Waltz of the Bodysnatchers
by Bob Shaw
“I think I can be of service to you,” the pale stranger said. “I want to commit suicide.”
Lorimer looked up from his drink in surprise. Even in the half-light of the bar, it was obvious that the dull-voiced man who had come to his table was ill, shabby and tired. His thin shoulders were bowed within his cloak, making him appear as slight as a woman, and his eyes smouldered with broody desperation in a white triangular face. What a wreck! Lorimer thought contemptuously. What a pitiful bloody mess!
“I said I want to commit suicide,” the stranger repeated, his voice louder but still lifeless.
“Don’t shout it all over the place.” Lorimer glanced around the cavern-like bar and was relieved to see there was nobody within hearing distance. “Sit down.”
“All right.” The man sagged into a chair and sat with his head lowered.
Looking at him, Lorimer began to feel a furtive pounding elation. “Do you want a drink?”
“If you’re buying I’ll have one; if you’re not, I won’t. It doesn’t really matter.”
“I’ll get you a beer.” Lorimer pressed the appropriate button on the order display, and a few seconds later a beaker of dark ale emerged from the table’s dispensing turret. The stranger seemed not to notice, and Lorimer pushed the cool ceramic over to him. He drank from it without relish, automatic as the machine which had served him.
“What’s your name?” Lorimer said.
“Does it matter?”
“To me, as a person, it doesn’t matter a damn—but it’s more convenient when everybody has a label. Besides, I’ll need to know all about you.”
“Raymond Settle.”
“Who sent you, Raymond?”
“I don’t know his name. A waiter down at Fidelio’s. The one with the rosewood hair.”
“Rosewood?”
“Brown and black streaks.”
“Oh.” Lorimer recognized the description of one of his most trusted contacts, and his sense of elation grew stronger. He stared at Settle, wondering how any man could let himself get into such a leached out state. Something about the way Settle spoke suggested he was intelligent and well-educated, but—Lorimer drew comfort from the thought—intellectuals were usually the ones who folded up when the going got a little tough. For all their so-called brains, they never seemed to learn that strength of body led to strength of mind.
“Tell me, Raymond,” he said, “what relatives have you got?”
“Relatives?” Settle stared down at his drink. “Just one. A baby girl.”
“Is that whom you want the money to go to?”
“Yes. My wife died last year, and the baby is in Our Lady of Mercy’s Hostel.” Settle’s lips stretched in what ought to have been a smile. “Apparently I’m considered unfit to bring her up by myself. The Office of the Primate would overlook my various character defects if I had money, but I’m not equipped to earn money. Not in the conventional manner, anyway.”
“I see. Do you want me to set up a trust fund for the kid?”
“That’s about the best thing I could leave her.”
Lorimer felt an uncharacteristic chill of unease which he tried to ignore. “Just our luck to be born on Oregonia, eh?”
“I don’t know much about luck.”
“I mean, life’s a lot simpler on planets like Avalon, Morgania, or even Earth.”
“Death’s a lot simpler, too.”
“Yeah, well …” Lorimer decided to keep the conversation businesslike. “I’ll have to get more details from you. I’m paying twenty thousand monits, and I have to be sure nothing goes wrong.”
“No need to apologise, Mr Lorimer. I’ll tell you anything you want to know.” Settle spoke with the calm disinterest of one whose life had already ended.
Lorimer ordered another drink for himself, making a determined effort not to become contaminated by the other man’s despair. The important and positive thing to concentrate on was the fact that Settle—in dying—would open up rich new lives for two other human beings.
Next morning the double suns were close together above the eastern horizon, merging into an elongated patch of brilliance which imprinted peanut-shaped after-images on the retina. Lorimer floated up from the city through flamboyant forests of gold shading into tan. On the crest of the hill, surrounded by vistas of complicated shoreline and small islands, he steered his skimmer off the road and allowed it to sink to the ground in the gardens of the Willen house. He got out of the vehicle, stood for a moment, appreciating the luxury of his surroundings, then walked the short distance to the patio at the rear of the house.
Fay Willen was seated on a bench with her back to him, busy stretching canvas over a wooden frame. She was wearing a simple white dress which enhanced the lustrous blackness of her hair. Lorimer paused again, drinking in the vision of what was his already by natural law and which was soon to come into his legal possession. He made a sound with his feet and Fay whirled to face him, startled.
“Mike!” she said, getting to her feet. “What are you doing here so early?”
“I had to see you.”
Fay frowned a little. “Wasn’t that a little risky? You didn’t even call to check if Gerard was still away.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“But he’s bound to get suspicious if you …”
“Fay, I told you it doesn’t matter.” Lorimer was unable to suppress the triumph in his voice. “I found one.”
“You found what?” Fay was still displeased, unwilling to relax or warm to him.
“The thing you said I’d never find in a hundred years—a man who wants to commit suicide.”
“Oh!” The small hammer she had been holding clattered on the patio with a curious ringing sound. “Mike, I never thought …”
“It’s all right, sweetie.” Lorimer took Fay in his arms and was surprised to feel that she was trembling. He held her tightly, remembering all the times he had got his way in disagreements simply by making her aware of the pent-up strength in his body.
“You won’t even have to be there when it happens,” he murmured. “I’ll take care of everything.”
“But I never really expected to be mixed up in a murder.”
Lorimer experienced a flicker of impatience, but was careful not to reveal it. “Listen, sweetie, we’ve been over all this before. We won’t be murdering Gerard—we’ll just be dispossessing him.”
“No, I don’t like it.” Fay looked up at him with troubled eyes.
“Just dispossessing him, that’s all,” Lorimer coaxed. “It isn’t your fault that the Church and the Law somehow got rolled into one on this planet. On any other world you’d be able to get a divorce for the things Gerard has done or on account of what he doesn’t do—but here the system forces you to take other steps. They don’t even permit emigration. It’s the system’s fault, not yours.”
Fay disengaged herself from his arms and sat down again. Her oval face had lost its colour. “I know Gerard is old. I know he’s cold … but, no matter what you say, he’d still have to be killed.”
“It doesn’t even have to hurt him, for God’s sake—I’ll get a cloud gun for the job.” The meeting with Fay was not working out as Lorimer had planned it, and he could feel his self-control slipping. “I mean, how long would he be clinically dead? Just a couple of days in an open-and-shut case like the one we’re planning.”
“It isn’t right, Mike.”
“As far as Gerard would know, he would close his eyes and waken up in a different body.” Lorimer sought for ways to strengthen his argument. “A younger body, too. This guy I’ve got lined up doesn’t seem very old. We would even be doing Gerard a favour.”
Fay hesitated then slowly shook her head, with fixed eyes, as though following the sweep of a massive pendulum. “I’ve decided against it. If I agreed before, it was only because I thought it could never happen.”