Blaine pondered this carefully. On the one hand, he was happy about it. It seemed to settle, once and for all, the conflict between his mind and his borrowed body. Obviously his mind was boss.
On the other hand, the situation didn't speak too well for the quality of that mind. Here was a man who had travelled 152 years into the future, had passed through wonders and horrors, and was working again, with a weary and terrible inevitability, as a junior yacht designer who did everything but design yachts. Was there some fatal flaw in his character, some hidden defect which doomed him to inferiority no matter what his environment?
Moodily he pictured himself flung back a million or so years, to a caveman era. Doubtless, after a period of initial adjustment, he would become a junior designer of dugouts. Only not really a designer. His job would be to count the wampum, check the quality of the tree trunks and contract for outriggers, while some other fellow (probably a Neanderthal genius) did the actual running of the lines.
That was disheartening. But fortunately it was not the only way of viewing the matter. His inevitable return could also be taken as a fine example of internal solidarity, of human steadfastness. He was a man who knew what he was. No matter how his environment changed, he remained true to his function.
Viewed this way, he could be very proud of being eternally and forever a junior yacht designer.
He continued working, fluctuating between these two basic views of himself. Once or twice he saw Marie, but she was usually busy in the high councils of the Rex Corporation. He moved out of his hotel and into a small, tastefully furnished apartment. New York was beginning to feel normal to him.
And, he reminded himself, if he had gained nothing else, he had at least settled his mind-body problem.
But his body was not to be disposed of so lightly. Blaine had overlooked one of the problems likely to exist with the ownership of a strong, handsome, and highly idiosyncratic body such as his.
One day the conflict flared again, more aggravated than ever.
He had left work at the usual time, and was waiting at a corner for his bus. He noticed a woman staring intently at him. She was perhaps twenty-five years old, a buxom, attractive red-head. She was commonly dressed. Her features were bold, yet they had a certain wistful quality.
Blaine realized that he had seen her before but never really noticed her. Now that he thought about it, she had once ridden a helibus with him. Once she had entered a store nearly on his footsteps. And several times she had been passing his building when he left work.
She had been watching him, probably for weeks. But why?
He waited, staring back at her. The woman hesitated a moment, then said, “Could I talk to you a moment?” Her voice was husky, pleasant, but very nervous. “Please, Mr. Blaine, it's very important.”
So she knew his name. “Sure,” Blaine said. “What is it?”
“Not here. Could we — uh — go somewhere?”
Blaine grinned and shook his head. She seemed harmless enough; but Orc had seemed so, too.
Trusting strangers in this world was a good way of losing your mind, your body, or both.
“I don't know you,” Blaine said, “and I don't know where you learned my name. Whatever you want, you'd better tell me here.”
“I really shouldn't be bothering you,” the woman said in a discouraged voice. “But I couldn't stop myself, I had to talk to you. I get so lonely sometimes, you know how it is?”
“Lonely? Sure, but why do you want to talk to me?”
She looked at him sadly. “That's right, you don't know.”
“No, I don't,” Blaine said patiently. “Why?”
“Can't we go somewhere? I don't like to say it in public like this.”
“You'll have to,” Blaine said, beginning to think that this was a very complicated game indeed.
“Oh, all right,” the woman said, obviously embarrassed. “I've been following you around for a long time, Mr. Blaine. I found out your name and where you worked. I had to talk to you. It's all on account of that body of yours.”
“What?”
“Your body,” she said, not looking at him. “You see, it used to be my husband's body before he sold it to the Rex Corporation.” Blaine's mouth opened, but he could find no adequate words.
23
Blaine had always known that his body had lived its own life in the world before it had been given to him. It had acted, decided, loved, hated, made its own individual imprint upon society and woven its own complex and lasting web of relationships. He could even have assumed that it had been married; most bodies were. But he had preferred not thinking about it. He had let himself believe that everything concerning the previous owner had conveniently disappeared.
