Year's Best Science Fiction 01 # 1984

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  Be careful now, Cleo warned herself. Trying to pile on convincing-sounding details when you don’t really know what you’re talking about is a sure way to give yourself away sooner or later.

  The thing to do, she knew, was to establish her credentials without working too hard at it; sit back, listen, learn how things really operate among these people.

  “What do you do up there in Sacramento?”

  “Nothing fascinating.”

  “Poor Judy. Real-estate broker?”

  “How’d you guess?”

  “Every other woman I meet is a real-estate broker these days. What’s Vixen?”

  “A lush.”

  “Not much of a livelihood in that.”

  Cleo shrugged. “She doesn’t need one. The rest of us support her.”

  “Real estate and what else?”

  She hadn’t been sure that multiples etiquette included talking about one’s alternate selves. But she had come prepared. “Lisa’s a landscape architect. Cleo’s into software. We all keep busy.”

  “Lisa ought to meet Chuck. He’s a demon horticulturalist. Partner in a plant-rental outfit—you know, huge dracaenas and philodendrons for offices, so much per month, take them away when they start looking sickly. Lisa and Chuck could talk palms and bromelaids and cacti all night.”

  “We should introduce them.”

  “We should, yes.”

  “But first we have to introduce Van and Judy.”

  “And then maybe Van and Cleo,” he said.

  She felt a tremor of fear. Had he found her out so soon? “Why Van and Cleo? Cleo’s not here right now. This is Judy you’re talking to. »

  “Easy. Easy!”

  But she was unable to halt. “I can’t deliver Cleo to you just like that, you know. She does as she pleases.”

  “Easy,” he said. “All I meant was, Van and Cleo have something in common. Van’s into software, too.”

  Cleo relaxed. With a little laugh she said, “Oh, not you, too! Isn’t everybody nowadays? But I thought you were something in the academic world. A university professor or something like that.”

  “I am. At Cal.”

  “Software?”

  “In a manner of speaking. Linguistics. Metalinguistics, actually. My field is the language of language—the basic subsets, the neural coordinates of communication, the underlying programs our brains use, the operating systems. Mind as computer, computer as mind. I can get very boring about it.”

  “I don’t find the mind a boring subject.”

  “I don’t find real estate a boring subject. Talk to me about second mortgages and triple-net leases.”

  “Talk to me about Chomsky and Benjamin Whorf,” she said.

  His eyes widened. “You’ve heard of Benjamin Whorf?”

  “I majored in comparative linguistics. That was before real estate.”

  “Just my lousy luck,” he said. “I get a chance to find out what’s hot in the shopping-center market and she wants to talk about Whorf and Chomsky.”

  “I thought every other woman you met these days was a real-estate broker. Talk to them about shopping centers.”

  “They all want to talk about Whorf and Chomsky. More intellectual.”

  “Poor Van.”

  “Yes. Poor Van.” Then he leaned forward and said, his tone softening.

  “You know, I shouldn’t have made that crack about Van meeting Cleo. That was very tacky of me.”

  “It’s okay, Van. I didn’t take it seriously.”

  “You seemed to. You were very upset.”

  “Well, maybe at first. But then I saw you were just horsing around.”

  “I still shouldn’t have said it. You were absolutely right: This is Judy’s time now. Cleo’s not here, and that’s just fine. It’s Judy I want to get to know.”

  “You will,” she said. “But you can meet Cleo, too, and Lisa and Vixen. I’ll introduce you to the whole crew. I don’t mind.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  “Sure.”

  “Some of us are very secretive about our alters.”

  “Are you?” Cleo asked.

  “Sometimes. Sometimes not.”

  “I don’t mind. Maybe you’ll meet some of mine tonight.” She glanced toward the center of the floor. “I think I’ve steadied up now. I’d like to try the mirrors again.”

  “Switching?”

  “Doubling,” she said. “I’d like to bring Vixen up. She can do the drinking, and I can do the talking. Will it bother you if she’s here, too?”

  “Won’t bother me unless she’s a sloppy drunk. Or a mean one.”

  “I can keep control of her when we’re doubling. Come on, take me through the mirrors.”

