Second Start

by Robert Silverberg

The name they gave me at the Rehabilitation Center on Earth was Paul Macy. It was as good as any other, I guess. The name I was born with was Nat Hamlin, but when you become a Rehab you have to give up your name.

I didn’t mind that. What I did mind was the idea of having my face changed, since I was pretty well content with my looks the way they were. They gave me the option of choosing either a refacing job or else getting outside the Four Parsec Zone and staying there, and I opted to keep my face and leave Earth. This was how I happened to settle on Palmyra, which is Lambda Scorpii IX, 205 light-years from Earth. I met Ellen on Palmyra. And Dan Helgerson met me. I didn’t figure to run into Helgerson there, but it’s a smaller universe than you think.

Helgerson was a sometime business associate of Nat Hamlin’s—the late Nat Hamlin, because that was the way I thought of my former identity. Hamlin had been in the jewel-trading business. Also the jewel-stealing business, the jewelry-fencing business, and the jewelry-smuggling business, and toward the end of his varied career, after he had made contact with an enterprising Sirian who owned a fusion forge, the jewel-making business.

Hamlin was quite a guy. If it had to do with pretty pebbles, and if it happened to be illegal, you could bet Hamlin was mixed up in it. That was why the Galactic Crime Commission finally had to crack down, grab Hamlin, and feed him through the psychic meatgrinder that is the Rehabilitation Center. What came out on the other end, purged of his anti-social impulses and stuff like that, was Paul Macy.

Me.

Naturally they confiscated Hamlin’s wealth, which included a cache of gold in Chicago, a cache of pure iron on Grammas VI, a cache of tungsten on Sirius XIX, and a cache here and there of whatever was most precious to a particular planet. Hamlin had been a smart operator. He had been worth a couple of billions when they caught him. After they finished turning him into me, they gave me five thousand bucks in Galactic scrip—not a hell of a lot of money by Nat Hamlin’s standards—he used to carry that much as pocket-change for tips—but more than enough for Paul Macy to use in starting his new life.

The Rehab people found me a good job on Palmyra, as a minor executive in a canning factory. It was the sort of job where I could make use of Nat Hamlin’s organizational abilities, channelling them constructively into the cause of faster and more efficient squid-canning. Canned squid is Palmyra’s big industry. The fishermen bring them in from the wine-colored sea in the billions, and we ship them all over the universe.

I got good pay from the canning people and I found a nice bachelor home on the outskirts of Palmyra City. I found a nice girl, too—Ellen Bryce was her name, Earthborn, 24, soft violet hair and softer green eyes. She worked in the shipping department of our place. I started noticing her around, and then I started dating her, and then before I knew it I was starting to think of getting married.

But then one night after I left my office I stopped into the bar on the corner for a vraffa martini as a bracer, and I saw Dan Helgerson sitting at one of the tables.

I tried to pretend I didn’t see him. I hunched down at the bar and sipped at my cocktail.

But out of the corner of my eye I saw him get up and start sauntering over to me. Wildly I hoped I was mistaken, that this was not Helgerson but someone else.

It was Helgerson, all right. And when he slid in next to me, clapped me on the back, and said, “Hello, Nat. Long time no see,” I knew I was in trouble.

* * *

My hand tightened on the stem of my cocktail glass. I looked up at Helgerson and tried to keep my face blank, unrecognizing.

“There must be some mistake. My name isn’t Nat.”

“Come off it, pal. You’re Nat Hamlin or I’m drunker than I think I am. And I don’t get that drunk on one shot of booril.”

“My name is Paul Macy,” I said in a tight voice. “I don’t know you.”

Helgerson chuckled thickly. “You’re a damn good actor, Nat. Always were. But don’t push a joke too far. I’ve been looking for you for weeks.”

“Looking for me?”

“There’s a privacy booth over there, Nat. Suppose we go over and talk in there. I’ve got a proposition you might want to hear.”

I felt a muscle twanging in my cheek. I said, “Look, fellow, my name is Macy, not Nat Hamlin. I’m not interested in any propositions you might have.”

