Crompton Divided (14 page)

Crompton tottered to his feet. He felt pain in his left thigh. Looking down, he saw tooth-marks. He also noticed a smear of feminine cosmetics on his chest.

There were other signata of sexual incontinence too embarrassing for Crompton even to acknowledge.

‘Loomis,’ he said, ‘you drugged me and perpetrated a nauseating debauch using my body last night. What do you have to say for yourself?’

‘Only that I am through taking orders from you,’ Loomis declared spunkily. ‘What gives you the right to tell me what to do or not do? I’m not your slave! I am legally your equal! Hereafter,
you
may run the body by day and study whatever you please; but
I
shall have it to myself in the nights!’

Crompton forced himself to remain calm. ‘You will have control of this body only when and for how long I allow you.’

‘But that’s not fair!’

‘I would be glad to give you an equal share in operating the body if you were willing to shoulder even a minimal share of the responsibility. But since you do not care for useful behavior, I must act in terms of the better interests of both of us.’

‘What makes you the big judge of useful behavior? It’s typical fascist-pig thinking.’

‘Watch your mouth,’ Crompton warned.

‘Fuck you, fascist pig!’

At that, Crompton’s thin edge of control crumpled. Red rage consumed him, and he was swept by the imperious desire to destroy his detestable alter ego. Caught off guard by this flood of destructive emotion, Loomis tried to rally, to fight back, to maintain his psychic equilibrium.

His struggle was to no avail. Crompton’s rage produced a sudden massive flood of antidols – units of psychic energy whose function is to expunge pain. Loomis fought back furiously: he knew that if the antidol process went to completion, he could be lost forever, walled off, encysted in a forgotten cul-de-sac in Crompton’s mind.

‘Alistair!’ he screamed. ‘Don’t do it! You need me to Reintegrate with!’

Crompton heard him and knew what he said was true. He fought down the unexpected blood-lust still singing in his veins and grasped at his remaining modicum of sanity. With a main heave he imposed control over his raging emotions.

The antidol cordon swiftly collapsed, leaving Loomis shaken but unhurt.

For a while they weren’t on speaking terms. Loomis sulked and brooded for an entire day and swore that he would never forgive Crompton’s brutality. But he had no talent for hating. Above all he was a sensualist, living the moment, forgetful of the past, incapable of worry about the future. His resentments soon passed, leaving him with his normal sunny disposition.

Crompton recognized his responsibilities as the dominant part of the personality. Regretting his murderous outburst he worked hard at making himself agreeable. For the rest of the flight they maintained a good, though careful, relationship.

At last they reached Ygga. They were sent down to the Inducation Satellite, where they passed through customs and immigration. They received injections to prevent Creeping Fever, Green River Plague, Elbow Rot, Knight’s Disease, Chorpster’s Syndrome, and Halloran’s Itch. They were then permitted to take the shuttle down to Yggaville.

23

Ygga was the sole planet of the gray dwarf star Ioannis (BGT 344590). A pear-shaped world with an oscillation moment of seven degrees seven minutes at apehelion, Ygga had a terranormic rating of 65892, and a typical Class C spread of minerals except for the sole and unaccountable absence of molybdenum.

The planet had four continents, three of which were buried under lava and were accordingly uninhabited except by microscopic lava-eaters and their parasites. The fourth continent, Clorapsemia, had a landmass roughly equivalent to Asia and Africa combined. Meandering in an undulent and deckle-edged ribbon along Ygga’s equator, this continent recapitulated a climate and flora and fauna roughly equivalent to some of the better years of Earth’s Carboniferous Age.

