Slowly, Horner nodded. He looked outside. He saw night darkness, a
dimly lit driveway, a hemlock hedge twelve feet high.
"Sign said 'Positively no vehicles,'" the cabbie told him. "So I guess
you walk from here."
"I guess I walk," Horner said. He consulted the taxi meter, took four
dollar bills from his money clip and a half dollar in change from his
pocket. Then he got out.
The cab door closed. The driver put the clutch down, then up, and
the cab rolled away into the darkness. Horner lit a cigarette. It
tasted harsh and bitter, stale. The darkness engulfed him and a pulse
hammered, of all places, in his right leg. He felt all at once old--or
at least aging. He sighed and it was not a sound a young man would
make. In the darkness on the unknown road, he longed for his youth, his
lost youth. Then he walked resolutely up the dimly lit driveway flanked
by the high hemlock hedge.
* * * * *
The door-knocker was brass, and Horner let it fall. It made a
resounding noise and the door opened within a second, as if someone
were standing half a foot away on the other side with no job but to
admit Hugh Horner the instant he knocked.
"Come in, Mr. Horner," the girl said. "Naturally, we were expecting
you."
She was tall and she wore a cashmere sweater, loose but not so loose
that it failed to reveal high, maidenly breasts. She wore a skirt not
provocatively tight, but tight enough to suggest the good thighs that
she had. Her hair fell almost to her shoulders in abundant auburn
waves. She had a lovely face and Horner thought she was about twenty
years old.
"You were expecting me?" Horner said.
"Of course. You see, _Bodies, Inc._ carefully screens its
applicants...."
"But I didn't apply!"
"Ah, but we knew you were going to. We have to be sure of our clients.
Because if a single client decided to talk, we'd be out of business."
"The authorities?"
"Certainly. But since you're here, we can get down to business at once.
You have the three thousand dollars with you?"
"Why, no. No, I don't."
"Bankbook?"
"Yes, I have that."
"It's good enough. Tomorrow we can take your identification papers,
driving license and so forth, and get the money ourselves. That is,
unless they know you personally at the bank?"
Horner said that he did his banking by mail. He supposed they were
going to forge his signature, but made no comment because he had
decided, all at once, to call the whole thing off.
"See here," he said. "This is a little awkward. But you can trust me
not to talk."
"What's a little awkward?"
"I--I've decided not to go through with it," Horner said lamely. "My
wife, my friends...."
The girl said nothing. She took two steps forward, placed her arms
around Horner, and kissed him. She wore a subtle perfume. She was
beautiful. Her lips were soft and warm, inviting. Her lips were hot.
Her lips burned....
Horner broke away breathlessly. His heart was pounding. He knew his
face was flushed, he could feel it. His legs were unsteady. He wanted
to respond, but his energies were dissipating in the hard-pumping
heart, the trembling limbs, the flushed face. It was a middle-aged
response. It lacked the drive and direction of youth.
* * * * *
"Did you like that?" the girl asked, taking one of Horner's hands and
holding it.
"Yes," came his breathless reply. "Oh, yes! I liked it."
"But you didn't...."
"Respond? I have a wife."
"That wasn't the reason."
"We're happily married!"
"And I like this sweater I'm wearing very much, but I have others and
will wear others."
"The mores of our society...."
"Mores baloney! You were just plain scared. Middle-aged scared. Look at
you. You're soft and you're getting wrinkles. Do you think I was really
attracted to you? Do you think that's why I kissed you? No, you fool.
That wasn't the reason."
"Then you...."
"Wanted to make this point. Wanted to show you you're old, too old to
enjoy the most obvious pleasures of a younger man's life. Twenty-five,
Mr. Horner! That's the age! The age not of boyishness but of mature
youth! Twenty-five! The perfect age for you, and you know it." She
smiled at him. It was a deliberately sexy smile, a come-on, an
invitation which Horner, under the circumstances, had to decline. "Are
you convinced?" she said.
