“Then what happens to my mind?” asked Blaine, sitting down again.
“That,” Orc said, “is where Joe comes in. Tell him, Joe.”
JOE nodded rapidly. “Transplant, my friend, is the answer.”
“Transplant?” Blaine repeated blankly.
“I told you about it,” Joe said, “on that inauspicious evening when we first met. Remember? Transplant, the great pastime, the game any number can play, the jolt for jaded minds, the tonic for tired bodies. WeVe got a worldwide network of Transplanters, Mr. Blaine. Dedicated people like me who know the future lies in Transplant and work to advance the cause. We’re going to key you into the organization.”
“You’re going to ship my mind across the country?” Blaine asked.
“Thaf s it—from body to body!” Joe told him. “Believe me, it’s instructive as well as entertaining.” Blaine got to his feet so quickly that he knocked over his chair. “Like hell!” he said. “I told you then and I’m telling you now, I’m not playing your lousy little game. I’ll take my chances on the street.” He started toward the door. Joe said, “I know it’s a little frightening, but—”
“No!”
Ore shouted, “Damn it, Blaine, will you at least let the man speak?”
“All right,” Blaine said. “Speak.”
Joe poured himself half a glass of wine and threw it down. He said, “Mr. Blaine, it’s going to be difficult explaining this to you, a guy from the past. But try to understand what I’m saying.”
Blaine nodded warily.
“Now then. Transplant is used as a sex game these days, and that’s how I peddle it. Why? Because people are ignorant of its better uses, and because ignorant people in the government insist on banning it. But Transplant is a lot more than a game. It’s an entire new way of life! And like it or not, Transplant represents the world of the future.” The little pusher’s eyes glowed. Blaine sat down again.
“There are two basic elements in human affairs,” Joe said sententiously. “One of them is Man’s eternal struggle for freedom: freedom of worship, freedom of press and assembly, freedom to select government—freedom! And the other basic element in human affairs is the effort of any form of government to withhold one form of freedom or another from the people.”
BLAINE considered this a somewhat simplified view of human affairs. But he continued listening.
“Government,” Joe said, “withholds freedom, for many reasons. For security, for personal profit, for power, or because they feel the people are unready for it But whatever the reason, the basic facts remain: Man strives for freedom, and government strives to withhold freedom. Transplant is simply one more in a long series of the freedoms that Man has aspired to, and that his government feels is not good for him.”
“Sexual freedom?” asked Blaine. “No!” Joe cried. “Not that there’s anything wrong with sexual freedom. But Transplant isn’t primarily that. Sure, that’s how we’re pushing it—for propaganda purposes. Because people don’t want abstract ideas, Mr. Blaine, and they don’t go for cold theory. They want to know what a freedom will do for them. We show them a small part of it, and they learn a lot more themselves.”
“What will Transplant do?”
“Transplant,” Joe said fervently, “gives Man the ability to transcend the limits imposed by his heredity and his environment!”
“Which means exactly what?”
“Transplant lets you exchange knowledge, bodies, talents and skills with anyone who wishes to exchange with you. And plenty do. Most men don’t want to perform a single set of skills all their life, no matter how satisfying those skills are. Man is too restless a creature. Musicians want to be engineers, advertising men want to be hunters, sailors want to be writers. But there usually isn’t time to acquire and exploit more than one set of skills in a lifetime. And even if there were time, the blind factor of talent is an insurmountable stumbling block. With Transplant, you can get the inborn talents, the skills, the knowledge that you want.
“Think about it, Mr. Blaine. Why should a man be forced to live out his lifetime in a body he had no part in selecting? It’s like telling him he must live with the diseases he’s inherited, and mustn’t try to cure them. Man must have the freedom to choose the body and talents best suited to his personality needs.”
“If your plan went through,” Blaine said, “you’d simply have a bunch of neurotics changing bodies every day.”
“The same general argument was raised against the passage of every freedom,” Joe said, his eyes glittering. “Throughout history it was argued that Man didn’t have the sense to choose his own religion, or that women didn’t have the intelligence to use the vote, or that people couldn’t be allowed to elect their own representatives because of the stupid choices they’d make. And of course there are plenty of neurotics around, people who’d louse up heaven itself. But you have a greater number—a much greater number—of people who use their freedoms well.”
