The Second Trip Read online

  “But I spoke to him only ten days ago, Miss Loftus!”

  She halted. Momentary blaze of the eyes. “Loftus is quite sufficient,” she said. Then the expression softened. Perhaps remembering she was dealing with a convalescent. “Sometimes transfers happen rapidly here. But Mr. Fredericks has your full dossier. He’s aware of the problems.”

  Mr. Fredericks had a long cavernous office, rounded and womby, from the sloping ceiling of which dangled hundreds of soft pink globes, breast-shaped; a tiny light was mounted in each nipple. He was a small dapper man with a moist handshake. Macy received from him a sweet sad embarrassed smile, the kind one gives a man who has had a couple of limbs or perhaps his genitals amputated to check the metastasis of some new lightning cancer. “So glad you’ve come, Mr. Macy. Paul, may I make it? And call me Stilton. We’re all informal here. A wonderful opportunity for you in this organization.” Eyes going to Macy’s Rehab badge, then away, then back, as though he couldn’t refrain from staring at it. The stigmata of healing.

  “Show you around,” Fredericks was saying. “Get to know everybody. The options here are tremendous: the whole world of modern data-intake at your service. We’ll start you slowly, feed you into the news in ninety-second slices, first, then, as you pick up real ease at it, we’ll nudge you into the front line.”

  Good evening, ladies and chentlemen, this is Pavel Nathanielovitch Macy coming to you from the Kremlin on the eve of the long-awaited summit.

  The rear wall of Frederick’s office vanished as though it had been annihilated by some wandering mass of antimatter, and Macy found himself staring into an immense stupefying abyss, a dark well hundreds of feet across and perhaps infinitely deep. A great many golden specks floated freely in that bowl of nothingness. He was so awestruck by the unexpected sight that he lost a chunk of Fredericks’ commentary, but picked up on it in time to hear, “You see, we have thousands, literally thousands of free-ranging hovereye cameras posted in every spot throughout the world where news is likely to break. Their normal altitude is eighty to a hundred feet, but of course we can raise or lower them on command. You can think of them simply as passive observers hanging everywhere overhead, little self-contained self-propelled passive observers, sitting up there soaking in a full range of audio and visual information and holding it all on twenty-four-hour tape-scanning drums. Those of us here at Manhattan North Headquarters can tap in on any of these inputs as needed. For instance, if I want to get some idea of what’s doing at the Sterility Day parade in Trafalgar Square—” he touched a small blue button in a broad console on his desk, and up out of the darkness one of the golden specks came zooming, halting in midair just beyond the place where the wall of Fredericks’ office had been. “What we have here,” Fredericks explained, “is the slave-servo counterpart of the hovereye camera that’s hanging above that parade right now. I simply induce an output—here, we get a visual”—Macy saw gesticulating women waving banners and setting off flares—“and here we get the audio.” Raucous screams, the chanting of slogans.

  Macy hadn’t heard of Sterility Day before. The world becomes terribly strange when you spend four years out of circulation.

  “If we want any of this for the next newscast, you see, we just pump the signal into a recorder and set it up for editing—and meanwhile the hovereye is still up there, soaking it all in, relaying on demand. Gathering the news is no frigging chore at all when you have ten thousand of these lovely little motherfuckers working for you all over the place.” A nervous giggle. “Sometimes our language gets a little rough around here. You stop noticing it after a while.” One doesn’t speak crude Anglo-Saxon to a man who wears the badge of his trauma on his lapel, is that it?

  Fredericks had him by the arm. “Time to meet your new colleagues,” he was saying. “I want to fill you in completely. You’re going to love it working here.”

  Out of the office. The rear wall mysteriously restoring itself as they leave, the dark well of the hovereyes vanishing once more. Down the humid fallopian passageways. Doors opening. Neat, well-groomed executives everywhere, all of them getting up to greet him. Some of them speaking exceptionally loudly and clearly, as if they thought a man who had had his troubles might find it difficult to understand what they said. Long-legged girls flashing the promise of ecstasy. Some of them looking a trifle scared; maybe they were hip to the evil deeds of his former self. Macy was aware of what crimes the previous user of his body had committed, and sometimes they scared him a little, too.