"That I'm not as young as I used to be? Of course."
She gave him a deliberately daughterly kiss, pecking at his temple with
her soft warm lips. "Then you're ready to go to the observation room."
The observation room, thought Horner. Did he do the observing, or was
he observed? He sighed. It was not a young man's way of expressing
what Hugh Horner felt. He knew it was not. He said slowly, bleakly,
"I'm ready for the observation room."
The girl did not even nod. She had known he would be ready all along.
* * * * *
It was a small, utterly bare room with three walls of dull gray metal
and the fourth of dazzling floor-to-ceiling glass. On the other side
of the glass was a similar room--except that it was furnished with a
single bench running across its length.
Men were seated on the bench. Young men, apparently staring at Horner
and his lovely companion.
"They can't see us," the girl explained. "One way glass."
"But do they, er, know why they are here?"
"Naturally. Everything's on the up-and-up with _Bodies, Inc._, morally
if not legally."
"And they are...."
"Your choice, Mr. Horner. As you can see, there are eight young men
in there, each twenty-five years old, each guaranteed in good health,
each perfectly willing to switch identities with you. I must tell you
in advance, however, that the switch is quite permanent. There is no
recourse. You understand?"
"Yes, but...." Horner looked at the eight men who could not see him,
and lapsed into silence. The eight all looked like sound specimens,
all right. All seemed healthy and alert, even cheerful. Horner said,
somewhat suspiciously, "My reason for wanting to switch places is
obvious. And theirs?"
[Illustration: It was a good body. It looked as though it would last
for years.]
The girl licked her lips before she spoke. They were very nice lips.
They were delicious lips. Horner had tasted them. He was suddenly
reminded of a magician who makes diverting passes with one hand while
performing his magic with the other. "Money," the girl said laconically.
"Money? But I'm only paying three thousand dollars. Surely a man
wouldn't surrender his youth for such a sum!"
"Our regulations call for a man's total savings. In your case, three
thousand dollars. But most of our clients are extremely wealthy, Mr.
Horner. Now, since half of the fee goes to the youth who will become
Hugh Horner while we keep the other half...."
"But fifteen hundred dollars only!"
"I should have said it goes into a pool. A yearly pool, you see. The
average last year was four-hundred sixty-five thousand dollars, Mr.
Horner. Don't you think some young men would be willing to surrender
twenty years of their lives for half a million dollars?"
"I wouldn't if I were young," Horner said at once.
"Between you and me, that's because you aren't. But it's their choice
to make, and it's a free choice. Now, have you made a selection?"
Horner looked at the eight men again, and shrugged.
"I see," the girl said. "And I agree. They're all choice specimens,
is that what you're thinking? All strong, all healthy, and all will
probably be in better shape than you are, twenty years from now."
"Do I get some kind of a guarantee on their health? I mean, what if ...
if I should pick one of them with an incurable disease or something?"
Although he asked this very practical question, Horner still hardly
expected to go through with anything as incredible as switching bodies
with one of the young men on the other side of the glass partition.
After all, he told himself for the tenth time, such things just weren't
possible. This was either an elaborate joke or an elaborate dream.
He decided--hopefully--that it was the latter. He recalled that the
doctor had given him reserprine to calm his nerves recently, and the
doctor had told him that one of the side effects of reserprine was an
abundance of nightmare.
"That's it," he said. "Reserprine."
"What did you say?" the girl asked him, an amused look on her face.
"Er, I said, that one's fine," Horner blurted, pointing at random at
one of the men on the other side of the glass partition.
"Good," the girl said. "Then everything is ready." She touched a
section of the wall and the dazzling glass sheet abruptly went opaque.
This lasted for some five seconds, then the wall became transparent
again.
* * * * *
All but one of the men had disappeared. Horner assumed it was the
individual he had singled out quite at random.
"Now really ..." he began.
"Look at me," the girl said.
That was easy. She was beautiful.
