Transmigration (8 page)

 

 

Judy's plan was working all right. However, the strain was not enough.

 

 

--Pity, she said.
--I thought that would do it. Oh well . . .

 

 

She fell. Deliberately she fell. As she did so, she twisted lithely in
the air. She couldn't conceal from Fletcher for more than a split second
her intention of catching the parapet with her hands and pulling herself
back safely.

 

 

But for him, this scarcely registered. He was falling off a skyscraper.

 

 

He thought of nothing else but escape. Survival was neither here nor
there. It was not death he was afraid of, or dying, but the far more
terrifying fact of falling from the parapet.

 

 

Fleetingly he knew that he could have tumbled deliberately into the
basement well to kill himself and Judy . . . but he could not fall from
the top floor of the skyscraper.

 

 

Everything that was left of him went into the effort to escape.

 

 

And he escaped.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER 3: ROSS

 

 

Again he found himself in bed, but this time he was powerless to open
his eyes or move.

 

 

Soundlessly he groaned. It was not over.

 

 

In one way it was the same as before: he was ravenous. Other considerations
had driven from his mind the fierce hunger he had experienced in the young
body of Judy.

 

 

Fletcher had always been hungry. Like a compulsive drinker who slipped in
extra, surreptitious snorts because his friends could not keep up with
him, he had supplemented the normal three meals a day with mid-morning,
mid-afternoon and late-evening snacks. Perhaps his early lean years in
the Homes had something to do with it: as a boy in the thirties he had
good reason to be always hungry. Charity had not been particularly cold
to him, but it had never been over-generous.

 

 

There was another theory, of which he was not unaware . . . psychologists
suggested that unnatural hunger could be caused by lack of affection.
Unwanted, unloved children turned to gluttony. Well, that could be
relevant. Until very recently, until illness began to claim him, he had
eaten, when he could afford it, like seven men; but like the seven lean
kine he ate up the seven fat kine, and when he had eaten them up he was
still lean and ill-favored, as in the beginning.

 

 

He prayed that Judy was safe. He did not know if she had caught the
parapet, because he had escaped before waiting to find out.

 

 

And it was not over. Now he was in another body, this time, he somehow
knew, the body of a man. The body of a man who, apparently, was asleep.
Fletcher did not seriously attempt to rouse him. His experience with
Judy had made him cautious.

 

 

Remembering how comparatively little of him had survived in Judy, he
sought himself, such as he was, and found just about the same as he had
found in Judy. After all, his bags were already packed.

 

 

Yet there was one difference.

 

 

Nous ne nous endormirons pas tons, mais nous
serons tous changés: en un instant, en un clin d'oeuil,
ŕ la derničre trompette, car la trompette . . .

 

 

He knew it all. The word he had not been able to remember was 'aiguillon.'

 

 

Now he wondered if he had ever really accepted death. Consciously, yes.
Yet perhaps not entirely, with his whole being.

 

 

Now, consciously, he tried to get out of the mind he was in. He tried
to die without killing his host. With a firm prohibition against merely
jumping to yet another body, he tried desperately to leave the one he
was in. And he failed.

 

 

Only at the moment of death had he been able to make a mental leap into
the mind of Judy. Only in utter terror, terror beyond ordinary fear of
death, had he been able to leave the mind of Judy.

 

 

For the moment at least, he was stuck where he was. His realization of
this was so complete, so incontrovertible, that peace descended on him;
and, like his host, he slept.

 

 

 

 

When he awoke, he was a prisoner. He could see, feel, hear and think,
but he was helpless.

 

 

His host yawned, scratched himself, got out of bed and dropped his
pajama trousers, his only garment, to the floor. A quick cold shower
made Fletcher wince incorporately; he experienced the cold shower as
near agony.

 

 

Then as the host shaved, Fletcher saw his face.

 

 

It was remarkably like his own, though more than twenty years younger:
lean, sharp, dark-complexioned, yet glowing with health. The body was
similar too, tall, spare, sinewy.

 

 

And he had seen the face before. This was one of the students who had
assisted Baudaker at the all-night session.

 

 

This time Fletcher could make no contact with the rest of the brain he
inhabited. He tried cautiously at first, then more strongly. Nothing
happened. He was certain his host had no idea he was there.

 

 

It was not difficult to guess why. Judy's poor little mind was easy
to dominate. Yet even there he had been overborne, had finally been
ejccted. In the mind of a young, strong man, what little was left of
Fletcher was no more than a memory, a shadow.

 

 

He did not even know his host's name.

 

 

But the young student, after toweling himself vigorously, obligingly
went to the door, still naked, and picked up the four letters lying on
the mat. They were all addressed to Ian Ross.

 

 

Ross put a match to the two envelopes which obviously contained bills,
without opening them, and threw them in the empty grate. The two others
were from girls. He glanced at the signatures, Sandra and Veronica,
and put them on the mantel unread.

 

 

The small flat was vaguely familiar, and Fletcher guessed that this was
simply because it was very like his own.

 

 

Ross went to the tiny kitchen and turned on the heat below a frying
pan. Back in his bedroom he threw on a clean white shirt, underpants,
slacks, socks, shoes. Combing his thick hair, he whistled tunelessly.

 

 

Returning to the kitchen as the fat in the pan began to sizzle, he
broke two eggs into it and added a couple of rashers of bacon, rather
carelessly. Shortly afterward he ate breakfast with an undiscriminating
appetite which could tackle anything that was not completely spoiled.

 

 

Fletcher enjoyed breakfast, unlike the cold shower. There was bacon left,
and plenty of eggs. He tried to prod Ross into frying more eggs and bacon,
but this effort, too, failed.

