Mindswap

Another silence seemed about to begin, so Marvin asked, 'What sort of chance do you think I have – we have – for recovering my body?'

'A most excellent chance,' Detective Urdorf replied. 'It is my firm belief that we will find your body soon. In fact, I think I could go so far as to say that I am certain of success. I base this not on a study of your particular case, about which I know very little at present, but on a simple examination of the statistics involved.'

'Do the statistics favour us?' Marvin asked.

'They most assuredly do. Consider: I am a trained detective, conversant with all the new methods and possessing a top efficiency rating of AA-A. Yet in spite of this, during my five years with the force, I have never solved a case.'

'Not a single one?'

'Not a single one,' Urdorf said firmly. 'Interesting, isn't it?'

'Yes, I suppose it is,' Marvin said. 'But doesn't that mean-'

'It means,' the detective said, 'that one of the strangest runs of bad luck that I have ever heard of is statistically due to break.'

Marvin was nonplussed, which is an unusual sensation in a Martian body. He said, 'But suppose your luck doesn't break?'

'You must not be superstitious,' the detective replied. 'The probabilities are there; even the most casual examination of the situation should convince you of that. I have been unable to solve 158 cases in a row. You are my 159th. How would you bet if you were a betting man?'

'I'd stay with the run,' Marvin said.

'So would I,' the detective admitted, with a self-deprecating smile. 'But we would both be wrong, and would be betting on the basis of our emotions rather than on the calculations of our intellect.' Urdorf looked at the ceiling dreamily. 'One hundred and fifty-eight failures! It's a fantastic record, an unbelievable record, especially if you grant my incorruptability, good faith, and skill. One hundred fifty-eight! A run like that simply has to break! I could probably sit here in my office and do nothing, and the criminal would find his way to me. That's how strong the probabilities are in my favour.'

'Yes, sir,' Marvin said politely. 'But I hope you won't test that particular approach.'

'No, no, of course not,' Urdorf said. 'It would be interesting, but some people might not understand. No, I shall pursue your case actively, especially since it is a sex crime, which is the sort of thing I am interested in.'

'I beg yotir pardon?' Marvin said.

'There is really no need to apologize,' the detective assured him. 'One should not be embarrassed or guilty by reason of being the victim of a sex crime, even though the deepest folk wisdom of many cultures attaches a stigma to being such a victim, on the presumption of conscious or unconscious complicity.'

'No, no, I wasn't apologizing,' Marvin said. 'I was merely-'

'I quite understand,' the detective said. 'But you mustn't be ashamed to tell me all the bizarre and loathsome details. You must think of me as an impersonal official function instead of as an intelligent being with sexual feeling and fears and urges and quirks and desires of his own.'

'What I was trying to tell you,' Marvin said, 'is that there is no sex crime involved here.'

'They all say that,' the detective mused. 'It is strange how the human mind is forever unwilling to accept the unacceptable.'

'Look,' Marvin said, if you would take the time to read over the facts of the case, you would see that it was a case of an outright swindle. Money and self-perpetuation were the motives.'

'I am aware of that,' the detective said. 'And, were I unaware of the processes of sublimation, we could leave it at that.'

'What possible motive could the criminal have had?' Marvin asked.

'His motive is obvious,' Urdorf said. 'It is a classic syndrome. You see, this fellow was acting under a specific compulsion, for which we have a specific technical term. He was driven to his deed in an advanced state of obsessive projective narcissism.'

'I don't understand,' Marvin said.

'It is not the sort of thing which the layman is apt to encounter,' the detective told him.

'What does it mean?'

'Well, I can't go into the entire etiology, but essentially, the dynamics of the syndrome involve a displaced self-love. That is to say, the sufferer falls in love with another, but not as other. Rather, he falls in love with the Other as Himself. He projects himself into the persona of the Other, identifying himself with that Other in all ways, and repudiating his actual self. And, should he be able to possess that Other, through Mindswap or allied means, then that Other becomes himself, for whom he then feels a perfectly normal self-love.'

'Do you mean,' Marvin asked, 'that this thief loved me?'

'Not at all! Or rather, he didn't love you as you – as a separate person. He loved himself as you, and thus his neurosis forced him to become you in order that he could love himself.'

'And once he was me,' Marvin asked, 'he was then able to love himself?'

'Precisely! That particular phenomenon is known as the incrementation of the ego. Possession of the Other equals possession of the primordial Self; possession becomes self-possession, obsessive projection is transformed into normative introjection. Upon achievement of the neurotic goal there is an apparent remission of symptoms, and the sufferer achieves a state of pseudonormalcy in which his problem can be detected only inferentially. It is a very great tragedy, of course.'

'For the victim?'

'Well, yes, that certainly,' Urdorf said. 'But I was thinking of the patient. You see, in his case two perfectly normal drives have been combined, or crossed, and thus perverted. Self-love is normal and necessary, and so is the desire for possession and transformation. But taken together, they are destructive of the true self, which is supplanted by what we term the "mirror-ego". The neurotic conquest, you see, shuts the door to objective reality. Ironically enough, the apparent integration of the self precludes any hope of real mental health.'

'All right,' Marvin said, with resignation. 'Will this help us find the man who stole my body?'

'It will enable us to understand him,' the detective said. 'Knowledge is power; we know at the very start that the man we seek is apt to act normal. This extends our field of action and enables us to act as if he were normal, and thus to see the full complement of modern investigative techniques. Being able to start from a premise like that, or indeed from any premise, is a very real advantage, I can assure you.'

'How soon can you begin?' Marvin asked.

'I have already begun,' the detective replied. 'I shall send for the court records, of course, and all other documents pertaining to this matter, and I shall contact all relevant planetary authorities for additional information. I will spare no effort, and I will travel to the ends of the universe if necessary or desirable. I shall solve this case!'

'I'm very glad you feel that way,' Marvin said.

'One hundred and fifty-eight cases without a break,' Urdorf mused. 'Have you ever heard of such a run of bad luck? But it will end here. I mean to say, it can't go on indefinitely, can it?'

'I don't suppose so.'

'I wish my superiors would take that view,' the detective said gloomily. 'I wish they'd stop calling me "stumblebum". Words like that and sneers and lifted eyebrows all tend to shake one's confidence. Luckily for me, I have an implacable will and utter self-confidence. Or at least I did have through my first ninety or so failures.'

The detective brooded darkly for several moments, then said to Marvin: 'I will expect your complete and utter cooperation.'