Her eyes grew very large. Incredibly large. They filled her entire
head. They filled the room. They were two enormous blue pits. Horner
jumped into both of them just before he fell into a deep hypnotic sleep.
* * * * *
His hands were raw and bleeding. His first thought was that the guards
would know something was wrong when they saw his hands. He was down on
his knees in foul-smelling dirt, but his head scraped the low ceiling.
He was digging mechanically with his bare hands. He had had a shovel,
but it had been lost in a slight cave-in.
"Hey, Lonnie!" a harsh whispering voice called. "Stop dreaming, for
cryin' out loud. If we don't do it tonight, we'll never get another
chance. Forbish is out."
"What do you mean he's out?" called back Horner, whose name now seemed
to be Lonnie.
"You know what I mean. Out. Another cell-block. Forbish got a mouth
like the Holland Tunnel. What I mean, if he ain't here to cash in on
the deal, he's gonna spill it. And fast. How you comin'?"
"I'm digging," Horner responded. "I'm digging ... and digging." He was
doing that, all right. The work should have been tremendously tiring,
should have exhausted Hugh Horner in his run-down forty-seven-year-old
body. But he found it almost exhilarating. He looked at his hands.
Dirty hands, and bloody. But large--larger than they should have been.
Horner had had small hands, almost delicate hands. He dug and dug,
thinking.
Either it was another reserprine dream--or he wasn't Hugh Horner.
Then was he the man whom he'd selected--more or less at random? But
that wasn't possible, for the man in question had been in the _Bodies,
Inc._ establishment on Long Island--unless, somehow, that had merely
been a projected image of the man, like three-dimensional television.
Then ... where was he?
"Want me to take over, Lonnie?" demanded the harsh whisper. For the
first time, Horner realized that it was not close by. It was a loud
whisper and it came from a considerable ways off. Wanting time to
think, Horner said, "Yes. All right."
He backed out of the tunnel slowly, awkwardly, his body stiff. Stiff,
but not painful. Hugh Horner's limbs would have ached terribly in this
cramped position, but Lonnie's did not. Lonnie scurried more rapidly
now--backwards and not minding it at all--out of the tunnel. The walls
of the tunnel, Horner observed, were of bare soft earth. If his elbows
or knees struck them, some of the earth sifted down, and sometimes a
rock. He had the sudden impression that the tunnel had been dug over a
considerable period of time with crude implements or by hand.
Finally, Horner emerged into a small square room. There were two bunks,
one over the other, he observed as he stood up. The walls were bare
plaster. There was a sink and a lidless toilet. There was a small
mirror. Only three of the walls were plaster. The fourth consisted of a
grim row of vertical bars.
He was in a prison cell.
* * * * *
He gazed about wildly. He wanted to scream. He didn't understand how
this could be, but understanding was decidedly secondary. He looked
at his bloody hands. It was his own blood--Lonnie's, that is--but it
was symbolic to him. A man was sitting on the edge of one of the
bunks, smoking. He was watching Horner. He was a short man with immense
shoulders. He wore gray denim and Horner did not have to be told it was
a prison uniform or that his clothing was identical.
Somehow, Horner had traded places--identities!--with a convict.
"'Samatter, Lonnie? What you staring at?"
"Nothing. Nothing, I guess." Horner went on staring. The other man's
name was Jake, he knew that all at once. He knew other things. Other
memories came flooding back ... not his memories. Lonnie's. Because
he was Lonnie now. His mind was numb. Numb. He was Lonnie--Lionel
Overman--and he was in jail on a twenty-to-life rap. His behavior,
the river of memory told him, had not been exemplary. It would not be
twenty years. It would be life.
"What--what am I in for?" he demanded in a soft voice, for that
particular memory would not come.
"You're kidding," the man named Jake said.
Horner went over to him and grabbed his denim shirt with
dirt-and-blood-caked hands. "I asked, what am I in for?"
"Hey, take it easy," Jake growled. "Don't get yourself in an uproar. We
got other things to think about."
"Tell me," Horner said grimly.
