“Mr. Orc?”
“Yes, Miss Thorne.”
“This is Tom Blaine. I’d like you to take care of him.”
“Sure,” Orc said.
“I’ll make further arrangements with you later. Now I must get back. Good luck,” she said to Blaine, and hurried away.
Blaine and Orc faced each other in mutual embarrassment. To break the silence, Blaine asked, “What is this building?”
“This,” Orc said, “is the headquarters of Hereafter, Incorporated.” He was a tall man, very thin, with a long, mournful, weatherbeaten face. His eyes were narrow and direct. His clothes hung awkwardly on him, as though he were more used to levis than tailored slacks. Blaine thought he looked like a Westerner.
“Impressive,” Blaine said, gazing up at the Gothic castle.
“Gaudy,” said Orc. “You aren’t from the city, are you?”
Blaine shook his head.
“Me neither. But frankly, Blaine, I thought everybody on Earth and all the planets knew about the Hereafter building. Do you mind my asking where you’re from?”
“Not at all,” Blaine said, his mind racing. He wondered if he should announce himself a man from the past. No, it was hardly the thing to tell a possibly untrustworthy stranger, particularly in view of the situation at Rex. He’d better be from somewhere else.
Blaine said, “I’m from—Brazil.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. Upper Amazon Valley. My folks went there when I was a kid. Rubber plantation. Dad just died, so I thought I’d have a look at New York.”
“I hear it’s still pretty wild down there,” Orc said.
Blaine nodded, relieved that his story wasn’t being questioned. But maybe it wasn’t a very strange story for this day and age. In any event, he had found a home for himself.
ORC said, “I’m from Mexican Hat, Arizona. Carl Orc’s the name. I came here to cast a look around this New York and find out what they’re always boasting about. It’s interesting enough, but these folks are just a little too up and roaring for me, if you catch my meaning. I don’t mean to say we’re poky back home. We’re not. But these people bounce around like an ape with a stick in his line.”
“I know just what you mean,” Blaine said.
For a few minutes, they discussed the jittery, frantic, compulsive habits of New Yorkers, comparing them with the sane, calm, pastoral life in Mexican Hat and the Upper Amazon Valley. These people, they agreed, just didn’t know how to live.
“Blaine,” said Orc, “business and pleasure can mix. What say we get ourselves a drink?”
Blaine hesitated, wondering how he would talk with Orc; then he remembered that he could plead Brazil and inadequate schooling to excuse his lack of present-day knowledge.
“Fine,” he said.
“Then let us proceed,” said Orc somberly, “to inspect the internal nocturnal movements of this edgy little old town.”
It was, Blaine decided, as good a way as any other of finding out about the future. After all, nothing could be more revealing than what people did for pleasure. Through games and drunkenness, Man exhibits his essential attitudes toward his environment, and shows his disposition toward the questions of life, death, fate and free will.
What better symbol of Rome than the circus? What better crystallization of the American West than the rodeo? Spain had its bullfights and Norway its ski-jumps. What sport, recreation or pastime would similarly reveal the New York of 2110? He would find out. And, surely, to experience this in all its immediacy was better than reading about it in some dusty library, and infinitely more entertaining.
“Suppose we have a look at the Martian Quarter?” Carl Orc suggested.
“Lead away,” Blaine said, well pleased at the chance to combine pleasure with stern necessity.
BLAINE followed through a maze of streets and levels, through underground arcades and overhead ramps, by foot, escalator, subway and helicab. The interlocking complexity of streets and levels didn’t impress the lean Westerner. Phoenix was laid out in the same way, he said, although admittedly on a smaller scale.
They went to a small restaurant that called itself the Red Mars and advertised a genuine South Martian cuisine. Blaine had to confess he had never eaten Martian food. Orc had sampled it several times in Phoenix.
“It’s pretty good,” he told Blaine, “but you’re hungry an hour later.”
The menu was written entirely in Martian, and no English translation was included. Blaine recklessly ordered the Number One Combination, as did Orc. It came, a strange-looking mess of shredded vegetables and bits of meat. Blaine tasted, and nearly dropped his fork in surprise.