  “You be careful now. San Francisco mirrors aren’t like Sacramento ones. You’ve already discovered that.”

  “I’ll watch my step this time. Shall we go out there?”

  “Sure,” he said.

  As they began to move out onto the floor a slender, T-shirted man of about thirty came toward them. Shaven scalp, bushy mustache, medallions, boots. Very San Francisco, very gay. He frowned at Cleo and stared straightforwardly at Van.

  “Ned?” he said.

  Van scowled and shook his head. “No. Not now.”

  “Sorry. Very sorry. I should have realized.” The shaven-headed man flushed and hurried away.

  “Let’s go,” Van said to Cleo.

  This time she found it easier to keep her balance. Knowing that he was nearby helped. But still the waves of refracted light came pounding in, pounding in, pounding in. The assault was total: remorseless, implacable, overwhelming. She had to struggle against the throbbing in her chest, the hammering in her temples, the wobbliness of her knees. And this was pleasure for them? This was a supreme delight?

  But they were multiples, and she was only Cleo, and that, she knew, made all the difference. She seemed to be able to fake it well enough. She could make up a Judy, a Lisa, a Vixen, assign little corners of her personality to each, give them voices of their own, facial expressions, individual identities. Standing before her mirror at home, she had managed to convince herself. She might even be able to convince him. But as the swirling lights careened off the infinites of interlocking mirrors and came slaloming into the gateways of her reeling soul, the dismal fear began to rise in her that she could never truly be one of these people after all, however skillfully she imitated them in their intricacies.

  Was it so? Was she doomed always to stand outside their irresistible world, hopelessly peering in? Too soon to tell—much too soon, she thought, to admit defeat.

  At least she didn’t fall down. She took the punishment of the mirrors as long as she could stand it, and then, not waiting for him to leave the floor, she made her way—carefully, carefully, walking a tightrope over an abyss—to the bar. When her head had begun to stop spinning she ordered a drink, and she sipped it cautiously. She could feel the alcohol extending itself inch by inch into her bloodstream. It calmed her. On the floor Van stood in trance, occasionally quivering in a sudden, convulsive way for a fraction of a second. He was doubling, she knew: bringing up one of his other identities. That was the main thing that multiples came to these clubs to do. No longer were all their various identities forced to dwell in rigorously separated compartments of their minds. With the aid of the mirrors and lights the skilled ones were able briefly to fuse two or even three of their selves into something more complex. When he comes back here, she thought, he will be Van plus X. And I must pretend to be Judy plus Vixen.

  She readied herself for that. Judy was easy. Judy was mostly the real Cleo, the real-estate woman from Sacramento, with Cleo’s notion of what it was like to be a multiple added in. And Vixen? Cleo imagined her to be about twenty-three, a Los Angeles girl, a one-time child tennis star who had broken her ankle in a dumb prank and had never recovered her game afterward, and who had taken up drinking to ease the pain and loss. Uninhibited, unpredictable, untidy, fiery, fierce: all the things that
Cleo was not. Could she be Vixen? She took a deep gulp of her drink and put on the Vixen face: eyes hard and glittering; cheek muscles clenched.

  Van was leaving the floor now. His way of moving seemed to have changed: He was stiff, almost awkward, his shoulders held high, his elbows jutting oddly. He looked so different that she wondered whether he was still Van at all.

  “You didn’t switch, did you?”

  “Doubled. Paul’s with me now.”

  “Paul?”

  “Paul’s from Texas. Geologist, terrific poker game, plays the guitar.” Van smiled, and it was like a shifting of gears. In a deeper, broader voice he said, “And I sing real good too, ma’am. Van’s jealous of that, because he can’t sing worth beans. Are you ready for a refill?”

  “You bet,” Cleo said, sounding sloppy, sounding Vixenish.

