Western was gone, but the world would never be the same. MEDIUM would ensure that. The world will never be the same, he thought. And then, it never is and yet it always is.
The bus rolled into its port, and he saw Patricia standing in front of the bus. She smiled when she saw him. He thought that she had never looked so beautiful.
23.
She questioned him eagerly all the way home. He finally told her to let him finish an answer before she broke in with another question. She laughed and, said she'd be silent, but he could understand, couldn't he, how she lusted to know everything that had happened?
"Perfectly," he said. "But watch your driving, will you? I'd hate to come through all this and be killed in a dumb traffic accident."
"I'm just excited," she said. "Would you rather drive?"
"No, just take it easy. We'll have a lot of time to go over everything in juicy detail."
Five minutes later, they pulled into the driveway of his house. Carfax picked up his suitcase and waited while Patricia rumbled with the keys. "I'm so excited I'm all thumbs!" she said. "Here, I've got it now."
He put the suitcase near the foot of the staircase to the second story and headed toward the bar. Two glasses were set out by the ice cube container, and five bottles: bourbon, Scotch, vodka, gin, and dark Lowenbrau were lined up by them.
"You must be planning on quite a party," he said.
He put an ice cube in a glass and poured out about six ounces of Weller's Special Reserve. He turned to see Patricia in the middle of the room, looking at him with a curious expression.
"Come on!" he said. "Surely you aren't planning to have people in?"
"Oh, no," she said, sitting down and taking a package of cigarettes out of her handbag. "I was just taking inventory of our liquor stock. I wouldn't let anyone else into the house tonight. To tell the truth, I had expected that the first thing you'd grab would be me, not the whiskey."
He laughed and said, "Make up your mind. The story first or bed."
"The story, of course," she said. She drew in a deep breath of smoke, released it, and said, "Would you mind making me one, too, darling?"
"Not at all," he said.
He poured her three ounces of bourbon and carried it across the room to her. As he handed it to her, he leaned down and kissed her on the lips. She responded as passionately as she had at the bus station. For a moment he wondered if he should put off the inquisition until later. But no, no matter how starved she was for sex, her desire to hear about Western would be stronger. He didn't want her mind occupied with that while he was making love.
He sat down by her, smelled the aroma rising from the glass, tasted it with his tongue, said, "Ah!" and downed half an ounce. "Now," he said, "to begin all over again at the beginning."
When he had finished, she said, "It must have been horrible. I mean, seeing that rotting body. I feel sorry for him, even if he was the world's worst bastard." "Smelling him was worse than seeing him," he said.
"No matter. He stank when he was alive."
"Well, he's gone now, and this time he won't be coming back. So, here's to Western, wherever he is." "Here's to the devout wish that hell stay wherever he is," Carfax said, lifting his glass. He drained it down, coughed, wiped the tears from his eyes, and stood up. "Come on, let's go upstairs. I don't want to wait any longer."
"I can't think of a better way to celebrate," she said.
She rose, and he took her hand and led her across the room and up the steps.
Afterward, he said, "You must really have been suffering! That's the first time you ever scratched my back. I didn't mind it while it was happening, but it's hurting like hell now."
He got out of bed and stood sideways to the mirror, looking at the gashes. "You'd better fix me up, since you did it," he said. He went into the bathroom and got a bottle of rubbing alcohol and a box of band-aids. Patricia, smoking a cigarette and looking not at all contrite, entered a moment later. She applied the alcohol to the gashes and placed the band-aids over them. He turned around, and she moved her naked body against him.
"I'm not completely satisfied," she said in a low voice.
"The gashed child dreads the nails," he said. "Though not necessarily the gash.''
"What?"
"Never mind," he said. "You may have conditioned me forever against sex."
A few moments later, dressed, he went downstairs.
Patricia, clad in only a robe, followed him down. She started to resume her place on the sofa when he said, "Would you mind making some coffee? I need a stimulant, not a depressant."
"Of course," she said. "Instant or perked?"
"Perked. And how about a sandwich? That'll keep me until we have dinner."
She stopped and turned to him. "I was hoping that you'd take me out to dinner. I don't feel like cooking tonight."
"You said you were going to be busy being a good wife to me," he said. "I don't feel like going out."
"Couldn't we just this once?"
"No, I'm tired of eating in restaurants."
"And I'm tired of cooking."
"All right, dear, I surrender. But only for tonight. Tomorrow you fix my favorites."
Well, here they were, reunited for only a few hours and already at odds, he thought, although Patricia's re quest wasn't unreasonable. On the other hand, neither was his.
He heard her running the water into the coffee pot.
That was followed by a clang as she dropped the lid of the can on the floor, succeeded by a soft swearing. He smiled at these domestic noises and leaned back, then winced and leaned forward again. He'd have no more of this wild nail-digging, but he and Patricia would work out the other irritations and hurts and disagreements. They did love each other, and they missed each other when they were separated. There was no reason that he could see why they shouldn't get married soon. They'd lived together long enough to know each other well and to know what to expect in the way of unhappiness and happiness. He might as well pop the question now, when she came back from the kitchen. He did not want her, however, to throw her arms around him. Even the pressure of the clothes hurt his back.
