Mindswap (14 page)

Lord Blackamoor was first to break tableau. With skilled fingers he swept off his cap and wig. Loosening his collar, he probed along his neck, unfastening several invisible holders. Then, with a single movement, he peeled the tight-fitting skin-mask from his face.

'Detective Urdorf!' Marvin cried.

'Yes, it is I,' the Martian detective said. 'I am sorry we had to put you through this, Marvin; but it was our best opportunity of bringing your case to a quick and successful conclusion. My colleagues and I decided-'

'Colleagues?' Marvin asked.

'I forgot to make the introductions,' Detective Urdorf said, grinning wryly. 'Marvin, I would like you to meet Lieutenant Ourie and Sergeant Fraff.'

The two who had masqueraded as Lord Inglenook and Sir Gules now swept off their skin-masks and revealed themselves in the uniforms of the North-west Galactic Interstellar Constabulary. They grinned good-naturedly as they shook Marvin's hand.

'And these gentlemen,' Urdorf said, gesturing at the Thuringian guards, 'have also aided us considerably.'

The guards removed their deal-coloured half-jackets of buff, and stood revealed in the orange uniforms of Cassem City Traffic Patrolmen.

Marvin turned to Cathy. She had already pinned to her bodice the red and blue badge of a special agent in the Interplanetary Vigilance Association.

'I – I think I understand,' Marvin said.

'It's really simple enough,' Detective Urdorf said. 'In working on your case, I had, as is usual, the aid and cooperation of various other law enforcement agencies. Upon three separate occasions we came close to capturing our man; but always he evaded us. This might have gone on indefinitely had we not tried this scheme of entrapment. The theory was sound; for if Kraggash could succeed in destroying you, he could claim your body as his own without fear of a counter-claimant. Whereas, as long as you were alive, you would continue to search for him.

'Thus, we enticed you into our scheme, hoping that Kraggash would take notice, and would enter the plan himself so as to be sure of destroying you. The rest is history.'

Turning to the unfrocked executioner, Detective Urdorf said, 'Kraggash, have you anything to add?'

The thief with Marvin's face lounged gracefully against the wall, his arms folded and his body replete with composure.

'I might hazard a comment or two,' Kraggash said. 'First, let me point out that your scheme was clumsy and transparent. I believed it to be a hoax from the start, and entered it only on the distant possibility of its being true. Therefore, I am not surprised at this outcome.'

'An amusing rationalization,' Urdorf said.

Kraggash shrugged. 'Secondly, I want to tell you that I feel no moral compunction in the slightest at my so-called crime. If a man cannot retain control of his own body, then he deserves to lose it. I have observed, during a long and varied lifetime, that men will give their bodies to any rogue who asks, and will enslave their minds to the first voice that commands them to obey. This is why the vast majority of men cannot keep even their natural birthright of a mind and body, but choose instead to rid themselves of those embarrassing emblems of freedom.'

'That,' Detective Urdorf said, 'is the classic
apologia
of the criminal.'

'That which you call a crime when one man does it,' Kraggash said, 'you call government when many men do it. Personally, I fail to see the distinction; and failing to see it, I refuse to live by it.'

'We could stand here all year splitting words,' Detective Urdorf said. 'But I do not have time for such recreation. Try your arguments on the prison chaplain, Kraggash. I hereby arrest you for illegal Mindswapping, attempted murder, and grand larceny. Thus I solve my 159th case and break my chain of bad luck.'

'Indeed?' Kraggash said coolly. 'Did you really think it would be so simple? Or did you consider the possibility that the fox might have another lair?'

'Take him!' Urdorf shouted. The four policemen moved swiftly towards Kraggash. But even as they moved, the criminal raised his hand and drew a swift circle in the air.

The circle glowed with fire!

Kraggash put one leg over the circle. His leg disappeared. 'If you want me,' he said mockingly, 'you'll know where to find me.'

As the policemen rushed him, he stepped into the circle, and all of him vanished except his head. He winked at Marvin. Then his head was gone, and nothing was left except the circle of fire.

'Come on!' Marvin shouted. 'Let's get him!'

He turned to Urdorf, and was amazed to see that the detective's shoulders had slumped, and that his face was grey with defeat.

'Hurry!' Marvin cried.

'It is useless,' Urdorf said. 'I thought I was prepared for any ruse … but not for this. The man is obviously insane.'

'What can we do?' Marvin shouted.

