Crompton Divided Read Free

with momentary bursts of his former lightheartedness. In his second week he began to show great affection toward his nurse, who declared he was a perfect darling. Under the influence of her soothing warmth, Alistair began to act like his former self.
    Then, without warning, on the evening of his thirteenth day in the infirmary, Alistair slashed the nurse’s face with a broken water tumbler, then made a desperate attempt to cut his own throat. He was hospitalized for his injuries and sank into a catalepsy which the doctor thought was simple shock. Rest and quiet were prescribed; they were the worst possible things, under the circumstances.
    After two weeks of stupor characterized by the waxy flexibility of catatonia, the disease reached its climax. Alistair’s parents sent the child to the A1 Smith Memorial Clinic in New York. There the case was immediately and accurately diagnosed as virus schizophrenia in a terminal stage.
    Alistair, now twelve, had few reality-contacts with the world; not enough to provide a working basis for the specialists. He was in an almost continual state of catatonia, his schizoid personalities irreconcilably hardening, his life continuing in a strange, unreachable twilight, among the nightmares that were his only companions. Massive Cleavage had little chance of success in so advanced a case. But without the operation, Alistair was doomed to spend the rest of his life in an institution, never really conscious, never free from the surrealistic dungeons of his mind.
    His parents chose the lesser evil, and signed the papers allowing the doctors to make a belated and desperate attempt at Cleavage.
    Under deep synthohypnosis, three separate personalities were evoked. The doctors talked to them and made their choice. Two personalities were given names and projected into Durier bodies. The third personality – Alistair – was considered the most adequate by a narrow margin, and retained the original corpus. All three personalities survived the trauma, and the operation was judged a limited success.
    The neurohypnotic surgeon in charge, Dr. Vlacjeck, noted in his report that the three personalities, all inadequate, could not hope for a successful Reintegration at the legal age of thirty. The operation had come too late, and the personalities had lost their vital intermingling of traits and sympathies, their essential commonality. In his report he urged them to waive Reintegration and live out their lives as well as they could, each within the stifling confines of his own narrow personality.
    In an attempt to render any attempt at Reintegration unlikely if not impossible, the two Duriers were sent to foster parents on the planets Aaia and Ygga. The doctors wished the best for them, but expected very little.
    Alistair Crompton, the dominant personality in the original body, recovered from the operation; but a vital two-thirds of him was missing, gone with the schizoid personalities. Certain human attributes, emotions, capabilities, had been torn from him, never to be replaced or substituted. Crompton grew up an unprepossessing youth of meager height, painfully thin, sharp-nosed and tight-lipped. His hairline was receding, his eyes were glassy, and his face remained sparse of stubble.
    His high intelligence and talented olfactory sense brought him a good job and rapid promotion with Psychosmell, Inc., and he had risen quickly to the position of Chief Tester, the top of his profession, a job that brought him respect and a very adequate income. But Crompton was not satisfied.
    On all sides of him, the envious Crompton saw people with all their marvelous complexities and contradictions, constantly bursting out of the stereotypes that society tried to force on them. He observed prostitutes who were not good-hearted, army sergeants who detested brutality, wealthy men who never gave a cent to charity, Irishmen who hated talking, Italians who could not carry a tune, Frenchmen with no sense of logic. Most of the