subservience once more. Sweeping from his mind the distractions of this

  dismaying studio in order to regain inner discipline. There. There. There. Macy

  saw that he did not yet have the power to vanquish the other, although he was

  constantly learning and gaining strength. Later. Another time. He has me now.

  “Isn’t the studioabsolutely fascinating, Mr. Macy?”

  An idiot warble, a gay contralto trill. Enter Mrs. Bryson. A slip of paper in

  her hand. By no accident, she has rid herself of her loincloth, and she comes

  jollying in, starkers, with flatfooted buoyancy. Eyes sparkling, breasts heaving

  expectantly. Thick curling deep-piled black triangle. Her nipples turning to

  turrets. The hot scent of a rutting bitch spreading in the warm air. We’re very

  casual about nudity out here, you see, Mr. Macy. Clothes are so primitive, don’t

  you think! And then maybe making a quick grab for his crotch, getting the pole

  out in the open, down on the floor amid the paraphernalia of the great artist.

  To be had by his simulacrum.Ooom. But not this time, lady. “I had some trouble

  finding Mrs. Hamlin’s new name and address,” she said. “It was with our papers

  on the house, you know, tucked away, but I dug everything out, and now—”

  “Yes,” Hamlin said. Blurted. A frantic need to get out of here. Throat dry; face

  flushed; eyes unfocused. Defending himself simultaneously against Macy’s

  assaults from within and the mockeries of this equipment from without. Her black

  bush and hot slot of no interest to him now. The unexpectedly overbearing

  atmosphere of his studio had unmanned him utterly. To escape, fast. Snatching

  the slip of paper from her startled hand. “Thankyouverymuchgottogonow.” Moving

  rapidly past her toward the door. Her face suddenly a rigid mask of surprise and

  anger: she knows she will be denied. Hell hath no fury.

  She looks ten years older. Deep lines from cheeks to chin. The nipples going

  soft: the shoulders slumping. All her nakedness wasted on him. Her arm

  outstretched, the fingers working eagerly as if to pull him back. No chance.

  Hamlin had reached the exit. Out into the midday brightness. Pursued by phantom

  tendrils of feminine libido. “You needn’t leave so soon!” she calls to him.

  Hamlin made no reply. Glanced back once, saw her outside the studio door, naked

  well-endowed idle-rich lass on the threshold of middle age, bewildered by his

  panic, astounded by his rejection of her body. His panic bewildered him too.

  Head awhirl. Macy did his best to make things worse, yanking on all the neural

  lines at once. Hamlin yelped, but stayed in control, and went on running.

  Running. Run. Ning.

  In the car again, jouncing helter-skelter westward across several counties, Macy

  wondered if they were going to survive this trip. These back roads didn’t have

  any protective strips, and thus the auto’s homeostasis mechanisms were

  essentially cancelled out; if the car started to slide off the road, nothing

  would keep it from smashing into the bulky oaks that awaited it.

  And Hamlin was in a ghastly state. Madly gripping the stick. Eyes glazed in

  Dostoevskian fixity. Jaws clenched. He was driving on reflex alone, employing

  one tiny plaque of cerebral tissue to operate the vehicle while the rest of his

  mind wildly revolved the events of the past half hour. The car teetered from

  side to side on the narrow road, now and then crossing the center line or

  running onto the shoulder.

  Most of Hamlin’s defenses were relaxed, but as before Macy feared to make a

  takeover attempt in a moving car. He hunkered down inside Hamlin’s brain as

  though it were a storm-shelter and temporarily disconnected his optical hookup,

  for the view of the madly slewing road through Hamlin’s eyes was making him

  seasick. Better, this way. To sit in solemn silence in a dull dark dock. About

  him still flashed the lightnings and eruptions of Hamlin’s distress. The studio

  visit had really shaken him. Moving among his implements, his elaborate

  sculpting apparatus, Hamlin had seemed not to know what from which or up from

  down. Macy wondered why. Had the Rehab process done irreversible damage to the

  Hamlin persona? Was there actually nothing left of the original Nat Hamlin

  except a clutch of old memories, a cluster of attitudes and phrases, some tics

  and twitches of the spirit? The sculptor, the man of genius, had he been

  irretrievably demolished, and was this comeback merely a delusion?