'We can do nothing,' Urdorf said. 'He has gone into the Twisted World, and I have failed in my 159th case.'

'But we can still follow him!' Marvin declared, moving up to the fiery circle.

'No! You must not!' Urdorf declared. 'You do not understand – the Twisted World means death, or madness … or both! Your chances of coming through it are so small-'

'I have just as good a chance as Kraggash!' Marvin shouted, and stepped into the circle.

'Wait, you still do not understand!' Urdorf shouted. 'Kraggash
has no chance
!'

But Marvin did not hear those final words, for he had already vanished through the flaming circle, moving inexorably into the strange and unexplored reaches of the Twisted World.

The transition was abrupt, and not at all what Marvin thought it would be. He had heard stories about the Twisted World, and had hazily expected to find a place of melting shapes and shifting colours, of grotesques and marvels. But he saw at once that his viewpoint had been romantic and limited.

He was in a small waiting-room. The air was stuffy with sweat and steam heat, and he sat on a long wooden bench with several dozen other people. Bored-looking clerks strolled up and down, consulting papers, and occasionally calling for one of the waiting people. Then there would be a whispered conference. Sometimes a man would lose patience and leave. Sometimes a new applicant would arrive.

Marvin waited, watched, daydreamed. Time passed slowly, the room grew shadowy, someone switched on overhead lights. Still no one called his name. Marvin glanced at the men on either side of him, bored rather than curious.

The man on his left was very tall and cadaverous, with an inflamed boil on his neck where the collar rubbed. The man on his right was short and fat and red-faced, and he wheezed with every breath.

'How much longer do you think it should take?' Marvin asked the fat man, more to pass the time than in a serious attempt to gain knowledge.

'Long? How long?' the fat man said. '
Damned
long, that's how long it'll take. You can't hurry their goddamned majesties here in the Automobile Bureau, not even when all you want is to have a perfectly ordinary driver's licence renewed, which is what I'm here for.'

The cadaverous man laughed: a sound like a stick of wood rapping against an empty gasoline can.

'You'll wait a goddamned long time, baby,' he said, 'since you happen to be sitting in the Department of Welfare, Small Accounts Division.'

Marvin spat thoughtfully on the dusty floor and said, 'It happens that both of you gentlemen are wrong. We are seated in the Department, in the
anteroom
of the Department, to be precise, of the Department of Fisheries, I was trying to say. And in my opinion it is a pretty state of affairs when a citizen and taxpayer cannot even go fishing in a tax-supported body of water without wasting half a day or more applying for a licence.'

The three glared at each other. (There are no heroes in the Twisted World, damned few promises, a mere scattering of viewpoints, and not a conclusion in a carload.)

They stared at each other with not particularly wild surmise. The cadaverous man began to bleed slightly from the fingertips. Marvin and the fat man frowned with embarrassment and affected not to notice, The cadaverous man jauntily thrust his offending hand into a waterproof pocket. A clerk came over to them.

'Which of you is James Grinnell Starmacher?' the clerk asked.

'That's me,' Marvin replied. 'And I want to say that I've been waiting here for some little time, and I think this department is run in quite an inefficient fashion.'

'Yeah, well,' the clerk said, 'it's because we haven't got in the machines yet.' He glanced at his papers. 'You have made application for a corpse?'

'That is correct,' Marvin said.

'And you affirm that said corpse will not be used for immoral purposes?'

'I so affirm.'

'Kindly state your reasons for acquiring this corpse.'

'I wish to use it in a purely decorative capacity.'

'Your qualifications?'

'I have studied interior decorating.'

'State the name and/or identification code number of the most recent corpse obtained by you.'

'Cockroach.' Marvin replied. 'Brood number 3/32/A45345.'

'Killed by?'

'Myself. I am licensed to kill all creatures not of my subspecies, with certain exceptions, such as the golden eagle and the manatee.'

'The purpose of your last killing?'

'Ritual purification.'

'Request granted,' the clerk said. 'Choose your corpse.'

The fat man and the cadaverous man looked at him with wet, hopeful eyes. Marvin was tempted, but managed to resist. He turned and said to the clerk, 'I choose you.'

'It shall be so noted,' the clerk said, scribbling on his papers. His face changed to the face of the pseudo-Flynn. Marvin borrowed a crosscut saw from the cadaverous man, and, with some difficulty, cut the clerk's right arm from his body. The clerk expired unctuously, his face changing once again to his clerk's face.

