by Dennis Etchison
A new young American author presents an interesting idea coupled with a terrible problem in this story of mind transference.
* * * *
Three sat on the brown old wood bridge somewhere in the forest near the century-old millwheel which creaked under its load of ever-aging insect and crayfish water. The boy sitting on the edge flipped away his length of rotting twig and wiped his palms on his jeans.
“Gimme a cigarette,” he said, looking up into the lukewarm air that smelled faintly of matted leaves.
The taffy-blonde girl who sat with her legs folded, facing away from him, stretched two long fingers into her white shirt pocket and came up with a flattened packet. “Got two left.”
She lifted the pungent package to her nose. “Mmm.” Pulling one half out of the pack, she extended her arm backwards to him.
He took it, hung it on his lips and struck a paper match. His eyes squinted. “I can almost get it. Sometimes. Until a minute ago I saw it clear, all of them moving around the trailer.” His eyes closed and he took a short drag, wrinkling his forehead.
“Zoe?” The blondish girl leaned on one hand and looked at the girl lying on her back, one arm over her eyes.
Zoe shifted and sighed. “Nothin’.”
“How long she been tryin’, Carrie?” asked the boy.
Zoe herself answered quietly. “It’s been over an hour, counting before you came.” Of the three, only black-haired Zoe wore a wrist watch.
“Do you get even a shadow image?”
“Sorry, Cam. Not even a shadow.” Zoe held her breath and let it out slowly from her plaid-shirted chest. “I’m sorry. I guess I can keep on trying.”
Carrie stood up and straightened the bottom of her white blouse and stretched, finishing up with her hands clasped around the back of her neck.
“Let her rest, Cam. You too. It’s only about four. Give ‘em some more time.” She met Cam’s eyes and suppressed a sad kind of grin. “Let’s give ‘em time to cook dinner.”
Cam didn’t say anything.
She stuck her hands into the back pockets of her jeans and started along the bridge, slapping her bare feet as resoundingly as possible against the old planks. When she reached the end of the bridge she scurried down the bank to the water and squatted, pressing her hands on the smooth brown and green stones just below the surface. When she looked up at the two on the bridge, she was smiling.
The dark girl sat up, rubbing her temples. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” She took the cigarette from between Cam’s fingers and smoked it, squinting. Her lips were red and her features cleanly attractive, her black hair cut just short enough. “Not even a shadow,” she said with a half-hearted laugh, staring at the cigarette.
Not bothering to look at her, Cam reached back and touched her arm firmly. He said nothing, but looked up and around at the trees. He held his head as if listening to the water pouring off the old mill in the distance.
“It is the camp site, isn’t it?” asked the girl, studying the side of his face.
“It has to be.” He met her gaze. “I’m sure it’s a trailer. Blue on the inside. This is the only trailer site in my range.”
“Will we be able to reach them ... by nightfall?” She finished hesitantly. “I mean, will we be able to make the transfer?”
“I think I can manage it.” He took the cigarette from her and finished it quickly. He flicked it into the water.
“Is it a family ?” she asked.
“Yes. A little boy. I’ve been probing him. I think——” he frowned, and finished softly, “he’ll do.”
She spoke slowly, looking at her fingers. “Cam, I wish ... I wish I could be of more help. Carrie was able to probe someone in the camp today, but so far I haven’t been able to...”
“It takes only one to do it. It isn’t as hard on me as it is on you. Or Carrie, even. It takes just one to probe the subject and time the transfer. Make it easy on yourself. And Carrie.” He watched the girl kneeling at the edge of the water. “But don’t tell her that.”
Carrie tossed a stone out into the river, where it plunked in a circle a few yards in front of them.
“You ought to take a rest, Cam,” said the dark-haired girl, looking down. “Let’s take a walk. The sun won’t be down for four hours yet. Or don’t you ... I mean ...”
“Let’s go.” He stood, pulling her up with him. “Come on.” He forced a little smile. They glanced at Carrie but she said nothing as they left the bridge and headed into the trees.
They wandered until they came to a familiar wide stump, several feet across.
“Here she is,” he announced. “The Roundtable.” He planted himself in the middle of the stump, drawing his knees up. “Licorice? I didn’t think I had any left.” He chewed a little round piece and tossed her the box.
She sat down on the edge and reached into the box. “Cam, I don’t know what I should say to you, but I know I have to say something before ... well, before our last day is over.” With her index finger, she rubbed her nose. “Gee, but that sounds dramatic, doesn’t it ?”
