by Bob Leman
He began to dose himself with substantial quantities of Sunburst Apple Wine, which he bought in gallon jugs at the liquor store on the ground floor of the building. The clerk there, a seasoned observer of the neighborhood's winos, had prescribed Sunburst as precisely what Barley needed for what ailed him, and indeed it sometimes helped; but if he became incautious and drank too much, his gloom would deepen dramatically, and he would fall to brooding at length upon the way he had been misused and the futility of his life. At such times he tended to lay elaborate plans for his own destruction, preparing scenarios for suicides of such grandeur and ingenuity that they would compel the whole world to recognize how deeply he had been wronged.
One night as he sat hunched in his broken armchair, communing with the jug of Sunburst and pondering the practicability of dressing in a gaudy costume and setting himself afire in a public place, his doorbell rang. He did not immediately recognize the sound for what it was; it was the first time the bell had sounded since he had taken up residence in the apartment. When he at length understood that there was someone at his door, he moved with clumsy alacrity to answer the ring. The locks seemed to have taken on an additional complexity since he had fastened them earlier in the evening, but at last he solved the puzzle and threw open the door.
A young woman of the most extraordinary beauty was standing there, smiling at him with great warmth. It was not what he had expected to see, and he simply stood with his mouth open, staring mutely and exhaling fumes of Sunburst. After a time she said, "I will come inside the room," and did so, her movements richly undulant.
"Come in," Barley said, belatedly. He had stepped aside to permit her to pass, and now he stared in fascinated appreciation as she made her way into his seedy quarters. It seemed to him that the most arresting characteristics of Rita Hayworth, Madeleine Carroll, and Betty Grable, concentrated and enhanced in some indefinable way, were combined and amalgamated in
her body, so that at the instant she made the first liquid movement he could feel long-quiescent juices begin to percolate briskly through his veins, and he was seized by a prodigious lust, the like of which he had not experienced since the days when his glands were first asserting themselves. "Oh, yes, yes, come in," he said.
He slammed the door shut and lurched toward her, a goatish adolescent pushing fifty. She held up her hand. "I know what you are thinking," she said. "Do not. I have come to help you." Her voice was Jean Arthur and Glynis Johns.
"Oh, yes, help me," said single- minded Barley, bearing down upon her.
She said, imperiously, "Wait." Barley stopped. She said, "I have tried to make an appearance that is agreeable to you. I did not anticipate so strong a feeling. I will make an amendment." Barley did not quite comprehend what she was saying, but he became aware that upon closer scrutiny she was not, perhaps, as overpoweringly desirable as she had at first seemed to be and that he had been on the verge of making a thorough fool of himself. He made a valiant effort to pull himself together. "Come in," he said. "That is, have a seat. What can I do for — what can I help you with?"
"Your understanding is backwards," she said. "I am here to help you, as I have said. You wish to end your life, but you propose to do so in a wasteful manner, in such a way as to destroy your body. Your body will be useful to me, and I have come to help you to terminate your existence without physical damage." She beamed at him, as one who had conferred a favor and awaits expressions of gratitude.
Barley beamed back for a moment, until he realized what she had said. "You what?" he cried in horror. "You want to kill me? And use my body7 Why, that's the worst — the worst—" Words failed him. Pictures of Clive Brook manufacturing Boris Karloff from charnel scraps flashed through his mind. "You must be crazy!" he shouted. "Who are you, anyhow?"
"Be calm," she said. "Be peaceful. I will carefully explain everything. You should sit down and drink of your Sunburst Apple Wine." It struck Barley as a sound idea, and he did so.
"Now," she said, "here is the explanation. I am not real. I am only in your mind."
"You mean I've gone crazy.''
"Oh, no. No, indeed. I will show you. Take hold of my hand." She extended it and Barley reached out. His fingers passed through hers; he felt nothing but air. He said, "Oh, my God."
