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 going on. 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, then?”
Melhill nodded.
“But who would sell his body?”
“A very poor guy, obviously. By law he's supposed to receive compensation in the form of 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 asked. “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 to sell.”
“Perhaps so,” Blaine said. “But no matter how bad things got, I'd never sell my body.”
Melhill laughed with good humor. “Stout fellow! But Tom, they’re taking it for nothing!”
Blaine could think of no answer for that.
7
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.
They were kept together for companionship; solitary men sometimes go insane, and insanity can cause irreparable damage to the valuable brain cells. They were even granted the right to exercise, under strict supervision, to relieve boredom and to keep their bodies in shape for future owners.
Blaine began to experience an exceeding fondness for the sturdy, thickset, well-muscled body he had inhabited 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 overrated. To counterbalance that lack, he suspected the body was not prone to hay fever like the former body he had tenanted; and its teeth were very sound.
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 bastard,” Blaine said, with a deep sense of the inadequacy of words.
“Them's the breaks,” Orc said. “You boys gettin‘ enough to eat?”
“You and your ranch in Arizona!”
“I've got one under lease,” 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 said.
Orc sighed deeply. “Well, it's a business, and I guess it's no worse than some others I could think of if I set my mind to it kinda hard. It's a wicked world we live in. 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 said.
“I won't?”
“No. One night a mark is going to catch you spiking his drink. You’re going to end in the gutter, Orc, 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,” Orc said, interestedly, as though he were studying the world's last moa.
“Call it what you like. Maybe you'll get your hereafter, Orc. But I think there's a little corner of it where you'll burn forever!”
Orc said, “There's no scientific evidence of hell-fire. But 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.”
Orc 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.
Orc appeared 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.
“Sorry,” Orc said, as they led Blaine out. “The customer specified your particular build and complexion.”
Blaine suddenly came to life and tried to wrench free. “I'll kill you!” he shouted to Orc. “I swear it I'll kill you!”
“Don't damage him,” Orc said to the men, wooden-faced.
A rag was pushed over his mouth and nose, and Blaine smelled something sickeningly sweet. Chloroform, he thought. His last recollection was of Melhill, his face ashen, standing at the barred door.
8
Thomas Blaine's first act of consciousness was to find out whether he was still Thomas Blaine, and still occupying his own body. The proof was there, apparent in the asking. They hadn't wiped out his mind yet.
He was lying on a divan, fully dressed. He sat up and heard the sound of footsteps outside, coming toward the door.
They must have overestimated the strength of the chloroform! He still had a chance!
He moved quickly behind the door. It opened, and someone walked through. Blaine stepped out and swung.
He managed to check the blow. But there was still plenty of force left when his big fist struck Marie Thorne on the side of her shapely chin.
He carried her to the divan. In a few minutes she recovered and looked at him.
“Blaine,” she said, “you’re an idiot.”
“I didn't know who it was,” Blaine said. Even as he said it, he realized it wasn't true. He had recognized Marie Thorne a fractional instant before the blow was irretrievably launched; and his well-machined, responsive body could have recalled the punch even then. But an unperceived, uncontrollable fury had acted beneath his sane, conscious, morally aware level; fury had cunningly used urgency to avoid responsibility; had seized the deceiving instant to smash down the cold and uncaring Miss Thorne.
The act hinted at something Blaine didn't care to know about himself. He said, “Miss Thorne, who did you buy my body for?”
She glared at him. “I bought it for you, since you obviously couldn't take care of it yourself.”
So he wasn't going to die after all. No fat slob was going to inherit his body, scattering his mind to the wind. Good! He wanted very much to live. But he wished anyone but Marie Thorne had saved him.
“I might have done better if I'd known how things work here,” Blaine said.
“I was going to explain. Why didn't you wait?”
“After the way you talked to m
e?”
“I'm sorry if I was brusque,” she said. “I was quite upset after Mr. Reilly cancelled the publicity campaign. But couldn't you understand that? If I'd been a man —”
“You aren't a man,” Blaine reminded her.
“What difference does it make? I suppose you have some strange old-fashioned ideas about woman's role and status.”
“I don't consider them strange,” Blaine said.
“Of course not.” She fingered her jaw, which was discolored and slightly swollen. “Well, shall we consider ourselves even? Or do you want another clout at me?”
