She was the only one Mifflon ever confided in. Mifflon didn't tell me he'd told Webster he was going to confess to me, but it wasn't hard to figure out. I didn't bother to erase Webster, as they say nowadays. She was no danger. Who's going to pay attention to a crazy spiritualist?
But I did keep an eye on her. An ear, rather. I had her place bugged.
"Back to your cousin. I was half-doped and subject to dizziness and uncoordination when I changed. But then your cousin was also subject to that, and she didn't have the practice I've had overcoming it. So, with the helmets on and everything set up, I pressed the button that would start an automatic operation. Everything was set up ahead of time, the proper coordinates fixed and the switching done without manual adjustment of the controls. Even so, I hesitated for a few minutes. This was the first time I'd ever worked the automatic device. Due to the attack on Megistus, I had no time to test it. What if Rufton had made an error? What if some especially strong semb seized his chance and took over?"
"That can happen?" Carfax said.
"It has happened. I did it. You ought to know that.
Western and Rufton were experimenting with a prototype, there were two, you know. No, you wouldn't. One was in your uncle's house and one was in Western's apartment. I think Western had some plans for grabbing the MEDIUM for himself. That may have been why he insisted on building a second one at his place.
Perhaps. I don't really know. In any event, I was contacted by them through Western's machine. It was an accident, they weren't looking for me, they were just probing around. But I knew that the way was open, and I took it."
"How did you know?"
"I just knew it. The English language, any language, I suppose, is incapable of describing what it's like to be
a semb. You can't see, hear, smell, taste, or feel. There are no sensory inputs or outputs at all. There is no sense of time, which is fortunate, Otherwise we'd go crazy. And don't ask me how you can exist without a sense of the passage of time. I don't know, but you do exist without it. There is, however, communication among the members of your colony. There is no communication between colonies, though, so you're restricted to eighty people. Forever and forever until MEDIUM was invented. I don't know how we communicated, but we quote heard unquote words. We spoke by some process I don't understand; perhaps it was a form of telepathy or modulated energy transmission.
"Whatever ... I was able to understand only three members. One was a woman who spoke some English, a Boer who'd died a few seconds after I did ..."
"Which was when?" Carfax said.
"Which was January 7, 1872. You'd like to know who I am? I'll tell you in good time. I like to save the best for the last. There was also a Frenchman who was very fluent in English, a poet. I didn't have much in common with him or the Boer. And I had less in common with the other English speaker, an incredibly arrogant and stupid British lord, a veteran of the Crimean War. The rest were either speakers of gibberish, Chinese and the like, or babies. That was the worst part of all, I think, hearing those babies wailing on and on. But I quickly learned to shut them out."
"That shoots my theory down," Carfax said. "The sembs really are the dead?" "Oh, you're talking about that wild idea of yours that they're things pretending to be the dead?"
She laughed and said, "That may be useful, though.
I'm thinking about making an announcement that your theory has been proved after all. That way, I can get rid of all this antagonism from the religious swine. I'll continue to deal with the sembs, of course, but in secret. My main revenue will be from MEDIUM as a power source."
"I don't think you can convince people of that now," Carfax said.
She shrugged and said, "Then I'll handle the situation in another way. My, we do get off the subject, don't we? Anyway, I finally punched the automatic-on button, and the switch was transacted as planned. I was in Patricia's mind. I was drowsy, only half-conscious, since the semb, when it's integrated with the body, is affected by physical causes. My body wanted to sleep, but I didn't, and so I forced myself to carry out my plan. It wasn't easy, but I have a very strong will. I fumbled around with the knot I'd tied in the rope I'd put around her to keep her from falling out of the chair. I got it loose and tried to stand up, but I fell over, tearing the helmet off my head.
"Meanwhile, your cousin had been struggling like mad, but she'd only succeeded in falling backward with the chair. She had stunned herself. I taped her other arm down, and then I tore the tape off my own mouth. I'd put it on Patricia to keep her from screaming, just as I'd taped my own mouth when in Dennis's body to keep her from screaming when she was switched. I managed to give her an injection to put her under until noon, and I crawled into bed and went to sleep."
