Transmigration

by J. T. McIntosh

  "There's one very strange thing about you, Fletcher. You've got this feeling about good. You're not a real Chris-Christian, despite your background. Maybe you're a pig, prig I mean. You're certainly a pood, I mean prude. . . . " He started to laugh.

  "All the same," he went on, recovering, "I see the sense in this good obsession of yours. It gives you a certain direction, a certain purpose. I mean, even if it's of no particular value in itself, you do have something to hang on to that I haven't got. I never was a genuine diab-diab- what's the word? You can't build a life on evil for evil's sake. It's a slare and denusion. A dare and a slelusion. A . . . "

  He laughed helplessly, only minutes from coma. He had drunk a whole bottle of whisky and started on a second in half an hour.

  And his scheme, Fletcher thought, was not going to work. There was nothing forcing him out of Ross. He had been revolted by every cubic centimeter of whisky consumed, but he was not permitted to be sick, and the alcohol did not appear to affect him.

  However, as Ross tried to pick up the glass and succeeded only in spilling its contents over his legs, Fletcher suddenly felt himself being nudged from his haven.

  He remembered the youth Gerry nudging the girl into the water. Time after time she recovered, but in the end she had to go in over her head. Irregular nudges like that were dislodging him now, and he realized that it was the almost comatose Ian Ross who was applying them.

  --Get out, Fletcher. Get out, get OUT!

  There were no words. It was an emotional plea, and it was a plea, not a command. Ross could not command. Fletcher, if he chose, could command. The host could only urge, or nudge.

  And Ross, drunk and bound to get very much drunker, even if he consumed no more whisky, was nudging violently, with shattering effect.

  There was desperation in the effort, and as Ross's shield slipped, Fletcher sensed what Ross had been keeping from him, or at least not quite telling him.

  Ross wanted to rid himself of the consciousness that remained of Fletcher, the stranger in his head who could watch him, talk to him, control him, enslave him.

  Yet he had no intention of getting rid of the part of Fletcher that he needed, the part that supplied something which had been missing in him. And Fletcher was willing to leave it, if he could do for Ross anything remotely like what he had done for Judy.

  Ross pressed with all his emotional strength, and Fletcher, like Sheila when she was finally flung off balance, felt the water close over his head.

  CHAPTER 4: BAUDAKER

  He was in the laboratory, feeding figures into the computer. It was a purely mechanical job requiring only occasional attention.

  Fletcher had learned how to be quiescent; either totally, or seeing, hearing and feeling without advertising his presence. Ross had sensed him nevertheless, but only after he had become careless.

  This time Fletcher was careful and remained careful. Baudaker, absorbed in his work and the private thoughts the work allowed, knew nothing, although this was the first time Fletcher had entered a conscious mind.

  Fletcher was at once aware of two major differences this time, one disappointing, one extremely pleasant. The disappointing thing was the return to a third rate body. Judy and Ross were young and strong; Judy was so exuberantly healthy that the mild discomfort of her injured leg scarcely registered, and Ross, careless though he was of his body's welfare, had not yet succeeded in doing it any permanent harm. Baudaker, however, was middle-aged and flabby, and had smoked far too much for many years. Fletcher felt a permanent constriction round his chest and a constant throat irritation, a constant desire to cough. He was not, this time, hungry at all.

  The pleasant thing was that poor little Baudaker, though anything but well adjusted, and with certain areas of vast sorrow and unease which Fletcher did not try to probe just then, was a well-meaning man of old-fashioned respectability and honesty. For the first time Fletcher could be content in his host. If he could only compel Baudaker to stop smoking . . .

  At that moment Baudaker lit another cigarette. The last was still smoking in an ashtray. Open-mindedly Fletcher savored the first draw. There must be some pleasure in smoking, or so many people wouldn't do it.

  If there was, he failed to find it. He learned, too, that Baudaker didn't really enjoy smoking either. A compulsive smoker, he really enjoyed only the first cigarette in the morning, the one that started him coughing, and the last one at night.

  Reaching the end of his task, Baudaker began to tidy up. What he was doing was as usual, extra, voluntary work. It was work that somebody had to do, and Baudaker was the willing horse.

  Fletcher sensed and wondered at Baudaker's reluctance to go home. He would not have to wonder long.

  Baudaker put out the lights, locked up and went out. It had started to rain. He turned up his collar and dashed for his car. Although it was parked under trees less than a hundred yards from the entrance to the psychology building, he was gasping for breath as he reached the little black car, ten years old, and fumbled to unlock it. Rain ran down the back of his neck. Spots danced before his eyes, and his hands shook so that it took him a long time to get the door open.

