Crompton Divided by Robert Sheckley

to get us off. Most of the time we just get a bad taste in the mouth. So when Chush and his twin brought the packet of semi-aspirated derii weed from Aztec II, I thought nothing of it. The next two days were a blank. I wish I could get some more of that stuff. …’
    ‘I don’t understand any of this,’ Crompton said. ‘But I do have my own problems. Will you give me the address of Edgar Loomis?’
    ‘And who,’ Secuille asked, ‘is Edgar Loomis?’
    ‘Must I go through all of that again?’ Crompton asked. ‘You said on the ship that by meeting me out of temporal sequence we could cut out the tedious explanations when we actually did meet, which I presume is now, unless this meeting also doesn’t count.’
    ‘Calm down,’ Secuille said. ‘I’ve just taken the liberty of peeking into your mind and finding out about Edgar Loomis and all the rest of it. I’m completely at home with the situation by now. By the way, I’m sorry I passed that law concerning the employees of the Rui Gardens. I had no idea it would affect you.’
    ‘It’s quite obvious that you did that,’ Crompton said, ‘in order to force me to find you and ask a favor.’
    ‘It’s not as simple as that,’ Secuille said. ‘I – the identity who is speaking to you now – had no idea of your existence, and passed the nondisclosure law in all innocence. It was one of my other identities, the one whom you met on the star ship, who influenced me to pass that law.’
    ‘How many identities do you have?’ Crompton asked.
    ‘Innumerable,’ Secuille said.
    ‘I find all of this difficult to believe,’ Crompton said.
    ‘That is only because you haven’t consciously experienced for yourself the influences which your selves, past and present, have on the identity you happen to be at the moment. Crompton, every sentient creature Eves simultaneously in various timebound sequences, and tries to better things for himself by influencing one or more of his other selves. The voices that you hear in your head, telling you what to do and what not to do, these are the voices of your other selves at other times and places, casting their votes, trying to improve conditions for themselves.’
    ‘Maybe that’s true for you,’ Crompton said. ‘But it’s not for me. I’m always the same person.’
    ‘Some of your other selves are presently out of touch,’ Secuille admitted. ‘But what I say is as true for you as it is for me. You yourself, at this moment, are nothing more than one thin voice in the mind of some inconceivable Crompton who might not yet have dreamed that this was one of this situations.’
    ‘I don’t understand any of that,’ Crompton said. ‘The fact remains that you passed the law that won’t allow me to learn Loomis’s whereabouts. And now I suppose you’ll give me his address only if I agree to be a pawn in your Game.’
    Secuille looked amazed, then threw back his head and laughed. Aaians don’t laugh whole-heartedly as a rule when in the company of other beings: Aaians, being ancient and wise, are filled to bursting with various kinds of psychic powers. The sudden explosive release of emotion tends to allow these powers to manifest.
    That is what happened now. Secuille’s laughter gave form to the following beings: a brown-skinned girl with long black hair and dancing eyes, two Babylonian demons, a yeti, and a red-faced man in a brown and yellow checked suit.
    ‘Do you see what I see?’ one of the demons remarked to the other indicating the girl. ‘Poontang!’
    ‘Is good to eat?’ the other demon asked.
    ‘Eeee,’ said the girl.
    ‘To think,’ said the red-faced man, ‘that I should wind up to be mere illusion in the mind of an extraterrestrial being who, during my lifetime, I never even dreamed existed! Yet he might equally be a figment of someone else’s imagination. Which would make me an apparition of a second order of unreality, counting from the left.’
    ‘Let’s get married,’ the brown-skinned