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?”
He gulped. “Killed anybody? Oh my heavens no! How could I--”
“Listen--suppose while you--er--have possession of some
stranger--suppose you got killed?” I suggested. “Or committed suicide
for instance?”
“Oh please--please be careful,” Lisbeth put in.
“It isn’t Porky I’m worried about, it’s the other fellow,” I said.
“Look here, Porky--it only takes you a second to--withdraw, as you put
it?”
“Why--yes. Less than that, maybe. Instantaneous maybe--”
“And so you’d be sitting here in your chair, but the other fellow would
be dead.”
“Don’t quibble,” Baldy said. “Let’s see him do it. That’s the important
part.” Baldy also has a good imagination, which is why his cartoons are
so successful. “If he can do a thing like that, it’s a gift,” Baldy
added with mounting enthusiasm. “Why, we can capitalize on it in a
thousand ways--maybe make a fortune--”
“I just want to get rid of it,” Porky said. “But here goes--just so you
won’t think I’m crazy.”
Well, he showed us, all right. A meek-looking old woman with a shawl
over her head and an umbrella under her arm happened to come along, and
at the busy intersection just under my window she stood looking
confused, as though afraid of the traffic.
“Try her,” Baldy suggested. “She looks like a weak character. You can
take possession of a weak one better, can’t you?”
“Doesn’t seem to make any difference,” Porky said. “All right, she’ll
do. Now just watch. Keep your eyes on her.”
We were all of us pretty tense, I guess. I recall that I was trying to
watch the old woman, and Porky simultaneously. There was the old woman,
standing on the corner, nervously waiting for the light to change; and
then when it did, she seemed afraid to start across because cars were
turning from the side street. And here in his chair, Porky just took a
good, intense look at his victim. That was queer too. I saw a sort of
predatory look jump into his pale blue eyes. And then he sat back in
his chair with a hand up to his forehead.
* * * * *
Then it happened. Down on the corner the old woman seemed to start; for
a second she looked dazed; I think she gave a twitch. Here in the chair