TRANSMIGRATION
by
J.T. McIntosh







CONFRONTATION!

In his unwilling travels from mind to mind,
Fletcher had lived in the brains of many people --
young, old, healthy, ill, men, women. But now
he found himself in the brain of Charles Searle --
the man who was responsible for his ghastly
situation -- the brilliant and ruthless scientist who
had altered Fletcher's mind and left him, finally,
a disembodied personality. His lifelong unhappi-
ness and the ultimate torment of endless dying
were the result of Searle's insane arrogance.

And now Fletcher shared his brain.

And Searle was dying . . . .







Avon Books by J.T. McIntosh



SIX GATES FROM LIMBO


SNOW WHITE AND THE GIANTS


TRANSMIGRATION





TRANSMIGRATION


J.T. McINTOSH





AVON


PUBLISHERS OF


DISCUS o CAMELOT o BARD







This is the first American publication


of TRANSMIGRATION in any form





AVON BOOKS


A division of


The Hearst Corporation


959 Eighth Avenue


New York, New York 10019



Copyright © 1970 by J.T. McIntosh.


Published by arrangement with the author.



All rights reserved, which includes the right


to reproduce this book or portions thereof in


any form whatsoever. For information address


Lurton Blassingame, 60 East 42 Street,


New York, N.Y. 10017



First Avon Printing, December, 1970



AVON TRADEMARK REG. U.S. PAT. OFF. AND


FOREIGN COUNTRIES, REGISTERED TRADEMARK --


MARCA REGISTRADA, HECHO EN CHICAGO, U.S.A.



Printed in the U.S.A.











CHAPTER 1: FLETCHER



The doctor said quietly: "Since you insist . . . there's no doubt."



"How long have I got?"



"I'm sorry, Mr. Fletcher, I can't possibly . . . "



"How long until it kills me?"



The doctor looked shrewdly at him, made up his mind, and said bluntly: "Eight months. Probably only five. Possibly three."



Fletcher laughed as he had not done for years, with real enjoyment. The doctor was puzzled; he could recognize hysteria, and this was not hysteria.



"It can be beaten, doctor," said Fletcher at last.



The doctor started to shake his head. He had not wanted to pass sentence on this tall, gaunt spider of a man whom he scarcely knew, whose lean face bore the marks of loneliness. But truth was truth. Having insisted on it, Fletcher should not be allowed to deceive himself. The doctor in such circumstances allowed, indeed encouraged, most people to deceive themselves. This man was different.



"It will be beaten," said Fletcher. He laughed again, but this time there was no amusement in his laughter. "Don't you recognize the pall of death on me, doctor? Others do. Not everybody sees it yet Not young people, or happy people, or strong, confident people. But those who are close to death see Death sitting on my shoulder, and shrink back as I pass."



The doctor, who had until then had no doubt of Fletcher's sanity, started to say something calm and reassuring.



But Fletcher went on: "It will be beaten, doctor. I'm going to beat it by dying; not in eight, months, or five months, or three months, but in a matter of days. No, don't look at me like that. It won't be suicide. Never mind. Forget all about me, doctor. When I die, the world won't know the difference. I was never really here anyway."



Out in the street he was ashamed of his outburst. It was only the genuinely amusing irony of one death sentence being frustrated by a prior death sentence which had made him so unusually loquacious. And of course the doctor could not be expected to understand.



Moved by a sudden sense of urgency, he wanted to see Baudaker again, and at once. In his whole life, in all his forty-three years, thirty-nine of which he remembered, he had aroused excitement only in one unprepossessing little laboratory technician; a man who thought he had found in John Fletcher a world-shaking discovery. And even John Fletcher had some urge toward immortality. Although he had slammed the door on Baudaker and his psi tests eighteen months earlier, sickened by the prospect of being proved a freak, he now felt prepared to accept even that dubious distinction. To be a mental freak was better than being nothing at all.



Poor little Baudaker . . . he wasn't one of the death people, yet he jumped at his own shadow. It was life Baudaker was scared of, not death. If he had ever been a little more assertive he would surely have become something more than a laboratory office boy.



From a phone booth just outside the surgery room, Fletcher called the university. Mr. Baudaker was not available. Could he call back in an hour? Fletcher said that he would.



On the way back to his bed-sitter he stopped at a supermarket and bought a large steak pie. He was not hungry, but the habit of many years was too strong to he broken. In addition to lunch, dinner and supper, he always had a substantial snack in mid-afternoon. Fletcher was not a solitary drinker, he was a solitary eater. He delightedly gorged himself in secret, yet his long, lean body never revealed the secret. Not that it mattered: who would have cared?



Back in his room he put the pie onto the tiny oven hotplate and stretched himself out on the bed. Any activity had become an effort. The tumor deep inside was not yet troubling him except in the vaguest ways, this being one of them. He could still eat, but he could no longer enjoy food. He could walk, even run, but given a choice he remained inactive. And the thought of women, so often a torment in his forty-three lonely, tortured years, no longer bothered him. In that respect he was at peace. No longer was he torn apart by incompatible urges to seek out women and to keep his distance: to never touch them.



He reflected that he was suddenly rich. When he left his last job seven weeks since, he had given himself a maximum of two months to find suitable employment. This had always been difficult for him; not because he lacked skill, intelligence or experience, but because his unlucky temperament made it impossible for him to work easily with others -- especially women.



Now, the few pounds in his bank account would not have to keep him for six months, but could keep him in opulent luxury for a few days.



By the time he had wolfed the pie, nearly an hour had elapsed. He had to go out again to phone. There was a telephone in the hall, but he never used it.



He closed the door of his room . . .



"Mr. Fletcher! Are you busy?"



It was Judy, the landlady's daughter. She stood in the doorway of her bedroom in a shapeless sweater, an incredibly short skirt, and nylons far too large for her which hung loosely about her skinny legs.



"Why aren't you at schoolS" he asked.



"I fell yesterday. I've got a broken leg and a broken ankle and I'm to stay at home for two weeks, the doctor said. And my radio won't work. Mr. Fletcher, could you fix it?"



"You can't have a broken leg or a broken ankle, Judy. You wouldn't be able to stand."



"Well, my ankle's big and my knee is sore. Come in and I'll show you. And will you fix the radio?"



He entered the room rather awkwardly. Until a few months ago he had been able to talk more easily to Judy than to anyone else. She didn't look and seldom sounded backward. She was a happy, pretty little thing, and it never mattered what anyone said to Judy, for her mind was like a bucket with a hole in it. He had been at his ease with her as with no one else, and she actually liked him; not knowing any better.



But just as death closed its grip on John Fletcher, life began to beckon Judy MacDonald. Her mental age might be about five, but she had lived twelve or thirteen years, and nature decided it was time she became a woman. And Fletcher's ease with her was shattered.



"I'll show you my sore leg," she said like a child, and then turned away from him like a woman. "Don't look!" Turning away wasn't enough, however, and she skipped behind the massive old wardrobe to take off her stockings.



The radio was an ancient floor standing model. In moving it nearer the bed on which she had been lying, Judy had pulled one of the leads from the plug. He restored it, using his pocketknife as a screwdriver.



She came skipping back. For the moment she was so like the gay child of last year that he was able to examine the swollen ankle, only slightly sprained, and make the appropriate sympathetic remarks. But then she flung her skirt right up and put her bare leg along the back of a chair so that he could inspect it, and he started back uneasily.



"It's all right, there's no blood," she reassured him. "In fact, I can't see anything wrong, but maybe you can."



Her new modesty went with her new bra and borrowed nylons. He was not supposed to look as she took off her stockings, but once they were off, all was well and she could hold her skimpy skirt high for him to examine her knee and thigh closely. Fletcher, compelled to make a thorough examination because she would not be satisfied with less, reported that he couldn't see anything wrong either.



"Well, it's sore," she complained, dropping her leg and casually shrugging her skirt down. "Worse than my ankle."



"Probably a pulled muscle. That wouldn't necessarily show."



"I'm supposed to rest, but walk about, and not go out. So I need the radio. Will you be able to fix it?"



Fletcher switched it on, and the pilot light glowed.



"Oh, you've done it already! I knew you could fix it, Mr. Fletcher. You can do anything, can't you?"



"Not really," he said. "It's astonishing how little I can do."



"Oh, you're making fun of me. You can fix radios and put my doll's head back on, and speak French and German."



"Life demands more than such talents sometimes," he said drily,



"Mummy's out working, and I'm supposed to rest most of the time, and not go out. Could you stay for a while, and speak French to me?"



"I have to go out, but I might be back soon. I don't know. If I am, I'll come and see you."



"Oh, please do, Mr. Fletcher!"



He closed her door behind him and went downstairs. 'You can do anything, can't you?' Only Judy would say such a thing.



He could do nothing. That was the story of his life. He had never succeeded in anything. He had a magnificently consistent record of total failure. You always knew where you were with John Fletcher . . . nowhere.





After a long wait, he got Baudaker on the phone.



"This is Fletcher," he said. "John Fletcher. Perhaps you remember me. You said if ever I agreed to . . . "



"Fletcher!" The little technician squeaked with delight. "You're prepared to come back? You'll let me do more tests?"



"If you still want to."



"If I want to! When, Mr. Fletcher?"



"Now, if you like."



There was a pause. Then Baudaker said: "I'd love to have you, Mr. Fletcher. But I'm not free . . . could you come tonight?"



"Tonight will be fine. Where?"



"Here at the university. In the lab where you were before, you remember? I'll need helpers, but I'll easily get half-dozen student volunteers. Could you come about seven?"



"Certainly. How long do you want me to stay?"



Another pause. Fletcher could guess that the timid little technician was trying to screw up his nerve -- two hours, four hours if he asked for too much of Fletcher's time, he might change his mind and not come at all.



"Could you," said Baudaker tentatively, "stay all night?"



For the first time in months, Fletcher laughed. The little man's enthusiasm had made him bold. "All right," he said, "if you give me coffee at frequent intervals."



"Oh, we'll do that, Mr. Fletcher! We'll do that!"



Fletcher left the kiosk. A middle-aged woman with a shopping bag was waiting impatiently, looking at her watch. She looked up, irritation in every line of her face. Instead of avoiding her eye, he caught it and held it.



They stared at each other, three feet apart. The woman cringed, half raised her free hand as if to ward off a blow, turned and walked away rapidly, not looking back.



That was needed, Fletcher .thought bleakly, to restore the status quo. The warm admiration of Judy and Baudaker's enthusiasm were usual. He had felt almost happy and strangely secure -- it was only a matter of time until something or someone came along to cancel out the hint of success he vaguely sensed and allow failure and loneliness to reassert their primary places in John Fletcher's life.





Fletcher walked aimlessly for quite a while and ended up at the beach. He needed solitude, and with Judy around, it would be impossible to find it at the house.





Reaching the whins that hid the sand dunes from the road, he went straight through them and burst out on a little knoll above the river. In front of him sand fell sharply to the slow moving river. Two hundred yards farther on it reached the sea.



It was hot here, the dunes affording shelter from the slight breeze. Sparsely scattered along the banks were a few early bathers and sunbathers. He sank down to crouch among the whins.



Along the shore came a boy and a girl. They were not much older than Judy, sixteen or seventeen. The boy wore bathing trunks and a loose blue sweater. The girl wore a dazzlingly white dress. Barefoot, they waded in about six inches of water, laughing.



Then the boy, on the shore side, started to edge the girl farther into the water. She protested. They came level with Fletcher, and went no farther on. He could hear them, not clearly, but missing only the words, not the sense. The youth pushed the girl out until the water was up to her knees, nudging her, not letting her get past to the shore.



They weren't laughing any more. Something nasty and brutal had got into the youth. He was drunk with male power. He didn't hit the girl and he checked her only with his body. But he was stronger and heavier than she was. She was his prisoner, his plaything, his slave.



A light breeze wafted a few words to Fletcher.



" . . . my new dress, Gerry!"



"All right then." The youth turned to wade to the shore.



"Anyway, I knew you wouldn't dare!"



The youth turned and went back.



It was not, then, as simple as it seemed. It was a game of the sexes, the kind of game that Fletcher knew nothing about. The girl wasn't just a poor kid being bullied by a young hooligan. When he abandoned the game she had to tease him into starting it again. Something compelled her to do this.



Now she was holding up her white dress clear of the water. Several times she recovered surprisingly, staggering as the youth nudged her, but not quite falling down. Then as he bumped her hard she let her dress go and threw out both arms to balance herself. She didn't fall, but the skirt of her dress was soaked almost to the waist.



She was crying now. But Gerry was not satisfied. Three times he body-checked her, and each time she recovered nimbly. Then he barged into her and she toppled flat on her back, the water closing over her head.



She came up, wailing like a child. The boy, apparently satisfied now that she was soaked through, turned and waded back toward the bank. But when she followed, he turned and barged into her again, and once more the water closed over her. Fletcher stood up.



The youth's game now was to turn as if to go ashore, and every time the girl tried to get past him, nudge her and make her fall again. As he turned for the fourth time he saw Fletcher striding down the sandbank straight toward him..



He hesitated. Their eyes met. The boy waded ashore, making a detour to avoid Fletcher. Fletcher moved a few steps to meet him. The youth caught his eye again.



Defiantly the boy made a rude gesture and strode away.



Fletcher waited for the girl to wade in. Her white dress was dull gray now, limp and bedraggied. She was crying and shivering.



He started to unzip his anorak. "Put this on," he said. "You'll . . . "



She looked at him and the incident at the telephone box was repeated. The gift shielded her eyes, stepped back into the water to avoid him, twisted, ran, stumbled in the water and nearly fell again, then reached the sand and rushed away without looking back.



Fletcher winced. He had been angry at the senseless cruelty of the youth Gerry, but his feelings toward the girl were entirely protective and sympathetic. It hurt that she ran from him as if from the devil.



It hurt most because she was the first young person to run from him. Was he to end up as a leper shunned even by children? Would even Judy cower away from him in time?



No longer taking any pleasure in the day or his surroundings, suddenly tired, he turned for home. Well, hardly home. Had he ever really had a home?



Of course he had lived for many years in a Home. It was one of the ironies of the English language that when a thing was called what it clearly was not, it was given a capital letter.



Suddenly he thought it would be very pleasant to talk to Judy. Judy liked him. He even suspected, incredulously, that she adored him. Undoubtedly Mrs. MacDonald, who did not fear but was uneasy with him, had told her to keep out of his way. But this, like the millions of other things the harassed widow had told Judy in the last thirteen years, had dropped into the bottomless well that was Judy's mind, never to emerge again.



Judy was delighted to see him. She proved it by switching off the blaring radio, remembering by some miracle that he hated pop music.



She loved to hear him reciting French poetry. She even understood, in a vague general way, what some of the poems were about.



She sat on the bed, clutching her sore leg, as he recited. She had not put on the tipped nylons again, and as she rocked gently in time with the meter, he was able for a while, to rest his eyes on her with pleasure as if she were still the lovely, sexless child she had been last year.



Once when he reached the end of a Verlaine poem she said: "Why is it you talk French so much better than you speak English?"



"I don't really, Judy."



"Yes, you do. When you talk French your voice goes all warm and deep and exciting. Did you ever live in France?"



"For a few months."



"Why didn't you stay there?"



It was a key question, but he couldn't answer it because he didn't know the answer. He should have stayed in France, or in Germany. Returning to England was one of the many mistakes he had made in life, the mistakes he was compelled to make. John Fletcher could never do anything right; it was obligatory for him to make a mess of everything.



He had been happy, even reasonably successful, for him, on the Continent. So of course he had returned to England.





The psychology department was one of the new buildings at the university, a block standing alone among trees and grassland in the extensive grounds. As Fletcher approached it a youth came out of the main door and hurried away along one of the avenues. Fletcher paid no attention to him at first, but after a slow double-take stared after him. The youth obliged by glancing back over his shoulder, at the building, not at Fletcher, and Fletcher got a good look at him.



It was Gerry, the youth who had pushed the girl in the white dress into the water.



Fletcher sighed. He was not surprised. The coincidence, to him, was unremarkable. Such things were always happening. No doubt he would meet the girl in the white dress again, too.



Then he remembered: he was not going to be meeting many more people. Many of the things he was doing, perhaps most of them, were being done for the last time. He had very little time left.



Baudaker met him in the hall, impatient, eager, yet hesitant and nervous. Putting out a cigarette as Fletcher appeared, he lit another.



"Mr. Fletcher!" he said, pumping his hand. "I'm so glad you came."



Since surprise and relief seemed to be implicit, Fletcher said: "I told you I was coming, didn't I?"



"Yes, but . . . Well, never mind. I've got half a dozen volunteers to help me, students who are interested . . . well, I'd better have a word with you about them first. In here."



Fletcher followed him into a tiny room full of filing cabinets.



"That young fellow who just left," said Fletcher. "Name of Gerry. You don't know him, by any chance?"



"Not very well," said Baudaker quietly. "I should know him much better. I wish I did. He's my son."



"I saw him with a girl today."



"That would be Sheila."



There was restraint in Baudaker's manner. He didn't want to talk about Gerry. At another time Fletcher would have been curious. However, he was there for one purpose only, to find out if he really did have special talents, as Baudaker so strongly believed.



"You wanted to tell me about the students," he said.



"Yes. I've told them to regard you merely as a subject, and I'd like you to treat them as . . . well, machines. I don't want any personal factors to intrude, so I won't introduce you and the students will work mainly in shadow."



"Are there any girls?"



"Two. And four men."



"You don't even want me to look at them?"



"Not any more than you can help. Naturally, you know who I am, and I know you, and because of that I'll take no part in the tests. Another thing -- any factor which disturbs you, let me know about. If you find it too light, too dark, too warm, too cool . . . "



"All that disturbs me," said Fletcher, "is your chain-smoking, Baudaker. I don't smoke. I never have. I'm choking already."



"Oh." Baudaker stubbed out his cigarette. "I'll try not to. When I want a cigarette I'll go out. The students . . . "



"I don't mind ordinary smokers," said Fletcher. "You smoke all the time. I'd forgotten that, but I remember now. What sort of tests do you want to make? Umpteen different kinds, I suppose?"



"No, on the contrary, what I'd like to obtain is statistical proof of a certain theory. Therefore I want to concentrate on one type of test. I want to run a long series of tests with the ESP cards. Five symbols, twenty-five cards in a pack: a rather old device, but it was in the tests we did with those cards before that the most interesting . . . "



He shut himself off. "You must understand, Mr. Fletcher, I mustn't tell you what I expect to find. In fact, I'd better not say any more. It might invalidate everything."



"I remember the cards. Not very exciting. No inkblots, word association, clairvoyance tests, telepathy?"



"The ESP cards can be a test of both clairvoyance and telepathy . . . but please, Mr. Fletcher, don't make me say any more just now. Shall we get started?"



He led Fletcher to a large, rather poorly lit room in which the six students were arguing about something. They ceased abruptly as Baudaker and Fletcher entered. Evidently Baudaker's instructions were going to be followed precisely, for they scarcely looked at Fletcher and went woodenly to various stations, some to sit at tables, some behind screens, one to a tape-recorder.



They were all in shadow if not behind screens, and Fletcher saw he was going to have no difficulty in regarding them as machines, even the girls.



First Baudaker showed Fletcher one of the ESP card packs, twenty-five cards showing a star, cross, square, triangle or wavy lines, five of each.



"I remember," Fletcher said.



Behind a screen, the top of her blonde head just visible, one of the girls looked at the twenty-five cards of a pack in turn, and Fletcher said what he thought the card she was looking at was. Then one of the men students silently held up each of the cards of another pack so that Fletcher could see only the back and no one could see the symbol.



For Fletcher the whole thing was very tedious. He was never allowed to know if he was right or not. The other seven found plenty to do. They wrote copiously, used calculating machines, checked each other's work. They replaced each other systematically as Fletcher's partner in the test. Sometimes two or more of them stared at the same card, the symbol of which Fletcher was to guess. Once all six students ran tests simultaneously, and he was asked to name the cards in turn.



They stopped frequently for coffee. Fletcher was amused; this had been his one condition when he agreed to come, and Baudaker was painstakingly literal in such matters. Baudaker also took care to go out when he wanted a smoke, taking his notes with him to the little office. Of the students, three apparently did not smoke, including both girls, and of the three who did, two smoked pipes.



When they stopped, the students withdrew to a screened corner where they had coffee and sandwiches. Baudaker remained with Fletcher. Fletcher drank a good deal of coffee, but refused sandwiches.



"How am I doing?" he asked Baudaker.



Baudaker was shocked. "I can't tell you that."



"I thought as much. Baudaker, I'm tired and I'm beginning to get a headache. Couldn't we have even a Rorschach for a change?"



"Please, Mr. Fletcher . . . " The little man was agitated, terrified that Fletcher would refuse further tests and walk out, as he had done once before.



Fletcher smiled faintly. "Oh, all right. But is this any good? Are you sure it isn't a waste of time?"



Baudaker hesitated, torn between the necessities of his test plan and keeping his subject cooperative; even, perhaps, keeping his subject.



Then, his voice trembling with excitement, he said: "Mr. Fletcher, the results so far are sensational."



Fletcher was startled. "Sensational" was not a word Fletcher had thought he would use at all.



Something was happening in the darkened lab that night, something remarkable in the unremarkable life of John Fletcher, (F for failure). Could it be a late, last breath of achievement? Fletcher, who had always lacked ambition, was surprised to find himself hoping fiercely that in the end -- before the end -- he would be proved not entirely useless, and that his lonely unhappy life would turn out not to be entirely pointless.





Hour after hour the tests went on, always with the ESP cards. No doubt by intent, there was no clock in the lab, and none of the students seemed to have watches. If Baudaker or any of the others ever consulted a watch, it was done covertly.



The students worked conscientiously and remarkably quietly. Once or twice, when he had a spare moment, Fletcher did try to differentiate between them, get a good look at them, catch them staring at him. But they remained deliberately impersonal. They acted like masked surgeons in an operating theater. Even Baudaker, who talked to Fletcher frequently, was abstracted. Fletcher felt like an animal specimen being observed coldly by beings of a different species.



He did not complain again as the hours went by and his headache grew steadily worse. He wanted to know . Many times he stopped himself on the point of asking what time it was. He had, after all, agreed to stay all night if necessary.



Now that was a strange thing. Here were four young men and two girls of twenty-one or less, and a university technician, all prepared to give up a night's rest to work on him. Some of them, perhaps all, would be expected to be active the next day. And Baudaker, after all, was only a glorified office-boy, not a professor who might have compelled these youngsters to help in this routine investigation.



They were all amateurs. They showed no sign of excitement or even interest, but they worked steadily and carefully on their chores, most of which were routine.



At last Baudaker, who no longer seemed quite so helpless a little man, turned on more lights and said: "It's five o'clock."





It had gone on for ten hours. At a rough estimate, they had consumed among them four gallons of coffee. The students had had sandwiches as well; Fletcher and Baudaker had eaten nothing.



Fletcher started to rise. "You're finished?"



"No, we want to try something different now," said Baudaker. "Another two or three hours, that's all . . . "



Fletcher groaned. "My head is splitting."



"I'm not surprised. We know nothing about the kind of energy you've been using up, but the strain must be immense." Baudaker's enthusiasm burst through again.



"It's all tremendously worth while, though. What we've been doing tonight may be one of history's turning points. We're all tired, but none of us would give up if we had to carry on here for a week."



"It's been worth while, then?"



Baudaker started to say something and checked himself.



Now that the lights were up Fletcher saw the students properly for the first time. A tall, thin youth in tight jeans and a floppy shirt grinned at him. One of the girls smiled too. He wondered if at last Baudaker was going to introduce them.



But no; at least he was introduced only to one.



"Anita would like to try a little experiment on her own," said Baudaker. "Meantime, the rest of us will have plenty to do sorting out these results. She'll tell you herself what she wants to do."



One of the girls was pretty, one was not. It was the pretty one, a small, neat brunette in a white coat, who smiled at him and led him to a waiting room, a small room carpeted in red, containing comfortable armchairs, a sofa, and nothing else.



She laid her papers and boxes on the sofa, smiled at him again, and took off her white coat. She was disturbingly attractive in a sleeveless red dress, short but of a more modest length than was fashionable, nylons of a shade so natural he could not be sure her legs were not bare, and high-heeled shoes of an uncommon style, open-toed like the shoes pretty girls used to wear twenty years earlier. She was not at all like the graceless, present day dollies wearing boots and recklessly short skirts, with eyes so blackened they always looked tired, sad and surprised. Also, her lips were unfashionably red.



She held out her hand. "I'm Anita Somerset."



He managed to turn and sit down as if he had merely failed to see her outstretched hand. He did not want to touch her.



In less than twenty-four hours fate had thrown three pretty girls in his path. Fate was not usually so generous -- or ungenerous. He liked, he had always liked, looking at pretty girls, but they disturbed him deeply. And for many years he had been careful never to touch any woman if he could help it. Judy, careless, trusting and quite unsophisticated, had several times that day brushed past him and she had certainly expected him to probe her ankle and her thigh. Probably she was unaware that he had managed to avoid touching her or being touched.



Anita didn't seem to notice either. She pushed her papers aside, sat on the sofa and swung her legs up carelessly.



"I'm nineteen," she said, "and I'm reading psychology. Actually, I'm the only psychology student among the six of us -- pure psychology, that is. Mr. Baudaker asked me to round up some helpers, and I did."



So that was how it was done.



"One," she said with a frown, "I didn't want, but he got wind of it and insisted on coming along . . . but that needn't concern you. About me -- most people consider me rather quiet and studious -- but I really fancy myself as a sort of Mata Hari."



She laughed, an infectious crow of high spirits. "Of course I'm not. Really, I'm a bit of a drag. I can't dance, can't swim, don't like pop music, hate alcohol, drink and drugs, and I haven't a steady boy friend."



"Why are you telling me all this?"



"We've been doing completely impersonal experiments up to now. I bet you never saw me until five minutes ago?"



"Well, I saw you, but . . . "



She nodded. "That was according to plan. What I want to do now is entirely my own idea. Mr. Baudaker agrees it should be tried, but he didn't put me up to it."



She stretched herself out and put both bare arms up to her head, caricaturing a screen vamp. "Do you think I could persuade an enemy general to tell me about the secret plans?" she said. "Please say yes."



"I don't know anything about enemy generals," he said, and cursed his own crass awkwardness.



"Can't you see me driving men mad, while I conceal secret documents in my camisole? Oh, well. But at least tell me I'm not repulsive, before I burst into tears."



He could have told her that whatever she had in mind, it wasn't going to work. His self-consciousness, caution and uneasiness with women would ensure that. The more attractive they were, the worse it was. But he didn't want to tell her. That would be still more embarrassing. Being a psychology student, she would at once probe, ask searching questions and force him to talk about the one thing which, above all others, he didn't want to discusa.



"You're a charming girl," he said awkwardly. "And I like your voice very much."



"Just my voice?" she said with pretended disappointment. "I thought I had rather nice legs." She pulled her dress up to her hips. "And I wore a dress with a belt because I have a rather neat waist and I like people to know it."



She laughed at his consternation. "No, don't let the reference to Mata Hafi fool you," she said. "I'm not trying to vamp you . . . at least, if I am, that's only a small part of the exercise. As I said, we've done impersonal tests so far. Now I've told you a little about myself, and I'll tell you any more you want to know. I want you to tell me about yourself. Then, when we're not strangers any more, we'll do some tests similar to those we've done already, and see if the results come out differently."



He saw the idea, which was not difficult, and no doubt it made sense. But she had invited honesty.



"It won't work," he said.



"Why not?"



"Well, it's pretense. It's unreal."



"What's unreal about it?"



He wished he had not started this. "Forget it."



"You're scared of me," she said in wonder.



"Oh, nonsense."



"Searled to death. I'm not blind."



"Not scared . . . "



"Then what? Are you a misogynist?"



"No."



"Homosexual?"



"No!" he said, revolted.



"Impotent?"



He choked.



"All right, I'll withdraw the question," said Anita. "But if you don't hate women, and you've nothing against me personally, what's behind this? Why are you so sure my idea won't work?"



He hesitated, feeling a sudden urge to tell her of the tumor. But that, he knew, was an irrelevance; if he introduced the subject, it would be as a red herring. Instead he told the truth.



"Failure!" he burst out suddenly and bitterly. "That's all I've ever achieved in life. I don't know if failure with women is the most important . . . maybe it is. Some psychologists say so. The worst of it is, I've no possible excuse I'm not ugly even now . . . "



"No," she agreed, leaning forward to inspect him. "A girl could go for that face. I could. I like the lean and hungry look."



"And when I was younger I was strong and better looking. So as for girls, I told you I'm not a misogynist, not a pervert, not impotent. I'm sensitive, of course, and shy, but not cripplingly so. I think it's life that has made me nervous with you. Not anything that was in me at birth. As for that . . . "



He stopped, not sure he wanted to tell her he didn't know where or exactly when he was born and who his parents were. She might pounce on that as though it explained everything. Almost certainly she would. But she'd be wrong. That was another irrelevancy.



So Anita stuck to the subject, unaware it had nearly been changed. "You never had any success with girls?" she said sympathetically. "They always let you down?"



"I'm not blaming them . . . "



"Why not? Maybe that's the trouble, that you didn't blame them. You were too serious, and they let you down. In that way, women are totally unscrupulous. They go with a man, but if they see somebody they fancy more, they ditch the first sucker without a qualm. They say 'I hope we'll always be friends,' but the poor blighter doesn't want to be friends, he wants all or nothing, so it's nothing. If a girl has a date with somebody else and her heart-throb calls her, she'll drop the first sucker like a hot potato!"



"That's it exactly!" said Fletcher eagerly. "That's how it always was. But I still can't say the girls were always to blame. It was me. Often they'd be quite attracted to me, and let me see it. But something was always wrong. I couldn't say the right things."



"There are no right or wrong things to say," said Anita gently. "You just say the first thing that comes into your head."



He told her a lot more, briefly touching on his insecure childhood in a way that warned her not to probe, the way he did the right thing at the wrong time and never at the right time, his awkward personal relationships with men as well as women, the fact that he had never had a real friend. "That must be my fault," he said, and if she had disagreed with him he would have suspected her of insincerity. She did not.



It was very easy to talk to Anita. She was completely uncritical, and interested without false flattery. He told her about Judy and about Sheila, the girl who had been pushed in the water, but did not mention his discovery that the youth was Gerry Baudaker.



"Some girls are like that," Anita said. "She wants her boy friend to bully her. He's only half to blame, because if he wasn't the type to knock her about she'd find somebody else who was. You heard her daring him. It's worse for him than for her, really . . . he's being encouraged to become a sadist."



Several times she commented like that, easily and naturally, but never tried to straighten him out with a few short, pungent clichés.



Then he came, unprompted, to the episode of the earlier ESP tests eighteen months ago. He had been caught in a random survey. Baudaker was not the director of the study, but a mere underling. It was on the side that he ran tests on Fletcher and became excited over the results.



Fletcher paused as he realized that having come this far he must explain why he had previously refused to cooperate in any more tests and had walked out of the building. He returned only when he felt death upon him, urged on by what he considered "graveyard curiosity."



"It wasn't Baudaker's fault," he said.



"Of course not," she said, smiling.



"I just didn't want to be a freak, that's all."



She nodded.



"Tell me," he said abruptly, "have you ever been in love?"



She accepted the blunt change of subject calmly. "I've thought I was. But I'm like you in one way. It would take me a long time to fall in love."



There was something different about the silence that followed. When two people were talking freely, a reply could be apparently irrelevant and yet not an evasion. But what Anita had said was an evasion.



