“I should have known better,” Melhill said. “But we’d been transiting for three months on the asteroid run and I wanted a spree. I would have been fine if I’d stuck with the boys, but we got separated. So I wound up in a dog kennel with a greasy miranda. She knocked my drink and I wound up here.”
Melhill leaned back, his hands locked behind his head. “Me, of all people! I was always telling the boys to watch out. Stick with the gang, I was always telling them. You know, I don’t mind the thought of dying so much. I just hate the idea of those bastards giving my body to some dirty fat decrepit old slob so he can play around for another fifty years. That’s what kills me, the thought of some slob wearing my body!” Blaine nodded somberly.
“So that’s my tale of woe,” Melhill said, growing cheerful again. “What’s yours?”
“Mine’s a pretty long one,” Blaine said, “and a trifle wild in spots. Do you want to hear it all?”
“Sure. Plenty of time. I hope.”
“Okay. It starts in the year 1958. Wait, don’t interrupt me. I was driving my car. . .”
WHEN he had finished, Blaine leaned back against the padded wall and took a deep breath. “Do you believe me?”
“Why not? Nothing so new about time travel. It’s just illegal and expensive. And those Rex boys would pull anything.”
“The Rex girls, too,” Blaine said, and Melhill grinned.
They sat in companionable silence for a while. Then Blaine asked, “So they’re going to use us for host bodies?”
“That’s the score.”
“When?”
“When a customer totters in. I’ve been here a week, close as I can figure. Either of us might be taken any second. Or it might not come for another week or two.”
“And they just wipe our minds out?”
Melhill nodded.
“But that’s murder!”
“It sure is,” Melhill agreed. “Hasn’t happened yet, though. Maybe the flathats will pull a raid.”
“I doubt it.”
“Me too. Have you got hereafter insurance? Maybe you’ll survive after death.”
“I don’t believe in that stuff.”
“You don’t? But life after death is a fact.”
“Get off it,” Blaine said sourly. “It is! Scientific fact!”
Blaine stared hard at the young spaceman. “Ray,” he said, “how about filling me in? Brief me on what’s happened since 1958.”
“That’s a big order,” Melhill said, “and I’m not what you’d call an educated guy.”
“Just give me a rough sketch. What’s this hereafter stuff? And reincarnation and host bodies? What’s happening?”
Melhill leaned back and pursed his lips, squinting. “Well, let’s see. They put a ship on the Moon somewhere around 1960, and landed on Mars about ten years later. Then we had that quickie war with Russia over the asteroids—strictly a deep-space affair. Or was it with China?”
“Never mind,” Blaine said. “What about reincarnation and life after death?”
“I’ll try to give it to you like they gave it to me in high school. I had a course called Survey of Psychic Survival, but that was a long time ago. Let’s see.”
MELHILL frowned in deep concentration. “Quote. ‘Since earliest times, Man has sensed the presence of an invisible spirit world, and has suspected that he himself will participate in that world after the death of his body.’ Unquote. I guess you know all about that early stuff. The Egyptians and Chinese and the European alchemists and those. So I’ll skip to Rhine. He lived in your time. He was investigating psychic phenomena at Duke. Ever hear of him?”
“Sure,” Blaine said. “What did he discover?”
“Nothing, as a matter of fact. But he got the ball rolling. Then Kralski took over the work at Vilna and shoved it ahead some. That was 1987, the year the Pirates won their first World Series. Around 2000, there was Von Leddner at the University of California. Very important figure, Von Leddner. Outlined the general theory of the hereafter, but didn’t have any proofs. And finally we come to Professor Michael Vanning.
“Professor Vanning is the boy who pinned it all down. He proved that people survive after death. Contacted them, talked with them, recorded them, all that stuff. Offered absolute sure-enough concrete scientific proof of life after death. So of course there were big arguments about it, a lot of religious talk. Controversy. Headlines. A big-time professor from Harvard named James Archer Flynn set out to prove the whole thing was a hoax. He and Vanning argued back and forth for years.