The autochthonous, indigenous, and eponymous race of Ygga, the Yggans, were of remote reptilian ancestry. Standing about eight feet tall, extremely strong and agile, bloodthirsty and of a crude sense of humor, the Yggans were a menace to the Terran minority that controlled their planet. An undeclared war smoldered between the two races, complicated by the fact that the Yggans could not be legally killed, being protected by interstellar protocols. Terrans were not protected from the Yggans by a similar law, however, since the Yggans did not recognize any law except their own, which no one else recognized. Their unruly ways were condoned only because it was usually just worthless, jobless Terrans who got killed, whereas otherwise they would be eligible for social benefits. In addition, this arrangement tended to obscure the knowledge that the Yggans were a dying race whose birthrate had fallen to zero ever since the Terrans had sprayed their planet with Supercyclone B, a gas that induces sterility in reptiles and in certain rare types of moths.

Yggaville, the chief city of northwest Clorapsemia continent, was a tropical sort of place with broad dusty boulevards decked out in open-air stalls where grinning natives sold hand-chewn tata-bark refulgences for the flourishing art deco market on nearby Nesbitt IV.

At City Hall, Crompton subverted a stubborn clerk into releasing Dan Stack’s last known address. This was in the city of Inyoyo, a musk-pearl collection point on the left bank of the Greenish River. To reach this place was no easy task, however, for Inyoyo lay behind the Great Swamp of Kilbi, which covered an area equal to all of Western Europe excluding Albania. To cross this one had to join an expedition, and Crompton found one that was departed the following morning.

After a restless night at the Hotel Ygga, where swarthy plantation owners held noisy reunions with shrill blond harpies until dawn, Crompton went to Collection Street, the starting point for the expedition.

Trips into the interior were organized with considerable care. The most important feature of every expedition, of course, was its falaya craft. These were boats with hulls made of a local balsa-wood-type plant, ovoid in shape and capable of bearing the weight of a dozen men, or of two ziernies.

The ziernies were the bell-hoofed hornless oxen of Ygga, the standard transport across the swamplands. The ziernies were physically similar to the East Indian water buffalo, differing mainly in having sphincter muscles around their fore-kneecaps, for a reason no one had ascertained. These great, tireless beasts were capable of plodding rapidly through the soupy mixture of sand, water, clay, malt, and borax crystals that made up the greater part of the swamp. When aroused, the ziernies were capable of attaining speeds of five miles an hour, or better, slapping the water with their bell-shaped feet and creating a partial vacuum through which the falaya craft could easily be towed. The drawback of the ziernie was its tendency to metamorphose unexpectedly into its alternate form, which was long and flat and batlike and of no use to Terrans whatsoever. In this way they differed considerably from their Terran cognates, but were good-tempered and sweet-smelling brutes despite that.

At considerable expense Crompton rented his own ziernie, driver, and falaya craft. He also had to purchase a knapsack, folding tent, pink plastic washbasin, canteen with orange canvas cover, two compasses, a supply of Compactoplex food pellets, a Swiss Army knife, and a miniature collator with a twelve-month charge.

At last everything was ready. The wagonmaster gave two warning blasts on the traditional rhinoceros-hide bugle, then one more. The expedition set off, accompanied by the deep-throated singing of the Yggan paddlers. Their chant can be roughly translated as follows:

By diverse and paradoxical means the spirit of mud

Consigns grief to the heavens and sharp wings to the face

That haunts the watery wastes of the dark swamp Mother

Whose trace is her ritual and whose somber sweet nostrils.

The exact meaning of this plaintive and evocative text awaits the publication of a definitive book on Yggan psychology. For now, it can only be pointed out that in common with many tribal chants throughout the galaxy, obscurity is made to carry a heavy burden.

24

Loomis claimed at first that he wanted to participate in the operation of the body. But this was not exactly true. What Loomis wanted was to be there for the interesting parts. He wanted to taste the varied flavors and textures of food, experience the sensation of thirst-quenching, look at fascinating objects and hear amusing sounds. But he didn’t want to be in conscious control and full sensory contact during the nasty spells.

