Her face had resumed its normal appearance. Her eyes were open. No glow in them. A sullen, absent expression.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
No response. Off in another galaxy somewhere.
“Lissa? Are you okay?”
Staring blankly at him, she said, “Do you give a shit if I am?” Her voice was as hoarse as his.
“What kind of question is that?”
“You were really letting me have it before all the fireworks started,” she said. “Telling me you suspected I was on his side, and a lot of other crap. If I had any sense I’d get the hell away from you, fast. I don’t need to be pushed around like that.” She stood up, huddling her arms against her sides, looking more vulnerable than ever. The blue streaks of veins visible in her breasts. Stretch marks in the skin of her hips, showing where she had lost weight lately. Quick angry motions. Snatching at her clothes, throwing things on. A blouse, a tunic. She said, “That was him, wasn’t it? Hamlin? Trying to talk through my voice?”
“And then through mine, yes.”
“Where did he go?”
“I beat him down. I made him let go.”
“Hurray for you.” Tonelessly. “My hero. You see my sandals anywhere?”
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“This is a crazyhouse. I’m worse off here than I was alone. I’m going home.”
“No,” he said. He remembered that he had decided, only this dawn, to sever her from his life once the Rehab Center had plucked the resurgent Nat Hamlin from his brain. Telling himself then that it was too dangerous to have her around him, because of her gift, her curse, whatever it was that had awakened Hamlin. Out she goes, he had decided. Self-preservation first and always. Out she goes. How hollow that sounded to him now. He still had Hamlin inside him, and he was frightened by the thought of having to grapple with him in solitude. Lissa wasn’t as dispensable now as she had seemed earlier. “Don’t go,” he said. “Please.”
“I’ll get nothing but trouble here.”
“I didn’t mean to yell at you. My nerves were raw, is all. You can understand that. I didn’t intend to accuse you of anything, Lissa.”
“Even so. You got me all stirred up. And then him, jumping into my head. The sounds I was making. I never did that before. Like I was some kind of ventriloquist’s dummy, and I could feel Nat trying to move my lips, trying to push my vocal cords, trying to get his words out through me—” She seemed to gag on something. “It was coming out of you, Paul. I thought my head would blow. I don’t want to go through that again.”
“I beat him back,” Macy said. “I shut him off.”
“And if he gets out again? Or if you start suspecting me again? Asking me if I’m really on his side? Maybe next time you’ll bang me around some. You could break my arms. You could knock all my teeth out. And then you’d apologize later.”
“There’s no possibility of that.”
“But you’ve got reason to be hostile. I’m responsible for waking him up inside you, right? Even if I wanted to stay here, you know, it wouldn’t be smart for you if I did. Maybe he’ll use me now to finish the takeover of your body. Play his mental energy through my ESP output, or something. He almost did that just now, didn’t he? Do you want to chance it?”
“Who knows?” Macy said. He caught her by the arm as she moved slowly toward the door. “Do I have to beg you, Lissa? Don’t leave me now.”
“First you didn’t want anything to do with me. Then you screamed at me that you didn’t trust me. Now you don’t want me to go. I can’t figure you, Paul. When somebody comes out of a Rehab Center, he’s supposed to be sane, isn’t he? You scare me too much. I want to get out of here.”
“Please. Stay.”
“What for?”
“To help me fight against him. I need you. And you need me. We can support each other. Separately we’re both going to go under. Together—”
“Together we’ll both go under too,” she said. Moving no closer to the door, though. “Look, I thought you could help me, Paul. That’s why I wrote you at the network, that’s why I begged you to see me. But now I realize that your troubles are as bad as mine. Worse, maybe. I just hear voices from outside. You’ve got somebody else in your head. On account of me. We can only harm each other.”
“No.”
“You ought to believe it. Look what I’ve already done to you, bringing him back. And then you, bouncing him into my head for a couple of minutes. And on and on and on like that, things getting worse and worse and worse for both of us.”
He shook his head. “I’m going to fight. I’ve beaten him twice in two days. Next time I’ll finish him altogether. But I don’t want to be alone while I’m doing it.”
Shrugging, she said, “Don’t blame me if—”
“I won’t.” He looked at the time. A sudden bold idea hooking him. By their works ye shall know them. Yes. Go to the museum, see his version of Lissa. Look at her through his eyes.
An unexpectedly powerful hunger rose in him to know the real past, to find out what manner of man he had been, what he had been capable of creating. In a sense what I was capable of, in my other self. And the sculpture of Lissa a bridge to that hidden past. Leading him out of this shadowy unlife into the realm of authentic experience. He did this, he made it, his unique and irreplaceable vision was at work. And I must understand him in order to defeat him.
Macy said, “Listen, there’s no sense in my going to the office this late in the day. But we’ve still got the whole afternoon. You know where I want to go? The Metropolitan Museum. To see the sculpture he did of you, the Antigone 21.”
“Why?”
“Old maxim: Know your enemy. I want to see his interpretation of you. Find out what his mind is like. Size him up, look for the places where I can attack.”
“I don’t think we should go. It could trigger anything, Paul. You said yourself, how at your office you saw one of his pieces and it almost knocked you but. Suppose at the museum—”
“I was caught by surprise that first time. This is different I’ve got to take the offensive, Lissa. Carry the battle to him, do you see? And the museum’s as good a place to start as any. Showing him that I can hold my own under any conditions. All right? Let’s go, shall we? The museum.”
“All right,” she said distantly. “The museum.”
7
Entering the huge building, he felt apprehensive and ill at ease. An overwhelming sense of not belonging in this vast and labyrinthine palace of culture oppressed him.
Searching his stock of synthetic memories, he couldn’t find any recollection of having been here before. Or any other art museum. The Rehab people hadn’t built a strong interest in the visual arts into him, it seemed. Music, yes. The theater. Even ballet. But not sculpture, not painting, not anything that was likely to impinge on the world Nat Hamlin had inhabited. A deliberate divergence from the abolished past.
Still, why was he so edgy about going in? Afraid of being recognized, maybe? People turning, whispering, pointing? Look, that’s Nathaniel Hamlin, the famous psychosculptor. He did that naked woman we saw before. Hamlin. Hamlin. That man looks just like Hamlin. Requiring you to say something by way of correction. Pardon me, ma’am, you are in error. My name is Paul Macy. Never done a sculpture in my life. Ostentatiously rubbing your Rehab badge. Thrusting it in her eyes. I must tell you, ma’am, that Nathaniel Hamlin has become an unperson. And the woman fading, away in embarrassment, heels clicking on the stone floor, looking back at him over her shoulder, sniffing a little in disdain. Maybe even reporting him to a guard for molesting her.