Silverberg robert seco.., p.1
Silverberg, Robert - Second Trip.txt, page 1
The Second Trip
Fictionwise
www.fictionwise.com
Copyright ©1972 by Agberg, Ltd.
ISBN 1-930936-23-0
NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original
purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized
person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer,
paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International
copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.
ONE
EVEN the street felt wrong beneath his feet. Something oddly rubbery about the
pavement, too much give in it. As though they had changed the mix of the
concrete during the four years of his troubles. A new futuristic stuff, the
2011-model sidewalk, bouncy and weird. But no. The sidewalk looked the same.He
was the new stuff. As though, when they had altered him, they had altered his
stride too, changing the swing of his knees, changing the pivot of his hips. Now
he wasn’t sure of his movements. He didn’t know whether he was supposed to hit
the pavement with his heel or his toe. Every step was an adventure in discovery.
He felt clumsy and uncertain within his own body.
Orwas it his own? How far did the Rehab people go, anyway, in reconstructing
your existence? Maybe a total brain transplant. Scoop out the old gray mass, run
a jolt of juice through it, stick it into a waiting new body. And put somebody
else’s rehabilitated brain in your vacated skull? The old wine in a new
decanter. No. No. That isn’t how they work at all. This is the body I was born
with. I’m having a little difficulty in coordination, true, but that’s only to
be expected. The first day out on the street again. Tuesday the something of
May, 2011. Clear blue sky over the towers of Manhattan North. So I’m a little
clumsy at first. So? So? Didn’t they say something like this would happen?
Easy, now. Get a grip. Can’t you remember how you used to walk? Just be natural.
Step. Step. Step. Into the rhythm of it. Heel and toe, heel and toe. Step.Step.
That’s the way! One-and-two-and-one-and-two-and-one-and-two. This is how Paul
Macy walks. Proudly down the goddam street. Shoulders square. Belly sucked in.
Thirty-nine years old. Prime of life. Strong as an—what did they say, strong as
an ox? Yes. Ox. Ox. Opportunity beckons you. A second trip, a second start. The
bad dream is over; now you’re awake. Step. Step. What about your arms? Let them
swing? Hands in pockets? Don’t worry about that, just go on walking. Let the
arms look after themselves. You’ll get the hang of it. You’re out on the street,
you’re free, you’ve been rehabilitated. On your way to pick up your job
assignment. Your new career. Your new life. Step. Step.
One-and-two-and-one-and-two.
He couldn’t avoid the feeling that everybody was looking at him. That was
probably normal too, the little touch of paranoia. After all, he had the Rehab
badge in his lapel, the glittering bit of yellow metal advertising his status as
a reconstruct job. The image of the new shoots rising from the old stump,
warning everybody who had known him in the old days to be tactful. No one was
supposed to greet him by his former name. No one was supposed to acknowledge the
existence of his past. The Rehab badge was intended as a mercy, as a protection
against the prodding of absent memories. But of course it attracted attention
too. People looked at him—absolute strangers, so far as he knew, though he
couldn’t be sure—people looked and wondered, Who is this guy, what did he do
that got him sentenced to Rehab? The triple ax murderer. Raped a nine-year-old
with pinking shears. Embezzled ten million. Poisoned six old ladies for their
heirlooms. Dynamited the Chartres Cathedral. All those eyes on him, speculating.
Imagining his sins. The badge warned them he was something special.
There was no place to hide from those eyes. Macy moved all the way over to the
curb and walked just along the edge. Right inside the strip of gleaming red
metal ribbon that was embedded in the pavement, the stuff that flashed the
magnetic pulses that kept autos from going out of control and jumping up on the
sidewalk. It was no good here either. He imagined that the drivers zipping by
were leaning out to stare at him. Crossing the pavement on an inward diagonal,
he found another route for himself, hugging the sides of buildings. That’s
right, Macy, skulk along. Keep one shoulder higher than the other and try to
fool yourself into thinking that it shields your face. Hunch your head. Jack the
Ripper out for a stroll. Nobody’s looking at you. This is New York, remember?
You could walk down the street with your dung out of your pants and who’d
notice? Not here. This city is full of Rehabs. Why should anybody care about you
and your sordid eradicated past? Cut the paranoia, Paul.
Paul.
That was a hard part too. The new name.I am Paul Macy. A sweet compact name. Who
dreamed that one up? Is there a computer down in the guts of the earth that fits
syllables together and makes up new names for the Rehab boys?Paul Macy. Not bad.
They could have told me I was Dragomir Slivovitz. Izzy Levine. Leroy Rastus
Williams. But instead they came up with Paul Macy. I suppose for the holovision
job. You need a name like that for the networks.“Good evening, this is Dragomir
Slivovitz, bringing you the eleven-o’clock news. Speaking from his weekend
retreat at the Lunar White House, the President declared—” No. They had coined
the right kind of name for his new career. Very fucking Anglo-Saxon.
