Transmigration (14 page)

 

 

Very gently, the next time Baudaker was going to crash down into second
gear long before the speed had dropped enough, Fletcher tried to delay
him a second or two, and succeeded. For once the change was smooth.

 

 

However, Baudaker was alerted.

 

 

--Why did I do that? he asked himself.

 

 

--What, make a decent gear change for once?

 

 

In the long pause that followed, Fletcher was wondering quite calmly
how it would go this time.

 

 

--Who are you? Baudaker asked at last.

 

 

--John Fletcher, remember?

 

 

--Yes. Yes, of course. You had immense potential. How it would be used one
could only guess. But this is wonderful! Life after death! Immortality!

 

 

His enthusiasm engulfed Fletcher; smothered him.

 

 

--The mind has no barriers, Baudaker went on lyrically.
--This is a triumph of mind over matter, of mind over death. Man has
conquered death!

 

 

--Now wait a minute, before you shit yourself. . .

 

 

Fletcher stopped, appalled. That, of course, was Ross. He might have
withdrawn completely to figure this out, but when he started to do so
Baudaker cornered wildly and nearly hit a bus.

 

 

Fletcher stepped in.

 

 

--Unless you let me do the driving, this blazing new immortality won't
last long. I drove a van for five years. The mind has plenty of barriers,
Baudaker. I just happen to be unable to cease to exist. I hop from mind
to mind.

 

 

You've been in others? Of course, you must have been, it's two days
since . . .

 

 

--Since I died, yes. I've been in Judy MacDonald and Ian Ross. I just
lost a battle with Ross. You might say he drank me under the table.

 

 

Fletcher realized that he had achieved a mild witticism. This was further
proof that he not only changed his hosts, his hosts had changed him. He
was not the dour Puritan he had been.

 

 

--You chose me? Baudaker inquired humbly.

 

 

--I never do the choosing. I didn't choose, in the first place, to survive
after I was dead. I certainly didn't choose to be in the mind of a girl.

 

 

--Still, it must have been fascinating.

 

 

--Several words for it occur to me, but they don't include that
one. I didn't choose to be Ross either. I couldn't, scarcely knowing
he existed. When I left Ross, it was for oblivion. That time at least,
I had fully made up my mind to it.

 

 

Fletcher reversed the car neatly into the tiny and rather awkward garage
of a maisonette, to Baudaker's open admiration. Baudaker usually left
the car outside all night because it was too much trouble to get it in
and out of the garage.

 

 

--Incidentally, you didn't let me smoke in the car, Baudaker observed.

 

 

--No.

 

 

--How does this work? Can I do only what you let me do, or what?

 

 

--We share the responsibility.

 

 

Baudaker was curious, excited, neither rebellious nor afraid. With him,
Fletcher was convinced, it would never be a matter of fighting for
control. He would say in effect "Move over," and Baudaker would meekly
surrender, quite unresentfully, like an acting skipper who was quite
prepared to hand over the responsibility when the new skipper turned up.

 

 

It even seemed -- and at this stage it could be only a guess -- that
Baudaker might be sorry to lose him. Baudaker was making no secret of his
enthusiastic intention of embarking on an orgy of tests, psychological,
extra-sensory, personality, association, and all the others in his
extensive repertoire, to try to pin down the wonder of what had happened
and to codify some of the manifestations of the miracle.

 

 

Fletcher let Baudaker take control again. He waddled to the back door
of the maisonette (the rain had stopped) and let himself in.

 

 

Fletcher suddenly remembered Baudaker's reluctance to go home. What did
he expect to find?

 

 

Gerry was snoring in an armchair in the tiny lounge. The air stank of
whisky. There was mud on the knees of his trousers, his fly was open,
and he had pulled out his shirt to scratch his stomach.

 

 

Baudaker reacted defensively to Fletcher's disgust.
--You don't smoke and you don't drink. Gerry's very young . . .