He watched her.
“But we should—I mean, it seems to me that we ought to say what we have to say to each other, all three of us, while we can. Because who knows when we’ll get another chance?” Her eyes found his. “What chance is there that we’ll be ... I mean, will we be able to see each other afterwards ? What happens to the three of us ?”
“Well...” His tone was deceptively casual. “After my transfer, you two will probably be told by Connection to get to an area near others of our kind. If you have to transfer after that—well, it’ll be pretty much up to you guys. You’ll have to set it up and carry it through under your own power. They’ll give you time to improve your skill.”
Looking straight at her he said, “It’s been a good thing for us, this growing up together, hasn’t it? You know...-”
“What, Cam?”
“Nothing.”
“Please say it while you can.”
“It’s just that. . . well, this kid has two sisters about the same age as him, you know. If you both were good enough at it, we could probably all pull through. I’m sorry I said that.” He looked up, trying to break the tension. “Cigarette?”
“Sorry, Cam, I’m out.”
He tried a laugh but it was hoarse and didn’t sound quite right. “No, I guess I’m the one who’s out. Odd boy out.”
For a moment she didn’t say anything.
Finally she said, “I am very sorry about this, Cam. I don’t know how to really tell you—to apologise—so you’ll believe me. But, you know.” As she raised her hand to her eyes, it was trembling. “I guess I always held you and Carrie back. I know I’m to blame for getting you transferred.” She looked at him with glossy eyes.
He shot a glance at her.
“Now, wait a minute. You’ve been able to get through sometimes. Carrie’s told me how sometimes you’ve got a probe shadow without any warning in the middle of the afternoon. Anyway, you’re one of us, and that’s enough. It wouldn’t matter about the other, even if it were true. Which it isn’t. I know you’re able to make probes just like any of the rest of our people. Carrie told me and I know she wouldn’t lie. Not Carrie. It’s not your fault I was picked. I just was, and that’s all we can think about it. They decided I’ll be of more use somewhere else. Maybe I’ve made myself too conspicuous.”
The black-haired girl took out a Kleenex and wiped her nose. “Thank you, Cam,” she said simply.
They both were silent for a moment.
“And so now it’s my turn,” said Cam. “It’s my turn to speak my piece. I didn’t let you lead me out here for the exercise, you know, kid.” He tried to smile.
Zoe cleared her throat. “No, you wait.”
He waited.
“There’s . . . something more. I don’t know, I...”
She turned away, pressing her fist to her forehead, eyes closed.
The boy swung his legs around and stood before her, very close. After a few seconds, when her hand remained over her eyes and she began shaking her head from side to side, he said, “Hey, you.”
A second after she lifted up her face he had it resting against the side of his neck, wordlessly. His hand rubbed over her back and gripped her shoulder firmly. When he made a sound, she whispered quickly. “Don’t say anything.”
After a minute she drew away from him and began speaking down into herself.
“You always knew, didn’t you? I don’t know what to say to you. Three or four years ago, when I was thirteen or fourteen, I used to plan how I would say it to you. Some afternoon in the forest, or some night late, when our folks were asleep, I’d come over to your trailer and we’d just be alone together for a while and I’d tell you that I didn’t expect anything from you, that I didn’t expect you ever to feel towards me the way you did about Carrie. I knew it was always you and Carrie. But I used to watch you, Cammy. Did you know that? I used to watch you swim in the river, and sometimes Carrie was with you and sometimes she wasn’t, but I used to watch. I just...-”
Sudden tears ran from her eyes. “Carrie was always the proud one, the brave one, that hair of hers blowing wild. Oh, you were two of a kind! Oh, Cammy!” She hid her face.
He squatted down in front of her and, miraculously, he was smiling.
“Well, what the hell do you think I came all the way out here to tell you, anyway, kid?”
He took her shoulders.
“I have eyes. I tried many times to show you that I knew, but I guess I was never really able. Sure it was me and Carrie—you said it yourself, we’re two of a kind, I guess. We always knew you were one of us, as soon as I caught you probing Carrie for the first time when she was five. And you were three. If it hadn’t...” He looked at the ground. “Well, if it hadn’t been for that—whatever it is that decides it for people without them having anything to do with it—if it hadn’t been for that, well, I don’t know...”
Spontaneously, boyishly, he leaned forward and kissed her cheekbone.
Zoe sniffed a couple of times and dried her eyes.
