The Second Trip

10

“Paul? Can you hear me?”

“From a million miles away.”

“Are you all right?”

“Dazed. Groggy. Jesus, groggy!” Trying to sit up. She tugging him back into his chair. Surprising how strong she is. He looked at his hands. Quivering and twitching. As if a powerful electrical current had passed through his body and was still recycling itself through the peripheral circuits, touching off a muscular spasm here and here and here.

Searching for Hamlin. No, not in evidence. Not at the moment.

“What happened?” he said.

“I was at the door,” said Lissa. “And from outside, I could feel the waves coming from his mind and yours. Mostly from his. You were—asleep, drugged, drunk, I don’t know. Passive, anyway. And he was taking you over, Paul. His mind was wrapped around yours, and he was turning you off switch by switch—that’s the only way I can describe it—and you were about half gone already. Submerged, dismantled, switched off, whatever word is best.”

“We made a deal. We were going to share the body, half the time him running the show, and me the rest of the time. He promised me that if I let him take over, he’d turn the body back to me when it was my time to have control.”

“He was tricking you,” she said. “What were you, drunk? Stoned?”

“Both.”

“Both. It figures. He was just getting you to lower your defenses so that he could get full control. I felt the whole thing from outside. I opened the door. It was much stronger in here. You sitting there with an idiot smile on your face. Eyes open, but you couldn’t see. Hamlin swarming all over you. So I—I don’t know, I didn’t stop to think, I just hit him. With my mind.”

“I think you killed him,” Macy said.

“No. I hurt him, but I didn’t kill him.”

“I can’t feel him any more.”

“I can,” she said. “He’s very weak, but I can sense him down at the bottom of your brain. It’s like he fell off a twenty-five-foot wall. I don’t know how I did it. I just lashed out.”

“Like you did that time in the restaurant.”

“I suppose,” she said. “Why did you let him do that to you?”

Macy shrugged. “We were talking to each other all evening. While I waited for you to come home. Getting chummy with him. We were proposing deals to each other, compromises, arrangements. And then this talk of sharing came up. I was pretty stoned by then, I suppose. Lucky thing you came in.” He glanced up at her and said, after a moment, “Where the hell were you, anyway?”

Out, she told him. She just decided to go out around five o’clock. Back to her apartment to pick up some of her things. He gave her a fishy look. Even in his present shellshocked condition he was able to see that she had come in emptyhanded. He taxed her with the inconsistency, and she made a stagy attempt to seem innocent, with much shrugging and tossing of the head, telling him that when she had reached her place she had decided she didn’t need those things after all, and had left them there. And the rest of the evening? From six o’clock till now? Chatting with old friends down at the house, she said. Sure, he thought, remembering the sort of neighbors she had had there, the shimmies, the bandits.

Without in so many words accusing her of lying to him, he accused her of lying to him. She was indignant and then at once contrite. Admitting everything. Left here without intending to come back. The strain, too much strain, too much mental noise, the yammering of the double soul within the single brain getting to be more than she can handle. All night long, lying next to him, picking up the blurred shapeless echoes of the conflict going on within his head. You maybe don’t even realize it yourself, she told him. How Hamlin hammers all the time, let me out, let me out, let me out. Deep down below the levels of consciousness. That constant agonized cry. And you fighting back, Paul. Suppressing him, squashing him. Don’t you know it’s going on?

And he shook his head, no, no, I’m only aware when he surfaces and starts talking to me, or when he grabs parts of my nervous system. Tell me more about this. And Lissa told him more. Conveying to him, in short nervous blurts of half-sentences, how much she was suffering from her mere proximity to him, how much it had cost her in extrasensory anguish since she had moved in. It would be bad enough if there was only one of him, but the double identity, no, too much, too fucking much, all that telepathic pressure, her head was splitting.

