Crompton Divided

by Robert Sheckley

  ‘I told you Finch is going fast,’ Tyler said, his eyes narrowing. ‘Watch yourself, stranger. Don’t go around impugning the justice of Blood Delta, or you’ll find yourself in plenty of trouble. We don’t need no fancy lawyer’s tricks to tell us right from wrong.’

  Loomis whispered urgently to Crompton, ‘Leave it alone, let’s get out of here.’

  Crompton ignored him. He said to the sheriff, ‘Mr. Tyler, Dan Stack is my half brother.’

  ‘Bad luck for you,’ Tyler said.

  ‘I’d really appreciate seeing him. Just for five minutes. Just to give him a last message from his mother.’

  ‘Not a chance,’ the sheriff said.

  Crompton dug into his pocket and took out a grimy wad of bills. ‘Just two minutes.’

  ‘Well, maybe I could – damn!’

  Following Tyler’s gaze, Crompton saw a large group of men coming down the dusty street.

  ‘Here come the boys,’ Tyler said. ‘Not a chance now, even if I wanted to. I guess you can watch the hanging, though.’

  Crompton moved back out of the way. There were at least fifty men in the group, and more coming. For the most part they were lean, leathery, hard-bitten no-nonsense types, and most of them carried sidearms and wore moustaches. They conferred briefly with the sheriff.

  ‘Don’t do anything stupid,’ Loomis warned.

  ‘There’s nothing I can do,’ Crompton said.

  Sheriff Tyler opened the barn door. A group of men entered and came out dragging a man. Crompton was unable to see what he looked like, for the crowd closed around him.

  He followed the crowd as they carried the man to the far edge of town, where a rope had been thrown across one limb of a sturdy tree.

  ‘Up with him!’ the crowd shouted.

  ‘Boys!’ came the muffled voice of Dan Stack. ‘Let me speak!’

  ‘To hell with that,’ a man shouted. ‘Up with him!’

  ‘My last words!’ Stack shrieked.

  The sheriff called out, ‘Let him say his piece, boys. It’s a condemned man’s right. Go ahead, Stack, but don’t take too long about it.’

  They had put Stack on a wagon, the noose around his neck, the free end held by a dozen hands. At last Crompton was able to see him. He stared, fascinated by this long-sought-for segment of himself.

  Dan Stack was a large, solidly built man. His thick, deeply lined features showed the marks of passion and hatred, fear and sudden violence, secret sorrow and secret vice. He had wide, flaring nostrils, a thick-lipped mouth set with strong teeth, and narrow, treacherous eyes. Coarse black hair hung over his inflamed forehead, and there was a dark stubble on his fiery cheeks. His face betrayed his stereotype – the Cholerie Humor of Air, caused by too much hot yellow bile, bringing a man quickly to anger and divorcing him from reason.

  Stack was staring overhead at the glowing white sky. Slowly he lowered his head, and the bronze fixture on his right hand flashed red in the steady glare.

  ‘Boys,’ Stack said. ‘I’ve done a lot of bad things in my time.’

  ‘You’re telling us?’ someone shouted. ‘I’ve been a liar and a cheat,’ Stack shouted. ‘I’ve struck the girl I loved and struck her hard, wanting to hurt. I’ve stolen from my own dear parents. I’ve brought red murder to the unhappy natives of this planet, and to some humans besides. Boys, I’ve not lived a good life!’

  The crowd laughed at his maudlin speech.

  ‘But I want you to know,’ Stack bellowed, ‘I want you to know that I’ve struggled with my sinful nature and tried to conquer it. I’ve wrestled with the old devil in my soul, and fought him the best fight I knew how. I joined the Vigilantes and for two years I was as straight a man as you’ll find. Then the madness came over me again, and I killed.’

  ‘You through now?’ the sheriff asked.

  ‘But I want you to know one thing,’ Stack shrieked, his eyeballs rolling in his red face. ‘I admit the bad things I’ve done, I admit them freely and fully. But boys, I did not kill Barton Finch!’

  ‘All right,’ the sheriff said, ‘if you’re through now we’ll get on with it.’

  ‘Finch was my friend, my only friend in the world! I was trying to help him, I shook him a little to bring him to his senses. And when he didn’t come around, I guess I lost my head and busted up Moriarty’s Saloon and fractured a couple of the boys. But before God I swear I didn’t harm Finch!’

