“Where, then?”
“That's what I asked Miss Thorne,” Orc said. “We discussed several possibilities. First, there's a zombie-making operation. I could perform it. Rex would never search for you underground.”
“I'd rather die,” Blaine said.
“I would too,” Orc agreed. “So we ruled it out. We thought about finding you a little farm in the Atlantic Abyss. Pretty lonely territory out there. But it takes a special mentality to live undersea and like it, and we didn't figure you had it. You'd probably crack up. So, after due consideration, we decided the best place for you was in the Marquesas.”
“The what?”
“The Marquesas. They’re a scattered group of small islands, originally Polynesian, out towards the middle of the Pacific Ocean. They’re not too far from Tahiti.”
“The South Seas,” Blaine said.
“Right. We figured you should feel more at home there than anywhere else on Earth. It's just like the 20th century, I'm told. And even more important, Rex might leave you alone.”
“Why would they?”
“For obvious reasons, Tom. Why do they want to kill you in the first place? Because they snatched you illegally from the past and they’re worried about what the government's going to do about it. But your going to the Marquesas removes you from the jurisdiction of the U.S. government. Without you, there's no case. And your going so far is a sign to Rex of your good faith. It certainly isn't the act of a man who's going to blab to Uncle Sam. Also, the Marquesas are an independent little nation since the French gave them up, so Rex would have to get special permission to hunt you there. On the whole, it should be just too much trouble for everyone concerned. The U.S. government will undoubtedly drop the matter, and I think Rex will leave you alone.”
“Is that certain?” Blaine asked.
“Of course not. It's conjecture. But it's reasonable.”
“Couldn't we make a deal with Rex beforehand?”
Orc shook his head. “In order to bargain, Tom, you have to have something to bargain with. As long as you’re in New York, it's easier and safer for them to kill you.”
“I guess you’re right,” Blaine said. “How are you going to get me out?”
Orc and Joe looked at each other uncomfortably. Orc said, “Well, that was our big problem. There just didn't seem to be any way of getting you out alive”
“Heli or jet?”
“They have to stop at the air tolls, and hunters are waiting at all of them. Surface vehicle is equally out of the question.”
“Disguise?”
“Maybe it would have worked during the first hour of the hunt. Now it's impossible, even if we could get you a complete plastic surgery job. By now the hunters are equipped with identity scanners. They'd see through you in a moment.”
“Then there's no way out?” Blaine asked.
Orc and Joe exchanged another uneasy glance. “There is,” Orc said. “Just one way. But you probably won't like it.”
“I like to stay alive. What is it?”
Orc paused and lighted another cigar. “We plan to quick-freeze you to near absolute zero, like for spaceship travel. Then we'll ship your carcass out in a crate of frozen beef. Your body will be in the center of the load, so most likely it won't be detected.”
“Sounds risky,” Blaine said.
“Not too risky,” Orc said.
Blaine frowned, sensing something wrong. “I'll be unconscious through it, won't I?”
After a long pause. Orc said, “No.”
“I won't?”
“It can't be done that way,” Orc told him. “The fact is, you and your body will have to separate. That's the part I'm afraid you won't like.”
“What in hell are you talking about?” Blaine asked, getting to his feet.
“Take it easy,” Orc said. “Sit down, smoke a cigarette, have some more wine. It's like this, Tom. We can't ship out a quick-frozen body with a mind in it. The hunters are waiting for something like that. Can you imagine what happens when they run a quick scan over that shipment of beef and detect a dormant mind in it? Up goes the kite! Adieu la musique! I'm not trying to con you, Tom. It just can't be done like that.”
“Then what happens to my mind?” Blaine asked, sitting down again.
“That,” Orc said, “is where Joe comes in. Tell him, Joe.”
Joe nodded rapidly. “Transplant, my friend, is the answer.”
“Transplant?”
“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. We've got a worldwide network of Transplantees, Mr. Blaine. Folks who like to switch around, men and women who get tired of switch around, men and women who get tired of wearing the same old body. We’re going to key you into the organization.”
“You’re going to ship my mind across the country?” Blaine asked.
“That'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!”
Orc 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 a reactionary government insists on banning it. But Transplant is a lot more than a game. It's an entire new way of life! And whether you or the government 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 efforts of government to withhold freedom 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?” Blaine asked mockingly.
“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?” Blaine asked.
“Transplant,” Joe said fervently, “gives man the ability to transcend the limits imposed by his heredity and his environment!”
“Huh?”
“Yes! 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 wr
iters. 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 much greater number of people who'd 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 by heredity and 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 respect. He was looking, he realized, at a genuine revolutionary of the year 2110.
Orc said, “He's got a point, Tom. Transplant is legal in Sweden and Ceylon, and it doesn't seem to have hurt the moral fibre much.”
“In time,” Joe said, 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 justifications. And it's the only way of saving that body of yours. What do you say?”
“Are you a revolutionary, too?” Blaine asked.
Orc grinned. “Could be. I guess I'm like the blockade runners during the American Civil War, or the guys who sold guns to Central American revolutionaries. They worked for a profit, but they weren't against social change.”
“Well, well,” Blaine said 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,” Blaine said. “I never thought I'd find myself in the advance guard of a social revolution.”
Orc 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 while Orc took a hypodermic from a drawer.
“This is just to knock you out,” Orc explained. “The Yoga Machine is in the next room. It does the real work. When you come to, you'll be a guest in someone else's mind, and your body will be travelling 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, 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. “But how does this Yoga Machine work?”
“It works like Yoga,” Orc said. “The machine simply does what you could do yourself if you were thoroughly trained in Yoga exercises. It relaxes every muscle and nerve in your body, focuses and calms your mind, helps build up your concentration. When you've reached potential, you’re ready to make an astral projection. The machine does that for you, too. It helps you release your hold on the body, which a Yoga adept could do without mechanical assistance. It projects you to the person we've selected, who yields room. Attraction takes care of the rest. You slip in like a stranded fish going back into water.”
“Sounds risky,” Blaine said. “Suppose I can't get in?”
“Man, you can't help but get in! Look, you've heard of demonic possession, haven't you? Guys under the control of so-called demons? The idea runs through most of the world's folklore. Some of the possessed were schizophrenic, of course, and some were downright frauds. But there were a lot of cases of real spiritual invasion, minds taken over by others who had learned the trick of breaking out of their own body and casting into another. The invaders took over with no mechanical help, and against an all-out battle on the part of their victims. In your case you've got the Yoga Machine, and the people are willing to have you in. So why worry?”
“All right,” Blaine said. “What are the Marquesas like?”
“Beautiful,” Orc said, sliding the needle into Blaine's arm. “You'll like it there.”
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.
30
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 damn 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 levis.
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 y
ear work and study program on Mars. It had sure been interesting, especially the archaeology 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, and 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, and 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, anyhow.
“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 Hunt. 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, maybe…
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 just like he knew his own face.
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