Immortality, Inc

1

Afterwards, Thomas Blaine thought about the manner of his dying and wished it had been more interesting. Why couldn't his death have come while he was battling a typhoon, meeting a tiger's charge, or climbing a windswept mountain? Why had his death been so tame, so commonplace, so ordinary?

But an enterprising death, he realized, would have been out of character for him. Undoubtedly he was meant to die in just the quick, common, messy, painless way he did. And all his life must have gone into the forming and shaping of that death — a vague indication in childhood, a fair promise in his college years, an implacable certainty at the age of thirty-two.

Still, no matter how commonplace, one's death is the most interesting event of one's life. Blaine thought about his with intense curiosity. He had to know about those minutes, those last precious seconds when his own particular death lay waiting for him on a dark New Jersey highway. Had there been some warning sign, some portent? What had he done, or not done? What had he been thinking? Those final seconds were crucial to him. How, exactly, had he died?

He had been driving over a straight, empty white highway, his headlights probing ahead, the darkness receding endlessly before him. His speedometer read seventy-five. It felt like forty. Far down the road he saw headlights coming toward him, the first in hours.

Blaine was returning to New York after a week's vacation at his cabin on Chesapeake Bay. He had fished and swum and dozed in the sun on the rough planks of his dock. One day he sailed his sloop to Oxford and attended a dance at the yacht club that night. He met a silly, pert-nosed girl in a blue dress who told him he looked like a South Seas adventurer, so tanned and tall in his khakis. He sailed back to his cabin the next day, to doze in the sun and dream of giving up everything, loading his sailboat with canned goods and heading for Tahiti. Ah Raiatea, the mountains of Morrea, the fresh trade wind …

But a continent and an ocean lay between him and Tahiti, and other obstacles besides. The thought was only for an hour's dreaming, and definitely not to be acted upon. Now he was returning to New York, to his job as a junior yacht designer for the famous old firm of Mattison & Peters.

The other car's headlights were drawing near. Blaine slowed to sixty.

In spite of his title, there were few yachts for Blaine to design. Old Tom Mattison took care of the conventional cruising boats. His brother Rolf, known as the Wizard of Mystic, had an international reputation for his ocean-racing sailboats and fast one-designs. So what was there for a junior yacht designer to do?

Blaine drew layouts and deck plans, and handled promotion, advertising and publicity. It was responsible work, and not without its satisfactions. But it was not yacht designing.

He knew he should strike out on his own. But there were so many yacht designers, so few customers. As he had told Laura, it was rather like designing arbalests, scorpions and catapults. Interesting creative work, but who would buy your products? “You could find a market for your sailboats,” she had told him, distressingly direct. “Why not make the plunge?”

He had grinned boyishly, charmingly. “Action isn't my forte. I'm an expert on contemplation and mild regret.”

“You mean you’re lazy.”

“Not at all. That's like saying that a hawk doesn't gallop well, or a horse has poor soaring ability. You can't compare different species. I'm just not the go-getter type of human. For me, dreams, reveries, visions, and plans are meant only for contemplation, never for execution.”

“I hate to hear you talk like that,” she said with a sigh.

He had been laying it on a bit thick, of course. But there was a lot of truth in it. He had a pleasant job, an adequate salary, a secure position. He had an apartment in Greenwich Village, a hi-fi, a car, a small cabin on Chesapeake Bay, a fine sloop, and the affection of Laura and several other girls. Perhaps, as Laura somewhat tritely expressed it, he was caught in an eddy on the current of life… But so what? You could observe the scenery better from a gently revolving eddy.

The other car's headlights were very near.

Blaine noticed, with a sense of shock, that he had increased speed to eighty miles an hour.

He let up on the accelerator. His car swerved freakishly, violently, toward the oncoming headlights.

Blowout? Steering failure? He twisted hard on the steering wheel. It wouldn't turn. His car struck the low concrete separation between north and south lanes, and bounded high into the air. The steering wheel came free and spun in his hands, and the engine wailed like a lost soul.

The other car was trying to swerve, too late. They were going to meet nearly head-on.