“One was enough, thank you,” Blaine said.
She stood up, somewhat unsteadily. Blaine put an arm around her to steady her, and was momentarily disconcerted. He had visualized that trim body as whipcord and steel; but in fact it was flesh, firm, resilient, and surprisingly soft. So close, he could see stray hairs escaping her tight coiffure, and a tiny mole on her forehead near the hairline. At that moment Marie Thorne ceased as a abstraction for him, and took shape as a human being.
“I can stand by myself,” she said.
After a long moment, Blaine released her.
“Under the circumstances,” she said, looking at him steadily, “I think our relationship should remain on a strictly business level.”
Wonder after wonder! She had suddenly begun viewing him as a human being too; she was aware of him as a man, and disturbed by it. The thought gave him great pleasure. It was not, he told himself, that he liked Marie Thorne, or even desired her particularly. But he wanted very much to throw her off balance, scratch enamel off the facade, jar that damnable poise.
He said, “Why of course, Miss Thorne.”
“I'm glad you feel that way,” she told him. “Because frankly, you’re not my type.”
“What is your type?”
“I like tall, lean men,” she said. “Men with a certain grace, ease and sophistication.”
“But —”
“Shall we have lunch?” she said easily. “Afterwards, Mr. Reilly would like a word with you. I believe he has a proposal to make.”
He followed her out of the room, raging inwardly. Had she been making fun of him? Tall, lean, graceful, sophisticated men! Damn it, that's what he had been! And under this beefy blonde wrestler's body he still was, if only she had eyes to see it! And who was jarring whose poise?
As they sat down at the table in the Rex executive dining room, Blaine suddenly said, “Melhill!”
“What?”
“Ray Melhill, the man I was locked up with! Look, Miss Thorne, could you possibly buy him, too? I'll pay for it as soon as I can. We were locked up together. He's a damned nice guy.”
She looked at him curiously. “I'll see what I can do.”
She left the table. Blaine waited, rubbing his hands together, wishing he had Carl Orc's neck between them. Marie Thorne returned in a few minutes.
“I'm very sorry,” she said. “I contacted Orc. Mr. Melhill was sold an hour after you were removed. I really am sorry. I didn't know.”
“It's all right,” Blaine said. “I think I'd like a drink.”
9
Mr. Reilly sat erect and almost lost in a great, soft, thronelike chair. He was a tiny, bald, spider-like old man. His wrinkled translucent skin was stretched tight across his skull and clawed hands, and bone and tendon showed clearly through the leathery, shrunken flesh. Blaine had the impression of blood coursing sluggishly through the brittle, purple varicosed veins, threatening momentarily to stop. Yet Reilly's posture was firm, and his eyes were lucid in his humorous monkey's face.
“So this is our man from the past!” Mr. Reilly said. “Please be seated, sir. You too, Miss Thorne. I was just discussing you with my grandfather, Mr. Blaine.”
Blaine glanced around, almost expecting to see the fifty-years-dead grandfather looming spectrally over him. But there was no sign of him in the ornate, high-ceilinged room.
“He's gone now,” Mr. Reilly explained. “Poor Grandfather can maintain an ectoplasmic state for only a brief time. But even so, he's better off than most ghosts.”
Blaine's expression must have changed, for Reilly asked, “Don't you believe in ghosts, Mr. Blaine?”
“I'm afraid I don't.”
“Of course not. I suppose the word has unfortunate connotations for your twentieth-century mind. Clanking chains, skeletons, all that nonsense. But words change their meaning, and even reality is altered as mankind alters and manipulates nature.”
“I see,” Blaine said politely.
“You consider that doubletalk,” Mr. Reilly said good-naturedly. “It wasn't meant to be. Consider the manner in which words change their meaning. In the twentieth century, ‘atoms’ became a catch-all word for imaginative writers with their ’atom-guns’ and ‘atom-powered ships.’ An absurd word, which any level-headed man would do well to ignore, just as you level-headedly ignore ‘ghosts’. Yet a few years later, ‘atoms’ conjured a picture of very real and imminent doom. No level-headed man could ignore the word!”
Mr. Reilly smiled reminiscently. “ ‘Radiation’ changed from a dull textbook term to a source of cancerous ulcers. ‘Space-sickness’ was an abstract and unloaded term in your time. But in fifty years it meant hospitals filled with twisted bodies. Words tend to change, Mr. Blaine, from an abstract, fanciful, or academic use to a functional, realistic, everyday use. It happens when manipulation catches up with theory.”
