a plastic dome, all by myself. Although even there I’d probably pick up the

  static. Minds radiating at me right across space. Can you imagine what it’s

  like, Paul, never to have real privacy? Never to know when your head is going to

  turn into a goddam two-way radio?” Then a chilly laugh from her. “Hey, that’s

  funny. Me asking you about privacy. And you with your own ghost sitting in your

  head. Worse off than I am. Paul and Lissa, Lissa and Paul. What a pair of

  fucking cripples we are, you and me!”

  “Somehow we’ll manage.”

  “I bet.”

  “We can get help, Lissa.”

  “Sure we can. He’ll kill you as soon as you go within a mile of your doctors.

  And nobody can fix me without chopping my brain into hamburger. But we can get

  help, yeah. I like your optimism, kid.” She pointed. “We can take that

  staircase. Nightmare Number Sixteen is waiting for us.”

  Up the stairs, through another hall full of Chinese porcelains and Assyrian

  palace reliefs, past a room of Persian miniatures, one of Iranian pottery,

  gallery after gallery of archaic treasures, and emerging ultimately in an

  opulent cube of clear plastic cantilevered out of the rear of the building to

  overhang the wilted greenery of Central Park. The modern-art wing.

  Crowded, too; Macy looked nervously at Lissa, fearing she would tumble into

  another telepathic abyss, but she appeared to be in control of herself. Guiding

  him coolly down yards of gaudy paintings and sculpture and tick-tock artifacts

  and dancing posters and metabolic mirrors and liquespheres and all the rest.

  Left turn. Deep breath. A small room, no door, just a circular entrance. Over

  the entrance, in raised gilded letters: ANTIGONE 21 BY NATHANIEL HAMLIN. Jesus.

  A private exhibition hall for it. What he had taken to be the absence of a door

  was in fact the presence of an invisible airseal, providing secret shelter for

  the masterwork within, ensuring it its own environment and psychological

  habitat. They stepped through. No sensation while breaching the seal: cooler on

  the other side, the air tingling, full of wandering ions. A faint chemical odor.

  A low hum.

  “That’s it,” Lissa said.

  Ten, twelve people clustered in front of it; he couldn’t see. She hung tensely

  against him; arm jammed through his, ribs raking his side. Her tautness leaked

  through to him, a mental emanation of something just short of fear. He felt the

  same way. The knot of onlookers parted and as though through a rift in the

  clouds he beheld Nathaniel Hamlin’sAntigone 21.

  Nude female figure, larger than life. Unmistakably Lissa, yet no danger that

  anyone in the room would turn from that radiant statue to the drab drained girl

  and connect the two of them. Firm, full body. The breasts higher and heavier:

  had the sculptor idealized them or had Lissa lost weight there too? The pose an

  aggressive, dynamic one, head flung back, one arm outstretched, legs apart. O

  Pioneers, that sort of thing. Emphasizing the strength of the woman, the

  resilience of her. Eyes bright and fierce. Mouth not quite smiling but almost.

  The entire solid figure crying out, I can take it, I can handle anything, stress

  and turmoil and flood and famine and revolution and assassination, I have

  endured, I will endure, I am the essence of endurance. The eternal feminine. And

  so forth.

  But of course the sculpture was not merely just a sexy academic nude in a

  high-powered nineteenth-century mode, nor was it only a sentimentally-conceived

  monument to stereotyped concepts of womanhood. It was those things, yes, but it

  was also a psychosculpture, meaning that it approached the condition of being

  alive, it was a whole cosmos in itself. It did tricks. The room was rigged to

  heighten the effects. Imperceptible changes of lighting. That odd humming sound,

  coming from a battery of hidden sonic generators, controlled the mood through

  its pattern of modulations, hitting the onlookers at some subterranean level of

  their psyches.

  The degree of ionization in the room was constantly changing, too. And the

  statue itself. Going through a cycle of transformations. Look, the nipples are

  erect now, the breasts are heaving (but are they, or does it just seem that they

  move?), the eyes are those of a woman in heat. What has become of the defiant,

  all-enduring woman of three minutes ago? Now we behold the essence of

  cuntliness. One could rush forward glady and prong her.

  And yet she changes again. Her juices going sour, her nipples softening: a woman

  thwarted, a woman denied. How bitter that fractional smile. She holds grudges.

  In the darkness of the night she would gladly castrate the unsuspecting male.

  But the strength of hatred ebbs from her. She is afraid; she knows that there

  are questions for which she has no answers; she feels the phantoms of the night

  fluttering against the windows, wings beating harder and harder. Terror closes

  its hand on her. She is alone, naked and vulnerable, not half so strong as she

  would have the world believe.

  If they came to attack her now—but what comes is dawn. A brightening. Finding

  her place in the universe under a friendly sky. She seems taller. Older, though

  no less beautiful; voluptuous, though cooler than before; in command of herself,

  beyond doubt. Venus ascendant. A totally different self each few minutes.