And Blaine thought, yes, I'm one of them. I'm one of those silly bastards you read about whose cars go out of control and kill innocent people. Christ! Modern cars and modern roads and higher speeds and the same old sloppy reflexes…

Suddenly, unaccountably, the steering wheel was working again, a razor's edge reprieve. Blaine ignored it. As the other car's headlights glared across his windshield, his mood suddenly changed from regret to exultance. For a moment he welcomed the smash, lusted for it, and for pain, destruction, cruelty and death.

Then the cars came together. The feeling of exultance faded as quickly as it had come. Blaine felt a profound regret for all he had left undone, the waters unsailed, movies unseen, books unread, girls untouched— He was thrown forward. The steering wheel broke off in his hands. The steering column speared him through the chest and broke his spine as his head drove through the thick safety glass.

At that instant he knew he was dying.

An instant later he was quickly, commonly, messily, painlessly dead.

2

He awoke in a white bed in a white room.

“He's alive now,” someone said.

Blaine opened his eyes. Two men in white were standing over him. They seemed to be doctors. One was a small, bearded old man. The other was an ugly red-faced man in his fifties.

“What's your name?” the old man snapped

“Thomas Blaine.”

“Age?”

“Thirty-two. But —”

“Marital status?”

“Single. What —”

“Do you see?” the old man said, turning to his red-faced colleague. “Sane, perfectly sane.”

“I would never have believed it,” said the red-faced man.

“But of course. The death trauma has been overrated. Grossly overrated, as my forthcoming book will prove.”

“Hmm. But rebirth depression —”

“Nonsense,” the old man said decisively. “Blaine, do you feel all right?”

“Yes. But I'd like to know —”

“Do you see?” the old doctor said triumphantly. “Alive again and sane. Now will you co-sign the report?”

“I suppose I have no choice,” the red-faced man said. Both doctors left.

Blaine watched them go, wondering what they-had been talking about. A fat and motherly nurse came to his bedside. “How do you feel?” she asked.

“Fine,” Blaine said. “But I'd like to know —”

“Sorry,” the nurse said, “No questions yet, doctor's orders. Drink this, it'll pep you up. That's a good boy. Don't worry, everything's going to be all right.”

She left. Her reassuring words frightened him. What did she mean, everything's going to be all right? That meant something was wrong! What was it, what was wrong? What was he doing here, what had happened?

The bearded doctor returned, accompanied by a young woman.

“Is he all right, doctor?” the young woman asked.

“Perfectly sane,” the old doctor said. “I'd call it a good splice.”

“Then I can begin the interview?”

“Certainly. Though I cannot guarantee his behavior. The death trauma, though grossly overrated, is still capable of —”

“Yes, fine.” The girl walked over to Blaine and bent over him. She was a very pretty girl, Blaine noticed. Her features were clean-cut, her skin fresh and glowing. She had long, gleaming brown hair pulled too tightly back over her small ears, and there was a faint hint of perfume about her. She should have been beautiful; but she was marred by the immobility of her features, the controlled tenseness of her slender body. It was hard to imagine her laughing or crying. It was impossible to imagine her in bed. There was something of the fanatic about her, of the dedicated revolutionary; but he suspected that her cause was herself.

“Hello, Mr. Blaine,” she said. “I'm Marie Thorne.”

“Hello,” Blaine said cheerfully.

“Mr. Blaine,” she said, “where do you suppose you are?”

“Looks like a hospital. I suppose —” He stopped. He had just noticed a small microphone in her hand.

“Yes, what do you suppose?”

She made a small gesture. Men came forward and wheeled heavy equipment around his bed.

“Go right ahead,” Marie Thorne said. “Tell us what you suppose.”

“To hell with that,” Blaine said moodily, watching the men set up their machines around him. “What is this? What is going on?”

“We’re trying to help you,” Marie Thorne said. “Won't you cooperate?”

Blaine nodded, wishing she would smile. He suddenly felt very unsure of himself. Had something happened to him?

“Do you remember the accident?” she asked.

“What accident?”

“Do you remember being hurt?”

Blaine shuddered as his memory returned in a rush of spinning lights, wailing engine, impact and breakage.

