Mindswap

by Robert Sheckley

  The cadaverous man laughed: a sound like a stick of wood rapping against an empty gasoline can.

  'You'll wait a goddamned long time, baby,' he said, 'since you happen to be sitting in the Department of Welfare, Small Accounts Division.'

  Marvin spat thoughtfully on the dusty floor and said, 'It happens that both of you gentlemen are wrong. We are seated in the Department, in the anteroom of the Department, to be precise, of the Department of Fisheries, I was trying to say. And in my opinion it is a pretty state of affairs when a citizen and taxpayer cannot even go fishing in a tax-supported body of water without wasting half a day or more applying for a licence.'

  The three glared at each other. (There are no heroes in the Twisted World, damned few promises, a mere scattering of viewpoints, and not a conclusion in a carload.)

  They stared at each other with not particularly wild surmise. The cadaverous man began to bleed slightly from the fingertips. Marvin and the fat man frowned with embarrassment and affected not to notice, The cadaverous man jauntily thrust his offending hand into a waterproof pocket. A clerk came over to them.

  'Which of you is James Grinnell Starmacher?' the clerk asked.

  'That's me,' Marvin replied. 'And I want to say that I've been waiting here for some little time, and I think this department is run in quite an inefficient fashion.'

  'Yeah, well,' the clerk said, 'it's because we haven't got in the machines yet.' He glanced at his papers. 'You have made application for a corpse?'

  'That is correct,' Marvin said.

  'And you affirm that said corpse will not be used for immoral purposes?'

  'I so affirm.'

  'Kindly state your reasons for acquiring this corpse.'

  'I wish to use it in a purely decorative capacity.'

  'Your qualifications?'

  'I have studied interior decorating.'

  'State the name and/or identification code number of the most recent corpse obtained by you.'

  'Cockroach.' Marvin replied. 'Brood number 3/32/A45345.'

  'Killed by?'

  'Myself. I am licensed to kill all creatures not of my subspecies, with certain exceptions, such as the golden eagle and the manatee.'

  'The purpose of your last killing?'

  'Ritual purification.'

  'Request granted,' the clerk said. 'Choose your corpse.'

  The fat man and the cadaverous man looked at him with wet, hopeful eyes. Marvin was tempted, but managed to resist. He turned and said to the clerk, 'I choose you.'

  'It shall be so noted,' the clerk said, scribbling on his papers. His face changed to the face of the pseudo-Flynn. Marvin borrowed a crosscut saw from the cadaverous man, and, with some difficulty, cut the clerk's right arm from his body. The clerk expired unctuously, his face changing once again to his clerk's face.

  The fat man laughed at Marvin's discomfiture. 'A little transubstantiality goes a long way,' he sneered. 'But not far enough, eh? Desire shapes flesh, but death is the final sculptor.'

  Marvin was crying. The cadaverous man touched his arm in a kindly manner. 'Don't take it so hard, kid. Symbolic revenge is better than no revenge at all. Your plan was good; its flaw was external to yourself. I am James Grinnell Starmacher.'

  'I am a corpse,' said the corpse of the clerk 'Transposed revenge is better than no revenge at all.'

  'I came here to renew my driving licence,' the fat man said. 'To hell with all you deep thinkers, how about a little service?'

  'Certainly sir,' said the corpse of the clerk. 'But in my present condition, I can license you only to fish for dead fish.'

  'Dead, alive, what difference does it make?' the fat man said. 'Fishing is the thing; it doesn't matter so much what you catch.'

  He turned to Marvin, perhaps to amplify that statement. But Marvin had left

  and, after an unpersuasive transition, found himself in a large, square, empty room. The walls were made of steel plates, and the ceiling was a hundred feet above his head. There were floodlights up there, and a glassed-in control booth. Peering at him through the glass was Kraggash.

  'Experiment 342,' Kraggash intoned crisply. 'Subject: Death. Proposition: Can a human being be killed? Remarks: This question concerning the possible mortality of human beings has long perplexed our finest thinkers. A considerable folklore has sprung up around the subject of death, and unverified reports of killings have been made throughout the ages. Furthermore, corpses have been brought forth from time to time, indubitably dead, and represented as the remains of human beings. Despite the ubiquity of these corpses, no causal link has ever been proven to show that they ever lived, much less that they were once human beings. Therefore, in an attempt to settle the question once and for all, we have set up the following experiment. Step one …'

  A steel plate in the wall flow back on its hinge. Marvin whirled in time to see a spear thrust forth at him. He sidestepped, made clumsy by his lame foot, and evaded the thrust.

