Identity Matrix (1982) (13 page)

You're out here on a spiral arm, pretty far away from the action, but you're the closest, most convenient source of warm-blooded mammalian oxygen-breathers we have."

I was appalled, and even Parch looked disturbed, at all this.

"We're your spare parts depot, then, for humanoid worlds," Parch said more than asked.

Pauley nodded slowly, a sheepish look on his face. "Look, this world's massively overpopulated anyway, and I think you'd admit that most of those people are vegetative—subsistence farmers, primitives of all kinds. They die young, of curable diseases and terrible cus-toms, sometimes of starvation, and it makes absolutely no difference whatsoever to your race, your history, if such people live or die. We try to concentrate on people like that—we really do. Most of the bodies we take are from people who matter not a bit to Earth but they matter a great deal to us. In a sense, we give them purpose."

"At the cost of their lives," Parch responded darkly.

"This is a war! You'd react the same way and do the same things if you were in our shoes! You know it!"

Parch didn't reply to that because he knew as well as I did that the whole of human history supported the alien's point of view. We really weren't that different after all.

"So those people on the trail and in Skagway and on that ship—they were all expendable?"

Pauley sighed. "Look, I was a—station chief, I guess you'd call it. I've been here a very long time, and I was due to go home as soon as I could break in my relief. That's who I picked up in Alaska—but something went wrong. You know more about that than I do. We got chased halfway across Alaska and the Yukon by you, no matter what tricks we tried. I wish I knew how you did it, I really do.

All those we left—well, it was them or us. You'll understand that a body-switching race doesn't face death easily because there's a good chance it won't happen."

Parch nodded at that, and I considered it. A race of body switchers would be potentially immortal, subject only to accidents and acts of violence.

Particularly a spacefaring race with access to all the bodies of many worlds. It was a staggering concept.

"Now what happens?" Pauley asked. "You can kill me, of course and I admit the thought terrifies me. But I'm a soldier and a volunteer—I'll die if I have to.

You can keep me prisoner, but that won't gain you much, either. I don't mind telling you the general things but there's much, the important parts, no amount of coer-cion can get from me. You can try torture, but I can shut down the pain centers—I have far more control over this body than you have of yours. You can't use drugs—although I'm sure you'll try. All you'll get is a Urulu mind and unless you know Urulu, a language with few common references to yours, it'll get you noth-ing but a lot of bad sounds."

"Or I could let you go," Parch said softly.

To my surprise that caused the alien to laugh. "Come on, Parch! You and I both know I couldn't do anything now if I wanted to. You have me in your sights. You have some way of tracking me—how I can't imagine. I'm not about to betray my people."

"We have your matrix, you know," Parch said in that same soft tone.

The man stiffened. "My ma—" He seemed to collapse, to deflate as if a balloon newly pricked by a needle. "So you've come that far," he managed weakly.

"You started it, you know," the IMC agent pointed out. I wished I knew what they were talking about.

Pauley seemed to regain a little of his composure. "I suppose we did, although it's hard to believe you're advanced enough to manage it. I wish my people knew. It might change everything. Make us allies instead of adversaries."

He hesitated a moment, thinking. "Maybe that's what they are doing here. We thought it was just to try and cut off our body bank, but if they even guessed…"

Again a pause, then, "You may be in far more danger than you realize."

"If they know—and we have only your word that they even exist—we're already doomed," Parch noted. "I rather suspect they do not know, Mr. Pauley, if you didn't."

"Which brings us back to question one," the Urulu said. "What do we do for now?"

"Well, I can't trust you, of course, for I have only your word on these matters, and you can't trust me, since you can hardly place your faith in my hands childishly. What I think we shall do for the moment is leave things as they are while we get to know each other better. For now, I'm going to release you from this bed, and we have rigged up a small apartment in back, through that door there. It is, of course, totally bugged and moni-tored and is not the world's most comfortable accom-modations, but it should do. Food will be passed in to you. Automatic and human-controlled weapons will be trained upon you at all times, of course, so please keep that in mind. Just consider yourself, well, a prisoner of war."