  ‘Are you finished now?’ the sheriff asked.

  Stack opened his mouth, closed it again, and nodded. ‘All right, boys!’ the sheriff said. ‘Let’s go!’

  Men began to move the wagon upon which Stack was standing. And Stack, with a look of helpless desperation on his face, caught sight of Crompton.

  And recognized him for who he was.

  Loomis was speaking to Crompton very rapidly. ‘Watch out, take it easy, don’t do anything, don’t believe him, look at his record, remember his history, he’ll ruin us, smash us to bits. He’s dominant, he’s powerful, he’s homicidal, he’s evil.’

  Crompton, in a fraction of a second, remembered Dr. Vlacjeck’s estimate of his chances for a successful Reintegration.

  Madness, or worse. …

  ‘Totally depraved,’ Loomis was saying, ‘evil, worthless, completely hopeless!’

  But Stack was part of him! Stack too longed for transcendence, had fought for self-mastery, had failed and fought again. Stack was not completely hopeless, no more than Loomis or he himself was completely hopeless.

  But was Stack telling the truth? Or had that impassioned speech been a last-minute bid to the audience in hope of a reprieve?

  He would have to assume Stack’s good faith. He would have to give Stack a chance.

  As the wagon was pushed clear, Stack’s eyes were fastened upon Crompton’s. Crompton made his decision to let Stack in.

  The crowd roared as Stack’s body plunged from the edge of the cart, contorted horribly for a moment, then hung lifeless from the taut rope. And Crompton reeled under the impact of Stack’s mind entering his.

  Then he fainted.

  33

  Crompton awoke to find himself lying on a cot in a small, dimly lighted room.

  ‘You all right?’ a voice asked. After a moment Crompton recognized Sheriff Tyler bending over him.

  ‘Yes, fine now,’ Crompton said automatically.

  ‘I guess a hanging’s something of a shock to a civilized man like yourself. Think you’ll be okay if I leave you alone?’

  ‘Certainly,’ Crompton answered dully.

  ‘Good. Got some work to do. I’ll look in on you in a couple of hours.’

  Tyler left. Crompton tried to take stock of himself.

  Integration … Fusion … Completion … Had he achieved it during the healing time of unconsciousness? Tentatively he searched his mind.

  He found Loomis wailing disconsolately, terribly frightened, babbling about the Orange Desert, camping trips at All Diamond Mountain, the pleasures of women, luxury, sensation, beauty.

  And Stack was there, solid and immovable, unmoved.

  Crompton also knew that Stack was completely and absolutely unable to reform, to exercise consistent self-control, to practice moderation. Even now, in spite of his efforts, Stack was filled with a passionate desire for revenge. His mind rumbled furiously, a deep counterpoint to Loomis’s shrill babbling. Great dreams of revenge swam in his head, gaudy plans to rip that damned Sheriff Tyler limb from limb, machine-gun the whole town, build up a body of dedicated men, a private army of worshippers of STACK, maintain it with iron discipline, cut down the Vigilantes, and set loose murder, revenge, fury, terror upon the world!

  Struck from both sides, Crompton tried to maintain balance, to extend his control over the two personalities. He fought to fuse the components into a single entity, a stable whole. But the minds fought back, refusing to yield their autonomy. The lines of cleavage deepened, new and irreconcilable schisms appeared, and Crompton felt his own stability underminded and his sanity threatened.r />
  Then Dan Stack, with his baffled reforming urge, had a moment of lucidity.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘You need the other.’

  ‘What other?’

  ‘I tried,’ Stack moaned. ‘I tried to reform! But there was too much conflict. So I schismed.’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘Can’t you hear me?’ Stack asked. ‘Me, I was schizoid, too. Latent. It showed up here on Ygga. When I went to Yggaville, I got another Durier body, and fissioned.’

  There’s another of us?’ Crompton cried. ‘Of course we can’t Reintegrate without him! Who is it, where is he?’

  ‘I tried,’ Stack moaned. ‘Oh, I tried! We were like brothers, him and me. I thought I could learn from him, he was so quiet and good and patient and calm! I was learning! Then he started to withdraw.’

  ‘Who was it?’ Crompton asked.

