Transmigration (7 page)

 

 

--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?

 

 

But the churches had to go farther. After death you met all your
friends. In the happy land far, far away there was music and trees and
a river and flowers and green fields, and no pain. Christianity itself
promised no more than survival of the soul, but the ministers preaching to
real people distributed after-death largesse in the form of an invitation
to a real nice clambake across the Jordan, on Canaan's shore.

 

 

Heaven would be an eternal picnic with all the people you liked best,
and no hangovers.

 

 

Well, he had managed to take a certain amount of baggage with him, not
to heaven, but to the somewhat empty marble halls of Judy's brain. Yet
even there two was a crowd.

 

 

As he explored, however, he found that his baggage had been limited. He
had not, after all, been allowed, or able, to pack an unlimited number
of cabin trunks with all the mental impedimenta that John Fletcher had
accumulated in his forty-three years. On his mental flight he had been
allowed just so much personal baggage, no more.

 

 

He tried to remember that same passage from the Bible
in French:

 

 

Or je dis ceci, frčres, que . . . Voici, je vous dis un
mystere. Nous . . . a la derničre trompette . . . la mort
a été engloutie en victoire . . . Oů est, o mort, ton . . . ?

 

 

His knowledge of the French Bible had been greater than that of the
English Bible, since he liked to read "La Sainte Bible" rather than the
version of King James. But now he could remember only phrases here and
there -- probably passages, he realized in a flash of inspiration, that
he had recited to Judy. She had not understood them, had not remembered
them, yet they were not entirely unfamiliar to her brain.

 

 

For the rest, he knew he was, or had been, John Fletcher. He knew about
Baudaker, Anita, Judy, Gerry -- all concerned in recent events.

 

 

But at least 95% of the knowledge of John Fletcher was gone. He had
managed to take with him only a basic pattern of John Fletcher, no more.

 

 

Well, what did it matter, anyway? Suddenly he tired of the whole thing.
Pure basic animal fear of death had made him strive for life when he
knew he must die. This time there was no conflict. He wanted to leave Judy

 

 

--You're wrong, she observed.

 

 

Returning to awareness, he found they had reached the Westfield skyscraper,
the city's first. It towered over them. Now it was quite dark, ten or
eleven o'clock, perhaps.

 

 

--I don't want to leave you?

 

 

--No, not that. About forgetting all your learning. Why, I know millions
of things I never knew before.

 

 

He had grown careless about keeping his thoughts to himself. Shutting Judy
right out at first, he had gradually forgotten to keep up the barrier.

 

 

Now he felt the pain of Judy's knee and ankle.

 

 

--You shouldn't be out like this, he said.
--You've walked too far.

 

 

She entered the hall, deserted except for a few people leaving the
building. Visitors, probably, they paid no attention to her as she
entered the lift they had vacated.

 

 

--I'll be all right in a day or two, she replied indifferently. If this
works, that is.

 

 

He was suddenly struck by the essential difference between them, the
quality most characteristic of Judy as she had been and as she was now,
and the quality still characteristic of him. She was an optimist and he
was a pessimist.

 

 

--You're right, she observed, pleased.
--I always think everything is going to turn out all right, and it does.

 

 

--I always expect everything to turn out wrong, and it does.

 

 

--Well, that's another reason why this is going to work. When I set up
something that could turn out wrong for one of us or both of us, it's
not likely to turn out wrong for me, is it?

 

 

He didn't answer that. Another thought which had not occurred to him
before struck him now. Pessimistic though he still was, he no longer
had quite the black acceptance of failure of John Fletcher in the body
of John Fletcher. Perhaps it was impossible to be so bleakly unhopeful
in the brain and body of the sparkling Judy. She had sparkled even when
retarded, and she had lost none of that quality.

 

 

The lift had stopped. Judy stepped out into a long corridor.

 

 

--Now remember, she warned.
--Leave this to me.

 

 

Fletcher curled himself into a mental ball and left it all to Judy. He
didn't know what she intended, and didn't want to know.

 

 

--No! said Judy, giving him a mental jolt which, though not physical at
all, was like a punch in the stomach, if not even more unenjoyable.
--Leave everything to me, yes, but don't run away and hide. You have to
watch what's going on.

 

 

--All right. Please don't do that again.

 

 

She chuckled.

 

 

--You felt that, didn't you, Mr. Fletcher? Now who's weak-minded, you
or me?

 

 

--I concede the point without further demonstration.

 

 

Judy went to the stone parapet and looked over.

 

 

Far below, tiny cars crawled about the streets like beetles. The street
lights were all shielded from above; the round pools of light they cast
were like shining silver coins on the dark streets.

 

 

"No, no!" said Judy, as he tried to draw back.
--Stay quiet. Leave this to me.

 

 

--I'm afraid.

 

 

--Good.

 

 

She looked along the windows behind them. On one side quite a few were
lit. In the other direction, only one was, and that was heavily curtained.

 

 

She climbed nimbly on the stone parapet.

 

 

All that was left of fletcher screamed with terror.

 

 

As skyscrapers went, this was a mere high tenement. But the people moving
below looked like ants. The parapet was no more than three inches wide.

 

 

Casually Judy started to walk along the parapet.

 

 

--No, no! Fletcher screamed silently.

 

 

--I won't look down again. So you won't see it.

 

 

--Jump down!

 

 

--This way? She turned to face the chasm.

 

 

--Oh, Christ, no!

 

 

--I never heard you swear before. I'm shocked.

 

 

--I wasn't swearing, that was a prayer.

 

 

She turned ninety degrees and started to walk along the parapet again.
--I'm very surefooted, and I've never been afraid of heights, just
as heights. Think of it this way: anybody at all could walk along a
three inch painted line in a car park, without ever stumbling off the
line. Unless he was drunk, of course, or unless the wind was very fierce
and gusty . . . there's quite a strong breeze here as a matter of fact,
but it's fairly steady.

 

 

Having shrunk in terror until what remained of him barely existed at all,
Fletcher desperately tried to regain control of Judy and make her jump
safely on to the balcony.

 

 

"You know perfectly well that will kill us both," said Judy aloud. "We
can't fight for control now of all times. You couldn't even get off the
parapet safely. Your terror would make you do the wrong thing. So please
don't be silly ."

 

 

He knew she was right. Once more he pretended not to exist. Yet he was
no longer able, as he had been on the way to the skyscraper, not to look
through Judy's eyes. He tried and failed. She didn't have to jolt him
again. Fear made him look.

 

 

Her injured leg gave way slightly as she put her weight on it, all but
pitching her into the abyss.

 

 

--Near thing, she observed cheerfully, as Fletcher silently gibbered
in terror.

 

 

Judy reached the corner of the building. No longer was there safe solidness
on one side. At the apex of the parapet, it was like standing on the point
of a mile high needle with a gulf all around.

 

 

She turned to bisect the 270 degree angle. Now there was nothing but
the gulf. Calmly, curiously, she surveyed the streets below.

 

 

--Funny, she remarked.
--As a moron, I had too much sense to do this. Maybe intelligence does
make you less sensible.

 

 

She raised one leg, the injured one, and held it out in front of her,
over the gulf.

 

 

Fletcher's nerve snapped and he tried desperately to get out.

 

 

But he couldn't.