"We have completed half a cycle of our time-vibration pattern," the ship told him.
"We're heading back now from the year 2830, then?"
"That is correct, Mark."
Two minutes passed, and the ship said, "One complete vibratory cycle now, Mark. Beginning the second."
"Okay." The screen showed they were not beginning the second swing back through time from the same position as the first. There had been a sideways motion of perhaps ten light-minutes.
Once more Rimni's sun swung closer until they reached the point of nearest approach . . .
And there was another ship.
It was not moving at warp velocity, being powered by a drive of 2830 vintage that had required a sizable distance from a massive gravitating body for safe warp activation.
The relative motion through space of the two ships was sufficiently small for Keaflyn to catch an instant glimpse of the other vessel's lines and its name glowing around its prow.
It was a large passenger liner. Its name was . . . Brobdinagia!
Perhaps the two ships collided. Or perhaps the interaction was between protective shieldscreens—one of which carried temporal charge—rather than between masses of reactive matter.
Brobdinagia and Kelkontar exploded into a flare of energy and rapidly dispersing vapor. They were destroyed with all hands.
Chapter 18
Just when everything was working out so beautifully, too! Why such a wildly improbable event as a collision in space, of all things? Was some jealous and elemental force of nature behind it—some Principle that resented this latest display of overweening cockiness by humanity in general and by Mark Keaflyn in particular?
He had been cocky, all right. No denying that. And proud as a peacock! All that talk to his ship about his "creative research"! Downright boastfulness!
But was the collision really a wild coincidence? Not on second thought. It was an event obviously destined to happen, even predictable, if men had bothered to be as wise as they were intelligent . . .
There was a project for somebody to work on—a study on how humans should go about acquiring wisdom. Most people doubtless thought intelligence and sanity were enough . . . or perhaps they thought wisdom automatically came enclosed in the same package.
But it did not, as he knew all too damned well. Wisdom came from . . . making mistakes? Well, it could, provided one learned the right things from the mistakes.
He certainly hadn't learned the proper lessons from his own! He hadn't even learned to consider all the obviously pertinent data in a situation before taking action. He could add two plus two, but he had not learned to add twelve years and five months to twelve years and five months and subtract the sum from 2855 and come up with the answer: the year in which the liner Brobdinagia mysteriously exploded in the vicinity of Rimni. Killing a nine-year-old girl-body inhabited by his beloved Tinker!
That wasn't incredible coincidence—it was incredible irony!
Because if Tinker had continued to live in that body, and had been waiting for him when he arrived at Splendiss-on-Terra, according to plan—well, this whole misbegotten mess would have never come to pass. Tinker was a competent medic as well as an ego-field therapist. So, when the Neg impinged on him and started pestering him with somatics, he would have had no reason to comm the local medic at Splendiss—a medic who happened to be a Sect Dualer and who thought a pleasure-impress was the way to exorcise a Neg!
No, Tinker would have handled his problem very differently than Dr. Arnod Smath . . . probably by devising a means that would allow him to live with his Neg in reasonable comfort, the way the Arlan Siblings lived with theirs. After treatment he would have gone on with the work the Neg was trying to prevent, and when the work was completed the Neg would have departed in defeat, and he and Tinker would have lived happily ever after. So he had to go back in time to destroy the Brobdinagia—as well as himself—for all the rest of it to happen.
It was over now, and his doom was sealed. He had added a real shocker of a death-trauma to his growing burden of garbage. And he couldn't even find that trauma, much less blow it. Whatever kind of body he had moved into must have a very primitive nervous system, to keep him from seeing that death trauma.
What kind of body was it?
Judging from the relaxed way he was sprawled on the ground (it felt mossy) he might be a worm or a caterpillar. But no, he was on his back, not his belly. Worms did not sprawl on their backs.
Also, he had two arms and two legs. He could feel them . . .
Mark Keaflyn opened his eyes and looked up, through the sunglow on fluttering leaves of oak and maple, at the patches of blue sky. It was a beautiful and vivid sight. He reveled in it for several minutes before taking much note of anything else.