Tacitly admitting this, she substituted the apparent irrelevance which was not an evasion. "Remember I said that if a girl had a date and her secret heart-throb called, she'd break any promise to go with him? Well, I did that once, not so long ago. The fellow who called me . . . as a matter of fact he's through there, but I won't tell you his name unless you insist. We went out. And he couldn't have been more honest. What he wanted, all he wanted, was to jump into bed with me as quickly as possible."



"Was it all you expected?" said Fletcher harshly.



"Now you're trying to annoy me, but you can't. I'm not a prig or a prude, at least I don't think so. If I had been in love, I suppose . . . Anyway, perhaps the answer to your question is that I've never been in love."



There was a long pause. The easy flow of conversation had hit a rock.



Fletcher sighed. "Right," he said. "I'm ready."



"The tests?"



"What else?"



She nearly made a mischievous retort, but stopped herself. This was a very sensitive man. He interested her, but of course there was an impossible gulf between them and there was little point in pretending it ever would or could be crossed. He clearly didn't believe her idea was going to work, and perhaps he was right.



John Fletcher suffered from something worse than self-pity; he didn't consider himself worth his own pity.





They were all back in the big lab. Fletcher found himself covertly examining each of the four men students in turn, wondering which was Anita's heart-throb. But the lights were dim again and the earlier atmosphere of anonymity had returned. Even Anita had put on her white coat and practically disappeared, he suspected deliberately, into the shadows.



"All right, tell me," said Fletcher. "Am I a mind-reader, a fortune-teller, a medium or what?"



Baudaker had sheafs of paper in his hand. "Whatever you are," he said in a tone of suppressed excitement, "you're unique, Mr. Fletcher. Nothing like this has ever been recorded before."



"Well, what did I do?"



"No matter how the tests were done," said Baudaker triumphantly, " you never named a single card correctly ."



"What!" Fletcher shouted.



"Not one. Do you know what that means?"



"It means we've all been wasting our time."



"Oh, not at all, Mr. Fletcher. Quite the reverse. You understand the mathematics of these tests? There are twenty-five cards, five each of five symbols. If pure chance operated, ,the average score must be five. Of course, in an individual case the number might be two or it might be eight, but over the piece the result must be five."



"That's obvious. But . . . "



"So a figure of nil is just as significant as a figure of twenty-five. To avoid a pure chance score of five, you had to know what every card was -- or to be more accurately what every card was not."



Fletcher frowned. He had not thought himself a mind-reader and had never liked the idea of being a mental freak. Yet he had expected something to come of this experiment. Had he really thought about it, he reflected, he might have predicted exactly this -- a significant result, but a totally negative one. Indeed, what else could have been expected?



"Now I must ask you something," said Baudaker. "I'd have liked to ask you before, but the very question would have told you something I didn't want you to know. Were your answers consciously negative? Did you know the symbol was, say, a circle, and pick something else?"



"Of course not," said Fletcher irritably. "You told me to tell you what I saw, and if I didn't see anything, guessblindly. That's what I did."



"Oh, but not blindly," said Baudaker happily. "Anything but blindly. This series,of tests proves beyond any doubt that you are both a telepath and a clairvoyant. The scale of the tests was such that no random error . . . "



"But to be wrong every time -- what's the point of that? Why have me make umpteen thousand guesses to prove I've got the world's greatest failure rate, which I knew already?"



"There were scores of possibilities we wanted to investigate. For instance, were your answers displaced? In a famous experiment along these lines, the subject's answers were found to be without significance until someone thought of checking them against the next card each time. A figure of about 11.5 was established then, highly significant."



"Well, were my answers displaced?"



"I think we have succeeded in proving that they were not. All such checks we have made have given random figures while the result of comparing your answers directly is of extraordinary interest."



"Not to me," said Fletcher. "I'm going home now."



"Wait. I've been talking only about the tests done in here, before the tests with Miss Somerset."



"Well?"



"There the picture changes dramatically. Here is a list of the figures."



Fletcher looked at it. It read:



Raw scores Percentage 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 4 6 24 9 36 14 56 24 96 23 92 19 76 24 96 -- -- 3 12 1 4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0



The rest were zeros.



"Well?" he said: "What does that mean?"



"We can only guess. Remember, these are observations, Mr. Fletcher. They prove nothing."



"I thought you just said . . . "



"They prove nothing in the sense that if you release a stone fifty times and it falls to the ground, that doesn't prove it will fall the fifty-first time. But anyone who sees the stone drop fifty times will believe, unscientifically, that the stone will fall the next time."



Fletcher's headache had returned, he was tired and suddenly very hungry. There were plenty of sandwiches left, but he wanted to get out of the laboratory.



The results excited Baudaker, but to him they were of no interest, except for that spurt in the tests with Anita which showed their minds had touched for a few minutes. Vaguely he recalled the moment. The first few tests had been like all the others, and then suddenly he ceased even to hear himself answering. He had put it down to tiredness and pulled himself together. That, presumably, was when he had returned to his true form.



"Goodbye," he said abruptly.



"Mr. Fletcher . . . "



The little man was frantic. He tugged at Fletcher's arm. There was so much more to be said, so much more to be done. The students, including Anita, remained in the background, as they had promised to do.



"You'll come back?"



"No. You'll never see me again.'



Fletcher was telling him the literal truth. Baudaker never did see him again.



Fletcher shook off Baudaker's arm and walked out.



Outside, the sun was already bright. Blinking in the glare, he was not aware of Anita until she reached out to touch his arm.



He drew his arm back. They had not touched each other and he felt it important that they never should.



"John," she said quietly.



"Don't talk about it," he muttered.



"Of course not, if you don't want to. What are you going to do now?"



"Get something to eat."



"I'll come with you."



"No."



"All right, kiss me goodbye."



"No!"



"I'm not easy to kiss. I don't do it like shaking hands. But I want to kiss you. There's something . . . something good about you."



He thought he had misheard the word. It made no sense to him. Although he had never done anything particularly evil, he had certainly never done anything, said anything or thought anything to justify what she had just said. It was a remark totally without meaning.



"Kiss me," she said quietly, without coquetry. "Please."



"Anita," he said with sudden desperation, "stay away from me."



Unexpectedly, she seemed to understand at once.



"That's what you want?"



"That's what I want."



She held out her hand to him. "Goodbye, John," she said.



He fled from her.





Fletcher had coffee and a fruit pie in a snack bar. He had thought himself ravenous, but discovered he didn't want to eat. He was light-headed after his sleepless night and the hours of concentration. Whatever the results, the tests had taken something out of him.



Light-headed already, no longer hungry, not particularly sleepy, he suddenly felt a strong desire for alcohol. This surprised him very much; he rarely drank. He hated all strong drink and could not get it down. When he did have a drink it was usually an iced lager on a hot day, or a stout late at night with bread and cheese, one of his extra snacks.



Now he wanted beer, lots of it, and the bars were not open yet.



He glanced for confirmation at the clock over the snack-bar counter and saw to his amazement that it was eleven o'clock. Somewhere, somehow, he had lost several hours.



There was a bar next door, deserted save for a red-faced barman dispiritedly polishing glasses.



"Pint of bitters," said Fletcher.



The barman drew the beer and settled on his elbows opposite him. "Going to be warm again," he said.



"Yes."



Fletcher drank the pint of beer in one draught, a thing he had never done before, and ordered another. This he dispatched in the same way.



The barman's eyes widened. "You all right, mate?"



"Yes, why?"



"You're white and shaking a bit, like. You haven't been in an accident or anything?"



Since the barman volunteered this as a logical explanation for his manner, Fletcher recklessly accepted it.



"Yes, that's it. I wasn't in an accident, but I saw one."



"Where, in the street?"



"No, over at the new block of flats." Improvising wildly, he said: "Where they're knocking down the old tenements. Great chunk of masonry fell on a kid."



"What was the kid doing there?"



"Oh, you know kids. He could only have been about four. Not at school yet . . . "



It was years since Fletcher had done anything like this, but once it had been quite common. Nervous, self-conscious, he used to lie recklessly, not because he liked lying, but because once a stranger made an assumption he had a terror of correcting the misapprehension. "Yes, that's right," he would say, rather than "No, you've got the wrong man."



"Is the kid dead?" the barman asked.



"I didn't wait to see. I came away."



He was more light-headed than ever, although there had surely not been time yet for the beer to have any effect He wanted more beer, but he could not have it here. His futile, ridiculous story made escape imperative. Pretending to go to the toilet, he escaped into the street.



He had never in his life been drunk. The very idea had always been repugnant, and it would have been impossible for him to do it on whisky or gin or brandy, because they all made him sick. Now, urged by the same shadow-of-the-grave curiosity which had sent him to Baudaker, he thought he would like to be drunk just once. It was a strange time to choose, eleven o'clock in the morning, but since he had started he thought he might as well go on.



Perhaps it was strange that a man like him, a total failure, had never sought consolation in drink, not even once. One reason was that he didn't particularly like the taste of any alcoholic drink, even beer. Another was his self-consciousness, his horror of being found, or of being seen, drunk and incapable. Now it didn't matter.



No, it might be important to get this right: he was not drinking became he wanted to, or because it didn't matter, or because he wanted to be drunk for once. He was going to go on drinking because in some way it was essential, inescapable. The two pints he had already poured into himself had been as essential as insulin is to a diabetic. He had to go on drinking, and since it was impossible for him to drink spirits and he didn't know much about wine, he would have to go on drinking beer.



In a supermarket he bought a carton containing a dozen cans of strong ale. The two pints he had drunk already lay deep in his belly like ballast; he felt he had swallowed a sack of lead shot. Yet the lightness of his head was not delightful, a pleasure such as he had not enjoyed for a long time. The lightness of his head and the heaviness of his belly seemed to represent the freedom of the mind and the bondage of the body.



He returned to the estuary where he had seen Gerry and Sheila the day before. When he reached the spot, it was deserted. Although the day was even warmer than the previous afternoon, half the peoble in the city were at lunch, a quarter had just finished, and the other quarter were about to eat. It was too early in the year for picnic parties at the beach, and there were no holiday makers yet.



Sitting down on the warm sand, out of the breeze, he tore the strip off a can of beer. At the supermarket he had had the forethought to buy a plastic mug. A man drinking from cans of beer drew attention to himself; a man drinking from a plastic mug would be assumed to be drinking tea or coffee, and was not worth a second glance.



He found himself thinking not of Judy but of Anita Somerset. There was a girl with enough warmth to warm even him. How could it be that she was free, unclaimed? Well, of course, it couldn't be. Even if she were older and he were younger, if the age gap were not uncrossable, if he were not living out his last few hours, his encounter with her would turn out like all such encounters in the past. If he were stupid enough to allow himself to become infatuated, as he had not done now for many years, it would turn out, at the moment of maximum pain for himself, that someone whom she had not bothered to mention had every claim on her, was engaged to her, married to her, perhaps the father of her child.



" What is wrong with me ?"



The question roared silently through him. It was not the first time, by many thousands, it had been asked.



It was too simple to say that he must fail, was always destined to fail. His life was full of good beginnings. Even when he had the sweet scent of decay on him he had interested Anita, had aroused her sympathy, and her sympathy was real. He did not doubt that. Even when cancer was growing in him, when he was forty-three and she was nineteen, he could have responded to Anita's sympathy and interest, until she tired of him . . .



" There I go again. " Inevitably she would tire of him. That there would be no real feeling involved, that it would be nothing remotely resembling a love affair, he took for granted. The very thought was ridiculous. But beyond that, he assumed from the very beginning that even talking further with Anita, letting her go with him when she wanted to, was bound to turn out wrong.



And the worst of it was, try as he might to convince himself otherwise, he knew he was right.



That incredible thing she had said returned to him and he puzzled over it. " Something good about you. "



Unlike him, she didn't tell fatuous, pointless lies, he was sure of that. She would never have been led into that ridiculous fantasy in the bar. When she said she had detected something good about him, she meant it.



But what could she mean?



There was, true, his religious background, more or less Scottish Free Kirk. Although he seldom went to church now, iron rectitude had sat on one shoulder as long as death had sat on the other. His spiritual ancestors were Puritans, Calvinists, Presbyterians. The various Homes had all been grimly religious, but his fear of the Lord dated back before the Homes, to the early years about which he knew nothing.



Yet his religious background had never led to good works.



He could not remember any occasion in his life when he had been altruistic or philanthropic. He had never been brave or strong or indeed anything positive. He had never helped anyone else because he had been too tied up in himself all his life.



Not only had he never done anything good, he had never even tried.



Quite gratefully, he lost the thread of his thought.





Unaware of time, he sat there as people returned to the beach, scolded toddlers for going too far into the water, packed up and went home to be back for older children's return from school. The first indication he had of the passage of time, other than the necessity to make frequent visits to the public toilet on the other side of the road behind him, was the discovery that all the cans of beer were empty.



He had drunk two pints and twelve cans of beer, without eating. And he was unused to alcohol.



Suddenly he was anxious. It seemed a long time since his last visit to the toilet, and then he had been extremely unsteady.



Could he still stand?



After a fashion, he could.



He left the carton of empty cans among the dunes. The task of carrying it was obviously beyond him. Perhaps more than ever before in his life, he wished he had a friend. Other drunks always had friends, people who at least tried to look after them.



He wished he had been able to drink in his room. But Judy always knew he was there.



" Weakness. "



That was the answer to the only question that mattered. He failed because he was always weak. He always took the weak way out. He avoided all showdowns, all conflict, all humiliation.



He had been right to drink himself to a stupor, because he had found out the truth. John Fletcher was nothing but a straw in the wind, and he didn't care.



Time, which had been going by stops and starts since he went to the university, was still up to its tricks. He found himself in a main street far from the beach, and it was beginning to get dark. The trouble was, he had to cross the street.



Like a wounded animal, he had to get to his lair. In such extremity he could ignore Judy. His door would be locked and she could knock till her knuckles were sore.



There was only one place he could go, and he had to cross the street to get to it. He might in his present state, desperate rather than drunken, have gone to Anita, but he had no idea where she lived. There was nowhere to go but his lodgings. And he had to cross this street.



The glorious lightness he had enjoyed for much of this vital day was gone, and his head was aching again. He was tired, but that was nothing. There was nothing to stop him walking a mile, two miles, five miles, to cross this street. Still, somewhere he had to cross it.



He was not incapable. He was not staggering. Nobody looked at him. If he tried, he might be able to speak intelligibly. But crossing this street was the most difficult and dangerous thing he had ever had to do.



After waiting for the right moment, he started to cross. Then he saw the white car. First he retreated to let it pass him. Then, when it still came at him, he stepped forward to let it go between him and the curb. From the middle of the road he darted back. There was a screech of brakes. He took three more quick strides.



The white car came to a halt six inches from him. The driver stuck his head out of the window. "What the hell do you think you're playing at?" he bawled. "If you want to get killed, try the railway. The trains can't dodge."



Somehow Fletcher reached the other side, drenched with sweat. For weeks, months, he had been perfectly prepared to die. But this glaring imminence terrified him. To die in six months, to die next week, even to die tomorrow was a prospect quite easy to face. To die in the next three seconds was another matter.



He knew what had happened, he knew how the ballet of death between him and the white car had come about. The driver didn't know. No wonder he had shouted in his anger and his fright: "What the hell do you think you're playing at?" No wonder he had added the reference to the railway.



Fletcher had moved where he knew the white car must go. Instead of trying to avoid it, he had waited until the driver must change course and then moved into the new course. If he had walked blindly, heedlessly across the street, the driver of the white car wouldn't have turned a hair.



Fletcher, or a part of Fletcher, had tried very hard to make the driver of the white car kill him. And he had been frustrated only by the skill of the driver.





There was no reason why Fletcher should go home by way of the half-demolished tenements where a new block of flats was to be built. There was certainly no reason why he should go through the now deserted demolition site, ignoring all the barriers and the warning signs.



On the other hand, the fact that the construction site lay directly between him and Beechview Gardens, where he lived, offered an excuse to go that way, and an excuse was apparently all he needed.



The bartender to whom he had told those ridiculous lies must have already found out that there had been no accident at the building site.



But there might be one now.



Suddenly Fletcher knew he was never going to see his room again, or Judy, or the sun.



There was nothing forcing him to go through the danger area. Yet he couldn't help it. He was in a curious state of intoxication in which his mind was clear but he could not remember anything. Although he knew perfectly well where he was and what he was doing, the effort to remember where he had been and what he had been doing five minutes ago was not worth while.



No doubt there was a watchman somewhere on the site. Fletcher had no difficulty in avoiding him.



When he heard the cracking sound, looked up and saw the chimney block falling, he started to run. Then his brain took over.



Recent events had shown him that if he ran he would run directly under the falling masonry. He would be able to judge it precisely, adjusting his position carefully until he was in the most suicidal spot.



He did possess one very special talent. Baudaker and his helpers had proved that, as if he hadn't known it already. He could be wrong with total fallibility.



With a desperate effort, he closed his eyes and stood still. If he had stood still at any time when the white car was coming at him, the driver, who had proved himself to be skilfull, would have had no difficulty in avoiding him. Now . . .



There was a fearful crash, the ground shook, and rubble showered him. But it was only rubble. He opened his eyes. The masonry had fallen some yards away, exactly where he would have been had he continued running.



He remembered what he had told the bartender . . . "great chunk of masonry." It hadn't been a hundred per cent lie; he had merely anticipated the masonry fall by a few hours.



Why, he wondered, was it so important that he should die, and so soon? He was humorless and seldom laughed, but he found himself sniggering hysterically at some half remembered sick joke about a man drinking poison and plunging a dagger into his heart as he jumped off the top of the Empire State Building in New York, to make sure.



The funniest thing of all was that he didn't want to die. Condemned to death anyway, and trying to kill himself in every way he knew, he still fought it.



He was through the demolition lot now, and the remaining streets were quiet. Already accepting the fact that he would never reach his rooms, he wondered how his execution could be accomplished now.



When the end came, it was really too simple. There was no time to fight himself, warn himself. Tired, a little unsteady through drink, he leaned on the railing as he climbed the steps to Mrs. MacDonald's house. But what he leaned on was not the railing, it was the gate to the basement entrance, and the gate was unlatched.



He missed the stone stairs and plunged headfirst to the well beneath, landing on the top of his head.











CHAPTER 2: JUDY



He was in bed, and he had never felt better in his life. Never before had he known quite such comfort, such luxurious well-being. Although he had thought he had had no pain, it was suddenly clear that his life, or at least his last ten years or so, had been lived against a background of minor discomfort; an imperceptible malaise that had dulled everything for him.



He was, however, exceedingly hungry, and this puzzled him.



Obviously, this was life after death. He had felt himself die. Yet not for a moment, certainly not after feeling the pangs of hunger, did he think he was in heaven, despite his physical well-being. Heaven, he believed, must be a place of the spirit, and there was nothing spiritual about this incarnation.



Incarnation? Reincarnation?



Caution and a hint of fear made him keep his eyes closed. When he opened them he must face an incredible situation. He had died, and he was alive. He did not waste time speculating on the nature of the miracle that had occurred.



One very strange thing was the strong, impression that he was not alone. He was with someone, and their closeness was something beyond understanding. Without moving, he knew no one was touching him, and he could hear no one in the room. Yet he was not alone.



At last he did open his eyes; He was in a bedroom dimly lit by street lighting outside (so at least a few hours had elapsed). The startling thing was that the bedroom was not unfamiliar. Beside the bed was the radio he had fixed the previous day . . . What was he doing in Judy's bedroom, in Judy's bed?



He leaped from the bed, switched on the light, and looked in the dressing-table mirror.



Staring back at him was Judy.



He was Judy.



He staggered and clutched the dressing-table to steady himself. The mechanics of his possession of Judy's body was something he didn't even think about. He was in the grip of a sick horror that he had become a girl. Spinning round, he put out the light so that he could no longer see.



He had told Anita he did not hate women, and it was true. Nor did he despise them. Rather, he idolized them. They were not merely a sex apart but a race apart, a species apart. Communication with them, except across a wide gulf, was impossible. That was the nature of things. His brief near-intimacy with Anita was as uncharacteristic and untypical as the drinking spree.



The miracle of being alive after death, in another body, he took for granted, because it had happened. But he could never take for granted, could never accept, could never endure life as a girl. It was an emotional reaction, and, being emotional, it required no reasons. He required no reasons,



He had to get out.



Lying down in bed again, he closed his eyes. He tried not to be aware of Judy's body, was careful not to touch it with Judy's hands. Irrationally, that seemed like a kind of lesbianism.



There was no denying one main fact: in dying he had made a mental escape from death, alighting into a receptive mind, a weak mind. That, then, was part of the talent he had as a freak. He could hop into another body under extreme stress -- and what could be more extreme than the moment of death?



Baudaker would be very interested, probably delighted.



But Fletcher -- he still thought of himself as that -- was not. He had been given, as an alternative to slow death, life as a thirteen-year-old girl. And he didn't want it.



Had his body been found yet? Possibly not. There was no light in the bricked-up, unused basement sink. If the gate had swung shut, the body might not be seen until the next day.



Why not do the thing again, and do it right? He was perfectly prepared to take a second dive into the same dark sink, deliberately this time, and with no thought of escape. Last time he had desperately wanted to live. And this was the result. Next time he would die with the fixed thought in his mind that a creature like himself ought to destroy itself, because it was of no use to itself and could never be of use to others.



Without warning, the door opened slightly. "Are you all right, Judy?" Mrs. MacDonald murmured, not loudly enough to waken her if she was sleeping.



"Yes, Mother," said Fletcher, and then remembered Judy always called her Mum. But Mrs. MacDonald withdrew her head and closed the door.



Hearing himself speak in Judy's light soprano, pleasant though it was, caused further revulsion in Fletcher, as if he had lost his manhood and heard himself speak in the unnatural tone of the castrato. He made un his mind irrevocably: there was no question of accepting this fate. He would fall to the basement again, and next day the police would have to assume, since there was no other reasonable explanation, that Fletcher and Judy had been talking, leaning on the railing, when it gave way. Fletcher didn't consider it worthwhile to create a more plausible story for them. If you really wanted to die, instead of bitterly spitting your life in the faces of people who had wronged you, it made not the slightest difference what you left behind.



He got up and put on the light again. In bed he felt no pain, but standing up he was aware of the soreness in Judy's thigh, the stiffness of her ankle.



His hand on the doorknob, he realized he could hardly go downstairs and outside in Judy's flimsy nightgown. He would have to dress Judy's body. That was how he thought of it, though it was his body too.



Ashamed and disgusted, as if he as Fletcher had found Judy unconscious and undressed her while she was helpless, he plucked at her nightdress and found it nearly impossible to force himself to touch either it or Judy's body, although he wanted only to dress it for death . . .



"And what about me?"



He controlled Judy's voice -- he had proved that. He also controlled her actions. Yet she spoke: she used her own voice to speak aloud to him. She was still there.



He had known it all along, really. That was what he had sensed before he opened his eyes: not the presence of another person in another body, but another person in the same body.



So his plan was impossible. Any human being had every right, he fully believed, to kill himself or herself. In practice this was never in doubt. Suicide was a legal offense only if you botched it. However, he had no right to kill anyone else, even Judy.



"I'm glad you realize that, anyway," she said drily. "Though I don't like that bit about 'even Judy.' Now you know you can't kill me and you still want to get out of me. So far, we're in complete agreement."



"You hate it as much as I do?"



He didn't use her voice. It was unnecessary. She knew what he was thinking.



--Not as much, no. After all, I've gained certain advantages in the deal.



--Advantages?



--Haven't you noticed? What was the matter with me, Mr. Fletcher? I was mentally retarded, is that it? I never really knew why I had to go to a special school. I never really knew anything, I suppose.



He tried to hide his thoughts, but failed.



Using her voice again, she said: "Oh, that would be awful! If my life were really to be as you showed me just now, I think I'd agree to end it all and let you kill us both! But I don't think it will be like that, now."



--You don't?



His thought was guarded. It was possible, he discovered, to shut his thoughts off from Judy and merely speak mentally to her, in words, like two people using their voices.



--You do, judging by that barrier you've iust put up, she retorted. But I think you're wrong. You've opened my eyes, and I don't think they'll ever be closed again.



--You certainly don't think like the old Judy.



--Mr. Fletcher, the old Judy couldn't think at all. Poor little kid . . . I'm really sorry for her. But all this is a waste of time. You want to die rather than be me, and frankly it does seem the best thing.



She was cheerfully brutal, like a dentist saying: "All these will have to come out."



--You used to like me, Fletcher observed, slightly piqued.



--I still like you, but you must admit you've no right to be anything but dead. And remember, I saw right into your thoughts. You can't go on this way.



--No.



--I wonder what made you hate women so much? I didn't catch that.



"I don't hate women[" he prolested, using her voice.



--Not exactly. You think they're unclean.



--Nothing like that, I . . .



--Well, you feel you have to keep away from them. I've just realized . . . What a cheek! . . . you liked me when I was a kid, but lately you've been trying to keep out of my way. Really, Mr. Fletcher, in your own way you were more mixed up than me.



--I know.



--Funny, I thought you were wonderful.



--And now you know the truth.



--Oh, don't be such a drag. I still respect you. How could I help it? You're such a good man.



There it was again, from Judy this time and not Anita. It was equally incomprehensible, more incomprehensible, because Judy had seen into his mind, and Anita had not.



What I mean is, said Judy, quite willing to explain, you'd never do anything bad. You'd always do the right thing. I don't think I'm going to be religious, like you, but if it makes people like you it's a good thing.



There were about fifty different things he couldn't understand, and the most immediate among them was Judy's attitude. At once she liked him, respected him, treated him as a not very bright child, was curious about him, and casually thought the sooner he was dead the better.



--Yes, that's right, she observed. --It's not really funny if somebody's dead but won't lie down, is it? Anyway, you still insist you don't want to go on like this.



--Right.



--Then I think I know how we can both get what we want.



--You do?



He tried to keep unflattering surprise out of his thought, but she caught it.



--Please don't go on regarding me as an idiot, Mr. Fletcher, and a female idiot at that. I'm really quite smart now. Of course, I've no means of comparison, and although I know I'm about five thousand times smarter than I was, that wouldn't necessarily make me a genius now. But I can think of things, get ideas, even ideas that might work.



--How do you think We could both get what we want? How would you go about it?



--Create a situation where we must fight to live. I want to live. I'll fight. I'll survive. You want to die. So you won't fight me for my body. You'll leave me to save it.



--What's your plan?



--Tell me what you fear.



--What I fear?



--What you can't stand.



--Choking, drowning . . .



--That's no use. I can't either.



--Heights . . .



--Heights?



--It's not a pathological fear. At least, I don't think so. If I'm ten floors up behind glass, in a solid building, I can bear to look down, though I'd rather not. But even twenty feet up, on a flat roof without a parapet, I . . .



--That's it, she observed with satisfaction. --Mr. Fletcher, prepare to meet thy doom. No, it's not very funny, is it? Do you know the new skyscraper in Westfield?



--I've seen it. I've never been near it.



--I've been up at the top with Mum, visiting a friend of hers. Anybody can go up in the lift. There's an outside parapet. Anybody can go out there.



--Go on.



--No. It's strange, I can keep things from you. I can think things and not tell you. I don't think I should tell you about this. Let's go to the skyscraper and get to the top, and you leave it to me.



--You're not going to kill yourself, I presume.



--Well, haven't we agreed that the present situation is a fate worse than death? And talking of fates worse than death, I suddenly understand, theoretically of course, a lot that I didn't know before.



She laughed out loud.



--That must have been very funny yesterday: me, a poor simple kid, making you inspect my sore leg, and you, a shy bachelor, overcome with embarrassment. I wish I could see it as an outsider. But you needn't have been embarrassed a little while ago about taking off my nightie. After all, you're me, or I'm you. Why be embarrassed at taking off your own nightie?



--I think you know perfectly well, he said stiffly. --To return to this idea of yours. Maybe you're right not to tell me the details. But what is it in general?



--I'm going to make you want to leave me. I'm going to make you want it so much that you'll do it.



--Maybe we'll both die.



--Not if you leave things to me.



--Very well. It's your life.



--Thanks very much for acknowledging that. In the circumstances, I suppose there might be some doubt. Promise you'll leave everything to me?



--All right.



All this time, as they communicated, mostly silently, she had been lying on the bed, her eyes shut because that made things easier for both of them. Now she opened her eyes, stood up and reached for her nightdress.



"No!" she said sharply. "Stop that. You mustn't interfere. You must let me be in complete control. If it horrifies you that I'm going to take off my nightie and get dressed (and I must say you have your nerve being horrified, Mr. Fletcher) go and hide in that coruer of my brain you've taken over. I'm sure you can, if you try."



He discovered he could.





It was possible to shut everything out except the vaguest consciousness of Judy's presence beside him. He saw nothing, heard nothing, felt nothing. Judy, he was fairly sure, could still summon him if she wanted him.



In the most complete peace he had ever known, he was able to think without any considerations of time or space or personality; yet he found himself thinking exclusively of John Fletcher and Judy MacDonald.



Judy was by far the more interesting subiect. Regretfully he could not agree with her optimistic assumption that when and if he left her mind she would not return to the painfully retarded child she had been.



She did not talk and act now like Judy, or indeed like any thirteen-year-old girl who ever lived. Whatever she was, she was something new, a little of her old self, a little herself plus the knowledge and experience of John Fletcher, and a lot pure John Fletcher.



Considering that John Fletcher's brain was dead, probably pulped (because he had fallen head first on stone), a surprising amount of him still existed -- not merely spirit, soul, and the abstract mysteries of personality, but also memory, which he had always thought was physical, dwelling in a particular place in a complex of brain cells.



Philosophers and psychologists had long pondered the basis of personality. Was a man what he was because the genes of his parents made him so, or because of what the world had done to him, or because of what he had made of himself? What was the soul, the spirit? Where did the soul live?



There had been endless theoretical discussions when he was a student at Edinburgh about life after death. In most of them there was general agreement that personal survival was pointless without personality. In other words, mere continuance as a spirit without the history that made up the individual, the virtues, the vices, the talent, his loves and hates, would be like a play without players. A man taking the greatest journey of his life felt there was no purpose in making it unless he could take along a certain amount of luggage.



The Church, while stressing the importance of the spirit and soul, had been forced always to promise more than the survival of the soul, to go on and promise personal survival. Paul wrote to the Corinthians:



Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption. Behold, I show you a mystery: we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be ranged incorruptible, and we shall be changed . . . O death, when is thy sting? O grave, when is thy victory?



But the churches had to go farther. After death you met all your friends. In the happy land far, far away there was music and trees and a river and flowers and green fields, and no pain. Christianity itself promised no more than survival of the soul, but the ministers preaching to real people distributed after-death largesse in the form of an invitation to a real nice clambake across the Jordan, on Canaan's shore.



Heaven would be an eternal picnic with all the people you liked best, and no hangovers.



Well, he had managed to take a certain amount of baggage with him, not to heaven, but to the somewhat empty marble halls of Judy's brain. Yet even there two was a crowd.



As he explored, however, he found that his baggage had been limited. He had not, after all, been allowed, or able, to pack an unlimited number of cabin trunks with all the mental impedimenta that John Fletcher had accumulated in his forty-three years. On his mental flight he had been allowed just so much personal baggage, no more.



He tried to remember that same passage from the Bible in French:



Or je dis ceci, frčres, que . . . Voici, je vous dis un mystere. Nous . . . a la derničre trompette . . . la mort a été engloutie en victoire . . . Oů est, o mort, ton . . . ?