And it got worse every day. Cumulative. Rebirth of the old overpowering impulse to hide herself away from the whole human race. Not your fault, Paul, I know, not your fault, I asked you to take pity on me and help me, but yet, but yet, this is what happens. Even when you aren’t here I feel you and Hamlin hemming me in. Pushing against my temples.

Like a kind of air pollution, it was: he gathered that she felt the sweaty residue of their grappling selves enfogging and enfouling the place, greasy molecules of disembodied consciousness drifting in the rooms, sucked into her lungs with every breath. A daily poisoning. So at last she simply had to get out and clear her head. Setting out at five, a long twilight walk downtown, hour after hour, mechanically moving along, lift foot put foot down lift other foot. Finally reaching the vicinity of West 116th Street by nightfall. A somber prowl in darkness through the ruins of the old university.

He stared at her in alarm. You really went there? Those charred shells of buildings were, they said, a rapist’s heaven, a mugger’s paradise. Suicidal to stroll there alone after dark. And she gave him an odd masked look, faintly guilty. What had she done this evening? His imagination supplied a possible answer—or was Hamlin planting the thought, or had it come from her, bleeding across the line of mental contact? A dimly perceived figure, say, pursuing her through the shattered campus. But Lissa crazily unafraid, perhaps half eager to court death or mutilation, defiant, turning to the unknown pursuer, winking, pulling up her tunic, waggling her hips. Here, man, bang away, what do I care? Thrust and thrust and thrust on a bed of rubble. Afterward the man giving her a funny look. You must be real weird, lady. And running away from her, leaving her to proceed on her solitary wandering way. Had it happened? Her clothes weren’t rumpled or stained or soiled.

Macy told himself that it was all his own ugly fantasy; she had merely been out for a walk, hadn’t spread her legs for a stranger, hadn’t purged her head of echoes by inviting rape. Go on, he told her. You walked through the ruins. And then? I did a lot of thinking, she said. Wondering if I ought to head back to my old place and stay there. Or go uptown to you. Maybe even to kill myself. The easiest way. Misery no matter what I do, you see, that’s no joke. And finally, beginning to tire, to regret her long nocturnal expedition, beginning to worry about worrying him by her disappearance. Getting on the tube, returning. Standing outside the door and becoming aware of the tricky takeover in progress within. The entry. The last-minute rescue. Tarantara!

“Why did you come back here?” he asked.

A shrug. Vague. “I can’t say. Because I was lonely, maybe. Because I had a premonition, maybe, that you were in trouble. I didn’t think about it I just came.”

“Do you want to move out for good?”

“I don’t know. I’d like to be able to stay with you, Paul. If only. The pain. Would. Stop.” Drifting away from him again. Her voice dreamy and halting. “A river of mud flowing through my head,” she murmured. Flopping down on the bed, face in arms. Macy went to her with comfort. Such as he could offer. Stroking her tenderly despite the ache behind his eyes. Again, it seemed, the curious flow of strength had taken place. From her to him. The odd sudden reversal of roles, the comforter becoming the comforted. Ten minutes ago she had been striving to put him back together, now she was crumpled and flaccid. And Hamlin thinks this girl is destructive. A monster, a villainess. Poor pitiful monster.

She said indistinctly, not looking up, “Your Rehab Center phoned again this morning. A doctor with a Spanish name.”

“Gomez.”

“Gomez, yes, I think so.”

“And?”

Pause. “I told him the whole thing. He was very upset.”

“What did he say?”

“He wanted to see you right away. I said no, it was impossible, Hamlin would attack you if you went near the Rehab Center. He didn’t appear to believe that. I think I convinced him after a while.”

“And then?”

“He said finally he’d have to discuss things with his colleagues, he’d call back in a day or two. Said I should phone him if there were any important new developments.”

Macy considered calling him now. Wake the bastard up. Yank him from his bed of pleasure. He could be at the Rehab Center by one, half past one in the morning; maybe they could give him a shot of something while Hamlin was dormant, knock him out for keeps. Lissa vetoed the idea. Hamlin’s not as dormant as you think, she said. He’s down, but not out. Sitting there trying to collect some of his power. No telling what he’ll do if he feels threatened.