The man nodded. "I understand." Parch undid the straps holding the alien down and Pauley got up un-steadily, rubbing the places where the tight restraints had cut into him. Finally he got unsteadily to his feet and went over to Parch.

"Truce?" he asked, and put out his hand.

We all tensed, knowing what Pauley was trying to pull. Parch did not hesitate, taking Pauley's hand and shaking it vigorously, a wide smile on his face.

"Now that we have that established, yes, a truce," Parch told him.

Pauley looked more than a little astonished and somewhat worried. "The only people I ever knew that were immune are other Urulu, who can consent or not, and our enemy," he said suspiciously. "Which are you, Parch?"

For the first time I understood just why Harry Parch was such a terror figure to them. They knew all their own people on our little world, so Parch, who had the power to block a switch, had to be their enemy in hu-man guise. It seemed to me that Parch, too, must have thought of that, perhaps long ago. For a second I won-dered if it might not just be true, but I quickly dis-missed the idea. That way lay madness, and you could be paranoid enough just knowing what I knew.

"I'm no alien," Parch assured him. "I was born in this body on this planet, I promise you. I am—a prototype, you might say. A few of us have been rendered immune to you, although at great cost."

Pauley just stared at him and I did likewise. "Cost?" The alien repeated.

He nodded. "I am totally immune. I am myself—forever. Forever, Pauley.

You yourself mentioned the promise of immortality from the process. You can see, then, why so few working on this project have been willing to take the cure."

Pauley's mouth dropped slightly, and, for the first time, I understood IMC's problem, why the defense wasn't "perfected" as Parch had said. If we really could learn how to switch bodies then immortality, at least for some, would be attainable. Attainable, yes, like the Urulu -but not for Parch. Never for Harry Parch…

"I must leave you now," the agent told the alien. "However, I'm assigning someone directly to you, to talk to you, discuss ways out of this mess, give us some common ground. I think you two will get along famous-ly—considering you are responsible for her being in the body she's in. Your partner, anyway.

Does the prospect interest you, Ms. Goner?"

I almost jumped at the sound of my name. Finally I leaned over and keyed the microphone. "There's noth-ing I'd like better," I told them both.

Chapter Six

I was escorted by Marine guard back to my room, and I decided to drop in on Dory and fill her in. I went to her door and knocked, finally hearing a muffled ques-tion. I called out who I was and heard the sound of something being pulled back from the door. The motion made me chuckle a bit, and feel a little better, too. I wasn't alone in my privacy demands, it seemed.

Finally the door opened a crack and Dory said, "Come on in. I'm not really fit for those gorillas at either ends of the hall."

I pushed the door open and walked through, shutting it behind me. She was nude and had a towel wrapped around her hair. The TV was on, and I saw a mirror, scissors, and make-up kit on the bed.

It was already getting hard to remember myself in that slight, dark body, and I reflected how odd it was that I'd adjusted so easily to all this. Humans were adaptable animals, all right.

She was extremely thin and quite cute in an exotic sort of way. Although not quite there as yet, you could tell she was going to be an attractive, if small, young woman.

"What've you been doing?" I asked her.

She went over and snapped off the television. "Sitting around, mostly.

Watching TV. They got a couple of movie channels here I never saw before—one's all porn. Inter-esting. I been sitting here doing my hair and taking notes for when I can use it properly."

I smiled and took a seat on the couch. "Did you get anything to eat?"

"Oh, yeah, hours ago. One of the Marines came by and we went up to the dining hall. The food's not bad, although I have a thing against cafeterias. They got some setup here, though. Bar with dance floor, movie theater with first-run stuff, game rooms—you name it, like a luxury hotel. Swimming pool, jaccuzi, saunas, you name it. Even tennis courts. They live pretty good here, I'd say."

"I'll have to see it," I told her, then proceeded to fill her in on my evening.

She followed my story with rapt attention, occasionally breaking in with questions. When j was through she considered it all for a while.

"You know, you sound like you really liked that alien thing," she noted.