“Yes. The steering wheel broke. I got it through the chest. Then my head hit.”

“Look at your chest,” she said softly.

Blaine looked. His chest, beneath white pajamas, was unmarked.

“Impossible!” he cried. His own voice sounded hollow, distant, unreal. He was aware of the men around his bed talking as they bent over their machines, but they seemed like shadows, flat and without substance. Their thin, unimportant voices were like flies buzzing against a window.

“Nice first reaction.”

“Very nice indeed.”

Marie Thorne said to him, “You are unhurt.”

Blaine looked at his undamaged body and remembered the accident. “I can't believe it!” he cried.

“He's coming on perfectly.”

“Fine mixture of belief and incredulity.”

Marie Thorne said, “Quiet, please. Go ahead, Mr. Blaine.

“I remember the accident,” Blaine said. “I remember the smashing, I remember — dying.”

“Get that?”

“Hell, yes. It really plays!”

“Perfectly spontaneous scene.”

“Marvellous! They'll go wild over it!”

She said, “A little less noise, please. Mr. Blaine, do you remember dying?”

“Yes, yes, I died!”

“His face!”

“That ludicrous expression heightens the reality.”

“I just hope Reilly thinks so.”

She said, “Look carefully at your body, Mr. Blaine. Here's a mirror. Look at your face.”

Blaine looked, and shivered like a man in fever. He touched the mirror, then ran shaking fingers over his face.

“It isn't my face! Where's my face? Where did you put my body and face?”

He was in a nightmare from which he could never awaken. The flat shadow men surrounded him, their voices buzzing like flies against a window, tending their cardboard machines, filled with vague menace, yet strangely indifferent, almost unaware of him. Marie Thorne bent low over him with her pretty, blank face, and from her small red mouth came gentle nightmare words.

“Your body is dead, Mr. Blaine, killed in an automobile accident. You can remember its dying. But we managed to save that part of you that really counts. We saved your mind, Mr. Blaine, and have given you a new body for it.”

Blaine opened his mouth to scream, and closed it again. “It's unbelievable,” he said quietly.

And the flies buzzed.

“Understatement.”

“Well, of course. One can't be frenetic forever.”

“I expected a little more scenery-chewing.”

“Wrongly. Understatement rather accentuates his dilemma.”

“Perhaps, in pure stage terms. But consider the thing realistically. This poor bastard has just discovered that he died in an automobile accident and is now reborn in a new body. So what does he say about it? He says, ‘It's unbelievable.’ Damn it, he's not really reacting to the shock!”

“He is! You’re projecting!”

“Please!” Marie Thorne said. “Go on, Mr. Blaine.”

Blaine, deep in his nightmare, was hardly aware of the soft, buzzing voices. He asked, “Did I really die?”

She nodded.

“And I am really born again in a different body?”

She nodded again, waiting. Blaine looked at her, and at the shadow men tending their cardboard machines. Why were they bothering him? Why couldn't they go pick on some other dead man? Corpses shouldn't be forced to answer questions. Death was man's ancient privilege, his immemorial pact with life, granted to the slave as well as the noble. Death was man's solace, and his right. But perhaps they had revoked that right; and now you couldn't evade your responsibilities simply by being dead.

They were waiting for him to speak. And Blaine wondered if insanity still retained its hereditary privileges. With ease he could slip over and find out.

But insanity is not granted to everyone. Blaine's self-control returned. He looked up at Marie Thorne.

“My feelings,” he said slowly, “are difficult to describe. I've died, and now I'm contemplating the fact. I don't suppose any man fully believes in his own death. Deep down he feels immortal. Death seems to await others, but never oneself. It's almost as though — ”

“Let's cut it right here. He's getting analytical,”

“I think you’re right,” Marie Thorne said. “Thank you very much, Mr. Blaine.”

The men, solid and mundane now, their vague menace disappeared, began rolling their equipment.

“Wait —” Blaine said.

“Don't worry,” she told him. “We'll get the rest of your reactions later. We just wanted to record the spontaneous part now.”

“Damn good while it lasted.”

“A collector's item.”

