[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction August 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
However fantastic it may seem, the society
so elaborately described in this story has
its seeds in ours. Just check the data....
The opening afternoon class for Mary Walden's ego-shift was almost
over, and Mary was practically certain the teacher would not call on
her to recite her assignment, when Carl Blair got it into his mind to
try to pass her a dirty note. Mary knew it would be a screamingly
funny Ego-Shifting Room limerick and was about to reach for the note
when Mrs. Harris's voice crackled through the room.
"Carl Blair! I believe you have an important message. Surely you will
want the whole class to hear it. Come forward, please."
As he made his way before the class, the boy's blush-covered freckles
reappeared against his growing pallor. Haltingly and in an agonized
monotone, he recited from the note:
"There was a young hyper named Phil,
Who kept a third head for a thrill.
Said he, 'It's all right,
I enjoy my plight.
I shift my third out when it's chill.'"
The class didn't dare laugh. Their eyes burned down at their laps in
shame. Mary managed to throw Carl Blair a compassionate glance as he
returned to his seat, but she instantly regretted ever having been kind
to him.
"Mary Walden, you seemed uncommonly interested in reading something
just now. Perhaps you wouldn't mind reading your assignment to the
class."
There it was, and just when the class was almost over. Mary could have
scratched Carl Blair. She clutched her paper grimly and strode to the
front.
"Today's assignment in Pharmacy History is, 'Schizophrenia since the
Ancient Pre-pharmacy days.'" Mary took enough breath to get into the
first paragraph.
"Schizophrenia is where two or more personalities live in the
same brain. The ancients of the 20th Century actually looked upon
schizophrenia as a disease! Everyone felt it was very shameful to have
a schizophrenic person in the family, and, since children lived right
with the same parents who had borne them, it was very bad. If you were
a schizophrenic child in the 20th Century, you would be locked up
behind bars and people would call you--"
Mary blushed and stumbled over the daring word--"crazy." "The ancients
locked up strong ego groups right along with weak ones. Today we would
lock up those ancient people."
* * * * *
The class agreed silently.
"But there were more and more schizophrenics to lock up. By 1950 the
_prisons_ and hospitals were so full of schizophrenic people that
the ancients did not have room left to lock up any more. They were
beginning to see that soon everyone would be schizophrenic.
"Of course, in the 20th Century, the schizophrenic people were almost
as helpless and 'crazy' as the ancient Modern men. Naturally they did
not fight wars and lead the silly life of the Moderns, but without
proper drugs they couldn't control their Ego-shiftability. The
personalities in a brain would always be fighting each other. One
personality would cut the body or hurt it or make it filthy, so that
when the other personality took over the body, it would have to suffer.
No, the schizophrenic people of the 20th Century were almost as 'crazy'
as the ancient Moderns.
"But then the drugs were invented one by one and the schizophrenic
people of the 20th Century were freed of their troubles. With the
drugs the personalities of each body were able to live side by side in
harmony at last. It turned out that many schizophrenic people, called
overendowed personalities, simply had so many talents and viewpoints
that it took two or more personalities to handle everything.
"The drugs worked so well that the ancients had to let millions of
schizophrenic people out from behind the bars of 'crazy' houses. That
was the Great Emancipation of the 1990s. From then on, schizophrenic
people had trouble only when they criminally didn't take their drugs.
Usually, there are two egos in a schizophrenic person--the hyperalter,
or prime ego, and the hypoalter, the alternate ego. There often were
more than two, but the Medicorps makes us take our drugs so that won't
happen to us.
"At last someone realized that if everyone took the new drugs, the
great wars would stop. At the World Congress of 1997, laws were passed
to make everyone take the drugs. There were many fights over this
because some people wanted to stay Modern and fight wars. The Medicorps
was organized and told to kill anyone who wouldn't take their drugs as
prescribed. Now the laws are enforced and everybody takes the drugs and
the hyperalter and hypoalter are each allowed to have the body for an
ego-shift of five days...."
Mary Walden faltered. She looked up at the faces of her classmates,
started to turn to Mrs. Harris and felt the sickness growing in her
head. Six great waves of crescendo silence washed through her. The
silence swept away everything but the terror, which stood in her frail
body like a shrieking rock.
Mary heard Mrs. Harris hurry to the shining dispensary along one
wall of the classroom and return to stand before her with a swab of
antiseptic and a disposable syringe.
Mrs. Harris helped her to a chair. A few minutes after the expert
injection, Mary's mind struggled back from its core of silence.
"Mary, dear, I'm sorry. I haven't been watching you closely enough."
"Oh, Mrs. Harris...." Mary's chin trembled. "I hope it never happens
again."
"Now, child, we all have to go through these things when we're young.
You're just a little slower than the others in acclimatizing to the
drugs. You'll be fourteen soon and the medicop assures me you'll be
over this sort of thing just as the others are."
Mrs. Harris dismissed the class and when they had all filed from the
room, she turned to Mary.
"I think, dear, we should visit the clinic together, don't you?"
"Yes, Mrs. Harris." Mary was not frightened now. She was just ashamed
to be such a difficult child and so slow to acclimatize to the drugs.
As she and the teacher walked down the long corridor to the clinic,
Mary made up her mind to tell the medicop what she thought was wrong.
It was not herself. It was her hypoalter, that nasty little Susan
Shorrs. Sometimes, when Susan had the body, the things Susan was doing
and thinking came to Mary like what the ancients had called _dreams_,
and Mary had never liked this secondary ego whom she could never really
know. Whatever was wrong, it was Susan's doing. The filthy creature
never took care of her hair, it was always so messy when Susan shifted
the body to her.
Mrs. Harris waited while Mary went into the clinic.
Mary was glad to find Captain Thiel, the nice medicop, on duty. But she
was silent while the X-rays were being taken, and, of course, while he
got the blood samples, she concentrated on being brave.
Later, while Captain Thiel looked in her eyes with the bright little
light, Mary said calmly, "Do you know my hypoalter, Susan Shorrs?"
The medicop drew back and made some notes on a pad before answering.
"Why, yes. She's in here quite often too."
"Does she look like me?"
"Not much. She's a very nice little girl...." He hesitated, visibly
fumbling.