His own meeting with Ray Melhill's snatched body should have shown him how naive that attitude was. Now, like it or not, he had to think about it.
They went to Blaine's apartment. The woman, Alice Kranch, sat dejectedly on one side of the couch and accepted a cigarette.
“The way it was,” she said, “Frank — that was my husband's name, Frank Kranch — he was never satisfied with things, you know? He had a good job as a hunter, but he was never satisfied.”
“A hunter?”
“Yes, he was a spearman in the China game.”
“Hmm,” Blaine said, wondering again what had induced him to go on that hunt. His own needs or Kranch's dormant reflexes? It was annoying to have this mind-body problem come up again just when it had seemed so nicely settled.
“But he wasn't ever satisfied,” Alice Kranch said. “And it used to make him sore, those fancy rich guys getting themselves killed and going to the hereafter. He always hated the idea of dying like a dog, Frank did.”
“I don't blame him,” Blaine said.
She shrugged her shoulders. “What can you do? Frank didn't have a chance of making enough money for hereafter insurance. It bothered him. And then he got that big wound on the shoulder that nearly put him under. I suppose you still got the scar?”
Blaine nodded.
“Well, he wasn't ever the same after that. Hunters usually don't think much about death, but Frank started to. He started thinking about it all the time. And then he met this skinny dame from Rex.”
“Marie Thorne?”
“That's the one,” Alice said. “She was a skinny dame, hard as nails and cold as a fish. I couldn't understand what Frank saw in her. Oh, he played around some, most hunters do. It's on account of the danger. But there's playing around and playing around. He and this fancy Rex dame were thick as thieves. I just couldn't see what Frank saw in her. I mean she was so skinny, and so tight-faced. She was pretty in a pinched sort of way, but she looked like she'd wear her clothes to bed, if you know what I mean.”
Blaine nodded, a little painfully. “Go on.”
“Well, there's no accounting for some tastes, but I thought I knew Frank's. And I guess I did because it turned out he wasn't going with her. It was strictly business. He turned up one day and said to me, ‘Baby, I'm leaving you. I'm taking that big fat trip into the hereafter. There's a nice piece of change in it for you, too.’ ”
Alice sighed and wiped her eyes. “That big idiot had sold his body! Rex had given him hereafter insurance and an annuity for me, and he was so damned proud of himself! Well, I talked myself blue in the face trying to get him to change his mind. No chance, he was going to eat pie in the sky. To his way of thinking his number was up anyhow, and the next hunt would do him. So off he went. He talked to me once from the Threshold.”
“Is he still there?” Blaine asked, with a prickling sensation at the back of his neck.
“I haven't heard from him in over a year,” Alice said, “so I guess he's gone on to the hereafter. The bastard!”
She cried for a few moments, then wiped her eyes with a tiny handkerchief and looked mournfully at Blaine. “I wasn't going to bother you. After all, it was Frank's body to sell and it's yours now. I don't have any claims on it or you. But I got so blue
, so lonely.”
“I can imagine,” Blaine murmured, thinking that she was definitely not his type. Objectively speaking, she was pretty enough. Comely but overblown. Her features were well formed, bold, and vividly colored. Her hair, although obviously not a natural red, was shoulder length and of a smooth texture. She was the sort of woman he could picture, hands on hips, arguing with a policeman; hauling in a fishnet; dancing to a flamenco guitar; or herding goats on a mountain path with a full skirt swishing around ample hips, and peasant blouse distended.
But she was not in good taste.
However, he reminded himself, Frank Kranch had found her very much to his taste. And he was wearing Kranch's body.
“Most of our friends,” Alice was saying, “were hunters in the China game. Oh, they dropped around sometimes after Frank left. But you know hunters, they've got just one thing on their minds”
“Is that a fact?” Blaine asked.
“Yes. And so I moved out of Peking and came back to New York, where I was born. And then one day I saw Frank — I mean you. I could have fainted on the spot. I mean I might have expected it and all, but still it gives you a turn to see your husband's body walking around.”