Macy searched his cerebral crannies for Hamlin and could not find him, but left Gomez unphoned anyway. The risks were too great. Lissa probably was right: Hamlin still maintaining surveillance down there, capable of taking severe and possibly mutually fatal defensive action if attempt was made to reach the Center. Paul didn’t dare try calling his bluff.

They prepared for bed. Flesh against flesh, but no copulatory gestures. He was carrying too heavy a burden of fatigue to think about mounting the doubtfully willing Lissa just now. Still obsessed by the image of the stranger balling her in the university ruins, too. Tomorrow’s another day, heigh-ho! As Macy was falling asleep he heard her say, “Gomez doesn’t want me to stay with you any more. He thinks I’m dangerous for you.”

“Because you awakened Hamlin in me?”

“No, I didn’t go into that with him. I didn’t say anything to him about my—gift.”

“Then why?”

“Because I’m out of your other life, is why. You aren’t supposed to be seeing Nat Hamlin’s cast of characters, remember? They conditioned you against it.”

“He knew who you were?”

“I told him I used to model for Nat. Our accidental meeting on the street. He pretty much ordered me to go away from you.”

“Is that why you walked out tonight?”

“How do I know?” she said petulantly. Curling close against him. Tips of her breasts grazing his back. Turn around and do her? No. Not tonight. That lousy meddling fucker Gomez. Like to tell him a thing or two. If only I could. If only. What a bitching mess. But tomorrow’s another day. She’s snoring already, anyway. Let her rest. Maybe I will too. To sleep. Perchance to dream.

Three days of relative tranquility. Friday, Saturday, Sunday. His first weekend with Lissa. No news out of Hamlin, save only some irregular psychic belchings and rumblings. Obviously the shot that Lissa had given him had left him pretty feeble. No news out of Gomez, either. A quiet weekend together. Where to go, what to do? The first edge of summer heat lapping the city. We stay in bed late. We screw to Mozart. Dee-dum-dee-dum-dee-dum-dum, diddy-dum diddy-dum diddy-dum. Her legs up over his shoulders in a nicely wanton way. Her eyes aglow afterward in the shower. Playful, kittenish. Soaping his cock, trying to get him up again and succeeding. For a man of my mature years I’m pretty virile, hein? Laughter. Breakfast. The morning news coming out of the slot.

Then out of the house. Her mood already descending; he could sense her turning sullen, starting to withdraw. It just didn’t seem possible to keep her happy more than two hours at a stretch. He tried to ignore her darkening outlook, hoping it would go away. Such a beautiful day. The golden sunlight spilling out of the Bronx.

“Where do you want to go, Lissa?” She didn’t answer. It seemed almost that she hadn’t heard him. He asked again.

“Voices,” she muttered. “These fucking voices. I’m a crapped-up Joan of Arc.” Lissa? Lissa? Turning toward him, torment in the ocean-colored eyes. “A river of mud,” she said. “Thick brown mud piling up in my head. Coming out my ears, soon. A delta on each side.”

“It’s such a beautiful day, Lissa. The whole city’s ours.”

“Wherever you want to go,” she said.

At his random suggestion they went to the Bronx Zoo. Wandering hand in hand past the cunning habitat groups. Hard to believe that those lions really had no way of jumping the moat. And what kept those birds from flying out of their dome? Wide open on one side, for Christ’s sake! But of course they did clever things with air pressure and ion-flows these days. The zoo was crowded. Families, lovers, kids. Most of them funnier-looking than the population behind the moats. The raucousness of the animals. Wet twitching noses, sad eyes.