  His apartment was nearby, a cheerful, airy, sprawling place in the Marina district. The segmented nature of his life was immediately obvious: The prints and paintings on the walls looked as they had been chosen by four or five different people, one of whom ran heavily toward vivid scenes of sunrise over the Grand Canyon, another to Picasso and Miró, someone else to delicate, impressionist views of Paris street scenes and flower markets. A sunroom contained the biggest and healthiest houseplants Cleo had ever seen. Another room was stacked with technical books and scholarly journals, a third was equipped with three or four gleaming exercise machines. Some of the rooms were fastidiously tidy, some impossibly chaotic. Some of the furniture was stark and austere; some was floppy and overstuffed. She kept expecting to find roommates wandering around. But there was no one here but Van. And Paul.

  Paul fixed the drinks, played soft guitar music, told her gaudy tales of prospecting on the West Texas mesas. Paul sang something bawdy sounding in Spanish, and Cleo, putting on her Vixen voice, chimed in on the choruses, deliberately offkey. But then Paul went away, and it was Van who sat close beside her on the couch. He wanted to know things about Judy and he told her a little about Van, and no other selves came into the conversation. She was sure that was intentional. They stayed up very late. Paul came back toward the end of the evening to tell a few jokes and sing a soft late-night song, but when they went into the bedroom, she was with Van. Of that she was certain.

  And when she woke in the morning she was alone. She felt a surge of confusion and dislocation, remembered after a moment where she was and how she happened to be there, sat up, blinked. Went into the bathroom and scooped a handful of water over her face. Without bothering to dress she went padding around the apartment looking for Van.

  She found him in the exercise room, using the rowing machine, but he wasn’t Van. He was dressed in tight jeans and a white T-shirt, and he looked somehow younger, leaner, jauntier. There were fine beads of sweat along his forehead, but he did not seem to be breathing hard. He gave her a cool, distantly appraising, wholly asexual look as if it was not in the least unusual for an unknown naked woman to materialize in the house and he was altogether undisturbed by it. “Good morning. I’m Ned. Pleased to know you.” His voice was higher than Van’s, much higher than Paul’s, and he had an odd, overprecise way of shaping each syllable.

  Flustered, suddenly self-conscious and wishing she had put her clothes on before leaving the bedroom, she folded one arm over her breasts, though her nakedness did not seem to matter to him at all. “I’m—Judy. I came with Van.”

  “Yes, I know. I saw the entry in our book.” Smoothly he pulled on the oars of the rowing machine, leaned back, pushed forward. “Help yourself to anything in the fridge,” he said. “Make yourself at home. Van left a note for you in the kitchen.”

  She stared at him: his hands, his mouth, his long muscular arms. She remembered his touch, his kiss, the feel of his skin. And now this complete indifference. No. Not his kisses, not his touch. Van’s. And Van was not here now. There was a different tenant in Van’s body, someone she did not know in any way and who had no memories of last night’s embraces. I saw the entry in our book. They left memos for one another. Cleo shivered. She had known what to expect, more or less, but experiencing it was very different from reading about it. She felt almost as if she had fallen in among beings from another planet.

  But this is what you wanted, she thought. Isn’t it? The intricacy, the mystery, the unpredictability, the sheer weirdness? A little cruise through an alien world because her own had become so stale, so narrow, so cramped. And here she was. Good morning. I’m Ned. Pleased to know you.

  Van’s note was clipped to the refrigerator by a little yellow magnet shaped like a ladybug. DINNER TONIGHT AT CHEZ MICHEL? YOU AND ME AND WHO KNOWS WHO ELSE. CALL ME.

  That was the beginning. She saw him every night for the next ten days. Generally they met at some three-star restaurant, had a lingering, intimate dinner, went back to his apartment. One mild, clear evening they drove out to the beach and watched the waves breaking on Seal Rock until well past midnight. Another time they wandered through Fisherman’s Wharf and somehow acquired three bags of tacky souvenirs.

  Van was his primary name—she saw it on his credit card one night—and that seemed to be his main identity, too, though she knew there were plenty of others. At first he was reticent about that, but on the fourth or fifth night he told her that he had nine major selves and sixteen minor ones. Besides Paul, the geologist, Chuck, who was into horticulture, and Ned, the gay one, Cleo heard about Nat, the stock-market plunger—he was fifty and fat, made a fortune every week, and divided his time between Las Vegas and Miami Beach; Henry the poet, who was shy and never liked anyone to read his work; Dick, who was studying to be an actor; Hal, who once taught law at Harvard; Dave, the yachtsman; and Nicholas, the cardsharp.

