“Letting me go splat?”
Marla stopped outside Crate & Barrel and peered into the window. “What the hell?” she muttered. “Kitchen chairs? Wineglasses? I thought it was going to be a warehouse supply store.”
“And so the disillusionment begins. But seriously—you would’ve saved yourself and let me die?”
She glared at him. Sometimes he was worse than a boyfriend. “Rondeau, in a situation where I could save both of us, I would. In a situation where I could save only one of us, it would be me. And before you get all dramatic on me, about how you’d sacrifice your life for me and all that shit, you wouldn’t die under the same circumstances. If our plane crashed, the body you’re wearing would die, and your mind would have to float around for a while until you found a new body, but that’s all. If you tried to take over my body I’d spit you out like a watermelon seed, by the way.”
Rondeau raised his hands, wincing. He didn’t like to be reminded of his essential nature. He could pass for human, and his body was human, but the soul, spirit, ka, or whatever inside that body was something else again, something even Rondeau himself barely understood. “Okay. Point taken. Though we don’t know for sure if that’s what would happen. I took control of this body when it was, what, six years old? And I don’t have any real memories before that. I don’t know what I am. Even Hamil just says I’m a ‘parasitic psychic entity.’ Maybe when this body dies, I die with it.”
Marla shrugged. “That’s the same deal all the rest of us are stuck with. Even Lao Tsung died, and I thought he’d outlive the sun. Killed by frogs. He should never have stayed in this city. I can’t wait to get out of here.”
“Speaking of Lao Tsung…what do you think about the old Chinese guy and his apprentice? I know you don’t want to do anything to help them, but let’s say I did. Where would I start?”
“You want me to tell you how to oust one psyche and reinstate another? Like it’s any of our business anyway! Come on, Rondeau—surely you have some sympathy for the old guy. You’ve done the Thing on the Doorstep trick yourself, and the poor kid whose body you took didn’t even get a shitty old body to replace his young one.”
Rondeau stopped walking. “Fuck you, Marla. I’m nothing like that old prick. I was floating around, disembodied, with no memories, no sense of self, nothing. I saw—and that’s not even the right word, I didn’t see like I’m seeing you right now—some little street kid in an alley, and I drifted down and settled over him like mist, or I slithered in through his nose, or I put him on like a suit, I don’t know, I can’t describe it. I didn’t do it on purpose, Marla. Whatever I was, that was my nature, that’s all, and I didn’t mean any harm any more than a…than a virus does. This old sorcerer, he stole her life deliberately, and I know that must have taken some serious prep work and planning. You’re always telling me that the body is the mind, that mind-body duality is a fallacy and there is no ghost in the machine, just one combined ghost-machine. That’s why real ghosts are so violent and repetitive and crazy, right? Because they’re just a broken piece of a dead whole, a fragment left behind when the real self goes. But this old sorcerer made his mind a self-contained thing that still works, and he stole a body, with malice aforethought and all that. It’s fucked-up. I’m not like that. I wouldn’t do that.”
Marla was surprised. Rondeau seldom got so worked up—he was loyal, amusing, and a bit unpredictable, but angst didn’t suit him. Still, if he wanted to talk seriously, Marla could do that. “Yeah, okay. You didn’t take that kid’s body deliberately. But I don’t recall you ever feeling bad about it before, or even expressing the least bit of interest in what might have become of that kid’s consciousness when you ousted it or overwrote it or whatever. You’re getting all worked up now, but you never felt bad about what you did before, accident or not.”
Rondeau shoved his hands deep in his pockets and hunched his shoulders. “You don’t know everything I think and feel, Marla. You’re not the easiest person to share that kind of stuff with. Besides, thinking about that apprentice getting her body stolen made me think about this body, about what I did, and what I am. I do feel bad now. Which is probably why I want to help that apprentice get her body back, if I can. To make myself feel better. So, no, it’s not altruism. But can you help me?”