—But I’m still in it. And I’m prepared to be a mammoth pain in the ass unless

  I’m allowed to take charge some of the time.

  You want me to yield half my lifespan to you under duress.

  —I want you to be sensible and cooperative, that’s all. Can you function freely

  with me playing games inside your nervous system? Do you enjoy being harassed? I

  can cripple your life, Macy. And what about me? Must I be condemned to be

  bottled up without any autonomy, with my gifts? Listen, even if you run the body

  for half the time, that’s three and a half days a week more than fate originally

  intended. By rights you shouldn’t be here at all. So why not accept a reasonable

  compromise? Half the time you’ll be you, and you can do any fucking thing you

  please. The other half you’ll surrender autonomy and ride as a passenger while I

  go about my business. Sculpting, screwing, eating, whatever I feel like doing.

  We’ll both benefit. I’ll get to live again, a little, and you’ll be free from

  the annoyance of having me constantly interfering with you.

  Well—

  —Another incentive. I’ll give you the free run of my memory bank. What you were

  asking for a little while ago. You can find out who you really were, before you

  became you.

  Get thee behind me, Satan!

  —Will you tell me what’s wrong with the goddam deal?

  Nothing wrong with it. It’s too damned tempting, that’s what.

  —Then why not go along with it?

  A taut uneasy moment. Considering, weighing, mulling. Blinking his eyes a lot.

  Aware that his head is really too foggy now for such perilous negotiations. Why

  surrender a chunk of his life to a condemned criminal? Wouldn’t it be better to

  fight it out, to try to expel Hamlin altogether, to break his grip once and for

  all? Maybe I can’t. Maybe when the showdown comes he’ll expel me. Perhaps it

  makes more sense to accept the half-and-half. But even so—a flood of suspicions,

  suddenly—

  How would we work this switch?

  —Easy. I’d penetrate the limbic system. You know what that is? Down underneath,

  in the depths of the folds. Controls your pituitary, your olfactory system, a

  lot of other things, blood pressure, digestion, and so forth. Also the seat of

  the self, so far as I can tell. You have it pretty well guarded, whether you

  know it or not. A wall of electrical charge sealing it off. But I could come in

  by way of the thalamus, reverse the charge—if we cooperate, it would be just a

  matter of a few seconds and we’d have our shift of identity polarity—I’ve worked

  out the mechanisms, I know where the levers are—

  All right. Let’s say I cooperate and you take over. What assurance do I have

  that you’d let me back on top again when your time was up?

  —Why, if I didn’t, you could pull all the stuff I’ve been pulling on you! The

  situations would be entirely reversed. You could mess around with my heart, my

  sex life—you’d learn the right linkups fast, Macy, you aren’t dumb—

  I’m not convinced what you say is true. Maybe you’d have a natural advantage,

  because it was your body originally. Maybe when you were in charge again you

  could evict me altogether.

  —What an untrusting bastard you are.

  My life’s at stake.

  —All I can say is you’ve got to have more faith in my good intentions.

  How can I?

  —Look, I’ll open wide to you for a minute. I’ll give you a complete unshielded

  entry into my personality. Poke around in there, make your own evaluation of my

  intentions—you’ll see them right up front—decide for yourself whether you can

  trust me. Okay?

  Go ahead. But no funny stuff.

  —I’m baring my soul to him, and he’s still suspicious as hell.

  Go ahead, I said. How do we work this?

  —First, we make some little electrical adjustments in the corpus callosum—

  Odd sensations along the back of the neck. Prickling, tingling, a mild

  stiffening of the skin. Not entirely unpleasant; a certain agreeable feel to it,

  in fact. Unseen fingers stroking the lobes of his brain, caressing the

  prominences and corrugations. A tickling on the underside of the skull. Moss

  beginning to sprout between the white jagged cranial ridges and the soft

  cerebral folds below. And the oozing of warm fluids. Pulse. Pulse. A wonderful

  sleepy feeling. Passivity, yes, how splendid a thing is passivity. We are

  merging. We are opening the gates. How could one have thought that this

  admirable human being meant to do one harm? When now his soul is thuswise

  displayed. Its peaks and valleys. Its exaltations and depressions. Its hungers

  and fears. See, see, I am as human as thou! And I yearn. And I lament. Come let

  me enfold you. Come. Put aside these unworthy untrustingnesses. Open. Open.

  Open. Bathed in the warm river. Lulled on the gentle tide. Tick. Tock. Tick.

  Tock. This is how we come together. The avoidance of all friction. The total

  lubrication of the universe. And we dissolve into one another. And we dissolve.

  What’s that sound?

  Buzz saw at work in the forest! Dentist’s drill raping a bicuspid! Jackhammers

  unpeeling the street! Braked wheels squealing! The fury of clawed cats!

  Key turning in the lock!

  Lissa! Lissa! Lissa!

  Standing on the threshold. Fingertips pressed to lips in alarm. Body curved

  backward, recoiling in shock. Then the scream. And then:

  “Leave him alone! Get your filthy hands off him, Nat!”

  Followed by a sudden instinctive bombardment of mental force, a single massive

  jolt out of her that sent Macy crumpling stunned to the floor. Blackout.

  Internal churning. Clicking of defective gears. Slow return to

  semiconsciousness. Lissa embracing him, cradling his throbbing head. A coppery

  taste in his throat. Incredible lancing pain between the eyes. Her face,

  smudged, strained, close to his. Her faint worried smile. And Hamlin nowhere

  within reach. There was in Macy’s head the strange blessed aloneness that he had

  experienced so few times since the first awakening of his other self. Alone.

  Alone. How quiet it is in here.

  TEN

  “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 justhit 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 shell-shocked 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 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 slummies, 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 unkown 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.”