  What machinery is at work beneath that figure’s supple skin? How is this cycle

  of transformations propelled? Watching it, the constantly shifting play of

  emotions and impressions, the subtle mutations of posture and attitude, Macy

  feels awed and overpowered but also vaguely cheated. He had not known what to

  expect of the art of his former self, other than that it would be dramatic and

  impressive. But is this really art, this clever robot? Will all this mechanical

  trickery be able to stand alongside the true artistic achievements of the ages?

  He is no critic, in truth he knows nothing at all, yet the intense realism of

  the sculpture that is its outstanding characteristic makes it seem aesthetically

  primitive to him, a toy, a stunt, a triumph of craft, not art.

  But even so. But even so. Impossible not to respond to the power of the thing.

  How thoroughly Lissa has been captured in those gears and cogs; not his Lissa,

  not the broken dazed girl he knows, but Nat Hamlin’s glorious Lissa, whose

  caved-in shell has fallen to Hamlin’s successor. What Hamlin has created here

  may be simpleminded next to Leonardo and Cellini and Henry Moore, but behind the

  superficial superficiality may lie a carefully masked profundity, Macy suspects.

  He could stand here studying the figure for hours. Days. As others seem to be

  doing. Those students muttering notes into handrecorders, and that one,

  holographing the work from every conceivable angle—they are trapped by it too,

  plainly. A masterpiece. Undoubtedly a masterpiece.

  With an effort he turned away from it, feeling an almost audible snap as the

  sightlines of his contact with the sculpture broke, and glanced at Lissa. She

  was drawn back, hunched against the wall, lips parted, eyes fixed and glassy,

  caught by the mesmerism of her overpowering simulacrum up there. A gasp frozen

  on her face. What currents of identity, he wondered, were flowing from her to

  the sculpture, from the sculpture to her? What draining of self was going on,

  and what recharging? What must it be like to behold yourself made into such a

  work of art?

  And where was Hamlin? Why wasn’t he jumping and cavorting in pride before his

  wondrous achievement, as he had that first day in Harold Griswold’s office?

  Hamlin was quiescent. Not absent, though. Macy became gradually aware of him

  glowing far below the surface, embedded deep in his brain. A thorn in his paw. A

  pebble in his hoof. Macy hadn’t expected Hamlin to remain bolted inside his

  dungeon for long.

  Nor did he. Rising slowly now, bubbling toward the top. Evoked into

  consciousness by theAntigone 21. That’s all right, Macy thought. Let him come

  up. I can handle him. Bracing himself, battening down, Macy waited for his other

  self to finish drifting toward the surface. Not hostile, this time. Not even

  aggressive. A prevailing air of calmness about him. No resentment apparent over

  his defeat in their last battle. Perhaps a strategy of deception, though. Get me

  off guard, then make another quick leap for the speech centers. I’m ready,

  whatever he tries. But when Hamlin opened their inner conversation, his tone was

  easy, civil:

  —What do you think of it?

  Impressive. I didn’t know you had it in you.

  —Why? Do I seem second-rate to you, Macy?

  The only aspect of you that I know is the violence, the criminality. It turns me

  off. I don’t associate great art with that kind of personality.

  —What a load of bourgeois crap that is, friend.

  Is it?

  —Item one, a man can be a thief, a killer, a baby-buggerer, anything, and still

  be a great artist. The quality of his morals has nothing to do with the quality

  of his perceptions, hip? You’d be surprised how much of the stuff in this museum

  was produced by absolute bastards. Item two, I happened to have been a pretty

  fair artist fifteen years before I became what they call an enemy of society.

  This piece you see here was entirely finished before I had my breakdown. Item

  three, since you never knew me, you don’t have any goddam right to judge what

  kind of person I was.

  I concede item two and maybe item one. But why should I yield on number three? I

  know you plenty well, Hamlin. You’ve knocked me down, you’ve played games with

  my heart, you’ve attempted to seize sections of my brain, you’ve threatened

  outright to kill me. Should I love you for that? This is the first time since

  you surfaced that you’ve seemed even halfway civilized. You come on like a thug;

  do you blame me for being surprised you could produce a sculpture like this?

  —You really think I’m a villain?

  You’re a convicted criminal.

  —Forget that shit. I mean my relationship to you. You think I’m acting out of

  evil impulses?

  What else can I think?

  —But I’m not, Macy. I don’t dislike you, I don’t want to harm you, I have no

  negative feelings toward you at all. It just happens that you’re in the way of a

  man who’s fighting for his life.

  Meaning you.

  —Exactly. I want to be myself again. I don’t want to stay submerged inside you.

  The court decreed—

  —Fuck the court. The whole Rehab system is hysterical nonsense. Why wipe me out?

  Why not rehabilitate me in the real sense of the word? I wasn’t hopelessly

  insane, Macy. Shit, yes, I did a lot of awful things, I admit that freely, I was

  off my head. But in the year 2007 they could have some better way of coping with

  insanity than the death sentence.

  But—

  —Let me finish. Itwas a death sentence, wasn’t it? To rip me out of my own body

  and throw me away, and pour someone else into my head? What happened to my whole

  accumulation of experiences? What happened to my skills and talents? What

  happened to me, damn it, what happened tome? Killed. Killed. Nothing but a

  zombie body left. It’s only by the merest fluke that I’m still here, even in

  this condition, hanging on inside you. What kind of humanitarianism is that?