Damn the woman! The lovely woman.
Pat entered, carrying a cup of steaming coffee on a saucer. She put it down on the coffee table and stood before him, looking as if she were waiting for him to say something.
"What is it?" he said.
"What's what?"
"You seem to be expecting something."
"Oh no, it's nothing. I just can't get my mind off Western. It's so hard to believe that we don't have to worry about him any more."
She turned and walked toward the kitchen. He opened his mouth to tell her to come back and sit down, then decided to drink his coffee first. There was really no rush about proposing. His hesitation, he thought, might result from a subconscious reluctance to propose. Was it because it was telling him that he was not actually in love with her? Or was it because he was afraid that she might come to a violent end, as his first two wives had? But that was superstition. He didn't carry a fatality for spouses, and things did not always happen in threes.
He heard the refrigerator door close as he lifted the cup to his lips. And then, as he gingerly sipped the hot liquid, he heard a crunching sound. For a few seconds, he listened. The cup shook in his hand so much that some of the coffee sloshed over the edge. He put the cup down and said, "What are you doing in there, The crunching stopped, there was a pause, and Pat said, "I'm just taking the edge off my appetite. Why?"
His heart was beating so hard that he thought he would faint, and his head thrummed as if it were being beaten with drum sticks. He rose slowly and walked across the room and around the corner and looked down the room into the kitchen. She was standing by the counter, a cup of coffee before her, and munching on a stalk of celery.
He advanced even more slowly.
Patricia said, "What's the matter. You look so pale."
He stopped in the doorway.
Her coffee
was a pale brown; beside the cup stood a plastic container of cream and a sugar bowl.
"You ... you..." he said, stepping forward.
"What's the matter?" she said, shrinking back and looking wildly around.
He bellowed and sprang at her. She screamed and grabbed the cup and dashed its contents in his face. His yell of pain mingled with her scream, and for a second he was blind. And then, unconsciousness.
24.
When he awoke, he was slumped in a chair in the front room. His face burned, and his head ached. His arms were bound tightly to his body with rope, and his ankles were gripped by more rope. Two ropes around his chest and his waist secured him to the chair, which had been removed from the dining room. The drapes had been pulled and three lamps turned on. There was no one else in the room.
Even with only one good ear, he could hear footsteps upstairs. Somebody was working hard, dragging something across the floor. That somebody had to be Patricia. And he could do nothing, absolutely nothing, except endure whatever she had in mind for him.
After a minute or so, something thumped on the steps. She appeared around the corner, her back to him. She was now wearing a pantsuit and was bent over and hauling something. A second later he saw that it was a cardboard box, a cube about two meters wide. Paying no attention to him, she dragged it across the room, past him, and to the outlet at the base of the wall near the French windows that opened onto the sun-porch. She straightened, breathing hard, and said, "That's the trouble with being a woman. No muscle. But there are compensations."
He should have expected anything, but her pronunciation startled him. It was a New England twang, and the there are came out as theah ah.
She must have spoken thus deliberately, because thereafter her speech was standard mid-Western. The rhythm was not quite that of the Patricia he had known. He should have caught on, he told himself, he should have heard it. But then he wasn't looking for it.
She disappeared into the kitchen, returning with a large butcher knife. His bowels constricted at sight of it, but she intended to use it, for the moment anyway, on the box. She hacked away the cardboard, separating the corners down to the bottom and then put her foot against the metal cube it had contained and slid the bottom of the box out from it. When she went into the kitchen again, he saw that it bore a CRT and a control panel.
She entered his view pushing a serving cart. With much huffing and puffing and some swearing, she hoisted the metal cube onto the top of the cart. She unreeled from its back a long power cord. It was not, however, long enough to satisfy her. She went into the kitchen again and came back with a heavy-duty extension cord. After connecting the cord, she plugged it into the wall socket.
She went around to the back of the machine and checked something. Looking up, she saw that he was staring at her. She smiled and said, "Old Rufton attached an automatic control device to this, but you have to make sure the two wires from it are connected to terminals. This model is jerry-built, a prototype, but it works."
She went around to the front and adjusted dials and pressed some buttons. The screen glowed for a minute, but it became dull again when she pressed the off button.
"There. It's working fine. Everything is going fine, except for you. And that's no real problem."
Carfax said nothing. He glared at her as she sat down on the sofa across the room from him and lit a cigarette.
"All right," she said. "How did you find out?"
"Pat.. . Pat," he said, choking. Tears were suddenly running down his cheeks, and he wept with sorrow for her.
She--he couldn't think of her as a male--looked coolly at him and waited until he was able to talk.
"A good cry never hurt anyone," she said. "Though it isn't going to do you much good in the long run.
Now, how did you find out?"
"Pat hates--hated--celery," he said. "And when I went into the kitchen and saw that you were drinking coffee with cream and sugar, I knew you couldn't be Pat."
