My Two Faces

You could always tell whose battle had already been won, and whose was yet to come. It was usually a question of confidence. Some people almost swaggered, walked with a perpetual elation, knew that they no longer had to hide who they were or look at the reflections in shop windows to see who was behind them. They could sleep with both eyes closed.

Then there were the people like me. Those of us without beards grew them: the others shaved them off. Some resorted to plastic surgery, but that wasn't common now: there were too many stories of meeting your adversary in the waiting room at your first appointment. We were in hiding. We hid both from our adversaries, and from our own police, who were starting to devote their resources to bringing us together.

I looked at my reflection. I could see no one behind me, no one who seemed to be taking an interest anyway. At first I didn't recognise myself. I had shaved my head, an extreme reaction which I soon regretted as it didn't allow the possibility of further disguise. I tried to keep my beard in check, but I'd never had one before and didn't know how to look after it. I couldn't stop myself from plucking out hairs in moments of nervousness, which were frequent. My nose seemed to stick out for a mile. I'd always thought it was too big, a unique feature that identified me as surely as a fingerprint, but more obvious. Anyone trying to track me down had only to follow my nose.

It was Saturday afternoon, and the streets were full. It was safer that way, and the streets tended to be either full or empty: no one would go out unless there were already enough people to hide behind. I turned and watched. I was startled as two identical women walked past. Both young, blonde, same shoulder-length hair: they hadn't even bothered wearing different clothes. They held hands, a touching but defiant gesture: the salute of two opposing gladiators. I wondered where they were heading. Somewhere out of the way, to settle their affairs in an orderly fashion, perhaps, unless they genuinely thought they could publicly defy the police. It was possible, I supposed, that they were unfortunate enough to be identical twins. This was a bad time for them: they were meant to have police protection, but the police made mistakes.

I turned away from the window, deciding to go back to the bedsit that I still hoped would be only my temporary home. And in that moment, I found myself staring into the eyes of Charlotte.

Foolishly, I smiled. I had assumed that my wife's counterpart would have made some attempt to disguise herself, dyed her hair red and grown it long. I remembered how we had sat in the park, tossing coins and rolling dice to choose our future lives. This was the only way we knew of being unpredictable. Whatever we decided, our counterparts would decide as well. Only by following genuine random paths could we prevent them from finding us. And then we went our separate ways, knowing that if we stayed together, they only had to find one of us to find both.

Charlotte smiled at me from across the street, and only then did I realise that there was no reason why her dice shouldn't have landed the same way, that both Charlottes could have looked identical. And I realised that the smile was wrong. It wasn't a smile of compassion or affection: it was the smile of a hunter who has just found their prey.

I was looking not at my wife but at her double, and I ran, in fear of my life.

My first thought was of finding Charlotte, my Charlotte, and warning her, but I knew how stupid that would be--I might just as well go and kill her myself. From now on, I could not see my wife.

It was time to fight. I had prepared for this moment, while hoping that it wouldn't come. I knew that I didn't have the killer instinct in me, and assumed that the same was true of my counterpart. It was the reason why the situation was lasting so long, why it hadn't been settled since the day of the split four weeks ago. When we'd all woken up and realised there were two of us, and that one had to go. Few of us were capable of dispatching another human being: especially not when that human shared our own face.

But I had seen the way things would go. I had a friend who shot for sport--indoor targets, rather than live animals, but I still didn't see the point. I saw it well enough when I went to see him. He happily lent me a handgun--completely against club rules, but such restrictions were already being relaxed. He told me that he wouldn't be needing it himself, and had the confidence that told me he had already solved his problem, on only the second day.

I had rolled a few dice, and stashed the gun in a left-luggage locker at the railway station. In the meantime, I hoped that my counterpart would hide from me as eagerly as I hid from him. The crisis was global, and sooner or later I knew the police would hunt us down, and that only one of us would survive. I just hoped that I was the better hider.

Now I drew the key from my pocket and opened the locker, wondering how many passengers were in flight for their lives. The locker was empty.

I felt something in my back. It didn't matter if it were the gun or not: he had me anyway.