“And ghosts?”
“The process has been similar. Mr. Blaine, you’re old-fashioned! You'll simply have to change your concept of the word.”
“It'll be difficult,” Blaine said.
“But necessary. Remember, there was always a lot of evidence in their favor. The prognosis for their existence, you might say, was favorable. And when life after death became fact instead of wishful thinking, ghosts became fact as well.”
“I think I'll have to see one first,” Blaine said.
“Undoubtedly you will. But enough. Tell me, how does our age suit you?”
“So far, not too well,” Blaine said.
Reilly cackled gleefully. “Nothing endearing about body snatchers, eh? But you shouldn't have left the building, Mr. Blaine. It was not in your best interests, and certainly not in the company's best interests.”
“I'm sorry, Mr. Reilly,” Marie Thorne said. “That was my fault.”
Reilly glanced at her, then turned back to Blaine. “It's a pity, of course. You should, in all honesty, have been left to your destiny in 1958. Frankly, Mr. Blaine, your presence here is something of an embarrassment to us.”
“I regret that.”
“My grandfather and I agreed, belatedly I fear, against using you for publicity. The decision should have been made earlier. Still, it's made now. But there may be publicity, in spite of our desires. There's even a possibility of the government taking legal action against the corporation.”
“Sir,” Marie Thorne said, “the lawyers are confident of our position.”
“Oh, we won't go to jail,” Reilly said. “But consider the publicity. Bad publicity! Rex must stay respectable, Miss Thorne. Hints of scandal, innuendoes of illegality… No, Mr. Blaine should not be here in 2110, a walking proof of bad judgment. Therefore, sir, I'd like to make you a business proposition.”
“I'm listening,” Blaine said.
“Suppose Rex buys you hereafter insurance, thus ensuring your life after death? Would you consent to suicide?”
Blaine blinked rapidly for a moment. “No.”
“Why not?” Reilly asked.
For a moment, the reason seemed self-evident. What creature consents to take its own life? Unhappily, man does. So Blaine had to stop and sort his thoughts.
“First of all,” he said, “I'm not fully convinced about this hereafter.”
“Suppose we convince you,” Mr. Reilly said. “Would you suicide then?”
“No!”
“But how shortsighted! Mr. Blaine, consider your position. Th
is age is alien to you, inimical, unsatisfactory. What kind of work can you do? Who can you talk with, and about what? You can't even walk the streets without being in deadly peril of your life.”
“That won't happen again,” Blaine said. “I didn't know how things worked here.”
“But it will! You can never know how things work here! Not really. You’re in the same position a caveman would be, thrown haphazardly into your own 1958. He'd think himself capable enough, I suppose, on the basis of his experience with saber-tooth tigers and hairy mastodons. Perhaps some kind soul would even warn him about gangsters. But what good would it do? Would it save him from being run over by a car, electrocuted on a subway track, asphyxiated by a gas stove, falling through an elevator shaft, cut to pieces on a power saw, or breaking his neck in the bathtub? You have to be born to those things in order to walk unscathed among them. And even so these things happened to people in your age when they relaxed their attention for a moment! How much more likely would our caveman be to stumble?”
“You’re exaggerating the situation,” Blaine said, feeling a light perspiration form on his forehead.
“Am I? The dangers of the forest are as nothing to the dangers of the city. And when the city becomes a supercity —”
“I won't suicide,” Blaine said. “I'll take my chances. Let's drop the subject.”
“Why can't you be reasonable?” Mr. Reilly asked petulantly. “Kill yourself now and save us all a lot of trouble. I can outline your future for you if you don't. Perhaps, by sheer nerve and animal cunning, you'll survive for a year. Even two. It won't matter, in the end you'll suicide anyhow. You’re a suicide type. Suicide is written all over you — you were born for it, Blaine! You'll kill yourself wretchedly in a year or two, slip out of your maimed flesh with relief — but with no hereafter to welcome your tired mind.”
“You’re crazy!” Blaine cried.
“I'm never wrong about suicide types,” Mr. Reilly said quietly. “I can always spot them. Grandfather agrees with me. So if you'll only —”
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