“Wait!” Blaine cried. “I don't understand. Where am I? What happened? How —”

Marie Thorne said. ”I'm terribly sorry, I must hurry now and edit this for Mr. Reilly.“

The men and equipment were gone. Marie Thorne smiled reassuringly, and hurried away.

Blaine felt ridiculously close to tears. He blinked rapidly when the fat and motherly nurse came back.

“Drink this,” said the nurse. “It'll make you sleep. That's it, take it all down like a good boy. Just relax, you had a big day, what with dying and being reborn and all.”

Two big tears rolled down Blaine's cheeks.

“Dear me,” said the nurse, “the cameras should be here now. Those are genuine spontaneous tears if I ever saw any. Many a tragic and spontaneous scene I've witnessed in this infirmary, believe me, and I could tell those snooty recording boys something about genuine emotion if I wanted to, and they thinking they know all the secrets of the human heart.”

“Where am I?” Blaine asked drowsily. “Where is this?”

“You'd call it being in the future,” the nurse said.

“Oh,” said Blaine.

Then he was asleep.

3

After many hours he awoke, calm and rested. He looked at the white bed and white room, and remembered.

He had been killed in an accident and reborn in the future. There had been a doctor who considered the death trauma overrated, and men who recorded his spontaneous reactions and declared them a collector's item, and a pretty girl whose features showed a lamentable lack of emotion.

Blaine yawned and stretched. Dead. Dead at thirty-two. A pity, he thought, that this young life was snuffed in its prime. Blaine was a good sort, really, and quite promising…

He was annoyed at his flippant attitude. It was no way to react. He tried to recapture the shock he felt he should feel.

Yesterday, he told himself firmly, I was a yacht designer driving back from Maryland. Today I am a man reborn into the future. The future! Reborn!

No use, the words lacked impact. He had already grown used to the idea. One grows used to anything, he thought, even to one's death. Especially to one's death. You could probably chop off a man's head three times a day for twenty years and he'd grow used to it, and cry like a baby if you stopped…

He didn't care to pursue that train of thought any further.

He thought about Laura. Would she weep for him? Would she get drunk? Or would she just feel depressed at the news, and take a tranquillizer for it? What about Jane and Miriam? Would they even hear about his death? Probably not. Months later they might wonder why he never called any more.

Enough of that. All that was past. Now he was in the future.

But all he had seen of the future was a white bed and a white room, doctors and a nurse, recording men and a pretty girl. So far, it didn't offer much contrast with his own age. But doubtless there were differences.

He remembered magazine articles and stories he had read. Today there might be free atomic power, undersea farming, world peace, international birth control, interplanetary travel, free love, complete desegregation, a cure for all diseases, and a planned society in which men breathed deep the air of freedom.

That's what there should be, Blaine thought. But there were less pleasant possibilities. Perhaps a grim-faced Oligarch had Earth in his iron grasp, while a small, dedicated underground struggled toward freedom. Or small, gelatinous alien creatures with outlandish names might have enslaved the human race. Perhaps a new and horrible disease marched unchecked across the land, or possibly the Earth, swept of all culture by hydrogen warfare, struggled painfully back to technological civilization while human wolfpacks roamed the badlands; or a million other equally dismal things could have happened.

And yet. Blaine thought, mankind showed an historic ability to avoid the extremes of doom as well as the extremes of bliss. Chaos was forever prophesized and Utopia was continually predicted, and neither came to pass.

Accordingly, Blaine expected that this future would show certain definite improvements over the past, but he expected some deteriorations as well; some old problems would be gone, but certain others would have taken their places.

“In short,” Blaine said to himself, “I expect that this future will be like all other futures in comparison with their pasts. That's not very specific; but then, I'm not in the predicting or the prophesying business.”

His thoughts were interrupted by Marie Thorne walking briskly into his room.

“Good morning,” she said. “How do you feel?”

“Like a new man,” Blaine said, with a perfectly straight face.

“Good. Would you sign this, please?” She held out a pen and a typed paper.

“You’re very damned efficient,” Blaine said. “What am I signing?”

