F. M. Busby, whose most recent novel is The Alien Debt, takes it from there to one surprise after another.
* * * *
FIRST PERSON PLURAL
F. M. Busby
First his awareness sneaked up on him; then it sprang and he came awake. His eyes opened. Blinking, trying to focus, he looked around him.
Nothing was right; nothing was what it should be. He saw beige walls, and a pair of french windows with a balcony outside; he saw and heard a blatting TV set. Around him, bathrobed figures huddled in wheelchairs; among them moved white uniforms.
He shook his head. Sure as hell not the motel room, a day’s drive short of home, where he had read himself to solitary sleep. Adrenaline sounded Red Alert.
All right; for starters, what time was it? He looked at his watch, or tried to. His arm moved sluggishly, only vaguely to his order; when finally he saw the wrist, he didn’t believe it. Fat and flabby and almost hairless, not thin and corded under black wiry bristle. And no watch.
Part of his mind pushed the panic button; another part assured him he had to be dreaming. For the moment he ignored both, and only tried to move the hand he saw. It did not work well; the movement was jerky and inexact.
What’s happened to me? He must not scream; that was no way to find out. But his effort, not to scream, verged on sheer pain.
He needed to look, to see, and finally his eyes came fully into focus. He tried to catalog the facts at hand. Item: he was sitting up, in a wheelchair. Item: the TV showed a soap opera, purple faces exchanging slow, breathless platitudes. Item: around him people sat or stood or moved; some spoke. Item: he wore a loose short-sleeved robe, blue and faded, bulging hugely over his chest. Bulging on each side . . . now wait a minute!
And before he could absorb that jolt, he felt, under him, a warm ooze. His anal sphincter did not take orders, either.
* * * *
When all else fails, Ed Carlain liked to say, think. Well, now was his chance, sure as God made Texas and regretted it. The burst of panic ebbed; he felt light-headed and alert at the same time, and his immediate situation became all the universe there was. Ed recognized the feeling from his combat days, in ‘Nam; it was a form of shock, and there he had learned to use it. Why not now? So, ignoring his body, he looked and listened further.
Some kind of hospital or sanitarium, that’s where he was. He? She? Again panic nibbled, but he fought it down. He’d worry about that part later; right now, the point was to get some action.
The right kind, though, it had to be. What could he say? He didn’t know who he “was,” let alone how or why. To hell with that; he needed to talk with someone. Someone who would say things to help him build sanity.
But how to start? Personal experience held no clues. He thought of books he had read, movies and TV plays he had seen. Well, how about the amnesia ploy? It was true enough, God knew! Under his breath he began rehearsing what to say—and found his tongue and lips slow and awkward, as though speech were unfamiliar.
He persisted. Goddamn it, something had to work around here. For one thing, he was tired of sitting in his own moist, cooling excrement. So before he was really prepared, he made his try—because a nurse paused nearby, and it might be a while until the next one.
Slowly, with difficulty, the words came. “Nurse? This is silly—but I can’t seem to remember—my name. Could you—help me?”
The young woman’s eyebrows rose to disappear under her blond bangs. Her lips moved, but silently. She turned and lunged away to Carlain’s right, out of the room.
What in hell did I do wrong!
* * * *
In a few minutes the blonde was back. The big man she brought with her, who did not believe a word she said, she addressed as Dr. Harkaway.
“Nurse Ahlstrom,” he said, “you must be mistaken. This patient has never spoken a word in its entire life.”
“It has now,” said Carlain. Well, it was all or nothing—but he could have wished for a few good leads to work from.
“Who said that?” Harkaway looked threatened, even betrayed.
“I did. I seem to have forgotten my name—and the date.”
Somehow, Harkaway’s dark, lean features went pale and blobby. He swallowed before he said, “You can speak?”
By main force, Carlain fought down a feeling of light-headedness and suppressed the sarcastic retort that came to mind. He said, “Yes. But I can’t seem to remember—who am I?”
“This is unbelievable!” Yow don’t know the half of it, buddy. “I don’t recall your name,” Harkaway said next. “Some of the attendants call you ‘the turnip.’ Because until this moment you’ve never made a purposeful sound or movement since the day you were born.”
The turnip, huh? How about that? All right: “How old am I?”
“A little over eighteen,” Ahlstrom said. “And your name is Melanie Blake; I remember that much about you.”
Harkaway cleared his throat, and said, “Do you remember anything?”
Thinking fast, Carlain stalled. He knew he wasn’t enough of an actor to fake total ignorance and go through the ordeal of pretending to learn everything he already knew. So he said, “I do, and I don’t. I don’t remember me at all, until today when I—well, woke up, sort of. But I know things I don’t remember learning. They’re just there, is all.” Mentally he crossed his fingers; physically he tried, too, but those fingers were too clumsy.
“TV!” The nurse said it. “TV, and people talking where she could hear. For eighteen years, and on some level it must have registered. So now—” Fervently, Carlain thanked Somebody for the woman’s quick intelligence; she had picked up the same “answer” he had thought to use. But he was glad he wouldn’t have to; the setup was tricky enough already.