"Do not be afraid," she said. "I have created this image so that I could speak to you without causing fear. I found in your memory pictures of humans that you have considered to be most agreeable and shaped the image to fit. I would have frightened you very much if I had suddenly begun to speak to you only inside your head. In this way I have broken it gently."
"I don't believe it," Barley said. "I really don't. It’s either a trick or I've gone crazy."
She vanished. Barley found himself to be quite alone in the room. Her voice, however, continued: "You now see that I speak the truth. I am only a mind, speaking to your mind. You observe that I continue to create the illusion of a voice, but even that is not really necessary. And now, if you have come to believe the truth of what I am saying, I will re-create the image, so that our conversation will be more comfortable for you. Ah. I see. The female figure I used is distracting to your emotions. Well, then. Perhaps this."
In the other chair sat Mr. Oates, his high-school English teacher, the teacher Barley had liked best of all. "You will believe me now," he said. It was Oates, all right, horn-rims, tweed jacket, and all.
"Well, I guess maybe its not a trick," Barley said, "but I may be crazy. I've been drinking a lot of this stuff. It can do weird things to your brain. You ought to see some of the characters on the street down here."
"I assure you that you are not insane. I will now tell you how I will help you. You had been laying plans to don unconventional clothing and undergo combustion before an audience, which, you believe, would prove a point and cause various persons to feel remorse. I put it to you that such an act would only make you appear foolish. It would also be excessively painful. The mere fact of your death will be sufficient to awaken the remorse you desire, and I am prepared to make your death painless, and indeed even pleasurable."
"You've been reading my mind!" cried Barley, much alarmed.
"Yes, of course. I have told you so several times. Now, shall we begin?"
"No!" Barley shouted. "No! I'm not ready. That is, I'm not sure — I haven't made up my mind yet. Keep away from me! Why do you want to do this?"
"Calm yourself, Barley, do not be afraid," the Oates-figure said. "I can do nothing without your prior consent. I wish to do this because I require a body to use here in your world. It is most difficult to maintain a connection with you by the method I am using now, and it cannot be continued for long. I require a local brain in which to lodge. Since you have decided to abandon yours, I would like to have its use."
"No! No, you can't have it! Who are you, anyway? Where do you come from?"
Oates did not reply, but suddenly Barley found himself remembering something that he knew was not in his memory; he remembered a bitter, sterile landscape that stretched endlessly away under an incredible glare of white light, an angular desolation of planes and edges and points and corners, a landscape hard, crystalline, and unchanging; a place where no line curved and there was nowhere a hint of softness, a soundless place utterly without movement except for an invisible sleet of malevolent radiation. Barley remembered it with warmth and affection.
"That is where I come from," Oates said, and the spell was broken. Barley wondered how he could have felt, even for a moment, any affection for the hideous scene. He said, somewhat shakily, "But where is it?"
'There is no way I can tell you," Oates said. "You do not have the mathematics to grasp the concept. Call it another universe."
"Okay, let it go. I don't believe you, anyhow. Nothing could live in that place."
"Not life as you have it here, wet masses of protoplasm. We are otherwise. We are —" And it became clear to Barley that somewhere inside the jagged and razored crystals of that seared waste there were minds, bodi
less intelligences without emotion, passing the slow ages in endless musing upon incomprehensible questions.
"And you're one of those," he said. Oates nodded. Barley said, 'Then what the hell do you want here? How did you get here?" He had always found it easy to talk to Oates, and the Sunburst, whatever its taste, served very well to relieve timidity and inhibitions.
“As to how I came here, I must give the same answer I gave before: you could not understand. Your other question is what it is that I want. I will tell you. A — what would be the word? — a member of us, a part of — it — me — has come here. I have come to take that one back."
"I will explain. It is possible for me to enter into communication only with rare people among you, those few who were by chance born with a certain infinitesimal peculiarity of the brain. You are the first among those few to wish to give up his body."