Then he noticed the ground was mossy, and it sloped down to the small, shaded pool of a spring, just a few feet away. The smell of springy vegetation and the tinkle of water were delightful. Whatever kind of body he was in, it seemed to benefit from enhanced existence, he decided.
He looked at his body.
It was his own. It was the body of Mark Keaflyn, born twenty-six subjective years ago on Bensor.
"What the hell . . . " he muttered in surprise. Could he possibly have been rescued from the collision with the Brobdinagia? That just wasn't reasonable!
He rose and walked to the spring, to stare down at his reflection in the still surface of the little pool. Yes, it was his face, all right, and more glowing and serene than he had ever seen it. Now he realized why he couldn't find the death trauma. This was the face of a man with no traumas at all—the outward aspect of a totally clean ego-field.
Curious and curiouser, he thought interestedly.
"Ah, there, Mark! You made it!"
He whirled to face the source of the vaguely familiar voice. He recognized the bluff, pudgy man at once.
"Hi, Lafe. What are you doing here?"
Lafe chortled. "Where would I be but here on Avalon, old son? Where did you think you were?"
"I hadn't gotten around to thinking about that yet,"
Keaflyn mumbled, in a daze. "Avalon?"
"Sure! Your reward for a climactic life, Mark! No more marching around and around the old birth-and-death treadmill for you, man! Onward and upward! And we've got quite a welcoming celebration planned for you!" Keaflyn stood in silence, gazing at Lafe's jovial smile. Finally he shook his head. "This takes a while to get used to, Lafe. I was just thinking, a little while ago, what a conceited ass I was, but I was never conceited enough to anticipate this!"
"Not many who make it are, Mark," Lafe replied.
"And . . . and I wasn't ready for this!" Keaflyn protested. "My stabilities research wasn't finished!"
"So, what?" shrugged Lafe. "There are plenty of others to put on the final touches."
"And Tinker! This separates me from Tinker!"
Lafe gave a showy snort of disgust. "It never ceases to amaze me, the penchant we humans have for griping! Here you are, more fortunate than a soul in an early Christian heaven, and you start complaining about the broad you left behind! Oh, well, never mind. She'll be along shortly, anyway."
"You mean, Tinker will be here?" Keaflyn demanded.
"Sure. Couldn't you see she was working herself into a climactic life, too?"
"Oh . . . her research on the pleasure-impress," muttered Keaflyn.
"Yep. I may as well tell you, since you'll soon be able to see the near-future parts of the universe for yourself. She doesn't succeed with her research, not to the extent of blowing pleasure-impresses. Her work with animallevel ego-fields is pretty impressive, though.
"However, what will really get her here is that she's going to install a pleasure-impress on herself, to provide a human subject for testing. The tests will be flops."
"But that's . . . that's awful!"
"It would be if she weren't coming here," agreed Lafe.
"She'll die with the same expectation you had, of eternal degradation."
Slowly Keaflyn nodded. "If you're sure she'll make it to here, I suppose it's all right."
"I'm sure," Lafe told him, chuckling. "Now come on, old son! A welcoming party is waiting for you."
But Keaflyn still stood in awed silence. Finally he laughed. "Sorry to be so slow on the uptake, Lafe. I think I'm with you now. It's just that I never thought of my life as climactic."
"Let me put it to you like this," said Lafe as they moved away. "If you had another lifetime, how would you make it more climactic than the one you just finished without pulling the poor old universe apart at the seams?"
Which was, Keaflyn had to agree, a pertinent question.
Ten Percent of Glory
Ah, Miss Krimsby, I'm glad to see you on the job so promptly. While I was alive, I always believed in giving the old job a full day's effort. That's a policy I intend to maintain here in the realm of the spirit I feel we owe that to our clients . . . Hum? . . . Yes, Miss Krimsby. I'll be busy going over the preliminaries for our explorers campaign, but not too busy to accept important calls . . .
. . . What now, Miss Krimsby? . . . Certainly, I'll talk to him. Put him on . . .
Well, Senator, I'm honored to hear from you. We met on Earth once . . . No, I didn't vote for you, but only because my home was in Connecticut. I was rooting for you all the way, Senator . . . Thank you, Senator. I hope you're getting accustomed to the place . . . Good. If I can be of any help . . .