  More plates popped open. Knives, arrows, clubs, all were flung at him from various angles.

  A poison-gas generator was pushed through an opening.

  A tangle of cobras was dropped into the room. A lion and a tank bounded forward. A blowgun hissed. Energy weapons crackled. Flamethrowers coughed. A mortar cleared its throat.

  Water flooded the room, rising quickly. Naphtha fire poured down from the ceiling.

  But the fire burned the lions, which ate the snake, which clogged the howitzers, which crushed the spears, which jammed the gas generator, which dissolved the water, which quenched the fire.

  Marvin stood forth miraculously unscathed. He shook his fist at Kraggash, slipped on the steel plating, fell and broke his neck.

  He was afforded a military funeral with full honours. His widow died with him on the flaming pyre. Kraggash tried to follow, but was refused the solace of suttee.

  Marvin lay in the tomb for three days and three nights, during which time his nose dripped continuously. His entire life passed before his eyes in slow motion. At the end of that time he arose and moved onward.

  There were five objects of limited but undeniable sentience in a place with no qualities worth mentioning. One of these objects was, presumably, Marvin. The other four were lay figures, hastily sketched stereotypes designed for the sole purpose of adorning the primary situation. The problem confronting the five was, which of them was Marvin, and which were the unimportant background figures?

  First came a question of nomenclature. Three of the five wished to be called Marvin immediately, one wanted to be called Edgar Floyd Morrison, and one wished to be referred to as 'unimportant background figure'.

  This was quite obviously tendentious, and so they numbered themselves from one to four, the fifth stubbornly insisting upon being called Kelly.

  'All right, already,' said Number One, who had already taken an officious air. 'Gentlemen, could we maybe stop beating our gums and bring this meeting to order?'

  'A Jewish accent won't help you here,' Number Three said darkly.

  'Look,' said Number One, 'what would a Polack know about Jewish accents? As it happens, I am Jewish only on my father's side, and although I esteem-'

  'Where am I?' said Number Two. 'My God, what happened to me? Ever since I left Stanhope …'

  'Shut up, Wop,' Number Four said.

  'My name-a not Wop, my name-a she'sa Luigi,' Number Two responded swarthily. 'I bin two year in your greata country ever since I leetle boy in village San Minestrone della Zuppa, nicht wahr?'

  'Sheet, man,' Number Three said darkly. 'You ain't no dagowop atall nohow, you ain't nuttin' but jes' a plain ornary privisional background figure of limited flexibility; so suppose you jes shut you mouf afore I do dat little ting for you, nicht wahr?'

  'Listen,' said Number One, 'I'm a simple man of simple tastes and if it'll help any I'll give up my rights to Marvinhood.'

  'Memory, memory,' muttered Number Two. 'What has happened to me? Who are these apparitions, these talkative shades?'

  'Oh
, I say!' Kelly said. 'That's really bad form, old man!'

  'It'sa pretty goddamn disingenuous,' muttered Luigi.

  'Invocation is not convocation,' said Number Three.

  'But I really don't remember,' said Number Two.

  'So I don't remember so good neither,' said Number One. 'But do you hear me making a big thing out of it? I'm not even claiming to be human. The mere fact that I can recite Leviticus by heart don't prove nothing.'

  'Too right it doesn't!' shouted Luigi. 'And disproof don't prove any flaming thing neither.'

  'I thought you were supposed to be Italian.' Kelly said to him.

  'I am, but I was raised in Australia. It's rather a strange story-'

  'No stranger than mine,' Kelly said. 'Black Irishman do you call me? But few know that I passed my formative years in a Hangchow whorehouse, and that I enlisted in the Canadian army to escape French persecution for my part in aiding the Gaullists in Mauretania; and that is why-'

  'Zut, alors!' cried Number Four. 'One can keep silence no longer! To question my credentials is one thing; to asperse my country is another!'