"Eric," said a voice, which sounded strange to me, as if it were on tape. "Don't run. Please."

Slowly I turned myself round. I was facing my mortal enemy. Myself.

"We're civilised men, and we're going to do this in a civilised fashion," he said.

After a short while I nodded, and he led me away.

He had planned this. We went to a hotel room that he had booked in advance. The receptionist looked away from us as we walked towards the lift.

"We don't have to do this," I said.

"You know that's not true," he said. I did.

"How did you know where to find me?"

"I didn't know how your dice were coming up. But I knew which rolls you were making."

He'd disguised himself as me. I mean, he'd shaved his head and grown a beard. And as the lift rose, giving me the familiar queasy feeling, I realised why: so he could take over my life with the minimum of fuss. The only difference was a ring which he wore on the middle finger of his right hand, as if it were an identity tag.

The lift arrived on the fourth floor. The hotel was smart but not luxurious, a place for sleeping in rather than living. My double led me from the lift, down a corridor that turned left and right, and stopped in front of a room. Room 411: the room that I would die in.

He unlocked the door, and held out his hand. I entered. He closed the door behind him, locked it from the inside. He placed the key on the table, next to the table.

"The room's paid for," he said. "If you're the one that leaves, you only have to hand the key in."

I nodded.

"Don't sulk, Eric," he said. "This has to be done." He seated himself in the chair. "I'd offer you a drink, but you wouldn't trust me."

"It was heads, then," I said.

The first toss of the coin. We had fled together from our counterparts, once we'd heard of the first killings and realised how things were to turn out. We chose the park at random. First decision: should we seek out our other selves, dispatch them as humanely as possible, and attempt to carry on with our lives; or should we go into hiding, hope that the situation would in some way resolve itself, or that the population would drop so far that we would both be allowed to live? The decision had to be made at random, or they'd see us coming. It was tails: hide.

"It was heads," said the other. "But we made another decision. It had to be both of us together. We'd live or die as a couple. We felt you'd grant us the same."

It was a few seconds before I understood the implications of this. "Then you've found Charlotte!" I said.

"We found her two weeks ago," he said. "It was you we couldn't find. My Charlotte made contact today, and I knew you'd go for your weapon next. The two Charlottes will be meeting as we speak."

This changed everything. I had felt extraordinarily brave as I entered the hotel, prepared to risk my own life on the roll of a die. But now Charlotte's life was at stake.

"Don't," said the other Eric. The gun was in his hand, pointing firmly at me. "I said we'd do this fairly. I could just shoot you where you are, but I'm going to give you your chance. You deserve it as much as me. But the one thing I'm not going to do is let you leave."

The coin had fallen the wrong way. I should have become the hunter, found him before he found me, taken him by surprise. "Promise me one thing," I said. "If you're the one who survives."

"Please."

"However you do it, and whichever Charlotte survives. You look after her."

"Oh, Eric, how could you?" I felt an absurd desire to apologise. "Yes, we're bastards. We'd sell out our own mothers if we thought it would help. Yes, I just had the same thought: we've no idea how Mum and Dad are getting through this, we've only been interested in saving our own skins. That's us. But through all our selfish cowardice, the one thing we won't compromise on is Charlotte. Of course I'll look after her. And I don't even have to ask you. Now my turn."

I said nothing.

"You'll give up meat."

I looked up, not understanding. Then I realised what he was getting at. "You don't believe that!" I said.

"Doesn't it make sense? A collapse in food, and a sudden increase in dead bodies. How would you solve the problem?"

"There isn't the slightest evidence," I said, angry that he'd chosen to believe such an idea: which of course proved that I was capable of believing it myself.

"There doesn't have to be evidence," he said. "There's no other way of doing it."

"A few isolated incidents, maybe," I said. "That's all."

"Just the same. Dying man's wish."

At the moment, I couldn't imagine ever eating anything again. It was an easy promise to make. "Okay," I said.

"Now sit."

For the first time I had a good look at the room. There was an ensuite shower room, and I suddenly felt as if I needed it. The bed was double, probably just because there were no single rooms available--neither of us had the money to squander on luxuries. There was a second chair, and between the two, a small low table, on which had been set out a wooden chess set. The significance of this finally hit me.