His knowledge of the French Bible had been greater than that of the English Bible, since he liked to read "La Sainte Bible" rather than the version of King James. But now he could remember only phrases here and there -- probably passages, he realized in a flash of inspiration, that he had recited to Judy. She had not understood them, had not remembered them, yet they were not entirely unfamiliar to her brain.



For the rest, he knew he was, or had been, John Fletcher. He knew about Baudaker, Anita, Judy, Gerry -- all concerned in recent events.



But at least 95% of the knowledge of John Fletcher was gone. He had managed to take with him only a basic pattern of John Fletcher, no more.



Well, what did it matter, anyway? Suddenly he tired of the whole thing. Pure basic animal fear of death had made him strive for life when he knew he must die. This time there was no conflict. He wanted to leave Judy



--You're wrong, she observed.



Returning to awareness, he found they had reached the Westfield skyscraper, the city's first. It towered over them. Now it was quite dark, ten or eleven o'clock, perhaps.



--I don't want to leave you?



--No, not that. About forgetting all your learning. Why, I know millions of things I never knew before.



He had grown careless about keeping his thoughts to himself. Shutting Judy right out at first, he had gradually forgotten to keep up the barrier.



Now he felt the pain of Judy's knee and ankle.



--You shouldn't be out like this, he said. --You've walked too far.



She entered the hall, deserted except for a few people leaving the building. Visitors, probably, they paid no attention to her as she entered the lift they had vacated.



--I'll be all right in a day or two, she replied indifferently. If this works, that is.



He was suddenly struck by the essential difference between them, the quality most characteristic of Judy as she had been and as she was now, and the quality still characteristic of him. She was an optimist and he was a pessimist.



--You're right, she observed, pleased. --I always think everything is going to turn out all right, and it does.



--I always expect everything to turn out wrong, and it does.



--Well, that's another reason why this is going to work. When I set up something that could turn out wrong for one of us or both of us, it's not likely to turn out wrong for me, is it?



He didn't answer that. Another thought which had not occurred to him before struck him now. Pessimistic though he still was, he no longer had quite the black acceptance of failure of John Fletcher in the body of John Fletcher. Perhaps it was impossible to be so bleakly unhopeful in the brain and body of the sparkling Judy. She had sparkled even when retarded, and she had lost none of that quality.



The lift had stopped. Judy stepped out into a long corridor.



--Now remember, she warned. --Leave this to me.



Fletcher curled himself into a mental ball and left it all to Judy. He didn't know what she intended, and didn't want to know.



--No! said Judy, giving him a mental jolt which, though not physical at all, was like a punch in the stomach, if not even more unenjoyable. --Leave everything to me, yes, but don't run away and hide. You have to watch what's going on.



--All right. Please don't do that again.



She chuckled.



--You felt that, didn't you, Mr. Fletcher? Now who's weak-minded, you or me?



--I concede the point without further demonstration.



Judy went to the stone parapet and looked over.



Far below, tiny cars crawled about the streets like beetles. The street lights were all shielded from above; the round pools of light they cast were like shining silver coins on the dark streets.



"No, no!" said Judy, as he tried to draw back. --Stay quiet. Leave this to me.



--I'm afraid.



--Good.



She looked along the windows behind them. On one side quite a few were lit. In the other direction, only one was, and that was heavily curtained.



She climbed nimbly on the stone parapet.



All that was left of fletcher screamed with terror.



As skyscrapers went, this was a mere high tenement. But the people moving below looked like ants. The parapet was no more than three inches wide.



Casually Judy started to walk along the parapet.



--No, no! Fletcher screamed silently.



--I won't look down again. So you won't see it.



--Jump down!



--This way? She turned to face the chasm.



--Oh, Christ, no!



--I never heard you swear before. I'm shocked.



--I wasn't swearing, that was a prayer.



She turned ninety degrees and started to walk along the parapet again. --I'm very surefooted, and I've never been afraid of heights, just as heights. Think of it this way: anybody at all could walk along a three inch painted line in a car park, without ever stumbling off the line. Unless he was drunk, of course, or unless the wind was very fierce and gusty . . . there's quite a strong breeze here as a matter of fact, but it's fairly steady.



Having shrunk in terror until what remained of him barely existed at all, Fletcher desperately tried to regain control of Judy and make her jump safely on to the balcony.



"You know perfectly well that will kill us both," said Judy aloud. "We can't fight for control now of all times. You couldn't even get off the parapet safely. Your terror would make you do the wrong thing. So please don't be silly ."



He knew she was right. Once more he pretended not to exist. Yet he was no longer able, as he had been on the way to the skyscraper, not to look through Judy's eyes. He tried and failed. She didn't have to jolt him again. Fear made him look.



Her injured leg gave way slightly as she put her weight on it, all but pitching her into the abyss.



--Near thing, she observed cheerfully, as Fletcher silently gibbered in terror.



Judy reached the corner of the building. No longer was there safe solidness on one side. At the apex of the parapet, it was like standing on the point of a mile high needle with a gulf all around.



She turned to bisect the 270 degree angle. Now there was nothing but the gulf. Calmly, curiously, she surveyed the streets below.



--Funny, she remarked. --As a moron, I had too much sense to do this. Maybe intelligence does make you less sensible.



She raised one leg, the injured one, and held it out in front of her, over the gulf.



Fletcher's nerve snapped and he tried desperately to get out.



But he couldn't.



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."



"I won it! It was mine!"



She laughed with genuine scom. "Ross, you're a spoiled kid. I didn't know it at first. But I know it now. Your secret is out."



He took a step toward her, murder in his eyes.



"Now don't try that," she said softly. "Never try to be a tough guy with me, Ross. I'm not rotten like you, and I'm certainly not vindictive, but if anyone ever really annoyed me, really made me loathe him, I think I'd hound him to his grave."



It was then that a tiny youth in a white coat, who must be at least sixteen but didn't look it, appeared at Ross's shoulder and said breathlessly: "Are you Ian Ross?"



Ross recovered instantly. "I have that honor, infant."



"Mr. Baudaker wants you."



"But I don't want him."



The youth shrugged indifferently. "Anyway, I've told you. Can you tell me where to find a girl called Anita Somerset?"



Ross leered. "I could, if you were to make it worth my while."



"Where is she, then?"



"Right here, infant, inflaming us both to fiery passion with her presence."



"Oh . . . are you Anita Somerset?"



The girl smiled at him to compensate for Ross. "Yes."



"Mr. Baudaker wants you too."



He turned on his heel and ran off, whistling.



"Come and have a pint of wallop with me," said Ross.



"But Baudaker -- "



"You don't imagine I come running when bald little elderly lab office-boys summon me?"



"No, I don't," said Anita, suddenly amused. "You couldn't go and see Baudaker now, could you, Ross? It wouldn't be in your part. You only took part in that session the night before last because nobody wanted you, yet you did behave, you did work, because nobody expected you to, and you didn't sneer over the results because we were all waiting for it. Don't you realize, Ross, you're ten times more predictable than anybody else?"



"Nobody's predictable. Let's go and see what Baudaker wants."



"That's what I mean," said Anita tranquilly.





"Dead?" said Anita blankly. "Already?"



"She's a clever girl," said Ross dispassionately. "She knew he was going to die. So did we all. He carried it around with him."



"Be quiet," said Anita impatiently. "How did it happen?"



Baudaker had a copy of the first edition of the evening paper. A paragraph low on the front page, headed DEATH FALL, was marked:



John Fletcher (43), 24 Beechview Gardens, has been found dead in a disused basement well at his lodgings. According to the police statement, an iron gate leading to the basement well had given way as Fletcher leaned on it, and he pitched over the edge, missing the steps, landing on his head. There are no suspicious circumstances.



"I'm going there to find out about it," said Anita.



"Find out what, Miss Somerset?" Baudaker asked.



"I'm going to that house. What's the address? -- 24 Beechview Gardens. That's not far from here."



"Such a tragedy," Baudaker sighed. "His ESP rating, under controlled conditions, was phenomenal. If only he had cooperated in a really exhaustive series of tests . . . "



"I know," said Anita. "Now please excuse me."



"If you're really going there," said Ross, "I'll come with you."



"Please don't bother."



"It's no bother, Maiden."



As they walked, he spoke less provocatively than usual. His interest had been caught and he did not want the episode to close, as so many episodes in his life had closed, because of something said by someone else or himself that made it impossible to go on.



"Except for about five minutes with you, Maiden, he had a totally negative score. That must mean something."



"Of course it means something. It means he had to be wrong. Consciously or unconsciously, he made all his answers wrong. And he could do that only by knowing the right answers."



"I don't know about that . . . "



"It's the only way. You understand mathematics, don't you?"



"Through a glass, darkly."



"Well, don't argue about this. Obviously, if a man can manage to be always wrong, it can't be due to chance."



"Obviously."



"All right, then . . . just don't argue about obvious things. And then, suddenly, Fletcher was able to score fantastic positive results with me alone."



"Of course," said Ross, "we only have your word for that."



"What?"



"By arrangement, there was no tape recorder, no spyhole, no outside check. You took down the figures . . . "



She said coldly: "If you think I'd falsify results . . . "



"I don't. Did anyone suggest anything of the sort? But remember, if anything has to be proved, seven people spent umpteen hours with Fletcher and demonstrated beyond doubt that he could score zero per cent with unfailing regularity. Only in a private test with you, carried out and scored by you, were there positive results."



"I see what you mean," Anita said.



They found the house and looked at the iron gate. A new padlock had been fitted on it. Anita peered over reluctantly, aware that Fletcher's body would no longer be there, yet a little scared it might be.



As she rang the bell, Anita said: "Let me do the talking."



"Certainly, Maiden. Next to your pale white body, the thing I love best about you is your seductive voice."



"Oh, shut up."



The door was opened by a pretty girl who might have been sixteen, but was not.



"We're friends of John Fletcher," said Anlta.



"Oh? I didn't think he had any friends, but I'm glad to know I was wrong. Do come in."



Fletcher took immense pleasure in sight and sound of Judy. First, she had not fallen from the balcony to her death. Second, her composure, her intelligent elegance in a plain print dress, no makeup and no nylons showed that she had acquired discrimination quite beyond the Judy of old. Third, what she said indicated she was at least a normal thirteen-year-old if not a precocious thirteen-year-old.



"The police have gone," said Judy. "But they asked us to let them know if anybody inquired about Mr. Fletcher. It seems hardly anything is known about him . . . are you relatives, by any chance?"



"No . . . I'm Anita Somerset and this is Ian Ross. We met Mr. Fletcher through experiments at the university."



"Experiments?" Judy, leading them upstairs to Fletcher's room, paused on the stairs to look back.



"Yes."



She recollected herself. "Oh, I'm Judy MacDonald. My mother is the landlady. She had to go to the police station again."



"Yes, of course."



Ross, who had restrained himself so far, started to say something, but Anita, suspicious in advance of anything he might choose to say, dug him in the ribs with her elbow.



Perhaps, Fletcher thought wonderingly, he had achieved something worth-while after all, in death if not in life. How it was possible by briefly inhabiting Judy's mind to effect such a transformation he had no idea, but then he had no idea either how he managed to jump from mind to mind.



They entered Fletcher's room. It was much as he had left it. The police had put everything back as they found it.



"This is where he lived, said Judy. "The furniture isn't his, but everything else is. There's a gold watch, typewriter, radio, clothes. Do you know anyone who should get them?"



"I'm afraid not," said. Anita. She stood irresolute, not knowing how to go on. Then she said: "Fletcher's definitely dead, I suppose? I mean, there's no doubt?"



The quizzical glance Judy shot at her meant more to Fletcher than it did to Anita or Ross. To them it only indicated her surprise that people who had read of a man's death in the newspaper should doubt that he was dead. To Fletcher it indicated speculation if Anita suspected what she knew -- that Fletcher had not died when his body did.



"Well, in the fall his brain was smashed, his neck was broken and his back was broken, all instantly," Judy said in a matter-of-fact tone. "I don't know how anyone can be much deader than that."



Anita shuddered. But she went on steadily: "That's part of what I mean. He must have been pretty badly smashed up. Could there be any mistake in identification?"



"No," said Judy firmly. "His face wasn't injured."



"There's no question of suicide, I suppose?" said Ross casually.



Again that quizzical glance. "Why should there be? Mr. Fletcher apparently leaned on the gate, and for some reason it had been unfastened -- probably by children. The police at first hinted my mother should have done something about that gate, but then they looked around and merely suggested it should be padlocked, since it's never used now. Every building in the street has a basement well like ours, some in use, some not. There are stone steps leading down, with a railing on the street side and not on the other. Some have gates like ours, some have none. Children play on the stairs, and sometimes fall. My mother said she never heard of anyone being seriously hurt before. This is old property . . . "



"But the gate was normally shut," Ross persisted.



"Yes, with a bolt. No padlock. It couldn't open by itself. And there's a spring to shut the gate if it's opened. This morning the gate was shut but not bolted."



"Who found the body?"



"I did. About seven. I was thirsty and went down for the milk."



Judy was perfectly composed. The night before she must have felt Fletcher leave her. To discover the body on her return to the house would have prompted many awkward questions. So she had sensibly waited until a reasonable opportunity of finding the body presented itself.



"You can't tell me anyone who should know about Mr. Fletcher?" she said.



"No," said Anita. "I knew he was rather solitary . . . There's nothing here that might help to trace relatives?"



"There may not be any relatives."



"Oh? Surely . . . "



"Surely everyone has relatives? Not necessarily. The police found Mr. Fletcher's birth certificate. I'd never seen one like it before . . . He was a foundling."



"Foundling?"



"Exact date of birth unknown, presumed to be about August, 1926. Place of birth unknown, unregistered, presumed to be in the Edinburgh district. Parents unknown. He was given the name Fletcher at his first children's Home."



Anita and Ross exchanged glances.



"And there's this." Judy turned and opened a drawer. "The police took the birth certificate, but they left this." She brought out a parchment in a cardboard cylinder. "This is a degree from Edinburgh University," she said.



"First class honors in French and German."



"Oh?" said Ross, interested. "That's my course."



"Dated 1948," said Judy. "That's quite a while ago, but Edinburgh University must still have some details. The police are checking that."



There was a pause. Anita and Ross had no reasonable excuse to stay any longer. They could not help Judy; they certainly couldn't help Fletcher; and she had told them all they had any right to know.



"Thank you, Miss MacDonald," Anita said automatically. "You've been very helpful."



Judy laughed her old gurgle of amusement. "Call me Judy," she said. "I'm not old enough to be Miss MacDonald."



"Well, Judy, then. Thank you anyway."



"Before you go, the police asked us to take a note of the names and addresses of anyone who inquired about Mr. Fletcher."



"Of course. I'm Anita Somerset, 74 Old . . . "



"Would you write it down, please?" Judy gave Ross a piece of paper and a pencil, since he was nearer.



"Why don't you write it yourself?" he asked.



"Because I can't write."



He laughed incredulously. "Now, really, you don't expect me to swallow that, do you?"



"Why not? Can't you swallow? I had a sore throat last week, and I couldn't swallow."



"You're pulling my leg, Miss MacDonald."



She frowned at him. She didn't like him much and made no secret of it. "And you're trying to pull mine, but you can't because I'm too ignorant. All the same, it isn't very, nice of you. How would you like it if somebody pulled your leg became you couldn't write?"



Tactfully Anita took the paper and wrote their names and addresses. Ross was still staring at Judy.





Ross invited Anita to lunch, and when she said her lunch would be waiting for her at her lodgings, tried to get himself invited there. She refused to take the hint, broad though it was, and left him.



The parting was not cordial. Few of their meetings or partings were.



Ross lunched at the Students' Union. As he finished the soup, a watery brew with a few sprigs of parsley floating in it, a girl came over and sat beside him.



Without enthusiasm he said: "Hello, Veronica. I got your letter."



She was a tall, powerful creature, attractive like the horses she rode on her father's estate.



"And you're going to be like that about it," she said, ordering a pork pie followed by apple tart.



"Like what about it?"



"Sulky, because I said no."



"Oh, you said no, did you?"



"I thought you said you got my letter."



"Yes, but I didn't read it. I seldom read letters."



"Then why write and ask me?'



"Eric Stirling made me. I wouldn't have done it, but I was drunk at the time."



"Why didn't Eric Stirling ask me himself? He's the charities campaign convener."



"Because he thought the invitation to be Lady Godiva in the parade would be more appropriate coming from me than from him."



"And why did he think that?" she asked with dangerous calm.



"Because everybody knows that we slept together for three months before I got tired of you."



"Everybody knows?"



"I've recommended you to all my friends. You must admit that's generous. Have you had any offers?"



"You have no friends," she said drily, and moved to another table.



Ross cackled derisively.



Now that he had more information, Fletcher decided there were indeed certain deep similarities between Ian Ross and himself. Fletcher had been anti-social, and so, in a different way, was Ross. Nobody but Judy had liked Fletcher; nobody seemed to like Ross. Fletcher had been a failure; the way he was going, Ross was going to end up a failure too in middle age, antagonizing all who might help him, rejecting the women who would put up with him in favor of those who would not, posing in a way which might win him a certain reluctant envy at university but would do him no good in a profession or in commerce.



Offhand, from what he had seen of Ross, Fletcher guessed he would become a bitter, frustrated modern languages teacher in one of the lesser public schools, never attaining the responsibility of heading a department because no one would ever select him for such responsibility. His acid wit, becoming more biting with the passing years, would be heard only in classrooms and common rooms.



Fletcher was able within Ross's brain, as he had been in Judy's, to ignore what Ross did when it did not interest him, almost shut himself off from Ross. What Ross did in the afternoon he had no idea. Fletcher became aware of the external world again only quite late in the evening when Ross, rather drunk, became involved in an argument in a pub with a clutch of rugby players, and Anita Somerset's name was passed back and forth like a rugby ball.



One of the rugby men was Eric Stirring. Perhaps in pique at Veronica's refusal to be Lady Godiva and blaming Ross for it, he taunted Ross about Anita, and Fletcher could feel Ross becoming furious.



"I seem to remember," Eric said, "your propounding a very simple doctrine. Girls were made weaker than men as a prime condition for the survival of the race. Now Anita isn't particularly strong, not nearly as strong as Veronica, and from all accounts -- from your accounts, anyway -- you managed to cope satisfactorily in Veronica's case."



Several of the rugby players, drunker than either Ross or Stirling, intervened thickly with earthy comments.



"I used to lodge at 74 Old Castle Road," Eric observed, "until I was kicked out. The old harridan who runs the place is very narrow-minded for an ex-nurse. But that's by the way . . . one night, a night such as this, I was in my room, somewhat inebriated, as I am now. I had managed to reduce my apparel to one sock, and was standing at the open window. A movement outside attracted my attention -- two elderly females of forbidding aspect, in the lane behind the house, were staring at me."



The rugby players guffawed.



"It was a large window," said Eric reflectively. "I should like to say they stared in admiration, but my respect for the truth compels me to admit that their expression savored rather of horror."



There was another outburst of laughter, in which Ross did not join.



"Now the point is," Eric went on, "this lane is open to all. And Anita Somerset's room is the one next to the one I then occupied. And the coal cellar roof affords an easy way to reach the two rooms. Even those two elderly females, had they felt so inclined, would have had no great difficulty in climbing into my bedroom."



It was some time before the ribaid chorus died down.



"Someone such as you, Ross," said Eric, "holding your opinions, is surely practically forced to take advantage of such a providential dispensation. La Belle Somerset is almost certainly in her room now . . . "



"I'm not forced to do anything," Ross retorted shortly. Fletcher noticed, not for the first time, that when he was angry any gift for repartee he possessed deserted him.





"Oh? One would have thought..."



"But I'll do it."



Sudden silence fell. Coarse badinage was one thing. This, suddenly, was another.



Drunk as they were, they all knew Ross didn't mean he would accept the challenge in the spirit of a conventional rag, good for a bellylaugh at a pub afterward, raiding Anita's room and carrying off her panties as a trophy.



This was serious.



Since it was serious, they decided that was none of their affair. They turned away and finished their pints. It was closing time anyway.



Eric Stirling smiled and raised his glass to Ross.





The rear of 74 Old Castle Road was not quite as Eric had described it.



The lane, closed to traffic at both ends by posts, led from one cul-de-sac to another. The Old Castle Road houses were cut off by a continuous high wall in which there were no gates. Eric had exaggerated considerably in saying two elderly ladies would have had no difficulty in climbing into his bedroom. First there was the seven-foot wall to be negotiated. Then, he had tacitly minimized the height of the bedroom windows. Although there was only one floor below, it was an old house built on the grand scale, and at the rear, where the ground was lower than at the front, even the ground-floor windows were about ten feet up. As he had said, there was a coal cellar with its roof close to the top of the wall. It was not this, however, which led to the wall between the upstairs bedrooms, but an out-jutting addition to the original building housing, probably, a bathroom.



Anita was in her room. Light curtains were drawn, but her shadow as she moved was plainly and provocatively recognizable.



Ross stood there for several minutes. Eric Stirling had bent the truth quite considerably. Reaching Anita's window was a job for a cat burglar rather than two old ladies. And the chances were that the catch of the window would be set anyway.



Yet the challenge had been made and accepted, and it would sound terribly weak later to claim that the climb was too difficult and dangerous. That cunning so-and-so, Ross thought, knew that at the time.



Anita settled the matter by coming to the window, drawing the curtains partially, and pulling up the window a few inches. She might almost be opening the door for him.



Ross drew himself to the top of the wall. Some eight feet away and a little higher was the roof of the cellar Eric had mentioned. It was a felt roof and might not bear his weight. However, the cellar was obviously old, like the house, like this entire district, and the chances were it was as solid as most old buildings.



Ross stood up on the wall, balancing precariously, and leaped for the roof. He landed easily and quietly on all fours.



Close up, the wall of the bathroom extension seemed even higher and more forbidding. But there was a stout waste pipe offering a step about four feet up, and above that the sill of a window, unlit, and then a slight ledge above the window. Drunk as he was, Ross would have turned back on finding any obstacle which he could honestly say made the thing too difficult. Instead, there was always something to encourage him to take the next step. Even Anita was cooperating a hundred per cent.



He put his foot on the pipe and drew himself up to the sill. The bathroom window was open at the top, affording an excellent hold. He stepped up on the cross-frame, holding the ledge above the window, and then when he straightened he was able to reach the roof. There was no gutter at this side; his hands were on solid brick. Drawing himself up, he rolled over on the sloping roof with a slight rattle of slates. Then he got to his feet and climbed carefully up the slope.



The height was not great enough to send Fletcher giddy with terror, even when Ross glanced over the edge. Yet a fall from this roof could be just as fatal as from the top of the Westfield skyscraper, and he was glad to note that Ross had a wholesome respect for heights and took no chances. The coal cellar was set against the wall of the extension but not at its angle with the main building, and there was therefore, a fall of some thirty-five feet to what looked like a concrete path in the gloom below.



A much shorter fall had killed John Fletcher.



As near Anita's window as he could get on the bathroom roof, Ross paused with a muttered curse. The window, which had appeared to be only inches from the top of the sloping roof, was actually some distance away. With nobody in the room inside, he could stretch to the sill and clamber in. With Anita moving about in the room, however, it was impossible to push up the window and climb in without alerting her.



What would Anita or any girl do when she heard and saw a man at her window? Very likely slam it shut without thinking. And he'd fall and probably be killed.



Ross cursed Anita, cursed Eric Stirling, cursed himself and cursed the beer he had drunk for getting him into this situation.



Then abruptly he stopped cursing. Through the gap in the curtain he saw Anita running hot water into the sink in her room. She had a green bottle on a shelf at the back of the washbasin. It was obvious she was going to wash her hair.



She took so long in getting started, however, that Ross began muttering again in impatience. At last she reached behind her for the zip of her dress.



While the dress was over her head, Ross reached over, threw up the window and scrambled into the room. Emerging from her dress, Anita, in a green slip, stared at him with surprise and disgust but no fear.



"Now you're in my power, you proud beauty," said Ross, striking a pose.



"Get out," she said with loathing.



"After all the trouble I took to get in? Not likely."



"You're drunk."



"Only moderately drunk."



She made no attempt to scuttle for cover or reach for a wrap. "I'm not going to scream. I don't like scenes. But you realize, of course, you're wasting your time?"



"I don't think so." He moved closer to her, and she didn't move. "I think first," he said, "we should establish something, and this is the easiest way to do it."



He struck her savagely across the face.



And as he did so, Fletcher struck too.



Fletcher still had only vague ideas of the powers he possessed, powers which sometimes seemed to slip away from him altogether and at other times amounted to total control. So far he had had no control whatever over Ross.



But if one thing was obvious, it was that stress made a mighty difference to his powers. At rest, when he was in no danger and his host was in no danger, Fletcher could be powerless. When anything important was going on, when strong emotions were at play in himself or in his host, the situation changed.



Now Fletcher had total control. "I'm sorry, Anita," he said. "I'm drunk. It was a dare. Goodbye."



He turned to the window.



Her hand to her cheek, where an angry red mark was coming up, she said colorlessly: "Wait. If you're drunk you may break your leg or your neck. I'll let you out through the house."



Fletcher, who had no fancy for the climb down, was tempted, but he said: "And have everybody know? No, thanks, Anita. Please try to forget anything happened."



His leg was over the sill. He wanted to get Ross away immediately, because there was no telling how long he could hold him.



Anita said no more, but watched silently as he traversed the roof, climbed down to the coal cellar and then jumped for the wall. When he was safely in the lane, she closed the curtains and withdrew from sight. Before that, however, he heard the click as she set the catch of the window, perhaps for the first time.



Fletcher strode off along the lane.



--I knew you were there, you bastard, Ross said.



--I doubt it.



--Why do you think I asked if Fletcher committed suicide?



--It struck me as a reasonable question.



--Think I didn't know you were there? I've felt you all along, pale ghost of a pale poltroon. You didn't bother me, Fletcher. Not till now. I knew you had no power. Why didn't I guess that if you had anything it would be negative power? Power to stop me doing something . . . That's all you've got.



--Perhaps you're right. I'll think about it.



--Get out, Fletcher! Get off my backl



--I can't, just like that. I'm sorry, but there it is. I've tried.



--I know you were Judy. She kicked you out. Even she kicked you out. Till now, I let you be, not seeing any harm you could do. Now I'm going to kick you out.



--Go ahead.



There was a brief struggle. Ross went on walking, directed by Fletcher.



Fletcher remarked gently:



--It's not as easy as you seem to think.



--That kid got rid of you . . .



--Yes, but I was desperately keen to oblige her. I hated being a girl. I'm not so sure I want to leave you.



Another struggle left Ross-Fletcher steadily walking under Fletcher's total control. Fletcher observed:



--One thing I've found is that I'm either up or down. It's a see-saw. When I was Judy, I was in total command. Yet when I let her speak to me, she took over. In the end, I was a ghost, as you said. With you, it was the other way. I didn't know you even suspected my existence. You were in control. But in the last few minutes . . . Ross, here's a turning. I want to go left, back to your digs. See if you can go right.



Ross could not go right.



He blustered:



--I want to go this way too.



If Ross had been a decent man, Fletcher thought, I'd have been ashamed of myself, horrified of myself, as I was in Judy's body, knowing myself to be a blight, a disease, a scourge, an excrescence. But with me in command, this Ian Ross can't be any worse than he's been. He's bound to be better. With me in him, the world is a better place.



--I heard that, said Ross. But there was fear in his response. He didn't know if he could get his own body back. His earlier confidence was gone. The see-saw was up, and he was down.



I was good for Judy, Fletcher thought with satisfaction. That was a pure accident, but an accident that worked out all right. I've no idea what I did . . . maybe merely sending messages along channels that have always been closed opens the circuit permanently. I stepped into a brain that was almost entirely switched off, and I switched it on. Apparently it stayed switched on . . .



--You're sensational, Ross snarled. --Now will you get the hell out of my mind?



--No. I don't think, as of this moment, I would if I could.



Ross reached his lodgings. For a moment or two, after he and Fletcher in one body reached his apartment, it seemed that a battle royal would take place.



But Ross had drunk a lot of beer. He could scarcely keep his eyes open. He managed to hang his clothes up on the floor and get his pajama trousers on.



Then the beer caught up with both of them, and they slept.





Fletcher, awakening first, pondered idly and more contentedly than usual on the strange mechanisms of possession.



He could be Ross, but why? Was there any purpose? He had not particularly wanted to be John Fletcher, and he could see no point in being Ian Ross.



That he might possibly do some good as a parasite -- many natural parasites performed valuable functions -- gave him some hope. He could not help being what he was now, any more than a human being could help being born. Yet he loathed and despised his role as a disembodied Master, dominating some unfortunate person who surely had a right to live his own life, however badly.



Only the case of Judy gave him any real grounds for hope. She was his Galatea: he had made that girl, or at least given her the chance to make herself. Of course at present she was a weird mixture, partly a thirteen-year-old with little or no experience of life, partly an ascetic academician . . . even he could not guess all the elements that were in her. But she could amount to something; he felt sure she was going to amount to something, and that was something that had been beyond the capacity of either John Fletcher or Judy MacDonald of a few days ago.



Unfortunately he could not see any possibility of being able to make anything of Ian Ross.



Gradually Fletcher became aware that Ross was with him; a sober, subdued Ross.



--Is it to be a fight for my body? Ross asked.



--I hope not. I'm perfectly prepared to die, you know. The trouble is, I can't.



--We can't live together in peace, obviously. It's got to be war between us.



--If you can think of any way to get rid of me, as Judy did, I won't resist.



--You'll hop into some other body and take another poor devil's life from him.



--That I don't know. I'll try not to. Anyway, what's that to you? All you want is to get rid of me.



There was a long pause during which Ross carefully guarded his thoughts. They could both do that. Fletcher was puzzled, somehow aware that Ross was not doing the obvious thing, considering ways and means of ridding himself of Fletcher.



At last Ross said:



--Talk to Anita for me.



Astonished, Fletcher made no reply.



Ross went on fiercely.



--I've got to have that girl. I'd have had her last night if . . . No, don't turn away in disgust. What right have you to be disgusted at me? Fletcher, I know most of your sorry history. The broad outline has leaked through from you, if not the details. You could have been saved if only you'd met the right girl and had the guts to go all out for her.



--For you, of course, the answer to everything is sex.



--Hell, didn't your forty-three wasted years teach you anything? What was the keynote of that unregretted character John Fletcher? Not just failure. Not really failure at all -- you couldn't have failed in everything even if you tried, which I suspect you did. You got a First, didn't you? What was wrong with you was loneliness.



Again Fletcher made no reply, wishing Ross would change the subject.



--And fear, Ross added.



Fletcher, acutely uncomfortable, was at the same time surprised and discomfited. Ross was not after all entirely selfish and insensitive. His judgments could be disconcertingly penetrating.



--Fear?



--Well, caution, self-consciousness, wishing the earth would open up and swallow you, that kind of thing. And another thing -- inability to communicate. You didn't even talk well, do you know that?



--I know that.



--I was surprised to learn you were a graduate. You mumbled and hesitated like a skid row wino. Yet it seems you were fluent in French and German, so much so that Judy liked to hear you talk French even though she couldn't understand it. . . .



This was intolerable. Fletcher would have been uncomfortable under analysis by Anita, but he could have stood it. To be analyzed by Ross was torture.



Fortunately the analysis was over, at least for the moment. Ross went on:



--Anita liked you. That kid Judy obviously loved you, as far as she was capable of it. She's not so sure now, but that's understandable. I don't suppose once you've been right in anybody's mind, or vice versa, love is possible any more. Man and wife are supposed to be one flesh, but they're still supposed to have two heads . . .