  On the other hand, Macy thought, it might have been the strain of maintaining

  control of their shared body that had so severely drained Hamlin’s psychic

  energy. There had been definite signs all day that Hamlin’s grip was none too

  strong and was slipping from hour to hour. In the morning, striding jauntily

  down the street to Gargan’s gallery, presenting the contract ultimatum to the

  fat dealer, all that hard bargaining—Hamlin had appeared to be in full command

  then, but by the end of the encounter with Gargan he had started to show some

  fatigue, and the troubles he had had in driving from the city to his Connecticut

  studio had revealed a further weakening of control.

  And then the disastrous studio visit. Continued slippage. The battery running

  down and no time for recharging. It must take a constant terrific effort for

  Hamlin to operate this body, injured as he had been by the Rehab obliteration

  experts. Macy knew that he himself was nowhere near the point where he could

  regain the body, but the way things were going that moment couldn’t be very far

  away. It was coming. It was coming. Or was he fooling himself?

  He reconnected the visuals. The car still careening along the suburban back

  roads. Hamlin sitting rigidly, lost in contemplation, paying minimal attention.

  Horrifying. The body wouldn’t be worth shit to them if Hamlin smashed up the

  car. Certainly fatal to both of them. But there was nothing Macy could do about

  that right now. He blanked the scene again, escaping. Diving down deep,

  burrowing into Hamlin’s memory bank. Everything there was accessible to him, all

  the stored scenes of his prior self’s active life. Failures and triumphs, mostly

  triumphs. The women. The critics. The press clippings. The one-man shows. The

  money. The accumulation of possessions. All the surface glamour. Yet beneath the

  shiny shallow business of careermaking Macy could see in Hamlin the authentic

  artistic impluse, the hunger to make his visions real. Give Hamlin credit for

  that. He had been a bastard, sure, still was, but he pursued a vision, he

  realized it, he gave it to the world. There are those who make and give, and

  those who take and consume, and Hamlin had been a maker and giver.

  Macy envied that. Who are the real ones among us, anyway, if not those who

  create, who give, who enrich those about them? Regardless of their motives.

  Doing it for the money, for the ego trip, for whatever unworthy reason, butdoing

  it. Having something worth doing and doing it. Hamlin was one of those.

  I’m one of the consumers thought Macy. Blame Gomez & Co., I guess: they could

  have made me someone worthwhile. Their own artistic achievement, their creative

  self-justification. But of course they aren’t paid to do that. Just to fill up

  vacant bodies with reasonably functional human beings. Gomez isn’t an artist,

  he’s a doctor, and he can’t transcend himself when he does a reconstruct. If I

  am second-rate, it’s because my makers were second-raters too.

  Unlike this bastard Hamlin. Whose darker side was also visible: the inner

  collapse, the breaking free from moorings. Roaming the quiet streets. The artist

  as predator. Each rape neatly labeled and catalogued in the archives. And not

  just mere rape, either. Not just the shoving of Blunt Object X into Unwilling

  Orifice Y, but also the associated stuff, the peripherals, the leering, the

  mocking, the capering, the perversions, the garbage. Even in a permissive age

  there still are such things as abominations. Hamlin must have been out of his

  mind. The big-eyed twelve-year-old forced to watch her pretty young blond mother

  blowing the famous artist: what kind of scars does that leave on an unformed

  psyche? And all this buggery. A trail of torn sphincters across four states. Not

  even greasing it first. That’s sadism, Hamlin. Out of your fucking mind.