I shook my head. “No, Helgerson. Just keep away and leave me alone.”

A slow smile rippled out over Helgerson’s face. “If your name is Macy and you don’t know me, how come you know my name? I don’t remember introducing myself.”

It was like a kick in the ribs. I had blundered; it had been an accident. But it had happened before I could stop it. The Rehab treatment had altered Hamlin’s personality, but it hadn’t wiped out his old memories. As Paul Macy, I had no business knowing Helgerson’s name—but I did.

I scowled and said, “Okay. Let’s go over to the privacy booth and I’ll fill you in on the news.”

Scooping up my half-finished drink, I followed Helgerson across the room to the privacy booth. On the way I glanced at my watch. It was quarter after five. Ellen was expecting me at half past six at her place, for dinner. I had been figuring on a leisurely shower and shave first, but if it took too long to get rid of Helgerson I would probably have to skip everything and go straight out to Ellen’s.

He slipped a coin into the slot and the crackling blue privacy field built up around us, shielding our little booth in an electronic curtain impervious to spybeams and eavesdroppers. He said, “Okay, Nat. What’s this Paul Macy bit? Some new dodge?”

“No. No dodge.”

I reached into my breast pocket, and Helgerson’s jowly face twitched in momentary alarm, as if he half expected me to yank out a blaster. Instead I drew out my wallet and silently handed him my identity card—not the blue one that everyone has to carry, but the other one, the yellow card they had given me when I left the Rehabilitation Center.

He read both sides of it and when he handed it back to me his face was a lot different.

“So they got Nat Hamlin. Whaddya know. And they left your face alone?”

“I took the Four Parsec option. As long as I keep away from Earth I can wear my old face. I figured it was safe, on Palmyra. Nobody in our line operated on Palmyra.”

“We do now.”

It was my turn to twitch in alarm. “How?”

“We’re setting up an import chain. The Palmyrans are getting interested in owning pretty jewelry. They weren’t, before, but we’ve been working on them. It’s a virgin market, Nat.”

“My name is Macy.”

“Sorry. Anyway, we’re setting up a pipeline. And you’re the key man.”

The muscle in my cheek twanged again. “I’m not in the business any more, Helgerson.”

“Listen to me, Nat—Macy, whatever you call yourself. I’ve checked up on you ever since I heard you were here. You got a good posi-tion—you’re respected—trusted. I figured you were setting some-thing up for yourself. But I guess it was just because you were a Rehab. Well, anyway, it’s a natural. We could send the stones in wrapped up in those squid-cans—call them market returns, code the wrappers. All you have to do is grab the loaded cans and turn them over to me. I’ll guarantee you three quarters of a million a year for it.”

I felt sick. I wanted to get out of that booth fast. “I’m not in the business,” I said bleakly.

“Eight hundred thousand. Nat, this setup is a peach!”

“I told you—”

“I’ll go as high as a million.”

“Look,” I said. “I’m a Rehab. That means I’ve been through the Center, analyzed, monkeyed-with, headshrunk, rearranged. There isn’t a criminal molecule left in me. I can’t do it even if I wanted to. And I don’t want to.”

He smiled pityingly. “Don’t give me that crap, Nat. If you wanted to bad enough, you could break your conditioning. It’s been done before.”

“Maybe it has. But I don’t want to. Not even for a billion a year.”

“Nat—”

“The name is Macy. And I’m not interested.” I looked at my watch. It was getting late. I didn’t want to talk to Helgerson any more. Ellen was expecting me. I reached out and yanked the shutoff lever, and the privacy field died away with a faint whuffling sound. Helgerson was glaring at me and I glared back. “The answer is no. Finally and absolutely. And don’t bother me any more, Helgerson. I’ll run you in for violating the Rehab Code if you do.”

I got up and strode toward the door. Helgerson yelled something after me, but I was too angry to listen.

