To Live Again

To Live Again

by Robert Silverberg

There is therefore but one comfort left, that though it be in the power of the weakest arm to take away life, it is not in the strongest to deprive us of death: God would not exempt himself from that; the misery of immortality in the flesh he undertook not, that was in it immortal.

Chapter 1

The lamasery rose steeply from the top of the bluff on the Marin County side of the Golden Gate. Feeling a faint cramp in his left calf, John Roditis got out of the car near the toll plaza and, stretching and kicking, looked across the water at the gleaming yellow building, windowless, sleek, ineffably holy as a fountainhead of good karma. It was an extraordinarily warm day. San Francisco had been gripped by an unaccustomed heat wave throughout the four days of Roditis’ visit. Hot weather in the psychological sense did not trouble Roditis; he thrived on it, in fact. But when heat came to him not as a function of metaphor but as a blazing golden eye staring from above, he longed to switch on the air conditioner.

There was no way for him to change the outdoor environment to that degree. At least, not yet. Given enough minds in one skull, though, who was to say what limits a man might have?

Roditis gestured at the lamasery. “I hope it’s cooler in there, eh?”

“It will be,” Charles Noyes said. “The guru is cool.” Roditis scowled at his associate’s pun. “Still infested with the antique slang?”

“Not me. It’s — Kravchenko.” As he spoke the name of the persona who shared his body, Noyes’ grin turned to a grimace, and he clung to the polished railing just before him. His long body sagged. His elbows trembled and beat against his ribs. “Damn him! Damn him!” Noyes grunted.

“Have him erased,” Roditis suggested.

“You know I can’t!”

“When an unruly persona threatens the integrity of the host, he ought to be expelled,” said Roditis crisply. “If Kozak made trouble for me I’d throw him out in a minute, and he knows it. Or Walsh. Either of them. I can’t afford to have a troublemaker in my head. Can you?”

“Stop it, John.”

“I’m just talking common sense.”

“Kravchenko doesn’t like it. He’s giving me a hard time.” Noyes’ arm came up from the railing in a fitful jerk. “He’s fighting me. He’s trying to speak.”

“You won’t be satisfied,” said Roditis, “until he goes dybbuk on you. Throws you out of your own body.”

“I’d kill him and me both first!” Roditis scowled. “You’re becoming an unstable bastard, you realize it? If I weren’t so fond of you I’d let you go. Come on: into the car. Mustn’t keep the cool guru waiting, or he’ll get hot under the toga. Or whatever he wears.”

Roditis, chuckling, opened the car door and pulled Noyes away from the railing. There was momentary confusion as Noyes struggled to regain full control of his limbs. Then Roditis thrust his companion into the car, got in beside him, and slammed the door.

“Finish the route as programed,” Roditis said to the car. The generator thrummed and the car backed out of the plaza area, swung around, and headed for the tollbooths. The actuarial sign over the row of booths a

Within the cool depths of the car, Roditis flecked perspiration from his corrugated brow and regarded the other man uneasily.

He was growing more and more worried about Noyes, who perhaps was becoming a risky liability. It would be a pity to have to let Noyes go, after a relationship that had lasted so long and worked so well.

They had met in college, nineteen years before. Their roles had been reversed then: Noyes was the campus leader, tall and dashing, appropriately Anglo-Saxon, with the fair hair and blue eyes of the highest caste, and seven generations of respectable money behind him, while Roditis, the immigrant shoemaker’s son who looked the part, was short, thick-bodied, dark, a scholarship student, a nobody.

But Noyes had a gift for dissipating his many assets, Roditis a gift for capitalizing on what little he had. It was an attraction of opposites, instant, permanent. Now Roditis controlled an empire, and Noyes was a cog in that vast wheel. Poor Noyes. He hadn’t been able to handle his own wealth, couldn’t deal with a fine wife, was even making a mess of his persona transplant. Roditis hated to patronize anyone, but he couldn’t help a certain feeling of smugness as he contemplated his own position vis-а-vis Noyes. Sad. Sad.

The car purred to a halt in the gravelly parking oval adjoining the lamasery. The men got out. It seemed to be at least ten degrees hotter on this side of the bridge. Reflected heat from the lamasery’s polished sides, Roditis wondered? He looked up, and felt Anton Kozak within him responding affirmatively to the chaste elegance of the architecture. Roditis had become infinitely more aware of esthetic matters since taking on Kozak’s persona. It had seemed odd to some that a businessman like Roditis would choose a sonic sculptor for his second transplant, but Roditis knew what he was going toward. He was assembling a portfolio of personae as another man might assemble a portfolio of common stocks — for diversity, and for ultimate high profit.

“Feeling better?” Roditis asked. “Much,” said Noyes.

“Kravchenko is pushed way down?”

“I think so. He’s had his exercise for the day.”

“If there’s more trouble while we’re here, ask the guru to help you. He’ll run a few simple exorcisms, I’m sure.”

Looking pale, Noyes said, “It won’t be necessary, John,” and they approached the building.

Sensors sca

Two shaven-headed monks emerged from i

“The guru will be with you shortly,” said one of the monks. “Will you remove your worldly coverings and join us in prayer?”