"You left her lying on the floor on her back tied up to that chair?"
"Sure, why not? She was going to die that night anyway. Besides, I didn't have the coordination or the strength to set her back up. I woke about noon and walked around the house and up and down the steps until I mastered myself. It was strange being in a woman's body, but I found I liked it. I got a big thrill from caressing myself. And from thinking about how recently I'd been screwing myself."
She laughed loudly for a long time. After wiping away the tears, she said, "You don't know how eager I was to get you to bed and try out my woman's body. I'll admit I found it repulsive in the beginning. I'd never kissed a man before. But I got over that, and let me tell you, women enjoy sex more than a man can. I didn't think it was possible, but I had the living proof of it.
I'm going to have to stay in this body a long time, until I get legal ownership of MEDIUM, anyway, and I'm going to get me a stable of young studs you wouldn't believe."
"I suppose a queer would make the transition to a woman easier," Carfax said.
She stared at him a moment and then broke out into laughing again.
"You say that to me. Old Stallion Clan? Why, man, I was notorious for my string of Broadway beauties. Three-times-a-night-Dan, they called me, among other things not so complimentary. I was keeping the great Josie Mansfield and three other showgirls at the same time. And none of them ever complained. You don't understand. Carfax. I'm an adapter. I can fall into any situation and come out on top, except..."
She frowned, and Carfax said, "Except..."
"Well, there's always the crazy nut who goes ape.
You can't foresee him. Old Stokes shot me, and I wasn't expecting that. And then there was that Houvelle with his plane full of dynamite. But I still came back, didn't I?"
"Stokes?"
"Yeah, Stokes. A business associate of mine whom I'd shafted. I had a little talk with him one night in L.A. I told him what had happened and what he was missing. I threatened to bring him back just so I could torture him. I don't intend to, but he'll be sweating it out for eternity!"
"And what happened to Pat? In Dennis's body?"
"I was able to drive by nightfall, though I had to do it carefully. I moved her car out of the garage and drove mine in. I closed the garage doors and shoved her on ahead of me through the door between the house and the garage. I made her get into the trunk, and I doped her up again. I drove back to the farmhouse, took her into the room where MEDIUM was, told her how much trouble you and she had caused me and how I was going to fool you. Then I turned on the power and shoved her so she fell against the exposed transformer. I removed her tapes, washed on the tape-marks with water and alcohol, and rode my motorcycle north to Streator. I had to leave my car at the farmhouse, of course, and I wasn't going to be seen in Pontiac. I didn't want anybody in Pontiac to remember seeing a woman who looked like Patricia Carfax.
"I abandoned the motorcycle, it was registered in a fake name, and took the INTO and a bus back to Busiris. And I took the MT from downtown to the Sheridan Village stop and walked home. Home sweet home. And there you have it."
And I'm about to get it. Carfax thought.
"You died in 1872?" he said. "You must have had a hell of a time adjusting. The
re were no cars, planes, TV, electronics, almost none of the technology of today. Everything must have seemed so strange, even terrifying. You must not have been able to understand half the vocabulary of the people you had to meet."
"I adjust quickly, fella," she said. "I laid doggo for two weeks, playing sick, while I studied things that seem simple to you, like learning how to operate a viewphone. I went down to the L.A. library, what an experience that was, my first time out of the apartment, and I got a lot of books to study up on. I made many mistakes, like I found out when I got to the library that I could have read all the books on my TV with a simple request to the library. But I learned, oh, how I learned!"
"One of the mistakes you made was killing Uncle Rufton," Carfax said. "You should have switched him with some cooperating semb, and you'd never have had trouble with Pat. That's what started the whole thing."
"That was a mistake," she said. "But it turned out all right, didn't it?"
She stood up and said, "Well, we might as well get down to business."