* * * * *
Jake looked at him. Jake had the widest shoulders Horner had ever seen.
Probably, Jake was incredibly strong. But his shoulders shrugged and
he said, "When you get like that, Lonnie, I guess you got to have your
way." He added one word. He added, "Murder."
"Murder," Horner said slowly.
"Hell, yeah, murder. Now snap out of it, will you?"
"Murder. Why didn't they electrocute me?"
"You was young at the time. Twenty, I think. Hey, what's the matter
with you? Will you leave go the shirt so I can go down there?"
"Yes," Horner said. "Yes, of course." There was more on the river of
memory now. There was Jake. And Lonnie Overman--Horner. And a man named
Forbish, another convict. For eighteen months they had been digging.
Digging.
The entrance of their tunnel was concealed behind the toilet. For
eighteen months they had kept a model cell and inspections had been
only cursory. Eighteen long months.
And tonight, according to the missing Forbish's calculations, they were
ready to strike paydirt. Which, naturally, would make Forbish very
bitter. Because now he wasn't with them. Forbish had been transferred
to another cell-block when the three-man cells had been converted to
two-man cells. Forbish was a bitter, brooding fellow to begin with.
Forbish might be bitter enough to spill everything.
"... Don't forget," Jake was saying. "We're close enough now. Forbish
knew what he was talking about. I hope to hell you can swim, Lonnie."
"I can swim."
"On account of the tunnel lets out near the river, remember? So, don't
forget. The guards come now, it'll probably be on account of Forbish
told them. The guards come now, don't bother giving me the signal. Just
come crawling in and we'll try to bust through. It got to be no more
than inches now. Ain't that right?"
Horner said it was right. Forbish, now departed, had been their tunnel
expert. The whole plan had been Forbish's, and now Forbish was deprived
of it. There was no telling what the bitter Forbish might do.
"Well, wish me luck, kid."
"Good luck," Horner said dutifully. Jake got down on hands and knees
and squirmed down behind the toilet and soon disappeared into the
tunnel.
Horner wanted to think. Desperately he wanted to think. But now his
stunned mind was a blank. The thoughts would not come. He sat there,
all but mindless.
And heard footsteps.
He shut his eyes. The bunk was hard, but not too hard. If he shut his
eyes and tried to think very hard of Hugh Horner and Hugh Horner's
life, pretty soon he would wake up and the nightmare would be over.
He shuddered. He was only fooling himself, he knew. This was no
reserprine dream. This was--incredibly--the real thing.
He heard footsteps.
He stood up, adrenalin coursing through his veins and making him feel
vital and alive and ready for anything. Footsteps meant the guard was
coming, but the gray light streaming in through the window told Horner
that it was barely dawn and there would be no reason for a guard to
come so purposefully in this direction unless Forbish had squealed.
So, if the guard came now, which seemed likely, the guard would come
seeking their tunnel.
* * * * *
Lonnie's and Jake's--not Horner's. Horner had had nothing to do with
it. No. Certainly not.
But Horner was going to serve Lonnie Overman's life-term in prison--for
murder. And Horner would be punished for the attempted escape.
Punishment? He was already serving a life-term. Solitary-confinement,
probably. He was innocent. He had done nothing, except wish for youth.
It wasn't fair, he told himself. It was terribly, tragically unfair. He
wanted his freedom.
"Hey you, Overman," the guard said. He stood outside the cell, holding
the bars. "I can't see so good in there. Where's Halrohan?"
Halrohan was Jake. "Sleeping," Horner said.
The guard scowled and squinted. "Bunk looks like it's empty," he said.
"The top bunk," said Horner.
"Can't see the top bunk," said the guard. He searched for his keys,
inserting the right one, turning the big tumblers.