The fat man laughed at Marvin's discomfiture. 'A little transubstantiality goes a long way,' he sneered. 'But not far enough, eh? Desire shapes flesh, but death is the final sculptor.'

Marvin was crying. The cadaverous man touched his arm in a kindly manner. 'Don't take it so hard, kid. Symbolic revenge is better than no revenge at all. Your plan was good; its flaw was external to yourself. I am James Grinnell Starmacher.'

'I am a corpse,' said the corpse of the clerk 'Transposed revenge is better than no revenge at all.'

'I came here to renew my driving licence,' the fat man said. 'To hell with all you deep thinkers, how about a little service?'

'Certainly sir,' said the corpse of the clerk. 'But in my present condition, I can license you only to fish for dead fish.'

'Dead, alive, what difference does it make?' the fat man said. 'Fishing is the thing; it doesn't matter so much what you catch.'

He turned to Marvin, perhaps to amplify that statement. But Marvin had left

and, after an unpersuasive transition, found himself in a large, square, empty room. The walls were made of steel plates, and the ceiling was a hundred feet above his head. There were floodlights up there, and a glassed-in control booth. Peering at him through the glass was Kraggash.

'Experiment 342,' Kraggash intoned crisply. 'Subject: Death. Proposition: Can a human being be killed? Remarks: This question concerning the possible mortality of human beings has long perplexed our finest thinkers. A considerable folklore has sprung up around the subject of death, and unverified reports of
killings
have been made throughout the ages. Furthermore, corpses have been brought forth from time to time, indubitably dead, and represented as the remains of human beings. Despite the ubiquity of these corpses, no causal link has ever been proven to show that they ever lived, much less that they were once human beings. Therefore, in an attempt to settle the question once and for all, we have set up the following experiment. Step one …'

A steel plate in the wall flow back on its hinge. Marvin whirled in time to see a spear thrust forth at him. He sidestepped, made clumsy by his lame foot, and evaded the thrust.

More plates popped open. Knives, arrows, clubs, all were flung at him from various angles.

A poison-gas generator was pushed through an opening.

A tangle of cobras was dropped into the room. A lion and a tank bounded forward. A blowgun hissed. Energy weapons crackled. Flamethrowers coughed. A mortar cleared its throat.

Water flooded the room, rising quickly. Naphtha fire poured down from the ceiling.

But the fire burned the lions, which ate the snake, which clogged the howitzers, which crushed the spears, which jammed the gas generator, which dissolved the water, which quenched the fire.

Marvin stood forth miraculously unscathed. He shook his fist at Kraggash, slipped on the steel plating, fell and broke his neck.

He was afforded a military funeral with full honours. His widow died with him on the flaming pyre. Kraggash tried to follow, but was refused the solace of suttee.

Marvin lay in the tomb for three days and three nights, during which time his nose dripped continuously. His entire life passed before his eyes in slow motion. At the end of that time he arose and moved onward.

There were five objects of limited but undeniable sentience in a place with no qualities worth mentioning. One of these objects was, presumably, Marvin. The other four were lay figures, hastily sketched stereotypes designed for the sole purpose of adorning the primary situation. The problem confronting the five was, which of them was Marvin, and which were the unimportant background figures?

First came a question of nomenclature. Three of the five wished to be called Marvin immediately, one wanted to be called Edgar Floyd Morrison, and one wished to be referred to as 'unimportant background figure'.

This was quite obviously tendentious, and so they numbered themselves from one to four, the fifth stubbornly insisting upon being called Kelly.

'All right, already,' said Number One, who had already taken an officious air. 'Gentlemen, could we maybe stop beating our gums and bring this meeting to order?'

'A Jewish accent won't help you here,' Number Three said darkly.

'Look,' said Number One, 'what would a Polack know about Jewish accents? As it happens, I am Jewish only on my father's side, and although I esteem-'

'Where am I?' said Number Two. 'My God, what happened to me? Ever since I left Stanhope …'

'Shut up, Wop,' Number Four said.

'My name-a not Wop, my name-a she'sa Luigi,' Number Two responded swarthily. 'I bin two year in your greata country ever since I leetle boy in village San Minestrone della Zuppa, nicht wahr?'

'Sheet, man,' Number Three said darkly. 'You ain't no dagowop atall nohow, you ain't nuttin' but jes' a plain ornary privisional background figure of limited flexibility; so suppose you jes shut you mouf afore I do dat little ting for you, nicht wahr?'