"No way!" Barley said. "I've changed my mind. The truth is. I'm not sure I ever really meant it. You're out of luck here. I'm afraid. But I'll help you all I can," he said, generously. "I can see that you'd find things a little strange around here. What will you do now?"
"I would hope to persuade you to provide assistance."
"No. My mind's made up. But go ahead, give me your pitch. Show me some more pictures." He giggled suddenly. "Dancing girls."
"Be serious, Barley. This is not a game. You are affected by the alcohol.
I have now had an idea. I will tell it to you. I propose that you permit me to occupy your brain while you still remain within it. We will be co-tenants, as it were. It is only since entering into communication with you that I have perceived that such a solution is feasible, that it is not necessary that the brain I occupy be lifeless. Will you agree to my occupancy?"
Barley clutched very hard at the arms of the chair; it seemed to be revolving at considerable speed, and he had a feeling that at any moment he was going to be thrown out of it by centrifugal force. He knew from experience that it was nothing more than the effects of the Sunburst, and he also knew, from the same experience, that if he did not immediately retire to bed he would infallibly find himself on the floor in the morning, whether pitched out by a revolving chair or for other reasons. "Got to get to bed," he said, thickly, "m little drunk. Could use little help."
"I will help you," Oates said kindly-
Barley awoke in what had lately come to be his usual morning condition: raging headache, Saharan thirst, queasy stomach, and a fine tremor in every limb — a hangover. Today there was something new, however; he was not alone. He hurriedly turned to the other side of the bed; it was empty. He stared wildly around the room. No one. But he knew someone was there.
A rich bass voice said, with a joviality that Barley found singularly repellent, "Awake at last, I see. We must be up and doing, Barley. Make hay while the sun shines, as it were. The early bird catches the worm, you know."
"What—?" Barley said. "Where —?"
"It is I, your co-tenant. Rita Hayworth. Mr. Oates… No need of visual images now, of course. I should tell you that I have been educating myself while you have been asleep, learning some of the facts that you know. This will, I fear, have been my last opportunity to do so, because your subconscious has quite properly been erecting a partition between us. Would you say that my speech — if I may use that term for our mode of communication— has achieved full colloquialness?"
Last night's events, stark, clear, and now no longer cushioned by alcohol, returned to Barley in their entirety. He found tha.t he no longer had the slightest doubt that it was all perfectly real. He said, "You’re in my head, then."
"Oh, yes, indeed. At your invitation. I believe this is going to be a very happy association, Barley. What I have been able to glean during this short period of access to your mind has demonstrated that there is an enormous amount that you do not know, that I must learn, but together we will enlighten ourselves. In no time at all I will have accomplished my mission and each of us will have had his existence enriched. And now you are hungry, Barley. You will have a breakfast of bacon and eggs, waffles, pancakes, orange juice, mellon, kippers, hash, brioche, marmalade, and perhaps other things as well. I am most eager to experience taste. To have senses is really quite a remarkable thing. Now my immediate plans are—"
"For God's sake, shut up!" Barley shouted, his stomach churning. "Do you have to be so goddamn jolly? And I'm not hungry, and I'm not going to eat any breakfast. I’m going to have some coffee and aspirin and maybe a jolt from the jug. If you're going to —"
He stopped, clamping his mouth. "I don't have to talk, do I?" he thought.
"No, indeed. The two of us can communicate quite cozily right here inside your skull. By all means take your restoratives. We have much to do."
Barley had his jolt and his aspirin and drank black coffee, while inside his head the babble continued. At last he said, "I don't understand this. Last night you showed me where you come from and what you are. And that's how you talked. Now here you are jabbering away like a teen-age girl. Gushing. Is this how you behave back in your rock?"