--Why do you want me to talk to Anita?



--Hell, Fletcher, try to see what I'm getting at. I've never found any way of getting what I wanted except going out and taking it. But that's not going to work with Anita. We all know it, you, me and her. You talk to her.



--On your behalf?



--Fletcher, I'm going to show you something. I'm going to show you me. After that, maybe we'll understand each other.



That was all the warning Fletcher got. Then, in the mind of Ian Ross, he was suddenly enveloped in, surrounded by, submerged in the nineteen years of Ross.





Ross was an orphan. His parents were killed in a car crash three weeks after his birth, on their first night out together in more than six months.



They would have loved him. They were very young and devoted to each other, but not very wise. Their crash and death had been entirely their own fault; the responsibility of Harry Ross, then eighteen, a year younger than Ian Ross was now.



The baby passed to the care of an aunt and her husband, dutiful, childless people who could never have slept in peace again if they allowed the child of Harry and Mary Ross to go to a Home.



But they failed to give him one.



They found little Ian, chiefly, dirty. He was always soiling himself and had to be cleaned by one of them. Up until the baby's arrival, the house of Meredith and Gastone Doyle had been one of the most immaculate dwellings in the civilized world. Later, when Ian began to walk he always managed to find puddles to fall into, animal excrement to tread on, and disgusting objects to trail back with him.



They tried hard and patiently to train him, and, of course, they succeeded. On his first day at school he was the cleanest, shiniest, most immaculate small boy the teachers and the other pupils had ever set eyes on. He was also a precocious prig, begging to be punctured.



Little Ian was punctured many times in the next ten years. He asked for it. Uncritical of the standards of Meredith and Gastone Doyle, he was critical of everything he encountered outside them.



All this might not have mattered, but the most signal failure of the Ross aunt and uncle was their failure to exhibit (and probably to feel) any affection for the child they had never wanted and had accepted only owing to their strong sense of duty. They were not only always correct, they were very fair. Later on, when they knew a little more about growing children, they congratulated Ian on every success and chided him only for failure he could and should have avoided. But they never took pride in his success.



When, much later, hn Ross studied psychology, as many others did because of his own need for reassurance and justification, he found many significant things in what he learned, as such people always do. What struck him most was the confirmation that the human mind often went perversely by opposites. The son of a miser was a spendthrift; the daughter of a nymphomaniac was frigid; the children of religious fanatics were pagans.



Yet there were things that could not be reversed. In particular, a child who had never known warmth could not be warm.



So Ross prospered at school and was correct and dutiful. Then Meredith and Gastone, who had always regarded Ian's parents' death as their own fault, were killed in a crash themselves. They left their not inconsiderable possessions to him.



In other respects, Ross developed as far from the teachings and examples of Meredith and Gastone as possible. He drank, he gambled, he swore, he fornicated, he blasphemed, because they did not.



Yet he could not love, because they did not. And now he ached for Anita.



--Thank you, said Fletcher.



--For what?



--Honesty, said Fletcher.



--I can't help it, Ross retorted. --I would if I could but I can't. That reminds me, have you ever heard the line from some nonsense poet "What would you do if you were me to prove that you were you?" It seems revoltingly relevant.



--Anyway, there's no point in my talking to Anlta. You know my abysmal record.



--You know mine.



--You're young. You can change. I was beyond the point of no return.



--So you returned, Ross sneered.



--You can change.



--I don't want to change.



There it was. Ross didn't want to change, and he had every right not to change.



Fletcher, who had briefly experienced hope, confidence and purpose, lost them again. Knowing Ross, he was no longer able to feel he had any right to be in Ross's mind.



He was a man taking up space in a lifeboat while others drowned. He had no right to be in the lifeboat. His own drowning was receding into the past, yet he clung to a place in life, a place of refuge, that belonged to someone else.



He shielded these thoughts from Ross, and Ross thought he was shielding something else.



--You won't talk to Anita for me?



--Understand: it's pointless.



With characteristic, childish pique, Ross retorted --Then I'm damned if I'll talk to you.



After that Ross sulked in a corner of his mind, leaving Fletcher to cope as best he could with "A Day in the Life of Ian Ross." Fletcher had no choice; Ross refused to answer. On the whole Fletcher coped better than either of them expected, largely because he had nothing to lose.



When he encountered Eric Stirling, Eric said at once: "Well, what happened?"



"Whatever happened or didn't happen, I wouldn't tell you."



The reply was rude enough to be by Ross, but it wasn't in Ross's image. Eric was visibly startled.



The girl who was pregnant by Ross, Sandra, waylaid him and started on a shrill complaint.



"Now wait a minute," said Fletcher. "It's not my fault that when a man and a girl take a roll in the hay nothing can happen to the man and the girl may have a baby. All I know is that the roll in the hay was as much your idea as mine. If anything, more yours. So don't try to present me with the bill."



"I might have known that's how you'd take it!"



"Yes," he agreed cordially. "You might have known. Are you trying to tell me you didn't?"



She was silenced. It bothered him a little to be so brutal, but he honestly believed it was a case of being cruel to be kind. The possibility that Ross would marry Sandra did not exist. The possibility that he would take any responsibility for her, after Fletcher ceased to be part of him, was almost equally theoretical. The sooner the girl realized this, the sooner she would begin to equip herself for her not uncommon situation.



When he met Anita he said simply: "I'm sorry."



"I'm not very interested." She tried to brush past him.



"I'm not Ian Ross. I'm John Fletcher."



The announcement, which he made briefly and bluntly in the hope of catching her interest, fell exceedingly flat. "Good. Any change must be for the better."



"I have to talk to you."



"But I don't have to talk to you."



"Please, Anita -- "



Although she had shown no surprise when he said he was Fletcher, this seemed to surprise her. Probably it was the first time Ross had been known to say "please."



"I have to go to this lecture," she said, less coldly.



"Afterward, then?"



"Maybe . . . "



That was enough. Fletcher stepped back, and that surprised her too.



Fletcher was confused. He was in control. Ross was not speaking to him. Fletcher, too, was shielding his thoughts, his personal thoughts, from Ross.



Yet he was not speaking or acting like either Ross or himself.



Having no lecture, he called on his French tutor. He should have done so the day before, as Mr. Steen lost no time in pointing out.



"Sit down, Ross," said Steen. His manner made Anita's seem friendly. "I've read your essay. I've read it several times. The French is good. The content is execrable."



He stared grimly down at Ross, who was sprawled comfortably in an armchair in Steen's study.



"Before you make your usual insolent reply," Steen went on, "let me warn you that the moment you do your case goes before the Senatus. I want to speak to you, Ross, and this time you'll listen."



"Of course I'll listen, sir."



Steen waved the essay in the air. "Your essay cleverly hints at a perverted relationship between the Principal and the Chancellor, thinly disguised as two Breton peasants. What you have done here is an evil thing, a reckless thing, because it can please nobody, but must disgust and antagonize anyone able to understand it -- as you knew very well, Ross, I would. Yet to use this revolting document against you would inevitably be most unpleasant for all concerned, while you would be free to insist innocently that there was no double meaning, far less a triple meaning."



He stood over Ross and fixed him with his eyes. "To use talent for such ends is apparently your purpose in life, Ross, but it is not the reason you are here. You are supported here at Government expense, and this means you must ultimately bow to authority."



He sat down opposite Ross.



"Despite your relative caution, it would be very easy at this moment, before you further express your unedifying personality, to kick you out. You would then be in an unenviable position, Ross. You have no rich father or mother or patron. Without a degree, your undoubted linguistic talents would have very little market value. In other fields you are totally untrained."



When he paused, Fletcher said: "I am aware of all that, sir. One thing I should make clear; your opinion of me is flattering compared with my own of myself."



What he said was true in many ways and at several levels, and there was no doubting his sincerity.



Steen couldn't doubt it and was put off his stroke. "Well . . . well, Ross. If that is the case, perhaps you . . . Mr. Ross, please tell me one thing. Have you ever had psychiatric treatment?"



Fletcher smiled. "No, but I've studied psychology. I have some idea why I act as I do."



"Well . . . well . . . " Steen was totally at a loss, having started by going tooth and nail, in his academic way, for a student who needed a swift kick in the pants, then suddenly got the idea that psychosis might be involved and then . . . "I don't know," he said. "Good afternoon, Mr. Ross."



Anyway, Fletcher thought, he had won a "Mister."





Catching Anita after her lecture, he said firmly: "This way."



She hung back. "Considering you broke into my bed- room last night and hit me . . . "



"That was Ross, Anita."



She shrugged impatiently. "Oh, don't be ridiculous. This is just another of your dirty schemes -- "



"I can prove I'm Fletcher, if you let me."



"I can see you're Ross."



"Ross too, of course. But he isn't here at the moment. He's sulking. What I mean is, I can prove that part of me is Fletcher."



"How?"



"Remember the waiting room in the psychology department? You told me you fancied yourself as Mata Hari."



That caught her. She paused, frowned.



"I said I liked your voice. You said 'Just my voice? I thought I had rather nice legs.' You asked if I was a misogynist . . . "



"All right, I'll talk to you. Maybe I can help. I know several psychiatrists."



That again. Fletcher was unmoved. "Insanity isn't involved. I don't think I'm Napoleon Bonaparte, I know I'm John Fletcher. And so will you, if you let me talk to you."



"Where do you want to go?"



"Somewhere quiet."



"In the Union? You must be joking."



"No, it's easy." He led her to a locker-room which proved to be deserted. "Fletcher, poor sucker that he was, was always amazingly good at unimportant things like this."



"You' mean, knowing a place was deserted before he went there?"



"Or, sometimes, going to exactly the wrong place. That was the trouble."



"You say you're Fletcher. Then you talk about him in the past tense. If this is some kind of game, please don't keep changing the rules."



He told her more things which only she and Fletcher knew.



"When did Fletcher tell you this?" she demanded.



"Fletcher and Ross never met except at that session."



"I don't know." She tapped one foot thoughtfully. She wore a white blouse, a red skirt, and high-heeled shoes. The blouse was demure and plain but highly provocative. Fletcher was shocked at his thoughts, and could not blame Ross for them.



"I wouldn't put it past you," she said, "knowing Fletcher and I had a private session, to seek him out and pump him about what was said."



"And would I -- would Fletcher -- have told him?" he demanded.



That, too, had its effect. She frowned again.



"Listen," he said, and poured out the whole story.



Now she was totally incredulous. Rather disappointed in her, Fletcher had to admit that after all it was very different for her than for Judy and Ross. They knew . . . you don't argue with what you know, no matter how incredible it may be. If you awake with two heads, your future life has to be predicated on the plain fact that you now have two heads -- which, in a way, was what Judy and Ross had done.



"I don't like elaborate hoaxes," she said. "In general, I believe what people say. That makes me gullible, I suppose. Last year you and I had a bet on the Boat Race. You told me later the Cambridge boat had sunk. I paid up. It was hours later I found this was supposed to be a joke."



"This is no joke, Anita."



"Now, that . . . " she said, again uncertain, "would be clever, if you knew about it. Ross never called me Anita. Oh, I don't know."



"Go and see Judy."



"You want me to ask if Fletcher was ever in her . . . " Anita gave up impatiently, incredulously. "And that fantastic story of walking along the parapet of the skyscraper. Really, Ross."



"No," said Fletcher. "Not that. It's obvious nothing will convince you but facts. Right, find out the facts about Judy. She's at a special school. That girl you saw yesterday. Her IQ is on record somewhere, 60, 70, I don't know. You remember she told you she couldn't write."



"Yes," said Anita slowly, again momentarily impressed. "I couldn't figure that out. She seemed a normal kid, brighter than average, perhaps."



"Well, you look into it. Judy couldn't learn to read or write became she was too backward, doomed to illiteracy for the rest of her life. How about giving her a test now? In fact, that's the main reason I wanted to talk to you. I like Judy, and I feel responsible for her. If nobody does anything about it, she'll go back to the school when her leg is better. In due course they'll find out she's different. They'll take months over it. Then, since her case is unique, they'll take more months figuring out what to do about it. She can't be sent to an ordinary school with girls of her own age, because she's so far behind. She can't be sent to a primary school with seven-year-olds to catch up. Probably she'll be left in the special school because that means less trouble for everybody."



"Oh, no!" said Anita, jumping up. "That would be horrible for the poor kid. Somebody's got to . . . "



She broke off, for Fletcher was smiling at her, and she couldn't help smiling back.



"Tell me what, particularly, you can't believe."



"Oh, everything. The whole crazy story."



"Yet you took part in a test looking for psi talent in Fletcher. Why, if you were going to refuse to believe in it when you found it?"



"This isn't psi."



"Tell me, what is psi? What are the rules for clairvoyance? What are you allowed to do, and not allowed to do, in the fields beyond human knowledge?"



Rather weakly she said: "It's incredible."



"What, particularly, can't you believe?"



"Well, maybe the absence of science, of machines. I'm not technically minded, and perhaps because of that I believe gadgets can do anything. If you, Fletcher, had been put in a glass case with a steel band round his head, and Ross sat in a chair with another band round his head, and lights flashed along neon tubes, as in the films, I could probably believe it."



"Not very logical, is it?''



"Why not? When you get something like this that never happened before . . . "



"There are vast tomes of investigation into such phenomena. Even if the results are inconclusive, you have to admit that thousands of people have been honestly convinced that this kind of thing has been happening since the dawn of history."



Unexpectedly, she was suddenly interested, eager. She took a couple of quick steps and stood just in front of him, small, vibrant, challenging.



"You're Fletcher?" she said.



"Yes."



"You're also Ross?"



"Yes."



"But meantime you're Fletcher?"



"Yes."



"Kiss me."



He saw at once what she had in mind, but he didn't think about it. Such an invitation from such a girl required no consideration.



He took her in his arms and sought her lips with his. She was passive, then willing, then responding. As kisses went, this one soared to the stars. Neither of them had anything to learn from any of the great lovers of history.



When Anita could speak, she whispered, still in his arms: "Now I believe the unbelievable. But it's not what you told me. You're not Fletcher, obviously. And you're not Ross either."





Fletcher thoroughly enjoyed one part of the day. Ross usually lunched at the Students' Union, but he cooked his own evening meal, which he called supper, because he never had anything else to eat later. If funds ran to it he drank, but never ate.



Left to his own devices in Ross's tiny kitchen, Fletcher ran riot with the modest stores. Since there was rice, tins of chicken, prawns and shrimps, ham left over from breakfast, a few sausages and tomatoes, he made a vast mound of paella and ate every last morsel. He had never enjoyed a meal more. Ross's healthy appetite combined with Fletcher's unhealthy preoccupation with food made it a feast of the gods.



At last, as Fletcher was sprawled on the bed in postprandial torpor, Ross admitted his existence again.



--You ate enough to last me for a week.



--Wasn't it wonderful?



--I can't understand the way you eat, Fletcher.



--I can't understand the way you drink, Ross.



--Anyway, I want to be rid of you.



--We're agreed



--And I've thought of a way that might work. A very simple way.



Their thoughts were very guarded. Each had reached certain conclusions he didn't intend to share with the other.



--What is it? Fletcher asked.



--You'll have to let me do it.



--I will. You want to take over now?



--Yes, but I think after all I'll tell you what I have in mind. You remember what happened before you got into Judy's brain?



--Of course.



--You knew your time had come, so you got in touch with Baudaker. For more than twelve hours you strove to touch other minds. That must have toned you up, stimulated you in some way. You got a headache. Without really knowing why, you got drunk. That toned you up some more.



--Appearances were much the other way.



--But don't you see? You wanted to live, and you wanted to die. You wanted to find out about your special talents, and you wanted to pretend they didn't exist. You tried to touch minds, and achieved only negative results . . . like a golf champion pretending he couldn't play golf and doing ten times worse than someone who had never tried.



--Well?



--I'm going to buy two bottles of whisky, and drink them.



--No! Why not beer, like before?



--Because you don't like whisky. You don't like being drunk, either, do you? I'm nearly sure I've found the way, Fletcher. Somewhere around the end of the first bottle you'll hop into oblivion or into somebody else, and which it is I personally do not care.



After a moment's hesitation Fletcher realized there was nothing to hesitate about, if he meant what he had said.



--Go ahead.



For a time Fletcher closed all the doors and let Ross take over. The first taste of whisky brought him back: he wanted to gag, but Ross wouldn't let him.



Back in his room with the two bottles and a glass, alone, the door locked, in a comfortable armchair, Ross said aloud: "It's good stuff, Fletcher. Proper malt whisky, the real Highland stuff. I can't really afford it, but anything to get rid of you."



--The feeling's mutual.



--Yes, I wonder if some celestial entity is having a game with us? We're all sick. You're sick, Judy was sick, I'm sick. I use the past tense in one case because possibly Judy isn't sick any more. It's interesting about her. Cute kid. Pity she weren't six years older. That's one thing I never did, Fletcher, rob cradles. Anyway, maybe she isn't sick any more.



--That's one thing I'm happy about.



--Be happy if you like, Fletcher. But not when I take another swig of whisky, because that's not supposed to make you happy . . . .



It did not.



"As for me," Ross said, aloud again, "you may even have done me some good too. That is, assuming this works and you get the hell out of me."



He sipped some more whisky, drinking it like wine.



"We're alike in many ways, as you finally decided. Insecure background, no security of affection. It hit us in different ways, that's all. You decided not to exist any more than you could help. If anyone said 'boo' to you, you crawled into your shell. I decided I'd bloody well take what I could get. And it worked, in a way."



--Not a good way.



"No. We're agreed about that. Ours is better."



--What do you mean, ours?



"Wow, what a kissl And she was right. We weren't Ross, and we weren't Fletcher. We were something possibly worthy of Anita. Did you notice, she seemed to think so too?"



--I don't understand.



"Then you're a fool. Well, maybe that's unjust, Fletcher. I take it back. I take it back, but you're still a fool."



The level in the whisky bottle was sinking rapidly.



"I really am most extraordinarily grateful to you, Fletcher -- that is, assuming you get the hell out of me in about five minutes." As was only to be expected, he made a sad hash of the word "extraordinarily."



The whisky, evidently, had hit him very suddenly, almost in mid-sentence. That was quite possible at the rate he was drinking it.



Fletcher, although acutely uncomfortable, was not as drunk as Ross was, and this was strange. The same blood was coursing through the part of Ross's brain that was his, and the alcohol content of the blood was rising rapidly. But then, there must be something quite non-physical about these recent phenomena; what remained of Fletcher was more than just a small area of Ross's brain.



"There's one very strange thing about you, Fletcher. You've got this feeling about good. You're not a real Chris-Christian, despite your background. Maybe you're a pig, prig I mean. You're certainly a pood, I mean prude. . . . " He started to laugh.



"All the same," he went on, recovering, "I see the sense in this good obsession of yours. It gives you a certain direction, a certain purpose. I mean, even if it's of no particular value in itself, you do have something to hang on to that I haven't got. I never was a genuine diab-diab- what's the word? You can't build a life on evil for evil's sake. It's a slare and denusion. A dare and a slelusion. A . . . "



He laughed helplessly, only minutes from coma. He had drunk a whole bottle of whisky and started on a second in half an hour.



And his scheme, Fletcher thought, was not going to work. There was nothing forcing him out of Ross. He had been revolted by every cubic centimeter of whisky consumed, but he was not permitted to be sick, and the alcohol did not appear to affect him.



However, as Ross tried to pick up the glass and succeeded only in spilling its contents over his legs, Fletcher suddenly felt himself being nudged from his haven.



He remembered the youth Gerry nudging the girl into the water. Time after time she recovered, but in the end she had to go in over her head. Irregular nudges like that were dislodging him now, and he realized that it was the almost comatose Ian Ross who was applying them.



--Get out, Fletcher. Get out, get OUT!



There were no words. It was an emotional plea, and it was a plea, not a command. Ross could not command. Fletcher, if he chose, could command. The host could only urge, or nudge.



And Ross, drunk and bound to get very much drunker, even if he consumed no more whisky, was nudging violently, with shattering effect.



There was desperation in the effort, and as Ross's shield slipped, Fletcher sensed what Ross had been keeping from him, or at least not quite telling him.



Ross wanted to rid himself of the consciousness that remained of Fletcher, the stranger in his head who could watch him, talk to him, control him, enslave him.



Yet he had no intention of getting rid of the part of Fletcher that he needed, the part that supplied something which had been missing in him. And Fletcher was willing to leave it, if he could do for Ross anything remotely like what he had done for Judy.



Ross pressed with all his emotional strength, and Fletcher, like Sheila when she was finally flung off balance, felt the water close over his head.











CHAPTER 4: BAUDAKER



He was in the laboratory, feeding figures into the computer. It was a purely mechanical job requiring only occasional attention.



Fletcher had learned how to be quiescent; either totally, or seeing, hearing and feeling without advertising his presence. Ross had sensed him nevertheless, but only after he had become careless.



This time Fletcher was careful and remained careful. Baudaker, absorbed in his work and the private thoughts the work allowed, knew nothing, although this was the first time Fletcher had entered a conscious mind.



Fletcher was at once aware of two major differences this time, one disappointing, one extremely pleasant. The disappointing thing was the return to a third rate body. Judy and Ross were young and strong; Judy was so exuberantly healthy that the mild discomfort of her injured leg scarcely registered, and Ross, careless though he was of his body's welfare, had not yet succeeded in doing it any permanent harm. Baudaker, however, was middle-aged and flabby, and had smoked far too much for many years. Fletcher felt a permanent constriction round his chest and a constant throat irritation, a constant desire to cough. He was not, this time, hungry at all.



The pleasant thing was that poor little Baudaker, though anything but well adjusted, and with certain areas of vast sorrow and unease which Fletcher did not try to probe just then, was a well-meaning man of old-fashioned respectability and honesty. For the first time Fletcher could be content in his host. If he could only compel Baudaker to stop smoking . . .



At that moment Baudaker lit another cigarette. The last was still smoking in an ashtray. Open-mindedly Fletcher savored the first draw. There must be some pleasure in smoking, or so many people wouldn't do it.



If there was, he failed to find it. He learned, too, that Baudaker didn't really enjoy smoking either. A compulsive smoker, he really enjoyed only the first cigarette in the morning, the one that started him coughing, and the last one at night.



Reaching the end of his task, Baudaker began to tidy up. What he was doing was as usual, extra, voluntary work. It was work that somebody had to do, and Baudaker was the willing horse.



Fletcher sensed and wondered at Baudaker's reluctance to go home. He would not have to wonder long.



Baudaker put out the lights, locked up and went out. It had started to rain. He turned up his collar and dashed for his car. Although it was parked under trees less than a hundred yards from the entrance to the psychology building, he was gasping for breath as he reached the little black car, ten years old, and fumbled to unlock it. Rain ran down the back of his neck. Spots danced before his eyes, and his hands shook so that it took him a long time to get the door open.



He crashed the gears vilely and Fletcher thought: that's a problem that has to be faced. I didn't choose to be here, but I'm here. Baudaker has a right to his own life and his own body, but if I'm going to stay in it he's got to cut down on smoking, go for a walk sometimes, and wash more often. Also, since I can if he can't, why shouldn't we drive a car better?



Very gently, the next time Baudaker was going to crash down into second gear long before the speed had dropped enough, Fletcher tried to delay him a second or two, and succeeded. For once the change was smooth.



However, Baudaker was alerted.



--Why did I do that? he asked himself.



--What, make a decent gear change for once?



In the long pause that followed, Fletcher was wondering quite calmly how it would go this time.



--Who are you? Baudaker asked at last.



--John Fletcher, remember?



--Yes. Yes, of course. You had immense potential. How it would be used one could only guess. But this is wonderful! Life after death! Immortality!



His enthusiasm engulfed Fletcher; smothered him.



--The mind has no barriers, Baudaker went on lyrically. --This is a triumph of mind over matter, of mind over death. Man has conquered death!



--Now wait a minute, before you shit yourself. . .



Fletcher stopped, appalled. That, of course, was Ross. He might have withdrawn completely to figure this out, but when he started to do so Baudaker cornered wildly and nearly hit a bus.



Fletcher stepped in.



--Unless you let me do the driving, this blazing new immortality won't last long. I drove a van for five years. The mind has plenty of barriers, Baudaker. I just happen to be unable to cease to exist. I hop from mind to mind.



You've been in others? Of course, you must have been, it's two days since . . .



--Since I died, yes. I've been in Judy MacDonald and Ian Ross. I just lost a battle with Ross. You might say he drank me under the table.



Fletcher realized that he had achieved a mild witticism. This was further proof that he not only changed his hosts, his hosts had changed him. He was not the dour Puritan he had been.



--You chose me? Baudaker inquired humbly.



--I never do the choosing. I didn't choose, in the first place, to survive after I was dead. I certainly didn't choose to be in the mind of a girl.



--Still, it must have been fascinating.



--Several words for it occur to me, but they don't include that one. I didn't choose to be Ross either. I couldn't, scarcely knowing he existed. When I left Ross, it was for oblivion. That time at least, I had fully made up my mind to it.



Fletcher reversed the car neatly into the tiny and rather awkward garage of a maisonette, to Baudaker's open admiration. Baudaker usually left the car outside all night because it was too much trouble to get it in and out of the garage.



--Incidentally, you didn't let me smoke in the car, Baudaker observed.



--No.



--How does this work? Can I do only what you let me do, or what?



--We share the responsibility.



Baudaker was curious, excited, neither rebellious nor afraid. With him, Fletcher was convinced, it would never be a matter of fighting for control. He would say in effect "Move over," and Baudaker would meekly surrender, quite unresentfully, like an acting skipper who was quite prepared to hand over the responsibility when the new skipper turned up.



It even seemed -- and at this stage it could be only a guess -- that Baudaker might be sorry to lose him. Baudaker was making no secret of his enthusiastic intention of embarking on an orgy of tests, psychological, extra-sensory, personality, association, and all the others in his extensive repertoire, to try to pin down the wonder of what had happened and to codify some of the manifestations of the miracle.



Fletcher let Baudaker take control again. He waddled to the back door of the maisonette (the rain had stopped) and let himself in.



Fletcher suddenly remembered Baudaker's reluctance to go home. What did he expect to find?



Gerry was snoring in an armchair in the tiny lounge. The air stank of whisky. There was mud on the knees of his trousers, his fly was open, and he had pulled out his shirt to scratch his stomach.



Baudaker reacted defensively to Fletcher's disgust. --You don't smoke and you don't drink. Gerry's very young . . .



--Too young to be allowed by the law to buy a drink, but evidently that hasn't given him any trouble. You're relieved to find him here, alone, and merely drunk. Why?



--There are so many worse things I could have found.



--If you're so concerned about what Gerry might be doing on his own, why leave him alone?



Baudaker sighed.



--Whether I'm around or not, Gerry does as he pleases. It's better if I'm not here.



--You and he live here on your own?



--There's a housekeeper, Mrs. Wilson. In the mornings only.



--And what do you do now, put him to bed or just leave him there?



--Just leave him. If I touched him, he might start to fight.



--The girl what about her?



--Sheila? Baudaker sighed again, and Fletcher felt a familiar emotion, a feeling of inadequacy, regret, failure. Again, he thought. Fletcher, Ross, now Baudaker. Judy, who had perhaps most reason to feel it, had not had sufficient awareness of the world and her place in it to feel inadequate.



--What's Sheila like?



--I thought you knew her.



---I saw them together once. What's she like?



Baudaker hesitated. Then he burst out, with uncharacteristic bitterness: "Like all of us. Like me, like Gerry, like all the Baudakers.



--Shella's a relative?



--I'd better explain. Although she's a Baudaker, she's quite a distant relative. Let's see . . . no, I really don't remember the relationship. I'm not good at things like that. When she was a baby, she was left with us briefly -- Gerry was born within days of her -- while her parents made a quick trip to India. They were killed. No, there's no point in telling you anything but the truth. They killed themselves. It was a suicide pact. Of course, I haven't spoken of this for years. . . .



Fletcher felt an urge to shut himself off again. He had had enough of the troubles of the world. Briefly he had felt reasonably secure in a reasonably contented being. But it turned out Baudaker had the usual tangled tale of misery to tell.



However, he was part of Baudaker, and Gerry and Sheila were part of Baudaker too. He might as well know.



--My wife was a wonderful person, Baudaker went on, and instantly the shadows lifted. --I think Denis and Margaret counted on her to look after Sheila. You see, we had her anyway, and when the news came it took a long time to straighten things out. We kept Sheila, and it would have been all right -- only my wife died.



The shadows descended again.



Although he would have to know the full story, it was not necessary for Fletcher to extract it all at once. There was something very tragic about the death of Baudaker's wife, some deep hurt that he was reluctant to touch on. Fletcher could have made him tell the whole story, or could pick up the details himself from Baudaker's unguarded mind . . . but not now.



Baudaker went through to the kitchen and put on the kettle. --I drink a lot of tea, he said apologetically. --You don't mind that, do you?



Fletcher stifled an impulse to laugh. --No, I don't mind that. And I suppose I'll have to let you smoke now and then.



--I don't really mind about that. I've always wanted to stop. Perhaps this is my chance.



---Go on and tell me about Sheila and Gerry.



--They were four when Paula died. (Again that reticence, that hurt, that reluctance to linger.) --They'd been brought up as twins. We never did adopt Sheila formally.



--When your wife died, you brought Sheila and Gerry up yourself?



--There's always been a housekeeper. When Paula died, Gerry and Sheila were all right. They were healthy, happy children, affectionate too. It used to be wonderful I really don't know quite what went wrong.



Fletcher could feel tears running down Baudaker's cheeks. He was embarrassed, but said nothing.



--Well, perhaps I do know what went wrong. What happened was all my fault. I left the children to Mrs. Hanley, and then to Mrs. Winnington, and then Mrs. Doverley. I thought a woman would know far more about bringing them up than I ever could. And then the trouble started: Gerry stealing from shops, getting into trouble at school, damaging property. He and Sheila fought very little, as children. They were the same age and more like brothers than anything else.



In Baudaker's mind Fletcher saw them as chubby children too young for school, as twins in the same primary class clinging to each other rather than turning to the society of classmates, as lean and healthy outdoor kids of eight, nine, ten. These had been good times for all of them.



Sheila never played with dolls. She climbed trees with Gerry, fell off them as he did and cried only when he cried. They clambered on rocks, caught fish with their hands and watched tadpoles in jars mature into frogs. In the summer they roamed the countryside all day and came back quite often clad only in shorts, having taken off their shoes and socks and T-shirts somewhere and then wandered miles before it occurred to them to wonder where they'd dropped the rest of their clothes. They were lean, wiry, brown as berries and never ill.



That was before it all went wrong.



Fletcher asked:



--Didn't anyone ever try to take Gerry and Sheila away from you?



--No, why should they? Gerry was my son, and nobody seemed to know any more that Sheila wasn't his sister. And there was a housekeeper -- there must have been twenty or thirty altogether. They never stayed long. Besides, children are only taken away when they're ill-treated or neglected, and that never happened to Gerry and Sheila, except once or twice when I found one of the housekeepers . . .



He shuddered and didn't go on. Fletcher could guess what had happened. Driven to distraction, one of the long line of housekeepers would give the kids the good hiding they deserved and needed, and meek little Baudaker, horrified, would find the courage to fire her on the spot.





The kettle was boiling. Baudaker made the tea in an old earthenware pot and poured himself a cup.



--I must sound very stupid, he said apologetically. --In some ways I was very stupid indeed. As I said, Gerry and Sheila didn't fight much. Even when they started getting into trouble, they got into trouble together. As for the fact that Sheila was, after all, a girl . . .