 

 

--Too young to be allowed by the law to buy a drink, but evidently that
hasn't given him any trouble. You're relieved to find him here, alone,
and merely drunk. Why?

 

 

--There are so many worse things I could have found.

 

 

--If you're so concerned about what Gerry might be doing on his own,
why leave him alone?

 

 

Baudaker sighed.

 

 

--Whether I'm around or not, Gerry does as he pleases. It's better if
I'm not here.

 

 

--You and he live here on your own?

 

 

--There's a housekeeper, Mrs. Wilson. In the mornings only.

 

 

--And what do you do now, put him to bed or just leave him there?

 

 

--Just leave him. If I touched him, he might start to fight.

 

 

--The girl what about her?

 

 

--Sheila? Baudaker sighed again, and Fletcher felt a familiar emotion, a
feeling of inadequacy, regret, failure. Again, he thought. Fletcher, Ross,
now Baudaker. Judy, who had perhaps most reason to feel it, had not had
sufficient awareness of the world and her place in it to feel inadequate.

 

 

--What's Sheila like?

 

 

--I thought you knew her.

 

 

---I saw them together once. What's she like?

 

 

Baudaker hesitated. Then he burst out, with uncharacteristic bitterness:
"Like all of us. Like me, like Gerry, like all the Baudakers.

 

 

--Shella's a relative?

 

 

--I'd better explain. Although she's a Baudaker, she's quite a distant
relative. Let's see . . . no, I really don't remember the relationship.
I'm not good at things like that. When she was a baby, she was left with
us briefly -- Gerry was born within days of her -- while her parents
made a quick trip to India. They were killed. No, there's no point in
telling you anything but the truth. They killed themselves. It was a
suicide pact. Of course, I haven't spoken of this for years. . . .

 

 

Fletcher felt an urge to shut himself off again. He had had enough of
the troubles of the world. Briefly he had felt reasonably secure in a
reasonably contented being. But it turned out Baudaker had the usual
tangled tale of misery to tell.

 

 

However, he was part of Baudaker, and Gerry and Sheila were part of
Baudaker too. He might as well know.

 

 

--My wife was a wonderful person, Baudaker went on, and instantly the
shadows lifted.
--I think Denis and Margaret counted on her to look after Sheila. You
see, we had her anyway, and when the news came it took a long time to
straighten things out. We kept Sheila, and it would have been all right --
only my wife died.

 

 

The shadows descended again.

 

 

Although he would have to know the full story, it was not necessary for
Fletcher to extract it all at once. There was something very tragic about
the death of Baudaker's wife, some deep hurt that he was reluctant to
touch on. Fletcher could have made him tell the whole story, or could
pick up the details himself from Baudaker's unguarded mind . . . but
not now.

 

 

Baudaker went through to the kitchen and put on the kettle.
--I drink a lot of tea, he said apologetically.
--You don't mind that, do you?

 

 

Fletcher stifled an impulse to laugh.
--No, I don't mind that. And I suppose I'll have to let you smoke now
and then.

 

 

--I don't really mind about that. I've always wanted to stop. Perhaps
this is my chance.

 

 

---Go on and tell me about Sheila and Gerry.

 

 

--They were four when Paula died. (Again that reticence, that hurt,
that reluctance to linger.)
--They'd been brought up as twins. We never did adopt Sheila formally.

 

 

--When your wife died, you brought Sheila and Gerry up yourself?

 

 

--There's always been a housekeeper. When Paula died, Gerry and Sheila
were all right. They were healthy, happy children, affectionate too. It
used to be wonderful I really don't know quite what went wrong.

 

 

Fletcher could feel tears running down Baudaker's cheeks. He was
embarrassed, but said nothing.

