Public-domain ebook
by Ray Cummings
Language: en288 downloads on Project Gutenberg
Subjects
In: Short Stories·Science-Fiction & Fantasy·American Literature
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #76899.
The opening · free to read
Porky’s ego wouldn’t stay in his own body, and that, believe it or not, was what saved the city!
Of course, as you know, I didn’t figure in the excitement over the Green Giant. The newspapers and the radio boys never mentioned me, or Lisbeth, or Baldy or even Porky Jenks. Why would they? We have kept strictly silent about the whole affair. Not from shyness; none of us are against a little wholesome publicity. But it never does one any good to be billed as a first class candidate for the nut-house. So that Green Giant who waded around in the ocean off Sandy Hook will remain a mystery.
Not that I can actually explain him. I can’t. He’s as much a mystery to me as to anybody else. But, as it happened, there probably never would have been any Green Giant at all if it hadn’t been for me. I don’t mind telling the real facts, but I think it’s quite a bit safer for them just to go as fiction. You can take them or leave them, so to speak.
And there’s another angle to the thing. The war actually would have been won by now--if Lisbeth hadn’t queered it. Hitler would have been smashed and everything would have been just swell. I had it all planned--and then Lisbeth put the jinx on it. I’m sorry about that. But you’ll realize there’s not a thing I could have done.
The queer affair began last Spring--a warmish afternoon when I was sitting in my study trying to figure out a plot. Porky Jenks came in to see me. I used to know Porky quite well, but hadn’t seen him for a couple of years. He was a likeable young fellow, always with a ready laugh which is what made him so fat, I suppose. But this was a different Porky. He wedged himself down, collapsing in my only armchair. His clothes were rumpled as though he’d slept in them; his collar was wilted, hanging soggily on his bulging throat. His thin sandy hair was plastered on his sweating forehead; he pulled out a big blue handkerchief and mopped his face and just stared at me with pale blue eyes that looked haunted.
“Well, well, Porky, glad to see you,” I said. “How are you?”
“I’m awful,” he declared. Just out of habit, I suppose, he tried to laugh, but it was only a wan, sickly grin. “There’s--something the matter with me, Ray. Something terrible. That’s why I’ve come to you, see? You’re up on all that nutty stuff--the bizarre, the queer, the unbelievable--”
“Oh,” I said.
He stared at me with that haunted look. “Listen,” he said, “do I look crazy? Insane? A maniac? Tell me I’m not, Ray.”
“You’re not,” I said. “Cheer up. What have you been doing with yourself? Last I heard you were just finishing college.”
“I’m a hardware salesman. Retail trade. That is, I was, but what with the war and all, it’s no good.”
“Tough luck,” I said.
“It’s just as well. Walking so much made my feet hurt--they just wouldn’t stand it.” He sighed heavily. “Maybe that’s why I’m in 4-F, too. That and my weight--my heart. But that’s nothing serious--”
“Oh well, that’s fine,” I agreed. “But now--you’ve got some other trouble?”
The haunted look came back into his earnest eyes. “I’ll have to tell you,” he agreed. “After all, that’s what I came here for.” He gulped. “Listen,” he said, “hang onto yourself--you’ll get a shock. The thing hit me just about a week ago. Like a bolt from the blue--I didn’t have any warning at all. I was feeling perfectly all right, honest.”
“What hit you?” I prompted.
“I was just sitting by the window of my boarding house room.” His voice had that awed, solemn tone like you use telling a ghost story. “When all of a sudden I wasn’t myself at all. I was sitting in the chair all right--I knew that. But also I was a man walking down the street past my window.”
“You were--what?”
“A man walking past my window,” he repeated drably. “A perfectly strange man--and I was worried because I was late getting home and my wife’d give me hell. I was henpecked, scared to death of her, see?”
“No, I don’t see,” I declared.
His fat hands made a hopeless gesture. “Well, that’s what I mean, Ray. You think I’m crazy. That’s why I can’t go see a doctor. He’d just slam me into an asylum or something.” His chubby hands reached out and gripped my arm. “Listen--you’ve got to believe me. Anyway--I can show you--give you a demonstration--it’s easy enough.”
“Is it?” I said.
“Sure it is. You see, my ego, id, personality or something, doesn’t seem to want to stay put in my body any more. It--it wants to wander--”
“Let’s get this straight,” I interrupted. “You say you suddenly usurped the mind and body of some strange man walking down the street--”
“Yes, that’s it! Usurpsed! That’s a good word, Ray. I was sort of conscious that he was confused, too--my usurping him that way. He kind of resented it for a second or two--and then I guess he went blank. Anyway, I was in full control--”
“And what did you do? With him, I mean.”
“Oh. Well, I remember I decided I wouldn’t bother going back to my wife--his wife, I mean.”
I could only nod.
“So I went into a Bar and Grill and started to absorb whiskeys and soda and to the devil with his wife.”
“And then?” I prompted.
“Well, I can remember getting pretty blurry eventually. Seems like I was telling the bartender all my secret thoughts about the wife.” He smiled wryly. “And then I--well, you can’t blame me, Ray--it occurred to me I might be getting into some sort of jam. So I just--withdrew.”
“Withdrew?”
“I gave that little fellow back his body,” Porky said. He shrugged. “What else could I do? I just jerked myself back to my own body--in the chair by the window, see?”
For a minute I couldn’t think of anything to say. I’ve juggled with weird things like that for years--but strictly on paper, you understand. Now, meeting one in real life gave me a creepy feeling. Because Porky was telling me the truth. I wouldn’t doubt it. He was plainly about frightened out of his wits.
“You say you can do this any time you like?” I said at last.
“Sure I can. That’s just the trouble--sometimes it’s almost involuntarily, if I’m dozing, half asleep for instance, I just seem suddenly to slip into it. I got into a nasty jam just last night.”
He waited for me to ask him, what? But I just stared at him.
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