Suddenly he felt a great need to see the face he was wearing. He couldn’t
remember what he looked like. Coming to an abrupt stop, he turned to his left
and picked his reflection off the mirror-bright pilaster beside an office
building’s entrance. He caught the image of a wide-cheeked, thin-lipped,
standard sort of Anglo-Saxon face, with a big chin and a lot of soft windblown
yellow-brown hair and deep-set pale blue eyes. No beard, no mustache. The face
seemed strong, a little bland, decently proportioned, and wholly unfamiliar. He
was surprised to see how relaxed he looked: no tensionlines in the forehead, no
scowl, no harshness of the eyes. Macy absorbed all this in a fraction of a
second; then whoever had been walking behind him, caught short by his sudden
halt, crashed into his side and shoulder. He whirled. A girl. His hand went
quickly to her elbow, steadying her. More her fault than his: she ought to look
where she’s going. Yet he felt guilty. “I’m terribly sor—”
“Nat,” she said. “Nat Hamlin, for God’s sake!”
Someone was slipping a long cold needle into his eye. Under the lid, very very
delicately done, up and up and around the top of the eyeball, past the tangled
ropes of the nerves, and on into his brain. The needle had some sort of
extension; it seemed to expand telescopically, sliding through the wrinkled
furrowed folded mass of soft tissue, skewering him from forehead to skullcap. A
tiny blaze of sparkling light wherever the tip of the needle touched. Ah, so, ve
cut out dis, und den ve isolate dis, and ve chop here a little, ja, ja, ist gut!
And the pain. Oh, Christ, the pain, the pain, the pain, the fire running down
every neuron and jumping every synapse, the pain! Like having a thousand teeth
pulled all at once. They said it absolutely wouldn’t hurt at all. Those lying
fuckers.
They had taught him how to handle a situation like this. He had to be polite but
firm. Politely but firmly he said, “I’m sorry, but you’re mistaken. My name’s
Paul Macy.”
The girl had recovered from the shock of their collision. She took a couple of
steps back and studied him carefully. He and she now constituted an encapsulated
pocket of stasis on the busy sidewalk; people were flowing smoothly around them.
She was tall and slender, with long straight red hair, troubled green eyes, fine
features. A light dusting of freckles on the bridge of her nose. Full lips. No
makeup. She wore a scruffy blue-checked spring coat. She looked as if she hadn’t
been sleeping well lately. He guessed she was in her late twenties. Very pale.
Attractive in a tired, frayed way. She said, “Don’t play around with me. I know
you’re Nat Hamlin. You’re looking good, Nat.”
Each time she said the name he felt the needles wiggle behind his eyeballs.
“Macy. Paul Macy.”
“I don’t like this game. It’s a cruel one, Nat. Where have you been? What is it,
five years?”
“Won’t you please try to understand?” he asked. He glanced meaningfully at his
Rehab badge. Her eyes didn’t follow his.
“I understand that you’re trying to hurt me, Nat. It wouldn’t be the first
time.”
“I don’t know you at all, miss.”
“You don’t know me at all. You don’t know me at all.”
“I don’t know you at all. Right.”
“Lissa Moore.”
“I’m sorry.”
“What kind of trip are you on, Nat?”
“My second one,” Macy said.
“Your—second—one?”
He touched the badge. This time she saw it.
“Rehab?” she said. Blinking a couple of times: obviously adjusting her frame of
reference. Color in her cheeks now. Biting her lip, abashed.
He nodded. “I’ve just come out. Now do you understand? I don’t know you. I never
did.”
“Christ,” she said. “We had such good times, Nat.”
“Paul.”
“How can I call you that?”
“It’s my name now.”
“We had such good times,” she said. “Before you went away. Before I came apart.
I’m not working much now, you know. It’s been pretty bad.”
“I’m sorry,” he told her, shifting his weight uneasily. “It really isn’t good
for me to spend much time with people from my first trip. Or any time at all
with them, actually.”
“You don’t want to go somewhere and talk?”
“I can’t. I mustn’t.”
“Maybe some other time?” she asked. “When you’re a little more accustomed to
things?”
“I’m afraid not,” he said. Firmly but politely. “The whole point is that I’ve
made a total break with the past, and I mustn’t try to repair that break, or let
anyone repair it for me. I’m on an entirely new trip now, can you see that?”
“I can see it,” she murmured, “but I don’t want it. I’m having a lot of trouble
these days, and you can help me, Nat. If only—”
“Paul.And I’m not in any shape for helping anybody. I can barely help myself.
Look at how my hand is shaking.”
“And you’ve started to sweat. Your forehead’s all wet.”
“There’s a tremendous strain. I’m conditioned to keep away from people out of
the past.”
“It kills me when you say that.People out of the past. Like a guillotine coming
down. You loved me. And I loved you. Love. Still. Love. So when you say—”
“Please.”