"You've got to be kidding!" I said.

"Far from it," he replied. "I think it gives a due sense of occasion, don't you?" He picked up two pieces, held one in either fist, then held them out to me. "Choose," he said.

"No way," I said. "I can't play chess."

"Neither can I," he said. "I'm no better nor worse than you. We'd be quite evenly matched, wouldn't we?"

For a few seconds, it seemed a fairly attractive proposition. I at least knew how the pieces moved, and it wasn't as if I'd be playing a grandmaster. I tried to understand what had motivated him to choose this method.

"No," I said. "You've had a month. You've planned this. In four weeks, you've had time to raise your game--you'll be far ahead of me. It's a trick."

He tried to look offended, but then realised that he wouldn't be able to fool me. "Fair point," he said, still holding out his fists. "We could do it just by choosing queens. That would be properly random. What do you say? The person who gets black loses?"

"They're both black," I said.

He continued to hold them out for a few seconds, then gave a guilty smile, and returned the two black queens to the chessboard.

"Men of honour," he said. "I suppose that clears that one up."

"We don't have to do this," I said again. "Let's just go our separate ways. One of us can leave the country. We can go into hiding, find a way of faking the records. No one needs to know there's two of us."

He leaned back in his chair, aping gestures that I'd thought belonged solely to me. "Don't think I'm not tempted," he said. "But there are other considerations. Ethics, for example. You remember the day of the split?"

We hadn't known it was coming, and we're still not sure why it did. The most common explanation is something unusual in the Large Hadron Collider, but scientists still haven't worked out what that something unusual might be. They had other problems at the moment.

Charlotte and I had gone to bed early. We'd been arguing into the small hours the night before, and she'd felt we might be a bit less crabby if we actually succeeded in sleeping. As usual, there was space between us, but I felt that we were on reasonably good terms that night. Even so, I was surprised when I felt her body against me at about four in the morning.

Then I realised that something wasn't right, and I put on the bedside light. At the same time, the man next to me sat bolt upright, and we stared at each other in the light, at our own faces, and asked the question simultaneously. "What are you doing in my bed?"

Then two Charlottes woke up next to each other, saw what had happened, and screamed.

The four of us enjoyed about a half a minute of terror before we heard shouting from elsewhere in the street, and realised that it wasn't just us.

"I don't need a history lesson," I said now, but I also knew that he was explaining for his own benefit.

"Bad shit," he said. "One evening, a population of six and half billion. The next morning, thirteen. And everyone scrabbling for the same resources. Remember, there wasn't enough breakfast for the four of us? That told us what was going to happen. The planet could hardly support its population before the split. Now, there's no chance. That's the other reason why I couldn't offer you a drink."

"Half of us have to go," I said. He nodded gravely. "But just the same: a few of us could survive. Some people will die naturally. It won't matter if we fall through the net. The four of us." I was desperately impatient: while we were talking, Charlotte was confronting her own double, and I was powerless to help.

"Eric, how can you say such things?" He looked genuinely shocked, but I didn't care for his good opinion. "Why us? Why should we run and hide when the rest of the world is at war?"

"Because we can," I said. I already knew he was a coward: his actions had shown that, and I also knew how things worked in our heads.

"No," he said, firmly. "Because there is the other reason, isn't there? Tell me what it is, Eric."

I sighed. "We can never trust each other," I said.

"And don't forget, there are four of us. Charlotte will finish the job if we don't."

"Bastard!" I yelled, and swept the chess set onto the floor. I jumped up from my chair, and walked over to the window. We were at the rear of the hotel, and I only had a view of the car park. We were too high up for me to try to escape by jumping, a fact which I was sure he would have considered when booking the room.

"There's no point blaming me, Eric," said Eric. "Nobody wanted this to happen." I heard him stand up behind me. I glanced at the window, but could see no reflection. I turned round, afraid that he might have another ambush planned. Instead, what I saw in his hand killed all hope in me, as surely as if he'd pulled a knife.

"It's the only way now, Eric," he said. "You know that."

I said nothing, staring at the box that he held.