Horner tensed. He had committed no murder. He had done nothing. He was
no criminal. He wanted his freedom but could not tell them, by the
way, I'm not who you think I am, I'm a fellow named Hugh Horner and I
never committed anything worse than a traffic violation in my life, so
please get me the hell out of here and give me back my old body, it's
all right, I don't mind being forty-seven years old. He could tell them
nothing like that. He could only do what Lonnie Overman was trying to
do, and try to do something later about this unexpected place-changing
with a convicted lifer.
He could only try to escape.
The heavy bars swung in, all but soundless on oiled hinges. The guard
swaggered into the cell, expecting nothing. He walked to the bunks,
peered at the upper one.
He reached for the whistle, lanyard-dangling from his neck. He got it
in his mouth and blew on it. It was the loudest sound Horner had ever
heard.
A second later, Horner grabbed the guard's shoulder and swung him
around and hit him.
Horner felt the numbness and pain of it to his elbow, but it had been
a good blow. Lonnie knew how to use his fists. The guard went down and
stayed down and Horner wondered how much time they would have until the
whistle brought help.
He scurried to the toilet and got down on hands and knees behind it,
crawling into their tunnel.
* * * * *
"Forbish must have talked already," he called out, making his way on
hands and knees through the pitch-dark tunnel. The shaft was barely
wide enough to admit him and angled sharply several times where
Overman, Jake Halrohan and Forbish must have encountered large rocks.
Horner estimated the distance at fifty feet or more before he came up
against Jake's back. He had expected complete darkness here at the
nether end of the tunnel, but faint light seeped in from somewhere.
"Made it!" Jake cried hoarsely. "Listen to the river."
Horner heard it, a faint rushing of water. "The guards," he said. "I
took care of one, but not before he blew his whistle. We don't have
much time."
* * * * *
There was not enough room for both of them to dig. Horner waited on
hands and knees while Jake clawed at the earth again with his fingers.
Soon Horner heard a pounding sound and realized Jake was using his
fists to enlarge the hole in the soft mucky ground.
"I'm squeezing through!" Jake finally cried, and Horner felt the
man's bulk ahead of him shift over to one side and then forward. A
moment later, Horner felt cool fresh air caress his cheek. He had not
realized how close and fetid it was in the tunnel until now. He sobbed,
breathing deeply of the night air. A wind stirred, and hard rain pelted
his face. For a few tormenting seconds his shoulders became wedged in
the opening, then he was through. Suddenly there was no footing and he
rolled over and over down a steep embankment, taking loose earth and
stones with him. He came to rest very close to the river. The water
sounds were much closer now.
"We made it, bucko," Jake said in a low, jubilant voice. "We made it."
Just then a siren wailed above them and the night gloom was punctuated
by a quick-swinging searchbeam. Horner looked up quickly, knew the
light would never spot them down here because of the hill. But the
tunnel was something else again. Armed guards could be expected through
the tunnel momentarily.
"Do we wait, or beat it?" Jake said hoarsely.
"What do you think?" Horner called over his shoulder as he got up
and bounded down to the river. The bank was steep here; he took four
splashing strides and had to swim. The water was icy, the current
swift. Horner took a look over his shoulder, saw Jake wading more
gingerly into the water as the mouth of the tunnel suddenly erupted in
a bright flash of light that illuminated everything.
"Stop or we'll shoot!" a voice cried, and Horner let the current take
him, his head twisted back so he could see. Jake, the fool, had not yet
allowed the water to take him. He was still standing, still floundering
uncertainly in the shallows, when the flashlight beam at the mouth of
the tunnel caught and held him.
"Stand perfectly still, you!"
Jake shouted a curse and splashed into deeper water.
He did not get far enough to swim. There were three explosive sounds
and three flashes of light brighter than the searchlight and Jake threw
his hands into the air, spun completely around and staggered back
toward the embankment. Shuddering in the cold, Horner kicked easily
with his legs. He'd already removed his shoes. He was careful that his
kicking did not break the surface. He changed to a safe underwater
scissor and a breaststroke, swimming silently, unseen. He was an
innocent man in a killer's body, but could never prove that. He had to
get away.
"There were two of them," a voice called behind him.