Oh? Why, certainly, the firm would be honored to have you as a client . . . How's that? . . . I see. Well, that's your decision to make, Senator. Of course we would prefer to sign you on immediately, and get busy on a long-term program for you, but you're the boss. I might add, though, that we're prepared to accept you now on a straight commission basis, and later on we may have to start you on the fee system at a time when you will have far less remembrance-power than now. Those fees can dip pretty deep into a soul's capital, so to speak. Heh-heh-heh . . .
Now, Senator . . . Please, Mr. Senator . . . Look Senator, baby, don't take it that way! This is a respected remembrance agency dedicated to the best interests of our clients. We earn our commissions and fees! How long do you think we could hold our reputation if we tried to bilk every new soul that wanders in? . . .
Let me explain the situation, Senator, before you say another word. First, look about you at the other souls in the realm. You'll notice that, on the average, they just don't compare with you in brilliance and radiating power. The reason is, as you must have learned by now, that these are average souls, souls-in-the-street we might say. They are remembered, at the most, by a hundred or so relatives and friends, and for only a few decades. After that, they draw what little brilliance they display from the background of remembrance-power that is spread through the realm.
You're not like them, Senator, baby, not like them at all. You're a member of the Lustrous Company, the greats of history at whom remembrance-power is constantly being directed by millions of the living! That's what sets the Lustrous apart from the ordinary, what gives you high-magnitude radiance.
Now you've been mingling since you arrived with the Lustrous set, Senator, baby. Tell me this: how many of them are Senators who died more than twenty years ago? . . . Right! And how many Senators who've been dead fifty years? . . . Of course you haven't met one yet, because there aren't any to meet, except a few like Hank Clay who're best remembered for other reasons.
I'll tell you why that is, Senator. Most politicians arrive here in a blaze of glory, riding on a surge of remembrance brought on by their funerals. The first thing they know they're mingling with boys like Bill Shakespeare, Julie the Caesar, Genghis Khan, Ben Franklin, Johnny Bach, and so on. Now I don't mean this critically, baby, but politicians have a good opinion of themselves to begin with. When they get here and are slapped on the back by old G. Washington himself, nobody can tell them they're not all set for eternity!
Then, five or ten years later, it's pouf! Down the drain. For most of them. The people back on Earth have quit thinking about them, and they shrink down to normal soul size.
That's when most of them come running to me or some other remembrance agent, but it's too late then, baby! They don't bring us enough to work with, more often than not You have to understand, Senator, baby, that it's a thousand times easier to keep your memory alive than to rebuild it from nothing.
So you can accuse me, if you like, of trying to bilk you out of ten per cent of the remembrance-power that's coming in now, and that you achieved without my help. If you want to keep that attitude, all I can say is good luck to you, baby! Gleam it up for the next few years! You've won that privilege. But if you want to start thinking about the long term—and up here, baby, the long term is long—then we can talk business. Get the picture? . . .
Who's trying to rush you? Not me! Any time within the next week will be fine with us. Talk it over with your acquaintances in the Lustrous Company. See what they say . . . How's that? . . . I'd rather not, Senator, baby . . . No, I don't mingle with the Lustrous myself, although I don't mind admitting that my remembrancepower commissions give me a fair magnitude. A good remembrance agent, like a good press agent back on Earth, is one who keeps himself out of the limelight. You do the shining, and I'll keep my light hidden under a bushel. Heh-heh-heh . . . No, I'm afraid I'm too busy to meet you personally, and there's no need of that, anyway, as the mode of communication we're using now is quite adequate. Although I do appreciate your asking me . . .
. . . Very well, Senator, baby. But remember: don't wait too long. Two weeks at the most, and that's more for your own good than mine. Every day you delay is going to work against you . . . Goodbye . . .
Are you there, Miss Krimsby? . . . Okay, make a note to turn the Senator over to Lanny if he calls back and wants to be taken on . . . Yeah, within two weeks. The best we can do for him, I'm afraid, is the folk-hero routine. Lanny's doing a good job on the Davy Crockett account, and maybe he can use the same techniques to keep this new pigeon flying for a century or so . . . No, no long-term potential at all. Carry on, Miss Krimsby . . .
