Transmigration

by J. T. McIntosh

  He was, however, exceedingly hungry, and this puzzled him.

  Obviously, this was life after death. He had felt himself die. Yet not for a moment, certainly not after feeling the pangs of hunger, did he think he was in heaven, despite his physical well-being. Heaven, he believed, must be a place of the spirit, and there was nothing spiritual about this incarnation.

  Incarnation? Reincarnation?

  Caution and a hint of fear made him keep his eyes closed. When he opened them he must face an incredible situation. He had died, and he was alive. He did not waste time speculating on the nature of the miracle that had occurred.

  One very strange thing was the strong, impression that he was not alone. He was with someone, and their closeness was something beyond understanding. Without moving, he knew no one was touching him, and he could hear no one in the room. Yet he was not alone.

  At last he did open his eyes; He was in a bedroom dimly lit by street lighting outside (so at least a few hours had elapsed). The startling thing was that the bedroom was not unfamiliar. Beside the bed was the radio he had fixed the previous day . . . What was he doing in Judy's bedroom, in Judy's bed?

  He leaped from the bed, switched on the light, and looked in the dressing-table mirror.

  Staring back at him was Judy.

  He was Judy.

  He staggered and clutched the dressing-table to steady himself. The mechanics of his possession of Judy's body was something he didn't even think about. He was in the grip of a sick horror that he had become a girl. Spinning round, he put out the light so that he could no longer see.

  He had told Anita he did not hate women, and it was true. Nor did he despise them. Rather, he idolized them. They were not merely a sex apart but a race apart, a species apart. Communication with them, except across a wide gulf, was impossible. That was the nature of things. His brief near-intimacy with Anita was as uncharacteristic and untypical as the drinking spree.

  The miracle of being alive after death, in another body, he took for granted, because it had happened. But he could never take for granted, could never accept, could never endure life as a girl. It was an emotional reaction, and, being emotional, it required no reasons. He required no reasons,

  He had to get out.

  Lying down in bed again, he closed his eyes. He tried not to be aware of Judy's body, was careful not to touch it with Judy's hands. Irrationally, that seemed like a kind of lesbianism.

  There was no denying one main fact: in dying he had made a mental escape from death, alighting into a receptive mind, a weak mind. That, then, was part of the talent he had as a freak. He could hop into another body under extreme stress -- and what could be more extreme than the moment of death?

  Baudaker would be very interested, probably delighted.

  But Fletcher -- he still thought of himself as that -- was not. He had been given, as an alternative to slow death, life as a thirteen-year-old girl. And he didn't want it.

  Had his body been found yet? Possibly not. There was no light in the bricked-up, unused basement sink. If the gate had swung shut, the body might not be seen until the next day.

  Why not do the thing again, and do it right? He was perfectly prepared to take a second dive into the same dark sink, deliberately this time, and with no thought of escape. Last time he had desperately wanted to live. And this was the result. Next time he would die with the fixed thought in his mind that a creature like himself ought to destroy itself, because it was of no use to itself and could never be of use to others.

  Without warning, the door opened slightly. "Are you all right, Judy?" Mrs. MacDonald murmured, not loudly enough to waken her if she was sleeping.

  "Yes, Mother," said Fletcher, and then remembered Judy always called her Mum. But Mrs. MacDonald withdrew her head and closed the door.

  Hearing himself speak in Judy's light soprano, pleasant though it was, caused further revulsion in Fletcher, as if he had lost his manhood and heard himself speak in the unnatural tone of the castrato. He made un his mind irrevocably: there was no question of accepting this fate. He would fall to the basement again, and next day the police would have to assume, since there was no other reasonable explanation, that Fletcher and Judy had been talking, leaning on the railing, when it gave way. Fletcher didn't consider it worthwhile to create a more plausible story for them. If you really wanted to die, instead of bitterly spitting your life in the faces of people who had wronged you, it made not the slightest difference what you left behind.

  He got up and put on the light again. In bed he felt no pain, but standing up he was aware of the soreness in Judy's thigh, the stiffness of her ankle.

  His hand on the doorknob, he realized he could hardly go downstairs and outside in Judy's flimsy nightgown. He would have to dress Judy's body. That was how he thought of it, though it was his body too.

