Free The Dancers of Noyo by Margaret St. Clair Page A

."
     
                  "... Try," I said. An instant later I heard her get to her feet and run out of the room, and an instant after that I heard somebody come in. There was the sound of heavy breathing beside me. One—maybe two—men. All the male Russian Gulchers were heavy breathers, and if one couldn't smell them, one could always hear them.
     
                  Somebody picked up my right arm and jabbed a needle into it. The needle felt hot, and about as big as a railroad spike, and yet Gee-Gee's warning hadn't really been necessary. The needle hurt, but it didn't hurt me; what the Russian Gulchers had wanted to achieve with me had very nearly happened. I had been reduced to a body that no especial or consistent personality inhabited.
     
                  My arm was let drop. "He's had it, I guess," somebody said. "Wonder if he can respond to a simple command."
     
                  "Try it and find out," the other man said. He had a light, precise way of talking that left all the syllables separate and distinct. It wasn't at all like the slurred, slobby way the R. Gulchers talked.
     
                  "OK." The hard-breathing one pushed and prodded me into a sitting position and then bellowed into my ear, "Wake up, Boyle!"
     
                  Boyle? Why was he calling me that? I'd been Bennet, hadn't I? I let my eyelids flutter an instant before I opened them.
     
                  Two men, just as I'd thought. The bellowing, hard-breathing one I'd seen before. He'd chased me or attacked me or guarded me—I couldn't remember clearly. The other, the precise e-nun-ci-a-tor, was new to me.
     
                  "Get to your feet, Burke!" the bellower bellowed.
     
                  I didn't know whether I ought to obey or not. Finally I said, only a little more confused than I actually felt, "I thought my name was Scottish. A name with 'Mac'."
     
                  "Never mind that," the precise man said. "You're whoever we say you are. Get to your feet."
     
                  Stumblingly I obeyed. I stood swaying, my head down, wondering whether I oughtn't to just lie down again. If I lay down, I might be able to decide who I was. The vapors of confusion had risen around me blindingly, perhaps because of my precise-spoken jailer's denial of my right to any one name, and I felt I had a whole beanpot full of identities to choose from. There were not only the lives I had actually lived—Alvin Biggs and Bennet—and the assimilation with the cadaver of Alice—but a broad spectrum of possibilities, most of which weren't even names. Who did I want to be? I didn't know. And I didn't know who was wondering about it.
     
                  The bigger man began to push me toward the door, propelling me knowingly with his fists and knees. "What a lot of trouble this asshole from Noyo has been," he said. "If we'd only thrown him in the water, we'd of been lots better off. But your sensitive chemical conscience wouldn ' let you."
     
                  "I don't see why you mock me for having a chemical conscience," the precise man said. "It's certainly better to have one's ethical considerations activated by chemical than not to have them activated at all."
     
                  "Ethical!" The other man made a snorting noise. "Why, you've done things that would disgus ' a skunk. The kids, to mention one. Don't talk to me about your fuckin ' ethics."
     
                  "Ask yourself what I'd have been like without my chemical conscience," the other man said between his teeth. "I might just forget to go in for my shot some month, and prefer to settle with you. Watch yourself."
     
                  I heard all this without really comprehending it. I knew, of course, that the California Republic had elected to deal with its most troublesome criminals by means of the