A Darkness in My Soul

do."
        And he left the room.
        Minutes later, they wheeled me into the corridor to keep my rendezvous with my own coma-ridden flesh…
        All the while, I gloried in the thought that I was swiftly getting the upper hand and that before they realized what had happened, I would be in my former position of dominance. There were two minds' worth of energy within me, plus the complex intellect of Child now amplifying my own. They were mere men, I told myself, and they stood no chance at all.
        I did not realize that I was making the same mistake that I had made twice before. In the old days, I had convinced myself that I was a god of sorts, the Second Coming, and my life had been disastrous because of that fantasy. In Child's subconscious, I had eagerly sought to be transformed into the mythic images of Tibetan wolves, into something transcending humanity, and that might have cost me my mind and my eventual recovery. And now, as I was wheeled down the corridor, I again looked at myself as more than a man, as a minor god soon to prove his power. Because I had never allowed myself to associate with "mere men," I did not understand them, or myself. And my latest delusions of grandeur were bound to lead to ultimate disaster…
        And did…
        

    II
        
        My legs were cramped, and even a slight bit of movement made my shoulders ache, for the staff had not been exercising my body with the proper degree of enthusiasm during the month it had been vacant. I felt weak, and my stomach was a hard knot. Having been fed intravenously for some four weeks, the stomach had shrunk and felt like a clenched fist in there, squeezing my guts. Otherwise: fine. And since it was such a delight to be housed in my own flesh once again, I was willing to overlook the little aches and pains of readjustment to life. I didn't complain, and I tried not even to grimace.
        Morsfagen seemed disappointed by that.
        They wheeled Child's carcass out of the room. It would continue to live, though it would never exhibit intelligence again. It was a husk, nothing more. I still had not told them, for I was still not free of the AC complex and out of their immediate reach. Morsfagen would not take kindly to such a trick, and I didn't want to be around whenever he discovered it.
        I showered, washed away the weeks of sickbed smell.
        The hot water seemed to loosen my cramped muscles, and dressing was only half the ordeal I had expected. When I slipped into my jacket and checked my reflection in the mirror, Morsfagen said, "Your shyster is waiting downstairs."
        I held back the witty reply designed to demolish him, for I knew that was exactly what he wanted. He was searching for some reason to slap me down, either with his fists or with a preventive detention arrest. Why we had hit it off so miserably from the start, and why our hatred for each other was now twice what it had been, I didn't know. True, we were altogether different types, but the antagonism we felt for each other was deeper and more unremitting than a mere clash of personalities.
        "Thank you," I said, leaving him with nothing to attack. I walked to the door, opened it, and was halfway into the corridor before he replied.
        "You're welcome."
        I turned and looked at him and saw that he was smiling, that same cold smile of hatred which I had grown used to by then. He had said "you're welcome," but not with any seriousness-which meant that he understood me and knew that I understood him too.
        "We'll contact you day after tomorrow," he said.
        "There's a lot of work to do. But, after what you've been through, you deserve a little rest."
        "Thank you," I said.
        "You're welcome."
        Again. And grinning this time too…
        I closed the door and walked down the hall to the bank of elevators with a dark-haired, blue-eyed, six-foot-fourinch guard as company. We didn't say much of anything to each other on our way downstairs, not so much out of any particular dislike for each other as out of a sheer lack of anything to say, like a nuclear physicist and an uneducated carpenter at the same cocktail party, neither exactly superior, but both separated by a mammoth communications gap.
        Down…
        Harry was in the lobby, tearing his hat apart, and when the elevator doors opened, he gave the thing a particularly vicious mangling with his big hands and started