* * *

It was quarter of seven when I got to Ellen’s, which meant I was fifteen minutes late, and I hadn’t had time for that shower and shave, either. But Ellen didn’t make any acid remarks. That was how she differed from most of the women I knew; she could forgive and forget, and without making a fuss about it.

She was wearing a sprayed-on strylon dress that covered her body with a layer of plastic two molecules thick—enough to keep her within the bounds of maidenly decency, but also revealing enough to make her quite an eyeful. I held her against me for a minute or two, as if her nearness could drain away the inner tension Helgerson had provoked in me. It didn’t, but it was pleasant anyway.

Then she broke away, with the excuse that dinner would be spoiled. She had made roast seafowl with a garnishment of starflower sprouts, and cool white wine from Mellibor to wash it all down. We ate quietly; I was troubled over the Helgerson business. If a bunch of my old pals set up the trade on Palmyra, it was going to make life very hard for me here. Bitterly I asked myself why they had had to come here; I had had eight months of peace, but now it was to be shattered.

We dumped the dishes into the autowash. Ellen nuzzled against me playfully and said, “You’re quiet tonight, Paul. Worried. What’s bothering you?”

I tried to wear a cheerful grin. “Nothing much.”

I shrugged. “Plant business,” I lied. Telling even a small lie like that gave me a twinge of remorse, thanks to the built-in conscience the Rehab Center had given me. My conditioning didn’t prevent me from telling lies, but it made sure that I felt the effects of even a small one. “We had some trouble come up today. Nothing serious.”

“Shake it off, then! Let’s go for a drive, yes?”

We rode to the roof, where I had parked my aircar, and for the next two hours we soared through the Palmyran night. I drove out over the ocean, glittering with the reflection of a million stars and a quartet of bright moons, and then swooped down over the coastal plains, still mostly untouched by man’s hand. We said little, satisfied just to have each other near. When I was with Ellen I was glad I had been Rehabbed; Nat Hamlin had never trusted another human being, and so Nat Hamlin had never been in love. I had not only a different name but a different set of emotions, and that made all the difference in the universe.

It was nearly eleven when I brought the aircar lightly to rest on the roof of Ellen’s building. Our goodnights took half an hour, but they weren’t the sort of goodnights Nat Hamlin would have appreciated, because Paul Macy didn’t play the game as close as his predecessor in our body did. Ellen was passionate within bounds; she wanted to be my wife, not my mistress, and she knew the best way of achieving that goal. Which was all right with me. I could be patient a while longer.

I left her at half past eleven and drove home in a pleasantly euphoric state, having nearly forgotten about the ominous popping-up of Dan Helgerson. But when I entered my place, a little after midnight, I saw the red light on my autosec lit up.

I nudged the acknowledger to let the machine know I was home, and it said, “Mr. Helgerson called while you were out, sir. He left his number. Shall I call him back?”

“No. I’m tired and I don’t want to speak to him.”

“He said it was urgent, sir,” the autosec protested gently. “He said, quote, it would be too bad for you if you didn’t call him.”

There was a sour taste in my mouth and a knot of tension formed in my chest. I sighed. “All right. Call him back.”

* * *

Helgerson’s fleshy face formed in the depths of the screen. He wore an ugly smile. “Glad you decided to call back, Nat. You ran out on me so fast before that I didn’t have time to tell you all I wanted to tell you.”

“Well, spill it out now. Quick. It’s late and I don’t want to waste any more time on you than I have to.”

“I’ll come right to the point,” Helgerson said. “We want you to join our syndicate. You’re the key man; the whole thing revolves around your coming in. And if—”

“I told you I’m playing it straight. I’m not Nat Hamlin any more.”

“And if you turn down the offer,” Helgerson went on, ignoring the interruption, “we’re going to have to take steps to make you join us.”

I was quiet for a moment. “What sort of steps?”

“You have a girlfriend, Hamlin. I hear you’re pretty high on her. Plan to marry her, maybe. I’ve checked up a lot about you. How would your girlfriend react if she found out you were a Rehab?”