“Read it,” she said. “It's a release absolving us from any legal responsibility in saving your life.”

“Did you save it?”

“Of course. How did you think you got here?”

“I didn't really think about it,” Blaine admitted.

“We saved you. But it's against the law to save lives without the potential victim's written consent. There wasn't opportunity for the Rex Corporation lawyers to obtain your consent beforehand. So we'd like to protect ourselves now.”

“What's the Rex Corporation?”

She looked annoyed. “Hasn't anyone briefed you yet? You’re inside Rex headquarters now. Our company is as well known today as Flyier-Thiess was in your time.”

“Who's Flyier-Thiess?”

“No? Ford, then?”

“Yeah, Ford. So the Rex Corporation is as well known as Ford. What does it do?”

“It manufactures Rex Power Systems,” she told him, “which are used to power spaceships, reincarnation machines, hereafter drivers, and the like. It was an application of the Rex Power Systems that snatched you from your car at the moment after death and brought you into the future.”

“Time travel,” Blaine said. “But how?”

“That'll be hard to explain,” she said. “You don't have the scientific background. But I'll try. You know that space and time are the same thing, aspects of each other.”

“They are?”

“Yes. Like mass and energy. In your age, scientists knew that mass and energy were interchangeable. They were able to deduce the fission-fusion processes of the stars. But they couldn't immediately duplicate those processes, which called for vast amounts of power. It wasn't until they had the knowledge and the available power that they could break down atoms by fission and build up new ones by fusion.”

“I know this,” Blaine said. “What about time travel?”

“It followed the same pattern,” she said. “For a long time we've known that space and time are aspects of the same thing. We knew that either space or time could be reduced to fundamental units and transformed into the other by a power process. We could deduce the warping of space-time in the vicinity of supernovae, and we were able to observe the disappearance of a Wolf-Rayet star when its time-conversion rate accelerated. But we had to learn a lot more. And we had to have a power source exponentially higher than you needed to set off the fusion process. When we had all this, we could interchange time units for space units — which is to say, time distances for space distances. We could then travel the distance of, say, a hundred years instead of the interchangeable distance of a hundred parsecs.”

“I see, after a fashion,” Blaine said. “Would you mind running through it again, slowly?”

“Later, later,” she said. “Will you please sign the release?”

The paper stated that he, Thomas Blaine, agreed not to bring suit against the Rex Corporation for their unauthorized saving of his life in the year 1958 and the subsequent transporting of that life to a Receptacle in the year 2110.

Blaine signed. “Now,” he said, “I'd like to know —”

He stopped. A teen-age boy had come into the room holding a large poster. “Pardon me. Miss Thorne,” he said, “the Art Department wants to know will this do?”

The boy held up the poster. It showed an automobile at the moment of smashup. A gigantic stylized hand was reaching down from the sky and plucking the driver from the burning wreck. The caption read: REX DID IT!

“Not bad,” Marie Thorne said, frowning judiciously. “Tell them to brighten the reds.”

More people were coming into the room. And Blaine was growing angry. “What's going on?” he asked.

“Later, later,” Marie Thorne said. “Oh, Mrs. Vaness! What do you think of this poster for a teaser?”

There were a dozen people in his room now, and more coming. They clustered around Marie Thorne and the poster, ignoring Blaine completely. One man, talking earnestly to a grey-haired woman, sat down on the edge of his bed. And Blaine's temper snapped.

“Stop it!” Blaine shouted. “I'm sick of this damned rush act. What's the matter with you people, can't you behave like human beings? Now get the hell out of here!”

“Oh lord,” Marie Thorne sighed, closing her eyes, “He would have to be temperamental. Ed, talk to him.”

A portly, perspiring middle-aged man came to Blaine's bedside. “Mr. Blaine,” he said earnestly, “didn't we save your life?”

“I suppose so,” Blaine said sullenly.

“We didn't have to, you know. It took a lot of time, money and trouble to save your life. But we did it. All we want in return is the publicity value.”

“Publicity value?”

“Certainly. You were saved by a Rex Power System.”

