“Marie —”
“I told him I was your fiancée,” she said. “I hope you don't mind, Tom. I had to have some excuse for being here. I said I had come out early to surprise you. Mr. Davis was delighted of course, he wants his Master Boatwright to settle here so badly. Do you mind, Tom? We can always say we broke off the engagement and —”
Blaine took her in his arms and said, “I don't want to break off the engagement. I love you, Marie.”
“Oh Tom, Tom, I love you!” She clung to him fiercely for a moment, then stepped back. “We'd better arrange for a marriage ceremony soon, if you don't mind. They’re very stuffy and small-townish here; very 20th century, if you know what I mean.”
“I think I know what you mean,” Blaine said.
They looked at each other and burst out laughing.
32
Marie insisted upon staying at the South Seas Motel until a wedding could be arranged. Blaine suggested a quiet ceremony before a justice of the peace; but Marie surprised him by wanting as large a wedding as Taiohae could produce. It was held on Sunday, at the Mayor's house.
Mr. Davis loaned them a little cutter from the boatyard. They set sail at sunrise for a honeymoon cruise to Tahiti.
For Blaine, it had the sensation of a delicious and fleeting dream. They sailed across a sea carved of green jade, and saw the moon, yellow and swollen, quartered by the cutter's shrouds and tangled in its stays. The sun rose out of a long black cloud, reached its zenith and declined, scouring the sea into a gleaming bowl of brass. They anchored in the lagoon at Papeete and saw the mountains of Moorea flaming in the sunset, more fantastic than the mountains of the Moon.
And Blaine remembered a day on the Chesapeake when he had dreamed, Ah, Rai’atea, the mountains of Moorea, the fresh trade wind …
A continent and an ocean had separated him from Tahiti, and other obstacles besides. But that had been in another century.
They went to Moorea, rode horses up the slopes and picked the white tiare Tahiti. They returned to their boat anchored in the bay below, and set sail for the Tuamotos.
At last they returned to Taiohae. Marie started housekeeping, and Blaine began to work at the boatyard.
They waited anxiously through the first weeks, scanning the New York papers, wondering what Rex would do. But no word or sign came from the corporation, and they decided that the danger must be past. Still, they read with relief two months later that the Blaine hunt had been called off.
Blaine's job at the boatyard was interesting and varied. The island cutters and ketches limped in with bent shafts or nicked propellers, with planks that had been splintered against a hidden coral head, with sails blown out by a sudden gale. There were underwater craft to be serviced, boats belonging to the nearby undersea pressure farms that used Taiohae as a supply base. And there were dinghies to build, and an occasional schooner.
Blaine handled all practical details with skill and dispatch. As time went by, he started to write a few publicity releases about the yard for the South Seas Courier. This brought in more business, which involved more paper work and a greater need for liaison between the Point Boatyard and the small yards to which it farmed out work. Blaine handled this, and took over advertising as well.
His job as Master Boatwright came to bear an uncanny resemblance to his past jobs as junior yacht designer.
But this no longer bothered him. It seemed obvious to him now that nature had intended him to be a junior yacht designer, nothing more nor less. This was his destiny, and he accepted it.
His life fell into a pleasant routine built around the boatyard and the white bungalow, filled with Saturday night movies and the microfilm Sunday Times, quick visits to the undersea farms and to other islands in the Marquesas Group, parties at the Mayor's house and poker at the yacht club, brisk sails across Comptroller Bay and moonlight swimming on Temuoa Beach. Blaine began to think that his life had taken its final and definitive form.
Then, nearly four months after he had come to Taiohae, the pattern changed again.
One morning like any other morning Blaine woke up, ate his breakfast, kissed his wife goodbye and went down to the boatyard. There was a fat, round-bilged ketch on the ways, a Tuamotan boat that had gauged wrong trying to shoot a narrow pass under sail, and had been tide-set against a foam-splattered granite wall before the crew could start the engine. Six frames needed sistering, and a few planks had to be replaced. Perhaps they could finish it in a week.
