"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...."