“She—I—” I closed my mouth and felt black anger ripple up through me. And with it came the sick feeling my conditioning supplied, to keep me from doing anything violent. I wanted to do something violent right then. I said instead, “People don’t discriminate against Rehabs. The Code says they’re to be treated as completely new individuals. Paul Macy didn’t commit Nat Hamlin’s crimes.”

“That’s what the Code says, yeah. But nobody really trusts a Rehab, deep down. There’s always the lingering suspicion that he might backslide.”

“Ellen would trust me even if she knew.”

“Maybe she would, maybe she wouldn’t. How about the people you work with? They don’t know, either—only the top bosses. And your friends. What’s going to happen if they suddenly find out you’ve been holding out on them, that you’re really a Rehab?”

I knew what would happen, and I felt bitter-tasting fear. Legally a Rehab is an innocent man and should be subject to no prejudice—but in practice there’s a certain coldness between most people and Rehabs, a lack of trust that goes deeper than the legal codes. My nice neat life on Palmyra would be smashed if Helgerson spread the word about.

But I couldn’t go in with him on the deal.

I said, “You wouldn’t pull a thing like that.”

“Not if you wised up and let me go back into business with you, Nat. You can overcome your conditioning if you fight it hard enough. Think it over, Nat. I’ll phone you tomorrow night. If the answer’s still no, the whole planet will know about you the next morning.”

The screen went blank.

* * *

I paced up and down my room for three hours, cursing Helgerson out and getting my blood pressure up. I realized I was boxed in.

Sure, I could break my conditioning and go back to Helgerson. It probably would mean a total nervous breakdown inside of a month and a permanent case of the shakes, but I could do it. I didn’t want to do it, though. They had fixed me so I liked being honest. Besides, a backsliding Rehab doesn’t get a third chance. If I got caught, it would mean total personality demolition—the death sentence for Macy-Hamlin. They would wipe out my mind and build a wholly new identity into my body, one that would have to be taught how to read and write and tie his shoelaces all over again.

No. Joining Helgerson was impossible.

But the alternative was having word of my Rehab status spread all over the place. Maybe Ellen would stick with me after she knew, maybe not; but either way I could never be happy on Palmyra again. The rumor would spread, and I couldn’t deny it, which would confirm it. And suddenly I would find myself persona non grata at a lot of places where I was welcomed right now.

I chewed it all out inside myself and saw the only thing I could do, under the circumstances. I couldn’t let Ellen find out about me from Helgerson. I would have to tell her myself. I had been meaning to tell her for months, but kept putting it off, postponing it, being afraid of her reaction. The time had come to let her know.

I activated the autosec and told it to phone Ellen. The time was past three in the morning, but I didn’t care.

Her head and shoulders appeared on the screen, blinking, sleepfogged, lovely. “What is it, Paul?”

“I’ve got to see you, Ellen. Got to talk to you.”

“Right now.”

“Right now,” I said.

I braced myself for the deluge, but it didn’t come. She shrugged, smiled, said, “You must have a good reason for it, darling. I’ll have coffee ready when you get here.”

* * *

The trip took me twenty minutes. I was jittery and tense, and words rolled around crazily in my mind, ways of explaining, ways to tell what I had to tell. Ellen kissed me warmly as I came in. She was wearing a filmy sort of gown and she was still squint-eyed from sleep.

She put a cup of coffee in my hand and I sat down facing her and I said, “Ellen, what I’m going to tell you is something you should have known from the start. I want you to hear me out from beginning to end without interrupting.”

I told her the whole thing: how Nat Hamlin had thrived for thirteen years as a top interstellar jewel smuggler, how he had been wanted by half the worlds of the galaxy, how he had finally been caught and Rehabbed into me. I explained why I had taken the Palmyra option, how I had rebuilt my life, how I had begun with a fresh slate. I also told her how much I loved and needed her.