Blaine was looking over the ketch when Mr. Davis came over.
“Say Tom,” the owner said, “there was a fellow around here just a little while ago looking for you. Did you see him?”
“No,” Blaine said. “Who was it?”
“A mainlander,” Davis said, frowning. “Just off the steamer this morning. I told him you weren't here yet and he said he'd see you at your house.”
“What did he look like?” Blaine asked, feeling his stomach muscles tighten.
Davis frowned more deeply. “Well, that's the funny part of it. He was about your height, thin, and very tanned. Had a full beard and sideburns. You don't see that much any more. And he stank of shaving lotion.”
“Sounds peculiar,” Blaine said.
“Very peculiar. I'll swear his beard wasn't real.”
“No?”
“It looked like a fake. Everything about him looked fake. And he limped pretty bad.”
“Did he leave a name?”
“Said his name was Smith. Tom, where are you going?”
“I have to go home right now,” Blaine said. “I'll try to explain later.”
He hurried away. Smith must have found out who he was and what the connection was between them. And, exactly as he had promised, the zombie had come visiting.
33
When he told Marie, she went at once to a closet and took down their suitcases. She carried them into the bedroom and began flinging clothes into them.
“What are you doing?” Blaine asked.
“Packing.”
“So I see. But why?”
“Because we’re getting out of here.”
“What are you talking about? We live here!”
“Not any more,” she said. “Not with that damned Smith around. Tom, he means trouble.”
“I'm sure he does,” Blaine said. “But that's no reason to run. Stop packing a minute and listen! What do you think he can do to me?”
“We’re not going to stay and find out,” she said.
She continued to shove clothes into the suitcase until Blaine grabbed her wrists.
“Calm down,” he told her. “I'm not going to run from Smith.”
“But it's the only sensible thing to do,” Marie said. “He's trouble, but he can't live much longer. Just a few more months, weeks maybe, and he'll be dead. He should have died long before now, that horrible zombie! Tom, let's go!”
“Have you gone crazy or something?” Blaine asked. “Whatever he wants, I can handle it.”
“I've heard you say that before,” Marie said.
“Things were different then.”
“They’re different now! Tom, we could borrow the cutter again, Mr. Davis would understand, and we could go to —”
“No! I'm damned if I'll run from him! Maybe you've forgotten, Marie, Smith saved my life.”
“But what did he save it for?” she wailed. “Tom, I'm warning you! You mustn't see him, not if he remembers!”
“Wait a minute,” Blaine said slowly. “Is there something you know? Something I don't?”
She grew immediately calm. “Of course not.”
“Marie, are you telling me the truth?”
“Yes, darling. But I'm frightened of Smith. Please Tom, humor me this once, let's go away.”
“I won't run another step from anyone,” Blaine said. “I live here. And that's the end of it.”
Marie sat down, looking suddenly exhausted. “All right, dear. Do what you think is best.”
“That's better,” Blain
e said. “It'll turn out all right.”
“Of course it will,” Marie said.
Blaine put the suitcases back and hung up the clothes. Then he sat down to wait. He was physically calm. But in memory he had returned to the underground, had passed again through the ornate door covered with Egyptian hieroglyphics and Chinese ideograms, into the vast marble-pillared Palace of Death with its gold and bronze coffin. And heard again Reilly's screaming voice speak through a silvery mist:
“There are things you can't see, Blaine, but I see them. Your time on Earth will be short, very short, painfully short. Those you trust will betray you, those you hate will conquer you. You will die, Blaine, not in years but soon, sooner than you could believe. You'll be betrayed, and you'll die by your own hand.”
That mad old man! Blaine shivered slightly and looked at Marie. She sat with downcast eyes, waiting. So he waited, too.
After a while there was a soft knock at the door.
“Come in,” Blaine said to whoever was outside.