  ‘So I tried to help him, tried to shake him out of it. But he was fading away fast, he just didn’t care any more, and I went a little crazy and broke up Moriarty’s Saloon. But I didn’t kill Barton Finch!’

  ‘Finch is the last component?’

  ‘Yes! You must go to Finch before he lets himself die, and you must bring him in. He’s in the room in back of the store. You’ll have to hurry. …’

  Stack fell back into his dreams of red murder, and Loomis babbled about the blue Xanadu Caverns.

  Crompton lifted the Crompton body from the cot and dragged it to the door. Down the street he could see Stack’s store. Reach the store, he told himself, and staggered out into the street.

  He walked a million miles. He crawled for a thousand years up mountains, across rivers, over deserts, through swamps, down caverns that led to the center of the Earth, and out again to immeasurable oceans, which he swam to their farthest shore. And at the long journey’s end, he came to Stack’s store.

  In the back room, lying on a couch with a blanket pulled up to his chin, was Finch, the last hope for Reintegration. Looking at him, Crompton knew the final hopelessness of his search.

  Finch lay very quietly, his eyes open, unfocused and unreachable, staring at nothing. His face was the broad, white, expressionless face of an idiot. Those placid Buddha features showed an inhuman calm, expecting nothing and wanting nothing. A thin stream of saliva ran from his lips, and his breathing was imperceptible. Least adequate of the three, he was the ultimate expression of the Earthly Humor of Phlegm, which makes a man passive and uncaring.

  Crompton forced back madness and crawled to the bedside. He tried to force Finch to see him, recognize him, join him.

  Finch saw nothing.

  Crompton allowed the tired, overstrained Crompton body to slump by the idiot’s bedside. Quietly he watched himself drift into irrationality.

  Then Stack, with his despairing reformer’s zeal, emerged from his dream of revenge. Together with Crompton he willed the idiot to look and see. And Loomis searched for and found the strength beyond exhaustion and fear, and joined them in the effort.

  Three together, they came into mutual focus. And Finch, evoked by three-quarters of himself, parts calling irresistibly for the whole, made a final rally. A brief expression flickered in his eye. He recognized. And rejoined his suffering brothers.

  Four

  34

  The city of Brenh’a is situated on an eastern arm of Ygga’s Inland Zee, near the estuary of the Blackheart River, the broad and sluggish stream which drains the interior marshlands of the Danaid Wilderness. Known as the Jewel of the Outback, Brenh’a is Ygga’s newest major city, a quickly growing entrepot on the edge of the great unknown, serving the needs of the diverse peoples of Ygga and their friends. Brenh’a is civilization’s first or last outpost, depending on which way you are going, and it gets a colorful crowd, especially on a Saturday night.

  The most famous place in Brenh’a is undoubtedly Max’s Caravanaserai Restaurant on Little Dug Street just behind the statue of John Chivvie, Sweet Singer of the Badlands. Max’s is an institution – a sprawling collection of dining rooms serving the diverse cuisines of two dozen worlds. Here, and only here on all Ygga, the fastidious Neccharese of Rumble’s Planet can get their bowls of scrambled brains and tubers; the far-traveling Drumfittie salesmen can sit down to their plates of decomposed cats in aspic; and the New Yorkers of Sol III can dine on their native cuisine of pastrami, souvlaki, and dill pickles.

  Into this place one evening there came a short, scrawny Earthling. From the vermilion stains on his bush jacket one could tell that he had just come in from the Blood River country. He had a severe, clerkish, unsmiling face, and tightly compressed lips. He was in no way remarkable; but he did have a certain air of uneasy equilibrium and potential madness that boded no good.

  The headwaiter registered all of this with his infallible sixth sense for impending impropriety, and immediately assigned Hertha Sims to wait upon him.

  Hertha was a large, buxom, shapely woman with a large, buxom, shapely face framed in crisp good-humored orange curls. She was adept at cooling out weirdos. She was something of a weirdo herself.

  ‘Something to start with?’ she asked cheerfully, handing Crompton the large souvenir menu with its 3,003 items. ‘A drink, a snort, a fix? Whatever turns you on, we got it.’