“It’s exactly like Chinese food!”
“Well, of course,” Orc said. “The Chinese were the first on Mars—in ’97, I think. So anything they eat up there is Martian food. Right?”
“I suppose so,” Blaine said.
“Besides, this stuff is made with genuine Martian-grown vegetables and mutated herbs and spices. Or so they claim.”
Blaine didn’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved. With good appetite, he ate the C’kyo-Ourher, which tasted just like shrimp chow mein, and the Trrdxat, or egg roll.
“Why do they give it such weird names?” Blaine asked, ordering the Hggshrt for dessert.
“Man, you’re really out of touch!” Orc said, laughing. “Those Martian Chinese went all the way. They translated the Martian rock-carvings and suchlike, and started to talk Martian—with a strong Cantonese accent, I reckon—but there wasn’t no one around to tell them different. They talk Martian, dress Martian, think Martian. You call one of them a Chinese now, he’d up and hit you. He’s a Martian, boy!”
The Hggshrt came, and turned out to be an almond cookie.
Ore paid the check. As they left, Blaine asked, “Are there many Martian laundries?”
“Hell, yes. Country’s filled with them.”
“I thought so,” Blaine said, and paid a silent tribute to the Martian Chinese and their firm grip on traditional institutions.
THEY caught a helicab to the Greens Club, a place that Orc’s Phoenix friends had told him not to miss. This small, expensive, intimate little club was world-famous, an absolute must for any visitor to New York. For the Greens Club was unique in presenting an all-vegetable floor show.
They were given seats on a little balcony, not far from the glass-fenced center of the club. Three levels of tables surrounded the center, and brilliant spotlights played upon it. Behind the glass fence was what looked like a few square yards of jungle, growing in a nutrient solution. An artificial breeze stirred the plants, which were packed tight together, and varied widely in size, shape and hue.
They behaved like no plants Blaine had ever seen. They grew rapidly, fantastically, from tiny seeds and root tendrils to great shrubs and rough-barked trees, squat ferns, monstrous flowers, dripping green fungus and speckled vines; grew and quickly completed their life-cycle and fell into decay, casting forth their seeds to begin again.
But no species seemed able to reproduce itself. Sports and mutants sprang from the seeds and swollen fruit, altered and adapted to the fierce environment, battled for root space below and air space above, and struggled toward the artificial suns that glowed above them. Unsuccessful shrubs quickly molded themselves into parasites, clung to the choked trees, and discovered new adaptations clinging to them in turn.
Sometimes, in a burst of creative ambition, a plant would surmount all obstacles, put down the growths around it, strangle the opposition, conquer all. But new species already grew from its body, pulled it down and squabbled over the corpse. Sometimes a blight, itself vegetable, would attack the jungle and carry everything before it in a grand crescendo of mold. But a courageous sport would at last take root in it, then another, and on went the fight.
The plants changed, grew larger or smaller, transcended themselves in the struggle for survival. But no amount of determination, no cunning, no transcendence helped. No species could
prevail, and every endeavor led to death.
Blaine found the spectacle disturbing. Could this fatalistic pageant of the world be the significant characteristic of 2110?
“It’s really something,” Orc told him, “what these New York labs can do with quick-growing mutants. It’s a freak show, of course. They just speed up the growing rate, force a contra-survival situation, throw in some radiation, and let the best plant try to win. I hear these plants use up their growth potential in about twenty hours and have to be replaced.”
“So that’s where it ends,” Blaine said, watching the tortured but ever-optimistic jungle. “In replacements.”
“Sure,” said Orc, blandly avoiding all philosophical complications. “They can afford it, the prices they charge here. But it’s freak stuff. Let me tell you about the sandplants we grow in Arizona.”
BLAINE sipped his whiskey and watched the jungle growing, dying and renewing itself. Orc was saying, “Right on the burning face of the desert. Fact. We’ve finally adapted fruit and vegetable-bearing plants to real desert conditions, without increasing their bulk water supply, and at a price which allows us to compete with the fertile areas. I tell you, boy, in another fifty years the entire concept of fertile is going to change. Take Mars, for example . . .”