34
Blaine recognized Smith immediately, even with false beard, sideburns and tan stage makeup. The zombie came in, limping, bringing with him a faint odor of decay imperfectly masked by a powerful shaving lotion.
“Excuse the disguise,” Smith said. “It isn't intended to deceive you, or anyone. I wear it because my face is no longer presentable.”
“You've come a long way,” Blaine said.
“Yes, quite far,” Smith agreed, “and through difficulties I won't bore you by relating. But I got here, that's the important thing.”
“Why did you come?”
“Because I know who I am,” Smith said.
“And you think it concerns me?”
“Yes.”
“I can't imagine how,” Blaine said grimly. “But let's hear it.”
Marie said, “Wait a minute. Smith, you've been after him since he came into this world. He's never had a moment's peace. Can't you just accept things as they are? Can't you just go and die quietly somewhere?”
“Not without telling him first,” Smith said.
“Come on, let's hear it,” Blaine said.
Smith said, “My name is James Olin Robinson.”
“Never heard of you,” Blaine said after a moment's thought.
“Of course not.”
“Have we ever met before that time in the Rex building?”
“Not formally.”
“But we met?”
“Briefly.”
“All right, James Olin Robinson, tell me about it. When did we meet?”
“It was quite brief,” Robinson said. “We glimpsed each other for a fraction of a second, then saw no more. It happened late one night in 1958, on a lonely highway, you in your car and me in mine.”
“You were driving the car I had the accident with?”
“Yes. If you can call it an accident.”
“But is was! It was completely accidental!”
“If that's true, I have no further business here,” Robinson said. “But Blaine, I know it was not an accident. It was murder. Ask your wife.”
Blaine looked at his wife sitting in a corner of the couch. Her face was waxen. She seemed drained of vitality. Her gaze seemed to turn inward and not enjoy what it saw there. Blaine wondered if she was staring at the ghost of some ancient guilt, long buried, long quickening, now come to term with the appearance of the bearded Robinson.
Watching her, he slowly began piecing things together.
“Marie,” he said, “what about that night in 1958? How did you know I was going to smash up my car?”
She said, “There are statistical prediction methods we use, valence factors…” Her voice trailed away.
“Or did you make me smash up my car?” Blaine asked. “Did you produce the accident when you wanted it, in order to snatch me into the future for your advertising campaign?”
Marie didn't answer. And Blaine thought hard about the manner of his dying.
He had been driving over a straight, empty highway, his headlights probing ahead, the darkness receding endlessly before him … His car swerved freakishly, violently, toward the oncoming headlights…He twisted hard on the steering wheel. It wouldn't turn … The steering wheel came free and spun in his hands, and the engine wailed …
“By God, you made me have that accident!” Blaine shouted at his wife. “You and Rex Power Systems, you forced my car into a swerve! Look at me and answer! Isn't it true?”
“All right!” she said. “But we didn't mean to kill him. Robinson just happened to be in the way. I'm sorry about that.”
Blaine said, “You've known all along who he was.”
“I've suspected.”
“And never told me.” Blaine paced up and down the room. “Marie! Damn you, you killed me!”
“I didn't, Tom! Not really. I took you from 1958 into our time. I gave you a different body. But I didn't really kill you.”
“You simply killed me,” Robinson said.
With an effort Marie turned from her inner gaze and looked at him. “I'm afraid I was responsible for your death, Mr. Robinson, although not intentionally. Your body must have died at the same time as Tom's. The Rex Power System that snatched him into the future pulled you along, too. Then you took over Reilly's host.”
“A very poor exchange for my former body,” Robinson said.
“I'm sure it was. But what do you want? What can I do? The hereafter —”
“I don't want it,” Robinson said. “I haven't had a chance on the Earth yet.”
“How old were you at the time of the accident?” Blaine asked.
“Nineteen.”
Blaine nodded sadly.
“I'm not ready for the hereafter,” Robinson said. “I want to travel, do things, see things. I want to find out what kind of a man I am. I want to live! Do you know, I've never really known a woman! I'd exchange immortality for ten good years on Earth.”