“I should think so,” Blaine said.
“So I followed you and all. I wasn't ever going to bother you or anything, but it just, kept bothering me all the time. And I sort of got to wondering what kind of a man was… I mean, Frank was so — well, he and I got along very well, if you know what I mean.”
“Certainly,” Blaine said.
“I'll bet you think I'm terrible!”
“Not at all!” said Blaine. She looked him full in the face, her expression mournful and coquettish. Blaine felt Kranch's old scar throb.
But remember, he told himself, Kranch is gone. Everything is Blaine now, Blaine's will, Blaine's way, Blaine's taste…
This problem must be settled, he thought, as he seized the willing Alice and kissed her with an unBlainelike fervor…
In the morning Alice made breakfast. Blaine sat, staring out the window, thinking dismal thoughts.
Last night had proven to him conclusively that Kranch was still king of the Kranch-Blaine body-mind. For last night he had been completely unlike himself. He had been fierce, violent, rough, angry and exultant. He had been all the things he had always deplored, had acted with an abandon that must have bordered on madness.
That was not Blaine. That was Kranch, the Body Triumphant.
Blaine had always prized delicacy, subtlety, and the grasp of nuance. Too much, perhaps. Yet those had been his virtues, the expressions of his own individual personality. With them, he was Thomas Blaine. Without them he was less that nothing — a shadow cast by the eternally triumphant Kranch.
Gloomily he contemplated the future. He would give up the struggle, become what his body demanded; a fighter, a brawler, a lusty vagabond. Perhaps in time he would grow used to it, even enjoy it…
“Breakfast's ready,” Alice announced.
They ate in silence, and Alice mournfully fingered a bruise on her forearm. At last Blaine could stand it no longer.
“Look,” he said, “I'm sorry.”
“What for?”
“Everything.”
She smiled wanly. “That's all right. It was my fault, really.”
“I doubt that. Pass the butter please,” Blaine said.
She passed the butter. They ate in silence for a few minutes. Then Alice said, “I was very, very stupid.”
“Why?”
“I guess I was chasing a dream,” she said. “Thought I could find Frank all over again. I'm not really that way, Mr. Blaine. But I thought it would be like with Frank.“
“And wasn't it?”
She shook her head. “No, of course not.”
Blaine put down his coffee cup carefully. He said, “I suppose Kranch was rougher. I suppose he batted you from wall to wall. I suppose —”
“Oh, no!” she cried. “Never! Mr. Blaine, Frank was a hunter and he lived a hard life. But with me he was always a perfect gentleman. He had manners, Frank had.”
“He had?”
“He certainly had! Frank was always gentle with me, Mr. Blaine. He was — delicate, if you know what I mean. Nice. Gentle. He was never, never rough. To tell the truth, he was the very opposite from you, Mr. Blaine.”
“Uh,” said Blaine.
“Not that there's anything wrong with you,” she said with hasty kindness. “You are a little rough, but I guess it takes all kinds.”
“I guess it does,” Blaine said. “Yes, I guess it sure does.”
They finished their breakfast in embarrassed silence, Alice, freed of her obsessive dream, left immediately afterwards, with no suggestion that they meet again. Blaine sat in his big chair, staring out the window, thinking.
So he wasn't like Kranch!
The sad truth was, he told himself, he had acted as he imagined Kranch would have acted in similar circumstances. It had been pure autosuggestion. Hysterically he had convinced himself that a strong, active, hearty outdoors man would necessarily treat a woman like a wrestling bear.
He had acted out a stereotype. He would feel even sillier if he weren't so relieved at regaining his threatened Blaineism.
He frowned as he remembered Alice's description of Marie: Skinny, hard as nails, cold as fish. More sterotyping.
But under the circumstances, he could hardly blame Alice.
24
A few days later, Blaine received word that a communication was waiting for him at the Spiritual Switchboard. He went there after work, and was sent to the booth he had used previously.
