Doppelgangers (23 page)

He paused, again exhausted by the sudden strength of his conviction, his overwhelming conviction that his overwhelming victory had miscarried. He sighed again with a gathering despair.

“But it's no use—too late. I ought to have seen this development long ago. I can't get out now. There's no going back when you have gotten up to the pinnacle. Algol wouldn't let me. The road is blocked solid behind, me. I've not an inch that I could give, and I can't go an inch forward. No, none of them, from the very base up to those that have their automatics so ready that I can sometimes feel them in my back, none of them would let me go. If I step back, the guns will pitch me forward. Algol wouldn't let me, the people wouldn't dream of it—they
would,
they
all
would, rather have me dead, rather have me mad. I can't get out, I can't get out!”

After a month of this, the remodeled man began to realize what must now be ahead. But what could he do about it? It was unavoidably clear that Alpha had become parasitic on his hidden twin. True, the concealed partner could still give the figurehead relief. He could still get him ready so that he could take one of the monster reviews and rallies. But two symptoms showed the real depth of the inner change and balance. The first was that the great shows, when he, the remodeled man, had to take them, obviously took less out of him than out of the man he no longer thought of as his master. Of course, they were unbelievably tiring, but while he could and did recuperate, the other was clearly losing ground. It seemed that in the end that kind of exposure would kill anyone; and the man who had been at it longest would break soonest—that was all.

The second observation was even more significant of the change and more clear. After each such strain the old Alpha, as his attendant now called him in his mind, ran back to the safety and recharging of this essential stimulant. He had become an addict to these re-tonic muscular caresses. But though his mood was increasingly dependent, that was not to say it was increasingly intimate, still less affectionate or companionable. On the contrary, he was growing more gloomy, and in the shadows of his gathering depression lurked a darker shadow of suspicion, of oncoming paranoia. Though they had this queer kind of muscular intimacy, the human talk between them languished more and more. The attendant felt creeping over him the uncanny feeling that he was being turned into some kind of tamer that can keep a wild beast from attacking him only so long as he can stroke the animal and turn its savage mood to a kind of self-involved content.

One evening they were sitting together. A gloomy silence had fallen. Then Alpha rose silently and went out of the room by the door near his desk. After a couple of minutes he returned and before sitting down—indeed, as he was crossing the room to the fire—he spoke:

“Yes, I knew I was right. I've now spoken to the chief dresser. He agrees. There was something unconvincing in your last appearance. The old self which we thought we had rubbed out is coming back—just like the bramble on which a rose is grafted may reassert its old useless nature. You're here not to have a nature of your own, but to give your coarse vitality to mine.” He was growling now. “Get along. Go along the passage; the doors are open. He's waiting for you. We must cut out that sucker-growth at once.”

The remodeled man almost protested. Why the devil should he have to do it now! What madman's nonsense, even if the observation was true—which he doubted. But, of course, it was not the slightest use to protest. Like as not, he'd be killed that night if he did. No, he held quite good cards still, and the time to show one's hand hadn't yet come. He got up without a word and went out as he was directed. But he felt sure Alpha's eyes were on his back as he withdrew.

The whole thing, as he returned, he felt was a piece of neurotic farce. The dresser had kept him about five minutes and then, after having put him through some quite perfunctory movements and hardly seeming to attend to what he did or how he did it, glanced at his watch and remarking, “Yes, that's all right now,” began to switch off the lights and nodded him to the door.

As the remodeled man re-entered the study he saw that Alpha had become restless. He was just settling into his chair and the door to his bedroom and bathroom had not been latched; yes, and the door to the dining room—which surely the remodeled man had shut when they had come in from dinner—was ajar. But Alpha showed no sign that his companion had returned. They sat like this for perhaps half an hour. Then Alpha rose and without a word went into his bedroom, closing the door behind him.

