tiring. Why go on? She didn’t want to hear this.

  He became angry with her, hostile, irritated, begrudging her the resources of

  strength she was draining from him. And for what, this tremendous effort of his?

  What good? Everything he gave her the fever ate. She was the conduit through

  which his energies rushed uselessly into a shoreless sea. Now there was loud in

  him the voice of temptation, telling him to leave her while he still could, to

  forget her, to make his own difficult way through the world without dragging her

  on his back.

  You owe her nothing. You have troubles of your own, many of them caused by her.

  Why this quixotic desire to rescue and repair her? Let her sink. Let her fry.

  Let her freeze. Let her stew. Go. She told you to go: therefore go. This shabby

  burned-out girl with her implausible affliction, her ESP. Her chattering angry

  voices. The necklace of grime on her chest. Vacant glassy eyes. Go.

  To this Macy answered, not releasing Lissa’s sweating palm, that he would hear

  no counsel of defeat, nor would he abandon her now. He went on urging her to

  come out of her trance; he pleaded with her not to give up. Here I am: take

  strength from me. Let me be your shield and your support. He conceived the

  notion of hauling her from the bed and carrying her out of the room, to that

  shower in the hall, where he would let the cool cleansing water sluice her from

  her lethargy. He naked beside her as the purifying deluge descended.

  Up, then. To the shower. Grunting, he seized her by the shoulders, but her body

  was a dead weight and there was suddenly a terrific fiery bolus in his chest and

  a band of hot steel across his forehead, and he realized that she had already

  drained too much from him, that he was no longer strong enough to lift her. He

  let her fall back and collapsed across her, panting. His eyes were wet, he knew

  not whether from pain or despair or frustration or rage. Saving her was beyond

  him. He was too weak. He was too weary. He was too empty. He had given all he

  could give, and it had not been enough, and now he could give no more. Perhaps

  if I rest. Perhaps in a little while.

  But he knew he was being foolish. He was drained. He would not soon recover. And

  now, too, he knew who it was who had tempted him to turn back before reaching

  this point, for he felt the presence hot within him, rising, expanding, glowing,

  the dark presence of his other self coming forth from his hidden lair,

  whispering wordlessly to him, crooning, inviting him to yield.

  Shall I fight him?Can I fight him? I must. I must. Macy readied himself to

  resist. Searching the corridors of his soul for forgotten reservoirs of

  strength. But he feared it was too late, that the takeover was already

  beginning. Already he felt a familiar sensation, a prickling at the back of his

  neck, a tingling, a mild stiffening of the skin. The unseen fingers were at

  work, stroking the lobes of his brain, caressing the prominences and

  corrugations. Inviting him to yield. Yes. Yes. Temptation. An end to turmoil and

  torment.No, Macy said,I will not let you have me.

  He attempted to get to his feet, but the best he could manage was to roll

  heavily free of Lissa and lie beside her. She seemed to be unconscious. A sleep

  beyond all dreams. How peaceful she looks. And I could sleep that sleep. Come,

  said the voiceless voice in wordless words, let me enfold you, let me supplant

  you. Let there no longer be struggle between us. Give way to me.No! You will not

  have me!

  And Macy reached out toward Lissa, seeking her, asking alliance. The two of us

  against him. We can strike at him, we can destroy him. Lissa was a million

  million miles away. Her planetoid of ice. The cold light of the distant sun

  dancing on the walls of the glacier. The tempter said, You see, there is no help

  to be had from her. Now is the time. Step aside for me. Be realistic, Macy, be

  realistic! Macy attempted to be realistic. Where shall I go? How shall I fight?

  Who shall I be? And saw how little hope there was. He could not save himself. He

  had not been designed for this sort of stress. They had sent him on this second

  trip laden with an impossible burden, and was it then any surprise that the trip

  was a bummer? Let us end it. Let us fight no more. He would rest, he would close

  himself to struggling and hoping, he would surrender. The odds were too high

  against him. Outside waited Gomez, the van, the long cold needles, the drugs,

  all the machinery of deconstruction. Inside lurked Hamlin. Beside him lay this

  shattered girl. All right. I yield. I will fight no more.

  —Then get out of the way, Hamlin said, and let me become you.

  The mixing of selves was beginning. The dissolving, the blending. Paul Hamlin.

  Nat Macy, I am he. He is I. Maelstrom. Blinded by churning debris raining upon

  them out of their entangled pasts. A holocaust of dislocated events. As we

  dissolve into one another. Jeanie Grossman beneath the snows of Mount Rainier.