"You haven't told me who you are."
"You sure like to talk to me, don't you?" she said, grinning. "I'll tell you in just a minute. First, I have to get the helmet."
"Helmet?"
She stopped and said, "Of course. It's for better control.
A semb can be extracted, or summoned, or whatever you want to call it, through the CRT itself. It's not only a visual apparatus, it's a door-opener. A wall- breacher. But it's a dangerous step to use it for that because it's not one hundred percent certain. The semb might possess one of the innocent bystanders instead of the person for whom it's intended. And also sembs, some of them, can't make it through. Only the strong- willed ones, the tigers, can get through. Your uncle almost made it when you were talking to him, but he didn't have the drive. So I had my scientists design a channeling device, the helmet."
"How the hell can a person's will determine the action of an electronic being?" Carfax said.
"I don't know," she said. "But it can, to some extent, anyway. As for the sembs being electronic, that's only a term used to cover up our ignorance of their real essence.
Remember, what you see on the screen is only an electronic analog. But enough of talk. This isn't the Thousand and One Nights, Carfax, and you're not Scheherazade."
She halted again. "Oh, yes, don't try screaming.
Your neighbors on both sides are gone. Old lady Alien is off to visit her sister in Oklahoma, and the Batterdons are on vacation. Besides, with the drapes pulled, I doubt that anyone could hear you."
Carfax did not answer. As soon as she had disappeared around the corner, he bent his legs as far back as he could get them under the chair. He lifted up and bent over and began a slow and painful hopping toward the machine on the serving cart. The chair on his back was a carapace, and he was a crippled turtle trying to be a kangaroo. The coffee cart was only about two and a half meters away, but at the pace of a decimeter a hop, it seemed as if it were a kilometer. Each effort drained out half his strength. Like Achilles chasing the tortoise, he would never make it. But then Zeno's paradox didn't work in real life, and he only thought he was weakening by halves. Still, each little jump exploded pain in his head, and he was sweating before he had made three hops.
Once, he wondered if she was expecting him to make this attempt. Was she waiting around the corner to spring on him just as he completed his mission? What mission? He wasn't sure he could do what he planned.
Worse, he wouldn't know what he had accomplished when he had done it.
It would not take her long to climb the fourteen steps, go down the hallway into the bedroom, and into the attic. At least, he supposed that she had hidden the helmet in the attic. That must have been where she had concealed the MEDIUM. He did not believe he would have enough time, but he had to try. If only ... and the phone rang. He was given more time. If only it wasn't a wrong number, if only it was someone who insisted on speaking to him.
No, if it were, then she would be down at once to stand out of the field of vision of the phone and to hold a gun at his head while he spoke. If she did, then he was going to yell. He would die, but whoever was at the other end would see what was happening. And she would be in an untenable position again.
He resumed his minute progress, went past the side of the machine, turned slowly, and hopped until he was close to its rear. Panting, fearful that his legs would give way, he bent over. His face slid along the cool metal plate and then his lips touched the nearest of the two wires running from the automatic control box to the terminals on the back of MEDIUM. He shoved his head forward to get a better purchase, clamped his teeth on the wire, and jerked upward with his head.
The motion sent pain through his head again, and he almost collapsed. But the wire was torn loose from the jack.
He could no longer hear her voice. In a few seconds, she would be down, unless chance favored him again, and that was too much to expect.
He hopped backward until he was clear of the serving cart, turned slowly, and hopped back. Now he could hear the tinkle of water falling into water. Good. Chance had given him another break.
The toilet flushed as he settled back down. But the chair was only in its approximate previous position, and he had to place the ends of the chair legs exactly where they had been. Their pressure had left four square depressions in the nap of the rug. She would see these and would wonder just how far he had managed to move the chair.
It was very difficult to see the depressions, and when he moved one leg of the chair to cover one depression, he missed the others. It was impossible to see the hind depressions made by the rear legs, so he settled for an attempt at covering the front two. Then he heard footsteps, and he had to stop. He did not know whether he had succeeded perfectly, but there was nothing he could do now.