Every third cage or so was marked with a grim black star, signifying that the species was extinct except in captivity. White rhinoceros. Pygmy hippo. Reticulated giraffe. European bison. Black rhinoceros. South American tapir. Wombat. Arabian oryx. Caspian tiger. Red kangaroo. Bandicoot. Musk-ox. Grizzly bear. So many species gone. Another hundred years, nothing left but dogs and cats and sheep and cattle. But of course the Africans had needed meat in the famine years, before the Population Correction. The South Americans, the Asians. All those babies, all those hungry mouths, and still it hadn’t done any good, by the end of it they were eating each other after the animals were gone. Now the zoos were the last refuge. And for some it was too late.

Macy remembered a trip with his father, when he was a boy, ten, twelve years old, the San Diego Zoo, seeing the giant panda they had there. “That’s the last one left in the world, son. Smuggled out of Commie China just before the blowup.” A big two-toned fuzzy toy sitting in the cage. No giant pandas left anywhere, now. Some stuffed ones, as reminders. His father? The San Diego Zoo? Really? Who was his father? Where had he grown up? Had he ever been to the San Diego Zoo? Did they truly have a giant panda there, once? The oscillations of memory. Surely it had never happened. Perhaps there had never been any such animal.

Lissa said, “I can feel their minds. The animals.”

“Can you?”

“I never realized I could. I never went to the zoo before.”

He was poised, wary, ready to rush her toward the tube if the impact overwhelmed her. It wasn’t necessary. She was joyful, ecstatic, standing in the plaza by the seal tank and drinking in the oinks and bleats and honks and nyaaas of a hundred alien species. “Maybe I can transmit some of what I’m getting to you,” she said, and held both his hands and frowned earnestly at him and peered into his eyes, so that passersby nodded and smiled at the sight of true love being expressed between the seals and the tigers, but he was unable to pick up a shred of what she sent him.

So she described it, in intermittent bursts, whenever she could spare him a moment out of her contemplations. The high piping throaty thoughts of the giraffe. The dull booming ruminations of the rhino. The dense, complex, bleak, and bitter output of the African elephant, he of the big ears, a Kierkegaard of zoology. The sparkling twitter of the chimps. The flippant outbursts of the raccoon. The Galapagos tortoise pondered eternity; the brown bear was surprisingly sensual; the penguins dreamed icy dreams.

“Are you making all this up?” he asked her, and she laughed in his face, like Aquinas accused of inventing the Trinity. Within an hour she was wholly spent. They snacked on algaeburgers and Lenin soda, and took the conveyor to the exit. Lissa giggling, manic, stoned on her beasts. “The orangutan,” she said. “I could tell you exactly how he’d vote in the next election. And if I could only let you hear the gnu! Oh, shit, the gnu!”

But she was brooding again before dark. They went into Manhattan in the afternoon, circling around the burned-out places and drifting through the flamboyant new downtown section, and he tried to interest her in the amusement parlors, the sniffer palaces, the swimming tanks, and such, only she was glassy and distant. They had dinner at a Chinese restaurant on one of the Hudson piers, and she picked idly at her food, leaving most of it, getting clucked at by the waiter. A quiet evening at home. We have no friends, Macy realized. They played Bach and smoked a lot.

Just before bedtime Hamlin seemed to stretch and yawn within him, or was it an illusion? Bad sex that night, Lissa very far down, he not much better, both of them clumsy and halfhearted as they groped each other in bed. He tried to go into her and she was dry. Persevered, God knows why. Finally some lubrication. Not much response from her, though. Like fucking a robot; he was tempted to quit in the middle, but thought it would be impolite, and he chased himself on to a solitary, unrewarding coming. Some nasty dreams later, but nothing he hadn’t had before.

Saturday a fizzle. Lissa vacant, absent An endless day. Sunday much better. Throwing herself on him at sunrise, straddling him, lowering herself until impaled. Good morning, good morning, good morning! Up and down, up and down. Breasts jiggling overhead. His startled fingers encircling the smooth cool globes of her ass. After which she fixed a hearty breakfast. Bouncy, a breathless adolescent giddiness about her, perhaps fake: trying hard to be a good companion, he suspected. After that sulking bitchy day she gave me yesterday. Lose one, win one.

