Chapter IV

“Look, Gabe,” the girl said, “don’t try to fool me! I know you too well. And I know you have that man’s--the real Gabriel Lockard’s--body.” She put unnecessary stardust on her nose as she watched her husband’s reflection in the dressing table mirror.

Lockard--Lockard’s body, at any rate--sat up and felt his unshaven chin. “That what he tell you?”

“No, he didn’t tell me anything really--just suggested I ask you whatever I want to know. But why else should he guard somebody he obviously hates the way he hates you? Only because he doesn’t want to see his body spoiled.”

“It is a pretty good body, isn’t it?” Gabe flexed softening muscles and made no attempt to deny her charge; very probably he was relieved at having someone with whom to share his secret.

“Not as good as it must have been,” the girl said, turning and looking at him without admiration. “Not if you keep on the way you’re coursing. Gabe, why don’t you... ?”

“Give it back to him, eh?” Lockard regarded his wife appraisingly. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? You’d be his wife then. That would be nice--a sound mind in a sound body. But don’t you think that’s a little more than you deserve?”

“I wasn’t thinking about that, Gabe,” she said truthfully enough, for she hadn’t followed the idea to its logical conclusion. “Of course I’d go with you,” she went on, now knowing she lied, “when you got your ... old body back.”

Sure, she thought, I’d keep going with you to farjeen houses and thrill-mills. Actually she had accompanied him to a thrill-mill only once, and from then on, despite all his threats, she had refused to go with him again. But that once had been enough; nothing could ever wash that experience from her mind or her body.

“You wouldn’t be able to get your old body back, though, would you?” she went on. “You don’t know where it’s gone, and neither, I suppose, does he?”

“I don’t want to know!” he spat. “I wouldn’t want it if I could get it back. Whoever it adhered to probably killed himself as soon as he looked in a mirror.” He swung long legs over the side of his bed. “Christ, anything would be better than that! You can’t imagine what a hulk I had!”

“Oh, yes, I can,” she said incautiously. “You must have had a body to match your character. Pity you could only change one.”

He rose from the bed and struck her right on the mouth. Although he hadn’t used his full strength, the blow was painful nonetheless. She could feel the red of her lipstick become mixed with a warmer, liquid red that trickled slowly down her freshly powdered chin. She wouldn’t cry, because he liked that, but crumpled to the ground and lay still. If, experience had taught her, she pretended to be hurt, he wouldn’t hit her again. Only sometimes it was hard to remember that at the actual moment of hurt and indignity. He was too afraid of prison--a tangible prison. And perhaps, to do him credit, he didn’t want to deface his own property.

He sat down on the edge of the bed again and lit a milgot stick. “Oh, get up, Helen. You know I didn’t hit you that hard.”

“Did you have to beat him up to get him to change bodies?” she asked from the floor.

“No.” He laughed reminiscently. “I just got him drunk. We were friends, so it was a cinch. He was my only friend; everybody else hated me because of my appearance.” His features contorted. “What made him think he was so damn much better than other people that he could afford to like me? Served him right for being so noble.”

She stared at the ceiling--it was so old its very fabric was beginning to crack--and said nothing.

“He didn’t even realize what he had here--” Lockard tapped his broad chest with complacence--”until it was too late. Took it for granted. Sickened me to see him taking the body for granted when I couldn’t take mine that way. People used to shrink from me. Girls...”

She sat up. “Give me a milgot, Gabe.”

He lighted one and handed it to her. “For Christ’s sake, Helen, I gave him more than he had a right to expect. I was too god-damn noble myself. I was well-milled; I didn’t have to leave half of my holdings in my own name--I could have transferred them all to his. If I had, then he wouldn’t have had the folio to hound me all over this planet or to other planets, if I’d had the nerve to shut myself up on a spaceship, knowing he probably would be shut up on it with me.” He smiled. “Of course he won’t hurt me; that’s the one compensation. Damage me, and he damages himself.”