 

 

Some ninety minutes later Ross was at a lecture, and when Fletcher
discovered the subject was Heine, he began to guess why he had landed
in Ross's mind, of all minds.

 

 

Ross was tall and lean, like Fletcher; he was a modern languages student,
and Fletcher was a modern languages graduate; he had taken part in a
long series of experiments in which he tried over and over again to
touch Fletcher's mind; he lived alone in a flat like the one in which
Fletcher had lived alone; and there was one more thing about him that
Fletcher guessed, with a fair assurance of being correct. Anita was a
common factor.

 

 

After the lecture a girl came up to Ross. She was garishly dressed,
attractive, not pretty. She said: "Well, what about it?"

 

 

"What about what?" said Ross.

 

 

"Didn't you get my letter?"

 

 

"Oh . . . yes, Sandra, I believe I did."

 

 

"Well, what about it?" she demanded impatiently.

 

 

He laughed. "I didn't read it."

 

 

"You didn't read it?" she said fiercely. "You . . . "

 

 

"I got two bills too. I threw them in the fire."

 

 

"Ian Ross, get this straight. I'm not going to a backstreet abortionist.
I'm going to have the baby. I don't want to marry you, but . . . "

 

 

"That's good. I don't want to marry you either." And he walked past her
as if she had suddenly vanished.

 

 

When Ross came on a group of three men students in gowns, one greeted
him enthusiastically, one unenthusiastically, and one walked away.

 

 

"Ian, what about Veronica?" said the first eagerly.

 

 

"Well, what about Veronica?"

 

 

"Will she do it?"

 

 

Ross clapped his hand dramatically to his forehead.

 

 

"Sorry, Eric . . . "

 

 

"You didn't ask her?"

 

 

"No, I asked her. You made me promise, and I always keep my promises,
except to girls."

 

 

"And what did she say?"

 

 

"She said she'd think about it."

 

 

"And after she thought about it?"

 

 

"She wrote me a letter."

 

 

Erie frowned, puzzled. "She was going to write you a letter?"

 

 

"She did write me a letter. I got it this morning."

 

 

"Well, what did she say?"

 

 

"I forgot to read it." '

 

 

The other student laughed. Eric went pink. "Ian, will you stop being a
poseur? What did she say?"

 

 

"I told you, I didn't read it."

 

 

"Well, will you bloody well go and read it?"

 

 

"No, I bloody well will not."

 

 

Ross strode on.

 

 

Fletcher was appalled. What kind of creature was this?

 

 

He himself had always been nervous, self-conscious, tentative. This Ian
Ross he could not begin to understand.

 

 

For a short time he had thought he had merged with Ian Ross because of
similarities between them. It could not have been conscious or deliberate,
because he had been aware only very indirectly of the existence of
Ian Ross.

 

 

But this lout and he had nothing except the most superficial things
in common.

 

 

How was it possible to burn two bills without even opening them? Sooner
or later Ross must be called to account. And it was more incredible that
a youth of nineteen or so could receive letters from two girls, check
merely their names, and put them aside unread.

 

 

A tutor stopped to speak to Ross. "Mr. Ross, if you have a moment . . . "
He was very courteous, very vague.

 

 

"Yes, Mr. Beecham? How's your pills?"

 

 

The mild tutor went fiery red, and swept on without another word.

 

 

Ross, although there was no one to see or hear, laughed loudly.

 

 

Without further incident, Ross arrived at a lecture on Balzac. He sat
quietly and apparently listened throughout.

 

 

At the end of this lecture Ross sauntered to another lecture room,
apparently with a purpose. As the students came out many of them greeted
him, some ignored him because they didn't know him, and some simply
ignored him.

 

 

He stepped forward. "Hello, Anita."

 

 

Fletcher was surprised at the warmth of his pleasure in seeing her again
-- his pleasure, not Ross's.

 

 

"Hello," said the girl without enthusiasm, and moved to pass him.

 

 

"Why so cold, Virgin?" Ross said. "I've forgiven you."

 

 

"For not jumping into bed with you?" Again she tried to pass.

 

 

"That and other things. What happened to you yesterday morning after
the spook session?"

 

 

"I stayed to talk to Mr. Fletcher."

 

 

"That zombie? At least your virginity would be safe with him."

 

 

"Will you stop talking like that?" she said irritably. "And stop calling
me Virgin."

 

 

"Why, Virgin? Is the form of address anachronistic? Are you like the
girl Virginia who was called Virgin for short, but not for long?"

 

 

As she made a really determined effort to get by, and he had to grab her
arm to stop her, he went on more placatingly: "All right, I'll call you
Maiden. That's anachronistic too, but in a more tactful way. How did
you get on with the zombie, Maiden?"

 

 

"You saw the results."

 

 

"I don't mean that, Maiden. How did you get on with him? Did he put his
hand on your knee?"

 

 

"Why don't you change the record sometimes?" she said wearily. "You're
not even amusing. You're too predictable."

 

 

"Because I'm talking about sex, you mean? It was your idea to vamp the
zombie, Maiden. Was it a success? Did he invite you back to his web?"

 

 

Anita seemed to make up her mind. "Listen, Ross," she said grimly. "You're
already in trouble with the Principal. And you don't really want to be
kicked out, do you? You'd make a show of it as usual, like the time when
they were going to give you the MacPherson Prize and you pretended you'd
forgotten about it and didn't turn up."

 

 

She was not without weapons against Ross, it seemed. He retorted angrily:
"I won that prize. It was mine."

 

 

"But when you didn't turn up and later sent a puerile message that you'd
been detained by pressing business, jumping on grapes at the Principal's
vineyard, the committee decided to withdraw the award. And you were mad
as fire."