The remodeled man waited for some twenty minutes. “He's gone to bed, I suppose,” he finally reflected. “Well, I'd better not wait up for Daddy's good night.” He went into the dining room, shut the door behind him, and so gained his own room. He slept quite well, however. If the man were going mad, well, what did it matter? When he was quite off his head, that might be the signal. After all, a sane man can usually move more quickly and surely than a madman. Yes, he could wait. The first thing, of course, was to give no sign to the tottering mind that he thought it on the brink, that he saw anything odd in its conduct or suspected any change in their relationship. And certainly, apart from the gathering gloom, Alpha didn't say or do anything that was eccentric. But the descent into a self-centeredness and a suspicious melancholy was steepening—there could be no doubt of that.

One evening—it was perhaps a week after the sudden freakish order for that evening drill—the degeneration that had taken place during the day was so marked that the remodeled man felt the time had come to take a sounding. They were by the fire as usual—for winter or summer there was always a fire of some sort, though when the days were warm it was of a fuel that gave a pretty light and practically no heat. The dinner had been dismal. Alpha had pushed his food about but hardly eaten any. And more than once his companion could not help noticing that the figure opposite him was far more interested in watching him than in the food. The attention was furtive, but there was no doubt about it, and that it was furtive made it all the more disquieting. Could the food be poisoned? No: for though Alpha ate very little he did taste every one of the dishes—he was trying to feed. But finally he had risen impatiently and gone into the study.

His companion followed in five minutes. His host was slumped in his chair looking at the fire. He looked so wretched that it was the obvious thing to say, “Wouldn't some massage help?” As it happened, for one reason or another they hadn't had one during the whole of that week. Alpha hadn't asked and somehow his attendant hadn't felt inclined to press it, if the other didn't request it. But the reaction was immediate and even more violent than it was rapid.

“No!” the other shouted. “No!”

And, as though this negative assertion, this protest and resistance, had broken up some jam inside him, there rushed out a flood of words. They were so confused and scrambled that for a little while the attendant couldn't sort them, still less imagine what reaction ought to meet them. Then a drift became clear—it was the old complaint but in a passionate key, and, as it went on, though the words became clearer, the storm of anger evidently rose.

“No one, not one, not a single person! Alone, alone, but ringed in, ringed, not even a wall to get one's back against. But I won't be caught! I—not caught. I was always master. I haven't been trapped. I can see the toils. Keep away, keep your distance!”

The remodeled man had not risen, of course, and now he sat back with deliberate ease. Certainly there was no danger just for the moment, unless one moved. His companion, though, had wheeled round, half dragging the chair with him. But the distance between them remained the same. As Alpha's eyes watched his companion, his hands kept on running over his cheeks, played with the collar of his tunic and the lapels, and worked at the neck. It was the usual nervous reaction of the fingers when the central controls are going. He had seen that before in men that were breaking down, or being broken down, or broken in too fast. Yes, he was working up to some crisis. And all the while this litany of protest and complaint, with antiphonals of defiance, kept on running from his working lips.

“Yes, they all think they have me trapped. And in a way they have. But I have ways out of traps. Well, I was never caught, and I won't be. Yes, a bull can leap right out of the ring when they think he's cornered. They underrated the force, the resource, the drive that's left when, fools, they corner the strongest will and drive in all the world. I'll cheat them. They never thought I could do that.…”

It was clear that he had forgotten, or perhaps didn't see, the figure that sat watching him. Yes, that was it, he didn't see really any longer. For suddenly he addressed the remodeled man with a laugh.

“I've had a dream. But I see my dreams are still full of genius; even asleep I know more than the whole rest of them when they're awake. I thought I had a model served up for me, Heaven knows from where: just found on the doorstep, I suppose, like a present from Santa Claus. I dreamed he took quite a lot of work off my hands and shoulders and then he used to massage me and that gave him his grip.”

He half rose from his chair and began to crouch. The remodeled man felt the moment must now be here. Alpha would now fly at him, surely. Involuntarily he drew himself together to take the rush. The movement was noticed by his companion.

