Farmer, Philip José - Traitor to the Living (25 page)

He should have expected anything, but her pronunciation startled him. It was a New England twang, and the there are came out as theah ah.

She must have spoken thus deliberately, because thereafter her speech was standard mid-Western. The rhythm was not quite that of the Patricia he had known. He should have caught on, he told himself, he should have heard it. But then he wasn't looking for it.

She disappeared into the kitchen, returning with a large butcher knife. His bowels constricted at sight of it, but she intended to use it, for the moment anyway, on the box. She hacked away the cardboard, separating the corners down to the bottom and then put her foot against the metal cube it had contained and slid the bottom of the box out from it. When she went into the kitchen again, he saw that it bore a CRT and a control panel.

She entered his view pushing a serving cart. With much huffing and puffing and some swearing, she hoisted the metal cube onto the top of the cart. She unreeled from its back a long power cord. It was not, however, long enough to satisfy her. She went into the kitchen again and came back with a heavy-duty extension cord. After connecting the cord, she plugged it into the wall socket.

She went around to the back of the machine and checked something. Looking up, she saw that he was staring at her. She smiled and said, "Old Rufton attached an automatic control device to this, but you have to make sure the two wires from it are connected to terminals. This model is jerry-built, a prototype, but it works."

She went around to the front and adjusted dials and pressed some buttons. The screen glowed for a minute, but it became dull again when she pressed the off button.

"There. It's working fine. Everything is going fine, except for you. And that's no real problem."

Carfax said nothing. He glared at her as she sat down on the sofa across the room from him and lit a cigarette.

"All right," she said. "How did you find out?"

"Pat.. . Pat," he said, choking. Tears were suddenly running down his cheeks, and he wept with sorrow for her.

She--he couldn't think of her as a male--looked coolly at him and waited until he was able to talk.

"A good cry never hurt anyone," she said. "Though it isn't going to do you much good in the long run.

Now, how did you find out?"

"Pat hates--hated--celery," he said. "And when I went into the kitchen and saw that you were drinking coffee with cream and sugar, I knew you couldn't be Pat."

She shrugged and said, "That's why I seemed to be expecting something when I served you coffee. I didn't know if you took it black or not. I was ready to cover up with a plea of momentary forgetfulness if you said anything. I didn't know how she liked her coffee, so I drank it in the kitchen. I goofed anyway. I love celery, and it never occurred to me that anyone might not. So much for the best laid plans of mice and men. But it's going to be all right. My schedule has to be revised, that's all."

"What'd you hit me with?" he said.

"A hammer I had lying on the counter just in case. I was afraid I'd killed you. That would've been very bad, because I would have had a hell of a hard time explaining your sudden and violent demise. And I'm tired of running. Fortunately, I'm not strong, and you have a thick skull. And a thick brain, too."

"It doesn't feel like it," Carfax said. "I may throw up."

"I examined you. You only have a slight concussion, as far as I can tell, anyway. You'll live. At least, your body will."

Carfax knew that he had no chance of escaping, none at all. But he wanted desperately to stave off the inevitable, and the best way to do that was to keep her talking.

"How did you find out that Patricia was living here?"

"It wasn't difficult. I still have an organization, you know. I knew where you all were all the time, you, your cousin, Langer. That's why I went to the house near Pontiac. It's just one of about two dozen hideouts I had ready. I knew you'd track me down through NIC if I ordered parts to build another MEDIUM. So I set it up to look as if I'd been electrocuted accidentally while putting it together. But first I built this miniMEDIUM, the plans for which were drawn by your uncle, dumb old Rufton. He was a scientific genius, but he was stupid. He really thought I was going to let him live."

"I doubt that," Carfax said. "He went along with you, I'm sure, because he hoped to escape."

"And look where he is now, back in his colony."

"In the original colony?"

"Oh yes. If a semb is pulled out by MEDIUM, its place isn't taken by another semb. It seems to be left open for the original; it rejects a new one. Why, I don't know. I think I'll get some more coffee."

Though Carfax's mouth was dry, he would be damned if he would ask her for anything to drink. Damned was the right term, he thought. He was headed toward damnation.