“Cam...” She sniffed again and smoothed the hair on her forehead. “Cam, what... I mean, I hate to ask it, but it’s just that I’ve never known. . . .” She was staring at him, her voice low. “What will—happen to your— body?”
Cam stood up and turned to take a few steps to a tree, where he picked loose a fragment of rotting bark.
“Carrie knows what to do.”
“I mean...” Her voice was almost a whisper and sounded ready to break again any second. “You won’t still be alive or anything, in this body, will you? It’ll seem like... like...”
“There’ll be nothing but a corpse left, an empty shell. Burn it. After the transfer...”
“Oh!”
She was on her feet, hand over her mouth, staring at him round-eyed.
“You don’t have to. Carrie can do it.”
She made a high little sound in her throat.
“Look—it has to be destroyed. If anything were found— well, there would be no way of telling what had happened, but just the same that’s always the procedure. Burn the body and the clothing with it. We can’t afford to leave any loose ends lying around. Zoe, the body will be just a shell. I’ll be in a new one, a younger one with a lot of growing up to do all over again.”
Zoe turned away, hands to her eyes. She went over to a tree and leaned her forehead on the trunk.
After a few seconds he said, “I’ll go on back,” and started to walk past her.
As soon as she began speaking, her voice broke.
“Sometimes, Cam, sometimes—it’s happened several times before—I feel like—like I almost wish we—weren’t what we are. That the parents who raised us were really our own, that we hadn’t been sent here by the Group to do whatever it is they’re doing to this world, that we didn’t have the telepower lobe on our brains . . . that we could just . . . marry and . . . live like the rest here. I know I’m being very immoral by Group standards, or unethical, or whatever you want to call it. But Cam ? Can you tell me why it had to be us? Can you just tell me that one thing, so I can go on feeling like I really belong in this body after today? Can you just tell me something to keep me from— Cam! Do you know. Do you know why it had to be us? Are . . . are you going to be able to keep your sanity sleeping tonight in a little boy’s body ?”
After a long, pitiful pause he started back, blinking fast, keeping his eyes aimed up into the gold coin pattern the falling sun made high in the leaves of the trees.
Carrie stood up when he came out of the forest, wiped her hands on her shorts, and met his gaze. Then she turned away and moved under the bridge, watching her toes in the wet gravel at the water’s edge.
He saw her standing there, arms limp at her sides, her bare feet planted firmly apart, the sun making little spun highlights in her hair. There was an unmistakable strength in the line of her stance, from her ankles up her long and perfect legs, over her hips and on up to the almost careless hang of her shoulders. Before she turned away he could see her full lips, the nose so narrow and clean, her expressionless, noncommittal eyes beneath a broad forehead.
At the first rough touch of his face against hers, she turned to him. It may very well have been the first time in her life that she had ever really seen him crying...
They sat at the mouth of the bridge in the waning light of a burnt-orange sun which flashed like golden teeth through the trees.
Cam’s legs were folded under him and his eyes were closed, making a furrow between them, and his fingertips hung limp to touch the earth. Opposite him knelt the blonde girl, staring intently at his closed eyes. Zoe stood further down the bank, watching.
“Now he’s lost his ball,” crooned the boy, swaying almost imperceptibly.
“And now she’s setting out paper plates and cups on the trailer table,” answered Carrie, shutting her eyes to be certain.
Far down the bank, where the river wound on to the old mill, a bird flew off in the direction of the dying sun.
“He’s wandering back to the trailer now, slowly, biting his fingernail.”
“The pot’s ready . . . Now she’s calling the kids to supper.” She placed her hands on her thighs and swayed slightly.
“Down to the end of the trailer where he thinks she won’t see him. He knows it’ll be too dark to play by the time he’s finished eating. He’s trying to pretend he hasn’t heard....”
“She’s smiling and going to the door—leaning out....”
In the tops of the trees, for the first time all day, a breeze stirred and swished.
“He knows his two sisters are coming ... he’s turning to watch them go inside...”
“And she’s smiling at them as they come through the door, asking them if they’ve washed their hands...”
“And... he’s turning to go in ... help me.”
“What...-”
“Is she coming out after...”
“No. She’ll give him another couple of minutes, she’s thinking.”
“He’s standing there, expecting her to call again...”
“Anyone around?”
Listening, Zoe began to walk towards them.
“No. No other kids playing around.”
“She’s going to give him another minute, Cam...”
“Then ...” His fingers rubbed his temples. “Then . . . NOW!”
With a start, Carrie opened her eyes.