JOE lowered his voice to a persuasive whisper. “You must realize, Mr. Blaine, that a man is not his body, for he receives his body accidentally. He is not his skills, for those are frequently born of necessity. He is not his talents, which are produced less by heredity than by early environmental factors. He is not the sicknesses to which he may be predisposed, and he is not the environment that shapes him.
“A man contains all these things, but he is greater than their total. He has the power to change his environment, cure his diseases, advance his skills—and, at last, to choose his body and talents! That is the next freedom, Mr. Blaine! It’s historically inevitable, whether you or I or the government like it or not. For Man must have every possible freedom!”
Joe finished his fierce and somewhat incoherent oration red-faced and out of breath. Blaine stared at the little man with new surprise. He was looking, he realized, at a genuine revolutionary of the year 2110.
Ore said, “He’s got a point, Tom. Transplant is legal in Sweden and Ceylon and it doesn’t seem to have hurt the moral fiber much.”
“In time,” said Joe, pouring himself a glass of wine, “the whole world will go Transplant. It’s inevitable.”
“Maybe,” Orc said. “Or maybe they’ll invent some new freedom to take its place. Anyhow, Tom, you can see that Transplant has some moral justification. And it’s the only way of saying that body of yours. What do you say?”
“Are you a revolutionary, too?” Blaine asked.
Ore grinned. “In a way. I guess I’m like the blockade runners during the American Civil War, or the guys who sold guns to the South Seas natives. They worked for a profit, but they weren’t against social change.”
“Well, well,” said Blaine sardonically. “And up to now I thought you were just a common criminal.”
“Skip it,” Orc said pleasantly. “Are you willing to try?”
“Certainly. I’m overwhelmed. I never thought I’d find myself in the advance guard of a social revolution.”
Ore smiled and said, “Good. Hope it works out for you, Tom. Roll up your sleeve. We’d better get started.”
Blaine rolled up his left sleeve, Orc took a hypodermic from a drawer.
“This is just to knock you out,” Orc explained. “All the apparatus is in the next room. When you come to, you’ll be a guest in someone else’s mind and your body will be traveling cross-country in deep-freeze. They’ll be brought together as soon as it’s safe.”
“How many minds will I occupy?” Blaine asked. “And for how long?”
“I don’t know how many we’ll have to use. As for how long in each, a few seconds, a few minutes, maybe half an hour. We’ll move you along as fast as we can. This isn’t a full Transplant, you know. You won’t be taking over the body. You’ll just be occupying a small portion of its consciousness as an observer. So stay quiet and act natural. Got that?”
Blaine nodded. “What are the Marquesas like?”
“Beautiful,” Orc said, sliding the needle into Blaine’s arm. “You’ll like it th
ere.”
Blaine drifted slowly into unconsciousness, thinking of palm trees, of white surf breaking against a coral reef, and of dark-eyed maidens worshipping a god of stone. The god looked strangely like himself.
28.
THERE was no sense of awakening, no feeling of transition. Abruptly, like a brilliantly colored slide projected upon a white screen, he was conscious. Suddenly, like a marionette jerked into violent life, he was acting and moving.
He was not completely Thomas Blaine. He was Edgar Dyersen as well. Or he was Blaine within Dyersen, an integral part of Dyersen’s body, a segment of Dyersen’s mind, viewing the world through Dyersen’s rheumy eyes, thinking Dyersen’s thoughts, experiencing all the shadowy half-conscious fragments of Dyersen’s memories, hopes, fears and desires. And yet he was still Blaine.
Dyersen-Blaine came out of the ploughed field and rested against his wooden fence. He was a farmer, an old-fashioned South Jersey truck farmer, with a minimum of machines, which he distrusted anyhow. He was close to seventy and in good health. There was still a touch of arthritis in his joints, which the smart young medico in the village had mostly fixed, and his back sometimes gave him trouble before rain. But he considered himself healthy, healthier than most, and good for another twenty years.