  “In here,” Fredericks said. Into a bright, gaudy room, twice the size of Fredericks’ office. “I’d like you to meet the chief of daytime news, Paul. One hell of a guy. Harold Griswold, and he’s some beautiful son of a bitch. Harold, here’s our new man, Paul Macy. Number six on the late news. Bercovici told you the story, right? Right He’s going to fit in here perfectly.”

  Griswold stood up, a slow and complex process, and smiled. Macy smiled. His facial muscles were beginning to ache from all the smiling he had done in the last hour and a half. One doesn’t smile much at a Rehab Center. He shook the hand of the chief of daytime news. Griswold was implausibly tall, slabjawed, perhaps fifty years old, obviously a man of great prestige; he reminded Macy somehow of George Washington. He wore a bright-blue tank suit, an earwatch, and an elaborate breastplate of several kinds of exotic polished Woods. His office was like a museum annex, with works of art everywhere: shaped paintings, crystallines, talk-spikes, programmed resonances. A million-dollar collection. In the corner, to the right of Griswold’s kidney-shaped desk, stood a striking psychosculpture, a figure of an old woman. Macy, who had been glancing from piece to piece by way of an implied compliment to Griswold, lurched forward at the sight of the last work, coughed, grabbed the edge of the desk to steady himself. He felt as though he had been clubbed at the back of the neck. Instantly friendly hands clutched at him. “Are you all right? What’s the trouble, fella?” Macy fought off dizziness. He straightened and shook himself free of the propping hands.

  “I don’t know what hit me,” he muttered. “Just as I looked at that sculpture in the corner—”

  “The Hamlin over there?” Griswold asked. “One of my favorites. A gift from my first wife, ten years back, when Hamlin was still an unknown—”

  “If you don’t mind—some cold water—”

  Two gulps. Another cup. Three gulps. Carefully averting his eyes from the figure of the old woman. The Hamlin over there. The sleek smooth network men frowning at him, then erasing the frowns the instant he noticed. Everyone so solicitous. “Forgive me,” he said. “You know, it’s only my first day on the outside. The strain, the tension.”

  “Of course. The tension.” Griswold.

  “The strain. We understand.” Fredericks.

  He forced himself to look at the psychosculpture. The Hamlin over there. An excellent piece of work. Poignance; pathos; a sense of the tragedy of aging, a sense of the heroism of defying time. A soft hum coming from its resonators, subtly coloring the mood it was designed to stimulate. The Hamlin over there. Macy said, “That’s Nathaniel Hamlin who did it?”

  “Right,” Griswold said. “God only knows what it’s worth now. On account of Hamlin’s tragic fate. Not that I have the slightest interest in selling, but of course when an artist dies young his work skyrockets amazingly in value.”

  He didn’t know, then. He couldn’t just be pretending. And he couldn’t be that dumb. Either Bercovici hadn’t told him, or he’d been told and hadn’t cared enough to remember. That was interesting. Macy was shaken, though, by the intensity of his reaction to the unexpected sight of the sculpture. They hadn’t warned him at the Rehab Center that such things might happen. He made a mental note to ask about it when he went back next week for his first session of outpatient post-therapy therapy. And a mental note, also, to stay out of Griswold’s office as much as possible.

  The sculpture was still exerting an effect on him. He felt an undertow, the sucking of a subcerebral ocean in his mind. Hollow
echoing sounds of surf from far below. A hammering against the threshold of consciousness. The Hamlin over there. That’s Nathaniel Hamlin who did it? On account of his tragic fate. Jesus. Jesus. A bad attack of wobbly knees. Sweaty forehead. Paroxysms of confusion. Going to collapse, going to fall down in a screaming fit, going to vomit all over Harold Griswold’s nappy green electronic carpet. Unless you regain control fast. He turned apologetically to Stilton Fredericks and said in a thick furry voice, “It’s more upsetting than I thought. You’d better get me out of here fast.”

  Fredericks took his arm. A firm grasp. To Griswold: “I’ll explain afterward.” Propelling Macy urgently toward the door. Stumbling feet. Head swaying on neck. Jesus. Outside the office, finally.

