“That’s one of the problems. I know so little.”
“About this other life you’re living on a different plane—”
“I haven’t got the foggiest idea of any such life. Except for the incident itself, I know nothing about it. At the time, from what was said, I assume I had money. I was married to Vera Spain, whoever she was, and I must have been seven lands of an idiot because she was obviously carrying on an affair with that Russian character right under my nose.”
“Have you talked to your psychiatrist?”
“No, and I see no point in doing so. He’s busy right now trying to convince me that I hated my father. He’d be certain to call this thing an hallucination and start digging into my id.”
“Did you hate your father?”
“I didn’t hate him. But I didn’t think much of him, either.”
“Do you think it was an hallucination?”
“No. It was too real. There was none of the haziness of a dream. Maybe that’s not quite the word, but you know what I mean, Paul. When you awaken from a dream, you automatically know that you’ve been dreaming and that you’ve returned to reality. What I went through was just as real as sitting here talking to you.”
“Maybe you aren’t sitting here. Maybe this is the dream.”
Paul Bender had a deeply lined, heavily tanned face. His thick white hair looked like a halo, one he certainly did not merit, and his eyes were so clear blue and so young that they contradicted all the other indications of age. Also, you could never be sure that what he said was necessarily a statement of what he believed.
Mike Strong pulled a hand across his eyes. “Please! Don’t push me onto a merry-go-round. Right now I’ve got to stick to basics.”
“Have you got any to stick to?”
“That’s why I came running like a whipped pup to you. I need some.”
“I can only give you one: There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio—”
“Great!” Mike muttered. “So I just sit around and come apart.”
“They could put you in an asylum,” Paul Bender mused.
“Would you sign the papers?”
“No. Documents of that sort should be signed by people with something to gain—relatives who can get their hands on the nut’s money. Would you like to sign your fortune over to me?”
“I haven’t any.”
“Hmmm. Improvident and wasteful. A black mark “
“Paul! Will you please take this thing seriously?”
“I am, but let’s not tense up over it.”
Mike’s brow was wrinkled in heavy thought. “What I can’t reconcile is the time element.”
“What about it?”
“On that other plane, I got home from wherever I worked about six o’clock. I confronted Solonoff around seven-thirty. But when I came back to this plane it was only five—or fifteen minutes after I’d dismissed my class.”
“That shouldn’t bother you. Why should time on that plane obey the laws of this one?”
Mike sighed. “We seem to be taking it for granted that I was on another plane.”
“We’ve got to have terms of reference and that’s as good a one as any. But tell me this—what do you have against leading two lives? They’re both active, interesting existences. Why not just consider yourself lucky and wait to see what happens?”
“Good God! Do you want me to crack up?”
“The two lives don’t seem to interfere with each other.”
“But it’s contrary to all sanity!”
“Mike! Stop talking like a child. The word sanity is nothing more than another term of reference. The world’s most brilliant people may be locked in asylums for all we know. Right now, your problem is the fear of something that exists only in human judgments. I repeat—you may be the most fortunate of men.”
“I’ll sign all my good fortune over to you when the gates close on me,” Mike said.
Paul relit his nauseous pipe and allowed a little sympathy to show through. “Let’s dig a little deeper,” he said. “You aren’t reacting to a single, phenomenal incident. There’s more to this. You were running scared when this one happened.”
“There have been a few others,” Mike said guardedly.
“Well, don’t go coy on me all of a sudden. Tell me about them.”
“One happened years ago—when I was a high school student. I found myself in a very cold place among primitive people. I was one of them. It could have been Outer Mongolia or even Siberia. I lived in a village with my parents and I had a shaggy little pony of which I was very fond. It was a blustery, bitterly cold day and we were all excited because a great man was going to visit us—a holy man.”
“What was your religion?”
“We were Buddhists, I think. I remember standing outside our hut for hours, afraid I would miss the man. Then I came and I was the only one there. He was incredibly old but he wore only a light robe. Still, he did not seem to be in the least uncomfortable. He got off his horse and put his hand on my head. He asked me where the others were and I said I would get them. But he shook his head and spoke cryptically. ‘Let the virgins sleep,” he said. ‘You alone have waited.’ He continued to look into my eyes and I remember that I was tremendously uplifted. Then he said, ‘Your life here is but a moment, my son. You will go many places and see many things.’ Then he got back on his horse and left.”
“Who was he? You should remember whom you were expecting. It was part of the phenomenon.”
“A holy man. From India, I think.”
Paul Bender pondered that. “I don’t know what an Indian mystic would be doing in Outer Mongolia—or why he would have been speaking in Christian parables. Did that incident frighten you?”
“Not to any great extent. I put it down as a dream.”
“Perhaps you had more faith in those days. You said there were others.”
“Once when I was in my mid-twenties—about seven years ago—I was riding a jet to San Francisco. I was rushing to my mother’s death bed. When the plane put down, a limousine was waiting for me. The family chauffeur drove me to where my family lived—in Oakland. It was a beautiful mansion. I’d spent my childhood there. I rushed inside and upstairs and I was too late. My mother had died half an hour earlier.”
“Tragic,” Paul Bender commented.
“I never saw her. After that one, I wasn’t so much frightened as saddened. I wondered what my mother had looked like; if she in any way resembled my true mother.”
“Is your mother dead? Your true mother?”
“She died when I was twelve years old.”
Bender waved the stem of his pipe toward the liquor cabinet. “Your glass is empty.” While Mike refilled it, Bender said, “It appears that none of these incidents hinges in any way upon the others.”
“I could have lived in San Francisco and still married an actress named Vera Spain.”
“What was your name in San Francisco?”
“I don’t know—nor in any of the other incidents. My name was never spoken. I suppose I knew it at the time. But I can’t remember now.”
“You