  But how crazy were you, really? Didn’t you have a clear conscious awareness of

  what was going on, and didn’t you enjoy it? Yes. And wasn’t all this crap latent

  in you all along? Yes. Okay, something brought you out. Suddenly it was Monster

  Time in your head, and you went forth to fulfill all the steamy dreams you had

  nurtured since your cramped lonely adolescence. Right? Right. And filed

  everything away for subsequent gloating. No wonder they sentenced you to

  deconstruct. Jesus, I feel filthy just rummaging through this stuff. Maker of

  masterpieces. Giver of unique visions. And your demonic laughter underneath.

  Telling the court you were insane, that you were in the grip of an irresistible

  impulse, an obsessive compulsion, but were you? Perhaps you thought you were

  creating a new kind of work of art, made not out of paint or clay or plastic or

  bronze but out of bleeding invaded female bodies, an abstract sculpture composed

  of dozens of victims, forming a pattern you alone could have designed. Jesus.

  What a case for obliteration you were!

  Macy noticed that the car no longer was moving. Hastily he plugged in the

  visuals again.

  They were parked in the central shopping plaza of a medium-sized suburban city,

  with two- and three-story Westchester Tudor half-timbered shops, freshly

  whitewashed and their brown beams newly painted, glistening in the amber light

  of late afternoon. Hamlin had his head out the side door; he was asking a

  policeman—apoliceman!— how to find Lotus Lane. A rapid-fire stream of

  instructions. Turn left at the computer stanchion, follow Colonial Avenue to

  Route 4480, turn right at the yellow blinker, go about ten blocks, no, twelve,

  you’ll come to the industrial park, you turn right there past the tall building

  and you drive on to the sniffer palace—a grin, we’ve even got that stuff up

  here!—and make a left and that puts you on Route 519, all the cross streets

  there are marked, you won’t miss Lotus. On the left.

  Thank you, officer. And off we go. Left, right, right, left. Quiet country lanes

  again. Hamlin tense. No difficulty following the instructions, though. Left,

  right, right, left, the sniffer palace, the residential area, Cypress Walk,

  Redbud Drive, Oak Pond Road, Lotus Lane. Lotus. Number 55. A trim stucco house

  twenty or thirty years old, with a perspex sundome and glossy oval

  opaquer-windows. A sign out front: THE KRAFFTS. Hamlin presented himself to the

  doorscanner. From within, via intercom, a warm firm sweetly modulated mezzo

  voice: “Who is it?”

  “Paul Macy.”

  “Paul. Macy.” Doubtfully. “Paul Macy? Oh, my God! My God, you shouldn’t have

  come here!”

  “Please,” Hamlin said. “Just a few minutes. To talk.”

  A moment of empty humming from the intercom. Then, hesitantly, “Well, I suppose.

  All right. Although this is probably a big mistake.” Two moments more; then the

  door began to open. In the same instant Hamlin’s left hand rose toward his

  throat. For the purpose, Macy sensed, of ripping the tell-tale Rehab badge from

  his clothing. Macy blocked the attempt with a fierce neural jab, the accuracy of

  which surprised him, Hamlin, his arm arrested in midclimb, stiffened and let the

  arm sag to his side, while simultaneously snapping a furious silent curse at

  Macy. The door was open. Framed in the vaulted entranceway stood a woman of

  extraordinary poise and beauty. Tall, nearly to his shoulder, but slender,

  fine-boned, a delicate tiny-featured face, alert ironic eyes, sleek glossy black

  hair in tumbling cascades, full sardonic lips, strong chin, long columnar neck.

  An aristocrat. Paul guessed her age at thirty-one or thirty-two. She held

  herself well.

  “Why did you come here?” she asked.

  “To see you, Noreen.”

  “Noreen?” The lips quirking with distaste. “Are we so intimate, then, that we

  use first names?”

  “Formality’s foolish. We were married once,” Hamlin said.

  “I was married to Nathaniel Hamlin, God help me.” She conspicuously eyed the

  Rehab badge. “Your name is Paul Macy, and I have a stack of data cubes inside

  containing the documents that indicate that Paul Macy is in no way an heir or

  assign of the former Nat Hamlin. I don’t know you. I never did.”

