Transmigration (26 page)

 

 

In the middle of the lecture she collapsed. The doctor who was called in
had no difficulty in diagnosing malnutrition. She was taken to hospital,
not the one where Ross was, and would have been fed intravenously if
necessary.

 

 

But it wasn't necessary, for by this time Fletcher was gone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER 8: FLETCHER

 

 

In the first moment he knew he was himself again. He was with no other
mind. He was at last alone: John Fletcher and no other.

 

 

Then fear gripped him at the thought that he was alive, imprisoned,
conscious, in a dead, rotting body weeks in the grave.

 

 

He should be dead, and once again he was not.

 

 

With an effort he calmed himself. Physically he had no existence; he
could feel, see, hear, smell, taste nothing. Yet his mind was clear and
he was very comfortable. If death was like this, it should be possible
to become used to it.

 

 

But he had scarcely sought physical sensations and failed to find them
when they began to creep back.

 

 

He screamed silently.

 

 

It was not over. It would never be over. He could not die. Always he had to
begin again.

 

 

Yet he was himself. This time no one challenged his dominion, whatever
his dominion was.

 

 

Obviously he was not in the dead brain of John Fletcher. Equally obviously,
as sensation returned, he was in a living body . . . that of a dog or cat,
perhaps? He was the proof of the possibility of transmigration of souls.
He faced the possibility that all that was unusual about him was that he
was conscious of the changes as they came, as no one else was.

 

 

He still could not see or hear. As time passed he could feel, but could
not move. He was totally paralyzed.

 

 

Since there was nothing else he could do, he slept.

 

 

He awoke and sat up. Looking around, he could scarcely have had less to
see anywhere in the world. There were four gray walls, with a barred
window in one and a door with another barred window in the opposite
wall. There was the bed he lay on, and nothing else.

 

 

He was in a cell.

 

 

The curiosity which had killed the cat would never kill John Fletcher, the
unkillable. At first he had been impatient to learn as soon as possible
all about his new situation, but he was impatient no longer. In time he
would know it, and apparently for him time had no stop.

 

 

He looked down at himself. He wore blue jeans and a blue check shirt. His
body was lean, curiously lean . . . remembering Anita had been starving
herself he wondered for a moment if he had projected himself into
another starved body. But he was not hungry at all. The curious taste
in his mouth might explain that: he had been drugged, he suspected,
and that was why he had been paralyzed at first and had had to sleep
it off. Closer examination of his new body showed that its leanness was
that of extreme youth.

 

 

He was not more than twelve or thirteen.

 

 

Jumping up, he went to the door and tried it. It was locked. When he
tapped on it, nothing happened. He banged loudly on it, and still nothing
happened. So he stopped banging, looked out of the window and saw nothing
but a blank wall only a few feet away. It was getting dark, and this
reoriented his time sense. Anita had collapsed in midmorning. (He didn't
worry about her -- free of him she would end her hunger strike and be as
good as new in a couple of days.) Presumably the switch was instantaneous,
though he had never made any attempt to check. If that was so he had been
in the cell from midmorning, drugged, until late evening. This made him
wonder what kind of institution he could be in. Not an ordinary jail,
certainly: he was too young. For a moment he had the fantastic thought
that he had shot back in time to his own adolescence. Cheerless as the
various Homes had been, however, none had been as cheerless as this.

 

 

At last a blank-faced woman looked into the cell, and he caught her eye
and smiled at her. She remained blank faced.

 

 

"Hello," he said.

 

 

If he had turned into a dragon before her eyes and spat flame at her
she could not have been more startled. She ran for her life.

 

 

In saying two syllables, Fletcher discovered the difficulty of saying
anything at all. His jaws and mouth seemed to be constructed of very
hard rubber, not immovable but insufficiently flexible.

 

 

He said:

 

 

Earth hath not anything to show more fair
Dull would he be . . .

 

 

It was a labor of Hercules. The words came out, but chopped, mangled
and very slow.

 

 

He tried a bit of German.

 

 

Noch ist die blühende, goldene Zeit,
O du schöne Welt, wie bist du so welt!
Und so weit ist mein Herz . . .

 

 

Predictably this was far worse. He had found already that although he
did not entirely lose his knowledge of languages in transfer, it was
only when his host had similar knowledge, as in the case of Ian Ross,
that it was fluent.

 

 

Yet already he had a little more control of his lips and tongue. His
voice he found rather pleasant, deep and youthful. It would be a finer
instrument than he had ever had at his command before to express himself,
once he learned to control it.

 

 

He wished the cell contained a mirror so that he could see what he was
like. He was obviously tall and strong and young; past puberty but only
just, still growing,

 

 

Earth hath not anything . . .

 

 

He stopped.

 

 

He was in a borstal, approved school, young offenders' institution or
asylum, so much was obvious. Perhaps, young as he was, he had committed
some crime so terrible that he would never be allowed out. He found he
feared this more than he had lately feared death. The thought was so
dreadful to contemplate that he ceased thinking about it.

 

 

His choice of the gay German lyric, though unconscious, had been
significant. That was how he felt: for the first time ready and eager
to face the world. What, most of all, had brought this about was the
glorious sense of release, of being alone in a mind which had room only
for one personality.

 

 

All minds had room only for one personality.

 

 

He could do nothing about what the boy he now was had done. It was ironic
that now that he at last was a whole human being, his future, or whether
he had a future at all, depended on what the youth he now was had done.

 

 

It was puzzling . . . what had happened? Where was the mind which had
once inhabited the brain that was now his? Had he unknowingly killed
it? Could a brain die while the body it inhabited lived on?