Blaine nodded, understanding now why his rebirth in the future had been accepted so casually by those around him. They had taken a lot of time, money and trouble to bring it about, had undoubtedly discussed it from every possible viewpoint, and now were conscientiously exploiting it.

“I see,” Blaine said. “You saved me simply in order to use me as a gimmick in an advertising campaign. Is that it?”

Ed looked unhappy. “Why put it that way? You had a life that needed saving. We had a sales campaign that needed sparking. We took care of both needs, to the mutual benefit of you and the Rex Corporation. Perhaps our motives weren't completely altruistic; would you prefer being dead?”

Blaine shook his head.

“Of course not,” Ed agreed. “Your life is of value to you. Better alive today than dead yesterday, eh? Fine. Then why not show us a little gratitude? Why not give us a little cooperation?”

“I'd like to,” Blaine said, “but you’re moving too fast for me.”

“I know,” Ed said, “and I sympathize. But you know the advertising game, Mr. Blaine. Timing is crucial. Today you’re news, tomorrow nobody's interested. We have to exploit your rescue right now, while it's hot. Otherwise it's valueless to us.”

“I appreciate your saving my life,” Blaine said, “even if it wasn't completely altruistic. I'll be glad to cooperate.”

“Thank you, Mr.Blaine,” Ed said. “And please, no questions for a while. You'll get the picture as we go along. Miss Thorne, it's all yours.”

“Thanks, Ed,” Marie Thorne said. “Now, everybody, we have received a provisional go-ahead from Mr. Reilly, so we'll continue as planned. Billy, you figure out a release for the morning papers. ‘Man from Past’ sort of thing. ”

“It's been done.”

“Well? It's always news, isn't it?”

“I guess once more won't hurt. So. Man from 1988 snatched —”

“Pardon me,” Blaine said. “1958.”

“So from 1958 snatched from his smashed car at the moment after death and set into a host body. Brief paragraph about the host body. Then we say that Rex Power Systems performed this snatch over one hundred and fifty-two years of time. We tell ‘em how many ergs of energy we burned, or whatever it is we burn. I'll check with an engineer for the right terms. OK?”

“Mention that no other power system could have done it,” Joe said. “Mention the new calibration system that made it possible.”

“They won't use all that.”

“They might,” Marie Thorne said. “Now, Mrs. Vaness. We want an article on Blaine's feelings when Rex Power Systems snatched him from death. Make it emotional. Give his first sensations in the amazing world of the future. About five thousand words. We'll handle the placement.”

The grey-haired Mrs. Vaness nodded. “Can I interview him now?”

“No time,” Miss Thorne said. “Make it up. Thrilled, frightened, astonished, surprised at all the changes that have taken place since his time. Scientific advances. Wants to see Mars. Doesn't like the new fashions. Thinks people were happier in his own day with less gadgets and more leisure. Blaine will OK it. Won't you Blaine?”

Blaine nodded dumbly.

“Fine. Last night we recorded his spontaneous reactions. Mike, you and the boys make that into a fifteen minute spin which the public can buy at their local Sensory Shop. Make it a real connoisseur's item for the prestige trade. But open with a short, dignified technical explanation of how Rex made the snatch.”

“Gotcha,” said Mike.

“Right. Mr. Brice, you'll line up some solido shows for Blaine to appear on. He'll give his reactions to our age, how it feels, how it compares to his own age. See that Rex gets a mention.”

“But I don't know anything about this age!” Blaine said.

“You will,” Marie Thorne told him. “All right, I think that's enough for a start. Let's get rolling. I'm going to show Mr. Reilly what we've planned so far.”

She turned to Blaine as the others were leaving.

“Perhaps this seems like shabby treatment. But business is business, no matter what age you’re in. Tomorrow you’re going to be a well-known man, and probably a wealthy one. Under the circumstances, I don't think you have any cause for complaint.”

She left. Blaine watched her go, slim and self-confident. He wondered what the penalty was, in this day and age, for striking a woman.

4

The nurse brought him lunch on a tray. The bearded doctor came in, examined him and declared him perfectly fit. There was not the slightest trace of rebirth depression, he declared, and the death trauma was obviously overrated. No reason why Blaine shouldn't be up and about.

