Mindswap by Robert Sheckley

of his wit if not his predilection, snatched a fan out of his gun belt, leaned forward simpering, and tapped the enraged woman on her rhinocerine upper arm.
    'Don't you dare hurt him!' the saddlebum said, his voice a squeaky contralto.
    Marvin, quick if not apt, rejoindered, 'Yes, tell her to stop
pawing
me! I mean to say it is simply too much, one cannot even stroll out of one's house in the evening without encountering some
disgraceful
incident-'
    'Don't cry, for God's sake, don't cry!' the saddlebum said. 'You know I can't stand it when you cry!'
    'I am
not
crying!' Marvin said, snuffling. 'It is just that she has ruined this shirt. Your present!'
    'I'll get you another!' the saddlebum said. 'But I cannot abide another scene!'
    The woman was staring at them slack-jawed, and Marvin was able to utilize her moment of inattention by taking a pry bar out of his tool kit, setting it under her swollen red fingers, and prying himself free of her grip. Seizing the dwindling moment of opportunity, Marvin and the saddlebum sprinted out the door, leaped around the comer, broadjumped across the street, and polevaulted to freedom.

Chapter 17
    Once clear of the immediate danger, Marvin came abruptly to his senses. The scales of metaphoric deformation fell away for the moment, and he experienced a perceptual experiential remission. It was all too painfully apparent now, that the 'saddlebum' was actually a large parasite beetle of the species
S Cthulu
. There could be no mistake about this, since the Cthulu beetle is characterized by a secondary salivary duct located just below and slightly to the left of the suboesophegal ganglion.
    These beetles feed upon borrowed emotions, their own having long ago atrophied. Typically, they lurk in dark and shadowy places, waiting for a careless Celsian to pass within range of their segmented maxilla. That is what happened to Marvin.
    Realizing this, Marvin directed at the beetle an emotion of anger so powerful that the Cthulu, victim of its own hyperacute emotional receptors, fell over unconscious in the road. That done, Marvin readjusted his gold-bronze casing, stiffened his antennae, and continued down the road.
     
    He came to a bridge that crossed a great flowing river of sand. Standing on the centre span, he gazed downwards into the black depths that rolled inexorably onwards to the mysterious sand sea. Half-hypnotized he gazed, the nose ring beating its quick tattoo of mortality three times faster than the beat of his hearts. And he thought:
    Bridges are receptacles of opposed ideas. Their horizontal distance speaks to us of our transcendence; their vertical declivity reminds us unalterably of the imminence of failure, the sureness of death. We push outwards across obstacles, but the primordial fall is forever beneath our feet. We build, construct, fabricate; but death is the supreme architect, who shapes heights only that there may be depths.
    O Celsians, throw your well-wrought bridges across a thousand rivers, and tie together the disparate contours of the planet; your mastery is for naught, for the land is still beneath you, still waiting, still patient. Celsians, you have a road to follow, but it leads assuredly to death. Celsians, despite your cunning, you have one lesson still to learn: the heart is fashioned to receive the spear, and all other effects are extraneous.
    These were Marvin's thoughts as he stood on the bridge. And a great longing overcame him, a desire to be finished with desire, to forgo pleasure and pain, to quit the petty modes of achievement and failure, to have done with distractions, and get on with the business of life, which was death.
    Slowly he climbed to the rail, and there stood poised over the twisting currents of sand. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a shadow detach itself from a pillar, move tentatively to the rail, stand erect, poise itself over the abyss and lean precariously outwards-
    'Stop! Wait!' Marvin cried. His own desire for destruction