Who's Who?

ACT Two The two double agents with their faces...their bodies...smiled at them, and then walked out of the building. Silence. Dr. Kelmar came for a second to stare at them, and then there was a knock at the back door. ''You're not leaving us,'' Emma called to him. Kelmar turned and smiled at her. ''You will see me again, Mrs. Peel. Sooner or later.'' Patrick sat in silence, and Mrs. Peel didn't speak either . All of a sudden they began to hear noises emanating from the other room - the sound of machinery being dismantled, probably by a couple of men who had come especially for the purpose. It was bloody unfair, Patrick thought. There was no reason for that machine to moved - he hadn't understood it when he'd first read the script and he didn't understand it now. It had just been done to provide the show with an extra ten minutes while he and Mrs. Peel had tried to find out where Dr. Kelmar was. The men went out with the machine, and Dr. Kelmar followed them without another glance at the two captives. They sat for a long few seconds in silence. Patrick desperately tried to get some saliva into his mouth, and then said, ''They've gone.'' ''Why did they leave you behind?'' Had dialog been written for Freddie and Patricia at this point in the script? Well, if they had any dialog he didn't know what it was. What was he supposed to say? What was he supposed to bloody do to get out of this and back where he belonged? ''They....they couldn't take me along, Mrs. Peel. I am John Steed.'' ''You!'' her scorn would have cut him to the quick if he hadn't known he looked like a fortyish-odd man with graying temples and a bushy mustache. ''That machine you saw them dismantling. It did something to us. They've switched our psyches. We are in their bodies, and they are in ours.'' ''Don't be ridiculous. You're trying to gaslight me.'' ''Gaslight?'' ''Gaslight. Charles Boyer. Ingrid Bergman.'' ''Oh, yes, your movies. But I assure you....'' ''Don't even talk to me, please. I'm trying to think.'' Patrick was quite pleased to just sit there and say nothing. His head was still pounding, and perhaps if he just went to sleep for a few minutes he'd wake up and all this would turn out to be some crazy dream. But what if it wasn't a dream? What if he was really here, in ....Avengerland. Whether it had really happened or he'd gone round the twist and only thought it happened...what if he was really here, in Avengerland? He was in deep kimshi, that was what! He felt rather than saw her moving behind him, looking this way and that, trying to find a way out. Still she was ignoring him. The silence was now starting to get on his nerves. Was that really Emma Peel behind him? A woman as strong and self-confident and as intelligent as the woman Diana played? God, if only it weren't for that horrible wig.... Patrick tried to force some saliva into his mouth and said, ''So you imagine I'm part of some fiendish plot, Mrs. Peel.'' ''I know Steed.'' Patricia ...no, he'd better think of her as Emma, said. Her voice was pitched differently but her style of delivery was all Diana Rigg's. ''And you are not he.'' And she turned to look at him and saw her face in the mirror so conveniently placed. Her eyes took in her own face as well as Freddie's face. ''And to quote, or nearly, you are not she, either. Transmigration, interchange, switch, swap, call it what you will.'' She turned her head away. "No,'' she said definitely, '' It's some trick." ''Well, I'll say one thing. You've certainly retained your stubborn streak.'' She didn't respond. How to convince her that he was....Steed? Hell, how to convince her that he was an actor named Patrick Macnee and didn't belong here at all? What had been Freddie's lines at this point? He'd glanced over the entire script very briefly, but it wasn't his job to learn everybody's lines, just the people whom he was doing scenes with. What was Freddie supposed to say at this point? Suddenly, seemingly out of the blue, it came to him. ''Do you remember that drive from Mont Blanc to Dijon?'' ''Turn right, you said.'' ''And you turned left.'' ''Well if I hadn't..'' ''We'd have missed that delightful chateau...gourmet's paradise.'' "Except for the claret." "The chablis, Mrs. Peel. It was chablis.'' Emma turned and looked at him via the mirror again. Well, that bit of dialog had gone over well; he wondered how he'd known it. But she was still looking at him skeptically. ''You still doubtful?'' Patrick said. Patricia smiled what in Diana would have been her inimitable smile. "Well, I know who I am. And if you are Steed, I wonder what we are up to.'' We're busy killing a helluva lot of people, Patrick said to himself. Jesus, they're probably dying even as we're sitting here. And then Patrick blinked a few times as he ran through his mind the scenes that had been written for him and Diana while their bodies were supposed to be inhabited by Basil and Lola. ''We've got to get out of here!'' he almost shouted. ''I do so agree.'' Patrick