  And the girl with the long straight silken golden hair. Look, all through

  history girls have been posing for famous artists. Let me show you these charts,

  ma’am, explaining the special advantages of our encyclopedia. Why should you go

  to art school? My boy, you are already a master! Members of the class of ’93,

  welcome to the UCLA campus. Hey, no, officer! Put that stunner down! I

  surrender, damn you, I surrender! I’ll go peacefully! It isn’t a matter of

  opinion, it’s a matter of voltage thresholds. A voltage doesn’t lie. Amperes

  don’t have opinions. Resistances don’t fuck around with you for sly tactical

  reasons. We’re dealing in objective facts, and the objective facts tell me that

  Nat Hamlin has been wiped out. One-and-two-and-one-and-two. Proudly down the

  goddam street. Your new career. Your new life.Shqkm. Vtpkp. Smss! Grgg! Will the

  defendant please rise. Nathaniel James Hamlin you have heard the verdict of your

  peers. Don’t play around with me. I know you’re Nat Hamlin. You’re looking good,

  Nat. THE TORMENTS OF FAME. THE DAY THE MUSEUM BOUGHT EVERYTHING. MY NAME IS

  LISSA. No! Come back! Paul! Paul!Nat! Paul Hamlin. Nat Macy. We are becoming

  one. We are dissolving each into each. I will be you and you will be nothing.

  And there will be peace at last.

  Lissa!LISSA!

  Abruptly the sky darkened and without warning bolts of lightning flashed and

  terrible thunder came and a sword swept down, trailing streamers of fire, to

  cleave the hemispheres of his brain one from the other. Between the two there

  loomed an unbridgeable gap, and on the far side of it Macy beheld Hamlin,

  stunned, dazed, wandering through a charred and blasted meadow as lightning

  struck all about him. That sudden fierce blow had severed all connection between

  them just at the instant of merger. I am Paul Macy. He is Nat Hamlin. And the

  crashing of the lightning. Blinding white streaks splitting the sky. Is that

  Lissa up there? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. She hurls the bolts. Crash! Crash! Hamlin

  tries to dodge. Across the great gulf drifts the scent of burning flesh. He is

  wounded. He moves more slowly. Crash! She has hemmed him in by a zone of fire on

  every side. Now Hamlin offers resistance. He shakes his fist; he shouts; he

  seizes her bolts and hurls them back at her. But each act of defiance brings

  redoubled furies out of the heavens. Her aim is deadly. Lightning spears his

  toes. Lightning licks at his heels. He hops. He dances. He screams in rage and

  then in pain. His arm is blackened by a bolt; be can no longer return her

  shafts. Now he writhes on the smouldering earth; now he shrieks for mercy. But

  there will be no mercy. Lissa is the avenging goddess. Hamlin will be destroyed.

  But what’s this? In the moment of triumph she tires. She weakens. The bolts lose

  intensity, and Hamlin still lives! He regains strength. She cries out for

  help.Paul, Paul, Paul, Paul. Yes, he replies, from his place beyond the zone of

  combat. Hamlin has risen. He is hideously disfigured, he is maimed and ruined,

  but yet there is demonic power in him, and now he lashes back at her, trying to

  bring her tumbling down to his own level. Crackling energies climb the sky. Help

  me, Paul!

  And Macy opens himself to her, letting her take from him whatever she must have,

  and he arms her so that she can return to the attack. Again her lightnings

  flash. Again Hamlin howls. His thrusts are beaten back. He cannot fight on. He

  falls. A bolt pierces his back. He twists and coils in frightful convulsions.

  Lissa transfixes him again. Again. He is burning. He is dying. The odor of

  charred flesh on the wind. The sky is a sheet of white fire. She is spending

  herself, emptying herself, to eradicate him. She is cutting him to pieces.

  Hamlin still moves, but now only in the random galvanic twitches of the dead.

  The meadow is a blazing pyre. He burns. He burns. He dwindles. He is gone. The

  sky grows still. Lissa can no longer be seen. A strange silence has come; a

  gentle cooling rain begins to fall. The air is sweet. The clouds part; the rain

  ends; the soft sunlight returns. There is no gulf between the regions of the

  brain. Macy crosses over. He sees no trace of Hamlin but only a dark place on

  the ground, a blackened scar in the grass, and quickly the grass grows to hide

  it, tall green blades moving swiftly in, sprouting tender new shoots that rise

  and meet, and soon there is no sign of destruction anywhere, although Macy knows

  that beneath the graceful grassy carpet one might find a layer of ash, if one

  chose to excavate. He walks away from that place. He is utterly alone. Lissa? he

  calls. Lissa? But there is no reply. Silence governs. He is utterly alone.

  After a time he sat up and got carefully to his feet. The sense of being alone

  remained with him. There was a faint throbbing in his head, of the sort one

  might feel if one were transported suddenly from the heart of some great city to

  the eerie soundless wastelands of the polar plateau, but otherwise he was aware

  of no aftereffects of the battle. Except one. Hamlin was gone from him. That

  much was certain: Hamlin was gone.