  “Don’t be too sure of that. Won’t you ask me in?”

  “My husband isn’t home.”

  “What of it? Am I some kind of wild beast? I’m house-broken, Noreen. You can let

  me in.”

  Her invisible shrug was unmistakable. A quick grudging nod. “All right. For a

  few moments.”

  The house was small but handsomely and expensively furnished. Hamlin’s gaze

  traveled quickly along the walls, taking in a pair of nightmarish masks from New

  Guinea, an African figurine, a baffling shaped painting in the form of a

  tesseract, and three magnificent little crystallines. Macy would have liked to

  linger and study the tesseract, but he was the prisoner of Hamlin’s eyes, and

  Hamlin continued turning until he came to rest on one of his works, an exquisite

  porcelain-finish image of Noreen, half life size, nude. Small high breasts,

  flaring waist, and, coming from the cloud of airborne speakers mounted in the

  dark hair, an ominously sensual viewer-responsive hundred-cycle rumble. Hamlin

  turned from Noreen to Noreen. “I wondered whether you’d kept it,” he said.

  “Why wouldn’t I? It’s superb.” Clouds crossing her face. “You remember it?”

  “I remember plenty.”

  “But the Rehab—”

  “Let’s not talk about that. Who’s your new husband?”

  “Sy Krafft. I don’t think you knew him.” Pausing. As if to run the tape of her

  conversation back a bit for a correction. “I don’t thinkHamlin knew him. He does

  floating spectaculars. A charming and cultivated person.” Pausing again. “How

  did you find me?”

  “I went to the old house. The woman who owned it gave me your name and address.”

  “The Rehab Center assured me that I’d never be troubled by you.”

  “Am I making trouble?”

  “You’re here,” she said. “That’s enough. What is it you want with me, Mr. Macy?”

  “Don’t call me Macy. You know who I am.”

  She stepped back from him, doing it artfully, so that she seemed merely to be

  moving about the room and not retreating. She looked like a bird thinking of

  taking wing. In a low voice she said, “I never expected this. They assured me

  you were gone forever.”

  “They made a mistake.”

  “Rehab doesn’t make mistakes. I saw your body after they burned you out of it.

  No, you aren’t Nat. You’re Macy, the new one, and you’re trying to play a joke

  on me, and I assure you it’s not in the least funny.”

  “I’m Nat Hamlin. His ghost walks the earth.”

  “You’re Paul Macy.”

  “Hamlin.”

  “It can’t be.”

  “You’re so fucking beautiful, Noreen. What is it, five years, and you haven’t

  changed at all. I get hard just standing in the same room with you. Are you

  making any films these days?”

  “I think it’s time you left.”

  “You still love me, don’t you? I know, I know, you feel uncomfortable having me

  here, you’re edgy and tense because you think Mr. Sy Krafft is going to walk in

  on us, but you want me as much as ever. I could prove it. I could put my hand

  between your legs and it would come away wet. It was always easy for me to smell

  a woman in heat, Noreen.”

  “You’re crazy, whoever you are. I want you to go.”

  “And I love you too, even more than before. Listen, don’t play-act with me,

  don’t give me that icy I-want-you-to-go crap. I’mback, Noreen. Don’t ask me how

  I managed it. I’m back. I’ll be going under the name of Macy, but it’s me, the

  real me here, and I’m going to start working again soon. I’ve already seen

  Gargantua. He’s signing me, he’s giving me money to open a studio. Very quietly

  I’ll reestablish myself. No rapes any more. None of that. I’ll be sedate and

  bourgeois, Mr. Paul Macy, Mr. Nobody, only underneath it’ll be Nat Hamlin. And

  you’ll come visit me, won’t you?”

  “I’ll visit you in jail, yes.”

  “You’ll visit me in my studio. We’ll sit and talk about how good it was before I

  crapped everything up. Remember, ’02, ’03, when we were just starting out? Lying

  on the beach in Antigua, and we couldn’t leave each other alone, we did it right