When he stopped, Fletcher prompted him:



--You forgot about it.



--I almost did forget about it, what with Sheila doing everything Gerry did. Some boys wanted him to play on their football team, but he wouldn't because they wouldn't take Sheila too. They didn't sleep in the same bed, but they always had baths together. Of course that stopped when . . . you know. One day when they were about thirteen Gerry asked who Denis and Margaret Baudaker were. I knew then he'd been in my desk and had found SheHa's birth certificate. I told him the truth and then I told Shella.



Fletcher went on for him:



--And almost at once you found them in bed together.



--Yes.



The overtones of the meek little man's shock came through.



Baudaker, it went without saying, had never looked at any woman but his wife. He could not understand promiscuity: murder and bank robbery and illicit love were almost equally beyond his understanding. He was totally lacking in imagination, which was one reason why he had remained a lab "boy" employed on routine jobs. Even when the wonder of John Fletcher's supernormal capacities came into his life, all he could think of to do was repeat the one test which had produced remarkable results.



If he had been capable of violence, he might, on finding Gerry and Sheila together, have killed them both and then, naturally, himself.



Fletcher had no difficulty in comprehending this. Yet the blindness of Baudaker's attitude made him aware of the similar blind spot in himself, and how wrong they both had been. To be a modern Puritan among Puritans was one thing; to see the world only through Puritan eyes was not rational.



It was only in theory that Baudaker could acquit Gerry and Sheila of incest. Although they were not brother and sister and he had been forced to tell them so, to him this was a technicality. They were thirteen, children at school. The depth of their guilt, to Baudaker, was infinite. But that mattered even less than the fact that the gulf of understanding between them was shown to be unbridgeable.



Instead of killing them and himself, he said nothing and went away quietly, although they knew he had seen them. And from that moment Gerry and Sheila acted as if he was not there. They made love openly. They fought openly, punching each other, throwing things at each other. They fought bitterly and clung to each other passionately.



Baudaker poured another cup of tea.



--An aunt of mine took Sheila in. She's still with her, three years later. It hasn't made much difference except that what goes on between Gerry and Sheila doesn't go on in this house, at least when I'm here. How they feel about each other is something I really don't know. More than once Gerry has beaten Sheila half to death, but she has never looked at anybody else. They don't seem to have any idea of ever getting married. Gerry drinks a lot, and he's been in court seven times. Breach of the peace and assault, not stealing yet, thank heaven. Sheila's been in court twice.



Fletcher had heard more than enough about Gerry and Sheila for the time being. Also, the tea had washed some of the stale smoky taste from Baudaker's mouth, and Fletcher was beginning to get hungry.



--Aren't you going to have anything to eat?



Baudaker's surprise gave the answer. He drank tea as compulsively as he smoked; he lived on tea and cigarettes. He was tubby rather from lack of exercise than from excessive food intake.



--I'll see what there is, he said.



Baudaker had baked beans on toast, made and drank another pot of tea, went back to the lounge and put a rug over Gerry's legs. He switched off the light, murmuring, although he knew Gerry could not hear him: "Goodnight, son." His voice was warm and tender, and Fletcher knew that whatever Gerry had done or would do in the future, Baudaker would never cease to love him.



If Baudaker had killed him three years ago, it would have been like a biblical character cutting off his right hand.





When Baudaker got up next morning at half past seven, Gerry had not moved. Baudaker was mildly surprised to find himself taking a hot shower, since he had had a bath only two days since, but didn't object. Afterward he made tea, fried sausages, and bread for himself. Experience told him that Gerry would be unable to face anything.



Baudaker enjoyed the hearty breakfast as much as Fletcher did.



--Don't let me smoke. I really will give it up this time.



--While I'm with you, you certainly will. In a day or two you won't even cough.



Gerry, who worked in a shoe shop, did not have to leave the house until a quarter to nine. But he had to be clean and smart when he left.



Baudaker brought him a cup of tea and shook his arm gently. Gerry swore indistinctly but vilely.



"Gerry," said Baudaker softly, and the boy opened his eyes.



Without warning Fletcher stepped in. "Get up," he said curtly.



Gerry winced at his incisive tone.



"You're seventeen," said Fletcher. "It's time you learned to look after yourself."



Gerry stared blankly at him, and Baudaker frantically tried to intervene.



All children needed love, and Gerry had not been denied this. But they also needed direction and firmness.



Fletcher had been denied love, but he had not been denied direction and firmness. On the whole, low as his opinion of himself was, he felt he had turned out better than Gerry.



"There will be no more handouts," said Fletcher, "and any debts you incur are your own. Understand?"



Gerry retorted with inchoate filth.



"I don't understand that language, and obviously you don't either," said Fletcher. "If you wish to address a remark to me, please do it in English."



"You stinking old bastard."



"Now there," said Fletcher dispassionately, "is a remark totally lacking in substance. I have just had a shower and put on clean clothes, so I don't stink. I am forty-seven, which may by some definitions be middle-aged, but it is certainly not old. And I have documentary evidence to prove my legitimacy."



"What's got into you?" Gerry demanded, getting up and wincing again as he did so. He was nearly a foot taller than Baudaker. Yet Fletcher noted, and took some wry satisfaction from the fact, he took care to put some distance between himself and Baudaker.



"If I explained what has got into me," Fletcher said, "you would certainly not understand. Now go and get washed."



As Fletcher drove to the university later Baudaker said humbly --You think that's the way?



--It can't be any worse than your way, Fletcher retorted brutally.



--That's true.



--There are murderers and murderees. There are bullies and bullyees. You're a murderee and a bullyee. You ask to be kicked around, Baudaker. On the other hand there are people like Gerry, weak in a different way, who are as assertive as they're allowed to be, no more, no less. You do as you're told. Gerry does as he's told. Sheila, I gather, has masochistic tendencies. She likes to be beaten up.



--I believe you're right.



--Sheila is bad for Gerry. He needs a girl who'll say firmly, and mean it, "Now that's gone far enough," instead of inciting him, whatever he does, to go farther.





Most of that day Fletcher left everything to Baudaker. But now and then he intervened.



Not only Gerry knew that Baudaker was a bullyee. The little man was so slow to rouse, so willing, so unselfish, that everyone with whom he came in contact took advantage of him. The psychology lecturers gave him all the jobs that had a strict deadline, knowing, if they thought about it at all, that he would work all night if necessary to meet the deadline. The other technicians heaped as much of their own work on him as they could, and it was a lot. The students, apart from a few like Anita, treated him like a slave.



Ironically, Fletcher found no difficulty in making Baudaker dig his heels in although he had never been capable of this himself. He told Professor Williams calmly that it was impossible for him to prepare the correlation charts the professor wanted for the following morning.



"Impossible?" said the professor blankly.



"Quite impossible," said Fletcher firmly. "You want the students' vocabulary test figures correlated with the spelling figures -- not a very significant series of figures, I should say, but of course that's not my business."



"No, it is not!" said Williams sharply.



"But first the two sets of figures have to be extracted . . . I should say there's six hours' work here, and unless I drop everything else I can't possibly . . . "



"Then drop everything else!"



"I have to compute a long series of Standard Deviation scores for Mr. Foster."



"That can wait."



"Very well, sir, if you give me written authorization to abandon Mr. Foster's SD series for your correlation charts."



The professor hesitated. He was nominally in charge of the department. But when one member of a department, even the chief, arbitrarily countermanded the requirements of others without warning or consultation, considerable strife resulted. Staff members had been known to resign over such things. And if they didn't resign they made official complaints. In addition, the professor was aware, as Baudaker was, that the priority of charts for a lecture, dumped on a technician's lap less than twenty-four hours before the lecture, could not be considered overriding, especially since the tests had been done three weeks earlier.



"Mr. Baudaker? he said huffily, "I had always considered you one of the most cooperative members of the laboratory staff. I shall find someone else to do this little job for me." He stalked away.



--He won't, said Baudaker. Instead of being frightened out of his wits by Fletcher's firmness, he seemed to be enjoying himself this time.



A little later Baudaker had to supervise an experimental session of a small group of students on color vision. Until fairly recently the students had been left solely under the supervision of advanced students like Anita to find out the required facts by themselves, but too much equipment had been damaged or stolen and now it was a rule that a technician had to attend all such sessions.



This session was noisy and obstreperous and the girl allegedly in charge, a tiny, frail damsel with a whisper of a voice, could do nothing with them.



After several warnings, Fletcher shut off the rotating color wheel and opened the curtains.



"That's enough," he said. "Now clear out, all of you. You can apply for another tutorial date, but I doubt if you'll get it."



The three or four students who had been making most noise showed every disposition toward dispute, but some of the others got the point at once. If this session was not completed, and they were not allowed another date, they would not get a class certificate and would not be permitted to sit in at the exams.



A small plump youth who had scarcely said a word protested: "That's not fair."



"I have a lot of work to do, and you've been wasting my time. That's not fair either."



"But we weren't doing anything!"



"Precisely. No one was doing anything. Close the door behind you."



They saw he was quite determined and filed out silently, sullenly.



--I'm not at all sure that was the right thing to do, Baudaker observed, worried. --It's bound to lead to trouble. Everybody will hear about it.



--Good. Then we won't have the same trouble again.



Fletcher turned down several other demands for Baudaker's time, and at one point had to warn himself not to overdo it.



He was quite prepared now to be bold, and Baudaker would never be bold enough to oppose boldness. But it would puzzle everybody if Baudaker changed too much too suddenly.





For once, Baudaker went home when he was supposed to, just after five.



Fletcher did the driving. When he reached the maisonette, he reversed the car neatly into the garage and again took pleasure in Baudaker's open admiration.



Frying kippers for tea, Baudaker suddenly said:



--You must let me make tests.



--No.



--But we must find out . . .



--No. I'm not a guinea pig.



--Don't you realize, this is the greatest opportunity that ever existed for . . .



--Baudaker, let's get it clear once and for all. I refuse absolutely to be poked and probed and prodded. I should never have come back to you the other day, and if I hadn't I don't believe any of this would have happened.



--You really wish it hadn't?



--Well, what good is it?



And on that note he obstinately shut himself off from Baudaker.



What good was it? True, it had perhaps been good for Judy. But what good was it for John Fletcher?



--I heard that, said Baudaker, bursting in. He felt so strongly about this that he was no longer meek. --Don't you see, that's one of the things we have to find out? Nothing happens without a purpose. . . .



--You think I'm some kind of angel of God?



--Perhaps. If not, we must find out what you are.



Fletcher drew the curtain again, and this time Baudaker was shut out and couldn't get in.



Fletcher decided he had been wrong to conclude that there would be no conflict with Baudaker. It was a different kind of conflict, that was all. Unlike Judy and Ross, Baudaker had no desire to get rid of him. On the contrary, Baudaker wanted to keep him, to mount him on a microscope slide and examine him.



Well, why exactly was he so dead set against this?



He didn't know.



All he knew was that thee very idea was torture.





Gerry came home at seven, a little the worse for drink, having had two double whiskies on the way home. He looked at Baudaker challengingly.



"It's kippers for tea," said Baudaker.



"You know I don't like kippers."



Fletcher moved in. "Where did you get the money?" he demanded.



"What money?"



"You've been drinking."



"And you're dead set against that!"



"Not particularly. But you've got to be able to afford it."



Gerry didn't meet his eye. "If you must know, I got money from Sheila."



"I see. Congratulations."



"It's the first time I took money from her!" Gerry shouted, sensing and resenting the criticism.



"Because previously you had no difficulty in getting it from me?



"Well, I've got to get it from somewhere, haven't I?"



"You got your pay only yesterday. Apparently you drank it all. That's your privilege, Gerry. But it entails going without lunch and walking to and from work."



"I had to have a smoke, didn't I? I can see you going without your fifty fags a day!"



Fletcher let that go. It was manifestly unfair to point out that Baudaker had not had a cigarette all day. However true that was, it was only a half-truth.



Gerry suddenly abandoned defiance and pleaded. "Look, Dad, I only got fifteen bob from Sheila. I've got to have money, or I can't go out."



"Then it looks as if you'll have to stay in."



Gerry released a stream of profanity and abuse and then, suddenly silent, took a step forward.



"I'll take it," said Gerry wildly. "Your wallet's in your breast pocket."



"Gerry!" said Fletcher warningly. Curiously, although neither he nor Baudaker knew anything about fighting, and abhorred such violence, he was totally unafraid. He understood for the first time the courage of mothers and old women in the face of violence.



"I'm going to belt you one," said Gerry viciously.



Fletcher sensed the weakening. The next thing would be a stream of oaths, a paean of self-incitement.



"Congratulations again," said Fletcher. "In anticipation."



Goaded, Gerry swung a murderous blow. But Fletcher diverted his arm and hit out carefully, coolly.



Gerry crashed back against the wall and slid to the floor.



--Well, well, observed Fletcher, ignoring Baudaker's frantic desire to see if the glassy-eyed youth was all right.



--Evidently we owe something to Ross. Neither of us could have done that. And it needed doing.



It did need doing. From then on Gerry was sullen but otherwise less antisocial. He bore no grudge: if you told someone you were going to hit him and rob him, and he hit you, you had no comeback. Sometimes, not out of fear, because he would never fear Baudaker though he had learned a certain caution, he made small, tentative advances to which Baudaker wanted to respond overwhelmingly. Fletcher didn't let him. Love and license had failed with Gerry; it had to be love tempered with a certain paternal authority which Baudaker had never imposed.



It was strange that Fletcher could help him to exert this, since Fletcher had less paternal experience than Baudaker, but what he had learned from Judy and from Ross gave him an idea of the kind of control young people reluctantly accepted and the kind they despised or rebelled against.



There was a big improvement in Gerry, but the real struggle was not between Baudaker, Fletcher and Gerry: it was between Baudaker, Fletcher and Sheila.



Whenever Baudaker got into his car, Fletcher took over in sheer self-defense. But after three or four days he happened on one occasion to be too deep in himself to be reached, and Baudaker had to drive. Surprisingly, he drove excellently until he suddenly braked wildly on a sharp bend and went into a skid he couldn't handle.



Fletcher took command as they were about to fly off the road down a gully and be killed. At least, Baudaker would have been killed. Fletcher would no doubt have found a new haven.



He corrected the skid and, put the car back on course.



--You were doing all right until then, he told Baudaker.



--Yes. I did as you did. You'd taught me. I knew how.



--Then what went wrong?



--I lost confidence. I thought "This can't be me," and tried to stop. I panicked.



--Don't do that again. You don't have to. You're a good driver.



"Me?" said Baudaker incredulously.



--Yes.



--Fletcher, we've got to investigate this, find out what you and I can do, what I can do alone, what . . .



--No tests, said Fletcher coldly. To change the subject he asked --Where are we going, anyway?



--To a place Paula loved.



With the answer came more: every week Baudaker drove to a place in the country where he could feel near to Paula, the cottage, now a ruin, where she was born.



Again, despite Baudaker's reticence, Fletcher knew he could probe and dispel the mystery of Paula's death thirteen years ago. But he felt that was entirely Baudaker's affair, not his.



He walled himself off and did not even see where Baudaker went. And on the drive back Baudaker did not summon him.





Fletcher and Ross were both linguists. Baudaker, more or less uneducated, had always longed to be able to read psychological papers in foreign languages: Ebbinghaus, "Ober das Gedächtnis," 1885; Wundt, "Grundriss der Psychologie," 1896; Richard, "La psychologie et les problčmes psychique et moraux," 1946; Helmholtz, Burzlaff, Katz, Henning.



At last he could. Although Fletcher had lost almost all his French and German vocabulary again, it returned very easily. Baudaker could look at an old German textbook and the sense of the long, strange, alien words leaped up at him. It seemed he could never have failed to understand something which was so obvious, that language was no barrier, only a veil to be brushed aside.



The discovery that Baudaker was no longer a doormat puzzled some of the university staff members, was resented by others, and made most of them more friendly.



The chief technician left, his deputy moved up, and Baudaker became deputy. This seemed natural, indeed inevitable. However, Baudaker was humbly grateful to Fletcher for the long-delayed recognition. He was certain, and he had good reason for his certainty, that without Fletcher's intervention he would have been passed over, as usual.



Professor Williams, at first very cool to the new Baudaker, gradually thawed and took to consulting him in a way which Baudaker found very flattering.



And the junior technicians, who had been wont to regard him as a doddering old fool and insult him openly, began to be polite and tried to please him.



The new chief technician, Sam Connor, was the only one who seemed to have less regard for Baudaker than before and treated him with less than common civility. Baudaker was worried and hurt by this, but Fletcher told him: --He knows that he only became chief by the skin of his teeth instead of you. He's younger than you. Williams always turns to you, not him. Suddenly he's insecure. He'd be glad if you were dead.



This made Baudaker very uneasy. He didn't mind being stiffened by Fletcher, but two things bothered him: the loss of Sam Connor's friendship and the careless unconcern which Fletcher compelled him to show Gerry.



--Gerry's nearly eighteen, Fletcher told him. --It's too late to fight his battles for him. You've got to shove him out of the nest.



--But we're hard on him. I know it seems to be working. Don't you think that now it is working, we could start going easy . . . just a little bit?



--Rome wasn't built in a day. What you mustn't be with Gerry is soft. He despised you for being soft. Start being soft with him again and he'd snap right back to what he was.



Baudaker agreed reluctantly.





Anita not only believed now what she had once found incredible, she perceived for herself Fletcher was now part of Baudaker before he gave any hint of it.



Although there was little contact between her and Baudaker, they spent several hours each day in the same building, and met in a corridor nearly every day. As this happened late one afternoon, she stopped and said: "Mr. Baudaker, if you're not in too much of a hurry, would you drive me home?"



"Certainly, Miss Somerset." There was nothing strange in this; he passed the end of her street and had several times given her a lift when they happened to leave the building together.



Before the car was out of the grounds, she said: "I thought so."



"You thought what, Miss Somerset?"



"You never used to be able to drive like that, Mr. Baudaker. In fact, you can't now, can you?"



"But it's me who's doing the driving!" Baudaker said, quite hurt.



She laughed. "Anyway, you've given me my answer. It wasn't really necessary."



"How did you know?"



"Well, I know you're not with Ross any more. And when someone starts acting as he never acted before . . . Of course, others couldn't possibly guess the truth, it's so fantastic. But I had the clues. Judy is going to a school in Northumberland, by the way."



"Northumberland? Why?"



"It's not an ordinary school. I happened to read about it a few months ago, and remembered it when we were all wondering what to do about her. She's no genius, by the way. Her IQ's only 120."



"Only!"



Anita laughed. "Yes, that's remarkable enough, since she was on record as having a tentative IQ of 75, estimated because rating is always difficult at that level. The school in Northumberland is experimental. It's for children whose intelligence is greater than their attainment. Some have been removed from bad home backgrounds, some have had long illnesses, only a few are psychiatric cases."



"You think that'll be good for Judy?~



"I think it's the best available compromise. She can't be put with ordinary teenagers, not yet, anyway. She shouldn't be treated as a disturbed personality. There's no niche anywhere for her. The nearest I could find was this place where kids who're lost years through a long series of operations, say, are given a chance to catch up."



"What do they know about her at the school?"



"That she was rated IQ 75 and now turns out to be 120. Naturally they'll think somebody made a shocking blunder over the kid. Well, what would you tell them?"



"What do you think of her?"



Anita hesitated. "Ifs hard and perhaps pointless to form any conclusions about Judy just now. Remember, she's been turned upside-down and inside-out. She was one thing, and now she's another. Her life to date has no meaning or value to her now. Her mother is bewildered -- pleased, but bewildered -- and she has no friends. You rejected her."



"Nonsense, I . . . "



"You couldn't get out of her fast enough. If that had happened to me, I think I'd have understood. I don't want any man barging about in my mind like a bull. But Judy didn't see it the same way."



"Did she tell you?"



"She didn't have to tell me," said Anita scornfully. "And this is my corner."



He stopped the car and she opened the door.



"Wait, Anita . . . "



She turned to look thoughtfully at him. "That's quite a useful signal," she said. "You call me Anita, Ross calls me Maiden and Baudaker calls me Miss Somerset. No, I don't think I'll wait. I've said all I really wanted to say. Good-bye, both of you."



Ross knew too. He came to see Baudaker in his office, and after beating about the bush for a minute or two, said abruptly: "Fletcher, I want you to know I'm very glad that what happened did happen."



Fletcher nodded, unsurprised.



Ross went on: "I had good reason to be sorry for myself, I thought, but the truth is there's no good reason to be sorry for yourself. I thought I'd tell you that, because it applies to you too."



"I know it," said Fletcher quietly.



"And to Baudaker," said Ross.



"Yes."



"What you gave me I honestly don't know. Frankly, I'd have thought, and you'll probably admit, that on the face of it John Fletcher had nothing whatever to give me. But Judy, according to you, had serenity when she had nothing much else. Happiness, if you like. Perhaps I got some of it."



Since Fletcher said nothing, he did not pursue this.



"I wish to God Anita would realize I'm not the bastard I was."



"She does."



"But she still keeps me at the end of her bargepole."



"You can hardly blame her, can you?"



"Fletcher, I've got to have that girl!"



"Perhaps," said Fletcher, wryly savoring his own infinite wisdom, "when you start thinking of her as more than something you've got to have, you might begin to have a chance."



It was after Ross had gone that Baudaker said suddenly and very definitely --Now we must investigate your background.



--We must?



--There is a purpose. There is an aim, an end. It wasn't just an accident that you became Judy, then Ross, then me.



--It wasn't even an accident that I died.



--Then you agree?



--I flatly refuse to let you try to test what's left of me.



--That's not what I want to do.



--What do you want to do, then?



--Go to Edinburgh.



The suggestion came as a complete surprise to Fletcher. --What on earth for?



--To trace your background. You know virtually nothing about it.



--I remember nearly everything about it. The university, before that the schools, before that the Homes . . .



--And then nothing. You know nothing of your parents. Nothing before you were about four years old. That's strange. I'm older than you, and I remember quite a lot that happened before I was four.



--I've told you about that. However this thing works, I'm not allowed to take all the memories of John Fletcher with me. What I remember is like a photograph of a photograph of a photograph.



Baudaker said firmly --I believe that even as John Fletcher you knew little or nothing of your very early life. So now we're going to find out about it.



--You make the decisions for us both now? asked Fletcher drily.



--You'll do this. You don't want to be probed. You don't want tests. But you'll do this.



He was right, Fletcher realized, amazed at Baudaker's new perspicacity. Rather than be examined, tested, weighed in the balance and found wanting, he found himself quite prepared to make an ordinary inquiry into the origins of John Fletcher, who scarcely existed yet could not die.





Baudaker arranged to take a week off with no difficulty whatever. Indeed, it was practically arranged for him. Rather crossly Sam Connor said if Baudaker didn't hurry up and take his spring week soon, it would interfere with the summer holiday arrangements, and Baudaker said at once: "All right, I'll take next week."



For a moment Connor, who was never friendly toward Baudaker these days, was on the point of protesting that this wouldn't be convenient, but realized in time he would make himself look ridiculous.



--That's a remarkable coincidence, said Baudaker later.



--You think so? Don't you know coincidences buzz round me like flies?



--No, you've never told me about that.



--The day before I died I just happened to run into Gerry and Sheila. That was no coincidence at all, because I didn't know them. But I'd just phoned you, and that night I saw Gerry leaving the department as I arrived. Coincidence? It's nothing. The next day I tried to put myself in the exact spot where a piece of masonry was going to fall. And a little later I happened to lean on a gate which was unfastened for the first time ever. Coincidence? When Judy and I chose to walk along a balcony at night, the particular place we happened to choose was where about twelve adjoining tenants all happened to be out for the evening. Coincidence? When Ross wanted to speak to Anita privately, he took her to a tennis locker room, and in a building crammed with students of both sexes he found a completely private place. Coincidence? Well, only a small one.



--What you're saying is you can control your environment.



--Oh, no. Don't start thinking again I'm a superman. No, I simply sense things, I suppose. I was going to be involved with you again: I went where your son was. I half wanted to kill myself: I tried to put myself where I should be killed instantly, and at the third try, succeeded. A quiet piece of balcony was necessary: I went to where the conditions I wanted existed. I wanted to speak to Anita: I took her where I knew nobody else would be. Quite small miracles really, hardly worth mentioning.



--But still miracles. Like Connor inviting me to take my spring week exactly when I wanted it. If it had happened in the normal way, if I'd gone to him and asked for it, he'd have made it as awkward as he could. So you still have your special talents, even in someone else's mind?



---Obviously, or there would have been no repeat performance. If all this came about because there was something special in Fletcher's brain and nothing more than that, I might have made the jump into Judy's mind, but never into Ross's.



--That's so. I never thought of that.



Unexpectedly, Baudaker was less concerned about leaving Gerry alone in the house than Fletcher was. Perhaps it was because Baudaker was more optimistic about his son. Given the slightest cause for hope, he immediately believed, because he wanted to believe, that Gerry was once more the lovable kid he had been.



--If it were up to me, I wouldn't leave him just now, said Fletcher.



--What can he do, anyway? He's still seeing Sheila. Perhaps he'll have her here every night, but he sees her nearly every night anyway.



--There's some sort of crisis coming up in Gerry. At the moment he's sullenly passive. But something's going to happen soon.



--You sense it?



--I know it.



--Do you know it will happen next week?



--No, it doesn't seem as close as that. But I'm not a fortune-teller. Sometimes I know what is now, but I never seem to know what will be.



--All right, we needn't worry about it yet.



Baudaker had to work on Saturday morning. Anyone else would have finished on Friday afternoon or even on Friday at lunch time, but Connor elected to take Saturday morning off so that Baudaker wouldn't get away. Baudaker didn't particularly mind; it would be Monday before a proper investigation could begin in Edinburgh.



However, Doris Barry from the office called at the department to see Connor and was surprised to see Baudaker there.



Doris was near retiring age and was one of those women who quietly and efficiently take over and run a firm or a depot or a library or a university, in an entirely unofficial way and with no official recognition. Those who thought they administered the university, with the possible exception of the Principal, would have been astonished to learn how many important decisions which they thought they had made had actually been made by Doris Barry.



"I thought you were going on holiday next week, Mr. Baudaker?" she said.



"That's right, Miss Barrye"



"Didn't you ask for this morning off?"



"I couldn't. Mr. Connor isn't here, and since the recent reshuffle one of us has to be."



"Mr. Connor hadn't decided not to be here two days ago. He told me he'd definitely be here."



Baudaker said nothing. The arrival of Fletcher had stiffened him, but had not made him touchy or vindictive. Although Baudaker was aware that Connor was being deliberately awkward about this particular Saturday morning, he was also aware that no one going on holiday had any right whatever to a free Saturday as well; it was merely a convention that he got it.





Catching an early-afternoon train, Baudaker reached Edinburgh that evening. He had not smoked again and Fletcher had slowly accustomed him to taking long walks. He was eating like a horse and enjoying his food, but was actually losing weight because of the exercise he was taking for the first time in many years.



After an excellent dinner at a modest hotel, Baudaker went out without even consulting Fletcher, taking it for granted that Fletcher would want to walk round old haunts.



--I'm not insisting on going for a walk tonight, said Fletcher. --Stay in if you like and watch television.



--You were a student here. Don't you want to look around?



--Not particularly.



--Then let's start right away by going to the police.



The duty sergeant, as it happened, knew the name John Fletcher at once, having been involved in a recent inquiry (another small coincidence). But instead of becoming more cooperative, he went quite dry and reticent.



"A report has gone to your local police," he said. "You might have tried inquiring there."



"To get more detailed information, I'd have had to come here anyway," said Baudaker.



"Maybe so. Maybe so. You say you're not a relative?"



"No, just a friend. But I could say a very close friend."



"I see. I'm afraid, Mr. Baudaker, I can't help you. Of course, there's nothing to stop you making your own inquiries. If you knew Fletcher well, you'll know where to start."



It was clear he knew something that he wasn't going to tell. His manner made it obvious that he was not merely being negatively obstructive, but that there was something quite significant which he was not going to reveal to Baudaker.



However, he unbent enough to say: "It isn't difficult to find the facts, Mr. Baudaker, and I believe you fully intend to try. I can save you some trouble. Don't bother with the university or Fletcher's lodgings, or any of the schools he attended. Try the Homes where he spent his early life."



"Thank you," said Baudaker.



As Baudaker emerged into the street, Fletcher said --Midlothian Home for Boys. That's the one.



--You don't mind my going there?



--We either do this thing or we don't, I suppose, and we've decided to do it.



--But you're not very interested?



--I'd like to know what that sergeant wouldn't tell you, Fletcher admitted.



--Shall I go now?



--No, tomorrow is visiting day and the superintendent sees anyone who calls on him. Go about three o'clock.



So the following afternoon Baudaker was shown into the presence of the superintendent of the Midlothian Home for Boys. A glance showed that he could not have known Fletcher personally. He was a young man, not more than thirty.



The moment Fletcher's name was mentioned, the same wary look that they had seen in the police sergeant's face showed in Mr. Curran's, and he asked questions which showed he was not keen to divulge anything.



Baudaker therefore put some of his cards on the table. "This isn't an idle inquiry, Mr. Curran. At the university I'm on the psychology staff, and in the course of certain tests I discovered John Fletcher possessed unusual talents."



"What kind of talents?"



Baudaker told him -- omitting any mention of the most remarkable talent Fletcher had shown he possessed.



Curran was interested. "The police were here," he said.



"I know. They directed me to you." This was true, though deliberately misleading.



Curran became more cordial. "But they didn't say anything about this."



"They didn't know. They were only making routine inquiries following a fatal accident."



"Since Fletcher is dead, Mr. Baudaker, what can you gain from knowledge of his background?"



"I'm an experimenter. Fletcher was a remarkable man. I want to find if there is any clue in his history to his strange ability, his extraordinary ability, I might say."



"There might be," said Curran quietly. "There very well might be."



Baudaker remained silent, his silence a whole dossier of questions.



"Very well," said Curran. "I never saw Fletcher, of course. He left this particular Home before I was born. But I knew the old superintendent, Mr. Compton. He gave John Fletcher his name. Fletcher had no name until he was about four. He couldn't speak properly either."



Fletcher had known that: he could remember being taught to speak, a thing few people remembered. But he was not very interested in this. As Baudaker leaned forward eagerly, Fletcher mentally sat back. They seemed to be talking of someone other than himself, someone he knew of but did not personally know.



"What do you mean by saying he couldn't speak properly?" Baudaker asked. "Was there some physical or mental disability?"



"None," said Curran positively. "He knew certain words, all highly charged."



"What sort of words?"



"Really, Mr. Baudaker, you must remember this is all third or fourth hand, and it was a very long time go."



"Nevertheless, I should be most grateful for anything you can tell me. And it may be very important."



"It's difficult to see how it can be important now. Oh, very well . . . The boy had strong emotional reactions to words like woman, girl, sex, lust -- reactions of unrest, fear, and shock. He had strong positive reactions to words like church, rightness, justice, goodness and so on. When he came here, his early history was deliberately concealed from him, which was not difficult, in the absence of language, and by the time the boy could speak be was quite accustomed to his new circumstances and incurious about the past."



"Why . . . "



"Please, Mr. Baudaker, don't try to make me guess about this curious case. I've told you all I know, except that Fletcher was the boy in the Searle case."



"The Searle case?"



"It was famous, or infamous, in its day. You'll find the details in newspaper files of . . . let's see . . . it must have been 1929 or 1930. I suggest you get further information in this way."



