THIRTY-NINE

THE MORNING sun was very bright, and I felt terrific. My knee hardly hurt at all. The doctors had replaced my kneecap with one grown in a tank and shaved to fit my bones; they told me to minimize my walking for a week-and to guarantee that I did, they put my leg in a case so tight I couldn't bend it. But I could limp-with crutches or a cane-and as soon as I could I was out of the hospital.

I found Ted at the bus station.

He was sitting quietly and waiting. He looked subdued, which surprised me. I guess I didn't know what I was expecting. Silver antennae sticking out of his head? But, no-he was just sitting patiently in a corner, a detached look on his face.

I hobbled over to him, but he didn't see me-not even when I stood in front of him. "Ted?" I asked.

He blinked twice.

"Ted?" I waved a hand in front of his face. He didn't see me. His expression remained unchanged. Not just detached-absent. Blank. Nobody home.

"Ted? It's Jim." He was a zombie.

I sat down next to him and shook his leg. He brushed my hand away. I shook his shoulder and shouted in his ear. "Ted?"

Abruptly, he blinked-and then a confused expression came over his features. He looked like a sleeper awakening suddenly in a strange place. He turned his head slowly and looked at me. Recognition finally came to him. "Jim ... ?"

"Ted, are you all right? I had to knock three times."

"Yeah," he said quietly. "I'm fine. I was just ... plugged in."

"Oh. Well, uh, I'm sorry if I interrupted you. But I just got out of the hospital, and this was my only chance to say goodbye before you shipped out."

"Oh," he said. His voice was flat. Distracted. "Well, thank you."

He started to go emotionless again, but I caught his arm. "Ted, are you all right?"

He looked at me, a flicker of annoyance in his eyes. "Yes, Jim, I'm fine. But there's a transmission coming in from Capetown that I want to return to."

"I got it," I said. "But I want you to take a moment to be with me. Okay?"

He blinked at me. I knew the expression. Bored patience. "What is it, Jim?"

"Well, I thought ... just that... we might have some things to say to each other......"

His voice went distant. "I saw your Chtorran again. We had a transmitter in the front row. He died. I experienced his death."

"Oh," I said. "Uh-that must have been very hard for you."

"It wasn't the first death I've experienced. I've been playing a lot of tapes." Suddenly, he looked very old.

I put my hand on his arm. "Ted, is it hard?"

He looked at me, but didn't answer. Was he listening to another voice again?

"Ted," I said, "what's it like?"

He blinked, and for just a moment he was the old Ted looking out at me from inside his body, and for just that moment I thought I saw stark terror. "Jim," he said intensely, "it's wonderful! And it's ... terrible! It's the most intense and exhilarating experience a human being can have. I've been a thousand different people-I can't explain it. It's all still so confusing. I'm being bombarded with experiences, Jim! Constantly. And I don't know which of them are mine-if any! I don't even know if it's me sitting here talking to you. You could be talking to any telesend on the circuit. I can remote-access anybody else's experience and, if necessary, even take over control. And they can use my body too!"

I opened my mouth to say something, but he stopped me with a desperate hand on my arm.

"No-listen to me. I'm out of the circuit now, but only for a moment. The trainees have to take the dirtiest jobs-it's that way in all the services. I'm on call sixteen hours a day. Yesterday, I was . . ." He stopped, as if he were trying to form the words and finding it difficult. His eyes looked red. "Yesterday, I was . . . ridden. By a Russian government official. I don't know if it was a woman or a homosexual or-I don't know, but whoever it was used my body to make love to another man. And all I could do was do it. I had no control of my own."

"Did you file a grievance?"

"Jim, you don't understand! It was wonderful! It was complete and absolute service! Whoever it was gave me the opportunity to confront a different experience! That's what this is about-the expansion that comes from confronting the totality of human experience!"

"Ted, can't you get out?"

"Get out?" Ted looked incredulous. "Get out? Jim, don't you understand? I don't want out. Even while I was hating it, I was loving it-good and bad. The Telepathy Corps is a chance to share the experiences of a million other human beings. How else could a person ever get to live a million other lives?" His eyes were feverish now, intense. "Jim, I've played the tapes! I know what it feels like to die-in a hundred different ways. I've gone down in plane crashes, I've drowned, I've fallen off buildings, I've burned to death and I've even been eaten by a Chtorran! I've been afraid in more different ways than I ever dreamed possible-and I've been exhilarated in as many different ways too! I've climbed mountains and gone into space. I've lived in free fall and at the bottom of the ocean as a gillman. I've done so much, Jim-it's like making love to the universe! And I've made love a thousand different ways as well! It's all on the tapes. I've been a naked child in Micronesia and a fifteen-year-old courtesan somewhere in Osaka. I've been an old man dying of cancer in Morocco, and-Jim, I know what it is to be a woman, a girl! Can you comprehend what it, is to leave your own sex behind, like a fish discovering air-discovering how to fly? I've made love as a girl! And I've carried the child that resulted and given birth to it!! I've nursed it and raised it! And I died with it when the plagues came! Jim, I've experienced more of life in just the past few days than I'd ever known in all the years before. And I'm terrified and excited because it's all coming down so fast I can't assimilate it. Jim"-he clenched my arm so tight it hurt "Jim, I'm disappearing! Me-Ted! My identity is dissolving under the assault of a thousand other lives! I can feel it happening! And I know what it will feel like to stop existing as me, because that experience is recorded too! And, Jim, I want it even as I'm afraid of it. It's a kind of death. And it's a kind of orgasm too! This is incredible stuff! Jim, my life is over! Now, I'm a part of something else, something larger and-Jim, I want to say this to you while there's time-"

Abruptly, his grip on my arm loosened. His face relaxed, the tension disappeared and he became detached again.

"Ted?"

"I'm sorry, I'm on call now, Jim. I have to go."

He started to rise, but I pulled him back down. "Wait-you started to say something?"

"Perdoneme?" A strange voice came from his mouth.

"Uh, nothing." I let go in horror.

Ted's body nodded. "Bueno."

It got up and walked away. The last I saw of Ted, his body was just getting on a helibus. The chopper clattered up into the air and disappeared into the east.

I wondered where Ted was in the circuit now. I knew it didn't matter. The half-life of even a strong identity was less than nine months. I'd probably never see Ted again. His body, maybe, but the thing that animated it-where would that be? Experiencing what? Or whom? Within a few months, it wouldn't even be a personality anymore. Ted had known what he was getting into when he'd made the decision to receive the implant. He'd known what it meant. At least, that was what I wanted to believe.

I turned and hobbled back to the jeep I'd requisitioned. I didn't feel so terrific anymore. I had a lot to think about. I levered myself in and said, "Science Section, please."

The jeep replied "Acknowledged," and whined itself to life. It waited till its whirring stabilized, then backed smoothly out of the parking slot. As it eased forward, it announced, "Incoming message."