"Look. You can see that the seal isn't broken."

"That proves nothing," I said. "You can buy fakes."

"You can, and they're useless. Listen: you can make the rules. I'll open it in front of you: you can choose your tablet: then I'll swallow the other, before you take yours if you like."

I turned away, ignoring reflections and looking back into the car park.

"Come on Eric, you know it's the only way."

"I'm still trying to work out how you'll make into a trick."

I heard him sit back down, carefully placing the box onto the table where the chess set had previously sat.

"Fair point," he said. "The trick with the chess was rotten. But I'm no worse than you are. And the whole point of these tablets is that you can't cheat. One kills you, one doesn't. We take them simultaneously. And they're Government-backed, so you know who to sue if we both die."

I turned on him, still angry. "You only told me about Charlotte to put me under pressure. Speed me up, stop me thinking."

He shook his head. "Don't worry about those two," he said. "They'll be done by now. You don't really think they'll be hanging about like us, do you?" And the answer was, no I didn't. Charlotte and Charlotte would have seen how things stood at once, dealt with the situation on the spot. The only problem was, the other Charlotte would have a trick up her sleeve, and my Charlotte wouldn't see it coming. Because they would be different now. She had had four weeks as a hunter, four weeks watching her husband learn chess to trick his double out of his life, four weeks planning her own deceits and treachery. I remembered her smile: since the coin came up heads, she would have become a different person.

Now one of them was already dead, and I hadn't been there.

"And before you take the moral high ground," said my counterpart, "where are your tablets? I at least carried fairness as a back-up plan. You just got a gun."

Everything died inside me. I had been fooling myself to think that I could avoid this. There were two Erics breathing the same air, two Charlottes drinking the same water. I moved away from the window, and again took the seat opposite him, staring at the tablets.

"I didn't want it to be like this," I said. "I wanted to go with dignity, with honour."

Eric's superior grin collapsed. Suddenly we were not two men at war: we were two men defeated. We were at the end of the war, where, as ever, both sides had lost. "Let's not be hard on ourselves," he said. "There are others doing much worse. And this isn't the world we were born for."

At one end of the main table there was a kettle, two porcelain teacups with saucers, and a basket containing sachets of coffee, tea, sugar and milk. There seemed to be more sugar than anything else. There was also a small plastic bottle of mineral water. I decided then that I would be the one who acted. I stood up, fetched the bottle and two cups, and placed them on the table in front of us.

"You're okay with the water?" said Eric. "We could take it from the tap."

"Who cares," I said.

"Don't be like that," said Eric, but I said nothing as I filled each cup, and placed one in front of each of us.

I broke the seal on the box and pulled the plastic cover off. The two tablets were sealed in a silver foil casing. I pushed them out and dropped them onto the table. I then pushed them around a bit so it was no longer possible to see which was which, stupid since we hadn't known in the first place. Then I picked the tablet on the right. Circular, half a centimetre in diameter with a groove along the top. The difference between life and death.

"This one," I said, and handed it over.

He placed it in his mouth. As far as I could make out, he swallowed it. He then drank down the contents of his cup.

I picked up the other tablet and looked at it.

"Eric," he said. I looked up again and saw that he was holding the gun. "We'll do this fairly. But I will kill you if you don't swallow that tablet."

I nodded, placed the tablet in my mouth, picked up the cup of water.

He knew that if I was going to make a move, I'd do it now. But he still didn't see it coming. The cup smashed into his face and I was there within the second, punching at his neck with the only weapon I'd managed to find, the key to the locker at the station. I wrenched the gun from his hand, limp now, and shot him in the chest before I'd had a chance to think. The sound deafened me, and I reeled back as if I'd been the one who'd been shot. I felt numb. Stupidly I wondered why there was no blood on his shirt, and thought that I must have missed, but slowly a dark patch formed, spreading outwards like a mould or fungus, a parasite on the fabric and the flesh.

"Oh," he said.

I knew that he'd been right. We would never have been able to trust each other. And the stupid thing was, I'd always thought I was a good man. Or neutral at worst. Certainly not one of the bad guys. And here I was, having murdered an innocent through treachery and cowardice.