  Ashamed and disgusted, as if he as Fletcher had found Judy unconscious and undressed her while she was helpless, he plucked at her nightdress and found it nearly impossible to force himself to touch either it or Judy's body, although he wanted only to dress it for death . . .

  "And what about me?"

  He controlled Judy's voice -- he had proved that. He also controlled her actions. Yet she spoke: she used her own voice to speak aloud to him. She was still there.

  He had known it all along, really. That was what he had sensed before he opened his eyes: not the presence of another person in another body, but another person in the same body.

  So his plan was impossible. Any human being had every right, he fully believed, to kill himself or herself. In practice this was never in doubt. Suicide was a legal offense only if you botched it. However, he had no right to kill anyone else, even Judy.

  "I'm glad you realize that, anyway," she said drily. "Though I don't like that bit about 'even Judy.' Now you know you can't kill me and you still want to get out of me. So far, we're in complete agreement."

  "You hate it as much as I do?"

  He didn't use her voice. It was unnecessary. She knew what he was thinking.

  --Not as much, no. After all, I've gained certain advantages in the deal.

  --Advantages?

  --Haven't you noticed? What was the matter with me, Mr. Fletcher? I was mentally retarded, is that it? I never really knew why I had to go to a special school. I never really knew anything, I suppose.

  He tried to hide his thoughts, but failed.

  Using her voice again, she said: "Oh, that would be awful! If my life were really to be as you showed me just now, I think I'd agree to end it all and let you kill us both! But I don't think it will be like that, now."

  --You don't?

  His thought was guarded. It was possible, he discovered, to shut his thoughts off from Judy and merely speak mentally to her, in words, like two people using their voices.

  --You do, judging by that barrier you've iust put up, she retorted. But I think you're wrong. You've opened my eyes, and I don't think they'll ever be closed again.

  --You certainly don't think like the old Judy.

  --Mr. Fletcher, the old Judy couldn't think at all. Poor little kid . . . I'm really sorry for her. But all this is a waste of time. You want to die rather than be me, and frankly it does seem the best thing.

  She was cheerfully brutal, like a dentist saying: "All these will have to come out."

  --You used to like me, Fletcher observed, slightly piqued.

  --I still like you, but you must admit you've no right to be anything but dead. And remember, I saw right into your thoughts. You can't go on this way.

  --No.

  --I wonder what made you hate women so much? I didn't catch that.

  "I don't hate women[" he prolested, using her voice.

  --Not exactly. You think they're unclean.

  --Nothing like that, I . . .

  --Well, you feel you have to keep away from them. I've just realized . . . What a cheek! . . . you liked me when I was a kid, but lately you've been trying to keep out of my way. Re
ally, Mr. Fletcher, in your own way you were more mixed up than me.

  --I know.

  --Funny, I thought you were wonderful.

  --And now you know the truth.

  --Oh, don't be such a drag. I still respect you. How could I help it? You're such a good man.

  There it was again, from Judy this time and not Anita. It was equally incomprehensible, more incomprehensible, because Judy had seen into his mind, and Anita had not.

  What I mean is, said Judy, quite willing to explain, you'd never do anything bad. You'd always do the right thing. I don't think I'm going to be religious, like you, but if it makes people like you it's a good thing.

  There were about fifty different things he couldn't understand, and the most immediate among them was Judy's attitude. At once she liked him, respected him, treated him as a not very bright child, was curious about him, and casually thought the sooner he was dead the better.

  --Yes, that's right, she observed. --It's not really funny if somebody's dead but won't lie down, is it? Anyway, you still insist you don't want to go on like this.

  --Right.

  --Then I think I know how we can both get what we want.

  --You do?

  He tried to keep unflattering surprise out of his thought, but she caught it.

  --Please don't go on regarding me as an idiot, Mr. Fletcher, and a female idiot at that. I'm really quite smart now. Of course, I've no means of comparison, and although I know I'm about five thousand times smarter than I was, that wouldn't necessarily make me a genius now. But I can think of things, get ideas, even ideas that might work.

  --How do you think We could both get what we want? How would you go about it?

  --Create a situation where we must fight to live. I want to live. I'll fight. I'll survive. You want to die. So you won't fight me for my body. You'll leave me to save it.

  --What's your plan?

  --Tell me what you fear.

  --What I fear?

