Farnsworth grinned back. "I see. Well, I'll let you know when I'm ready
for your impressions. Probably tomorrow some time."
"Fine."
* * * * *
He walked back over to the window, but this time he looked at the horizon,
not at the street.
Farnsworth had called him "Bart". It's funny, Stanton thought, how habit
can get the best of a man. Farnsworth had known the truth all along, and
now he knew that his patient--_former_ patient--was aware of the truth.
And still, he had called him "Bart".
_And I still think of myself as Bart,_ he thought. _I probably always
will._
And why not? Martin Stanton no longer existed--in fact he had never had
much of a real existence. He was only a bad dream; only "Bart" was real.
Take two people, genetically identical. Damage one of them so badly that
he is helpless and useless--and always only a step away from death. It is
inevitable that the weaker will identify himself with the stronger.
The vague telepathic bond that always links identical twins (they "think
alike", they say) becomes unbalanced under such conditions. Normally,
there is a give-and-take, and each preserves the sense of his own
identity, since the two different sets of sense receptors give different
viewpoints. But if one of the twins is damaged badly enough something must
happen to the telepathic link. Usually, it is broken.
But the link between Mart and Bart Stanton had not been broken. It had
become a one-way channel. Martin, in order to escape the prison of his own
body, had become a receptor for Bart's thoughts. He felt as Bart felt--the
thrill of running after a baseball, the pride of doing something clever
with his hands.
In effect, Martin ceased to think. The thoughts in his mind were Bart's.
The feeling of identity was almost complete.
To an outside observer, it appeared that Martin had become a cataleptic
schizophrenic, completely cut off from reality. The "Bart" part of him did
not want to be disturbed by the sensory impressions that "Mart's" body
provided. Like the schizophrenic, Martin was living in a little world that
was cut off from the actual physical world around his body.
The difference between Martin's condition and that of the ordinary
schizophrenic was that _his_ little world actually existed. It was an
almost exact counterpart of the world that existed in the perfectly sane,
rational mind of his brother, Bart. It grew and developed as Bart did, fed
by the telepathic flow from the stronger mind to the weaker.
There were two Barts, and no Mart at all.
And then the Neurophysical Institute had come into the picture. A new
process had been developed, by which a human being could be
reconstructed--made, literally, into a superman. The drawback was that a
normal human body resisted the process--to the death, if necessary, just
as a normal human body will resist a skin graft from an alien donor.
But the radiation-damaged body of Martin Stanton had no resistance of that
kind. With him--perhaps--the process might work.
So Bartholomew Stanton, Martin's legal guardian after the death of their
mother, had given permission for the series of operations that would
rebuild his brother.
The telepathic link, of course, had to be shut off--for a time, at least.
Part of that could be done in the treatment of Martin, but Bart, too, had
to do his part. By submitting to hypnosis, he had allowed himself to be
convinced that his name was Stanley Martin. He had taken a job on Luna,
and then had gone to the asteriods. The simple change of name and
environment had been just enough to snap the link during a time when
Martin's brain had been inactivated by therapy and anesthetics.
Only the sense of identity remained. The patient was still Bart.
Mannheim had used them both, naturally. Colonel Mannheim had the ability
to use anyone at hand, including himself, to get a job done.
Stanton looked at his watch. It was almost time.
Mannheim had sent for "Stanley Martin" when the time had come for him to
return in order to give the Nipe data that he would be sure to
misinterpret. A special code phrase in the message had released "Stanley
Martin" from the posthypnotic suggestion that had held him for so long. He
knew that he was Bartholomew Stanton again.
_And so do I,_ thought the man by the window. _We have a lot to straighten
out, we two._
There was a knock at the door.
Stanton walked over and opened it, trying to think.
It was like looking into a mirror.
"Hello, Bart," he said.
"Hello, Bart," said the other.
In that instant, the complete telepathic linkage was restored, and they
both knew what only one of them had known before--that, for a time, the
flow had been one-way again--that "Stanley Martin" had experienced the
entire battle with the Nipe. His release from the posthypnotic suggestion
had made it possible.
_E duobus unum._
There was unity without loss of identity.
* * * * *