  The moment of intolerable angst ebbing.

  “I feel much better now,” Macy murmured.

  “Can I get you a pill?”

  “No. No. Nothing.”

  “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “Sure.”

  “You don’t look all right.”

  “It’ll pass. It shook me up more than I expected. Listen, Fredericks—Stilton—I don’t want you to think that I’m fragile, or anything, but you know I’ve just been released from the Rehab Center, and for the first few days—”

  “It’s perfectly natural,” said Fredericks. A comradely pat on the shoulder. “We understand the problem. We can make allowances. This was my fault, anyway. I should have checked things out before I brought you in there. He’s got so many works of art in his office, though—”

  “Sure. How could you have known?”

  “I should have checked anyway. Now that I see the difficulty, I’ll check the whole building. I simply didn’t realize that it would upset you so much to come face to face with one of your own sculptures.”

  “Not mine,” Macy said, shaking his head emphatically. “Not mine.”

  TWO

  DAYTIME it wasn’t so bad. He built a cozy routine for himself and lived within it, just as they had advised him at the Center to do. The Rehab people had found him a little apartment near the upper tip of Old Manhattan, five minutes from the network office by short-hop tube, forty minutes if he walked; he hadn’t wanted to risk exposing himself to the chaotic rush-hour environment of the tubes too soon, and so at first he went to work on foot. The exercise was good for him, and he had nothing better to do with his time anyway. But from the fourth day on he took the tube. The jostling and the screeching of wheels turned out not to bother him as much as he feared it might, and packed belly to rump in the cars, he didn’t have to worry about people staring at him or his Rehab badge.

  At work he slipped easily and comfortably into the network’s news-broadcast operation. He had had six months of vocational training at the Center, and so he came to his new career already skilled in voice projection, sincerity dynamics, makeup technique, and other such things; he needed only to learn the details of the network’s daily practice, the authority levels and flow patterns and such. Everybody was kind to him, although after the first few days most of them dropped the maddening exaggerated courtesy that made him feel like such a cripple. They showed him what to do, they covered his blunders, they responded patiently and good-humoredly to his questions.

  In the beginning Fredericks didn’t let him do any actual broadcasting, just dummy off-the-air runs under simulated studio circumstances. Instead he was put to work reading scripts aloud for the timing, and monitoring air checks of the other broadcasters. But he did so well at the dummy runs that by the fifth day they were putting him on the late news to do ninety-second capsule reports in what they called the mosaic-texture section, in which a bunch of broadcasters offered quick bouncy segments of the news in swift succession. Fredericks told him that in another few weeks he’d be allowed to handle full-scale stories, even to select his own accompanying hovereye coverage. So all went well professionally.

  The nights were something else.

  Lonely, for one thing. You’d be wisest to avoid sexual liaisons, at least at the outset, the Center therapists had suggested. They could be disturbing during the initial two or three weeks of adjustment. He paid heed. He refrained from bringing any of the network girls home with him, though plenty of them made it clear that they were available. Just ask, honey. At night he sat alone in the modest apartment. Watching a lot of holovision. Pretending that it was important to his career to study how the various networks handled the news. In truth he simply wanted the companionship of the bright screen and the loud audio; he left it on even when he wasn’t watching anything.

  He didn’t go out in the evenings. A matter of economy, he told himself. Supposedly he had been a wealthy man in his former life, or at least pretty damned prosperous. A successful artist, work in constant demand, prices going up at the gallery every year, that kind of thing. But his assets had been forfeit to the state. Most of his money had been used up by the costs of his therapy and the termination settlement awarded his wife. What little was left had gone into renting and furnishing his apartment. He was essentially a pauper until the network salary checks began coming in. But he knew that the real reason for staying home was fear. He wasn’t ready yet to explore the night world of this formidable city. He couldn’t go out there while his new self was still moist and malleable around the edges.

  Then there were the dreams.