She came around the corner holding a device which looked like a large metal football helmet. Attached to it was an electrical cord about two meters long.
She looked at him as she passed him and said, "My we certainly are sweating, aren't we? That's one nice thing about being a semb, you don't sweat. Not physically, anyway."
He said nothing but watched her while she plugged the end of the helmet cord into a receptacle near the base of the front panel. Still holding the helmet, she pushed the cart with one hand to a distance of a meter from him. She put the helmet on the floor, went into the kitchen, and returned a moment later with a strip of tape.
"Any famous last words?" she said, smiling.
"I'll see you in hell."
"I may drop in on you now and then," she said.
"But I won't be staying long. And you will."
"One thing," he said. "Your promise. You said you'd tell me who you really are."
"My name was James Fisk. Do you know who I am now, or must I give my biography?"
"The Barnum of Wall Street, the Prince of Erie?" he said.
"Right!"
She slapped the square of tape over his mouth, smoothed it out, and placed the helmet over his head. It felt very heavy, and his headache increased It was the weight of doom, he thought.
"That's a nice boy," she said. "It wouldn't do any good to struggle."
And so he was to become one more victim of the no longer late and never lamented James Fisk. Born in 1834, if he remembered correctly. A native of Bennington, Vermont. Oh yes, he had been born on April 1 , April Fool's Day. Very appropriate. Fisk was no fool, but he had certainly fooled many. He had started at the lowly job of circus hand, then become, successively, a waiter, a peddler, a salesman of dry goods, and a stockbroker. He had founded the brokerage firm of Fisk and .. . Belden? And then he had gotten into the big time as a stock market operator for Daniel Drew. Drew was as big a crook and as ruthless a financier as you could find. He and Fisk and the equally corrupt Jay Gould had become partners in taking control of the Erie railroad from Cornelius Vanderbilt. Nobody had cried about this except old Cornelius, who was as rotten as the unholy three who had beaten him out.
Fisk, as vice-president and comptroller of the railroad, had used its funds to bribe public officials, produce Broadway shows, and seduce Broadway actresses and chorus girls. One of his many mistresses had been the famous Josie Mansfield. Fisk was also Gould's assistant in his attempt to corner the gold market. This had resulted in the stock market crash, the infamous Black Friday, of, when was it?, oh yes, September 24, 1869.
And then Fisk, at the age of thirty-seven or thirty-eight, had been shot by E.S. Stokes and he had died the next day. Carfax remembered the exact day on which he had been shot because it was January 6, the day on which members of the Baker Street Irregulars celebrated Sherlock Holmes's birthday.
He watched her finger approach the automatic-on button. Here it comes, he thought. His heart was hammering, and he wondered what Fisk would do if he should drop dead of a heart attack before he could activate MEDIUM. He wished he would. Fisk might be in trouble then. And he thought, no, he wouldn't. The autopsy would show that I died a natural death, and no one would suspect Fisk.
Goodby, Patricia. If only we could have died at the same time, we would at least be in the same colony.
Fisk, his finger only a centimeter away from the button, turned his head and grinned.
Be a sadist for all I care, Carfax thought. Those few more seconds of life are precious, even under these conditions. And maybe the phone will ring again.
That's one question I meant to ask him. Who called? A friend of Pat's? One of Fisk's compatriots? Senator Langer? I'll never know, and it doesn't matter.
The finger moved; the button sank inward.
Carfax felt as if he were shrinking inside himself, collapsing, falling down the well of himself.
But nothing happened except that an indicator by the automatic-on button lit up. Fisk swore and pressed the button again. The light remained illuminated. If only Fisk would decide not to trace the trouble but to switch over to manual operation. Fisk had checked the connections of the two wires at the rear just after he had brought the machine down.
There was no reason for him to check it again; they could not possibly have come loose. Not as far as he would know.