“So now, what?” said Harkaway. “What’s happened? And how can we explain it?” Any irregularity here, his look said clearly, was all Melanie Blake’s fault; certainly none of Dr. Harkaway’s.
Carlain said, “What’s been wrong with me? Does anybody know?” He stopped short. Don’t push so fast, dammit! Keep it plausible.
The nurse waited; when the doctor did not answer, she spoke. “No one knows, for certain. You’re one of the cases old Dr. Reynaud used as an example to show that we don’t know everything. Body and brain perfect, he’d say—as far as we can tell. Maybe some congenital defect, just a few neuronic connections missing. The way an infant is sometimes short a bowel section, or a kidney.” She paused. “I’m sorry, Doctor. I didn’t mean to lecture.”
Harkaway gestured; no offense. “Yes. I remember the case now. Read the file when I first came here. And old Reynaud’s notes—very well put.”
Very well indeed, Carlain thought; he could use it. “So you mean, something in my brain that’s been wrong all my life, now it’s working right? The way it’s supposed to?”
“Possibly,” the doctor said. “But what caused the change?” Frowning first, then he smiled. “Oh well—if Reynaud couldn’t identify the defect, no one can expect me to know what cured it.”
And what would the fool do, Carlain wondered, if he couldn’t get himself off the hook? Ignore the change? Pretend it hadn’t happened? This clown could be dangerous.
Obviously, though, the doctor was satisfied. “I’ll just notify Phipps,” he said. “I believe he has charge of this file.” Still smiling, Harkaway left.
Ahlstrom stayed. “Uh, Melanie—is there anything you want?”
Carlain tried to smile, but his face did not seem to know how. “I’d like to know the date, and to see what I look like. But mostly, I’m afraid, I need a change of diapers.”
* * * *
She brought an orderly, and the two first cleaned him and then got him to his feet. He could not stand alone; even with support, he felt his heart beat fast at the unaccustomed strain. But finally—nude, at his own request—he viewed himself in a wall mirror.
His eyes still refused to focus precisely, but what he did see he did not like. He was about five-n
ine, and big-boned; that part was all right. But the body—arms, breasts, belly, hips, and thighs—was gross and flabby with fat. The moon of fleshy face showed no expression; his attempt at a smile was grotesque. The head appeared to be stone-bald. And for now, he couldn’t afford to let himself even think about the sex of the creature he saw.
After a moment he said, “Thank you. That’s enough,” and they got him back into the blue robe and the chair. The orderly left.
Raising a clumsy hand to his scalp, Carlain felt prickly stubble. Without thinking, he said, “Very fetching hairdo.”
The young nurse blushed. “You—the ones that can’t tend themselves—clippers save a lot of work. Yesterday was the day for it. But now, of course, you won’t—”
“It’s all right.” After all, it wasn’t as though he could lose enough weight to look reasonably human in any big hurry—or develop the strength and coordination for mobility, either.
He considered the date she’d told him. June third, and the year was right, too; today followed the yesterday he remembered. Somehow he felt comforted, a little.
* * * *
The nurse had other duties; he was left to himself. For the first time he had leisure to think about his predicament. He wasn’t so sure he welcomed the chance.
For he could find no answers. The problem was that he knew the whole thing was impossible—yet here he was. How could this—ego transfer?—visit itself on Ed Carlain when it had never happened to anybody else?
Wait a minute; how could he know that for sure? Consider: what might become of someone caught in this situation? If Ed told the truth, right now, Melanie Blake would graduate from vegetable to schizo; correct? Sure; if we can’t explain you, you have to be crazy. And such a person, naturally, would never be heard from, outside.
And if the person did not speak up, but held cover through the initial shock and after, who would ever know? Ed had kept his head down by instinct; surely a fair proportion of others, in the same predicament, would do the same.
Case unproven. The thing had happened, and that was that.
He saved the kicker for dessert, testing it gingerly, a little at a time. His sex: now that the shock had worn off, how did he feel about it?
The answer was, a sense of loss. Not from being female, exactly, but from not being male. Sex was vital to Ed Carlain. He did not question his reasons; he simply liked it. And oh, damn it all!—he was going to miss the way it had always been for him.
Then he had to face his real problem: would he ever be able to accept female sexuality? No hurry; the bald moonfaced blob of fat he’d seen in the mirror was about as sexy as a two-hundred-pound beanbag. But sooner or later, a matter of months, he would work his way out of here, and by that time his weight would be down to normal. And then . . .
Would he be good-looking, he wondered, or homely? It didn’t matter. Any woman with good health and an outgoing personality could be attractive, if she wanted to. Same as a man could.
The big question was, what was he going to be? Straight, gay, or sew it up and forget it? The idea of sex with other men had always repelled him. Oddly enough, female homosexuality had not. Once when he was dating a woman who was ac-dc, her female lover had joined the fun— and he found their activities rather stimulating.
