As I stuffed things into my big battered Gladstone I found myself
changing.
A cryptic statement, that, and one which requires explanation; yet how
can I say just what it was like, this metamorphosis? At first I was the
same creature that had crouched behind the false stalagmite and slain
the guard, then had leaped from the second-story window to flee into
the night. This was a--I was about to say a wholly physical being. That
isn't true. There was brainwork of a sort behind its actions, but an
alien brainwork. Could you understand the thoughts of an ape? Could you
describe them if you did?
At any rate, I slid away from this physical being, imperceptibly,
until Bill Cuff the prosaic pulpster seemed in the ascendant. Touching
familiar things: my typewriter, sport shirts, cigarette lighter, a
stack of manuscript--appeared to bring me back to what had all my life
been normality.
Yet this creates the portrait of a sort of Jekyll-Hyde personality, an
extreme example of schizophrenia. I would not have you believe this for
a moment. I was not two souls warring in a single body, nor a lunatic
of any sort.
No. I was not two people. I was a sleeper who had awakened in a manner
not explained, not understood, but acceptable at once as quite natural.
I found myself in a body which I had already been occupying for
twenty-eight years and two months and seven days. There was no other
personality in this body with me. The body was mine. The mind therein,
fully developed along its own lines, was my mind.
The body and mind were mine, but the _I_--the older _I_--which had
wakened was of somewhat different stuff. It had taken the body and mind
(perhaps while I slept on the marble bench, perhaps during the brief
argument with the guard), merging with them and dominating them. Yet
the dual brain, the single body with new proclivities, were one, were
all Bill Cuff. They differed but they were one.
I have said that before this night I had never even struck anyone. Yet
there had always been the possibility that I might; might strike and
slay, go berserk as I had now done. I had written many tales of brutal
violence. Without my knowledge, there had been the seeds of savagery
within me. They had flowered.
I looked in the mirror. I saw a well-set-up young fellow, a little
broader than average for my six feet, heavy-boned, not much excess fat.
My face was broad too, with high cheekbones and a small mustache and
wide gray eyes, under an unruly thatch of thick black hair. I had a
rather unintellectual look for a writer; it had always annoyed me. But
I didn't look brutal. I had a sort of mild-mannered air, like a wider
Jimmy Stewart.
* * * * *
In all that night I never questioned anything for more than a second
or two until I came to pack my belongings. Then the lifelong habits
and prejudices came back to make me ask myself for an accounting. No
remorse, nor fear, nor any such weak emotions; simply curiosity at the
changes.
What is it, I asked myself; reincarnation?
That would explain many things, including the paradox of two
individuals in one--who were not two, had never been two, yet were
different.
Postulate a gorilla, reborn in a man. His racial memories come to life
after a certain period of time. He is still a man, has the reasoning
ability of a man, is thoroughly Homo sapiens in everything, except
that suddenly he can swing through the trees and can think in a manner
strange to man--a furtive, sly, cunning, beastly way, if you like, but
a way that will help to preserve him even in the stone jungles of man.
As I said this to myself, I caught at one phrase therein. _Swing
through the trees._
It was obvious that my physical powers had undergone a terrific
change. I did not remember my hands ever being so powerful before.
Never, certainly, had my reflexes been so flawless. Why, take but
one instance: my leap from the second floor of the museum. That leap
yesterday would more than likely have cost me two fractured ankles.
Superstitiously I looked in the mirror again and felt my muscles. Had
they grown overnight, bulging out into the great biceps of whatever
primitive entity had emerged within me? So far as I could tell, they
were just my old muscles--not bad for a writer, because I swam a lot
and did calisthenics regularly, but surely no marvels as muscles go.
The change appeared to be in my use of them. Instinctively I could
employ them in the most effective way. What could that be but a racial
memory acting beneath the surface of the skin?
Other implausible explanations of the business occurred to me as I
packed. I discarded them. Nothing seemed to fit except the abrupt
return of a personality from eons ago, some great brute out of my
lineage. That chimed with the curious recollection I had had in the
cave, and with the accent I had several times put upon the word _man_
to describe my enemies. A gorilla? I laughed to myself. An intriguing
thought, indeed! I did not for a minute believe it. But what?