"Thank you, Mr. Curran. But please tell me just one more thing. You never knew the boy, you have clearly heard a lot about him, and you are obviously reluctant to talk about him. Why?"



"I'm equally reluctant to talk about what happened at Belsen and Dachau, and equally incompetent, since I wasn't there. But I believe that what happened to the inmates of Belsen and Dachau was kindness itself compared with what happened to this unfortunate child before he came to us."



A member of the Home staff came in then to summon the superintendent to some crisis, and since Curran seemed to think he had said more than enough, Baudaker took his leave.



--Does the "Searle case" mean anything to you? he asked, walking back to the hotel.



--Not a thing.



--I think I've heard of it, but I can't remember what it was. A criminal case? A trial here in Edinburgh?



--I know nothing of any trial.



--You wouldn't, if it was held when you were four and couldn't even speak then. That's incredible . . . you couldn't have gained a first class honor degree if you were in any way backward.



--I can believe it, though. As Fletcher I was a poor speaker, remember? I never communicated easily except in French and German, languages a British pupil doesn't normally start until about eleven or twelve.



Baudaker became excited, and Fletcher did as he usually did when Baudaker became excited: drew his mental curtain. They could do nothing more, in any case, until the next day, when the newspaper offices would be open.





Fletcher's choice of newspaper office turned out to be a poor one, for the "Courier" had been in existence only since 1937.



"We took over the old 'Advertiser,'" said the librarian, a bright young girl, "but the complete files weren't moved here. We only kept clippings."



"Perhaps that might be better for my purpose," said Baudaker, looking at the long steel shelves full of classified envelopes. "All the clippings on one subject are together, I suppose? That would be easier than looking through bound volumes of complete newspapers."



The girl shrugged. "Well, you can look at the files if you like, but you mustn't take any away."



"Of course. I only want information."



"On what?"



"The Searle case."



"Oh, that." She knew her library and what was in it. "If you want the full story, you'll have to go to the 'Mail' or the 'News.' The 'Advertiser' was a very old-fashioned paper, you know, and their filing system was no system at all. I'd like to put it in order, but I haven't the time. Will you go to the 'Mail' or the 'News'?"



Baudaker smiled. "You've been most helpful. May I see what you've got?"



Within a minute she handed him a thick envelope, yellow with age, and a thinner one, marked biography, which was evidently part of the newer 'Courier' filing system.



Baudaker sat at a quiet table out of the way of the librarian and the sub-editors and reporters who came in occasionally to check on something or other.



The biography envelope read SIR CHARLES SEARLE, 1878- . SEE EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY; ANCIENT GREEK; OCCULT; MENTAL DISORDERS; SEARLE CASE.



The other read simply: SEARLE CASE.



Baudaker looked back at the date followed by a dash. --That should mean he's still alivel he thought excitedly,



--In his nineties? It's more likely the file hasn't been brought up to date.



Baudaker hurried back to the librarian with the biography envelope. "Excuse me, miss. Does this mean Sir Charles Searle is still alive?"



"Well, it means his death hasn't been reported in the paper."



"You're sure?"



"Of course I'm sure. If there was a report of his death, that envelope would automatically be transferred to the obituary section."



"Thank you again." He hurried back to the table and opened the envelope.



Sir Charles Searle, a leading scholar in Greek, had been on the staff of Edinburgh University but his appointment was terminated in 1923. There was a hint of something which might be scandal; at any rate, something the newspaper did not report, even if the facts were known, probably for fear of legal action.



--Certainly before I was born, so it can't concern me, Fletcher commented.



On the side Searle wrote books on spiritualism, hypnotism, the occult in general, and one called "The History of Presbyterianism in Scotland" (1920). The envelope contained a clipping of a review of a book called "What the Mind Might Do," published in the late twenties. The reviewer said:



Surprisingly, in a book by an eminent scholar (albeit in another field), reasoned argument begins only after the bland assumption that the human mind only has to be trained to be able to perform the most astonishing feats of telepathy, clairvoyance, telekinesis, etc. It is thus pure fantasy. Some of the suggestions for training are ingenious . . .



Now Fletcher was interested too. This book had been reviewed not long before the Searle case. He himself had been born some three years before.



He pushed aside the Searle biography and opened the Searle case envelope.



The cuttings were not even in order. Baudaker started methodically to put them in chronological order, but soon caught by the headlines, was reading as they came.



SIR CHARLES SEARLE ARRESTED was the first that caught his eye. Although the report was nearly a column long, the information in it was negligible. The charge was not given.



The next cutting reported an attempt by the prosecution, after the trial had started, to introduce evidence concerning the termination of Searle's employment at the university seven years earlier. It was partially successful: the jury was permitted to know that Searle had been "allowed to resign" following discussion of whether or not he was a fit person to be entrusted with the instruction of young people. The defense got into the record voluminous riders which stated that no reflection on Sir Charles Searle's moral character had ever been made or intended; that the dispute had been over a matter of principle; that Sir Charles had resigned, and had not been dismissed; that far from leaving the city after the incident, he had made it clear in the prefaces to several of his subsequent books that he had no intention of ever leaving Edinburgh; and that he continued to be a highly respected Free Church communicant.



Fletcher, reading between the lines (memory told him nothing directly) had no difficulty in seeing two things behind the verbiage.



The first was that Searle had been kicked out of the university mainly because he refused, after repeated warnings, to confine himself to his subject and insisted on instructing his students in the mysteries of the occult, psychology, hypnotism, and his personal religious beliefs.



The second -- and it shone through what the prosecution said, what the defense said, what the newspaper reported of this part of the legal argument and what the Senatus had said -- was that even in 1923, Sir Charles Searle was as mad as a hatter.



Baudaker, for some reason, not knowing what else the clippings might reveal, chose to defend Searle.



--All pioneers and freethinkers are regarded as mad.



Fletcher did not answer. He picked out another yellowed clipping, which turned out to be Searle's statement to the police at the very beginning of the Searle case.



To say it was of great interest to both Baudaker and Fletcher was an understatement.



On May 17, 1926, I was driving my car from Penicuik back to Edinburgh. I was alone. The car was functioning perfectly and I was hungry and looking forward to a late dinner. Yet for no reason at all I stopped and got out of the car.



Annoyed with myself, I tried to get back into the car and drive on. Instead I crossed a field. Behind a large tree I found a small hut. The hut was not visible from the road. In the hut I found a baby. I then knew nothing of babies, but it was clear to me that this male child was only a matter of hours old -- hours rather than days. He had been abandoned and left to die soon after birth and was near to death when I found him, too weak to cry.



I took the baby to the car and drove on. It was only as I arrived at my house that I realized what a remarkable opportunity this was. Tests had shown that my own telepathic and clairvoyant talent was small. Yet this child, dying of starvation, had been able to reach me and make me save its life. This was an exceptional child, delivered apparently by chance, but not by chance, into the hands of one of the few men in the world capable of understanding and developing such ability.



In the instant before taking the child inside, I made up my mind. This child was mine. Its parents had left it to die. I had saved it. But if I failed to be circumspect, the infant might not be left in the hands of the man chosen by God to help it fulfill its destiny. This remarkable child would be treated like any other foundling. And the wonderful ability which had summoned me, like the Three Wise Men, would be overborne, smothered, and perhaps entirely defeated by the crass ignorance and stupidity of the modern world; which throws stones at what it does not understand.



I got the child into the house without being seen, cleaned it, fed it with milk, and hid it in an inner room with both doors locked. That night I found fault with the cook and butler and dismissed them. Later I flew into an assumed temper and discharged all the servants, accusing them of stealing.



The new servants were all subnormal in one way or another. The two housemaids were both deaf mutes; I did not want them to hear the child's cries. The cook was immensely fat owing to a gland disease and could not climb stairs. The others were mental defectives.



I knew I could not conceal the very existence of the child . . .



There, infuriatingly, a piece of the cutting was missing. There had been a fold, and the poor quality paper had fallen off, perhaps many years ago. However, the part which was missing seemed to be short and not very important. At the top of the next column the statement went on:



. . . four years I have trained this boy to use his mind. As far as possible, human speech has been denied him, because language is an inferior tool of communication employed in default of a purely mental link. He has tried to invent a language of his own, but I have always refused to recognize it.



Early training was simple. The child had already proved he could summon aid when he was starving. This ability was strengthened by constant repetition. He soon found it much easier to summon the mentally- defective nurse than to contact me. Although at first he had to be literally starving before he was able to break through, by the time he was two years old he could rouse the nurse to bring him a drink of water.



For further details on the training of the child I refer you to my book "What the Mind Might Do."



There the statement ended, apparently owing to certain arguments with the police officers who originally took it down. It was a statement unlike any in their experience, and they wanted clarification on many points, and to introduce matters which Searle considered irrelevant. His attitude seemed to be that he would make a statement as full as anyone could wish, but he had to be allowed to do it in his own way or not at all.



In particular, he wanted to give details of his experiment, and the police wanted a confession of what he had done to a nameless boy who had been a prisoner for four years entirely in the power of a man with an idée fixe.



--That's why you hate all tests! Baudaker burst out excitedly.



--It could'well be, replied Fletcher drily.



--But how can it be that you don't remember? A boy of four isn't a baby.



--Well, Fletcher is dead. I took forward only limited memories. What Fletcher remembered or might have remembered is of no more than academic interest now. Then, doesn't memory depend a lot on language? Searle's statement begins: On May 17, 1926, I was driving my car from Penicuik back to Edinburgh. Without language, what substance would be in that memory?



--I see what you mean.



It was Fletcher rather than Baudaker who turned back to the review of the book "What the Mind Might Do." The review was long and unsympathetic. The reviewer could not know what he was reviewing, because the book had come out before the Searle case. He could not know, especially, that Searle took telepathy for granted because he knew it existed, and that his experiments in telepathic development were not theoretical, but a statement of what he was actually trying out.



The review contained little information about the contents of the book, and Fletcher soon pushed it aside.



The next Searle case clipping was baffling: it concerned long, legal argument on the charges against Searle. It, too, was put to one side for the moment.



Big headlines leaped from the next sheet: SCOTT MONUMENT HORROR. A man, not named, had been arrested after holding a screaming boy out in space over the top gallery of the 200 foot monument. Charges would be preferred . . .



That, apparently, was the start of the Searle case.



It was also, Fletcher realized, beginning to hate Searle with a cold, sick loathing, the start of his terror of heights.



Looking back, Fletcher saw that the story of Sir Charles Searle's arrest and the report of the "Scott Monument horror" were from the same issue. Either the police or the newspaper editor had decided not to reveal the link at once.



The argument over the charges made more sense now. Although Searle himself was the main authority for what had been done to the nameless child in the case between May 17, 1926, and May 22, 1930, on Friday, May 23, 1930, Searle was seen by several witnesses holding the boy over the fearful gulf between the top gallery of the Scott Monument, Edinburgh, and the ground far below, and had to be dragged back with his burden.



This constituted assault at least. It might be attempted murder. It might be many things, but even if nothing else could be proved, Searle had terrified a four-year-old boy in a melodramatic way which partly explained the strong public feeling which the trial aroused.



Searle, throughout, never believed he had done anything wrong. He said of the Scott Monument incident: "The boy could command me. He had proved it. You simply don't understand. I never had the very slightest intention of harming him, obviously. As he grew older, it became increasingly difficult to find stimuli strong enough to make him apply himself fully. This experiment was designed to force him to take complete control of me, for his own safety. . . . "



At another point he said: "I don't understand. The child had already proved that when he was hungry he had the capacity to communicate mentally. I merely reinforced this caparty, hoping to train him to communicate with his mind instead of his voice. He was fed regularly as a rule. It was only occasionally, at irregular intervals, that he was given no food until he sent a mental summons. . . . I repeat, a gifted child of this type could come to no harm in these conditions. I don't understand these accusations of cruelty and neglect. The boy has always had the very best of attention. . . . "



Later: "Of course he was denied the normal upbringing of a normal child. He is not a normal child. My purpose? I should have thought that would have been obvious. Children of exceptional musical talent have often been denied normal upbringing. Child actors are denied normal upbringing. This child is a telepath. Was such supernormal ability to be suppressed? Are we still living in the Dark Ages amid fear of the unknown?"



Only once, hesitantly, did Searle admit a certain doubt. "Yes, I used hypnosis. I think that may have been a mistake. The boy had no words, and in employing hypnosis I had to permit him some. That in itself was a mistake. However, I felt it was necessary to condition him to certain godly attitudes toward lust, toward pride, and toward good and evil generally. I did not want the boy to fear me, but to fear God. Such talent had to be used for good. It was unthinkable that the boy's immense potential should be allowed to turn toward evil, or be allowed to dissipate itself, in future years, in womanizing . . . "



It was at about this point that the atmosphere changed. Throughout, Sir Charles Searle had been regarded as an inhuman monster, yet he acted and spoke so calmly and lucidly that doubts of his sanity never came into the foreground. It could be held that no sane man could do what he had done, but it could likewise be held that no sane man could commit motiveless murder, and in 1930 all murderers who were not foaming at the mouth were automatically executed.



Looking at the forty-year-old cuttings with a certain detachment, Fletcher and Baudaker could both sense the change that came over the trial of Sir Charles Searle. If he had gone on acting sanely, the case would have been a hopeless snarl of what might or might not be crimes against a nameless foundling of four. Searle might have been sentenced to three years in jail, perhaps more, probably less, because not much was certain except that he had held a child over a terrifying drop, with no apparent intention of actually letting him fall. And the 52-year-old ex-lecturer in Greek might be a fanatic, but he was not and had never been what was commonly considered a criminal.



When he stopped being lucid, however, when his calm certainty that he had done no wrong cracked, his whole story from the very first statement began to show itself as the ravings of a madman.



And suddenly the trial was over. The court heard from a doctor that the accused had gone completely out of his mind. No psychiatrists gave evidence in that May 1930 court. Insanity was simpler then.



Sir Charles Searle was committed without limit of time to an asylum. And it was cailcd, bluntly, an asylum then, not a sanatorium or a nursing home. Sir Charles Searle was a lunatic, and that explained everything. End of case.





The cuttings had nothing more to tell of the madman who had been Sir Charles Searle or the boy who was to become John Fletcher.



--There's a lot more to be found out, Baudaker observed thoughtfully as he emerged into the sunlight.



--There's nothing more to be found out.



Astonished, Baudaker replied --But we've scarcely begun to . . .



--We've finished.



Sitting in Princes Street gardens, Fletcher looked up at the 200 foot spire of the Scott Monument and shuddered. He did not want even to think about what he had learned, but something had to be done about Baudaker's frantic urge to go on probing into the events of forty years ago.



--I've got all the clues. I'm no longer interested.



--But you must . . .



--Baudaker, you know how I've grown to hate Searle for what he did to me in the last hour or so. If you want me to hate you with something of the same virulence, just go on the way you're doing.



Baudaker, shocked and hurt, made no reply.



More gently, having made the effect he had intended to make, Fletcher went on.



--You may not have the answers to all your questions, but I have all the answers to mine. I know why I became what I was, and whom to thank for it. There's nothing more I want to know.



Because he was aware that Baudaker was incapable of leaving it at that, he filled in a few details. --I know why I fear heights. I know why women were banned to me, I know why I didn't remember: Searle's hypnosis helped to block off the early memories that were vague in the first place since I was denied language. Searle's first and greatest crime against me was saving my life.



He went on for quite a while, sometimes chaotically, sometimes pensively, setting things in place for himself and for Baudaker.



--I think we have to get it clear that Searle is partly right and partly wrong. I did have certain talent, and he did help to develop it. But he used his power in fanatic ways . . . tried to make me his idea of a Christian . . .



When he thought he had said enough, he stopped.



Baudaker was far from satisfied.



--We must at least consult the fuller cuttings of the "Mail" and the "News." And we could see Mr. Curran again and . . .



--Baudaker, for God's sake, leave me alone.



Fletcher's silence after that drove Baudaker frantic. It was Fletcher who left the hotel and got back on the train. Occasionally he did answer Baudaker, but whenever Baudaker tried to talk about the only thing that interested him, Fletcher shut up like a clam.



It was late on Monday evening when Baudaker arrived at the maisonette. And Fletcher at once snapped back into contact with him.



--Coincidence again, he observed drily.



--Eh? What?



--You didn't notice the car parked on the other side of the street. Look at it.



It was Baudaker's old Morris. Baudaker stared at it blankly.



--What's it doing there? Gerry can't drive.



--I suspect it's the getaway car.



--What do you mean?



--It's only a guess. But I'm fairly sure Gerry is running away. With Sheila, of course.



"Running away," Baudaker muttered. "Like Paula."



This was the one thing he had never told Fletcher, and Fletcher had never probed.



--Paula ran away?



--For weeks she'd been jumpy . . . then she disappeared. She left a note asking me not to report her missing, so I didn't. She was away six months. Then she came back, looking ill. Three days later she put her head in the gas oven.



Once again Fletcher wanted to tun away. Was there nothing in the world but failure, inadequacy, insanity, suicide, and cruelty? Even Baudaker and his Paula, whom he knew to have been in general an extremely happy couple, had been parted by tragedy, and not tragedy from outside but tragedy created by themselves.



Anyway, it was necessary to go into the house.



--There's a girl with Gerry. Sheila, of course.



--You know? You can sense . . . ?



Fletcher retorted irritably: I know. Never mind how. I'm telling you this is a crisis. And I return opportunely. Of course.



--A crisis?



--Go in.



The front door was seldom used. Baudaker went round to the back, as usual.



Fletcher took over. He had never been a man of action, a man of decision, yet he was far more able to handle any crisis than was Baudaker.



The house was a shambles. In the lounge, Gerry and Sheila were packing large, new traveling cases. They were throwing in everything of value. They looked up in consternation as Baudaker entered.



"Hello, Sheila," said Fletcher, ignoring Gerry. He had not seen her since the day on the estuary. Now, close up, he saw she was a rather pretty girl with wild eyes.



In his old manner, Gerry released a flood of profanity. The gist of his remarks was that Baudaker was supposed to be away for a week, and what was he doing back on Monday night?



Sheila backed away. Unlike Gerry in his present mood, she found something in Baudaker to make her afraid.



"Gerry," said Fletcher softly, "you seem to be running away."



"You're damn right I'm going away. And you're not going to stop me."



"In the ordinary way I wouldn't try. You're perfectly free to go, naturally. I don't even mind your taking the car, if you have a driving license. Have you, by the way?"



"Sheila has."



"Oh well, that's all right. But there's something else, isn't there?"



"What the hell do you mean?"



"It's not just a simple matter of going away. What have you done?"



Recklessly Gerry said: "If you really want to know . . . "



"Gerry!" Sheila exclaimed warningly.



"If you really want to know, I've taken Ł300 from the shop."



Fletcher nodded, unsurprised. "Very clever. A master plan."



His sarcasm had always penetrated Gerry's otherwise thick hide very easily.



Gerry flushed. "It was easy. I've never taken anything before. They trust me."



"Cleverer still. Of course we all know it wasn't really your idea at all. It was Sheila's."



Sheila took another step back. But curiously she said: "Go on, hit me. That's what you want to do, isn't it?"



Fletcher ignored her. To Gerry he said quietly: "Can you get the money back tomorrow without anyone knowing?"



Taken aback, Gerry said: "I could -- if I wanted to. But I'm not going to."



"You are."



"You think you can make me, you little fat . . . "



"Get him, Gerry!" Sheila suddenly screamed.



She was right back against the wall, in some way terrified of Fletcher-Baudaker, but something had snapped in her and she made something snap in Gerry.



Gerry lashed wildly at the little man, and Fletcher, moving easily to evade the blow, brushed against a lamp-standard. It teetered and fell on him. Unhurt but dazed, he didn't move as Gerry caught him by the throat.



With the nervous frenzy of a man attacking something or someone he feared, like a man stamping in terror on a snake, Gerry squeezed madly and Baudaker was helpless. He heaved and fought for air and got none. He could feel his eyes popping and he knew Gerry in his sudden insanity would not release him while life remained in him.



Fletcher dimly heard Sheila chirping wild encouragement. Baudaker was dying and there was nothing he could do about it. Gerry was twice as strong as he was. But there was something Fletcher could do about it. He did it.











CHAPTER 5: GERRY



He released Baudaker and the little man slumped to the floor, eyes glazed almost as in death.



But Fletcher had made the transfer in time.



"Finish him, you fooll" Sheila shrieked.



Gerry turned casually. "Ies all off, Sheila," he said.



"Christ, you can't stop now! Finish the little creep."



He felt a strong urge to slap her and knew that although part of this came from Fletcher, some of it came from the habits of Gerry of slapping and punching Sheila as indifferently as a schoolboy kicked stones. Fletcher was in complete control, but Gerry was with him, unsurprised, wary, sullen, rebellious. It was in Gerry's nature to hit Sheila because he could not hit anyone else.



Fletcher, however, had no intention of hitting Sheila.



"Go home," he said.



She responded with a tornado of profanity and obscenity which seemed to be their common language.



"Stop that," he said in disgust.



"You're going to put the money back?"



"Yes." He bent over Baudaker, loosening his tie and opening his shirt. Baudaker was conscious, though every heaving breath was torture, and his eyes showed he knew exactly what had happened. But even if he could have spoken he would not have done so. He was leaving this to Fletcher.



Suddenly the universe exploded in pain, pain greater than he had experienced as Gerry was strangling him. Sheila had kicked him as hard as she was able in the side.



Eyes streaming with pain, he straightened with difficulty.



"Now look here," he said. "That's out, understand? I'm not going to hit you, I don't like hitting you, but . . . "



"Since when?" she hooted derisively, and with a careless wrench hauled her sweater up her body.



Her ribs and skinny midriff were patterned with bruises, blue, black, purple and yellow. She had been beaten systematically, regularly, remorselessly, as if the beating was a chore which was as obligatory as eating and sleeping.



Suddenly excited, she breathed: "Hit me, Gerry. Go on, hurt me. I want to be hurt. I want that feeling. Hit me till I can't stand. Hit me till I scream for you to stop, and don't stop. Take me, Gerry."



Sick, Fletcher wanted nothing more than to be rid of her. "Sheila," he said firmly, and then paused. Tell her the truth? Ridiculous. Yet she had to know that the Gerry she had known no longer existed.



"We've got to straighten ourselves out before it's too late. We've got to do things the right way, the decent way."



He stopped because she was laughing incredulously and derisively.



"You, Gerry?" she sneered.



It was hopeless. Talking to her while she was in her present mood was a waste of time.



Indeed, he began to be afraid that it would always be a waste of time.



At that early moment he suspected that working on Sheila from outside her, even as Gerry, particularly as Gerry, was not going to be a success. It was part of his job, part of his usual unsought responsibility, to try to set Gerry right. And Gerry and Sheila were linked unto death -- everyone seemed to take that for granted -- although they were not married or engaged and perhaps never would be. Their kind of relationship did not seem to encompass marriage. They were tethered together by lust, masochism, sadism, but not by tenderness.



Anyway, he could do nothing about Sheila now.



Grotesquely she still had her sweater hanging like a muffler round her neck. Her frail, discolored body aroused protectiveness as well as horror in Fletcher, and he could feel Gerry experiencing the new feeling and being baffled by it.



He stepped forward and Sheila tensed, expecting blows and both welcoming and fearing the pain they would bring.



Gently, he pulled down her sweater.



At a loss, she looked at him and then at Baudaker, still on the floor, still gasping, but less tortured now.



"You really want me to go?" she said, with sudden deadly calm.



"I can't make it any clearer, can I?"



"Then by Christ I'll go," she said savagely, and slammed the door behind her. A moment later he heard the front door slam.



He bent over Baudaker again. "Can I get you anything?"



"Water, please," Baudaker croaked.



"It's tea you want," Fletcher said. "Just a minute. Shall I help you to a chair?"



"No, I'll stay here."



"You know what's happened, of course."



"Yes. Tell me, what will it mean to Gerry?"



"I don't know. At the moment he's sort of standing back and looking on, wondering just what you asked, what this is going to mean to him. One thing -- he's not as selfish as I thought. He still cares in a certain shamefaced way about you, and of course in his twisted way about Sheila."



"Be good to him," Baudaker begged.



"I'll try to be."



"Yes, I know. I'm sorry about this; I didn't want to lose you."



Fletcher smiled half incredulously as he went to the kitchen and put on the kettle. Only Baudaker had ever said, or would ever say, anything like that. All the others had been and would be unspeakably relieved to be free of him. It could not be too soon for Gerry.



Baudaker was a friend, possibly the first he had ever had.





The first colloquy came a few minutes later after Fletcher had helped Baudaker to bed, placed a pot of tea on the bedside table, and put the car in. Fletcher, who had never in his life stolen as much as a postage stamp, could not rest with Ł300 of stolen money in the house, and intended to go to the shop right away.



--It would be all right to put it back tomorrow, Gerry said.



--No. Tonight.



--Ill have to climb in through a lavatory window.



--Good. You know the way, then.



--It's a long walk. Why not take the car? You can drive.



--But you haven't a driving license. Do you want to be picked up and charged with taking away a car without permission and driving without a license and without third party insurance, with Ł300 of stolen money in the car?



Gerry didn't answer the question. He was uneasy rather than rebellious. He was also reluctantly and resentfully ashamed, shocked to learn in the most unambiguous way what Fletcher thought of him and his behavior toward Baudaker, Sheila and his employers.



Of course, Gerry himself would have remained unimpressed if Fletcher, as an ordinary living individual, had told him what he thought of him. But now Gerry was partly Fletcher -- and possibly also partly Judy, Ross and Baudaker. He was seeing himself in many mirrors, from several unflattering angles.



--She made me hit her.



--You're stronger than she is. Much stronger. How could she make you?



--It seems different now.



--Never mind, said Fletcher with a sympathy and understanding he had not shown toward Ross. Perhaps he had not then acquired sympathy and understanding. -- You're not eighteen yet. You've done nothing irreparable. Maybe I can help you.



Gerry burst out suddenly --You were in the old man!



Fletcher was taken aback that Gerry had only just realized this, despite the conversation with Baudaker. But then, the boy did not possess more than average intelligence.



--Yes.



--What are you, a sort of angel?



It was Fletcher's turn to be shocked. True, he had been able to do some good, he hoped. But on the whole he regarded himself as a tortured soul unable to rest. What he had learued in Edinburgh gave him a clearer idea of the facts, but not much to justify the sense of purpose he yearned to feel, because only purpose could justify what was happening. He had always been a misfit and now he was far more of a misfit than he had ever been in life.



--An angel? Ridiculous.





Gordon's was a very large marble-fronted shoe shop, on the town's main street. The owner, Jeremy Gordon, still ran it like the tiny shoemaker's shop he had started forty years ago. Although he had achieved reasonable success, he still had only one shop when others who began as he did had achieved a chain.



He had been robbed all his life and his rivals had always been first. Yet he was a happy man, and for the first time Gerry felt some respect for the old fool seeing him through Fletcher's eyes. He was not a silly old man who deserved to be robbed, but a man who could never stop being optimistic over human nature.



Restoring the stolen money proved to be extremely easy, because the shop, though reasonably secure against an outside raider, was a cardboard shoe box to anyone who worked in it. And this fact, seen through Fletcher's eyes, made Gerry feel ashamed again.



Gerry did not make any effort to communicate on the way home.



Thunderous knocking on the rarely used front door, punctuated by imperious peals of the bell, roused Gerry from a deep sleep, and a glance at the luminous dial of his alarm clock told him it was 3 a.m. It would be Sheila, of course.



Both he and Fletcher were disinclined to answer the door. But if Gerry did not, Baudaker would have to get up.



Gerry got up reluctantly, scarcely able to see for sleep. Fletcher, suppressed by the heaviness of Gerry's oblivion, was a mere passenger. Gerry, like Ross, slept in pajama trousers only, and Fletcher vaguely thought of putting something else on. But he was not sufficiently in control to have any effect on Gerry, who stumbled to the front door and opened it, blinking.



Policemen.



Two in uniform, one in plain clothes.



Roused a little, Fletcher realized that he would have known it was not Sheila at the door if he had not been so committed in the heavy sleep of a very tired seventeen-year-old. Then he saw that the police, grim and certain though they were, were made less grim and less certain by the totally convincing sleepiness of the youth in rumpled pajama trousers.



Neither Fletcher nor Gerry could achieve alertness for several minutes. The three policemen were in the lounge. Baudaker did not appear and the police did not insist on rousing him.



They had reason to believe that Ł300 was missing from Gordon's. Could Gerry tell them anything?



Fully awake at last, Gerry said: "You got a call from Sheila?"



The plain-clothes man said: "Suppose we did, son?"



"We had a row," said Gerry.



"So she split on you. She didn't even wait till the morning."



"You don't know Sheila." Gerry-Fletcher paused: he didn't want to lie or half-lie. The money had been taken, but it was safely back. There was no need to do anything but wait.



"You mean she was lying, son?"



Fletcher found the "son" irritating. In his old-fashioned view, police were friends if you had never broken the law, enemies if you were a crook. This detective believed, still believed, that the kid in front of him had stolen Ł300 from his employer. That was perfectly reasonable, since Gerry had. But the friendliness jarred.



Fletcher, who had been Baudaker for long enough to forget his joy in being young and strong and healthy as Judy and as Ross, suddenly had to suppress an urge to dive through the window and escape, as Gerry could easily do in his youth, and strength.



The police, it became apparent, were waiting too. Probably they were waiting for a warrant to search the home. They had been invited in; at least, Gerry had not opposed their entry. But they said nothing about a search.



The phone rang. The friendly detective said politely: "May I?" and even waited until Gerry nodded before picking it up.



It was the type of one-sided phone conversation that made the whole conversation plain to the listener. Mr. Gordon was at the shop. Nothing was missing. Yes, he was quite certain. He couldn't be sure about the stock, but no money was missing. No attempt had been made to tamper with it.



The friendly detective, curiously, was less friendly when he put down the phone. His friendliness was the smile on the face of the tiger. While he thought Gerry had broken into a shop and stolen Ł300, he was "son." When he thought Gerry had not, he became "you."



"There's nothing to keep us," he said shortly. "You -- try to keep your girl friend in hand, will you? In fact, you'd be better away from that one. We know about you and we know about her."



Gerry said nothing.



"Somebody's going to murder that girl," said the detective. "She's going to be found in a field somewhere with nineteen stab wounds, probably some time in the next six months. When that happens, we'll come looking for you. Be sure you're in the clear then."



When they had gone, Gerry was too tired to do anything but stumble back to bed. Baudaker had heard nothing, apparently.



It was a warm night, and Gerry didn't even manage to get under the sheets. He flopped on the bed and slept.





Fletcher found it quite an interesting and enjoyable experience to be a junior salesman in a shoe shop. He had never in any of his lives had to deal with the general public. Unexpectedly, Gerry had a friendly, easy manner, and all regular customers tried to be served by him rather than any of the others.



Mr. Gordon, a small, thin man with white hair, sought him out and was as apologetic about the incident the night before as if it had been entirely his fault. Gerry, uncomfortable on his own behalf, with no interference by Fletcher, made it very clear that all he wanted was to forget the whole thing. But Mr. Gordon insisted he should take the afternoon off, in compensation for being needlessly disturbed in the middle of the night.



Then Mr. Gordon, too, said something that people were always saying to Gerry. Everyone who knew him at all knew about it.



"That girl, Gerry . . . she means nothing but trouble for you, you know."



"I know," said Gerry. "But she's my girl, Mr. Gordon."



Mr. Gordon sighed and left it at that.



