’s earnest request, I made an exception in your case.”

  “I’m very grateful,” Blaine said, hoping he had reason to be.

  “Don’t misunderstand me. I am not averse to helping you. But first and foremost I am responsible for the safety of the eleven hundred zombies living beneath New York. For their sake, normals must be kept out. Isolation is our only hope in an ignorant world.” Mr. Kean paused. “But perhaps you can help us, Blaine.”

  “How?”

  “By listening and understanding, and passing on what you have learned. Education alone can combat ignorance. Tell me, what do you know about the problems of a zombie?”

  “Very little.”

  “I will instruct you. Zombieism, Mr. Blaine, is a disease which has long had a powerful aura of superstition surrounding it, comparable to the aura generated by such diseases as epilepsy, lepr
osy, or St. Vitus’ Dance. The spiritualizing tendency is a common one. Schizophrenia, you know, was once thought to mean possession by devils, and hydrocephalic idiots were considered peculiarly blessed. Similar fantasies attach to zombieism.”

  THEY walked in silence for a few moments. Mr. Kean said, “The superstition of the zombie is essentially Haitian; the disease of the zombie is worldwide, although rare. But the superstition and the disease have become hopelessly confused in the public mind. The zombie of superstition is an element of the Haitian vodun cult, a human being whose soul has been stolen by magic. The zombie’s body could be used as the magician wished, could even be slaughtered and sold for meat in the marketplace. If the zombie ate salt or beheld the sea, he realized that he was dead and returned to his grave. For all this, of course, there is no basis in fact.

  “The superstition arose from the descriptively similar disease. Once it was exceedingly rare. But today, with the increase in mind-switching and reincarnation techniques, zombieism has become more common. The disease of the zombie occurs when a mind occupies a body that has been untenanted too long. Mind and body are not then one, as yours are, Mr. Blaine. They exist, instead, as quasi-independent entities engaged in an uneasy cooperation.

  “Take our friend Smith as typical. He can control his body’s gross physical actions, but fine coordination is impossible for him. His voice is incapable of discrete modulation and his ears do not receive subtle differences in tone. His face is expressionless, for he has little or no control over surface musculature. He drives his body, but is not truly a part of it.”

  “And can’t anything be done?” Blaine asked.

  “At the present time, nothing,” said Kean.

  “I’m very sorry,” Blaine said uncomfortably.

  “This is not a plea for your sympathy,” Kean told him. “It is a request only for the most elementary understanding. I simply want you and everyone to know that zombieism is not a visitation of sins, but a disease, like mumps or cancer, and nothing more.”