Doc sat down in front of her and looked over the chart. Finally, she asked, “How do you feel?”
“All right, I guess,” the patient responded. “A little tired.”
“That’s mostly from relief of tension, I wouldn’t worry about it. I’m going to run you through a decontamination chamber to kill off some of the bugs, but it’s no big thing. Actually, I was asking how you feel inside, in your mind.”
The young woman thought about it. “I—I don’t know. So much has gone on in there, but I guess I never really thought much about it. Never tried to.”
Doc nodded to herself. “I’d like to run a psych stat on you.”
“Huh? What’s that?”
“It’s a medical device, like decontamination and diagnostics. It was developed for this operation, for njghtsiders like us. It’ll help us to know what your problems are, and it might help you as well. It doesn’t hurt— it’s more like getting a good night’s sleep, in fact. Would it bother you?”
“Should it?”
“Good point. No, it shouldn’t, but some people don’t like anybody else to know them really closely. Herb, for example, won’t take one.”
“Doesn’t bother me, if it’ll help you out. I spent all my time and effort just getting here. Now that I’m here, I don’t know what I’m going to do anymore.”
“Well, that’s pretty well assured. O.K., just stretch out here on the examining table.” Doc reached up, pressed a button overhead, and a small device that looked something like a giant neon office lamp dropped down. She took it, adjusted it to within a few inches of the patient’s form, then sat back down again. “Any questions before we begin?”
“No, I guess not for now. Well, maybe one thing. How come I tripped so much and still could go forward in time? I mean, I thought if you were assimilated that couldn’t happen. I never thought about it much at the time, but it just came to me.”
“Fair question. It’s because you weren’t assimilated. The trip point is the halfway marker in assimilation, remember. After that time you become slightly more the new person than the old one. But you’re still connected, still a time traveler, a voyeur, so to speak, until full assimilation takes place. Basically, if you can remember enough to ask a question like that one, you’re still you as far as the devices and time are concerned, no matter what’s going on in your head.”
The woman nodded. “O.K.”
“Any more?”
“Lots, but I guess they can wait. What’s this thing gonna do?”
“Analyze all the people who make you up. Tell us, maybe, who you are in the here and now.”
“Sounds fair. Will I remember it?”
“Not consciously, but if you like, you can monitor the recorded results later. Ready?”
“I guess so. You’re the doctor.”
Kahwalini flicked some switches on a small control panel, and the little machine glowed a dull purple and began to move, tracing the contours of the patient’s body.
“Feels good. Like a massage,” the woman commented.
Its back-and-forth scan seemed to penetrate into every bit of her body, and she found herself becoming relaxed and drifting off.
The doctor became busy now, attaching a spider’s nest of probes not only to the head of the sleeper but to various parts of the body as well. Satisfied, she stepped back and triggered the process.
“Who are you?”
The question confused her for a few moments, and memory channels opened to pinpoint references. At that point, each of the elements from the various human lives and personalities that made up the sum of her mind were distinct, although interactive, and revealed to the computer analyzer.
The human mind, in fact, remained the most complex and amazing organic mechanism known. The human race had existed, and survived, not so much by physical as by mental adaptability: the ability to filter out or suppress; to add, file, and retrieve what was needed; to learn to cope with radical changes. Still, there were individual physiological limits on a specific brain, and the brain of the subject was not the brain of the others.
The information from all of those people she had been was there, but each trip point had caused the information to be reconfigured and refiled. All relevant data was integrated; all irrelevant data was relegated to those dark and seldom-used areas. Intelligence really was the ability to access those areas; the speed of access and the amount of data that could be combined and retrieved and assembled by that intelligence was the measure of how high it was.
The dominant, or shell, personality, which the body matched, was that of Megan Clark, b. San Francisco, 1885, but since it was the dominant shell and not an assimilated, or totally integrated, personality it was only partly Megan’s. Alfie, Neumann, and Sister Nobody were there, although only as data, not even anymore as memories. The original personality and life, that of Ron Moosic, was also there, as data of course—but, strangely, as an abstract as well. Intellectually, she understood her origins; as a practical matter, Megan could not actually remember being Moosic, or any man. He had the quality of a fantasy personality, someone she might occasionally imagine herself being, but the imagining was entirely from that perspective and rather unrealistic. In effect, he had become detached from her, an imaginary or ideal lover rather than as the person she once had been.
This process had allowed the later personalities to alter her psyche as his strong will would not have done. The three people she had become were from three different times and cultures, but they were all very traditional ones, and the attitudes instilled had been traditional as well. Add to this the fact that all had been prostitutes from poor backgrounds dominated by powerful males, and the new personality was easier to understand.
In all cases she had been treated like an object in societies that at least winked at prostitution and generally condoned it, thereby leaving no real outlet, no hope of varying the life. To adjust, to survive, all three had ultimately accepted it after fighting the idea for a little while.
Both Moosic’s and Neumann’s IQs had been exceptional. Megan’s, however, was perhaps average if used to the full. She had, generally, a low sense of self-worth. She needed someone to be over her, to make most of her decisions, to constantly reinforce her weak ego and tell her she was worthwhile. The fact that men would pay money for what pleasures she could give gave her a concrete sense of security, the only security she had. The fact that someone else got the money was actually better for her; she only felt secure when someone else was providing things.
The key to it was Moosic’s surrender, his depression when faced with Eric once more. He had lost hope and, therefore, the will to live. In the absence of any replacement values from Sister Nobody, the Ismet personality had dominated, and time had complied by providing similar situations. Time had finally killed Ron Moosic.
But, still, there was a spark there. This woman would cope with whatever was thrown at her, with no reservations as to how or why. She was insecure and submissive, but she was a survivor, and her dream was to be swept off her feet by a strong, dominant man.
Doc Kahwalini frowned. The subject, she reflected, had come out exactly as planned.
The next few days were used to get her settled in and to answer some of her questions. She also spent a little time with some learning machines they had, trying to improve her vocabulary and pronunciation. She knew and understood the word “assimilation,” for example, but it never seemed to come forward when she needed it, and when it was forced, she constantly mispronounced it. It irritated her, particularly because the word was there.
More unsettling was her almost incidental discovery that she couldn’t read or write. Doc was sympathetic. “It happens. It’s a skill, and skills are sometimes lost in this process. You can re-learn it—it’s back in there, someplace in your mind—but it’ll take time. I wouldn’t worry about it now, though. Come on with me now. You’ve forgotten a lot, and might forget more. It depends on what happens from here on out. The longer you are the way you are, the more of the past you’ll lose and the more of the new ‘you’ will dominate.”