—pick up twenty-two percent of the voting shares through street names before we announce the tender offer, that’s the right way to do it, then hit them hard from a position of strength and watch the board of directors fold up in two days—
—I think we can work it with the participating preference stock, if we give them just a little hint that the dividend might go up in January, and of course they don’t have to know that after the merger we’re going to throw them all out anyway, so—
—why am I in it? Why, for the fun of it!—
Yes. The sheer joy of wielding power. The changer lingers here, sadly wondering why it is that this man, who after all functions in the same environment as the changer himself, shows such fierce gusto, such delight in finance for the sake of finance, while the changer derives only sour tastes and dull aches from all his getting. It’s because he’s so young, the changer decides. The thrill hasn’t yet worn off for him. The changer surveys the body in which he is temporarily a resident. He makes himself aware of the flat belly’s firm musculature, of the even rhythms of the heart, of the lean flanks. This man is at most forty years old, the changer concludes. Give him thirty more years and ten million more dollars and he’ll know how hollow it all is. The futility of existence, the changer thinks. You feel it at seventeen, you feel it at seventy, but often you fail to feel it in between. I feel it. I feel it. And so this body can’t be mine. Lift the left hand. Out.
“We are having some difficulties,” Dr. Vardaman confesses, “in achieving accurate pairings of bodies and minds.” He tells this to the insurance men, for there is every reason to be frank with them. “At the time of the transmission error we were left with—ah—twenty-nine minds in the stasis net. So far we’ve returned eleven of them to their proper bodies. The others—”
“Where are the eleven?” asks an adjuster.
“They’re recuperating in the isolation ward,” Dr. Vardaman replies. “You understand, they’ve been through three or four shunts apiece today, and that’s pretty strenuous. After they’ve rested, we’ll offer them the option to undergo the contracted-for change as scheduled, or to take a full refund.”
“Meanwhile we got eighteen possible identity-insurance claims,” says another of the insurance men. “That’s something like fifteen million bucks. We got to know what you’re doing to get the others back in the right bodies.”
“Our efforts are continuing. It’s merely a matter of time until everyone is properly matched.”
“And if some of them die while you’re shunting them?”
“What can I say?” Dr. Vardaman says. “We’re making every attempt.”
To the relatives he says, “There’s absolutely no cause for alarm. Another two hours and we’ll have it all straightened out. Please be assured that none of the clients involved are suffering any hardship or inconvenience, and in fact this may be a highly interesting and entertaining experience for them.”
“My husband,” the plump woman says. “Where’s my husband?”
—shunt
The changer is growing weary of this. They have had him in five bodies, now. How many more times will they shove him about? Ten? Twenty? Sixteen thousand? He knows that he can free himself from this wheel of transformations at any time. Merely raise the right hand, claim a body as one’s own. They’d never know. Walk right out of the hospital, threatening to sue everybody in sight; they scare easily and won’t interfere. Pick your body. Be anyone who appeals to you. Pick fast, though, because if you wait too long they’ll hit the right combination and twitch you back into the body you started from. Tired, defeated, old, do you want that?
Here’s your chance, changer. Steal another man’s body. Another woman’s if that’s your kick. You could have walked out of here as that dyke from Texas. Or that diver. That ballplayer. That hard young market sharpie. Or the President. Or this new one, now—take your pick, changer.
What do you want to be? Essence precedes existence. They offer you your choice of bodies. Why go back to your own? Why pick up a stale identity, full of old griefs?
The changer considers the morality of such a deed.
The chances are good of getting away with it. Others in this mess are probably doing the same thing; it’s musical chairs with souls, and if eight or nine take the wrong bodies, they’ll never get it untangled. Of course, if I switch, someone else switches and gets stuck with my body. Aging. Decrepit. Who wants to be a used-up stockbroker? On the other hand, the changer realizes, there are consolations. The body he wishes to abandon is wealthy, and that wealth would go to the body’s claimant. Maybe someone thought of that already, and grabbed my identity. Maybe that’s why I’m being shunted so often into these others. The shunt-room people can’t find the right one.
The changer asks himself what his desires are.
To be young again? To play Faust? No. Not really. He wants to rest. He wants peace. There is no peace for him in returning to his proper self. Too many ghosts await him there. The changer’s needs are special.
The changer examines this latest body into which he has been shunted.
Quite young. Male. Undergraduate, mind stuffed full of Kant, Hegel, Fichte, Kierkegaard. Wealthy family. Curling red hair; sleek limbs; thoughts of willing girls, holidays in Hawaii, final exams, next fall’s clothing styles. Adonis on a lark, getting himself changed as a respite from the academic pace? But no: the changer probes more deeply and finds a flaw, a fatal one. There is anguish beneath the young man’s self-satisfaction, and rightly so, for this body is defective, it is gravely marred. The changer is surprised and saddened, and then feels joy and relief, for this body fills his very need and more. He sees for himself the hope of peace with honor, a speedier exit, a good deed. It is a far, far better thing. He will volunteer.
His right hand rises. His eyes open.
“This is the one,” he announces. “I’m home again!” His conscience is clear.
Once the young man was restored to his body, the doctors asked him if he still wished to undergo the change he had contracted for. He was entitled to this one final adventure, which they all knew would have to be his last changing, since the destruction of the young man’s white corpuscles was nearly complete. No, he said, he had had enough excitement during the mixup in the shunt room, and craved no further changes. His doctors agreed he was wise, for his body might not be able to stand the strain of another shunt; and they took him back to the terminal ward. Death came two weeks later, peacefully, very peacefully.