  He crashed the gears vilely and Fletcher thought: that's a problem that has to be faced. I didn't choose to be here, but I'm here. Baudaker has a right to his own life and his own body, but if I'm going to stay in it he's got to cut down on smoking, go for a walk sometimes, and wash more often. Also, since I can if he can't, why shouldn't we drive a car better?

  Very gently, the next time Baudaker was going to crash down into second gear long before the speed had dropped enough, Fletcher tried to delay him a second or two, and succeeded. For once the change was smooth.

  However, Baudaker was alerted.

  --Why did I do that? he asked himself.

  --What, make a decent gear change for once?

  In the long pause that followed, Fletcher was wondering quite calmly how it would go this time.

  --Who are you? Baudaker asked at last.

  --John Fletcher, remember?

  --Yes. Yes, of course. You had immense potential. How it would be used one could only guess. But this is wonderful! Life after death! Immortality!

  His enthusiasm engulfed Fletcher; smothered him.

  --The mind has no barriers, Baudaker went on lyrically. --This is a triumph of mind over matter, of mind over death. Man has conquered death!

  --Now wait a minute, before you shit yourself. . .

  Fletcher stopped, appalled. That, of course, was Ross. He might have withdrawn completely to figure this out, but when he started to do so Baudaker cornered wildly and nearly hit a bus.

  Fletcher stepped in.

  --Unless you let me do the driving, this blazing new immortality won't last long. I drove a van for five years. The mind has plenty of barriers, Baudaker. I just happen to be unable to cease to exist. I hop from mind to mind.

  You've been in others? Of course, you must have been, it's two days since . . .

  --Since I died, yes. I've been in Judy MacDonald and Ian Ross. I just lost a battle with Ross. You might say he drank me under the table.

  Fletcher realized that he had achieved a mild witticism. This was further proof that he not only changed his hosts, his hosts had changed him. He was not the dour Puritan he had been.

  --You chose me? Baudaker inquired humbly.

  --I never do the choosing. I didn't choose, in the first place, to survive after I was dead. I certainly didn't choose to be in the mind of a girl.

  --Still, it must have been fascinating.

  --Several words for it occur to me, but they don't include that one. I didn't choose to be Ross either. I couldn't, scarcely knowing he existed. When I left Ross, it was for oblivion. That time at least, I had fully made up my mind to it.

  Fletcher reversed the car neatly into the tiny and rather awkward garage of a maisonette, to Baudaker's open admiration. Baudaker usually left the car outside all night because it was too much trouble to get it in and out of
the garage.

  --Incidentally, you didn't let me smoke in the car, Baudaker observed.

  --No.

  --How does this work? Can I do only what you let me do, or what?

  --We share the responsibility.

  Baudaker was curious, excited, neither rebellious nor afraid. With him, Fletcher was convinced, it would never be a matter of fighting for control. He would say in effect "Move over," and Baudaker would meekly surrender, quite unresentfully, like an acting skipper who was quite prepared to hand over the responsibility when the new skipper turned up.

  It even seemed -- and at this stage it could be only a guess -- that Baudaker might be sorry to lose him. Baudaker was making no secret of his enthusiastic intention of embarking on an orgy of tests, psychological, extra-sensory, personality, association, and all the others in his extensive repertoire, to try to pin down the wonder of what had happened and to codify some of the manifestations of the miracle.

  Fletcher let Baudaker take control again. He waddled to the back door of the maisonette (the rain had stopped) and let himself in.

  Fletcher suddenly remembered Baudaker's reluctance to go home. What did he expect to find?

  Gerry was snoring in an armchair in the tiny lounge. The air stank of whisky. There was mud on the knees of his trousers, his fly was open, and he had pulled out his shirt to scratch his stomach.

  Baudaker reacted defensively to Fletcher's disgust. --You don't smoke and you don't drink. Gerry's very young . . .

  --Too young to be allowed by the law to buy a drink, but evidently that hasn't given him any trouble. You're relieved to find him here, alone, and merely drunk. Why?

  --There are so many worse things I could have found.

  --If you're so concerned about what Gerry might be doing on his own, why leave him alone?

  Baudaker sighed.

  --Whether I'm around or not, Gerry does as he pleases. It's better if I'm not here.

  --You and he live here on your own?

  --There's a housekeeper, Mrs. Wilson. In the mornings only.

  --And what do you do now, put him to bed or just leave him there?

  --Just leave him. If I touched him, he might start to fight.