Robinson hesitated a moment, then said, “I want a body. I want a man's good body that I can live in. Not this dead thing which I wear. Blaine, your wife killed my former body.”
Blaine said, “You want mine?”
“If you think it's fair,” Robinson said.
“Now wait just a minute!” Marie cried. Color had returned to her face. With her confession, she seemed to have freed herself from the grip of the ancient evil in her mind, to have come back to wrestle again with life.
“Robinson,” she said, “You can't ask that from him. He didn't have anything to do with your death. It was my fault, and I'm sorry. You don't want a woman's body, do you? I wouldn't give you mine, anyhow. What's done is done! Get out of here!”
Robinson ignored her and looked at Blaine. “I always knew it was you, Blaine. When I knew nothing else, I knew it was you. I watched over you, Blaine, I saved your life.”
“Yes, you did,” Blaine said quietly.
“So what!” Marie screamed. “So he saved your life. That doesn't mean he owns it! One doesn't save a life and expect it to be forfeited upon request. Tom, don't listen to him!”
Robinson said, “I have no means or intention of forcing you, Blaine. You will decide what you think is right, and I will abide by it. You will remember everything.”
Blaine looked at the zombie almost with affection. “So there's more to it. Much more. Isn't there, Robinson?”
Robinson nodded, his eyes fixed on Blame's face.
“But how did you know?” Blaine asked. “How could you possibly know?”
“Because I understand you. I've made you my lifetime work. My life has revolved around you. I've thought about nothing but you. And the better I knew you, Blaine, the more certain I was about this.”
“Perhaps,” Blaine said.
Marie said, “What on earth are you talking about? What more? What more could there be?”
“I have to think about this,” Blaine said. “I have to remember. Robinson, please wait outside for a little while.”
“Certainly,”
the zombie said, and left immediately.
Blaine waved Marie into silence. He sat down and buried his head in his hands. Now he had to remember something he would rather not think about. Now, once and for all, he had to trace it back and understand it.
Etched sharp in his mind still were the words Reilly had screamed at him in the Palace of Death: “You’re responsible! You killed me with your evil murdering mind! Yes you, you hideous thing from the past, you damned monster! Everything shuns you except your friend the dead man! Why aren't you dead, murderer!”
Had Reilly known?
He remembered Sammy Jones saying to him after the hunt: “Tom, you’re a natural-born killer. There's nothing else for you.”
Had Sammy guessed?
And now the most important thing of all. That most significant moment of his life — the time of his death on a night in 1958. Vividly he remembered:
The steering wheel was working again, but Blaine ignored it, filled with a sudden fierce exultancy, a lightning switch of mood that welcomed the smash, lusted for it, and for pain and cruelty and death …
Blaine shuddered convulsively as he relived the moment he had wanted to forget — the moment when he might have avoided catastrophe, but had preferred to kill.
He lifted his head and looked at his wife. He said, “I killed him. That's what Robinson knew. And now I know it, too.”
35
Carefully he explained it all to Marie. She refused at first to believe him.
“It was so far back, Tom! How can you be sure of what happened?”
“I'm sure,” Blaine said. “I don't think anyone could forget the way they died. I remember mine very well. That was how I died.”
“Still, you can't call yourself a murderer because of one moment, one fraction of a second —”
“How long does it take to shoot a bullet or to drive in a knife?” Blaine asked. “A fraction of a second! That's how long it takes to become a murderer.”
“But Tom, you had no motive!”
Blaine shook his head. “It's true that I didn't kill for gain or revenge. But then, I'm not that kind of murderer. That kind is relatively rare. I'm the grass-roots variety, the ordinary average guy with a little of everything in his makeup, including murder. I killed because, in that moment, I had the opportunity. My special opportunity, a unique interlocking of events, moods, train of thought, humidity, temperature, and lord knows what else, which might not have come up again in two lifetimes.”
Immortality, Inc Page 18