  ‘Nothing to start with,’ Crompton said firmly. He studied the menu until he found the section called Terran Tidbits. ‘I will have Dover sole without butter, green salad with no dressing, and a large glass of milk. Also one piece of dry toast, and –’

  He stopped in midsentence. Hertha waited, her pencil poised. She saw the customer’s face go through a series of amazing contortions. Some struggle seemed to be taking place within him; his face was changing uncannily.

  Hertha said sympathetically, ‘I know how it is when you just can’t decide.’

  The customer composed himself with a visible effort. ‘You must excuse me,’ Crompton said, ‘we are having some difficulty in making up our minds – my mind, I mean.’

  ‘Take your time,’ Hertha said. ‘You’re just in from the wilderness? Not much choice of what to eat out there.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Crompton said. ‘This is the first time this particular problem has come up like this.’ His face began to twitch, its planes and angles changed, took on momentary expressions, changed again. Hertha thought it looked just like a couple of guys having an argument.

  ‘All right,’ the customer said. ‘We will have the one-pound New York steak, rare, without vegetable.’

  ‘It’s really good,’ Hertha said.

  ‘And we will also have the Szechuan banquet. And the sole. I suppose this must seem very peculiar to you.’

  ‘If you could hear my life story,’ Hertha said, ‘you would know why nothing strikes me peculiar anymore. What would you like to drink with that?’

  The customer’s face contorted once again, then cleared. ‘We – I will have a stein of Lucky Lager, a glass of milk, and a good French wine.’

  When the feast was served, Hertha noticed that the customer alternated between the various dishes in strict rotation. His expressions while eating were noteworthy; he seemed to enjoy each dish very much, while loathing it a moment later. Nor did the food seem to calm him, for he carried on a whispered monologue between bits.

  Hertha listened. The customer was muttering, ‘I really can’t stand the smell of that meat … Yeah, well you can go screw yourself ’cause I can’t stand the taste of that Chinese slop … What was that? Your turn? Loomis, you’ve already had twice as much as the rest of us. …’

  Toward the end of the meal the customer’s hands were shaking, sweat was dripping from his face, and he seemed ready to go into a full-scale epileptic seizure.

  Hertha made her decision, the same decision she always made when confronted by lonely, sick weirdos who nobody else except maybe their mothers would touch with a ten-foot pole.

  ‘Hey,’ she said, ‘you look pretty strung out. You got a place to stay?’

  The customer left off muttering and loo
ked at her with pain-sick eyes. ‘Not yet. Could you recommend a quiet hotel?’

  ‘Are you kidding? No place in town would even let you sit in the lobby, the shape you’re in. Here.’ She put a key on the table.

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘It’s for my room. You just go to the back of the restaurant and upstairs and it’s at the end of the hall. Do you think you can make it?’

  Crompton said, ‘It is very kind of you, but I really don’t think …’ His face contorted dramatically. Then, in a different voice – an attractive, sexy voice – he said, ‘My dear, this is very good of you. When I am more myself I hope to repay …’ Again the voice changed. This time it was heavy, husky, hard: ‘Thanks a lot, lady, I won’t make you no trouble.’

  The customer paid and staggered toward the stairs, clutching the key as though it might open the gates of paradise. Hertha watched him go. The headwaiter also came over and watched.

  ‘Hertha,’ he said, ‘what have you gotten yourself into this time?’

  She shrugged and laughed, a little nervously.

  ‘What’s wrong with that guy, anyhow?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know, Harry. I think maybe he’s an out-of-work ventriloquist who’s gone off his nut. You should hear the voices he can do!’

  35

  When Hertha returned to her room that night, she found the man she had befriended sprawled on the floor, delirious. She managed to get him into bed, and she sat in a chair and listened to him raving.

  After a while she could make out three different voices coming out of him. Each voice had a name. The three voices talked and argued with each other.

  Soon she had their names sorted out. ‘Crompton’ was the one she had met in the restaurant. He seemed to be in charge, though the others were fiercely disputing his leadership. He was uptight, rational, tightly organized, and he spoke in a thin, controlled voice. Then there was ‘Loomis,’ who seemed to be an easygoing sort, refined, sophisticated, a ladies’ man. He had a light, amusing voice. ‘Stack’ was the third, and he gave the impression of toughness and violence; but there was also something boyish and vulnerable about him. His voice was strong, emotional, compelling.