  --The girl what about her?

  --Sheila? Baudaker sighed again, and Fletcher felt a familiar emotion, a feeling of inadequacy, regret, failure. Again, he thought. Fletcher, Ross, now Baudaker. Judy, who had perhaps most reason to feel it, had not had sufficient awareness of the world and her place in it to feel inadequate.

  --What's Sheila like?

  --I thought you knew her.

  ---I saw them together once. What's she like?

  Baudaker hesitated. Then he burst out, with uncharacteristic bitterness: "Like all of us. Like me, like Gerry, like all the Baudakers.

  --Shella's a relative?

  --I'd better explain. Although she's a Baudaker, she's quite a distant relative. Let's see . . . no, I really don't remember the relationship. I'm not good at things like that. When she was a baby, she was left with us briefly -- Gerry was born within days of her -- while her parents made a quick trip to India. They were killed. No, there's no point in telling you anything but the truth. They killed themselves. It was a suicide pact. Of course, I haven't spoken of this for years. . . .

  Fletcher felt an urge to shut himself off again. He had had enough of the troubles of the world. Briefly he had felt reasonably secure in a reasonably contented being. But it turned out Baudaker had the usual tangled tale of misery to tell.

  However, he was part of Baudaker, and Gerry and Sheila were part of Baudaker too. He might as well know.

  --My wife was a wonderful person, Baudaker went on, and instantly the shadows lifted. --I think Denis and Margaret counted on her to look after Sheila. You see, we had her anyway, and when the news came it took a long time to straighten things out. We kept Sheila, and it would have been all right -- only my wife died.

  The shadows descended again.

  Although he would have to know the full story, it was not necessary for Fletcher to extract it all at once. There was something very tragic about the death of Baudaker's wife, some deep hurt that he was reluctant to touch on. Fletcher could have made him tell the whole story, or could pick up the details himself from Baudaker's unguarded mind . . . but not now.

  Baudaker went through to the kitchen and put on the kettle. --I drink a lot of tea, he said apologetically. --You don't mind that, do you?

  Fletcher stifled an impulse to laugh. --No, I don't mind that. And I suppose I'll have to let you smoke now and then.

  --I don't really mind about that. I've always wanted to stop. Perhaps this is my chance.

  ---Go on and tell me about Sheila and Gerry.

  --They were four when Paula died. (Again that reticence, that hurt, that reluctance to linger.) --They'd been brought up as twins. We never did adopt Sheila formally.

  --When your wife died, you brought Sheila and Gerry up yourself?

  --There's always been a housekeeper. When Paula died, Gerry and Sheila were all right. They were healthy, happy children, affectionate too. It used to be wonderful I really don't know quite what went wrong.

  Fletcher could feel tears running down Baudaker's cheeks. He was embarrassed, but said nothing.

  --Well, perhaps I do know what went wrong. What happened was all my fault. I left the children to Mrs. Hanley, and then to Mrs. Winnington, and then Mrs. Doverley. I thought a woman would know far more about bringing them up than I ever could. And then the trouble started: Gerry stealing from shops, getting into trouble at school, damaging property. He and Sheila fought very little, as children. They were the same age and more like brothers than anything else.

  In Baudaker's mind Fletcher saw them as chubby children too young for school, as twins in the same primary class clinging to each other rather than turning to the society of classmates, as lean and healthy outdoor kids of eight, nine, ten. These had been good times for all of them.

  Sheila never played with dolls. She climbed trees with Gerry, fell off them as he did and cried only when he cried. They clambered on rocks, caught fish with their hands and watched tadpoles in jars mature into frogs. In the summer they roamed the countryside all day and came back quite often clad only in shorts, having taken off their shoes and socks and T-shirts somewhere and then wandered miles before it occurred to them to wonder where they'd dropped the rest of their clothes. They were lean, wiry, brown as berries and never ill.

  That was before it all went wrong.

  Fletcher asked:

  --Didn't anyone ever try to take Gerry and Sheila away from you?

  --No, why should they? Gerry was my son, and nobody seemed to know any more that Sheila wasn't his sister. And there was a housekeeper -- there must have been twenty or thirty altogether. They never stayed long. Besides, children are only taken away when they're ill-treated or neglected, and that never happened to Gerry and Sheila, except once or twice when I found one of the housekeepers . . .

  He shuddered and didn't go on. Fletcher could guess what had happened. Driven to distraction, one of the long line of housekeepers would give the kids the good hiding they deserved and needed, and meek little Baudaker, horrified, would find the courage to fire her on the spot.