“Where to?” she asked.

“Museum of Modern Art,” he suggested. “They’ve got some Hamlins there, don’t they?”

“Five or six, yes. But do you really think it’s wise to go? I mean, he’s been so quiet the last couple of days. The sight of his work might stir him up again.”

“That’s exactly what I want to find out,” he told her. They went. The museum, it developed, had seven Hamlins, two big pieces almost though not quite as impressive as the Antigone, and five minor objects. They all were on display in the same room, four grouped in one corner and three assembled against the opposite wall, which gave Macy the opportunity for a critical test: would the presence of so much of Nat Hamlin’s handiwork arouse the submerged artist by some process of psychic leverage?

Boldly Macy planted himself between the two groupings, where he would be exposed to the maximum output of the pieces. Well, Hamlin? Where are you? But though Macy detected some cloudy subliminal squirmings, there was nothing else to indicate Hamlin’s existence within him. He studied the sculptures closely. The connoisseur making his lofty observations. Only a few weeks ago, in Harold Griswold’s office, the sight of a Hamlin piece had knocked him slappy, and here he was listening critically to the resonances, noting the subtle recurvings of the contours, doing the whole art-appreciation number with great aplomb.

Some kids in the room, researching a report on Hamlin, maybe. Apparently recognizing him. Looking at his face, then at his Rehab badge, then at his face again, then at the sculptures, then at each other. Whispering. Even that didn’t bother him, being found out as the walking zombie relict of the great artist. The kids didn’t dare approach him. Macy gave them a benevolent smile. I’d give you my autograph if you asked. With these very hands, you know, those masterpieces were created.

He was impressed by his own newfound resilience. To come here, to confront Hamlin’s work, to take it all so calmly. Although not entirely calmly. He found the sight of these pieces gradually stirring in him that dismal depressing nostalgia, that yearning to have access to the past in which this body had brought into being those sculptures. His true past. As he was starting to regard it. Implying that his own past was unsatisfactory, insufficient insubstantial, inadequate. As if he too had come to agree with Hamlin that he was mere fiction, a freakish aberrant unreality that had been appended to Nat Hamlin’s authentic life. So he craved knowledge of that other time. Who was I when I was he? How did I bring forth these works? What was it like to be Hamlin? A bad moment. The subtle corrosive influence of Hamlin within me, undermining me even when he’s quiescent. So that I have begun to doubt myself. So that I have started to scorn myself. And hunger to be him. This is the road to surrender; let me turn from it.

Lissa seemed troubled by the Hamlin group too. Remembering a jollier past, perhaps. The happy days of first love. The awesome sensation of being chosen by Nathaniel Hamlin for his bed, for his studio. A world of endless sunrises before her. All highways open. And to have come to this. How great the contrast Macy could see the bleakness spreading across her face. A mistake to inflict Hamlin’s art on her? Or maybe she merely felt oppressed by the museum’s Sunday throng. We will go now, I think.

Midmorning, Monday, Macy hard at work. Griswold had just assigned him to a new story. Preliminary charisma-level statistics for the 2012 election came out last night, late; let’s do a feature on all the candidates, run up a chart of pulse-figures, hormone counts, recognition profile, the whole multivalent works, right? Right. And so to the task. Research assistants scurrying madly. Their pretty pink boobies hobbling. Stacks of documents. Fredericks stopping by to offer bland, useless suggestions. Loftus staggering in with a load of simulations and color overlays for his approval. The hours whisking swiftly by; the mind fully engaged in purposeful activity.

And then an unscheduled interruption. Someone down here to see you, Mr. Macy. No appointment. A visitor for me? Who? Image of Lissa, bedraggled, obsessed, freaking out in the reception hall. Please, I must see him, matter of life and death, I’m going to snap, I’m going to blow, let me go upstairs! A messy scene. Only his visitor wasn’t Lissa. His visitor turned out to be a Dr. Gomez.