  And then there were the fragmentary ones, some of whom didn’t have names, only a funny way of speaking or a little routine they liked to act out.

  She got to see very little of his otherselves, though. Like all multiples he was troubled occasionally by involuntary switching. One night he became Hal while they were making love, and another time he turned into Dave for an hour, and there were momentary flashes of Henry and Nicholas. Cleo perceived it right away whenever one of those switches came. His voice, his movements, his entire manner and personality changed immediately. Those were startling, exciting moments for her, offering a strange exhilaration. But generally his control was very good, and he stayed Van, as if he felt some strong need to experience her as Van, and Van alone. Once in a while he doubled, bringing up Paul to play the guitar and sing or Dick to recite sonnets, but when he did that the Van identity always remained present and dominant. It appeared that he was able to double at will, without the aid of mirrors and lights, at least some of the time. He had been an active and functioning multiple for as long as he could remember—since childhood, perhaps even since birth—and he had devoted himself through the years to the task of gaining mastery over his divided mind.

  All the aspects of him that she came to meet had basically attractive personalities: They were energetic, stable, purposeful men who enjoyed life and seemed to know how to go about getting what they wanted. Though they were very different people, she could trace them all back readily enough to the underlying Van from whom, so she thought, they had all split. The one puzzle was Nat, the market operator. It was hard for Cleo to imagine what he was like when he was Nat—sleazy and coarse, yes, but how did he manage to make himself look fifteen years older and forty pounds heavier? Maybe it was all done with facial expressions and posture. But she never got to see Nat. And gradually she realized it was an oversimplification to think of Paul and Dick and Ned and the others as mere extensions of Van into different modes.

  Van by himself was just as incomplete as the others. He was just one of many that had evolved in parallel, each one autonomous, each one only a fragment of the whole. Though Van might have control of the body a greater portion of the time, he still had no idea what any alternate selves were up to while they were in command, and like them he had to depend on guesses,
fancy footwork, and such notes and messages as they bothered to leave behind in order to keep track of events that occurred outside his conscious awareness. “The only one who knows everything is Michael. He’s seven years old, as smart as a whip, and keeps in touch with all of us all the time.”

  “Your memory trace,” Cleo said.

  Van nodded. All multiples, she knew, had one alter with full awareness of the doings of all the other personalities—usually a child, an observer who sat back deep in the mind and played its own games and emerged only when necessary to fend off some crisis that threatened the stability of the entire group. “He’s just informed us that he’s Ethiopian,” Van said. “So every two or three weeks we go across to Oakland to an Ethiopian restaurant that he likes, and he flirts with the waitresses in Amharic.”

  “That can’t be too terrible a chore. I’m told Ethiopians are very beautiful people.”

  “Absolutely. But they think it’s all a big joke, and Michael doesn’t know how to pick up women anyway. He’s only seven, you know. So Van doesn’t get anything out of it except some exercise in comparative linguistics and a case of indigestion the next day. Ethiopian food is the spiciest in the world. I can’t stand spicy food.”

  “Neither can I,” she said. “But Lisa loves it. Especially Mexican. But nobody ever said sharing a body is easy, did they?”

  She knew she had to be careful in questioning Van about the way his life as a multiple worked. She was supposed to be a multiple herself, after all. But she made use of her Sacramento background as justification for her areas of apparent ignorance of multiple customs and the everyday mechanics of multiple life. Though she too had known she was a multiple since childhood, she said, she had grown up outside the climate of acceptance of the divided personality that prevailed in San Francisco, where an active subculture of multiples had existed openly for years. In her isolated existence, unaware that there were a great many others of her kind, she had at first regarded herself as the victim of a serious mental disorder. It was only recently, she told him, that she had come to understand the overwhelming advantages of life as a multiple; the richness, the complexity, the fullness of talents and experiences that a divided mind was free to enjoy. That was why she had come to San Francisco. That was why she listened so eagerly to all that he was telling her about himself.