She came back with a cup of coffee and a glass of water. Seeing Carfax's surprise, she said, "Have to keep you healthy, you know. Here, drink this, and don't do anything heroic, like spitting it in my face."

She held the glass to his lips, tipping it back now and then. The water tasted delicious, and with it came hope. It was ridiculous for him to be hopeful in this situation, but then you never knew what would happen in this universe. Whereas, in that other, you knew. You whirled around in a strictly regulated dance, orbiting other hopeless things. What was it like to be without a body, to be a creature of pure energy? He would find out soon enough. Unless .. .

Even if he could get free of his ropes, he might not be able to do anything. He felt weak, and any sudden movement of his head shot pain through it, and his face felt as if it were covered with fire ants.

He watched her sit down on the sofa, and he said,

"How did you get Patricia?"

She laughed and said, "I drove down here late at night, went around to the back, used a diamond-pointed cutter to remove a pane of glass in the door, reached in, unfastened the lock, cut out another pane of glass in the French window, reached in, unlocked it, unfastened the chain, and presto, I was inside. I went upstairs and found your cousin sleeping away. Judging from the odor of whiskey, she'd been drinking heavily.

I injected a moderate amount of morphine to keep her asleep, tied her up, and set up my brand-new, handy-dandy, mostly transistorized, portable mini-MEDIUM, the latest product of your uncle. After she'd recovered, I raped her. I couldn't see all that beauty going to waste. Besides, I wanted to pay her back for turning me down in L.A. I will admit that I did worry about making myself pregnant, but I assumed that she was on the pill."

"You lousy son of a bitch!"

"You can do better than that, I'm sure," she said.

"Then I set up the MEDIUM and made the switch.

That was tricky, not the actual switching, I mean, but assuring that, once I was in her body, I could take care of her in Dennis's body. While I was still in Dennis' body, I taped my ankles together and tied them to the bed with a heavy rope. Then I taped my left hand to my left leg. That wasn't easy, but I was heavily motivated, as they say nowadays.

"Your cousin was in a chair beside mine. She was doped so she wouldn't struggle too hard, and she may not even have realized what was taking place. I couldn't dope her too heavily. When the switch was made I didn't want to be too sluggish. I had to recover quickly enough to stop her--in Dennis's body then--from freeing herself. Another factor I had to consider was the initial trouble with coordinating. A semb always has that difficulty when it first takes over, you know. Or do you?"

"I figured it out," Carfax said. "When I got a report of Mifflon's behavior during the first week he was at Megistus. By the way, who was in Mifflon?"

She chuckled and said, "You'd like me to talk forever, wouldn't you? Anything to stall me. Well, I don't mind. I like an appreciative audience. I had to pick a semb who knew how to fly a twin-engine jet. I could >have had Mifflon flown in, but it was well-known that he wouldn't permit anyone but himself at the controls.

I didn't want him to deviate from his normal behavior.

So I got a semb who had been an air force general.

Travers. You may remember his death from an automobile accident about five years ago. I located him and explained the setup, and he yelled a lot about ethics, but he came through all right. They all do. How did you find out about Mifflon?"

Carfax said, "You'll never know."

She smiled and said, "Very admirable. Noble to the end. You won't squeal on Mrs. Webster. Oh, don't look so shocked. She had to be the source of information.

She was the only one Mifflon ever confided in. Mifflon didn't tell me he'd told Webster he was going to confess to me, but it wasn't hard to figure out. I didn't bother to erase Webster, as they say nowadays. She was no danger. Who's going to pay attention to a crazy spiritualist?

But I did keep an eye on her. An ear, rather. I had her place bugged.

"Back to your cousin. I was half-doped and subject to dizziness and uncoordination when I changed. But then your cousin was also subject to that, and she didn't have the practice I've had overcoming it. So, with the helmets on and everything set up, I pressed the button that would start an automatic operation. Everything was set up ahead of time, the proper coordinates fixed and the switching done without manual adjustment of the controls. Even so, I hesitated for a few minutes. This was the first time I'd ever worked the automatic device. Due to the attack on Megistus, I had no time to test it. What if Rufton had made an error? What if some especially strong semb seized his chance and took over?"