Panic. Gomez, here? Hamlin’ll kill me!

After the first quick surge of fright, some rethinking. Hamlin had warned him not to go to the Rehab Center, or to telephone his doctors, yes. But the doctor had come to him. Was that covered by the threat? A debatable point. In any case, Hamlin didn’t seem to be raising objections. Macy waited a long troubled moment, expecting a sign from within, a squeeze of his heart, a pinching of his nerves, some sort of don’t-fool-around signal. Nothing. He sensed Hamlin’s presence like a dull heavy weight in his gut, but he got no specific instructions about seeing Gomez. Perhaps Hamlin wants to find out what Gomez will say. Maybe he’s still recovering from the jolt Lissa gave him. Anyway. Tell Dr. Gomez he can come up.

Gomez, out of context, looked unfamiliar. At the Rehab Center, surrounded by his phalanxes of computers and his electronic pharmacopoeia, Gomez was dynamic, formidable, aggressive, indomitable, confidently vulgar. Entering Macy’s sleek office he was almost meek. Without his throne and scepter a king’s but a bifurcated radish. Gomez came slipping hesitantly through the fancy sliding door. Dressed in excessively contemporary business clothes, greens and reds, much too young for him, instead of the customary monochrome lab outfit. Looking shorter and more plump than in his own domain. His thick drooping mustache seedy and in need of trimming. The weakness of his chin somehow mattering much more here. Ten feet apart; eyes meet eyes. Gomez moistening his lips. How strange to see him on the defensive.

Macy said, “I guess you’ve decided to believe me after all.”

“We’ve been discussing your case nonstop for three days,” said Gomez hoarsely. “But I had to have firsthand data. And since you wouldn’t come to us—”

“Couldn’t.”

“Couldn’t.” Gomez nodded. Scowled. Not at Macy but at himself. His distress was apparent. Coming here today was a considerable gesture. The cocky doctor eating crow. He said, voice ragged, “I didn’t want to chance phoning you. In case it might provide too much time for the former ego to build up negative reactions. Is my presence here causing any repercussions?”

“Not so far.”

“If it does, tell me and I’ll leave. I don’t want to endanger you.”

“Don’t worry, Gomez, I’ll tell you fast if anything begins.” Checking to see if Hamlin is stirring. All calm. “Hamlin hasn’t been very active since Thursday night.”

“But he’s still there?”

“He’s there, all right. Despite your loud assurance that it wasn’t possible for him to come back.”

“We all make mistakes, Macy.”

“That was a pretty fucking big one. I asked you to run an EEG. You said no, I was merely hallucinating, merely having a fantasy, there was no chance in the world that Hamlin was intact and surfacing. And then you said—”

“All right. Let’s not go into that now.” Dabbing at his sweaty forehead. “I’m concerned with therapy for this, not with placing blame. When did it start?”

“The day I left the Center. When I met the girl, Hamlin’s old model, mistress, the one you spoke to a couple of times on the telephone.”

“Miss Moore.”

“Yes. Bumped into her, literally, on the street. I told you all this. She kept calling me Nat, ignoring my badge—you remember?”

“I remember.”

“I saw her again, last Monday. She said she was in trouble and wanted me to help her. I didn’t want to get involved and started to leave. She hit me with a two-pronged blast of telepathy. Which woke him up fully, completing the job of arousing him that had started when—”

“Telepathy?”

“ESP. Communication between minds. You know.”

“I know. This girl’s a telepath?”

“I’m trying to tell you.”

“You knew she was a telepath, and also that she was a figure out of Hamlin’s past who you therefore were under instructions not to see, and nevertheless you arranged to meet her and—”

“I didn’t know she was a telepath. Until it was too late. Not that I’d have had any particular reason to avoid her because of that You never said anything about telepaths, Gomez. I didn’t even know there were such things as telepaths, not real ones, not walking around in New York City.”

