Macy, slumbering, maybe even snoring, makes desperate mental notes. I must remember all this when I wake up. This is my genuine past, accept no substitutes. Is Hamlin sending all this stuff up by way of making friendly overtures to me, or is he trying to torment me? In any event, more. More, he cried, give me more! So more. Look at the world through a madman’s eyes. Take the hallucinogenic trip for free. Breathe in, breathe out, turn on, tilt! What are those streaks spanning the sky? That cockeyed rainbow, black, green, turquoise, gray, purple, white. And what colors do you see when your eyes are closed? The same. The very same.
Why is there so much pressure in the groin? You can feel the pulsations, the throbbings. It’s like being sixteen all over again. You want to plant it fast, you want to pump yourself dry. Insatiable. But only in strange and reluctant cunts. Why is that? Can you offer a rational explanation? Ha. Time to prowl the winter streets. A tightness in the ass, a dryness in the throat. Your own sweet wifey willing to come across for you, any time, any place, and the same is true of a myriad of others, hot available Lissa, so why endanger yourself in this fashion? But danger defines the man. I climb these peaks because they’re here.
Do you realize, though, that you’re out of your mind? Naturally I do. Will the defendant please rise. Nathaniel James Hamlin you have heard the verdict of your peers. There, you see the risks? You know what those bastards can do to you? Sure I know. I accept the risks. Let them do their worst. It is the decision of this court that the identity known as Nathaniel James Hamlin having been found guilty of repeated and numerous instances of intolerably antisocial activity and having been declared an incurable and incorrigible sociopathic menace by a properly constituted panel of authorities shall be withdrawn permanently from access to society and shall be at once expunged under the provisions of the Federal Social Rehabilitation Act of 2001 and that in accordance with the terms of that act the physical container as legally defined of the proscribed identity be reconstructed and returned to society at the earliest possible time.
Let me have your left arm, please, Mr. Hamlin. No, this isn’t a needle, it’s an ultrasonic injector, you won’t feel a thing. How long will it be before it takes effect? Oh, you’ll sense some effects almost immediately, I’d say, as the short-term memory processes begin to break down. The left arm, now? Thank you. There. See how easy it was? We’ll be back in ten hours to begin the next phase. What is my name? Who am I? Why are they doing this to me? Now the right arm, please, Mr. Hamlin. Who? Mr. Hamlin. That’s you, Nathaniel Hamlin. Oh. The right arm, please? No, it’s not a needle, it’s an ultrasonic injector, just like the last one. You don’t remember the last one? Well, of course, I should have realized that. Here we go! They’re washing away my mind! No no no no no no no no no no no no
At the office the next afternoon Hamlin, who had not been heard from in any overt way for almost two full days, made another attempt at seizing the speech centers of Macy’s brain. He chose his moment carefully. Late in the day; Macy trying for the tenth or twelfth time to tape his commentary for the evening news; inner tensions high.
The words weren’t flowing and the tones were thorny. He was covering the presumed assassination of the Croatian prime minister, a particularly nasty incident: a gang of monadist radicals had kidnapped the man a week ago and, spiriting him away to an illegal mindpick laboratory thought to be located somewhere in the Caucasus, had subjected him to an intensive three-day personality deconstruct that had wholly obliterated his identity. His soulless shell had been picked up during the night in Istanbul and was now in Zagreb, where platoons of neurologists now were converging in the hope of summoning back his eradicated self. Scarcely any chance of success, according to a British authority on deconstruct techniques. If an identity is taken apart properly, there’s no known way of reassembling it. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men, and so forth. A bad show.
When the story had started to come off the pipe around lunchtime, Macy had instantly volunteered to handle it. He felt he had to prove to his colleagues that he did not need to be sheltered against references to deconstructs and reconstructs, rehabilitation work, and related matters. But it was proving unexpectedly difficult for him to carry out the assignment. The story was full of lumpy Croatian names that refused to cross his tongue in the right order of syllables. Moreover, he was more sensitive to the theme of the incident than he had realized; he burst into uneasy sweats at odd moments while reading his script, usually around the place where he was doing the lead-in to the statement from the London neurologist.
Take it slow, the platform monitor kept calling out to him. You’re pressing, Paul. Just go easy and let the words slide out. Everybody was being kind to him, again. A whole taping crew immobilized here for well over an hour while he blundered and staggered his way through an infinity of faulty takes. Take it slow, take it slow.
This time he thought he had it. The polysyllabic names all safely taped. The intricate explication of Balkan politics handled without calamity. For the first time this afternoon, a single usable take covering ninety percent of the script. Now to clinch things: “This morning in London, we spoke with the celebrated British brain expert Varnum Skillings, who vdrkh cmpm gzpzp vdrkh—”
“Cut!”
“Shqkm. Vtpkp. Smss! Grgg!”
People rushing toward him from all sides of the studio. His skull ablaze. Eyes unfocused. Macy knew precisely what had happened, and after the first instinctive moment of terror he began to take counteroffensive action. Just as he had on Tuesday, he labored to pry Hamlin’s mental grip loose. There was a complicating factor here, the public nature of his fit, the disturbed colleagues fluttering around him, asking him things, loosening his collar, otherwise distracting him. And the feeling of calamity that came over him at the realization that he had suffered this upheaval in front of everybody, exposed himself thoroughly as too sick to hold this job. Brushing aside those matters, he worked on Hamlin. The devil had bided his time, collected his strength, made his try when Macy was least prepared for it. All the same, Macy was more powerful. He had the leverage that controlling the body’s main neural trunks provided. Back, you fucker! Back! Back! Let go!
Hamlin let go. Foiled again.
Macy’s vision returned and he found himself staring into the agitated onyx face of Loftus. Asking him over and over what had happened, was he all right, should they send for a doctor, an ambulance, get him a drink, a gold.
“I’ll be fine,” he said. Voice like corroded copper.
“You sounded so weird just then—and your face was so twisted up—”
“I said I’d be all right.” Normal tone returning.
No one must know. No one.
The platform monitor, Smith, Jones, some name like that, coming up to him. “We got a nearly perfect take, Macy. If you’d like to rest a while, and then you can do the finale for us—no problem to splice it—”
“Well do it now,” said Macy.
No one must know.
The camera crew returning to places. Confusion defused. Macy, alone under the lights, swaying a little, searched his mind for Hamlin, could not find him, decided that he really had succeeded once again in thwarting a takeover. Nevertheless, he would keep on guard. If it happened again under the cameras he’d be in trouble. No room in this organization for newsmen who throw fits at unpredictable moments.