He went rigid for a moment, and fell forward on to the ground before her. And that was all.
Carrie did not move.
The forest air hummed with silence at the end of the day.
Zoe put out her hand, hesitated, then bent to touch him. And that was all.
* * * *
At the first leap of flame, Carrie let the match drop on to his body.
From the other side of the river Zoe could see the splash of flame caught reflected in the black water. The sticks burned quickly, turning the pyre into a bright, angular frame in the night.
In the glow, Carrie jumped back from the flames.
“Zoe!” she screamed in an animal scream, “ZOE!”
She crossed the bridge and ran up to her side. Carrie was still shaking, fists clenched at her sides.
She seemed to be groping for words, staring ahead into the fire. Finally she said, in a strained voice, “He came back. At the last minute, he—came back!”
Zoe made a choked sound in her throat.
“I could see—through the fire—I could see his eyes open!” She dropped to her knees. “He wasn’t gone. He tried to yell something about not making it all the way, he tried to yell while he had a chance...” Her face was not distorted but the tears ran down her seared cheeks. “Something went wrong”
She began rocking slowly, eyes not fixed on anything, saying what had to be said.
Dry twigs popped and sputtered. Something bubbled away into steam.
“Something must have frightened the little boy at the last second . . . the contact wasn’t complete—only halfway ... he was caught between the two bodies ... he hadn’t settled into the boy’s all the way yet. . . .” Her mouth twisted up and she sobbed heavily, hoarsely.
The fire flared up suddenly against the darkness.
The girl on her knees let herself fall forward on to the ground. Her light hair tossed forward and was singed.
Zoe walked back along the river, turning her face into the night.
Much later, when the forest darkness had deepened like velvet around the pointed fingers of the treetops, Zoe came back along the water’s edge to the pile of dying embers.
The other girl lay in almost the same spot as before, but she had rolled over on to her back and was now sweeping her dulled eyes back and forth across the heavens. Antares was ablaze in its full brilliance in the southern sky. Occasionally something sputtered and died in the orange-red glow beyond the top of her head. Her face and neck and arms and legs were greasy with perspiration and dirt. The dry lips were parted, and her breathing deep and rhythmic.
Zoe stood over her for a while, then helped her to stand. Slowly, Zoe supporting her, they started down towards the bridge.
From the middle of the bridge, the pyre was a dying flicker.
“I’m all right.” Zoe let her go and she stepped to the rail.
“Before we started, I asked if we could see him—see the one he’ll be—after the transfer. He said he didn’t know. I told him that when I probed the mother, she was thinking about moving the trailer out in the morning. He said to come to the camp early and he’d try to make himself visible as they move out. He said he’d like a glimpse of us, too, before moving on, because ... because he didn’t know how long it would be, or if we’d ever...”
Something ran from her eye, but she let it go.
“He explained again that he would be gaining by absorbing the other’s mentality, and that the only loss would be in aloneness. I asked him what about us and he didn’t answer at first. Finally he said we’d probably have to make a transfer, too, before long. Then he said something about looking for each other from time to time—that is, if our transfers don’t take us too far away. Then ... well, the rest we didn’t say with words.”
She waited. Zoe came up alongside her and leaned on the rail.
Carrie was standing straight once more and almost proud. Almost.
“You know . . . he—the little boy—has two sisters—two little girls to grow up with again.” When she looked at Zoe, she had the faintest beginnings of a smile on her lips.
Which didn’t last.
“But it wasn’t complete. . . . We lost half of Cam tonight, you know. . . . He came back—half-way—and it wasn’t—complete.”
The water lapped steadily at the sand. As it sloshed back out each time, a portion of the faint glow was pulled with it to be shattered as a warm wind came up and strafed the river’s surface.
And then, after a long, quiet waiting, the rest had to be said, in a voice that broke long before it was finished.
“And so we’ll go tomorrow morning, early, just after dawn, and we’ll look for him—and maybe, if we’re lucky, we’ll see him as he climbs into the car with his sisters to start on the trip. But maybe . . . maybe he won’t move out tomorrow, after all. Maybe the mother will change her mind. Maybe he’ll be out playing with the other little kids in the morning camp. And you know, Zoe, he won’t be…too hard to spot, if you think about it. . . . All—all we have to do—is look for the one who—who acts sort of crazy—like—like he just has maybe half a mind—the half that didn’t get burned up....”
After a long, long time, Zoe was the one who left the bridge and walked back along the water. Somebody had to get rid of the evidence.