The interminable days of traveling through the swamp seemed to be made up mostly of nasty spells. ‘Take over,’ Crompton would say, and abruptly Loomis would be tipped out of the dreamy mental domain that he usually inhabited into the seat of consciousness. One moment he would be floating along in a disembodied high, drifting on the waves of images that dimly limned the external world for him, blurrily, as through a translucent screen; the next instant, pow! he’s in the head, looking out of the eyes – those gritty, tired eyes – sick of staring at the monotonous gray-green vegetation or the grimy, insect-bitten backs of the bearers.

But the visual impact was the least of it. Consider the olfactory situation: plunged from his odorless cocoon into the dusky pungencies of the bearers, the burnt-meat smell of rotting vegetation, the unbearable chlorine-and-violet odor of the ziernie’s stools, all combined with the sharp ammoniac scent of Crompton’s own perspiration.

How Crompton himself – possessor of one of the human race’s truly discriminating noses – could stand this cacophonous stench, and do so uncomplainingly, was a measure of the hard-driving stoicism of the man. Loomis considered the situation to be frankly unbearable. (The odors of alien places are difficult to describe, but frequently subsume the essence of a place more vividly than the more usual visual description. Who will forget Clarenden’s statement that Alkmene V smells ‘exactly like a bison’s fart delivered through a vat of rancid goat’s cheese’? Or Grignek’s statement about Gnushi II – ‘an aroma rather like the amalgamation of molasses and cold cream in the belly of a putrefying anteater’?)

But even smell was not the worst of it. What was really intolerable was that Loomis, all sleepy and good-natured and lazy, had to take over and feel the maddening itching of Crompton’s eczema, had to caw angrily through aching throat at the skylarking bearers, had to feel the continual anxiety of waiting for a possible native attack, and worst of all, had to make continuous effort to push the tired body onward, resisting the desire to call a halt, take a break, give up the whole damned thing.

Loomis, who had never wanted to begin this insane journey toward a goal whose attainment he could only judge as highly dubious, was also supposed to take over Crompton’s motivation when he took over Crompton’s body, and that was really asking too much. Here was this idiot, jeopardizing both their lives against Loomis’s strongest protests, and Loomis was supposed to aid and abet him? He would not! Loomis resisted in accordance with one of the deepest instincts of human beings: the urge not to be a complete shmuck.

Therefore, Loomis’s character is not to be impugned by first reluctance and then his outright refusal to aid Crompton in crossing the vast swamp. Loomis, at this point, was not an ally. He was a captive, allowed a measure of light and freedom only so long as he cooperated with his jailer. It is to his credit that he continued to fight for identity and for life itself with the feeble weapons at his disposal.

He was, after all, a person in his own right, though admittedly in unusual circumstances. And despite what has been said about the behavioral rigidity and inadequacy of a single isolated personality segment, Loomis really got on very well in the world. A lot of people with so-called whole personalities would be doing damned well if they could get a tenth of the fun that Loomis had.

Loomis knew that Crompton thought of him as a mere means to an end, a thing to be used to transform Crompton into Super-Crompton through the ingestion and assimilation of his mind-brothers. It was not a very pleasant thought. Loomis had to live with it, but he really hoped he wouldn’t have to go along with it.

25

‘Want to pop for ten?’ the ziernie driver asked Loomis.

‘Why not?’ Loomis replied. He had been sent by Crompton to exercise the body while Crompton caught a few hours of well-deserved sleep. Loomis had been acting tolerably well recently, except for his incessant bellyaching and his misguided attempts to undermine the fighting spirit that was the only thing that sustained Crompton with his unsubtle assertions that ‘every single one of us is going to be killed on this crazy fiasco trip.’ He was not one of your silent sufferers.

Now Loomis was engaged in a game of Ouuve with the ziernie driver. This particular ziernie driver was a grook, as the Yggan-born creole population of Ygga was called. He had wagered heavily on the outcome of the next throw, and his normally smooth face grew lumpy with anxiety as he watched Loomis hold the twin crystals by their scribed side, breathe a prayer on them, and then cast them into the teak-wood scoring cone.