  'Yer indignation don't prove a thing!' Number Three cried. 'Not that I really care, since I choose no longer to be Marvin.'

  'Passive resistance is a form of aggression,' Number Four responded.

  'Inadmissable evidence is still a form of evidence,' Three retorted.

  'I don't know what any of you are talking about,' Number Two declared.

  'Ignorance will get you nowhere,' Number Four snarled. 'I refuse categorically to be Marvin.'

  'You can't give up what you haven't got,' Kelly said archly.

  'I can give up anything I damned well want to!' Number Four cried passionately. 'I not only give up my Marvinity; I also step down from the throne of Spain, yield up to the dictatorship of the Inner Galaxy, and renounce my salvation in Bahai.'

  'Feel better now, kid?' Luigi asked sardonically.

  'Yes … It was insupportable. Simplification suits my intricate nature,' Number Four said. 'Which of you is Kelly?'

  'I am,' Kelly said.

  'Do you realize,' Luigi asked him, 'that only you and I have names?'

  'That's true,' Kelly said. 'You and I are different!'

  'Here now, just a moment!' Number One said.

  'Time, gentlemen, time, please!'

  'Hold the fort!'

  'Hold your water!'

  'Hold the phone!'

  'As I was saying,' Luigi said. 'We! Us! The Named Ones of the Proof Presumptive! Kelly – you can be Marvin if I can be Kraggash!'

  'Done!' roared Kelly, over the protests of the lay figures.

  Marvin and Kraggash grinned at each other in the momentary euphoria of identity-intoxication. Then they flung themselves at each other's throats. Manual strangulation followed apace. The three numbered ones, robbed of a birthright they had never possessed, took up conventional poses of stylized ambiguity. The two lettered ones, granted an identity they had seized anyhow, tore and bit at each other, flung forth defiant arias and cringed before devastating recitatives. Number One watched until he grew bored, then began playing with a lap dissolve.

  That did it. The whole shooting works slid away like a greased pig on roller skates coming down a solid glass mountain, only slightly faster.

  Day succeeded night, which succeeded in making a perfect fool of itself.

  Plato wrote: 'It ain't whatcha do, it's the way thatcha do it.' Then, deciding that the world was not yet ready for this, he scrubbed it out.

  Hammurabi wrote: 'The unexamined life is not worth living.' But he wasn't sure it was true, so he scratched it out.

  Gautama Buddha wrote: 'Brahmins stink.' But later he revised it.

  Nature abhors a vacuum, and I don't like it much either. Marvinissimo! Here he comes catfooting along, flaunting his swollen identity. All men are mortal, he tells us, but some are more mortal than others. There he is, playing in the backyard, making value judgements out of mud. Having no respect, he becomes his father. Last week we revoked his Godhead; we caught him operating a life without a licence.

  (But, I have warned you often, my friends, of the Protoplasmic Peril. It creeps across the heavens, extinguishing stars. Shamelessly it survives and flows, uprooting planets and smothering the stars. With damnable insistence it deposits its abominations.)

  He comes again, that seedy juggler in an off-beige skin, that monstrous optimist with the stitched smile! Killer, kill thyself! Burglar, steal thyself! Fisher, catch thyself! Famer, harvest thyself!

  And now we will hear the report of the Special Investigator.

  'Thank you, ahem. I have found that Marvin is the one to have when you're having more than one; that stars fell on Marvin Flynn, that one should praise the Lord and pass the Marvin Flynn. And I have also noted: Darling, as long as you're up, get me a Marvin Flynn. Marvin Flynn is actually better than the higher-priced spread. Promise her anything, but give her Marvin Flynn. You have a friend at Marvin Flynn. Let your Marvin do the walking through the Yellow Pages. Drink Marvin – it satisfies! Why not worship this week at the Marvin Flynn of your choice? For the Marvin Flynn that prays together stays together.'

  … were locked in titanic combat, which, since it had happened, was inevitable. Marvin smote Kraggash upon the breastbone, then smote him again most grievously upon the nose bone. Kraggash promptly changed into Ireland, which Marvin invaded as a demi-legion of Danish berserkers, forcing Kraggash to attempt a kingside pawnstorm, which stood no chance against a low flush. Marvin reached for his opponent, missed, and devastated Atlantis. Kraggash swung backhanded and slaughtered a gnat.