“You, please.” She was trembling, hanging onto his sleeve. Her eyes, going
glassy, flitted and flickered a thousand times a second. “Let’s go somewhere for
a drink, for a smoke, for a talk. I realize about the Rehab thing, but I need
you too much. Please. Please.”
“I can’t.”
“Please.”And she leaned toward him, her fingertips clutching hard into the bones
of his right wrist, and he felt a baffling sensation in the top of his skull. A
sort of intrusion. A tickling. A mild glow of heat. Along with it came a
disturbing blurring of identity, a doubling of self, so that for a moment he was
knocked free of his moorings. Paul Hamlin. Nat Macy. In the core of his mind
erupted a vivid scene in garish colors: himself crouched over some sort of
keyboard, and this girl standing naked on the far side of a cluttered room with
her hands pressed to her cheeks.Scream, he was saying.Go on, Lissa, scream. Give
us a good one. The image faded. He was back on a street in Manhattan North, but
he was having trouble seeing, everything out of focus and getting more bleary
each second. His legs were wobbly. A spike of pain under his breastbone. Maybe a
heart attack, even. “Please,” the girl was saying. “Don’t turn me away, Nat.
Nat, what’s happening? Your face is so red!”
“The conditioning—” he said, gasping.
The pressure eased. The girl backed away from him, touching the tips of her
knuckles to her lips. As the distance between them increased he felt better. He
clung to the side of the building with one hand and made a little shooing
gesture at her with the other. Go on. Away. Out of my life. Whoever you were,
there’s no room now. She nodded. She continued to back away. He had a last brief
glimpse of her tense, puffy-eyed face, and then she was cut off from him by a
stream of people. Is this what it’s going to be like every time I meet somebody
from the old days? But maybe the others won’t be like that. They’ll respect my
badge and pass silently on. Give me a chance to rebuild. It’s only fair. She
wasn’t being fair. Neurotic bitch, putting her troubles above mine. Help me, she
kept saying. Please. Please, Nat. As if I could help anybody.
Twenty minutes later he arrived at the network office. Ten minutes overdue, but
that was unavoidable. He had needed some time to recover after the encounter
with the girl on the street. Let the adrenalin drain out of the system, let the
sweat dry. It was important for him to present an unruffled exterior; more
important, in fact, than showing up on time the first day. The network people
were probably prepared to be tolerant of a little unpunctuality at first,
considering all that he had been through. But he had to demonstrate that he had
the professional qualities the job demanded. They were hiring him as an act of
grace, yes, but it wasn’t pure charity: he wouldn’t have been accepted if he
hadn’t been suitable for the job. So he needed to show that he had the surface
slickness, the smoothness, that a holovision commentator had to have. Pause to
catch the breath. Get the hair tidy. Adjust the collar. Give yourself that
seamless, sprayed-on look. You had a nasty shock or two in the street, but now
you’re feeling much better. All right. Now go in. A confident stride.
One-and-two-and-one-and-two.
The lobby was dark and cavernous. Screens everywhere, a hundred sensors mounted
in the onyx walls, anti-vandal robots poised with bland impersonality to come
rolling forth if anybody tried anything troublesome. Standing beneath the
security panel, Macy activated one of the screens and a cheery female face
appeared. Just a hint of plump bare breasts at the bottom of the screen, cut off
by the prudish camera angle. “I have an appointment,” he said. “Paul Macy. To
see Mr. Bercovici.”
“Certainly, Mr. Macy. The liftshaft to your right. Thirty-eighth floor.”
He stepped into the shaft. It was already programmed; serenely he floated
skyward. At the top, another screen. Face of an elegant haggard black girl,
shaven eyebrows, gleaming cheekbones, no flesh to spare. The expectable gorgeous
halo of shimmering hair. “Please step through Access Green,” she said. A
throaty, throbbing contralto. “Mr. Fredericks is expecting you in Gallery Nine
of the Rotunda.”
“My appointment is with Mr. Bercovici—”
Too late. Screen dead. Access Green, an immense oval doorway the color of a
rhododendron leaf, was opening from a central sphincter, like the irising
shutter of an antique camera. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. Macy stepped
hastily through, worrying about having the sphincter reverse itself when he had
one leg on each side. Beyond the doorway the air was soft and clammy, heavy with
a rain-forest warmth and humidity, and mysterious fragrances were adrift. He saw
low, dim passages radiating in a dozen directions. The walls were pink and
rounded, no corners anywhere, and seemed to be made of some spongy resilient
substance. The whole place was like one vast womb. Trapped in the fallopian
tubes. Macy tried to persuade himself not to start sweating again. There was a
popping sound, of the sort one could make by pushing a fingertip against the
inside of one’s cheek and sliding it swiftly out of one’s mouth, and the black
girl emerged from a gash in the wall that promptly resealed itself. She was