'Listen,' said Number One, 'I'm a simple man of simple tastes and if it'll help any I'll give up my rights to Marvinhood.'

'Memory, memory,' muttered Number Two. 'What has happened to me? Who are these apparitions, these talkative shades?'

'Oh, I say!' Kelly said. 'That's really bad form, old man!'

'It'sa pretty goddamn disingenuous,' muttered Luigi.

'Invocation is
not
convocation,' said Number Three.

'But I really don't remember,' said Number Two.

'So I don't remember so good neither,' said Number One. 'But do you hear me making a big thing out of it? I'm not even claiming to be human. The mere fact that I can recite Leviticus by heart don't prove nothing.'

'Too right it doesn't!' shouted Luigi. 'And disproof don't prove any flaming thing neither.'

'I thought you were supposed to be Italian.' Kelly said to him.

'I am, but I was raised in Australia. It's rather a strange story-'

'No stranger than mine,' Kelly said. 'Black Irishman do you call me? But few know that I passed my formative years in a Hangchow whorehouse, and that I enlisted in the Canadian army to escape French persecution for my part in aiding the Gaullists in Mauretania; and that is why-'

'Zut, alors!' cried Number Four. 'One can keep silence no longer! To question my credentials is one thing; to asperse my country is another!'

'Yer indignation don't prove a thing!' Number Three cried. 'Not that I really care, since I choose no longer to be Marvin.'

'Passive resistance is a form of aggression,' Number Four responded.

'Inadmissable evidence is still a form of evidence,' Three retorted.

'I don't know what any of you are talking about,' Number Two declared.

'Ignorance will get you nowhere,' Number Four snarled. 'I refuse categorically to be Marvin.'

'You can't give up what you haven't got,' Kelly said archly.

'I can give up anything I damned well want to!' Number Four cried passionately. 'I not only give up my Marvinity; I also step down from the throne of Spain, yield up to the dictatorship of the Inner Galaxy, and renounce my salvation in Bahai.'

'Feel better now, kid?' Luigi asked sardonically.

'Yes … It was insupportable. Simplification suits my intricate nature,' Number Four said. 'Which of you is Kelly?'

'I am,' Kelly said.

'Do you realize,' Luigi asked him, 'that only you and I have names?'

'That's true,' Kelly said. 'You and I are different!'

'Here now, just a moment!' Number One said.

'Time, gentlemen, time, please!'

'Hold the fort!'

'Hold your water!'

'Hold the phone!'

'As I was saying,' Luigi said. 'We! Us! The Named Ones of the Proof Presumptive! Kelly – you can be Marvin if I can be Kraggash!'

'Done!' roared Kelly, over the protests of the lay figures.

Marvin and Kraggash grinned at each other in the momentary euphoria of identity-intoxication. Then they flung themselves at each other's throats. Manual strangulation followed apace. The three numbered ones, robbed of a birthright they had never possessed, took up conventional poses of stylized ambiguity. The two lettered ones, granted an identity they had seized anyhow, tore and bit at each other, flung forth defiant arias and cringed before devastating recitatives. Number One watched until he grew bored, then began playing with a lap dissolve.

That
did it. The whole shooting works slid away like a greased pig on roller skates coming down a solid glass mountain, only slightly faster.

Day succeeded night, which succeeded in making a perfect fool of itself.

Plato wrote: 'It ain't whatcha do, it's the way thatcha do it.' Then, deciding that the world was not yet ready for this, he scrubbed it out.

Hammurabi wrote: 'The unexamined life is not worth living.' But he wasn't sure it was true, so he scratched it out.

Gautama Buddha wrote: 'Brahmins stink.' But later he revised it.

Nature abhors a vacuum, and I don't like it much either. Marvinissimo! Here he comes catfooting along, flaunting his swollen identity. All men are mortal, he tells us, but some are more mortal than others. There he is, playing in the backyard, making value judgements out of mud. Having no respect, he becomes his father. Last week we revoked his Godhead; we caught him operating a life without a licence.

(But, I have warned you often, my friends, of the Protoplasmic Peril. It creeps across the heavens, extinguishing stars. Shamelessly it survives and flows, uprooting planets and smothering the stars. With damnable insistence it deposits its abominations.)

He comes again, that seedy juggler in an off-beige skin, that monstrous optimist with the stitched smile! Killer, kill thyself! Burglar, steal thyself! Fisher, catch thyself! Famer, harvest thyself!