They left the Greens Club and worked their way from bar to bar, toward Times Square. Orc was showing a certain difficulty in focusing, but his voice was steady as he talked about the lost Martian secret of growing on sand. “Someday,” he promised Blaine, “we’ll figure out how they produced the sandplants without the added nutrients and moisture-fixatives.”
Blaine had drunk enough to put his former body into a coma twice over. But his bulky new body seemed to have an inexhaustible capacity for whiskey. It was a pleasant change to have a body that could hold its liquor. Not, he added hastily, that such a rudimentary ability could offset the body’s disadvantages.
They crossed Times Square’s garish confusion and entered a bar on 44th Street. As their drinks were served, a furtive-eyed little man in a raincoat stepped up to them.
“Hey, boys,” he said tentatively.
“Whatcha want, podner?” Orc asked.
“You boys out looking for a little fun?”
“You might say so,” Orc said expansively. “And we can find it ourselves, thank you kindly.”
The little man smiled nervously. “You can’t find what Tm offering,” he said. “Not if you walked these streets all night. You can find plenty of bars and shag joints and dog kennels and rundowns, and there’s a couple of greasy mirandas on the corner, if you want that. But you can’t find what Tm offering.”
“Speak up, little friend,” Orc said. “What exactly are you offering?”
“Well, boys, it’s—hold it! Flathats!”
Two blue-uniformed policemen entered the bar, looked around and left.
“Okay,” Blaine said. “What is it?”
“Call me Joe,” said the little man with an ingratiating grin. “I’m a steerer for a Transplant game, friends. The best game and highest jump in town!”
“What in hell is Transplant?” Blaine asked.
ORC and Joe both looked at him. Joe said, “Wow, friend, no insult but you must really be from down on the farm. Never heard of Transplant? Well, I’ll be griped!”
“All right, so I’m a farmboy,” Blaine growled, thrusting his fierce, square, hard-planed face close to Joe’s. “What is Transplant?”
“Not so loud!” Joe whispered, shrinking back. “Take it easy, farmer, I’ll explain. Transplant is the new switch game, buddy. Are you tired of living? Think you’ve had all the kicks? Wait till you try Transplant. You see, farmer, folks in the know say that straight sex is pretty moldy potatoes. Don’t get me wrong, it’s fine for the birds and the bees and the beasts and the brutes. It still brings a thrill to their simple animal hearts, and who are we to say they’re wrong? As a means of propagating the species, old nature’s little sex gimmick is still the first and the best. But for real kicks, sophisticated people are turning to Transplant.
“Transplant is democratic, friends. It gives you the big chance to switch over into someone else and feel how the other ninety-nine per cent feels. It’s educational, you might say, and it takes up where straight sex leaves off. Ever get the urge to be a high-strung Latin, pal? You can, with Transplant. Ever wonder what a genuine sadist feels? Tune in with Transplant. And there’s more, more, so much more! For example, why be a man all your life? You’ve proved your point by now; why belabor it?”
“Voyeurism,” Blaine spat.
“I know them big words,” Joe said, “and it ain’t true. This is no Peeping Tom’s game. With Transplant, you are there, right in the old corpus, moving those exotic muscles, experiencing those sensations. Ever get the urge to be a tiger, farmboy, and go loping after a lady tiger in the old mating season? We got a tiger, friend, and a lady tiger too. Ever ask yourself what thrill a man could possibly find in flagellation, shoe-fetichism, necrophilia, or the like? Find out with Transplant. Our catalogue of bodies reads like an encyclopedia. You can’t go wrong at Transplant, friends, and our prices are set ridiculously—”
“Get out,” Blaine said.
“What, buddy?”
Blaine’s big hand shot out and grabbed Joe by the raincoat front. He lifted the little pusher to eye level and glared at him.
“You take your perverted little notions out of here,” Blaine said.
“Guys like you have been selling off-beat kicks since the days of Babylon, and guys like me haven’t been buying. Get out, before I break your neck for a quick sadistic thrill.”
He released him.