  Deadly the battle raged across the steaming swamps of the Miocene; a colony of termites mourned their queen as Kraggash cometed helplessly into Marvin's sun, fragmenting at last into countless militant spores. But Marvin unerringly picked the diamond from the glittering glass, and Kraggash fell back upon Gibraltar.

  His bastion fell in a night when Marvin kidnapped the Barbary apes, and Kraggash speeded across southern Thrace with his body in a suitcase. He was seized at the frontier of Phthistia, a country that Marvin improvised with considerable effect upon the history of Europe.

  Weakening, Kraggash became evil; becoming evil, Kraggash grew weak. In vain he invented devil-worship. The followers of Marvinity bowed down not to the idol, but rather to the symbol. Evil, Kraggash turned nasty: dirt grew beneath his fingernails, noxious tufts of hair appeared on his soul.

  Helpless at last Kraggash lay, the incarnation of evil, with the body of Marvin clutched in his talon. Rites of exorcism induced his final agony. A buzz saw disguised as a prayer wheel dismembered him, a mace masquerading as a censer brained him. Kindly old Father Flynn intoned over him the last words: 'Thou gettest no bread with one meatball.' And Kraggash was put into a tomb hewn out of the living Kraggash. Appropriate graffiti were carved upon his tombstone, and flowering Kraggash was planted around his grave.

  It is a quiet spot. To the left is a grove of Kraggash trees, to the right is an oil refinery. Here is an empty beer can, here is a gipsy moth. And just beyond is the spot where Marvin opened the suitcase and took out his long-lost body.

  He blew the dust off it and combed its hair. He wiped its nose and straightened its tie. Then, with seemly reverence, he put it on.

  Chapter 33

  And thus Marvin Flynn found himself back on Earth and inside his own body. He went to his hometown of Stanhope, and found things unchanged. The town was still some three hundred miles from New York in physical distance, and some hundred years away in spiritual and emotional distance. Just as before there were the orchards, and the clusters of brown cows grazing against the rolling green pastureland.

  Eternal was the elm-lined main street and the lonely late-night wail of a jetliner.

  No one asked Marvin where he had been. Not even his best friend, Billy Hake, who assumed he had taken a jaunt to one of the regular tourist spots, like Sinkiang or the lower Ituri Rain Forest.

  At first, Mar
vin found this invincible stability as upsetting as he had ever found the transpositions of Mindswap or the deformed conundrums of the Twisted World. Stability seemed exotic to him; he kept on waiting for it to fade away.

  But places like Stanhope do not fade, and boys like Marvin gradually lose their sense of enchantment and high purpose.

  Alone late at night in his attic room, Marvin often dreamed of Cathy. He still found it difficult to think of her as a special agent of the Interplanetary Vigilance Association. And yet, there had been a hint of officiousness in her manner, and a glint of the righteous prosecutor in her beautiful eyes.

  He loved her and would always mourn her loss; but he was more content to mourn her than to possess her. And, if the truth must be told, Marvin's eye had already been caught, or recaptured, by Marsha Baker, the demure and attractive young daughter of Edwin Marsh Baker, Stanhope's leading real-estate dealer.

  Stanhope, if not the best of all possible worlds, was still the best world Marvin had seen. It was a place where you could live without things jumping out at you, and without your jumping out at things. No metaphoric deformation was possible in Stanhope; a cow looked exactly like a cow, and to call it anything else was unwarrantable poetic licence.

  And so, undoubtedly: east, west, home's the best: and Marvin set himself the task of enjoyment of the familiar, which sentimental wise men say is the apex of human wisdom.

  His life was marred only by one or two small doubts. First and foremost was the question: How had he come back to Earth from the Twisted World?

  He did considerable research on this question, which was more ominous than it first seemed. He realized that nothing is impossible in the Twisted World, and that nothing is even improbable. There is causality in the Twisted World, but there is also noncausality. Nothing must be; nothing is necessary. Because of this, it was quite conceivable that the Twisted World had flung him back to Earth, showing its power by relinquishing its power over Marvin.