Crompton Divided by Robert Sheckley

nobody can do that! The poor are stuck with their poverty, and the rich are saddled with their wealth. That’s life, it simply can’t be helped. The rich need sympathy; and I am very sympathetic to their problems. They need people around them who can enjoy and appreciate luxuries, and teach them how to enjoy them as well. I perform that function, making it more possible for them to enjoy their lot in life. And rich women, Alistair! They have their needs, too. They are nervous, highly bred, suspicious, these women, and highly suggestible. They need nuance and subtlety. They need the attentions of a man of soaring imagination, yet possessed of an exquisite sensibility. Such men are all too rare in this humdrum world. Fortunately enough, my own talents lie in that direction.’
    Crompton stared at Loomis with a certain horror. He found it difficult to believe that this corrupt, self-satisfied seducer was a part of him, a potentiality of his own psyche. He would have been glad to turn away from Loomis and avoid the whole distasteful business of sex. But it could not be: an inscrutable destiny had proclaimed that even the most lucid and clearest-thinking men must still live with that debased aspect of themselves, must come to terms (by sublimation, if possible!) with the shameful male instinct to fuck a lot of women and have a lot of laughs and get paid a lot of money for doing nothing.
    It was regrettable, but he had to have Loomis. And perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad. Crompton had no doubt of his ability to keep an impulsive, changeable, impulse-ruled creature like that in line, maybe even help him to transform his useless rutting instinct into a passion for architecture or a love of gardening, or something like that.
    ‘All of that is really of no concern to me,’ Crompton said. ‘As you know, I am the basic Crompton personality in the original Crompton body. I have come here to Aaia to effect Reintegration with you. I suppose you’ll want some time in which to put your affairs in order?’
    ‘My affairs are always in order,’ Loomis said. ‘I just take up with whoever wants to get it on with me.’
    ‘I meant business matters, such as outstanding debts you might wish to liquidate, settlement of property, and so on.’
    ‘I usually don’t concern myself too much about that sort of thing,’ Loomis said. ‘I figure that taking care of the mess I leave behind after I’m gone is someone else’s business, if you see what I mean.’
    ‘As you wish. Shall we get on with it?’
    ‘I beg your pardon?’
    ‘With the fusion!’
    ‘Oh, yeah,’ Loomis said. ‘That’s the part I’m kinda doubtful about.’ He thought for a moment. ‘I’ve been thinking about it, Al, and the fact is I really don’t want to integrate with you. Nothing personal, but that’s the way I feel.’
    ‘You refuse to fuse with me?’ Crompton asked, incredulous.
    ‘That’s it,’ Loomis said. ‘I’m really sorry, I know you’ve come a long way for nothing; though you might have written first and asked me, you know? Anyhow, my apologies, but that’s how it is.’
    ‘Are you unaware,’ Crompton said, ‘that you are incomplete, unfinished, a caricature of a man rather than a complete portrait? Don’t you know that your only possibility of dragging yourself out of the gutter of your life into the clear, godlike atmosphere of self-transcendence is through fusion with me?’
    ‘I know,’ Loomis said with a sigh. ‘And sometimes I do have the desire to find something pure, sacred, serene, and untouched by the hands of men.’
    ‘Well then?’
    ‘But frankly, I don’t think about that sort of thing too much. I can get by without it, you know? Especially now that Gilliam has split and I can start getting around a little more. I’m just having too much fun to give it all up in order to take up residence in your head, Al, no insult intended.’
    ‘Your present state of happiness is only temporary, as you must be aware. It will soon