Gomez closed his eyes. “All right. I get the picture. What we have here is an apparent case of induced identity reestablishment under telepathic stimulus. Of all the shit. A minute theoretical possibility, but who ever expected to run into an actual case of—no fucking literature on the whole subject—no tests, no background, no data—”

“You can write a wonderful paper on me some day,” Macy said bitterly.

“Spare me the crap. You think I’m happy about this?” Indeed genuine agony was visible in Gomez’ fleshy features. “Okay, so she woke Hamlin. Meaning what? Give me the symptomology.”

“He talks to me.”

“Out loud?”

“In my head. A silent voice, but it doesn’t seem silent. Twice now he’s tried to grab my speech centers. All he can say is gibberish, though, and I knock him away. He also took hold of the muscles of the right side of my face once. I made him let go. Two or three times he’s given me a physical shock, a jolt, knocked me down. Last Tuesday, when I set out to the Rehab Center, he staged a little heart attack for me, telling me that he’d give me a niftier one if I persisted in going to the Center. This is no goddam hallucination, Gomez. I’ve had conversations with him, long rational conversations. He’s got very ambitious ideas.

He’s been inviting me to let him finish me off so he can have his body back.”

“Obviously we can’t allow that.”

“Obviously there isn’t a fucking thing you can do. If I let you make any hostile moves toward him at all, he’ll kill me. It’s like I’m carrying a bomb inside me.”

“He’s bluffing.”

“You’re very sure of that,” Macy said.

“If your body dies, he’ll die with it. Whatever he is, he can’t survive the decay of your brain cells.”

“He can’t survive another round in the Rehab Center, either. So he’d be willing to take any step to keep me from going there, right up to and including killing us both. If I go to you, he dies. Why shouldn’t he kill me anyway and take me along? Or at least threaten to, knowing it’ll stop me from going to the Center?”

Gomez considered that. He didn’t seem to arrive at any immediate conclusions.

Macy said, “I’ll tell you what’s going to happen. One of two things. He’ll knock me out and take over the body, or I’ll find some way of chopping him up so he can’t hurt me.

“You’re playing dangerous games, Macy. Come to the Center. I know Hamlin better than you do: he won’t carry out his threat, he won’t do anything ultimately to harm you. Killing you would mean the decay and ruin of his own physical self, the last legitimate vestige of Nat Hamlin in the world. He wouldn’t do it. He’s always been body-proud.”

“Balls. I’m no gambler. He said keep away from you and I’m going to keep away.”

“We can’t let you remain at large with the ego of a condemned criminal in partial control of your brain,” Gomez said.

“What will you do, then? Order my arrest? He’ll kill me. I believe him when he says that. Do you want to take the chance? It isn’t your life on the line, Gomez. You’ve been wrong in this case once already.”

Twitchings of the mustache tips. The tongue moving restlessly between teeth and lips. Gomez in a pickle. Macy staring across the desk at him. He felt his heart hammering. Was it Hamlin, waking up? Or just the excitement, the adrenalin flow?

Gomez said finally, “Well have to put you under surveillance. The legal problems, the presence of a potentially dangerous criminal in you. But we’ll keep our distance. We won’t jeopardize you.”

“How will you know whether you’re jeopardizing me or not?”

“A signal,” Gomez suggested. “Wait.” Frowning. “Let’s say that when Hamlin is threatening you, you clap your right hand to your left shoulder. So.”

“So.” Clap.

“That’ll tell us to back off, so we don’t provoke him. And when you want us to withdraw from the vicinity entirely, that is, when you feel that you’re in extreme danger, you also clap your left hand to your right shoulder. So.”

“So.” Clap. Clap. Idiocy. “How about a secret password, too?”

“I’m trying to help you, Macy. Don’t be clever.”

“Is there anything else you want to tell me, or can I get back to my work now?”

“One more signal, if you don’t mind.”

“The one that I use in asking for permission to take a crap?”

“The one to tell us that Hamlin is dormant and that it would be safe for us to seize you. Do you agree that it’s possible such a situation might arise? All right, then. That would be our opportunity to grab you and try to exorcise him completely, fast. But only when you give the signal.”