Already Fletcher was finding to his surprise that Gerry's problems were simple; possibly insoluble, but simple.



He had been rootless, at the mercy of the gentlest breeze. His mother had failed him not just by dying (anyone could die) but by leaving him and Sheila for six months, as Gerry now knew, and then returning only to stick her head in the gas oven. Baudaker, too, had failed him. Fletcher was interested to find confirmation that Gerry had respected the tougher, but fair, Baudaker he had encountered recently. Gerry was indeed the type who responded well to firm authority, and didn't know how to handle full freedom of action.



He clung to Sheila because there was no one and nothing else to cling to.



Ironically, Fletcher brought him stability. Gerry saw for the first time the futility of running without purpose and without destination, saw it with undeniable clarity. He saw himself, and bad as that was, it was not nearly as bad as he had thought in his heart.



With the first touch of Fletcher he became an ordinary kid of seventeen, still uncertain but now possessing a framework of experience, a map of life to help prevent his ever being wholly lost again.



Baudaker could help him again. Gerry now could do something he had not done for many years, trust certain people. He could trust Baudaker, he could trust Mr. Gordon, he could trust Fletcher most of all because he knew him most deeply. He could not trust Sheila.



Of course it was Sheila that was the real problem.



At lunch time Gerry did not go home, and there was no chance of seeing Sheila, who lunched in the canteen of a textile factory which was not open to visitors. He was ravenously hungry, and he had next to no money, having spent all he had with Sheila in the expectation of stolen riches. There was not enough for an ordinary meal in an ordinary restaurant, but here Fletcher, with his small experience of the world, was able to help. He directed Gerry to a small Italian café where, with the help of a few words of Italian, Gerry sat down to an enormous pile of spaghetti and cheese and tomato sauce, meatless but sustaining, for less than the price of a snack elsewhere.



--I can't leave Sheila, said Gerry as he ate.



It was a plain statement, definite but neither challenging nor rebellious, and Fletcher accepted it as such.



--I know.



--What was that? You were thinking something, and tried to hide it from me.



--It's my affair, not yours.



--No, it was about Sheila.



The significance of this was not lost on Fletcher. He had replied: "It's my affair, not yours," and Gerry, knowing the evasion concerned Sheila, immediately took it to himself.



--Sheila is sick.



--You think everybody is sick.



--Aren't they? Knowing. what I know, don't you agree?



--I don't know about things like that.



--Whether Sheila can be helped or not I don't know. But I'm sure of this: if it's possible, I can do nothing except by being Sheila.



--Well, then? Why not?



--It's not that easy. You know that. You know about me.



Gerry ate silently for some time. He had never eaten long spaghetti, and found it difficult. He tried twirling his fork and he tried cutting the ribbons; in the end, like an elderly and very prosperous-looking Italian two tables away, he sucked the strands up somewhat messily.



Judy had had to use Fletcher's terror of heights to dislodge him. Ross had drowned him in whisky. In Baudaker's case, chance took a hand.



His own thoughts paralleling Fletcher's, Gerry suggested:



--Suppose I started to strangle Sheila?



--It wouldn't work. It wouldn't even begin to work. I wouldn't let you.



--Then suppose Sheila tried to kill me?



The idea had not occurred to Fletcher. Yet at once, intuitively, he knew it was a red herring. Sheila would never kill anyone. She was passive, submissive; she would scream to Gerry to kill Baudaker, but she would never deliver the coup de grace herself.



Without prompting, Gerry chose to wander along the estuary that afternoon. It was warm and sunny, and there were many people on the sand, but not many children, since the school summer holidays had not stared yet. Full of spaghetti and well-being, Gerry threw himself down on the sand very near where he had once tormented Sheila, where later Fletcher had filled himself with beer.



Gerry was quite happy. Fletcher's presence made him content with himself: he was glad to be on good terms again with his father; and he no longer needed to drink whisky for the courage and oblivion it brought. Only the problem of Sheila remained, and Fletcher was half amused, half appalled, to find that Gerry was cheerfully shuffling it off onto his shoulders.



Gerry could not rid himself of the idea that Fletcher was some sort of angel. Not highly imaginative, he liked to find a simple answer or explanation for anything puzzling, and then believe in it implicitly. The simplest explanation for the miracle that was happening was that Fletcher was a good spirit of some kind.



Two girls of about Gerry's age passed in front of him, looked at him, whispered, giggled, and sat down on the sand a little farther along. Towels came out of their shopping bags and they took off their shoes. They made a great performance of removing their nylons, looking back over their shoulders at Gerry, giggling again, wriggling and drawing out the suspense, pretending they'd be horrified if he looked at them but making sure he did.



Fletcher felt Gerry's quickening of interest, and though he remained merely a spectator, he was somewhat startled by the youth's shamelessly polygamous instincts. Sheila was his girl, as he had not long ago finished making clear. Any plans for the future had to include Sheila. Yet when a couple of girls he had never seen before showed that they were not disinterested in him, he immediately began to wonder, in his own phrase, if there was "anything doing."



Fletcher the Puritan argued with himself, pointing out that his own record with women had shown all too plainly that puritanism was not what any woman wanted, nor what society really expected.



Meanwhile Gerry looked away from the girls, a picture of disinterest, and took his shirt off.



Not to be outdone, the girls wriggled into bikinis, at first coyly and then, when Gerry refused to let them see him looking at them, with smooth skill which showed they were practiced beach changers. The thin one, the blonde, turned out to be too thin, her ribs standing out starkly like xylophone keys and her halter halting nothing very much. But the redhead was generously curved, saved from over plumpness by a tight waist and slim thighs which, to accord with the rest of her, should have been heavy. She was not beautiful but she was devastatlngly attractive.



It was the redhead who stood up, stretching on tiptoe in the sun. Seeming to catch Gerry's eye purely by chance, she winked and then laughed.



The next moment he was with them. They were Vera (the blonde) and Daphne (the redhead). Within two minutes Vera was sulky and bored; frozen out, particularly by her friend. She was on the point of taking offense, throwing on her clothes and going away. Daphne shot Gerry a few secret glances to let him know he was on to a good thing.



Then Fletcher interrupted urgently.



--If you care about Sheila, come away now.



--Sheila? She's working.



--Where Sheila is, nobody's working just now. I don't know the details. All I know is, it's a crisis. Probably because of last night.



--I know what she's like when she's depressed . . .



At the thought, Gerry jumped up. "I have to go," he said.



Vera jeered with derision at Gerry and particularly at her friend Daphne. Gerry didn't see Daphne's reaction. He threw on his shirt as he climbed the sand slope.



--If you know Sheila's in trouble, you must have some idea what kind of trouble.



--No. She's the center of attention, I know that. She's somewhere where no one can get at her.



Gerry groaned.



--When Sheila gets high . . .



--Drunk?



--No, when she . . . I mean, when she can't take it any more, she tries to kill herself.



--Of course. I should have known that.





There was no sign of anything unusual at the factory where Sheila worked. Guided by Fletcher, Gerry ran up the stairs, into the office on the top floor. There all was chaos. Nobody was at any of the desks. A green filing cabinet lay on its face, having smashed a fragile desk as it fell. Debris was wildly scattered about.



Scores of girls and men were crowded at a big window right at the end of the office. They were silent for the most part, whispering but not speaking aloud.



Gerry came up behind 'them. "What's happening?" he demanded.



In the way of crowds, they knew at once who he was: Sheila's boy friend. An excited chatter told him:



"She's out there."



"On the ledge."



"She's got a broken arm."



"She tried to kill Mr. Sheringham."



"Pulled the cabinet on top of him . . . I wouldn't have thought she had the strength . . . "



"I only said she looked pale," said a thin bony man who presumably was Sheringham. "I dodged, but the cabinet caught her arm."



"She always was crazy."



"You must be Gerry Baudaker."



"I spoke to her earlier,-and she never even looked at me."



"She didn't have any lunch.".



"A policeman came to see her. He said it was nothing important, but when he left she looked . . . "



"I did say something about the company she kept," Sheringham admitted reluctantly. "All I meant was . . . "



Gerry pushed past them. It wasn't difficult; they all drew away from him, because he was Sheila's steady. He was part of this unexpected, frightening yet exciting drama. What was he going to do? Was the episode going to fizzle out, or was something yet more exciting going to happen?



When Gerry looked out of the window, sixty feet up, he and Fletcher split into their respective units. But Fletcher could not escape. The strain was not yet great enough.



It was not a remarkable coincidence that he was again having to face a situation in which height played a major part. When he was Fletcher, with a mild phobia, it had been easy to avoid such situations. Now that he was caught up with others, it was not.



Sheila was ten feet away, sitting on the sill of a false window. The architect who designed the building had fancifullly alternated real windows and embrasures in the stonework. Sheila was, in certain senses of the word, safe. She was sitting on a substantial sill with enough space behind her to give her a reasonable purchase, though her legs dangled in space.



The height was negligible compared with the skyscraper parapet. The offices, at the back of the factory, overlooked an untidy jumble of tenements and back greens, and even not very tall buildings cut off sight of any street. From Sheila on her perch, straight down to the warehouse lanes beneath her, the drop could not be more than sixty feet.



Gerry turned away and said urgently: "Have you called the police or the fire service? She could be caught in a blanket."



A chorus of voices assured him the firemen were on their way.



He looked out again. This time Sheila saw him, and waved ironically. He choked as he saw she was waving with her misshapen, broken arm. Blood dripped from it, and as his gaze followed it down, Fletcher felt all the horror that had driven him out of Judy.



It was incredible that she should have reached her perch without plunging down to the lane below. There was a ledge not quite three inches wide, and he gathered from what he had heard, that she had darted out of the window recklessly and almost run to where she was now. There was the paradox of suicide: nobody without suicidal impulses would ever have gone out through that window, yet instead of plunging straight to her death, she had gone along a three inch ledge to a place of temporary safety . . . why?



"I'm going out after her," said Gerry.



The five words paralyzed Fletcher. He didn't know they were coming until he heard them. Then immediately he hoped that the men and girls all round him would say at once: "No, you can't, we won't let you," but although they chattered like monkeys, nobody took any action to stop Gerry.



Fletcher remained paralyzed. He could not take over and control Gerry, as he had controlled them all, including Gerry himself, when it was necessary. Possibly the paralysis came from indecision; there were so many things he might try to do, so many things he could and could not do.



If he were able to become Sheila he might succeed in straightening her out. But while she was in her present situation, nothing could.make him transfer to Sheila, and if he did, terror would make him/her fall. Then, though he would no doubt move voluntarily or involuntarily to another haven, Sheila would be dead.



If he were able to take control of Gerry, a simple matter if he could calm himself sufficiently, he might be of help in talking Sheila back into the office, or in keeping her there until the firemen arrived with their ladders.



If he could not stop Gerry going out, it might well be the end of both Gerry and Sheila. He, of course, would survive. Either when Gerry fell or when Gerry looked like falling, he'd jump to . . . Baudaker? Ross? Someone entirely unexpected, as most of them had been?



Gerry's knee was on the sill of the open window. And Fletcher was still indecisive. If only it hadn't been a matter of heights, he told himself as an excuse. It was the unreasoning terror of falling sixty feet, unreasoning became he was fairly certain he would escape before this happened, that made him helpless when the two people who were currently his concern, Gerry and Sheila, faced their crisis.



Then Sheila said calmly: "If you come out, I'll jump."



Gerry remained two entirely separate people. At that moment there was only enough contact between him and Fletcher for each to know what the other was thinking.



Gerry thought: If I was quick enough I could reach her and catch hold of her all right, because she'd hesitate. But what could I hold on to once I'd caught her?



Fletcher thought: If I could reverse this situation -- put Gerry in danger while Sheila is safe -- I might be able to switch from Gerry to Sheila. This way, it's impossible. I can't control what I do, I have to lose control before anything happens.



Sheila's injured arm was on the side away from him, hidden now, and except for the appalling drop beneath her, she looked like any pretty girl sitting on a ledge in the sun, dangling her legs. She wore a skimpy black skirt and a plain white blouse. She had lost both her shoes.



Fletcher thought: this girl must be saved. He still felt a deep need for justification -- all that had happened could be justified in some supreme court if it had a purpose -- a worth-while purpose. "Sorting Sheila out," as Gerry thought of it, would be a very worth-while purpose, if there were some way to do it.



Having relaxed momentarily, he found he was able to take partial control of Gerry.



He turned to the whispering office girls and clerks. "Please get out, all of you," he said. "She'll never come back here with all of you standing about. If you leave me here alone . . . "



"He's right," said Sheringham. He started to shepherd the others away.



Gerry went back to the window. He had not lost his confidence in Fletcher. Fearless himself, he was quite prepared to make a reckless, even suicidal attempt to save Sheila, but it was obvious that this would, more likely than not, precipitate her fall. If Fletcher had any ideas, Gerry was quite prepared to let him try them.



"Sheila," Fletcher said. She turned her head. "It will be all right, I promise you," he said quietly. "Come back, and it will be all right."



"How can you promise anything?" she retorted bitterly. "Last night you showed what your promises are worth."



"All that happened was I decided not to run away. Sheila, I love you."



Curiously, or not so curiously, Gerry had never said that to Sheila. Indeed, he didn't say it now. Fletcher said it for him.



Sheila's mood changed. "I'm no good to you, Gerry. I never was and I never will be. I'm no good to anybody, especially not to myself."



"I still love you, Sheila."



"Then you're a fool. I can't change. If there were some way . . . "



"But there is a way!" Fletcher paused, striving to explain the inexplicable to a girl who only had to lose her nerve for a moment and she would plunge to her death. He knew the only real explanation was for him to become Sheila. Wild possibilities revolved in his mind . . . get Gerry to stand on the ledge, so that Fletcher's transfer to Sheila might be possible?



Anyway, keep her talking, he told himself. Any moment now the police and firemen would arrive. What was keeping them? In scores of such cases, the would-be suicide eventually returned docilely to safety. The trouble was, Sheila wasn't just an ordinary kid trying to draw attention to her wrongs. She wasn't particularly interested in attention and she didn't feel wronged, not really even by Gerry. She had been born for suicide, and for her there would be pleasure in the moment of abandonment to death, the moment of supreme pleasure, supreme pain.



"Please come in," he begged. "I'll help you . . . "



"Come any farther out of that window and I'll jump," she warned. "I don't know what I'm waiting for anyway. I'm not coming in. I did want to see you again, Gerry . . . how did you get here?"



"I knew you were in danger, Sheila, I swear to you that everything can be put right. There is a way."



There was scarcely any wind, but a sudden gust ruffled her thin blouse and flapped her skin over one thigh and off the other. Automatically she tried to push it back but with her injured arm, and for a moment the shock of the pain and the unexpected chill of the wind, startled her, and very nearly made her fall.



"You see!" said Gerry triumphantly, as she relaxed again. "You don't want to fall. You were terrified just now."



She answered obliquely: "I didn't need to hurt my arm. I saw the cabinet falling quite slowly, and I could easily have got out of the way. But I let my arm be smashed. That shouldn't surprise you."



"No."



"I do want to fall. The only thing that's keeping me here is . . . well, that would be the end, and somehow I'm not quite ready."



"Of course you're not quite ready. No one's ever quite ready to take his own life."



She frowned at that, sensing it was not Gerry who was speaking.



A shadow fell across her and they both looked up.



Descending by a rope ladder from the roof was a man in uniform. He was within six feet of Sheila, directly above her. He was now at the end of the ladder, which was being lowered from above.



"Goodbye, Gerry," said Sheila softly, and deliberately raised herself clear of the wall.



She seemed to be falling interminably. She fell flat, as if lying face down on a bed, one arm and both legs spread out.



Then she landed on the concrete.



A little later, the terrible sound of her landing reached Gerry.



For two days Gerry's shock numbed Fletcher too.



There were confused impressions: a police inspector blustering, knowing, and knowing that Gerry knew too. He had taken a chance that didn't come off, and if he had not done so, Sheila might not have died. Everybody knew, although the office had been cleared when Gerry requested it, that Sheila had apparently calmed down as he talked to her. It had seemed to the inspector then that a man coming down from the roof, without warning, might grasp her and hold her until a ladder could be run up from below. But now, of course, it seemed to him, as well as to everybody else, that perhaps it might have been better to leave it to Gerry.



Baudaker was silent but sympathetic, aware that Fletcher was with Gerry, yet also aware of Gerry's loss. And Baudaker, whatever had happened since, had loved both Sheila and Gerry.



There was a moment when in his grief Gerry blamed everything on Fletcher, saying that if there had been no interference he and Sheila would be on a blissful holiday in Wales, that if Fletcher had wanted to he could not merely have saved Sheila but transformed her. But Fletcher, who once had cringed under such attacks, could not feel this time that he had failed, except in being unable to engineer the transfer to Sheila which he had always felt was her only chance.



The sympathy of Mr. Gordon, which Fletcher was glad to observe, made Gerry more ashamed than ever. Far from suspecting the truth, Mr. Gordon thought Gerry a totally innocent victim of all that had happened, and though he would not say so, well rid of Sheila, even if the manner of his release was unfortunate. Mr. Gordon told him not to return to work until he felt like it, but Gerry replied that he felt like it now, and worked as usual.



A chance meeting with Anita, who knew him slightly as Baudaker's son, and suspected, he was sure, something of what had happened. Fletcher would have spoken to her and asked about Judy, but Gerry was reticent with all people who had known him as the graceless son who was a burden to poor little Baudaker.



. . . Puzzlement as Baudaker gave him a Ł5 note, "for a wreath, or anything else you like."



"But you've sent a wreath already."



"It's not just that. Gerry, Fletcher, I've been made chief technician. Sam was asked about that Saturday I didn't get off, and he blew up and said if they wanted me in charge they could have me. He's gone now." Gerry was diverted for a while by this, proud that his father, who had never "got on" in all the time he could remember, had now been promoted twice in a matter of days. There was also reinforcement of his belief that Fletcher, though he had failed to save Sheila, was some kind of angel. What else could explain what he had done for Baudaker?



And then a chance meeting with Daphne Smith, the redhead Gerry had met on the estuary; without Vera this time.



Impressions ceased to be confused.



The girl, a frank extrovert, knew all about it. A dentist's receptionist, she knew everybody and everything. She loved meeting people, and anything which happened to anybody was always of interest to her.



"The poor kid," she said of Sheila. She was the first to express any sympathy for Sheila.



Gerry told her all about it, but not about Fletcher. Daphne was fascinated. The cynical thought that she could be far more sympathetic over Sheila now that she was dead than she could ever have been while she was alive did occur to Fletcher, but he did not pursue it. Unlike Sheila, Daphne was not his concern. She was certainly not sick. A no more exuberantly female girl existed in the Western world.



Again Fletcher had to fight with himself. And I kissed her little sister and forgot my Clementine . . . No, Gerry would never forget Sheila. In his way he had truly loved the girl, just as in her even more peculiar way she had loved him.



Gerry was emerging from the shadows into the sunlight. He was a simple character. He no longer needed Fletcher, and he knew it. A little like his father, however, he was reluctant to be rid of him.



And there was no sign of any crisis, now that Sheila was dead, which might eject Fletcher.



They walked home in the moonlight. This time Daphne led him round the back of the old house where her parents lived.



"Where are we going?" Gerry asked.



"There's a shed at the back of the greenhouse. But don't get ideas. I'm a sfanf girl."



"What?"



"So far and no farther."



"I've met girls like that."



"I bet you have. And the other kind?"



"One or two."



"I thought there was only one girl in your life?"



"Only one in it, but there were a few round the edges."



They could talk quite easily about Sheila now, though her name was rarely mentioned.



Gerry was an easy talker with girls and with customers. It was only with Authority that he had been sullen, his feeling of inadequacy expressing itself in resentful obstinacy. He would in time be an extremely good salesman, and there were indications that Mr. Gordon was well aware of this.



The shed was tiny, dusty, warm and dark. The furniture consisted of one small stool on which Gerry sat, pulling Daphne down on his knee. Her lips met his willingly.



A little later she said "Naughty!" and slapped his hand, following up with a playful dig in the ribs. Automatically he swung back at her.



Instantly she was on her feet in the gloom. "Never do that again," she said fiercely. "Now get out."



"Sorry, Daphne," he said, trying to pull her back on his knee. He had reacted without thinking, swinging at her middle, but it was a light punch that could have hurt her no more than she had hurt him. For a moment he felt the old vicious resentment (what did I do wrong?), and then admitted to himself that she had been playful and there had been just the hint of malice in his response that made a world of difference. Although she was not trying to pull away from him, she was resisting his efforts to draw her back to him.



He caught her ankle, jerked it and caught her as she fell. But that was all right; there was no malice this time and she laughed breathlessly.



"I'll have to go in soon," she murmured. She had no intention of going in soon, and he knew it.



It was quickly and clearly established where the limits lay, to the satisfaction of both. Gerry was the kind of youth who would despise any girl who gave in to him too easily, and while on the face of it he was not getting what he wanted, he didn't really want Daphne to be too easy. And she, no doubt, was as well aware of this as he.



However, as Gerry finally made his way home, very late, he suddenly observed:



--It's true. Three's a crowd.



--I'd be the last to deny it.



--If I didn't have a girl, I wouldn't mind so much.



--0h, I see your problem all right.



--Well, what are you going to do about it?



--You know the difficulties.



Gerry began to laugh.



--It's the kind of thing you kill yourself laughing about later. Some day I'll tell Daphne, though she'll never believe me.



--No. I've found that. There's no point in not believing it when you know it's true, but it's something that has to happen to you. I think if this thing really has happened before, the sketchy and generally discounted evidence that is left is about all one could seriously expect.



Gerry wasn't interested in the general problem, only in his particular one.



--I wouldn't mind walking along that skyscraper parapet.



--I don't think it would work again.



--I never really liked whisky. But if it would work . . .



--Gerry, I think I have to be surprised. I never picked the way. In your case it might be very difficult.



--I know what you're thinking. You think I'm not very bright. You don't believe I'll ever be able to think of a way.



It was true. Baudaker, too, lacked the imagination of Judy and Ross, both of whom, when they made up their minds to be rid of Fletcher, had gone all out for the consummation devoutly wished, and achieved it.



Possibly, Fletcher mused, the means was far less important than they all believed. Neither he nor his host, nor both in collaboration, could snap their fingers and achieve the miracle. Yet once the host had really made up his mind, the thing couldn't be as difficult as Gerry believed, or Fletcher would not have been ejected three times almost on cue.



On cue -- that might be deeply significant. Judy, in a very short time, got what she wanted from him and then sent him on. Ross, after a longer period, did the same. Baudaker, although he had done nothing to eject Fletcher, did not lose him until he had nothing more to gain from his presence. Gerry, if he had ever stood to gain, no longer did so.



--I'll never be able to think of a way, said Gerry rather desperately.



He needn't have worried. Nobody had to think of a way. That same night, while Gerry was sleeping peacefully, Fletcher for the first time made a transfer when there was no crisis, at any rate no crisis at his end.











CHAPTER 6: SEARLE



He was an old man and he was dying.



Fletcher, who had several times believed himself prepared to welcome death -- total, final death -- discovered that he had never yet experienced genuine resignation. This old man, who was of course Sir Charles Searle, was in his last hours. He knew it and was glad of it.



Although there could be nothing more pitiful than a crazy old man dying in a madhouse, Fletcher's hate for him, the only hate he had ever experienced for anybody, did not diminish. On the contrary, it was focused to a burning spot of pure hatred that temporarily warmed the old man and brought him, reluctantly, a little way back to life.



He was in a. hospital bed in an ancient ward, cheerless and solitary. Not quite solitary, for in another of the five iron beds was another dying creature who appeared to be a woman. Old, dying people did not rate the privacy of sex accorded in hospitals elsewhere, apparently.



No nurse was present. A dim light burned.



Fletcher could not heal Searle. He could do nothing for him, and would not have done anything if he could for the man who had tortured, perverted and ruined him.



Yet he could not help bringing him a last glimpse of sanity. The old man who had not been rational for more than thirty-five years suddenly said:



--Why, hullo, I've often wondered about you. Did you change the world?



--No, Fletcher replied grimly. --You left me so maimed and crippled that the world never had a place for me.



There was nothing of shame or regret in the old man's sadness.



--Then I failed? Ah, well, perhaps I was attempting the impossible.



Searle had done what he felt he had to do. A surgeon who operated in good faith could not allow himself to feel guilt when his patient died, even if it turned out that the patient, uncut, might have lived for forty years. There was no need for guilt as long as the surgeon's own work was flawless. Searle believed, still believed, after the long blank years when he was incapable of consecutive thought -- that what he had done to John Fletcher was right, even if the enterprise failed.



--Don't you see, you might have been justified in developing my talent, but you could never be justified in trying to make me fear and shun women, in trying to make me a religious bigot, in shaping me into a solitary, unhappy man?



--I did what I thought was right, Searle replied tranquilly.



Becoming curious about the old man's fanaticism, Fletcher found his bitterness easing a little. For the first time, Fletcher's contact with a diseased mind proved incapable of changing it. True, the dying old man was now for the first time in many years as sane as he had ever been, but no more sane than that. Perhaps a mind that old could not encompass new thoughts. Searle went on:



--Besides, you must remember you were torn from me. I was not allowed to complete your training. I'm no more responsible for what you became than an engineer taken off a job half completed. If you had been left to me . . . What a stupid mistake I made, the one that brought it all to light. Why did I ever take you to the Scott Monument?



--Yes, just how did that happen? Why, after hiding me from the world for four years were you so foolish as to get yourself arrested like the villain in a Victorian melodrama?



--It was becoming terribly difficult to make you exert yourself. You were too good for me. Everything was in my favor except your extraordinary abilities. In a way it was a struggle between us, a middle-aged man and a child, and you won almost every round.



Fletcher said drily:



--Then I used up all the capacity for success that was to last me the rest of my life. Since then, my record has been nothing but failure.



--Failure? Impossible. Not you. The child I knew was not born for failure. I may have failed. Not you. What you have achieved is what you wanted.



About to protest, Fletcher remembered something.



He had always achieved what he expected.



What happened, in the big things at least, was usually what he had resigned himself to. Failure in a job, with a girl, in Baudaker's tests, all came about much as he expected.



Suppose he were to start expecting success?



He had told Baudaker about "minor miracles, hardly worth mentioning." Even minor miracles weren't failures. When he wanted to talk to Anita privately, it was the simplest thing on earth to go to an empty locker room. Of course, that was a triviality, something that scarcely mattered, so it didn't count. Or did it?



His mind reeling at the possibilities, he remembered his reluctance, his fear, his dread of being proved a freak.



Perhaps what he really feared was the extent of the power he might turn out to possess?



Cringing away from his own thoughts, he directed the old, dying man back to the irrelevance which had led to them:



--But why the Scott Monument?



--I was never really practical, I suppose. I saw no particular snags. It seemed simple. You were supposed to force me to draw you back to safety. I wanted you to compel me to do your will, as you did when you were a starving infant. But three young men of whom I had heard and seen nothing, were running up the stairs. They heard you scream, burst out, pulled me back, and took you from me. Of course, I never thought of it until now -- you summoned them. To control me would not have changed your situation. You had done that often enough already. You wanted to change your situation, and you did.



Resolutely Fletcher stuck to minor issues.



--Did you' hypnotize me into fear of heights?



--No, why should I? I had to direct you away from evil, away from pride, power madness, lust. That was my clear duty. But I loved you. You were not only a living miracle, your incredible potential waiting to be developed, you were also the son I never had. I see reflections of different attitudes in your mind . . . times have changed. When I was eighteen months old, my father, a minister of the church, deliberately held my left hand against the bars of the kitchen grate. You can see the scars. Apparently I would not stay away from the fire when I was a baby, and this was done so that I would acquire a healthy fear of fire rather than be burned to death. Such Spartan thinking was common in those days in Scotland. I was not as harsh. What I did, I did to make you spread your wings.



--Thanks very much. You should have left me to die.



The old man remained serene:



--How can you say that? I see in your mind the good you have done, the souls you have saved. And you have scarcely begun.



--I hope, I most sincerely hope, that I am coming to the end.



--Nonsense.



--I want to die. I am ashamed of being a cuckoo in the minds of strangers.



--But you have found some happiness with them, more than you found as a living man.



The old man, who had temporarily gained some strength as well as near-sanity from the arrival of Fletcher, retained the sanity but was losing strength.



--I'm dying. For me it is right. My life has perhaps been wasted, since I failed with the one great chance I had . . . or at any rate, you say I failed. Your life, I feel, is just beginning.



He mused for a while, sinking, yet attaining a certain mental clarity at the last.



--In one way I was wrong, he admitted. --Women could and should have helped you. I was wrong to think you had to be a celibate. But perhaps, as I die, I can give you a push in the right direction . . .



Sir Charles Searle died.











CHAPTER 7: ANITA



He was a woman again and this time he didn't mind.



Once more he was conscious in a sleeping mind. The personality, the attitudes, the beliefs of Anita Somerset lay quiescent but available to him.



Acceptance of both the general and the particular situation came easier to him this time, and with acceptance the realization that identification with any woman was impossible anyway, however willing he might be. What little was left of John Fletcher was indelibly male; in a man's mind he could be a partner, but in a girl's mind never more than a stranger. In Judy's mind he had reached the right conclusion for the wrong reasons.



Baudaker would be interested, clinically, in the fact now apparent, that maleness and femaleness were something more than physical, that the disembodied personality was male or female and never the twain could meet.



Fletcher's second realization was that there was little or nothing he could do for Anita. Even as early as this, he was sure from the contact with her sleeping mind that there was nothing he could give her, and he found this disappointing.



True, she was not perfect -- who was?



Though she was content, though she was what she was and perfectly happy about it, she was not complete, and it became clearer to him than ever before what circumstances had to exist before he could enter a mind.



For his part, he had to be ejected from the mind he was in.



In addition to that, the mind he entered had to be in certain ways ready to receive him. Judy, Ross, Baudaker, Gerry, Searle, Anita, all had certain things common. Not one of them had both parents alive, nor had had for many years. Not one of them had a brother or sister (though Gerry for a long time believed he had). All had personality inadequacies. All in some way, consciously or unconsciously, welcomed him and sought his guidance. The blind leading the blind, he thought wryly. He was refusing to give any weight to the strange, grandiose ideas which had stirred in him during his brief contact with Sir Charles Searle. The old man was mad, and had made him mad too.



Anita's inadequacy was the simplest, most normal of all. Almost all of it could be expressed as female need for a strong male, plus maternal need for husband and children. The rest arose naturally from a background of divorced parents constantly fighting over her, and all that that entailed.



She had to trust someone, and she could not trust Ross, even now. She was dreaming mildly erotic dreams in which Ross figured, but his face kept changing.



Looking into Anita's dreams caught Fletcher up in sleep, and he awoke with her when the small alarm clock beside her bed shrilled. Since he made no attempt to conceal his presence, she was in full contact with him at once.



--Well, hello. I suppose this had to happen. I wonder how long it will take you to get around the entire population of the British Isles?



--There's nothing I want less.



--Oh, don't be silly. You get a great kick out of it. I know I would.



--You'd have to die first.



--Well, we all have to go sometime, they say, and I used to believe it before I met you.



--You don't seem to mind my being with you.



--Fat lot of good that would do. I see you've noticed that men and women are different. You ought to take out a patent on that idea. It must be worth millions.



This time, as Anita got up and washed and dressed, the contact was neither shameful nor awkward. Once more Fletcher experienced the sheer joy of physical health which, curiously, had been strongest and purest in Judy and Anita. Perhaps women, particularly young girls, were naturally more sensuous than men and more conscious of their own bodies. There was also the fact that both Ross and Gerry, the two young men of whom he had experience, abused themselves physically in ways which would have seemed quite crazy to Judy or Anita.