Dyersen-Blaine started toward his cottage. His gray workshirt was drenched in acrid sweat, and sweat stained his shapeless coveralls.
In the distance he heard a dog barking and saw, blurrily, a yellow and brown shape come bounding toward him. (Eyeglasses? No, thank you. Doing pretty well with what I got.)
“Hey, Champ! Hey, there, boy!”
The dog ran a circle around him, then trotted along beside him. He had something gray in his jaws, a rat or perhaps a piece of meat Dyersen-Blaine couldn’t quite make it out.
He bent down to pat Champ’s head . . .
AGAIN there was no sense of transition or of the passage of time. A new slide was simply projected onto the screen and a new marionette was jerked into life.
Now he was Thompson-Blaine, nineteen years old, lying on his back half dozing on the rough planks of a sailing skiff, the mainsheet and tiller held loosely in one brown hand. To starboard lay the low Eastern shore, and to his port he could see a bit of Baltimore Harbor. The skiff moved easily on the light summer breeze and water gurgled merrily beneath the forefoot.
Thompson-Blaine rearranged his lanky, tanned body on the planks, squirming around until he had succeeded in propping his feet against the mast. He had been home just a week, after a two-year work and study program on Mars. It had sure been interesting, especially the archeology and speleology. The sand-farming had gotten dull sometimes, but he had enjoyed driving the harvesting machines.
Now he was home for a two-year accelerated college course. Then he was supposed to return to Mars as a farm manager. That’s the way his scholarship read. But they couldn’t make him go back if he didn’t want to.
Maybe he would. And maybe not.
The girls on Mars were such dedicated types. Tough, capable, always a little bossy. When he went back—if he went back—he’d bring his own wife, not look for one there. Of course there had been Marcia. She’d really been something. But her whole kibbutz had moved to the South Polar Gap and she hadn’t answered his last three letters. Maybe she hadn’t been so much.
“Hey, Sandy!”
Thompson-Blaine looked up and saw Eddie Duelitle, sailing his Thistle, waving at him. Languidly, Thompson-Blaine waved back. Eddie was only seventeen, had never been off Earth, and wanted to be a spaceliner captain. Huh! Fat chance!
The sun was dipping toward the horizon and Thompson-Blaine was glad to see it go down. He had a date tonight with Jennifer Rollins. They were going dancing at Starsling in Baltimore and Dad was letting him use the heli. Man, how Jennifer had grown in two years! And she had a way of looking at a guy, sort of coy and bold at the same time. No telling what might happen after the dance, in the back seat of the heli. Maybe nothing. But maybe plenty.
Thompson-Blaine sat up and put the tiller over. The skiff came into the wind and tacked over. It was time to return to the yacht basin, then home for dinner, then . . .
THE blacksnake whip flicked across his back.
“Get working there, you!” Piggot-Blaine redoubled his efforts, lifting the heavy pick high in the air and swinging it down into the dusty roadbed. The guard stood nearby, shotgun under his left arm, whip in his right, its lash trailing in the dust. Piggot-Blaine knew every line and pore of that guard’s thin, stupid face, knew the downward twist of the tight little mouth, knew the squint of the faded eyes even better than he knew his own face.
Just wait, buzzard meat, he silently told the guard. Your time’s a-coming. Just wait, wait just a bit.
The guard moved away, walking slowly up and down the line of prisoners laboring under the white Mississippi sun. Piggot-Blaine tried to spit, but couldn’t work up enough saliva. He thought, you talk about your fine modern world? Talk about your big old spaceships, your automatic farms, your big fine fat old hereafter? Think that’s how it is? Then ask ’em how they build the roads in Quilleg County, Northern Mississippi. They won’t tell you, so you better look for yourself and find out ’Cause that’s the kind of world it really is!
Arnie, working in front of him, whispered, “You ready, Otis? You ready for it?”
“I’m a-ready,” Piggot-Blaine whispered, his broad fingers clenching and unclenching on the pick’s plastic handle. “I’m past ready, Arnie.”
“In a second, then. Watch Jeff.”