"Finish it," he said, with difficulty. But suddenly I felt incapable of shooting again, and I let the gun drop to the floor, aghast at what I'd done.

"The ring," he said. "You need the ring." I looked closer at his right hand. The ring was plain, silver-coloured, a simple band of metal with no decoration or significance. "Show her," he said. He gasped as he held his hand up for me to remove the ring. I tried it as gently as possible, but it seemed stuck fast. And by the time I'd got it off, he was dead.

I didn't return the key. It was my responsibility to get the room cleaned first. Instead, blinded through tears, I made my way to the lift, then out onto the street, desperate and yet terrified to get to Charlotte.

As I stumbled through the door I bumped heavily into someone. Startled, I realised it was the blonde woman I had seen earlier. She was on her own now, and didn't even look up at me.

I realised now that I'd got it wrong. It wasn't the confident people who had won their battles. It was the defeated. The ones who had looked at themselves in the mirror.

"I'm sorry," I said, but she pushed past, ignoring me.

I remembered what he'd said, that Charlotte's duel would have been over long before our own. I used this as an excuse to dawdle. But I couldn't keep away either. She was renting a bedsit in the student area of town, and I had no choice but to go there.

The door was unlocked. I pushed it open. Inside was one bed, a desk, a fridge and an armchair. On the bed sat Charlotte, hugging her knees. On the floor lay Charlotte, calm, peaceful, dead. There had been no struggle: they had decided that one of them had to go, and she had gone with the minimum of fuss.

Charlotte on the bed lifted her head from behind her knees and looked at me. Her eyes were red. I said nothing, and looked back to the body on the floor.

I looked back. She had not taken her eyes off me. I realised she was waiting for something.

Slowly I held my right arm up, and displayed the ring that I had placed on my middle finger.

"Eric!" she screamed, leapt from the bed and flung her arms around me. Only then did I realise how painful my arm was from the effect of the gunshot. I held her as best as I could, and stared down at my dead wife.

We were the lucky ones, the ones who sorted it out between ourselves. We were able to register the deaths, and when, as we'd known they would, the army came to finish the job, we were safe.

And I oversaw the burials of Eric and Charlotte. He was wrong, they weren't taken for food. We visit the graves every week, partly out of respect and partly to ensure that the bodies stayed where they were put. They were buried together, which I think is how they'd want it. There is a space next to them, ready for us, for the two survivors.

Charlotte and I never talk about the four weeks between the split and our battle. That's the maddening part: it's always possible that she is the original, my Charlotte, and that she's pretending too.

Today was two months after their deaths. There had been an action in the city and it had seemed wise to get out for the day: we had our papers to prove that we were singles, and fled to the country, ignoring the sirens, the screams, the gunfire and explosions. We stopped at the cemetery on the way back, when things seemed to have calmed down. Charlotte stared at her grave for a short while, thoughtful but unrepentent. Then she said, "I'm going back to the car."

"I'd like a few minutes alone," I said.

She looked surprised, but respected my wishes. When I was sure she couldn't hear, I began to speak.

"I did what you wanted," I said. "I gave up meat."

I waited a minute, feeling foolish. Then I removed the ring from my middle finger. It had served its purpose. It was stiff and difficult to remove from the flesh, but finally I managed to get it off.

"You should have this," I said. "It's a funny thing. If we'd done this, if I had some way of identifying myself to Charlotte...well, I wouldn't have told you, I think."

Slowly I placed the ring on the grave, then stood up again.

"Half of us had to go, we all know that. And we wanted to do it fairly. But then again, the cowards, the traitors, the devious and scheming...and the pure evil. We always had the edge, didn't we?"

The wrong side was winning.

I turned away from Eric's grave, and walked back to the car, to the woman who was impersonating my wife.

Neil James Hudson is a UK writer who has appeared in zines such as Nemonymous, Alternative Coordinates and Ballista. His story "The Point of Oswald Masters" was nominated for a British Fantasy Award. He lives in the middle of nowhere, works in a charity shop, and still doesn't like tea after forty years. He last appeared in Fusion Fragment with the story "Bad Blood" in issue 10.