  --What you can't stand.

  --Choking, drowning . . .

  --That's no use. I can't either.

  --Heights . . .

  --Heights?

  --It's not a pathological fear. At least, I don't think so. If I'm ten floors up behind glass, in a solid building, I can bear to look down, though I'd rather not. But even twenty feet up, on a flat roof without a parapet, I . . .

  --That's it, she observed with satisfaction. --Mr. Fletcher, prepare to meet thy doom. No, it's not very funny, is it? Do you know the new skyscraper in Westfield?

  --I've seen it. I've never been near it.

  --I've been up at the top with Mum, visiting a friend of hers. Anybody can go up in the lift. There's an outside parapet. Anybody can go out there.

  --Go on.

  --No. It's strange, I can keep things from you. I can think things and not tell you. I don't think I should tell you about this. Let's go to the skyscraper and get to the top, and you leave it to me.

  --You're not going to kill yourself, I presume.

  --Well, haven't we agreed that the present situation is a fate worse than death? And talking of fates worse than death, I suddenly understand, theoretically of course, a lot that I didn't know before.

  She laughed out loud.

  --That must have been very funny yesterday: me, a poor simple kid, making you inspect my sore leg, and you, a shy bachelor, overcome with embarrassment. I wish I could see it as an outsider. But you needn't have been embarrassed a little while ago about taking off my nightie. After all, you're me, or I'm you. Why be embarrassed at taking off your own nightie?

  --I think you know perfectly well, he said stiffly. --To return to this idea of yours. Maybe you're right not to tell me the details. But what is it in general?

  --I'm going to make you want to leave me. I'm going to make you want it so much that you'll do it.

  --Maybe we'll both die.

  --Not if you leave things to me.

  --Very well. It's your life.

  --Thanks very much for acknowledging that. In the circumstances, I suppose there might be some doubt. Promise you'll leave everything to me?

  --All right.

  All this time, as they communicated, mostly silently, she had been lying on the bed, her eyes shut because that made things easier for both of them. Now she opened her eyes, stood up and reached for her nightdress.

  "No!" she said sharply. "Stop that. You mustn't interfere. You must let me be in complete control. If it horrifies you that I'm going to take off my nightie and get dressed (and I must say you have your nerve being horrified, Mr. Fletcher) go and hide in that coruer of my brain you've taken over. I'm sure you can, if you try."

  He discovered he could.

  It was possible to shut everything out except the vaguest consciousness of Judy's presence beside him. He saw nothing, heard nothing, felt nothing. Judy, he was fairly sure, could still summon him if she wanted him.

  In the most complete peace he had ever known, he was able to think without any considerations of time or space or personality; yet he found himself thinking exclusively of John Fletcher and Judy MacDonald.

  Judy was by far the more interesting subiect. Regretfully he could not agree with her optimistic assumption that when and if he left her mind she would not return to the painfully retarded child she had been.

  She did not talk and act now like Judy, or indeed like any thirteen-year-old girl who ever lived. Whatever she was, she was something new, a little of her old self, a little herself plus the knowledge and experience of John Fletcher, and a lot pure John Fletcher.

  Considering that John Fletcher's brain was dead, probably pulped (because he had fallen head first on stone), a surprising amount of him still existed -- not merely spirit, soul, and the abstract mysteries of personality, but also memory, which he had always thought was physical, dwelling in a particular place in a complex of brain cells.

  Philosophers and psychologists had long pondered the basis of personality. Was a man what he was because the genes of his parents made him so, or because of what the world had done to him, or because of what he had made of himself? What was the soul, the spirit? Where did the soul live?

  There had been endless theoretical discussions when he was a student at Edinburgh about life after death. In most of them there was general agreement that personal survival was pointless without personality. In other words, mere continuance as a spirit without the history that made up the individual, the virtues, the vices, the talent, his loves and hates, would be like a play without players. A man taking the greatest journey of his life felt there was no purpose in making it unless he could take along a certain amount of luggage.

  The Church, while stressing the importance of the spirit and soul, had been forced always to promise more than the survival of the soul, to go on and promise personal survival. Paul wrote to the Corinthians:

  Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption. Behold, I show you a mystery: we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be ranged incorruptible, and we shall be changed . . . O death, when is thy sting? O grave, when is thy victory?