“By this time, Vanning was an old man and he decided to take the plunge. He sealed a lot of stuff in a safe, hid things here and there, scattered some code words and promised to come back, like Houdini said but didn’t. Then—”
“Pardon me,” Blaine interrupted, “if there is life after death, why didn’t Houdini come back?”
“It’s very simple, but please, one thing at a time. Anyhow, Vanning killed himself, leaving a long suicide note about Man’s immortal spirit and the indomitable progress of the human race. It’s reprinted in a lot of anthologies. Later they found out it was ghost-written, but that’s another story. Where was I?”
“He killed himself.”
“Right. And damned if he didn’t contact Professor James Archer Flynn after dying, and tell him where to find all that hidden stuff, the code words, and so forth. That clinched it, buddy. Life after death was in.”
RAY Melhill stood up, stretched, and sat down again. “The Vanning Institute,” he said, “warned everybody against hysteria. But hysteria there was. The next fifteen years are known as the Crazy Forties.”
Melhill grinned and licked his lips. “Wish I’d been around then. Everybody just sort of let go. ‘Doesn’t matter what you do,’ the jingle ran, ‘pie in the sky is waitin’ for you! Saint or sinner, bad or good, everybody gets a slice. The murderer walks into the hereafter just like the archbishop. So live it up, boys and girls, enjoy the flesh on Earth while you’re here, ’cause you’ll get plenty of spirit after death. Yep, and they really lived it up. Anarchy.
“A new religion popped up calling itself Realization. It started telling people that they owed it to themselves to experience everything good or bad, fair and foul, because the hereafter was just a long remembrance of what you did on Earth. So do it, they said, that’s what you’re put on Earth for, do it, or you’ll be short-changed in the afterlife. Gratify every desire, satisfy every lust, explore your blackest depths. Live high, die high.
“It was wacky. The real fanatics formed torture clubs, and wrote encyclopedias on pain, and collected tortures like a housewife would collect recipes. At each meeting, a member would voluntarily present himself as a victim and they’d kill him in the most excruciating damned ways they could find. They wanted to experience the absolute most in pleasure and pain. And I guess they did.”
Melhill wiped his forehead and said more sedately, “I’ve done a little reading on the Crazy Years.”
“So I see,” Blaine said.
“It’s sort of interesting stuff. But then came the crusher. The Vanning Institute had been experimenting all this time. Around 2050, when the Crazy Years were in full swing, they announced that there was a hereafter, sure enough; but not for everyone.”
Blaine blinked, but made no comment.
“A real crusher. The Vanning Institute said they had certain proof that only about one person in a million got into the hereafter. The rest, the millions and millions, just went out like a light when they died. Pouf! No more. No afterlife. Nothing.”
“Why?” Blaine wanted to know. “Well, Tom, I’m none too clear on that part myself,” Melhill told him. “If you asked me something about flow-mechanics, I could really tell you something; but psychic theory isn’t my field. So try to stick with me while I struggle through it. It goes something like this.”
HE rubbed his forehead vigorously. “What survives or doesn’t survive after death is the mind. People have been arguing for thousands of years abo
ut what a mind is, and where and how it interacts with the body, and so forth. We haven’t got all the answers, but we do have some working definitions. Nowadays, the mind is considered a high-tension energy web that emanates from the body, is modified by the body, and itself modifies the body. Got that?”
“I think so. Go on.”
“So, the way I got it, the mind and body interact and intermodify. But the mind can also exist independently of the body. According to a lot of scientists, the independent mind is the next stage of evolution. In a million years, they say, we won’t even need a body except maybe for a brief incubation period. Personally, I don’t think this lousy race will survive another million years. It damn well doesn’t deserve to.”
“At the moment, I agree with you, though subject to change without notice,” Blaine said. “But get back to the hereafter.”