Piggot-Blaine’s hairy chest swelled expectantly. He brushed lank brown hair from his eyes and watched Je’ff, five men ahead on the chain. Piggot-Blaine waited, his shoulders aching from sunburn. There were calloused scars on his ankles from the hoofcuffs, and old seams on his back from earlier whippings. He had a raging thirst in his gut. But no dipperful of water could ever cut that thirst, nothing could, that crazy thirst that brought him in here after he’d dismembered Gainesville’s single saloon and killed that stinking old Indian.
Jeff’s hand moved. The chained line of prisoners sprang forward. Piggot-Blaine jumped toward the thin-faced guard, his pick swung high, as the guard dropped his whip and fumbled to bring up the shotgun.
“Buzzard meat!” Piggot-Blaine screamed, and brought the pick down fair in the guard’s forehead.
“Get the keys!”
Piggot-Blaine grabbed the keys from the dead guard’s belt He heard a shotgun go off, heard a high scream of agony. Anxiously he looked up . . .
RAMIREZ-Blaine was piloting his heli above the flat Texas plains, heading for El Paso. He was a serious young man and he paid strict attention to his work, coaxing the last knot of speed out of the old heli so he could reach El Paso before Johnson’s Hardware Store closed.
He handled the balky rattletrap with care, and only an occasional thought came through his concentration, quick thoughts about the altitude and compass readings, a dance in Guanajuato next week, the price of hides in Ciudad Juarez.
The plain was mottled green and yellow below him. He glanced at his watch, then at the airspeed indicator.
Yes, Ramirez-Blaine thought, he would make El Paso before the store closed! He might even have time for a little . . .
TYLER-Blaine wiped his mouth on his sleeve and sopped up the last of the greasy gravy on a piece of corn bread. He belched, pushed his chair back from the kitchen table and stood up. With elaborate unconcern, he took a cracked bowl from the pantry and filled it with scraps of pork, a few greens and a big piece of com bread.
“Ed,” his wife said, “what you doing?”
He glanced at her. She was gaunt, tangle-haired, faded past her years. He looked away, not answering.
“Ed! Tell me, Ed!”
Tyler-Blaine looked at her in annoyance, feeling his ulcer wince at the stab of that sharp, worried voice. Sharpest voice in all California, he told himself, and he’d married it. Sharp voice, sharp nose, sharp elbows and knees, breastles
s and barren to boot. Legs to support a body, but not for a second’s delight. A belly for filling, not for touching. Of all the girls in California, he’d doubtless picked the sorriest, just like the damn fool his Uncle Rafe always said he was.
“Where you taking that bowl of food?” she asked.
“Out to feed the dog,” Tyler-Blaine said, moving toward the door.
“We ain’t got a dog! Oh, Ed, don’t do it, not tonight!”
“I’m doin’ it,” he said, glad of her discomfort.
“Please, not tonight. Let him shift for himself somewhere else. Ed, listen to me! What if the town found out?”
“It’s past sundown,” Tyler-Blaine replied, standing beside the door with his bowl of food.
“People spy,” she said. “Ed, if they find out, they’ll lynch us. You know they will.”
“You’d look mighty spry from the end of a rope,” Tyler-Blaine remarked, opening the door.
“You do it just to spite me!” she cried.
He closed the door behind him. Outside, it was deep twilight. Tyler-Blaine stood in his yard near the unused chicken coop, looking around. The only house near his was the Flannagans’, a hundred yards away. But they minded their own business.
He waited to make sure none of the town kids were snooping around. Then he walked forward, carefully holding the bowl of food.
HE reached the edge of the scraggly woods and set the bowl down. “It’s all right,” he called softly. “Come out, Uncle Rafe.”
A man crawled out of the woods on all fours. His face was leaden-white, his lips bloodless, his eyes blank and staring, his features coarse and unfinished, like iron before tempering or clay before firing. A long cut across his neck had festered, and his right leg, where the townsfolk had broken it, hung limp and useless.
“Thanks, boy,” said Rafe, Tyler-Blaine’s zombie uncle.
The zombie quickly gulped down the contents of the bowl. When he had finished, Tyler-Blaine asked, “How you feeling, Uncle Rafe?”
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