Then I went into the Helgerson episode, and his threat. “That’s why I came here, Ellen. To tell you before he had the chance to. But everything’s ruined for me here anyway. I can’t stop him from exposing me. I’ll leave Palmyra tomorrow, go back to Earth, tell them I’ve changed my mind and want a refacing job done. That way none of Hamlin’s old pals can pop up this way again. And I’ll find some other world somewhere and start over a second time. That’s all, Ellen.”

Her expression hadn’t changed during the whole long narration. Now that she saw I was finished she said, “I wish you could find some way of avoiding the refacing, Paul. I like your face the way it is.”

The implications of what she had said didn’t register for a moment. Then I gaped foolishly and gasped, “You—you’ll come with me?”

“Of course, silly. You should have told me before—but it doesn’t make any difference. I love Paul Macy. Nat Hamlin’s dead, so far as I’m concerned.”

A floodtide of warmth and happiness swept over me. She trusted me! She—loved me! I had been an idiot not to see the depth of that love, to know that I could have told her the truth all along. “You—aren’t like the others, Ellen. The fact that I’m a Rehab doesn’t matter to you.”

There was an odd expression on her face as she said, “Of course it doesn’t matter.”

She got up and took her purse from a dresser drawer. She fumbled through the purse, found something, brought it over and handed it to me. “You’re not the only one with a past, darling.”

I was holding a yellow identity card in my hand. It told me that the girl who was known as Ellen Bryce had been born Joan Gardner, until her sentence two years ago. The card didn’t tell me what the sentence had been for, and I didn’t want to know. But it did tell me that Ellen was a Rehab too.

* * *

The last barriers of mutual mistrust were down between us. Ellen cried, and maybe I cried a little too, and then we laughed at how silly we had both been to keep our big secrets from each other. I figure half the pain in this universe is brought about by people who hide things unnecessarily and then brood over what they’ve hidden. But we didn’t have any more secrets from each other. Dan Helgerson couldn’t hurt us now.

He couldn’t do anything to what we had between us. If Rehabs don’t trust each other, how can they expect the rest of the world to trust them? I didn’t care what Joan Gardner had done in her twenty-two years of life. Maybe she had chopped her parents into hamburger; maybe she had been the most active call-girl in the galaxy. What did that matter? Joan Gardner was dead, and Ellen Bryce was the girl I held in my arms that night.

It was ridiculous for me to go home that night, and I stayed till dawn and Ellen made breakfast for us. We talked and planned and wondered, and between us we not only set the date but figured out what I was going to do about Helgerson and his threat.

When Helgerson called the next day to find out my answer, I said, “You win. I’ll come in with you at a million a year.”

“I knew you’d smarten up, Nat. We need you and you need us. It’s a good deal. You always had an eye for a good deal.”

“When do I begin?”

“Right away. Suppose you come on over here for lunch and a drink, and I’ll give you a month’s advance as a binder.” He quoted an address on Palmyra City’s swank South Side. “You won’t regret doing this, Nat. We’ll keep it quiet and the Rehab boys won’t ever find out you’re breaking your conditioning.”

“Sure. I’ll be right over.”

I hung up and reeled dizzily against the wall while the shock of the conversation left me. Rehab conditioning is no joke. Not only do they erase the neuroses that led you to become a criminal in the first place, but they stick in a few mental blocks that make it tough to go back to your old ways. I was fighting those blocks now. Waves of pain rolled through me. It was double-edged pain, too—for not only was I fighting the Rehab conditioning, I was also going against an older, still-active block I had about turning stoolpigeon. Nat Hamlin had been vividly expressive on the subject of stoolies. Paul Macy still found the idea repugnant. But I didn’t have any choice. And Helgerson was going to be in for a surprise.

When the pain spasms were gone, I picked up the phone again and asked for the Rehab desk of the local Crime Commission office. The face of Commissioner Blair, the man who had placed me on Palmyra, appeared on the screen: relaxed, pink-cheeked, smiling.

“Hello, there, Paul. What’s up?”

“You know Dan Helgerson, Commissioner?”

His brows furrowed. “The name doesn’t register.”