  He looked at Lissa. She lay as before, limp, glassy-eyed, self-isolated. Her

  bare skin glistened with sweat. The feverish look had left her, and, touching

  her side, he found that she was indeed cooler. Not only the fever had departed

  from her, though. For the first time since he had known her, Macy was unable to

  detect that look of terrible strain in her features, that expression of barely

  suppressed despair. She was calm. Her inner storms, as well as his, were over.

  But her calmness was of a frightening sort. She seemed vacant, almost entirely

  absent.

  “Lissa?” he said. “Can you hear me?”

  “Lis—Lis—”

  “Lissa.”

  “Lissa,” he said. “Lissa is you.”

  “Lissa is you.” Her voice was high, childish, fluting, toneless.

  “No. No. I’m Paul. You’re Lissa.”

  “I’m Paul. You’re Lissa.”

  He sat beside her. He took her hands in his. Her fingers were very cold. Her

  eyes closed a moment; then the lids fluttered and she opened them and looked at

  him in a sunny, uncomprehending way, and she smiled. He said, “You’ve burned

  yourself out, haven’t you? You just used up everything you had. To save me. And

  now there’s nothing left but a husk.”

  “Husk.”

  “Is the ESP gone too, I wonder? Can you still hear the voices? Do you hear them,

  Lissa?”

  “Voices. Do you. Hear them. Lissa.”

  “You don’t, do you? Not any more.”

  “No,” she said unexpectedly. “I don’t hear. Anything.”

  Her response startled him. “You can understand me now? The voices are really

  gone?”

  A smile. A fluttering of the eyelids. A babyish giggle. “The. Voices. Are.

  Really. Gone.” She had slipped away from him once more.

  He searched the room for a telephone. None. He went to the door and looked into

  the hall. A phone out there, yes. Someone using it. Chattering away. All right,

  I’ll wait. A few minutes. And then phone Gomez. Send your van, I’ll tell him.

  Manhattan North People’s Co-op, and hurry. Not for me. For her, for Lissa. Yes.

  Burned out, hardly knows her own name. But there’s something still intact down

  deep inside her. Not much, but enough, maybe, for you to work with, Gomez. No,

  you don’t have to bother with me. I’m okay. It’s over. Hamlin’s gone,

  obliterated for keeps, gone, really gone. A total deconstruct. But the girl. Can

  you fix her, Gomez? Can you put her back together? It won’t be like a

  reconstruct, exactly. You won’t have to pour a new identity into an old body,

  just put an old identity back where it belongs. Okay, Gomez? You’ll do it? Good.

  Good. And how long will it take? Five months, six, a year? Whatever. Just do it.

  Five months. Six. November. December. Macy saw himself waiting at the main

  building of the Rehab Center. Snow on the ground, the branches of the trees

  heavy with whiteness, the sky a wintry blue. And Lissa, renewed, repaired,

  coming toward him out of the inner wing. No longer a telepath. A brand-new

  Lissa, stripped of her gift and of her torment. Uncertain of herself as she goes

  forth to face the world. Hello, he’ll say. Hello, she’ll say. An awkward little

  kiss. Button up, he’ll tell her, it’s cold. I’ve got a car. She’ll look worried.

  Are we going into the city? she’ll ask. My first day out. I’m nervous. You know

  what it’s like, Paul, coming out. Sure, he’ll say, I know just what it’s like.

  But you’ll be all right. New people, new lives. The second trip. Paul and Lissa,

  Lissa and Paul. Minus our old friend Nat. A great artist has gone from the

  world. How quiet it is inside my head. Five months. Six. November. December.

  Lissa?

  She was giggling softly, and her hands were exploring her body, discovering this

  and that as a baby might. Lightly he touched her cheek. She wriggled in

  pleasure. You wait, he said. Gomez will fix you better than you were before.

  Macy peered into the hall again. The phone still busy. Come on, get off the

  line, get off, get off! He didn’t say it. He stood in the doorway, waiting to

  make his call, half expecting Hamlin to rise from somewhere, but Hamlin did not

  arise. Gone. Gone. My other self, my dark twin. He has left the world, and I

  have his place. Macy almost felt guilty about it. The merest flicker of regret.

  Farewell to you, Nat, a long farewell to Mr. Hyde. And I will go on through life

  without you. Wearing your skin, wearing your face. I am you, Nat, and you are

  nothing.

  Macy looked back at Lissa. She was drooling. As I must have drooled, he thought.

  Four years ago when I was very new. He went to her and mopped her chin. It’s all

  right, he said to her without bothering to speak aloud. December isn’t so far

  away. And then hello, and then we start again. Two ordinary people. Trip two,

  yours, mine. The second trip. The good one, maybe. From the hall came the click

  of the receiver. The phone was free at last. He went out to call Gomez.

  Visit www.fictionwise.com for information on additional titles by this and other

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  Unknown, Silverberg, Robert - Second Trip.txt

 

 

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