. . . Yes? . . . Who? . . . Oh, Ludwig, baby! How are ya? What's on your deep and sonorous mind today, baby? Oh, come on, now Ludwig! I can't believe the great Beethoven is jealous of such a minor composer as-what did you say his name is, Luddy, baby? . . . Jean Sibelius? Oh, sure, I remember him now, a guy recently from Finland. Well, you got to remember he is recent, and was a national hero when he came across to us. He'll start fading soon, and you'll still be right up there, Luddy, baby . . . Oh yes, we're working hard on your account all the time—after all, you're just about the biggest we've got . . .
Hum? . . . Well, we're prompting more and more performances of the Ninth Symphony-we're letting the Fifth and Seventh rest for a few decades right now. Also, we're doing something rather experimental with comic strips for you. The idea is to by-pass the formal education systems (which are in a confused mess at the moment, anyway) and use other media to plant your name in the retentive minds of millions of children . . .
No, that won't counter Sibelius' national hero status, not immediately, anyhow. But in the long pull . . . Well, if it's bothering you, Luddy, baby, I'll try to come up with something. Hey, here's an idea. Rebels are the "in" thing on Earth right now, so why not inspire one of the turned-on writers to give you a build-up along those lines? Something like: Beethoven, Fighter for SelfExpression? How does that hit you, baby? . . . Okay, the agency will get right to work on it . . . Right I'll keep in touch, Luddy, baby. Goodbye . . .
(Eech! What a grouch!) . . . Miss Krimsby? That Sibelius fella might have potential. Beethoven's in a stew over him, which must mean something. What's the latest info on him? . . . Still the strong, silent type, hah? Well, if he's not talking to anybody, chances are he's still unrepresented. Put a couple of the boys on him. When he starts talking, I want him to talk to us first . . .
Oh, you've already done that, Miss Krimsby? . . . Fine! That's what I like to see, sweety—i
ntelligent initiative. Keep up the good work . . .
Who? . . . Yes, but don't call him Mark Twain even when he calls himself that. Let him know you're aware he's Mr. Clemens . . .
Hi, Sam, what's the good word? . . . Why, thanks, Sam, I appreciate that. Thoughtful of you to mention it. What can I do for you today? . . . Nothing? What . . . You mean to say you called just to congratulate me on my promotion to managing partner of the agency? . . . Sam, youyou've got me all choked up! If there were such things as angels, you'd sure as hell be one, Sam. If all our clients were like you . . . Sorry, Sam, I didn't mean to go mushy like that, but you caught me by surprise . . .
Well, since you're one guy I can speak frankly to, Sam, I don't mind telling you I feel pretty damn smug over the whole thing. Of course I give the senior partners in the firm a lot of credit. They've been in business a long time, but they're on their toes every minute, and they didn't take long in grasping the advantages of having a modern public relations man like myself running things. Nothing stodgy about those guys! . . .
Oh, no, Sam, I'm no genius. Of course I have a bright idea occasionally, and I'm glad that one turned out so well. The hard part was to find just the right actor to portray you. Once we found the Holbrook lad, all we had to do was pour the inspiration to him . . . heh-hehheh! Yeah, Sam, I bet you're collecting far more remembrance-power than you ever did royalties. That's often the way it is with the true greats, Sam . . . Thanks, and if you want anything from us, all you have to do . . . Okay, Sam. So long. ..
. . . Miss Krimsby, were you listening to that? . . . Then I don't have to explain why I'd like us to do something special for Sam Clemens, and I've got an idea . . . An international build-up is what I have in mind-new translations of Sawyer and Finn, written to appeal to modern minds. We'll want European translators who'll work a background of passionate sex into the stories (maybe Tom and Becky could fool around while they're lost in that cave) and the editions for the communist countries ought to be given a socialist ring. The boys in our international letters department can work out the details . . . How's that again, Miss Krimsby? . . . Say, that's a good idea. Put the boys to work on that, too. You are really earning that last raise you received, Miss Krimsby, and at this rate the next one won't be long in coming . . . Heh-heh-heh! It's a pleasure working with you, Miss Krimsby! . . .
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