The Divide by Robert Charles Wilson Read Free Book Online

thought about Susan.
    He had liked talking to her. She knew what he was, and that stripped away the burden of pretense. There was the inevitable chasm between them, the biochemical and physiological gap— what Max had once called an evolutionary gulf. But that was inevitable, and she was at least aware of it… and acknowledging the gulf seemed somehow to narrow it.
    The talk had been good. But the talk had also evoked old, unpleasant memories; memories that were difficult to suppress at the best of times. And these were not the best of times.
    He knew what to do about Susan Christopher. Tell her firmly that he wasn’t interested. Hope that Max wouldn’t press the matter.
    Fade, if fading was inevitable.
    That was what John Shaw meant to do.
    But it occurred to him, closing his eyes, that Benjamin might have other plans.
    He groped after the thought and lost it. Too late now. The space behind his eyelids seemed to fill with a bright and unforgiving light. His head throbbed and ached. The change was coming, too fast and fiercely to resist. Memories surfaced like phosphorescent sea-creatures: Susan’s face, their conversation, Kyriakides and the Woodwards, the shimmering veneer on the face of a handmade guitar… all these pieces of himself, fragile as a china cup for one weightless moment… and then gone, shattered, dispersed.
    He slept. And someone else awoke.
     
     
     

Chapter 5
     
     
    “He’s refusing treatment?”
    Dr. Kyriakides sounded angry, his voice growling through the phone lines from Illinois.
    Susan said, “At the moment—yes.”
    “He’s not aware of the problem?”
    “He’s very aware of it.” She repeated the list of symptoms John had recited, the recurrence of “Benjamin.”
    “That’s not what I would have predicted,” Dr. Kyriakides said. “But it might be a positive sign.”
    “You think so? How could it be?”
    “He’s capable of tremendous things, Susan—both his conscious and his unconscious mind. He’s resurrected Benjamin for a reason, even if he’s not aware of it. It’s a response to the disease, I suspect… as if one suit of clothes has begun to wear out, and he’s preparing to put on a second.”
    “But it’s not the same,” Susan said. “It’s not
him.”
    “But in some sense it
must
be him. Benjamin is his creation. It’s not something new—it can’t be. Only an aspect of himself.”
    “But it isn’t John Shaw. The John Shaw part of him is dying.”
    There was a pause. “Possibly,” Dr. Kyriakides admitted. “In one way or another.”
    “Then we have to help him.”
    “I agree! But if he’s refusing treatment—”
    “He could change his mind. He said he might call back. I want to stay—at least another week. I need to talk to him again.”
    There was another crackling silence through the long exchange from Chicago. “I don’t remember you being this enthusiastic.”
    “I suppose… it never seemed real before.”
    “Then you must have felt it, too.”
    “I’m sorry?”
    “His specialness. There’s something unique about John. I mean, beyond the obvious. There always has been.”
    “Yes,” she said. “I know what you mean.”
    “Take whatever time you need.”
    “Thank you.”
    “Do you want a suggestion?”
    “Anything.”
    “Talk to the other one. Talk to Benjamin.”
    “I’ll try,” Susan said.
    But she had thought of that already.
     
     
    The problem was how to begin.
    She wasn’t much good with people. Susan had figured that out a long time ago. She was a book-reader and she had always been good with words, but that facility did not extend to her tongue. For most of her adolescence she had been a stutterer. She loved words but could not gracefully pronounce them; people often laughed when she tried. She had retreated into muteness and spoke only when it was unavoidable. Her mother took her for sessions with a “teen counselor,” who linked Susan’s stuttering with her parents’ divorce: a traumatic event for a