cast his mind back, not to his old World War II days but what he'd done time and time again in four years of the Avengers. ''I can ease my wrist out of this handcuff,'' he said at last. ''Old magician's trick.'' Emma held the chain up to make it easier for him. He tried to pull his wrist out, murmuring, while his face set in pain, "Merely a question of contracting the wrist." But all he was doing was rubbing his wrist raw. "Mind if I have a go?" came Emma's voice. "Do." Right. Let's see what she could do without a stuntwoman and a specially weakened pole. He heard her kick away the stool and adjust her feet. "Spot of kung fu might do the trick." She said. Then there was nothing but silence for a couple of seconds, and then he heard her shout, "Hai" and all of a sudden there was a crunching noise and a two inch section of the pole around which they were chained actually hit him in the back of the ankle. "Going down," said Emma Peel, and they both knelt down in unison, slipped the chains through the jagged hole and stood up once again. "Congratulations, Mrs. Peel.'' Patrick told her. He looked down at her feet. She was shod in high-heels. What was this - every woman spy wore steel-reinforced high-heeled shoes? "There are some tools over there.'' said Emma, nodding towards a work desk some feet away. They headed over in that direction. Patrick saw a long, stiff wire. Now, that could be a picklock. that he could do. He grinned at Emma. "Mrs. Peel, I think we have our key. But it will be easier face to face." She nodded at him. Then turned, and held up her hands. Good god...she actually expected him to...automatically, he held up his hands and they grasped hers. "One, two.'' he said. He felt the full pressure of her back against his as he leaned over, pulling her up, and she actually flipped over his shoulders and landed in front of her, bouncing in her landing like a gymnast completing a vault on a pommel horse. Thank god he was looking into the face of Patricia Haines and not Diana Rigg. Not that he didn't find Patricia unattractive - except for that awful wig - but if it had been Diana's face in front of him and the knowledge that he was actually looking at Emma Peel... he felt a tug on his hands as Emma reached for the piece of wire and handed it to him. Well, okay, Patrick, pick the lock, he told himself. Jesus Christ, he was supposed to be a top notch agent himself - he had to show her he had some skills. Patrick leaned over her wrist, probing the handcuff lock with the piece of wire. ''This is going to be a challenge, Steed,'' she said. ''Nonsense.'' Patrick felt it necessary to defend his skills. ''I pick a lock every day of the week.'' ''I didn't mean that. I meant, we're handicapped. First thing we've got to do is get our own bodies back.'' "True. But unfortunately, when the doctor left, he took his fiendish machine with him.'' Patrick didn't resist as Emma took the picklock out of his hand and went to work on the lock on her own. She spoke as she worked. "True, and unfortunately, we've got to find him. And the only way to find him is to find the other me.'' Patrick nodded. He knew his lines for this. What corny dialog they had written for this scene. But he had to say it. "Yes. If you were you, where would you head?'' ''Back to my apartment.'' And with that she handed him the last of the chains and headed for the door. Patrick glared at the chain incredulously. Then shrugged. "Bright girl." He followed her to the door, then paused and gestured. "After you.'' She stared at him and nodded. "That's better." Patrick glanced at her, puzzled. Just what did she ....oh, yes, as Basil inhabiting his body he'd walked out of a door in front of her - something he - that was to say, Steed - never did. And he'd called her Emma. And all she'd gotten was a puzzled look on her face. Why hadn't she realized right then and there that there was something rotten in the state of Denmark? And when 'he'd' driven her back to the stilt shop in a car that was not his Bentley - hadn't that given rise to some suspicion? Not for their tv selves of course but if this was the 'real world' and she was a 'real' secret agent, shouldn't that have occurred to her? The Bentley was still outside the building. Of course. It took a special knack to start it and the fellow Basil hadn't known how to do it. True enough, Emma climbed into the passenger's seat and looked at him searchingly. "I suppose you know how to start her." "Still don't believe I'm me, Mrs. Peel?" said Patrick, even while at that very moment he was wracking his brain to remember how to start it. On the show, the damn thing didn't run, he just went through the motions and a couple of prop men pushed it out of the frame. Nevertheless, here he'd just go through the motions and see what happened. He started the car with a flourish, released the brake, and to his utter shock and Emma's fond "You're you," he drove off. Go to Who's Who 3

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