I shrugged. "I don't know what I think. I can say that I found him reasonable, at least. I don't like the idea of my planet being a body bank for some alien species, but I can understand his point of view without approving. I think, inside, we're more alike—his people and us—than either of our groups wants to admit."

"Or he just understands humans better than we un-derstand his kind," she responded a bit cynically, then changed the subject. "Any idea what happens next to us?"

I shook my head. "Parch said we'd spend most of the day tomorrow taking a battery of tests."

"Tests?"

"Psychological tests, mostly, I think. They want to find out if there's anything wrong with our minds after the switching, how we look at ourselves, the world, that kind of thing."

She nodded. "I guess I understand. The truth is, I've been looking a little at myself lately. I'm not really sure I know myself anymore, if I ever did. I mean, it's kind of funny, but the more I think about all this the less I mind it. Isn't that weird?"

I frowned. "I don't understand what you're saying, frankly."

"It's—well, it's hard to explain. I think maybe you'll find out for yourself.

But, well, things weren't going right for me. I was pretty screwed up inside, and I didn't really know where I was going, only that I couldn't really go back to my old life, my old friends, be the kind of girl they wanted. It's—well, hard to explain. But life was getting to be such a pisser this wasn't so bad—once you get over the shock. For a day or two I really went off the deep end, particularly with my old self standing there in front of me. It's passed, though. I keep thinking that this was the best thing that could have happened to me—becoming somebody else, that is." She hesitated, realizing she wasn't getting through. I had the impres-sion that there was more to this than she was telling me, some missing piece of the complex puzzle that was Dorian Tomlinson. For my part, I couldn't imagine a nineteen-year-old stunner of a woman with money, brains, and looks having any problems I could recognize as problems.

"What about you, Vicki? How are you holding up? I mean, you had a lot more of a change than I did. All I did was lose some height, about six years, and gain reddish-brown skin."

My own sense of loneliness and isolation, of being out of place, returned to me with a vengeance. The interlude with Parch and the alien had allowed me to temporarily push it to the back of my mind, but it never really left, and now here it was back full once again. In a way, I thought, I was worse off than I was before, for the only way I got any release was by pretending I was doing it to somebody else. I felt a need, almost a hunger, to share this feeling with somebody and Dory was, now, closer to me than anyone else in the world. I began cautiously, but eventually it just poured out, my whole life story, my frustrations, the whole thing. "I feel as alien as that Urulu or whatever it is in that cage," I told her. "Just like I always have. God, Dory! I have such a need to belong, somewhere, just once."

She came over to me and kissed me softly on the forehead. "Poor Vicki,"

she sympathized, "you really have the worst of it, I think." She curled up into a cute little ball on the couch opposite me, looking at me thoughtfully.

"You know," she said, "it's really crazy. I never knew you as a man and I have a tough time thinking of you in those terms. You're mannish, yes, in your movements and gestures, but not male, if that makes any sense. Part of that's my own conditioning, I guess. I knew a lot of women who dreamed of being men, but you're the first man I know who admitted fantasizing being a woman. It's the old image thing, I guess. Women say they want men to be more emotional, tender, all that—but you got me to thinking that maybe that's all wrong. Maybe men are all those things women are, but it's all locked inside somehow. Maybe we contribute to it—I know many of my friends say they want a warm, tender man but they only go to bed with macho types."

I nodded. "That's my bitter experience. Men who really are what our liberated women say they want are often friends, confidants, of those women—but never sexual partners. That was my experience. I always won-dered if the male stereotypes everybody decries—the macho types, that sort of thing—aren't reinforced by women's behavior towards them. A man with normal sexual drives who tries to be a warm, friendly human being to women only to see them march off with what they say they abhor might become more of that macho type himself. In the process he loses his humanity, and maybe his pride, which makes him inwardly bitter, but he does it because he's forced to. And then there were those like me who couldn't lower themselves that way, and so became the permanent outsiders. You have no idea the hurt it causes—and the cynicism it breeds against women in general, fair or not."