I said, “You can check him against your master lists later. He’s wanted for jewel swindles on fifty worlds or so. He was one of Nat Hamlin’s old buddies.”

“And what about him, Paul?”

I winced at the inner pain. I said, “Helgerson’s on Palmyra, Commissioner. He’s been in touch with me and he’s trying to blackmail me into setting up a jewel-smuggling ring here. He says if I don’t come across, he’ll spread the word that I’m a Rehab.” I saw the alarm and anger appear on Blair’s face. “I told him I agreed to his terms, and he’s expecting me for lunch today. But of course—I can’t really go back into partnership with him—”

“Naturally not. Give me the address of the place where he’s expecting you, and we’ll pick him up. If he’s wanted as you say, we can book him on that charge—and even if he isn’t, we can grab him on Invasion of Privacy. A Rehab’s entitled to live in peace. You don’t have to wear the mark of Cain on your forehead for the things Nat Hamlin did.”

I was weak-kneed and sweat-soaked by the time I hung up. But I was smiling in satisfaction. Dan Helgerson was going to be awfully surprised when the police and not me showed up at his hotel.

Nat Hamlin had had two attributes for which he was admired throughout the galaxy by his fellow crooks. He never doublecrossed a buddy and he declared repeatedly that he would rather cut his throat than turn stoolie. Helgerson had given his address because he knew he could trust Nat Hamlin.

But Helgerson had made a big mistake. He underestimated the Rehab conditioning. He wasn’t dealing with Nat Hamlin at all. He was dealing with a guy named Paul Macy, and Macy wasn’t hampered by any of Hamlin’s attributes.

* * *

The trial was a closed-chamber affair that took eight hours. Helgerson sat across the room, glaring at me in anger and disbelief. Even then, he couldn’t believe that Nat Hamlin had called copper on him.

The central office of the Galactic Crime Commission sent in a full dossier on Helgerson by ultrafax, and the judge read through it, heard my testimony, and quickly sentenced Helgerson to be remanded to Earth for Rehabilitation. The case didn’t make the Palmyra papers, because my identity as a Rehab had to be kept quiet.

Ellen and I were married the next day; I got a leave of absence and we departed on our honeymoon. The first stop was Earth, where I visited the Rehab Center and asked for a minor refacing—just enough to keep other buddies of Nat Hamlin’s from recognizing me. They altered my hair color from black to reddish-brown, thinned out my nose, widened my mouth, shortened my jaw, and gave me a mustache. Ellen had designed the new face herself. It looked pretty much like the old me, but there were minor differences. When we got back to Palmyra, it wouldn’t be hard for Ellen to explain that I had had an aircar crackup and had needed some plastic surgery.

From Earth we went on to Durrinor, the playground-world, and our three months there were as close to Eden as I expect to get. The time came, finally, sadly, to return to Palmyra. We had a private cabin aboard the spaceship; we still thought of ourselves as honeymooners, and intended to keep on thinking of ourselves that way for the rest of our lives.

The first night on board the spaceliner we had just finished getting settled and unpacked in our stateroom when the doorchime sounded. I opened the door. My jaw slid down an inch or two.

Dan Helgerson was standing outside the door, and he was wearing the blue-and-gold uniform of a crewman. He smiled pleasantly. “Good evening, sir. Welcome aboard the Queen of the Stars. I hope you enjoy your trip, sir.” Then his expression changed as he recognized me behind the minor changes. “Ah—you’re Nat—Nat Hamlin—”

“No,” I said. “Paul Macy, just as it says on the doorplate, Dan.”

He shook his head. “Not Dan. The name is Joseph, sir. Joseph Elson. I’m your purser, and it’ll be my pleasure to serve you during this trip. If you need me, just ring. Thank you—Mr. Macy.”

“Thank you—Joseph.”

We smiled at each other, and he shut the door. Joseph Elson, eh? Well, Joseph Elson it was, then. I hoped I wouldn’t accidentally call him Dan during the course of the trip. A Rehab deserves that much courtesy, after all.

Content

Second Start
by Robert Silverberg