The Man Who Saved New York
By Ray Cummings
Porky’s ego wouldn’t stay in his own body, and that, believe it or not, was what saved the city!
Of course, as you know, I didn’t figure in the excitement over the Green Giant. The newspapers and the radio boys never mentioned me, or Lisbeth, or Baldy or even Porky Jenks. Why would they? We have kept strictly silent about the whole affair. Not from shyness; none of us are against a little wholesome publicity. But it never does one any good to be billed as a first class candidate for the nut-house. So that Green Giant who waded around in the ocean off Sandy Hook will remain a mystery.
Not that I can actually explain him. I can’t. He’s as much a mystery to me as to anybody else. But, as it happened, there probably never would have been any Green Giant at all if it hadn’t been for me. I don’t mind telling the real facts, but I think it’s quite a bit safer for them just to go as fiction. You can take them or leave them, so to speak.
And there’s another angle to the thing. The war actually would have been won by now--if Lisbeth hadn’t queered it. Hitler would have been smashed and everything would have been just swell. I had it all planned--and then Lisbeth put the jinx on it. I’m sorry about that. But you’ll realize there’s not a thing I could have done.
The queer affair began last Spring--a warmish afternoon when I was sitting in my study trying to figure out a plot. Porky Jenks came in to see me. I used to know Porky quite well, but hadn’t seen him for a couple of years. He was a likeable young fellow, always with a ready laugh which is what made him so fat, I suppose. But this was a different Porky. He wedged himself down, collapsing in my only armchair. His clothes were rumpled as though he’d slept in them; his collar was wilted, hanging soggily on his bulging throat. His thin sandy hair was plastered on his sweating forehead; he pulled out a big blue handkerchief and mopped his face and just stared at me with pale blue eyes that looked haunted.
“Well, well, Porky, glad to see you,” I said. “How are you?”
“I’m awful,” he declared. Just out of habit, I suppose, he tried to laugh, but it was only a wan, sickly grin. “There’s--something the matter with me, Ray. Something terrible. That’s why I’ve come to you, see? You’re up on all that nutty stuff--the bizarre, the queer, the unbelievable--”
“Oh,” I said.
He stared at me with that haunted look. “Listen,” he said, “do I look crazy? Insane? A maniac? Tell me I’m not, Ray.”
“You’re not,” I said. “Cheer up. What have you been doing with yourself? Last I heard you were just finishing college.”
“I’m a hardware salesman. Retail trade. That is, I was, but what with the war and all, it’s no good.”
“Tough luck,” I said.
“It’s just as well. Walking so much made my feet hurt--they just wouldn’t stand it.” He sighed heavily. “Maybe that’s why I’m in 4-F, too. That and my weight--my heart. But that’s nothing serious--”
“Oh well, that’s fine,” I agreed. “But now--you’ve got some other trouble?”
* * * * *
The haunted look came back into his earnest eyes. “I’ll have to tell you,” he agreed. “After all, that’s what I came here for.” He gulped. “Listen,” he said, “hang onto yourself--you’ll get a shock. The thing hit me just about a week ago. Like a bolt from the blue--I didn’t have any warning at all. I was feeling perfectly all right, honest.”
“What hit you?” I prompted.
“I was just sitting by the window of my boarding house room.” His voice had that awed, solemn tone like you use telling a ghost story. “When all of a sudden I wasn’t myself at all. I was sitting in the chair all right--I knew that. But also I was a man walking down the street past my window.”
“You were--what?”
“A man walking past my window,” he repeated drably. “A perfectly strange man--and I was worried because I was late getting home and my wife’d give me hell. I was henpecked, scared to death of her, see?”
“No, I don’t see,” I declared.
His fat hands made a hopeless gesture. “Well, that’s what I mean, Ray. You think I’m crazy. That’s why I can’t go see a doctor. He’d just slam me into an asylum or something.” His chubby hands reached out and gripped my arm. “Listen--you’ve got to believe me. Anyway--I can show you--give you a demonstration--it’s easy enough.”
“Is it?” I said.
“Sure it is. You see, my ego, id, personality or something, doesn’t seem to want to stay put in my body any more. It--it wants to wander--”
“Let’s get this straight,” I interrupted. “You say you suddenly usurped the mind and body of some strange man walking down the street--”
“Yes, that’s it! Usurpsed! That’s a good word, Ray. I was sort of conscious that he was confused, too--my usurping him that way. He kind of resented it for a second or two--and then I guess he went blank. Anyway, I was in full control--”
“And what did you do? With him, I mean.”
