Crompton Divided by Robert Sheckley

Hurting people is my business, but I’m trying to get into a better-paying field. That’s where you come in.’
    Crompton opened his mouth to expostulate, then thought better of it as he observed the dancing red sparks in Berserker’s blue eyes.
    ‘What do you want of me?’ he asked.
    ‘Let’s go to a place I know,’ Berserker said. ‘I’ll tell you all about it.’
    Later, in a sequestered booth in the back of the Al Capone Memorial Tavern in East Pigfat, Billy Berserker talked about himself. Berserker was a pseudonym he had adopted, a nom de crime. His real name was Edwin Gastenheimer, and he had been brought up in Paterson, New Jersey, the son of Charles G. Gastenheimer, an internationally famous bank robber, and Elvira Gastenheimer, who operated the infamous Giggles Club in Hoboken. Young Edwin had sought to emulate his successful and upwardly-mobile parents. He served the usual apprenticeship in the stews of Jersey City, then went to Columbia University, where he was proclaimed Psychopathic Personality of the Year three times running. He was a natural as a smash-and-grab man or an enforcer; but the higher reaches of crime were outside his abilities. And so it went, the dull years of living and hurting people, the hopelessness of it all. There seemed to be nothing he could do to better himself. And then he heard of the new opportunities to be found on Aaia.
    ‘And that’s where you come in, Professor,’ Berserker said. ‘Fate has thrown us together like this. I need your help to change my life. I am now going to reveal my deepest ambition to you, the secret pulsating soul of a man. So please do not laugh at me or I might kill you in a characteristic moment of sudden unreasoning rage that has more than earned for me my sobriquet, Berserker.’
    ‘What is it that you want?’ Crompton asked.
    Berserker looked momentarily shy. In a low voice he said, ‘Professor, more than anything else in the world I want to be a confidence man and live by my wits.’
    Crompton thought about that. ‘And you believe that I can help you?’
    ‘I know you can! You will be my guru, and I will follow your advice and example. Men can rise on stepping-stones of their dead selves to higher things!’
    In his excitement Berserker pounded the table for emphasis, driving a spoon two inches deep into the hardened formica surface. The gesture was not lost on Crompton, who considered the hopeful, murderous, and probably insane man in front of him and decided that there was nothing to do but get into the situation and hope for the best.
    He took a deep breath and heard himself say, ‘My boy, there is no reason why you should not make a first-rate confidence man. You have a confident bearing already. That is very important in this sort of thing, as I am sure you can appreciate. Your speech is straightforward, and no man would think you had much guile. In brief, your air of bucolic ferocity is an excellent mask beneath which, we both know, hides a rapierlike incisiveness of intellect. Yes, my boy, there will be no trouble at all.’
    ‘Gee, that’s great, Professor,’ the giant said. ‘You’re talking just the way I thought you’d talk.’
    ‘How gratifying,’ Crompton said.
    ‘But now, what should I do specifically?’
    ‘Ah, yes,’ Crompton said, thinking desperately, ‘we do come down to the practicalities of the situation. We must find something for you to do. To do … Well, you must learn! You must learn all the little tricks of dress and address that go to make up the truly accomplished confidence man.’
    ‘That’s just what I need!’ Berserker said. ‘You see, I don’t really know how a confidence man acts, and I don’t want to look ridiculous by thinking I’m looking like one when I’m not. That would embarrass me, and when I’m embarrassed I get angry.’
    ‘Obviously you must study,’ Crompton said. ‘And how? By observing the movements and manners of a top confidence man who happens to be here on the