“We’ve got this high-tension energy web. When the body dies, that web should be able to go on existing, like a butterfly coming out of a cocoon. Death is simply the process that hatches the mind from the body. But it doesn’t work that way because of the death trauma. Some scientists think the death trauma is nature’s ejecting mechanism, to get the mind free of the body. But it works too hard and louses up everything. Dying is a tremendous psychic shock, and most of the time the energy web gets disrupted, ripped all to hell. It can’t pull itself together, it dissipates, and you’re completely dead.”
Blaine said, “So that’s why Houdini didn’t come back.”
“I wouldn’t say for sure in any individual case, just statistically. A lot of people did some heavy thinking and that ended the Crazy Years. The Vanning Institute went on working. They studied Yoga and stuff like that, but on a scientific basis. Some of those Eastern religions had the right idea, you know. Strengthen the mind. That’s what the Institute wanted: a way to strengthen the energy web so it would survive the death process.”
“And they found it?”
“In spades. Along about that time, they changed their name to Hereafter, Inc.”
Blaine nodded. “I passed their building today. Hey, wait a minute! You say they solved the mindstrengthening problem? Then no one dies! Everyone survives after death!”
MELHILL grinned sardonically. “Don’t be a farmer, Tom. You think they give it away free? Not a chance. It’s a complex electro-chemical treatment, pal, and they charge for it. They charge plenty.”
“So only the rich go to heaven,” Blaine said.
“Can’t have just anyone crashing in.”
“Sure, sure,” Blaine said. “But aren’t there other ways, other mindstrengthening disciplines? What about Yoga? What about Zen?”
“They work,” Melhill said. “There are at least a dozen government tested and approved home-survival courses. Trouble is, it takes about twenty years of really hard work to become an adept. That’s not for the ordinary guy. Nope, without the machines to help you, you’re dead.”
“And only Hereafter, Inc., has the machines?”
“There are two others, the Afterlife Academy and Heaven, Ltd., but the price stays about the same. The government’s getting to work on some death-survival insurance, but it won’t help us.”
“I guess not,” Blaine said.
The dream, for a moment, had been dazzling: a relief from mortal fears; the rational certainty of a continuance and existence after the body’s death; the knowledge of an uninterrupted process of growth and fulfillment for his personality to its own limits—not the constricting limits of the frail fleshy envelope that heredity and chance had imposed on him.
But that was not to be. His mind’s desire to expand was to be checked, rudely, finally. Tomorrow’s promises were forever not for today.
“What about reincarnation and host bodies?” Blaine asked.
“You should know,” Melhill told him. “They reincarnated you and put you in a host. There’s nothing complicated about mindswitching, as the Transplant operators will gladly tell you. Transplant is only temporary occupancy, however, and doesn’t involve full dislodgement of the original mind. Hosting is for keeps. First, the original mind must be wiped out. Second, it’s a dangerous game for the mind attempting to enter the host body. Sometimes, you see, that mind can’t penetrate the host and breaks itself up trying. Hereafter conditioning often won’t stand up under a reincarnation attempt. If the mind doesn’t make it into the host—blooey!”
BLAINE nodded. He asked, “Why would any man with hereafter insurance still make the attempt at reincarnation?”
“Because some old guys are afraid of dying,” Melhill said. “They’re afraid of the hereafter, scared of that spirit stuff. They want to stay right here on Earth where they know what’s what. So they buy a body legally on the open market, if they can find a good one. If not, they buy one on the black market. One of our bodies, pal.”
“The bodies on the open market are offered for sale voluntarily?”
“That’s right.”
“But who would sell his body?”
“A very poor guy, obviously. By law, he’s supposed to receive compensation in addition to hereafter insurance for his body. In actual fact, he takes what he can get.”
“A man would have to be crazy!”