“Oh. Well, I remember I decided I wouldn’t bother going back to my wife--his wife, I mean.”
I could only nod.
“So I went into a Bar and Grill and started to absorb whiskeys and soda and to the devil with his wife.”
“And then?” I prompted.
“Well, I can remember getting pretty blurry eventually. Seems like I was telling the bartender all my secret thoughts about the wife.” He smiled wryly. “And then I--well, you can’t blame me, Ray--it occurred to me I might be getting into some sort of jam. So I just--withdrew.”
“Withdrew?”
“I gave that little fellow back his body,” Porky said. He shrugged. “What else could I do? I just jerked myself back to my own body--in the chair by the window, see?”
For a minute I couldn’t think of anything to say. I’ve juggled with weird things like that for years--but strictly on paper, you understand. Now, meeting one in real life gave me a creepy feeling. Because Porky was telling me the truth. I wouldn’t doubt it. He was plainly about frightened out of his wits.
“You say you can do this any time you like?” I said at last.
“Sure I can. That’s just the trouble--sometimes it’s almost involuntarily, if I’m dozing, half asleep for instance, I just seem suddenly to slip into it. I got into a nasty jam just last night.”
He waited for me to ask him, what? But I just stared at him.
* * * * *
“Seems a man and his wife were having a big argument--the room over me in my boarding house,” he went on. “I could hear them. I don’t know what possessed me but all of a sudden I decided to take the wife’s part. So I did. She was a little woman, but when my--my personality got control of her--she’d always been meek, see? Afraid of the big bruiser, see? Well, anyway, it seems I changed all that in a hurry--” Porky smiled weakly. “Sort of hard to explain--”
“I get what you mean. Go on.”
“Well, the little woman took a few socks at him which surprised him--”
“I should think it might,” I commented.
“And just as he was socking back at her--”
“You withdrew?”
“Yes--yes I did. And that’s what worries me too, Ray. Not just for myself--this damned thing, see? It can work injustice to other people--”
“Easily,” I agreed. “That henpecked husband getting home drunk, for instance.”
“That’s what I mean.” He was still gripping my arm and his hands were shaking. “Ray, listen--a fellow oughtn’t to be able to do a thing like this. It’s not normal, is it?”
“No,” I admitted. “No--certainly not exactly normal. But you’re not sick, Porky? Nothing seems to be the matter with you--except this, of course?”
“No. If I wouldn’t be so scared I guess I’d feel all right.” He shuddered. “But what am I going to do? Want me to show you how the thing works? It’s easy enough. Let’s look out your window here. You just pick out anybody--anybody at all--”
* * * * *
It was just then that Lisbeth and Baldy Green walked in on us. Lisbeth is my daughter. She’s a nice girl. And good looking--a mop of unruly, wavy brown hair, and a figure with curves in all the right places. She wants to be a career girl--a news photographer, newspaper reporter of the sob sister style maybe, with a big by-line and write feature articles; and maybe hold down the City Desk job and publish the newspaper. A few little odds and ends like that. Baldy is a cartoonist on one of the big dailies. Middle aged, with a wife and six kids. A good friend of mine; and he had just gotten Lisbeth a job on his paper. Neither he nor Lisbeth had ever met Porky Jenks. I introduced them now. And then--because you had to do something to explain Porky’s frightened aspect--and maybe I didn’t look too normal either--I thought I’d better explain the problem in hand.
Well, as you can imagine, Lisbeth and Baldy were pretty nonplussed. And skeptical. But Porky, more gloomy than ever at all this discussion, waved away their doubts.
“Then let me show you,” he declared. “Pick anybody out there on the street. Anybody at all.” He shoved his armchair up to my open window, with us three standing around behind him.
“Will it--will it hurt him?” Lisbeth asked.
“It won’t hurt Porky,” I said. “But it might very easily hurt the other fellow.” I must admit the thing had me pretty jittery. I could begin to see the possibilities of what might happen. The hazards, so to speak. I gripped Porky by the shoulder. “Now listen,” I told him. “You’ve evidently had a lot of luck so far. You haven’t killed anybody, have you?”