“You're a phantom, a Doppelgänger, but you don't come near me. I know, I've felt it: if you touch me, then you become real and I fade away. That's what's been happening. You vampire that I've created in my fancy, so as to double my mind, you worse than Frankenstein monster, you've gotten your power because I let you cease to be a mental fancy, a kind of splintered personality, a shadow I could project and then make vanish by drawing you back into myself. I let you become a real body, a somebody, yes, final folly, I let you touch me, because you could give me your strength. Why, you were simply the echo of me! I'd made you, and, you shadow, you want life, of course, and to have your separate existence. And for that you have to draw on me, to suck me, to get not only into my mind but to get your hands on me and suck me dry, as a spider sucks the fly empty, like the boa constrictor just twists and crushes its enveloped victim till he's simply a tube of fodder.”

The man was almost screaming now. The remodeled man kept still and ready. No: the madman wasn't going to rush him yet, if he didn't move a finger. The fingers of the other kept on playing over his own neck. While in that position he couldn't make a plunge, and this storm of frenzy couldn't last. The arteries in the neck could be seen standing out, and the veins on the temples. The pressure was felt by the victim himself. He dragged at his collar, worked his fingers round the collar band at the back and thereby seemed to find a little relief. He became almost silent and then quite hushed, save for his rapid breathing. He must be feeling some seizure coming on. His hands were trying feebly to relieve some pressure he felt in the neck, in the arteries, the veins and muscles, all of which were dilated. Yes, he was making some kind of feeble effort to massage himself. He worked his fingers back to get the big supporting muscles of the cervical vertebrae into his touch. There, evidently, he felt he must find some relief.

To the man looking on, into his mind there suddenly flashed the queer little scene of the masseur—the first man he had felt any friendliness with, after his operations—trying to show him how to massage his own neck. Well, evidently the poor creature now in front of him was getting or imagining he was getting something of the same relief. His movements became quieter. Though his fingers were hidden from his watcher, the face, too, it was clear, was settling. He had looked pathetically like someone wrestling with a refractory collar stud he couldn't either see or get a proper hold on. Now he was actually at ease for a moment. The eyes too, which had been seeing nothing, cleared. For one moment the onlooker felt he was recognized.

The lips he was watching said slowly, “Yes, you'd have held me trapped. Me! But I found out, I found you out, I'm out, out!”

The fingers slipped up and forward as though he would put them over his ears. His head went forward like a drowsy man's. With a bound, the onlooker was at his side. He slipped his hand onto the neck artery, now flaccid. Then, glancing down from where he stood above the curled-up man in the chair, his eyes remained a moment fixed. Only for a moment, though. An instant later he was through the dining room, into his own sitting room, into his slip of a bedroom and the small bay where his shaving mirror hung and, under it, the small pouch for the shaving things. He snatched it open, glanced, and ran back through the dining room into the great study. The man in the chair had not stirred—of course not, that would hardly be expected. But he himself must stir. There wasn't a moment, and he must make speed for two. Maybe he was a shadow; well, shadows must move and they do move fast when what has thrown them is falling. But he must move neatly as well as quickly.

He bent down, placing his fingers gingerly on the back of the neck. Then, with his other hand, he pulled. It came away quite easily, though. And it had left no mark. A moment after you couldn't say where the puncture had been made. But it had been driven home well; there was no doubt of that.

It was all clear now, and as he made his dispositions, his mind gave him all the steps that had led to where he must now, as he was doing, carry on. He had been told—and indeed had seen some evidence of it when he was being trained and let see a thing or two to toughen him—that when the mind goes, when it breaks under strain, very often one of its splinters will pierce and penetrate the mind that had broken it, or any other whole mind that may be about and somehow strike its tangental interest, so that a man who is going off his head will often tell the doctor who is surveying him what is going on in the doctor's own mind. That certainly had happened with Alpha. Somehow, under the strain, he had had this sudden insight. That was why he had suddenly sent his understudy to take that five-minute lesson. At that moment he knew what the Alpha pin was for and had gone and fetched it from where his understudy had put it when he was told he needn't wear it. He'd just stowed it away with the shaving tackle, feeling that after all he did not know when, if ever, he'd want it.