"Ah, there you raise an interesting point. Barley. Heretofore I have not 'behaved.' The word does not apply. I am now 'behaving' for the first time. I will grant, however, that occupying a brain has had effects that surprise me — for example the fact that I feel surprise. Indeed, the truth is that feelings, as I have them now, are perfectly new to me. And to be quite frank, my feelings are of euphoria and elation. This seems to have resulted in a certain garrulity, which is, of course, a human reaction. In a word, Barley, acquiring this physical presence — your brain — has affected the way that I think. And since I am in fact nothing but thought, I may say with assurance that I am a changed being."
"Me too, I guess," Barley said. “I seem to be taking this too much in stride. I'm accepting it all as fact and not arguing or carrying on. It's not natural."
"But logical. Perhaps my presence has increased your capacities in that direction. That is of course of great benefit to you. Barley, and not by any means the last benefit you will receive. We're going to make a splendid team!"
"Oh, I'm sure of it," Barley said. He was not even sure that he was being wholly ironic. "One thing, though. Have you got a name?"
"No, no name. Up to now I haven't been an individual, and hence in no need of a label. But I can see that you will be more comfortable if you have something to call me. What would you say to 'Fido'? The name has affectionate connotations for you and, as your friend Mr. Oates once explained to you, it means faithful friend,' which I think may be appropriate."
That remains to be seen. Barley thought. How could he know without knowing the creature's plans? "Tell me about them," he said.
"About what, Barley?"
"About your — didn't you read my thoughts?"
"No. I received no message of any kind. Your mind is clearly adjusting itself to the dual occupancy of your brain, and very rapidly, too. It seems to be developing that each of us will have a private area in which to think his own thoughts, and that there will be in addition a common ground where we can converse, as we are now. I think it is at least possible that this common ground will in time come to be a sort of joint mind, in which the knowledge and capabilities of both of us will be combined."
Barley had been a reader of pulp magazines in his youth. "Hot dog!" he said. "A superman!"
"Or at least something superior to the present Willis Barley," Fido said, smugly. "And now we must be up and doing. I have reasoned thus: the one I am in search of could not have done other than what I have done; that is, find a brain in which to lodge. The search is therefore for a human being. Now there are a great many human beings, and at present I have no way of knowing which one it is. But after I have experienced bodily existence for a time, I will examine my own behavior, knowing that my quarry, who of course thinks exactly as I do, will be acting in an identical manner, and under the same impulses. This should infallibly direct me to the proper human."
"Then what?"
/> "Then I will point out to the recreant the consequences of his absence and direct him to return. It is very important, Barley. You cannot conceive how important."
"Why did he come in the first place?"
"Barley, it is a thing that cannot be explained at our present primitive stage in communication. In time it will no doubt be clear. Let us now go to have experiences. You must be the director in this matter. What shall we do first of all?"
"Good Lord," Barley said. '"Have experiences.' That's anything from tying your shoe to murdering your grandmother. We have to start with something specific in mind."
"To be sure. My suggestion is that for a time you do anything you would like to do — anything at all. From this I will be able to determine further procedure by examining my reactions, and you will immediately be benefiting from our partnership. Now, what is it you would like best to do?"
"Why, what I guess I'd like to do for starters," Barley said, with ponderous irony and drawing on his youthful reading, "is to become an habitue of posh niteries of European ambience, small perfect restaurants known only to the cognoscenti, and other exclusive haunts of the elite, where I shall appear in the evening clothes of the costliest cut, with an adoring houri who resembles movie stars of the nineteen forties clinging to my arm, and where I will become known as a man of mystery."
"That seems to be a sensible beginning," Fido said. "Let us go."
"I'm afraid there's a little catch,"
Barley said. "Where's the money going to come from? I'm broke."
"Money. Yes, I see. The first thing to do, then, is to get money. How is that done?"
"Fido, we could talk about that forever."
"I will read your mind about money," Fido said, "if you will permit me entry."
Barley realized that there was a firm barricade preventing Fido from sharing his thoughts, a barricade that he must unconsciously have been erecting ever since Fido had turned up. "Go ahead," he said.