Melhill's amplified voice said, “Hello, Tom.”
“Hello, Ray. I was wondering where you were.”
“I'm still in the Threshold,” Melhill told him, “but I won't be much longer. I gotta go on and see what the hereafter is like. It pulls at me. But I wanted to talk to you again, Tom. I think you should watch out for Marie Thorne.”
“Now Ray —”
“I mean it. She's been spending all her time at Rex. I don't know what's going on there, they got the conference rooms shielded against psychic invasion. But something's brewing over you, and she's in the middle of it.”
“I'll keep my eyes open,” Blaine said.
“Tom, please take my advice. Get out of New York. Get out fast, while you still have a body and a mind to run it with.”
“I'm staying,” Blaine said.
“You stubborn bastard,” Melhill said, with deep feeling. “What's the use of having a protective spirit if you don't ever take his advice?”
“I appreciate your help,” Blaine said. “I really do. But tell me truthfully, how much better off would I be if I ran?”
“You might be able to stay alive a little longer.”
“Only a little? Is it that bad?”
“Bad enough. Tom, remember not to trust anybody. I gotta go now.”
“Will I speak to you again, Ray?”
“Maybe,” Melhill said. “Maybe not. Good luck, kid.”
The interview was ended. Blaine returned to his apartment.
The next day was Saturday. Blaine lounged in bed late, made himself breakfast and called Marie. She was out. He decided to spend the day relaxing and playing his sensory recordings.
That afternoon he had two callers.
The first was a gentle, hunchbacked old woman dressed in a dark, severe uniform. Across her army-style cap were the words, “Old Church.”
“Sir,” she said in a slightly wheezy voice, “I am soliciting contributions for the Old Church, an organization which seeks to promote faith in these dissolute and Godless times.”
“Sorry,” Blaine said, and started to close the door.
But the old woman must have had many doors closed on her. She wedged herself between door and jamb and continued talking.
“This, young sir, is the age of the Babylonian Beast, and the time of the soul's destruction. This is Satan's age, and the time of his
seeming triumph. But be not deceived! The Lord Almighty has allowed this to come about for a trial and a testing, and a winnowing of grain from chaff. Beware the temptation! Beware the path of evil which lies splendid and glittering before you!”
Blaine gave her a dollar just to shut her up. The old woman thanked him but continued talking.
“Beware, young sir, that ultimate lure of Satan — the false heaven which men call the hereafter! For what better snare could Satan the Deceiver devise for the world of men than this, his greatest illusion! The illusion that hell is heaven! And men are deceived by the cunning deceit, and willingly go down into it!”
“Thank you,” Blaine said, trying to shut the door.
“Remember my words!” the old woman cried, fixing him with a glassy blue eye. “The hereafter is evil! Beware the prophets of the hellish afterlife!”
“Thank you!” Blaine cried, and managed to close the door.
He relaxed in his armchair again and turned on the player. For nearly an hour he was absorbed in Flight on Venus. Then there was a knock on his door.
Blaine opened it, and saw a short, well-dressed, chubby-faced, earnest-looking young man.
“Mr. Thomas Blaine?” the man asked.
“That's me.”
“Mr. Blaine, I am Charles Farrell, from the Hereafter Corporation. Might I speak to you? If it is inconvenient now, perhaps we could make an appointment for some other —”
“Come in,” Blaine said, opening the door wide for the prophet of the hellish afterlife.
Farrell was a mild, businesslike, soft-spoken prophet. His first move was to give Blaine a letter written on Hereafter, Inc. stationery, stating that Charles Farrell was a fully authorized representative of the Hereafter Corporation. Included in the letter was a meticulous description of Farrell, his signature, three stamped photographs and a set of fingerprints.
“And here are my identity proofs,” Farrell said, opening his wallet and showing his heli license, library card, voter's registration certificate and government clearance card. On a separate piece of treated paper Farrell impressed the fingerprints of his right hand and gave them to Blaine for comparison with those on the letter.
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