 

 

--Well, perhaps I do know what went wrong. What happened was all my
fault. I left the children to Mrs. Hanley, and then to Mrs. Winnington,
and then Mrs. Doverley. I thought a woman would know far more about
bringing them up than I ever could. And then the trouble started:
Gerry stealing from shops, getting into trouble at school, damaging
property. He and Sheila fought very little, as children. They were the
same age and more like brothers than anything else.

 

 

In Baudaker's mind Fletcher saw them as chubby children too young for
school, as twins in the same primary class clinging to each other rather
than turning to the society of classmates, as lean and healthy outdoor
kids of eight, nine, ten. These had been good times for all of them.

 

 

Sheila never played with dolls. She climbed trees with Gerry, fell off
them as he did and cried only when he cried. They clambered on rocks,
caught fish with their hands and watched tadpoles in jars mature into
frogs. In the summer they roamed the countryside all day and came back
quite often clad only in shorts, having taken off their shoes and socks
and T-shirts somewhere and then wandered miles before it occurred to them
to wonder where they'd dropped the rest of their clothes. They were lean,
wiry, brown as berries and never ill.

 

 

That was before it all went wrong.

 

 

Fletcher asked:

 

 

--Didn't anyone ever try to take Gerry and Sheila away from you?

 

 

--No, why should they? Gerry was my son, and nobody seemed to know any
more that Sheila wasn't his sister. And there was a housekeeper --
there must have been twenty or thirty altogether. They never stayed
long. Besides, children are only taken away when they're ill-treated or
neglected, and that never happened to Gerry and Sheila, except once or
twice when I found one of the housekeepers . . .

 

 

He shuddered and didn't go on. Fletcher could guess what had happened.
Driven to distraction, one of the long line of housekeepers would give the
kids the good hiding they deserved and needed, and meek little Baudaker,
horrified, would find the courage to fire her on the spot.

 

 

 

 

The kettle was boiling. Baudaker made the tea in an old earthenware pot
and poured himself a cup.

 

 

--I must sound very stupid, he said apologetically.
--In some ways I was very stupid indeed. As I said, Gerry and Sheila
didn't fight much. Even when they started getting into trouble, they
got into trouble together. As for the fact that Sheila was, after all,
a girl . . .

 

 

When he stopped, Fletcher prompted him:

 

 

--You forgot about it.

 

 

--I almost did forget about it, what with Sheila doing everything Gerry
did. Some boys wanted him to play on their football team, but he wouldn't
because they wouldn't take Sheila too. They didn't sleep in the same bed,
but they always had baths together. Of course that stopped when . . . you
know. One day when they were about thirteen Gerry asked who Denis and
Margaret Baudaker were. I knew then he'd been in my desk and had found
SheHa's birth certificate. I told him the truth and then I told Shella.

 

 

Fletcher went on for him:

 

 

--And almost at once you found them in bed together.

 

 

--Yes.

 

 

The overtones of the meek little man's shock came through.

 

 

Baudaker, it went without saying, had never looked at any woman but his
wife. He could not understand promiscuity: murder and bank robbery and
illicit love were almost equally beyond his understanding. He was totally
lacking in imagination, which was one reason why he had remained a lab
"boy" employed on routine jobs. Even when the wonder of John Fletcher's
supernormal capacities came into his life, all he could think of to do
was repeat the one test which had produced remarkable results.

 

 

If he had been capable of violence, he might, on finding Gerry and Sheila
together, have killed them both and then, naturally, himself.

 

 

Fletcher had no difficulty in comprehending this. Yet the blindness
of Baudaker's attitude made him aware of the similar blind spot in
himself, and how wrong they both had been. To be a modern Puritan among
Puritans was one thing; to see the world only through Puritan eyes was
not rational.

 

 

It was only in theory that Baudaker could acquit Gerry and Sheila of
incest. Although they were not brother and sister and he had been
forced to tell them so, to him this was a technicality. They were
thirteen, children at school. The depth of their guilt, to Baudaker,
was infinite. But that mattered even less than the fact that the gulf
of understanding between them was shown to be unbridgeable.