“You think so?” Melhill retorted. “Today, like always, the world is filled with unskilled, sick, disease-ridden and starving people. And, like always, they all got families. Suppose a guy wants to buy food for his kids. His body is the only thing of value he has to sell. Back in your time, he didn’t have anything at all to sell.”
“Perhaps so,” Blaine said. “But no matter how bad things got, I’d never sell my body.”
Melhill laughed with easy good humor. “Stout fellow! But, Tom, they’re taking it for nothing!” Blaine could think of no answer for that.
VIII
TIME passed slowly in the padded cell. Blaine and Melhill were given books and magazines. They were fed often and well, out of paper cups and plates. They were closely watched, for no harm must come to their highly marketable bodies.
Blaine began to experience an exceeding fondness for the sturdy, thickset, well-muscled body he had acquired so recently, and from which he would be parted so soon. It was really an excellent body, he decided, a body to be proud of. True, it had no particular grace; but grace could be overestimated.
On the whole, all considerations of mortality aside, it was not a body to be given up lightly.
One day, after they had eaten, a padded section of wall swung away. Looking in, protected by steel bars, was Carl Orc.
“Howdy,” said Orc, tall, lean, direct-eyed, angular in his city clothes, “how’s my Brazilian buddy?”
“You louse,” Blaine said, with a deep sense of the inadequacy of words.
“Them’s the breaks,” said Orc. “You boys gettin’ enough to eat?”
“You and your ranch in Arizona!”
“I’ve got one under option,” Orc said. “Mean to retire there some day and raise sandplants. I reckon I know more about Arizona than many a native-born son. But ranches cost money, and hereafter insurance costs money. A man does what he can.”
“And a vulture does what he can,” Blaine snapped.
Ore sighed deeply. “Well, it’s a business and I guess it’s worse than some others I could think of, if I set my mind to it kinda hard. I’ll probably regret all this sometime when I’m sitting on the front porch of my little desert ranch.”
“You’ll never get there,” Blaine assured him.
“I won’t?”
“No. One night a mark is going to catch you spiking his drink. You’re going to end in the gutter, Ore, with your head caved in. And that’ll be the end of you.”
“Only the end of my body,” Orc corrected. “My soul will march on to that sweet life in the by and by. I’ve paid my money, boy, and heaven’s my next home!”
“You don’t deserve it!”
ORC grinned, and even Melhill couldn’t conceal a smile. Orc said, “My poor Brazilian friend, there’s no
question of deserving. You should know better than that. Life after death just isn’t for the meek and humble little people, no matter how worthy they are. It’s the bright lad with the dollar in his pocket and his eyes open for number one whose soul-marches on after death.”
“I can’t believe it,” Blaine said. “It isn’t fair. It isn’t just.”
“You’re an idealist,” said Orc interestedly, as though he were studying the world’s last specimen of the breed.
“Call it what you like. Maybe you’ll get your hereafter, Orc. But I think there’s a tiny corner of it where you’ll burn forever!”
Ore said, “There’s no scientific evidence of hell-fire. On the other hand, there’s a lot we don’t know about the hereafter. Maybe I’ll burn. And maybe there’s even a factory up there in the blue where they’ll reassemble your shattered mind . . . But let’s not argue. I’m sorry, I’m afraid the time’s come.”
Ore walked quickly away. The steel-barred door swung open and five men marched into the room.
“No!” Melhill screamed.
They closed in on the spaceman. Expertly they avoided his swinging fists and pinioned his arms. One of them pushed a gag in his mouth. They started to drag him out of the room.
Ore appeared again in the doorway, frowning. “Let go of him,” he said.
The men released Melhill.
“You idiots got the wrong man,” Orc told them. “It’s that one.” He pointed at Blaine.
Blaine had been trying to prepare himself for the loss of his friend. The abrupt reversal of fortune caught him open-mouthed and unready. The men seized him before he had time to react.
Blaine suddenly came to life and tried to wrench free. “I’ll kill you!” he shouted at Orc. “I swear it, I’ll kill you!”
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