“Which is?”

Gomez thought a moment. Deep concentration. All this Boy Scout stuff must really strain his mind. Finally: “Hands locked together behind neck. Like so.”

“So,” Macy said, imitating. “You won’t let your goons mix up the signals, will you?”

“Just keep them straight in your own head and we’ll manage to look after ourselves,” Gomez said. He moved toward the door. Looking back, shaking his head. “A case of demonic possession, that’s what this is. Holy shit. The seventeenth century rides again! But we’ll get this corrected, Macy. We owe you an uncrapped-up life, a life without these complications.” Pausing by the exit. “If you want to know what’s good for you, by the way, I recommend you stop screwing around with Miss Moore. You’re living with her, aren’t you?”

“More or less.”

“You were strongly advised not to get into any entanglements linked to your body’s former identity. Specifically including picking up Nat Hamlin’s old mistresses, telepaths or not.”

“Should I boot her out on her ass? She’s a human being. She’s got problems. She needs help.”

“She’s the cause of all your problems, too. It’s about ten to one you wouldn’t be saddled with Hamlin in the first place if you hadn’t gotten involved with her.”

“That’s easy to tell me now. But I have Hamlin, and I feel a responsibility toward her, too. She’s a wreck. She needs an anchor, Gomez, somebody to keep her from drifting away.”

“What’s the matter with her?”

“The ESP. It’s driving her out of her mind. She picks up voices—half the time she doesn’t know who she is—she has to hide from people, to shield herself—the telepathy comes and goes, random, not under her conscious control at all. It’s like a curse.”

“And this you need?” Gomez asked. “You’re such a solidly established individual yourself that you can keep company with dynamite like this?”

“It wasn’t my idea, believe me. But now that I’m involved with her, I’m not going to toss her out. I want to help her.”

“How?”

“Maybe there’s some way of disconnecting this ESP of hers. It’s burning out her mind. What do you say, Gomez? Could it be done?”

“I don’t know item one about ESP. I’m a Rehab specialist.”

“Who does know?”

“I suppose I could find out if there are any hospitals in the metropolitan area with experience in this. Some neuropsychiatric division must be pissing around with ESP. If she hates it so much, why hasn’t she gone in to be examined?”

“She’s afraid to let anyone fool with her mind. Afraid that she’ll end up losing her whole personality if they try to rip out the telepathy.”

“Shit. You tell me you want to help her, and two seconds later you tell me she’s scared of being helped. This is crazy, man. The girl is poison. Get her into a hospital.”

“Tell me where to send her,” Macy said. “I’ll see if I want to do it. And if she does.” He gave Gomez a sudden savage grin and clapped his right hand to his left shoulder. A moment afterward he put his left hand on his right shoulder. Gomez stared at him, blinking, not moving at all. “Well, dummy?” Macy asked. “You forgot your own signals? That’s the one for withdrawing from the vicinity.”

“Has Hamlin begun to threaten you?”

“Don’t stand there asking stupid questions. You got the signal. Go. Go. I have work to do. Let me be, Gomez.”

“You poor schmuck,” Gomez said. “What a lousy thing this is. For all of us.” And went. Macy cradled his head in his hands. An ache behind each ear. An ache in his forehead, as though the front of his brain were swollen and pushing against the bone. Practice the signals. Right hand to left shoulder. Left hand to right shoulder. Lock hands behind back of neck. Surveillance. The friendly Rehab Center haunting me too. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. He thought he could hear Nat Hamlin’s ghostly laughter reverberating through the interstices of his frazzled mind. Hey, are you awake, Nat? Did you listen to what Gomez said? Listening now? They’re out to get you, Nat. Gomez is after you. To finish the job that he didn’t do right the first time. Scared, Nat? I don’t mind telling you I am. Because only one of us is going to come out of this whole, at the very best. At the very best, only one of us.