  He hadn’t had nightmares at the Rehab Center. He had them now. Traumatic identity crises punctuated his sleep. He ran breathlessly down long gleaming ropy corridors, pursued by a man who wore his face. He stood by the shore of a viscous gray-green pool that bubbled and steamed and heaved, and a gnarled hairy claw reached up from its depths and groped for him. He tiptoed across a sea of quicksand, sinking deeper and deeper, and something underneath plucked at his toes. Pulling him under with a loud plop. A coven of monsters waiting down below. Teeth and green horns and yellow eyes. Often he woke up shrieking. And then lay awake, listening to something knocking on the inside of his skull. Let me out, let me out, let me out, let me out! Great gusts of wind blew through his brain. Vast snorting snores setting the medulla atremble. A slumbering giant, restless, cranky, trapped behind his forehead. Belching and farting within his head. Knock. Knock. Knock.

  Also the peculiar doubleness of self assailed him, the sensation of being enshrouded and entangled in the scraps and threads of his old identity, so that he momentarily was sucked back into it. I am Nat Hamlin. Married, successful. Psychosculptor. This is my face. These are my hands. Why am I in this unfamiliar little apartment? No. No. I am Paul Macy. I used to be. Formerly was. In another country, so to speak. And besides the stench is dead. Why does he haunt me? I am not Nat Hamlin.

  Sometimes at night it was hard to be sure of that, though. By the third night Macy dreaded going to bed. There was that man with his face, always haunting him when he crossed into dreamland. Waking in distress, he wanted to call a friend and ask for reassurance. But he had no friends. The old ones had been washed away by the therapy, and he hadn’t made any new ones yet, except a few people he had come to know at the Rehab Center, fellow reconstructs, and he didn’t want to bother them in the middle of the night. Maybe they had demons of their own to wrestle with. And the people from the network. Mustn’t call them. You’d blow the whole pretense of your stability in one gush of panicky talk. Nor could he call any of his therapists. Dr. Brewster, Dr. Ianuzzi, Dr. Gomez. You’re on your own, they said. We’re cutting the umbilicus. So. So. All alone. Sweat it out. Eventually, no matter how bad a night it was, he would sleep. Eventually.

  “Is there any chance,” Macy asked, “that the Rehab job didn’t completely take? I mean, sometimes I think I can feel Hamlin trying to break through.”

  A Tuesday late in May, 2011. One week after his discharge from the Rehab Center. His first session of post-therapy therapy. Dr. Gomez, round-faced, swarthy, drooping black mustache, not much chin, scowling and chewing on a computer stylus. Soft buzzing voice. “No chance of that at all, Macy.”

 
“But these dreams—”

  “A little psychic static, is all. What gives you the idea Hamlin still exists?”

  “During these nightmares I feel him pushing inside my head. Like somebody trying to get out.”

  “Don’t mess things up with your pretty imagery, Macy. You’ve been having some bad dreams. Everybody has bad dreams. You think I’m immune? I’ve got my share of lousy karma. Without any fancy hypotheses, tell me why you think it’s Hamlin.”

  “The man with my face chasing me.”

  “A metaphor for our own unfocused past, maybe.”

  “A sense of confusion. Not knowing who I really am.”

  “Who are you, really?”

  “Paul Macy. But—”

  “That’s who you really are. Nat Hamlin doesn’t exist any more. He’s been stripped out of your body, cell by cell, and extinguished. You really surprise me, Macy. I thought you were going to make one of the best adjustments I ever saw.”

  “I felt that way too,” Macy said. “But since I’ve been outside there have been these—these bursts of psychic static. I’m scared. What if Hamlin’s still there?”

  “Hamlin exists only as an abstract concept. He’s a famous psychosculptor who ran into trouble with the law and was eradicated. Now he exists only through his works. Like Mozart. Like Michelangelo. He isn’t in your head.”

  Macy said, “My first day at the network, I walked into the office of one of the high executives and there was a big Hamlin sculpture in the corner. I looked at it and I recognized it for what it was and I just took it in, you know, the way I’d take in a Michelangelo, and after a fraction of a second I had this sensation like somebody had banged me on the head with a mallet. I almost fell over. The impact was tremendous. How do you account for that, Dr. Gomez?”