So he supposed he could go gay, all right; it wasn’t as though he had anything against standard operating procedures. Funny, to find himself conditioned toward what was now “deviant” for him, and against what would be considered “normal.” Then he thought that in a way it would be a shame if he could not adapt fully. For he had always wondered what it was like for a woman. . . .
He still couldn’t decide anything; his thinking felt stuck between a rock and a hard place. Then it came to him that he did not have to decide now, that in fact he probably couldn’t yet. His hormones might have something to say about it; wait and see.
So he shucked that problem off his mind and put thought to the body’s needs. Gently, he began to exercise his unused muscles. He flexed his hands, moved his arms, wiggled his toes. At first he was embarrassed at grimacing to loosen the muscles of his face, but decided to hell with that—most of the other patients were obviously retarded and he could explain, if need be, to any staff member.
Also he devoted considerable attention to a couple of sphincter muscles. Toilet training was a top priority. . . .
* * * *
At feeding time he tried to handle the spoon himself, but his coordination was not up to the job. He had to get Nurse Ahlstrom’s authorization before the orderly would leave a spoon so that he could use it, empty, for practice.
The nurse wheeled him out onto the balcony; he had his first look at the outdoors. Before him lay hilly, wooded country—downhill, perhaps a hundred yards, a highway—and just this side of it, for Christ’s sake, last night’s motel! He had not seen it before from this angle—his room had been on the other side—but he recognized the sign. Do I lie dead, down there? He could think of no way, without breaking cover, to find out.
In the motel’s patio a fountain caught his eye. He had not seen that before either—or any like it. An abstract sculpture, three nozzles spaced asymmetrically at the top—but the flow pattern was symmetrical, a clockwise precession of maxima and minima. One nozzle spouted higher as the one behind it slacked off, then the progression moved on. Carlain watched until he solved the pattern: it mimicked the voltage curves of a three-phase electrical system, star-connected. Satisfied, he nodded.
Another thought came to him. He had not asked where he was—with all the rest of it, location had seemed unimportant—but now of course he knew. Near the Oregon coast, close to Coos Bay. Three hundred and eighty miles from Ed Carlain’s home. Well, it still didn’t matter. . . .
His body tired easily; twilight still prevailed when he first dozed. He woke partially when someone put him to bed, but not enough to notice who had helped him. His final thought before sleep was, If I’m stuck with this, I’ll just have to make the best of it.
* * * *
He came half awake, and then—as memory struck like a hammer-woke fully. He didn’t want to open his eyes—last night’s resignation had vanished and he didn’t want to believe the day before. But he did open them.
And then he didn’t have to believe it! He was in the motel room. As he sat up, nude as he always slept, a tide of relief stopped his breath and brought him close to fainting.
For again he was Ed Carlain—wiry, hairy, thirty-eight-year-old, smoker’s-coughing, horny Ed Carlain, balding a little but not much yet, still able to party all night and work all day, if he didn’t try it too often.
His breath came back. Grinning, he ran his hands down his torso and thighs; no doubt about it, all of him was present and accounted for.
Then he remembered fully. What a dream! What a crazy spaced-out dream! He shook his head, then got up, showered, shaved, and dressed. At the coffee shop he had breakfast—scramble two with bacon, toast, OJ, and coffee-with. He read the paper, the date was correct—June third. So much for “yesterday.”
Suitcase packed—he hadn’t unpacked much of it—he checked out at the motel office and put the suitcase in his car’s trunk. He got into the car, fastened his safety harness, and inserted the ignition key. But he did not start the engine. Instead he got out and began walking around the building.
I haven’t seen the other side. And then he did see it. The fountain was there, with its three-phase star-connected flow.
* * * *
For three hundred and eighty miles, all the way to Seattle, he argued with himself. He’d had a few drinks last night—maybe he had seen the damned fountain, and forgot. But would he forget something like that? Well, he had; that was all there was to it. Except he really hadn’t been all that drunk.
Over and over he played it, until there were no more variations left; he was on reruns in his own head. An hour short of home he stopped for a drink—a tall gin and tonic, nothing heavy. He left it half-finished when he fou
nd himself wondering what would happen, now, to Melanie Blake. She doesn’t exist, damn it!
When he reached his sprawling ranch-style home he was pleased, but not surprised, to find only his wife’s car in the driveway. Open marriage was sometimes a mixed bag, but Carl Forbes, Margaret’s latest, was considerate about being unobtrusive. Sometimes Ed wished he knew Carl better.
He found Margaret—lean, sleek Margaret—in their outsized bathtub. Bubbles covered her to the upper slopes of her small, taut breasts; her hands worked in the denser foam of shampoo that crowned her head. “Hello,” he said. And “Hello,” and before they kissed he used the little shower hose attachment to help her rinse the lather away. Then he stripped, and joined her, thinking, We haven’t played the bathtub game in a long time—too long.
Universe 10 - [Anthology] Page 19