She shrugged and said, "That's why I seemed to be expecting something when I served you coffee. I didn't know if you took it black or not. I was ready to cover up with a plea of momentary forgetfulness if you said anything. I didn't know how she liked her coffee, so I drank it in the kitchen. I goofed anyway. I love celery, and it never occurred to me that anyone might not. So much for the best laid plans of mice and men. But it's going to be all right. My schedule has to be revised, that's all."
"What'd you hit me with?" he said.
"A hammer I had lying on the counter just in case. I was afraid I'd killed you. That would've been very bad, because I would have had a hell of a hard time explaining your sudden and violent demise. And I'm tired of running. Fortunately, I'm not strong, and you have a thick skull. And a thick brain, too."
"It doesn't feel like it," Carfax said. "I may throw up."
"I examined you. You only have a slight concussion, as far as I can tell, anyway. You'll live. At least, your body will."
Carfax knew that he had no chance of escaping, none at all. But he wanted desperately to stave off the inevitable, and the best way to do that was to keep her talking.
"How did you find out that Patricia was living here?"
"It wasn't difficult. I still have an organization, you know. I knew where you all were all the time, you, your cousin, Langer. That's why I went to the house near Pontiac. It's just one of about two dozen hideouts I had ready. I knew you'd track me down through NIC if I ordered parts to build another MEDIUM. So I set it up to look as if I'd been electrocuted accidentally while putting it together. But first I built this miniMEDIUM, the plans for which were drawn by your uncle, dumb old Rufton. He was a scientific genius, but he was stupid. He really thought I was going to let him live."
"I doubt that," Carfax said. "He went along with you, I'm sure, because he hoped to escape."
"And look where he is now, back in his colony."
"In the original colony?"
"Oh yes. If a semb is pulled out by MEDIUM, its place isn't taken by another semb. It seems to be left open for the original; it rejects a new one. Why, I don't know. I think I'll get some more coffee."
Though Carfax's mouth was dry, he would be damned if he would ask her for anything to drink. Damned was the right term, he thought. He was headed toward damnation.
She came back with a cup of coffee and a glass of water. Seeing Carfax's surprise, she said, "Have to keep you healthy, you know. Here, drink this, and don't do anything heroic, like spitting it in my face."
She held the glass to his lips, tipping it back now and then. The water tasted delicious, and with it came hope. It was ridiculous for him to be hopeful in this situation, but then you never knew what would happen in this universe. Whereas, in that other, you knew. You whirled around in a strictly regulated dance, orbiting other hopeless things. What was it like to be without a body, to be a creature of pure energy? He would find out soon enough. Unless .. .
Even if he could get free of his ropes, he might not be able to do anything. He felt weak, and any sudden movement of his head shot pain through it, and his face felt as if it were covered with fire ants.
He watched her sit down on the sofa, and he said,
"How did you get Patricia?"
She laughed and said, "I drove down here late at night, went around to the back, used a diamond-pointed cutter to remove a pane of glass in the door, reached in, unfastened the lock, cut out another pane of glass in the French window, reached in, unlocked it, unfastened the chain, and presto, I was inside. I went upstairs and found your cousin sleeping away. Judging from the odor of whiskey, she'd been drinking heavily.
I injected a moderate amount of morphine to keep her asleep, tied her up, and set up my brand-new, handy-dandy, mostly transistorized, portable mini-MEDIUM, the latest product of your uncle. After she'd recovered, I raped her. I couldn't see all that beauty going to waste. Besides, I wanted to pay her back for turning me down in L.A. I will admit that I did worry about making myself pregnant, but
I assumed that she was on the pill."
"You lousy son of a bitch!"
"You can do better than that, I'm sure," she said.
"Then I set up the MEDIUM and made the switch.
That was tricky, not the actual switching, I mean, but assuring that, once I was in her body, I could take care of her in Dennis's body. While I was still in Dennis' body, I taped my ankles together and tied them to the bed with a heavy rope. Then I taped my left hand to my left leg. That wasn't easy, but I was heavily motivated, as they say nowadays.
"Your cousin was in a chair beside mine. She was doped so she wouldn't struggle too hard, and she may not even have realized what was taking place. I couldn't dope her too heavily. When the switch was made I didn't want to be too sluggish. I had to recover quickly enough to stop her--in Dennis's body then--from freeing herself. Another factor I had to consider was the initial trouble with coordinating. A semb always has that difficulty when it first takes over, you know. Or do you?"
"I figured it out," Carfax said. "When I got a report of Mifflon's behavior during the first week he was at Megistus. By the way, who was in Mifflon?"
She chuckled and said, "You'd like me to talk forever, wouldn't you? Anything to stall me. Well, I don't mind. I like an appreciative audience. I had to pick a semb who knew how to fly a twin-engine jet. I could >have had Mifflon flown in, but it was well-known that he wouldn't permit anyone but himself at the controls.
I didn't want him to deviate from his normal behavior.
So I got a semb who had been an air force general.
Travers. You may remember his death from an automobile accident about five years ago. I located him and explained the setup, and he yelled a lot about ethics, but he came through all right. They all do. How did you find out about Mifflon?"
Carfax said, "You'll never know."
She smiled and said, "Very admirable. Noble to the end. You won't squeal on Mrs. Webster. Oh, don't look so shocked. She had to be the source of information.