"That can happen?" Carfax said.

"It has happened. I did it. You ought to know that.

Western and Rufton were experimenting with a prototype, there were two, you know. No, you wouldn't. One was in your uncle's house and one was in Western's apartment. I think Western had some plans for grabbing the MEDIUM for himself. That may have been why he insisted on building a second one at his place.

Perhaps. I don't really know. In any event, I was contacted by them through Western's machine. It was an accident, they weren't looking for me, they were just probing around. But I knew that the way was open, and I took it."

"How did you know?"

"I just knew it. The English language, any language, I suppose, is incapable of describing what it's like to be

a semb. You can't see, hear, smell, taste, or feel. There are no sensory inputs or outputs at all. There is no sense of time, which is fortunate, Otherwise we'd go crazy. And don't ask me how you can exist without a sense of the passage of time. I don't know, but you do exist without it. There is, however, communication among the members of your colony. There is no communication between colonies, though, so you're restricted to eighty people. Forever and forever until MEDIUM was invented. I don't know how we communicated, but we quote heard unquote words. We spoke by some process I don't understand; perhaps it was a form of telepathy or modulated energy transmission.

"Whatever ... I was able to understand only three members. One was a woman who spoke some English, a Boer who'd died a few seconds after I did ..."

"Which was when?" Carfax said.

"Which was January 7, 1872. You'd like to know who I am? I'll tell you in good time. I like to save the best for the last. There was also a Frenchman who was very fluent in English, a poet. I didn't have much in common with him or the Boer. And I had less in common with the other English speaker, an incredibly arrogant and stupid British lord, a veteran of the Crimean War. The rest were either speakers of gibberish, Chinese and the like, or babies. That was the worst part of all, I think, hearing those babies wailing on and on. But I quickly learned to shut them out."

"That shoots my theory down," Carfax said. "The sembs really are the dead?" "Oh, you're talking about that wild idea of yours that they're things pretending to be the dead?"

She laughed and said, "That may be useful, though.

I'm thinking about making an announcement that your theory has been proved after all. That way, I can get rid of all this antagonism from the religious swine. I'll continue to deal with the sembs, of course, but in secret. My main revenue will be from MEDIUM as a power source."

"I don't think you can convince people of that now," Carfax said.

She shrugged and said, "Then I'll handle the situation in another way. My, we do get off the subject, don't we? Anyway, I finally punched the automatic-on button, and the switch was transacted as planned. I was in Patricia's mind. I was drowsy, only half-conscious, since the semb, when it's integrated with the body, is affected by physical causes. My body wanted to sleep, but I didn't, and so I forced myself to carry out my plan. It wasn't easy, but I have a very strong will. I fumbled around with the knot I'd tied in the rope I'd put around her to keep her from falling out of the chair. I got it loose and tried to stand up, but I fell over, tearing the helmet off my head.

"Meanwhile, your cousin had been struggling like mad, but she'd only succeeded in falling backward with the chair. She had stunned herself. I taped her other arm down, and then I tore the tape off my own mouth. I'd put it on Patricia to keep her from screaming, just as I'd taped my own mouth when in Dennis's body to keep her from screaming when she was switched. I managed to give her an injection to put her under until noon, and I crawled into bed and went to sleep."

"You left her lying on the floor on her back tied up to that chair?"

"Sure, why not? She was going to die that night anyway. Besides, I didn't have the coordination or the strength to set her back up. I woke about noon and walked around the house and up and down the steps until I mastered myself. It was strange being in a woman's body, but I found I liked it. I got a big thrill from caressing myself. And from thinking about how recently I'd been screwing myself."

She laughed loudly for a long time. After wiping away the tears, she said, "You don't know how eager I was to get you to bed and try out my woman's body. I'll admit I found it repulsive in the beginning. I'd never kissed a man before. But I got over that, and let me tell you, women enjoy sex more than a man can. I didn't think it was possible, but I had the living proof of it.