Breakfast for Anita was a glass of milk and a poached egg on toast. Again Fletcher noticed that in a curious way the two minds in one body interpreted the stimuli from the body differently. When Ross had drunk whisky, presumably enjoying it, Fletcher hated it as if he were consuming it in his own body. In Anita's body, he would have liked a big platte of ham and eggs for breakfast, washed down by many cups of coffee. But Anita drank her milk, ate her poached egg, and was satisfied. Although they shared the same body, Fletcher remained hungry and Anita was not.



He had not concealed his thoughts.



She retorted --I'm not going to get fat to please you.



--It wouldn't please me. Tell me, to avoid getting fat, do you always have to eat like a bird?



--That's a very stupid simile. Birds eat all the time. They consume their own weight in . . .



--You know what I mean.



--I don't want to stuff myself.



There was far more behind that than what she said. Yes, girls were sensuous. She enjoyed her lean, firm body, her lightness, her energy, her beauty. There were double, triple, quadruple standards which he could not fathom, even in her mind. She did not want to be a femme fatale, but she did. She did not want every man she met to desire her, but if they did not, she would be disappointed.



--Well, there's a way in which men are just as mixed up, she retorted. --They all have James Bond fantasies of beautiful girls in diaphanous nighties beckoning from their windows, yet if it really happened, ninety-five out of a hundred would run for their lives.



---Oh, that's ridiculous!



--You'd run for your life.



With restraint he said:



--Possibly, but I'm not typical.



Of course you're not typical. Nobody's typical. But don't fool yourself that you're different. Nobody's different either. Enough of this idle chatter. I have to get to classes.



He managed to talk her into a midmorning snack she didn't usually have, and naturally she pointed out that obsessive hunger was supposed to indicate lack of affection.



--So I've heard, he replied briefly.



She was not prepared to let it go at that.



--Now that you're a sort of ghost you can't expect anyone to love you, John. It may be hard, but that's the truth and you'll just have to face it.



Behind her, Ross said: "Hello, Maiden. Mind if I join you?"



"Yes," she said.



He sat down opposite her. At once she stood up. "So sorry I can't stay," she said politely, "but I hear my master's voice. And the prof. doesn't like to be kept waiting."



As she left the cafeteria, Fletcher said:



--Why did you do that? You're not in any hurry.



For the first time since he joined her, Anita was tense and irritable.



--You live your life and I'll live mine.



Fletcher's contact with Anita was less close than with any previous host. She talked to him easily and casually like a friend she could call on the phone at any time without even needing a phone. She concealed nothing from him; there was nothing in her life she had any particular reason to conceal.



The only area she would have screened off from him -- but she left it too late -- was her lack of sexual experience. Ian Ross was being literally accurate when he called her Maiden or Virgin, as he probably knew. Fletcher, no longer quite the repressed Puritan he had been, was amused to find that Anita was quite as ashamed as he had been of virginity, and put it down to personal inadequacy, as he had done.



Giving up the idea of concealing her virginal state from him, she explained:



--If it were a, moral matter, I'd be highly delighted that I'm still undefiowered, and I'd parade my purity and probably be an unsufferable prig about it. But morals don't come into it. I don't despise girls I knew who sleep with anybody they happen to be with when it gets dark. In fact, I envy them. Look what I'm missing.



--Are you sure you're missing anything?



--Well, I'm missing knowing if I'm missing anything, aren't I? I know what's the matter with me, and I don't need you or anybody else to tell me. I just won't commit myself. I look so long before I leap that I never leap at all. Take Ian . . . before your encounter with him, he was just bloody impossible, and I use the adjective because no other expresses it. He was bloody-minded, just generally bloody.



--I know.



--Now . . . Oh, I don't want to talk about it. Will you kindly shut up, roll yourself into a ball, or talk about baroque music?



Their only other bone of contention was Fletcher's appetite. In Anita's healthy body he was always ravenous, and she couldn't always withstand his demands. When she was about to ask for salad, he would step in and order roast beef with Yorkshire pudding, and when she was thinking of something else he induced her to put more potatoes on her plate.



One night about ten days after Fletcher joined her she deliberately took off every stitch of clothing and made him look at her in the long mirror set in the front of the wardrobe in her room.



--Look what you're doing to me, she accused.



He looked with a mixture of reluctance and pleasure. Although there was no awkwardness about being Anita, he always looked the other way, so to speak, when she dressed or took a bath, most conscious at such times that in one body two were a crowd, particularly a man and a girl in the girl's body.



--Charming, he said.



--Are you out of your infinitesimal mind? I used to have a genuine 23 inch waist and couldn't bulge if I tried. Now I've got a pot, after only ten days. Look at it!



She was exaggerating. Her waist was still tiny and there was only the, merest hint of convexity about her smooth abdomen. Still, Fletcher saw her point. He had done Baudaker a lot of good by making him stop smoking (Baudaker had managed to keep it up and probably would never smoke again), but if in a mere ten days he managed to put nine unwanted and unnecessary pounds on Anita, she certainly had a legitimate complaint. As Fletcher he had been able to eat all he wanted and never gain an ounce. This clearly didn't apply to Anita.



Suddenly he took full control of her for the very first time, apart from the momentary interferences which had led to this accusatory demonstration, and snatched up a wrap, threw it on and belted it. She protested:



--I made you look at what you're doing to me, but surely I'm not as hideous as all that yet?



--We're about to have a visitor.



--You have a private alarm system?



She turned to the door.



--Not that way.



When she realized he meant the window, and guessed that the visitor could only be Ross, she wanted to scream, set the window catch, or run from the room.



--It's not like last time, Fletcher told her. --He won't hit you.



Ross was outside, and he saw her looking at him. He saw, too, that she made no attempt to stop him opening the window and climbing in.



"How romantic!" said Anita drily.



"I have to talk to you," he said, "and if I called and rang the bell you wouldn't see me."



"So you came in by the window. I agree it's logical. Somewhat unnecessarily dramatic, but . . . "



"Anita," he said, leaning back against the window, "I love you and I always have."



She was silent, having no answer to this. Her heart started to hammer and she felt her color rising.



"Nothing quite like this ever happened before," he went on. "You know what happened to me, don't you? You know it, and believe it?"



She nodded.



"Men have told girls 'I've changed' before, but never with such cause. I don't blame you for not being impressed by the Ian Ross that was . . . "



"But you feel I should be greatly impressed by the Ian Ross that is?"



"Not that. But give me a chance, Anita."



"Sometimes," she said with a good pretense of coolness, "a traveling salesman must hate the customer who won't listen. Yet surely everybody has a right to opt out of being a customer? Suppose I just don't want to buy?"



"That's just it. You don't know whether you want to buy or not. And you're refusing to try and find out."



He was right, and she knew it.



Pressing his momentary advantage, he said. "I want you, Anita, and I'm not such a fool as to pretend I don't, just because you won't make up your mind. Think for a moment and then give me a straight answer. Am I really wasting my time?"



He was making it hard for her to temporize. He was doing all he could to force her to say yes or no.



"Yes," she said.



"You mean it?" he said steadily.



"Of course I mean it."



"I'm going to ask you again. Do you want me to go out through this window and never come near you again?"



"Yes."



"You're sure?"



"Yes, yes, yes!"



He hesitated, then nodded. "Goodbye, Anita," he said, and opened the window.



She didn't move. As Ross climbed out and closed the window, she sent out a frantic, wordless appeal to Fletcher.



Fletcher entirely ignored it. He had interfered in the lives of all his hosts, but at this moment he must not interfere, and he knew it.



--Please! she begged. --Help me!



Fletcher turned his back on her.



She knew Ross had meant what he said. He had pride. He had demanded a final answer, and predictably she had chosen the status quo. But now it was clear that her answer could not leave things as they were. Though she didn't want Ross, she even less wented to lose him.



And in her irrationality Fletcher suddenly saw his own.





Searle had said he couldn't fail. Well, Searle was crazy. What Searle had done to him could never be justified, even by Searle's conviction that it had to be done. Searle had meddled mistakenly and unforgivably in his early childhood.



Yet, in dying, Searle had given him valuable clues which he had resolutely refused to look at.



Failure was what he expected, so he failed.



Loneliness was what he expected, so he was lonely.



Although since John Fletcher died -- and perhaps it was significant and relevant, after all, that John Fletcher had had to die anyway -- he had achieved what gave some appearance of success with the lives of others, it was still very hard for him to face the idea that if he changed what he expected, he could change what he achieved.



He did not want vast power.



He did not want the responsibility of exerting it.



It was simpler to deny that he possessed it.



And Anita said, when the man she loved asked her if she wanted him never to come near her again: "Yes."





Anita ran to the window and threw it up.



"Ian!" she called. In the bright moonlight she saw him clearly in the yard below. He had not taken the chance of jumping from the coal cellar roof to the wall.



Without conscious thought she started to climb out of the window. The fact that Ross had twice reached and left her roof by that route made it an obviously practical one. Although she was not a militant feminist she was an active girl who believed that within reason she could do anything a man could. Suddenly reckless, she had every intention of climbing out on the roof and down to Ross.



Then, with one knee on the sill and the other stretching for the roof below, she remembered she was naked but for a thin robe. She made a violent gesture to draw her wrap about her, lost her balance, lost her grip, and found herself facing the dark sky, falling face upward.



Fletcher had heard that a dying man sometimes saw his whole life parade past him in a split second. In the fraction more than a second of the fall, he saw not only his own life, but what had happened since.



Falling or fear of falling had dominated his life and afterlife. There was no doubt some deep symbolism attached to it: falling equaled failing, perhaps?



The drop was not the terrifying one from the top of the Scott Monument or the Westfield skyscraper or the office building from which Sheila had fallen to her death. But it was twice the drop that had killed Fletcher. It was interminable. It lasted a million years.



Anita was going to die. She was screaming and Fletcher realized she knew that she was going to die. Curiously, Fletcher felt no fear, only surprise that he was still inside of Anita's body. Why had he not escaped as usual? But then, apart from the time when his own fear had made him leave Judy, he had often escaped only at the moment of death. Perhaps the same would happen again.



Another thing which possibly assuaged his terror was the fact that Anita was falling backward, facing the night sky. She could not see the ground rushing to meet her.



But she was terrified. She did not want to die. And she, independently, looked back on her own life and was horrified to see what a wasteland it was.



That was her own reaction to her life.



The fall at last ended.



Anita knew nothing about how it ended until she found herself on her feet, dazed, but otherwise unharmed. For long seconds she could not understand what had happened.



Then she saw Ross leaning against the wall of the house, barely able to stand. His face was an ashen blur of agony. His right arm hung in a way which showed it was broken, and even in the gloom there was something terribly wrong about his left shoulder. "You caught me," she breathed.



He managed to grin. "Maiden, before I carry you across the threshold you'll have to lose about two hundred pounds. You must weigh a ton at least."



"You saved my life."



"Think nothing of it. I'd have done the same for anybody. Now, before I actually expire, what about getting some help?"



Anita's landlady, many years before, had been a nurse. She coped competently, while Anita rang for an ambulance. Ross's arm was broken in two places at least, and his left shoulder, as well as being dislocated, was probably fractured.



Sensing the landlady's curiosity and disapproval, Anita said: "I've been a fool, but not in the way you think."



Mrs. Sandford said: "I always thought you were a quiet, sensible girl."



"Too quiet and too sensible. That's why this happened."



When the ambulance came it took them both away. Anita, after finding herself miraculously on her feet, had forgotten about herself altogether. But of course she had bruises, and the ambulance men insisted on taking her for X-rays.



She was allowed to see. Ross some hours later.



"Ian," she said. "That was a wonderful thing you did."



He frowned. "Look, Anita, don't let's get this all wrong. I was down there when you fell. Whoever it was, even a stranger, I'd have had to try to help."



She nodded. "All right, have it your way. But remember, even before that, I was coming after you."



She leaned over and kissed him.





After that Anita's views on the continued presence of Fletcher were very similar to those of Gerry.



--Why don't you find some lonely shepherd who's pining for company? Someone who likes voices in his head?



--I never do the finding. And if you want to be rid of me, it's up to you.



--Yes, I know about that. It's not a situation without precedent any more. Well, anything Judy and Ian can do, I can do.



--Do you have any ideas?



--I wouldn't have opened the subject if I hadn't.



--What are you going to do?



--You'll find out. You won't like it.



She told Mrs. Sandford that for the next week at least she would be having all her meals out.



Mrs. Sandford, friendly again, nodded. The hospital. I understand."



Although Ross would not have been detained on account of his broken arm, the fractured shoulder was more serious and he would have to be in the hospital for several weeks. Rules at the small convalescent home to which he had been sent were not strict. Anita could get in to see him at almost any time.



Anita did visit Ross very frequently. But she did not have her meals out. She didn't have them at all.



Fletcher expostulated:



--This is crazy. You'll kill yourself. And short of that you won't dislodge me.



--I think I will.



She drank at will; tea, coffee, milk or soft drinks. She sometimes ate biscuits or dry toast, but nothing more substantial.



--It's like trying to starve a tapeworm to deathl Fletcher exclaimed.



--Methinks he doth protest too much.



--What does that mean?



--If it's nothing to you that I've stopped eating, why get so concerned about it?



As the days passed, Fletcher had to admit to himself, though he did not admit to Anita, that her method was not wholly composed of madness. Even before she had lost the unwanted nine pounds, her primary objective, he was so ravenous he found himself incapable of thinking of anything but food, while she, never in the slightest concerned over eating for eating's sake, was almost indifferent to the missed meals.



--Business girls often lunch on a glass of milk and a sandwich, she told him airily.



--But you have the glass of milk and no sandwich.



--Well, it saves money.



Sometimes he tried to force her to take a solid meal, but with no success. She was determined, and he was prevented from exerting his full power by several considerations, including the fact that she was coming to no real harm.



It was demonstrated beyond all argument that two minds in the same body reacted differently to the same stimuli. Food was relatively unimportant to Anita. She had a cup of tea and a piece of dry toast and if she still felt hungry, it didn't really matter, not compared with more important things like seeing Ross in twenty minutes, or getting rid of the cuckoo in her mind. But Fletcher ached for food, tormenting himself with visions of huge steaks, great plates of spaghetti and cheese, or vast mounds of curry and rice.



His gluttony, cruelly exposed, disgusted him. Anita was certainly eating less than she should, and would harm herself if she went on as she was doing for long. Yet she was harming herself very little; she lost eleven pounds and then for a time seemed incapable of losing any more, partly because she never stinted her intake of fluids. Even after that, when she began to grow gaunt, her cheeks becoming hollow and her bones starting to protrude, she experienced few ill effects beyond lassitude.



Fletcher, on the other hand, was cut down to size. Searle's grandiose conception of him prompted only hollow laughter. Because he could not stuff himself (or rather, Anita) with vast volumes of animal and vegetable matter, he became nothing. Even thinking, save of food, became impossible.



He wanted to die, as Searle had wanted to die.



Intercepting the thought, Anita took him to his nameless grave in the town's biggest cemetery.



--There you are, under the soil. That's you, Fletcher. Have you finally made up your mind to go there, when I drive you out?



He could not understand her lack of sympathy, the cruelty that he knew was quite foreign to her. He knew and understood that she wanted to be herself, without his interference, but her cruelty shocked him. This was not Anita.



And then in one of the moments of clarity that were becoming less frequent, so tortured was his incorporate spirit by an entirely corporate weakness, he saw that the cruelty was part of her determination. She was locked in mortal combat with him, and she would never give in. Ross, who knew now what was going on, kept begging her to find another way. But she had made up her mind. If necessary, she would starve herself to death.



In an unguarded moment, she let him see another reason for her cruelty. If affection were food to him, he must have none. She would give him neither food nor affection.



The end was as unexpected to her as to him. She felt fine, except for the lassitude. She had just been to see Ross, and had to run to be in time for a class she could not afford to miss.



In the middle of the lecture she collapsed. The doctor who was called in had no difficulty in diagnosing malnutrition. She was taken to hospital, not the one where Ross was, and would have been fed intravenously if necessary.



But it wasn't necessary, for by this time Fletcher was gone.











CHAPTER 8: FLETCHER



In the first moment he knew he was himself again. He was with no other mind. He was at last alone: John Fletcher and no other.



Then fear gripped him at the thought that he was alive, imprisoned, conscious, in a dead, rotting body weeks in the grave.



He should be dead, and once again he was not.



With an effort he calmed himself. Physically he had no existence; he could feel, see, hear, smell, taste nothing. Yet his mind was clear and he was very comfortable. If death was like this, it should be possible to become used to it.



But he had scarcely sought physical sensations and failed to find them when they began to creep back.



He screamed silently.



It was not over. It would never be over. He could not die. Always he had to begin again.



Yet he was himself. This time no one challenged his dominion, whatever his dominion was.



Obviously he was not in the dead brain of John Fletcher. Equally obviously, as sensation returned, he was in a living body . . . that of a dog or cat, perhaps? He was the proof of the possibility of transmigration of souls. He faced the possibility that all that was unusual about him was that he was conscious of the changes as they came, as no one else was.



He still could not see or hear. As time passed he could feel, but could not move. He was totally paralyzed.



Since there was nothing else he could do, he slept.



He awoke and sat up. Looking around, he could scarcely have had less to see anywhere in the world. There were four gray walls, with a barred window in one and a door with another barred window in the opposite wall. There was the bed he lay on, and nothing else.



He was in a cell.



The curiosity which had killed the cat would never kill John Fletcher, the unkillable. At first he had been impatient to learn as soon as possible all about his new situation, but he was impatient no longer. In time he would know it, and apparently for him time had no stop.



He looked down at himself. He wore blue jeans and a blue check shirt. His body was lean, curiously lean . . . remembering Anita had been starving herself he wondered for a moment if he had projected himself into another starved body. But he was not hungry at all. The curious taste in his mouth might explain that: he had been drugged, he suspected, and that was why he had been paralyzed at first and had had to sleep it off. Closer examination of his new body showed that its leanness was that of extreme youth.



He was not more than twelve or thirteen.



Jumping up, he went to the door and tried it. It was locked. When he tapped on it, nothing happened. He banged loudly on it, and still nothing happened. So he stopped banging, looked out of the window and saw nothing but a blank wall only a few feet away. It was getting dark, and this reoriented his time sense. Anita had collapsed in midmorning. (He didn't worry about her -- free of him she would end her hunger strike and be as good as new in a couple of days.) Presumably the switch was instantaneous, though he had never made any attempt to check. If that was so he had been in the cell from midmorning, drugged, until late evening. This made him wonder what kind of institution he could be in. Not an ordinary jail, certainly: he was too young. For a moment he had the fantastic thought that he had shot back in time to his own adolescence. Cheerless as the various Homes had been, however, none had been as cheerless as this.



At last a blank-faced woman looked into the cell, and he caught her eye and smiled at her. She remained blank faced.



"Hello," he said.



If he had turned into a dragon before her eyes and spat flame at her she could not have been more startled. She ran for her life.



In saying two syllables, Fletcher discovered the difficulty of saying anything at all. His jaws and mouth seemed to be constructed of very hard rubber, not immovable but insufficiently flexible.



He said:



Earth hath not anything to show more fair Dull would he be . . .



It was a labor of Hercules. The words came out, but chopped, mangled and very slow.



He tried a bit of German.



Noch ist die blühende, goldene Zeit, O du schöne Welt, wie bist du so welt! Und so weit ist mein Herz . . .



Predictably this was far worse. He had found already that although he did not entirely lose his knowledge of languages in transfer, it was only when his host had similar knowledge, as in the case of Ian Ross, that it was fluent.



Yet already he had a little more control of his lips and tongue. His voice he found rather pleasant, deep and youthful. It would be a finer instrument than he had ever had at his command before to express himself, once he learned to control it.



He wished the cell contained a mirror so that he could see what he was like. He was obviously tall and strong and young; past puberty but only just, still growing,



Earth hath not anything . . .



He stopped.



He was in a borstal, approved school, young offenders' institution or asylum, so much was obvious. Perhaps, young as he was, he had committed some crime so terrible that he would never be allowed out. He found he feared this more than he had lately feared death. The thought was so dreadful to contemplate that he ceased thinking about it.



His choice of the gay German lyric, though unconscious, had been significant. That was how he felt: for the first time ready and eager to face the world. What, most of all, had brought this about was the glorious sense of release, of being alone in a mind which had room only for one personality.



All minds had room only for one personality.



He could do nothing about what the boy he now was had done. It was ironic that now that he at last was a whole human being, his future, or whether he had a future at all, depended on what the youth he now was had done.



It was puzzling . . . what had happened? Where was the mind which had once inhabited the brain that was now his? Had he unknowingly killed it? Could a brain die while the body it inhabited lived on?



Anyway, until he knew more of the situation he had to be cautious. If he were found declaiming Milton sonnets and German lyrics, there might be questions to answer which he could not answer.



The door opened. A young man in a white coat looked at him cautiously. Behind the young man, who was small, were two male nurses who were large.



"Rodney," said the man in the white coat tentatively.



So he was Rodney, "You're a doctor?" said Rodney.



The doctor, although as surprised as the nurse, let it show but did not let it deter him. "I'm Dr. Brooke. You didn't know, Rodney? You don't remember me?"



"I don't remember anything"



That was a lie, but surely a permissible lie. The shadow who had been Fletcher remembered a great deal; Rodney remembered nothing.



His slow careful, unpracticed speech was in one way an advantage. He had plenty of time to think.



Brooke came closer. "What happened, Rodney?"



"I woke up. That's all I know."



"You never saw me before?"



"I don't remember seeing you before."



It was apparent that Rodney had, unfortunately, been violent. The male nurses were watching him with suspicion and the young doctor, though trying to be soothing and friendly, remained watchful.



"Would you like to come to my office?"



Rodney glanced around. "I certainly wouldn't mind a change of scene."



That, he realized at once, was a mistake if he wanted to go on being careful until he knew more. It was by no means a brilliant remark, yet it was the kind of remark that might enable Brooke to guess something of the fantastic truth -- and Rodney had not yet made up his mind if he was prepared to give anyone a chance to guess the fantastic truth. To say: "I don't remember anything" was one thing; a moron could say that. A moron would not say: "I certainly wouldn't mind a change of scene."



They marched, all four of them, alongl bleak corridors. There was no doubt about it, this was an asylum. It probably had a more polite name. Nevertheless, it was an institution for creatures society did not want but did not have the moral courage to exterminate.



At the door of his room the little doctor did a brave thing. "It's all right, Stevenson, Clark," he said. "I don't need you."



And Rodney was left alone with him.





It was a long, slow business.



If Rodney had been able to ask the questions, twice the progress could have been made in half the time. But it was the doctor who asked the questions, and Rodney gleaned only glimmers of what he wanted to know.



He had been classed as a low grade mental defective, far lower than Judy had ever been. Of course the doctor did not tell him this; he had to guess it. Compared with him, Judy at her worst had been a bright child.



Occasionally he had been violent, lashing out like a frightened animal. It was a relief to learn that he had killed no one and injured only without malice. Rodney (he had no other name) would have been quietly put to death in any primitive community. Given a healthy body at birth, he had been given at the same time only enough mental ability to learn to feed himself at the age of ten.



Dr. Brooke could not understand what was happening at all. Rodney had never learned to speak. That he should do so now, even haltingly, was astonishing. Brooke, a doctor and psychiatrist, could do only what so many doctors in history had had to do: accept the incredible (like spontaneous untreated recovery in a week from advanced leukemia) and try to explain it later. Of course Brooke selected the incredibility he was prepared to believe. He created several theories for himself, and would go on creating more, rather than believe the fairly obvious fact that Rodney had become possessed.



Realizing that Brooke would never believe the truth, Rodney became bolder. His speech was improving, too, though it was no more fluent.



"I've been here since birth?" he asked.



"Not since birth, no. I wonder if I should tell you . . . "



"I'm sure you should. And you can relax, doctor. I won't go for you with a meat cleaver."



Brooke, sandy haired and fleckled, grinned. "Two things: if I hadn't decided that already I wouldn't be sitting here so comfortably. And the second thing -- you must realize that in a place like this meat cleavers aren't left lying around for anybody to pick up."



"Touché," said Rodney.



"Dr. Dorne says that. You must have picked it up from him."



"I suppose I must."



They didn't know who he was. He was a foundling and had grown up in other institutions. It was only when his brain failed to develop as it should, when he proved unteachable and occasionally violent, that he began to be shuffled from one institution to another until he reached what Dr. Brooke called, ironically, Paradise.



Realizing he was talking to an intelligent human being, the doctor became half apologetic, half defensive about Paradise.



"The place is a hundred and ten years old," he said. "Funds are low. Even in the Welfare State there's never enough money for places like this. The staff . . . " He shrugged. "Well, who would be here voluntarily? I had an application in for another post, but they bribed me to stay by making me director. At my age, theoretically, it's a good job."



His apologies were premature. Rodney had seen nothing of what went on in Paradise. He had no rancor over the way he had been treated, not knowing how he had been treated. However, he no longer had to wonder about what kind of institution shot inmates full of dope in the morning became they were obstreperous and then left them all day in a locked cell. Such things happened in Paradise.



Dr. Brooke sent for tea and a plate of sandwiches, which Rodney wolfed ravenously. As the nausea left by the drug wore off, the old familiar hunger returned, merely titillated by the sandwiches. Probably he had more excuse for it than he had had since Fletcher was Rodney's age. This Paradise was no land flowing with milk and honey.



The doctor could not understand what had happened, and was honest enough to admit it to himself and to Rodney. The human brain was still comparatively unmapped territory. Rodney had never been operated on and there had been no real psychiatric treatment. It had been thought that he could not possibly respond to it, being capable of only a few meaningful sounds that meant he was hungry or thirsty. or wanted to go to the bathroom.



A normal brain could suddenly go wrong. This seemed to be a case of a brain that was not normal suddenly going right.



One thing was obvious, even at this stage. Rodney would have to leave Paradise. Indeed, the doctor was clearly reluctant to let him sleep even that night in his old cell.



What was coming should have been obvious, but Rodney was not thinking about what might be coming, being too concerned over setting the past and the present to rights to have time to consider the future.



Anyway, it was no surprise at all when Dr. Brooke said: "There's a place in Cumberland . . . "



Rodney stepped off the train at the station. He was alone. Showing more confidence than he probably felt, Dr. Brooke had said he was quite capable of traveling by himself. It was one of the trusting gestures made by psychiatrists which didn't always come off.



In his small suitcase he had only a few clothes and a toothbrush.



It was hot, and as he emerged from the station a crowd of screaming children in swimsuits ran past him, the girls chasing the boys. He looked at them with pleasure.



It could be no coincidence that he was once again a foundling without a name. There was no coincidence in his life.



Somehow he suddenly knew who Rodney was. There was no means of proving it, but it didn't matter. He needed no proof.



Paula Baudaker had had one fling in her uneventful life, and it was all tragedy. Rebelling against her humdrum life with Baudaker, she had an affair with another man, a worthless man, a subnormal man. And she didn't know what to do when she found herself pregnant.



She couldn't face Baudaker became her transgression was so utterly senseless, motiveless, so shamefully wrong. Besides, the baby would not be normal. She knew that from the start.



So she went away for six months and had the baby somewhere, left it in public care and went home to see Baudaker once more. Perhaps if he had been cruel it would have been kind. Instead, he was overpoweringly glad to see her back.



And she couldn't take it. She put her head in the gas oven.



Whether this was true or not was unimportant. In any case, Rodney would never tell Baudaker about it. It would not add to his happiness. But it fitted into Fletcher's cycle so neatly it had to be true.



Rodney did not hurry along the dusty, sunkissed street. It was wide, with small shops on both sides, cars parked on cobbles off the main road, pretty young mothers pushing prams and leaving them outside shops, children everywhere, running, shouting. Several people smiled at him and he smiled back.



It was true that beauty was in the eye of the beholder. This small town could be considered dirty, untidy, unattractive and unwelcoming if people were predisposed to see it like that. Or it could be. as Rodney saw it, an ideal place to grow up and find oneself, if such a thing were necessary.



The institution on the outskirts looked rather like an institution, but not unfriendly. At least the iron gates were wide open.



He should have gone straight to the front door and announced himself, but he did not. He wandered round the old building and found that at the rear the gardens were lovely. Several children passed him, staring at him curiously. They were, sadly, quite unlike the shrieking brown children in the town. They were too clean, too solitary, too cautious. Several of them had calipers on their legs, and some had wasted limbs. But most of them smiled back at him.



Joyful shouts from a field behind the gardens, screened by a high hedge, indicated that the children who could take pleasure in gregarious play were doing so. For the most part, he saw those who could not.



He saw no teachers or doctors or nurses, and was glad of it. There had to be freedom in a place like this, or it was valueless. Life, too, offered freedom. You took it or you put yourself in chains.



Of course the place could not be perfect. There would be stupidity and cruelty and intolerance and boredom and frustration. But these were the obstacles in the obstacle-filled race of life. Anyone lucky enough to get a second chance in life ought to be able to make light of circumstances twenty times worse than he was likely to encounter here.



He would not be moving on. Whatever happened, he had found his final haven.



Final? Well, the wild possibilities suggested by Sir Charles Searle almost at the moment of death and, possibly, revelation would have to be considered sometime. But they were not the sort of things a thirteen-year-old boy had to bother his head about for a long time. His very age, independent of anything else, gave him at least half a dozen years' grace before he could take any positive place in the world..



There was no hurry.



On the lawn in the middle of the rose garden, reading a book, lay a girl. She wore the navy pants of a child and the casually tied suntop of a pretty and well-shaped woman. She was brown and was the loveliest thing he could recall seeing in his life.



"Hello, Judy," he said.



Lying on her stomach, she looked up from her book. "Hello," she said. "You know me?"



He dropped on the grass beside her. "I'm not sure. I used to think so."



She rolled over and sat on her heels. "You're Mr. Fletcher!"



"No," he said. "Rodney."



"Rodney what?"



"Well, I was asked if I had any preference, since most people have second names, and just for convenience I said Fletcher,"



"That is what I said. I knew you were Mr. Fletcher."



"No, Judy. Please, not Mr. Fletcher."



"Fancy meeting you, Mr. Fletcher," she said, and laughed. "It's a small world, isn't it?"



Rodney. I'm still older than you, but only a week older. You can't possibly call me Mr. Fletcher."



"Tell me all about it, Mr. Fletcher." She was teasing him. She was the most beautiful girl in the world. He was in no doubt about that, though he remembered Gerry had thought much the same about Daphne and Ross about Anita. He had nothing against Anita or Daphne, but anyone who preferred them to Judy needed his head examined.



"Take your shirt off," she said. "You're as pale as a ghost, Mr. Fletcher."



He took his shirt off. "I don't think, after all, I'll tell you anything," he said.



"Be like that. See if I care." She laughed and pushed him so that he lost his balance and clutched her. Her warm brown flesh felt even more wonderful than it looked. Thirteen he thought with momentary gloom. Why couldn't he and Judy have been five years older?



A bell in the home rang. It was so loud and shrill it made him release Judy. "What on earth's that?" he said.



"Tea bell. We can have tea and buns if we like."



"Are you hungry?"



"Not particularly."



"Neither am I. Let's stay here."



















FLETCHER HAD TO DIE

And so he did; and found himself in a
place -- in a state of mind -- that he
could not tolerate. And so he had to
die again. And then again. Until, soon
enough, it became clear that death did
not want him.

It became his challenge to
die into life.