JOE smoothed his raincoat and smiled shakily. “No offense, buddy. I’m going. Don’t feel like it tonight? There’s always another night. Transplant’s in your future, farmboy. Why fight it?”
Blaine started to move forward, but Orc held him back. The little pusher scuttled out the door.
“He isn’t worth dropping,” Orc said. “The flathats would just take you in. It’s a sad, sick, dirty world, friend. Drink up.”
Blaine threw down his whiskey, still seething. Transplant! If that was the characteristic amusement of 2110, he wanted no part of it. Orc was right, it was a sad, sick, dirty world. Even the whiskey was beginning to taste funny.
He grabbed at the bar for support. The whiskey tasted very funny. What was wrong with him? The stuff seemed to be going to his head.
Ore’s arm was around his shoulder. He was saying, “Well, well, my old buddy’s taken himself that one too many. Guess I’d better cart him back to his hotel.”
But Orc didn’t know where his hotel was. He didn’t even have a hotel to be taken to. Orc—that damned quick-talking straighteyed Orc must have put something in his drink while he was talking to Joe.
In order to roll him? But Orc knew he had no money. Why then?
He tried to shake the arm off his shoulders. It was clamped in place like an iron bar.
“Don’t worry,” Orc was saying, “I’ll take care of you, old buddy.”
The barroom revolved lazily around Blaine’s head. He had a sudden realization that he was going to find out a great deal about 2100 by the dubious method of direct experience. Too much, he suspected. Perhaps a dusty library would have been better, after all.
The barroom began to revolve more rapidly.
He passed out.
VII
BLAINE recovered consciousness in a small, dimly lighted room with no furniture, no doors or windows, and only a single screened ventilation outlet in the ceiling. The floors and walls were thickly padded, but the padding hadn’t been washed in a long time. It stank.
Blaine sat up, and two red-hot needles stabbed him through the eyes. He lay down again.
“Relax,” a voice said. “These knock drops take a while to wear off.”
He was not alone in the padded room. There was a man sitting in a corner, watching him. The man was wearing only shorts. Glancing at himself, B
laine saw that he was similarly dressed.
He sat up slowly and propped himself against a wall. For a moment, he was afraid his head would explode. Then, as the needles drove viciously in, he was afraid it wouldn’t.
“What is this?” he asked.
“End of the line,” the man said cheerfully. “They boxed you, just like me. They boxed you and brought you in like fabrit. Now all they got to do is crate you and label you.”
Blaine couldn’t understand what the man was saying. He was in no mood to decipher 2100 slang. Clutching his head, he said, “I don’t have any money. Why did they box me?”
“Come off it,” the man said. “Why would they box you? They want your body, man!”
“My body?”
“Right. For a host.”
A host body, Blaine thought, such as he was now occupying. Well, of course. Naturally. It was obvious when you came to think about it. This age needed a supply of host bodies for various and sundry purposes. But how do you get a host body? They don’t grow on trees, nor can you dig for them. You get them from people. Most people wouldn’t take kindly to selling their own bodies; life is so meaningless without one. Then how to fill the supply?
Easy. You pick out a sucker, dope him, hide him away, extract his mind, then take his body.
It was an interesting line of speculation, but Blaine couldn’t continue it any longer. It seemed as though his head had finally decided to explode.
LATER, the hangover subsided.
Blaine sat up and found a sandwich in front of him on a paper plate, and a cup of some dark beverage.
“It’s safe to eat,” the man told him. “They take good care of us. I hear the going black market price for a body is close to four thousand dollars.”
“Black market?”
“Man, what’s wrong with you? Wake up! You know there’s a black market in bodies just like there’s an open market in bodies.” Blaine sipped the dark beverage, which turned out to be coffee. The man introduced himself as Ray Melhill, a flow-control man off the spaceship Bremen. He was about Blaine’s age, a compact, redheaded, snub-nosed man with slightly protruding teeth. Even in his present predicament, he carried himself with a certain jaunty assurance, the unquenchable confidence of a man for whom something always turns up. His freckled skin was very white except for a small red blotch on his neck, the result of an old radiation burn.
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