  What are they saving, when they keep the body and throw away the soul?

  I didn’t make the laws.

  —Agreed, Macy. But you’re no fool. You can see how flagrantly unjust Rehab is.

  They want to separate me from society because I’m dangerous, okay, I agree, I

  agree, put me away, try to fix me, drain all the poison out of me. Right. But

  instead this. The super resources of modern science are employed to murder a

  great but somewhat deranged sculptor and invent a dumb holovision commentator to

  replace him.

  Thank you.

  —What else can I say? Look up there, at myAntigone. Could you do that? Could

  anybody else do that? I did it. My unique gift to mankind. And fifty others

  almost as good. I’m not bragging, Macy, I’m being as objective as hell. I was

  somebody valuable, I had a special gift, I had intensity, I had humanity. Maybe

  my gift drove me crazy after a while, but at least I had something to offer. And

  you? What are you?Who are you? You’re nothing. You have no depth. You have no

  texture. You have no past. You have no reality. I’ve been sitting here inside

  you, taking an inventory. I know what you’re made of, Macy, and it’s all ersatz.

  You have no purpose in existing. You can’t do anything that a robot couldn’t do

  better. A holovision commentator? They can program a machine with pear-shaped

  tones, father, and it’ll broadcast you off the map.

  I admit all this,Macy replied. He stood stiffly, pretending to study the

  sculpture. He wondered how much time had elapsed during his colloquy with

  Hamlin. Five seconds? Five minutes? He had lost track of external things.Granted

  that you were a genius and I’m a nobody, what am I supposed to do about it?

  —Vacate the premises.

  Just like that.

  —Yes. It wouldn’t be hard. I could show you how. You relax, you lower your

  defenses, you let me administer thecoup de grace. Then you disappear back into

  the limbo they whistled you out of, and I can function as Nat Hamlin wearing the

  mask of Paul Macy. I can begin to sculpt again. Quietly. As long as I don’t harm

  anybody, I’d get away with it.

  You’d harm me.

  —But you have no right to exist! You’re fiction, Macy. You’re not real.

  I exist now. I’m here. I have feelings and ambitions and fears. When I eat a

  steak I taste it. When I fuck a girl I enjoy it. You know how it goes. Cut me

  and I bleed. I’m real, as real as anybody who ever lived.

  —How can I persuade you that you aren’t?

  You can’t. I’m as real to me as anybody else is to himself. Look, Hamlin, look,

  this isn’t a thing for logic. I can’t just say to you, Okay, you’re a genius, I

  bow to the demands of culture, lop off my head and take my place. A far, far

  better thing, et cetera, et cetera. No. I’m here. I want to go on being here.

  —Where does that leave me?

  Up shit creek, I guess. Right now you’re the one who’s unreal, you know that?

  Officially you’re dead. You’re just a spook wandering around my skull. Why don’t

  you do the noble thing? Stop fucking up a decent and inoffensive human being’s

  life, and clear out. Vacate the premises, as you say. Lower the defenses and let

  me clobber you.

  —Some chance.

  You’ve given the world enough masterpieces.

  —I’m still young. I’m better than you. I deserve to live.

  The court said otherwise. The court sent you out of the world for God knows what

  kind of crimes, and—

  —For rape. That’s all it was, rape.

  I don’t care if it was for reusing old postage stamps. A verdict’s a verdict.

  I’m not giving up my life to remedy what you consider to have been a miscarriage

  of justice.

  —You don’thave a life, Macy!

  Sorry. I do.

  A long silence. Macy peered at the sculpture, at the onlookers, at the walls.

  His head was spinning. Hamlin’s presence remained manifest within him as a

  steady pressure, wordless, heavy. And then, finally:

  —All right. We’re getting nowhere like this. Go stroll around the museum. We’ll

  continue the discussion some other time.

  Sensation of Hamlin letting go. Dropping once more into the depths. Plop.

  Splash. The illusion of solitude. Solemn trombone music marking the alter ego’s

  exit. Macy was drenched in sweat. Unsteady on his feet.

  Lissa: “Have you seen enough yet?”

  “I think so. We can go. Wait, let me hold your hand.”

  “Is something wrong, Paul?”

  “A little wobbly.” He wasn’t able to look at her. Clutching her cool fingers

  between his. Step. Step. Through the invisible door. In the gallery outside he

  found a bench and sank down on it. Lissa fluttering over him, bewildered. He

  said, “While I was looking at it, I had a sort of conversation with Hamlin. Very

  quietly. He was almost charming.”

  “What was he telling you?”

  “A lot of insidious bullshit. He invited me to get out of our body so he could

  have it. On the grounds that he’s a great artist and deserves to live more than

  I do.”

  “That’s just the sort of thing he’d say!”

  “It’s just the sort of thing he did say. I told him no, and he went back to his

  cave. And now I realize I must have put more energy into that chat than I

  thought.”

  “Sit. Rest.”

  “I’m going to.”