“There’s a similar state, of course,” he said, “but we don’t know very much about it.” “What is it?” The psychiatrist turned to her. “Well, it’s a form of somnambulism where the subject suddenly manifests knowledge or skills that he’s never learned, and where the intention of the second personality is to—” He broke off. “Well, it’s terribly complicated,” he resumed, “and I’ve oversimplified outrageously.” He had also not completed his statement, for fear of unduly upsetting Chris: the intention of the second personality, he would have said, was the destruction of the first.