 

 

Anyway, until he knew more of the situation he had to be cautious. If
he were found declaiming Milton sonnets and German lyrics, there might
be questions to answer which he could not answer.

 

 

The door opened. A young man in a white coat looked at him cautiously.
Behind the young man, who was small, were two male nurses who were large.

 

 

"Rodney," said the man in the white coat tentatively.

 

 

So he was Rodney, "You're a doctor?" said Rodney.

 

 

The doctor, although as surprised as the nurse, let it show but did not
let it deter him. "I'm Dr. Brooke. You didn't know, Rodney? You don't
remember me?"

 

 

"I don't remember anything"

 

 

That was a lie, but surely a permissible lie. The shadow who had been
Fletcher remembered a great deal; Rodney remembered nothing.

 

 

His slow careful, unpracticed speech was in one way an advantage.
He had plenty of time to think.

 

 

Brooke came closer. "What happened, Rodney?"

 

 

"I woke up. That's all I know."

 

 

"You never saw me before?"

 

 

"I don't remember seeing you before."

 

 

It was apparent that Rodney had, unfortunately, been violent. The male
nurses were watching him with suspicion and the young doctor, though
trying to be soothing and friendly, remained watchful.

 

 

"Would you like to come to my office?"

 

 

Rodney glanced around. "I certainly wouldn't mind a change of scene."

 

 

That, he realized at once, was a mistake if he wanted to go on being
careful until he knew more. It was by no means a brilliant remark, yet
it was the kind of remark that might enable Brooke to guess something of
the fantastic truth -- and Rodney had not yet made up his mind if he was
prepared to give anyone a chance to guess the fantastic truth. To say:
"I don't remember anything" was one thing; a moron could say that. A
moron would not say: "I certainly wouldn't mind a change of scene."

 

 

They marched, all four of them, alongl bleak corridors. There was no
doubt about it, this was an asylum. It probably had a more polite name.
Nevertheless, it was an institution for creatures society did not want
but did not have the moral courage to exterminate.

 

 

At the door of his room the little doctor did a brave thing. "It's all
right, Stevenson, Clark," he said. "I don't need you."

 

 

And Rodney was left alone with him.

 

 

 

 

It was a long, slow business.

 

 

If Rodney had been able to ask the questions, twice the progress could
have been made in half the time. But it was the doctor who asked the
questions, and Rodney gleaned only glimmers of what he wanted to know.

 

 

He had been classed as a low grade mental defective, far lower than
Judy had ever been. Of course the doctor did not tell him this; he had
to guess it. Compared with him, Judy at her worst had been a bright child.

 

 

Occasionally he had been violent, lashing out like a frightened animal. It
was a relief to learn that he had killed no one and injured only without
malice. Rodney (he had no other name) would have been quietly put to
death in any primitive community. Given a healthy body at birth, he had
been given at the same time only enough mental ability to learn to feed
himself at the age of ten.

 

 

Dr. Brooke could not understand what was happening at all. Rodney
had never learned to speak. That he should do so now, even haltingly,
was astonishing. Brooke, a doctor and psychiatrist, could do only what
so many doctors in history had had to do: accept the incredible (like
spontaneous untreated recovery in a week from advanced leukemia) and
try to explain it later. Of course Brooke selected the incredibility
he was prepared to believe. He created several theories for himself,
and would go on creating more, rather than believe the fairly obvious
fact that Rodney had become possessed.

 

 

Realizing that Brooke would never believe the truth, Rodney became
bolder. His speech was improving, too, though it was no more fluent.

 

 

"I've been here since birth?" he asked.

 

 

"Not since birth, no. I wonder if I should tell you . . . "

 

 

"I'm sure you should. And you can relax, doctor. I won't go for you with
a meat cleaver."

 

 

Brooke, sandy haired and fleckled, grinned. "Two things: if I hadn't
decided that already I wouldn't be sitting here so comfortably. And the
second thing -- you must realize that in a place like this meat cleavers
aren't left lying around for anybody to pick up."

 

 

"Touché," said Rodney.

 

 

"Dr. Dorne says that. You must have picked it up from him."

 

 

"I suppose I must."

 

 

They didn't know who he was. He was a foundling and had grown up in other
institutions. It was only when his brain failed to develop as it should,
when he proved unteachable and occasionally violent, that he began to be
shuffled from one institution to another until he reached what Dr. Brooke
called, ironically, Paradise.

 

 

Realizing he was talking to an intelligent human being, the doctor became
half apologetic, half defensive about Paradise.

 

 

"The place is a hundred and ten years old," he said. "Funds are low. Even
in the Welfare State there's never enough money for places like this. The
staff . . . " He shrugged. "Well, who would be here voluntarily? I had an
application in for another post, but they bribed me to stay by making me
director. At my age, theoretically, it's a good job."

 

 

His apologies were premature. Rodney had seen nothing of what went on
in Paradise. He had no rancor over the way he had been treated, not
knowing how he had been treated. However, he no longer had to wonder
about what kind of institution shot inmates full of dope in the morning
became they were obstreperous and then left them all day in a locked
cell. Such things happened in Paradise.

 

 

Dr. Brooke sent for tea and a plate of sandwiches, which Rodney wolfed
ravenously. As the nausea left by the drug wore off, the old familiar
hunger returned, merely titillated by the sandwiches. Probably he had
more excuse for it than he had had since Fletcher was Rodney's age. This
Paradise was no land flowing with milk and honey.