The nurse came back with clothing, a blue shirt, brown slacks, and soft, bulbous grey shoes. The outfit, she assured him, was quite conservative.

Blaine ate with good appetite. But before dressing, he examined his new body in the full-length bathroom mirror. It was the first chance he'd had for a careful appraisal.

His former body had been tall and lean, with straight black hair and a good-humored boyish face. In thirty-two years he had grown used to that quick, deft, easy-moving body. With good grace he had accepted its constitutional flaws, its occasional illnesses, and had glorified them into virtues, into unique properties of the personality that resided within them. For his body's limitations, far more than its capabilities, seemed to express his own particular essence.

He had been fond of that body. His new body was a shock.

It was shorter than average, heavily muscled, barrel chested, broad shouldered. It felt top-heavy, for the legs were a little short in proportion to the herculean torso. His hands were large and callused. Blaine made a fist and gazed at it respectfully. He could probably fell an ox with a single blow, if an ox were procurable.

His face was square and bold, with a prominent jaw, wide cheekbones and a Roman nose. His hair was blonde and curly. His eyes were a steely blue. It was a somewhat handsome, slightly brutal face. “I don't like it,” Blaine said emphatically. “And I hate curly blonde hair.”

His new body had considerable physical strength; but he had always disliked sheer physical strength. The body looked clumsy, graceless, difficult to manage. It was the kind of body that bumped into chairs and stepped on people's toes, shook hands too vigorously, talked too loudly, and sweated profusely. Clothes would always bulge and constrict this body. It would need continual hard exercise. Perhaps he would even have to diet; the body looked as though it had a slight tendency toward fat.

“Physical strength is all very well,” Blaine told himself, “if one has a purpose for it. Otherwise it's just a nuisance and a distraction, like wings on a dodo.”

The body was bad enough. But the face was worse. Blaine had never liked strong, harsh, rough-hewn faces. They were fine for sandhogs, army sergeants, jungle explorers and the like. But not for a man who enjoyed cultured society. Such a face was obviously incapable of subtlety of expression. All nuance, the delicate interplay of line and plane, would be lost. With this face you could grin or frown; only gross emotions would show.

Experimentally he smiled boyishly at the mirror. The result was a satyr's leer.

“I've been gypped,” Blaine said bitterly.

It was apparent to him that the qualities of his present mind and his new body were opposed. Cooperation between them seemed impossible. Of course, his personality might reshape his body; on the other hand, his body might have some demands to make on his personality.

“We'll see,” Blaine told his formidable body, “we'll see who's boss.”

On his left shoulder was a long, jagged scar. He wondered how the body had received so grievous a wound. Then he began wondering where the body's real owner was. Could he still be lodged in the brain, lying doggo, waiting for a chance to take over?

Speculation was useless. Later, perhaps, he would find out. He took a final look at himself in the mirror.

He didn't like what he saw. He was afraid he never would.

“Well,” he said at last, “you takes what you gets. Dead men can't be choosers.”

That was all he could say, for the moment. Blaine turned from the mirror and began dressing.

Marie Thorne came into his room late in the afternoon. She said, without preamble, “It's off.”

“Off?”

“Finished, over, through!” She glared bitterly at him, and began pacing up and down the white room. “The whole publicity campaign around you is off.”

Blaine stared at her. The news was interesting; but much more interesting were the signs of emotion on Miss Thorne's face. She had been so damnably controlled, so perfectly and grotesquely businesslike. Now there was color in her face, and her small lips were twisted bitterly.

“I've worked on this idea for two solid years,” she told him. “The company's spent I don't know how many millions to bring you here. Everything's set to roll, and that damned old man says drop the whole thing.”

She's beautiful, Blaine thought, but her beauty gives her no pleasure. It's a business asset, like grooming, or a good head for liquor, to be used when necessary, and even abused. Too many hands reached to Marie Thorne, he imagined, and she never took any. And when the greedy hands kept reaching she learned contempt, then coldness, and finally self-hatred.

It's a little fanciful, Blaine thought, but I'll keep it until a better diagnosis comes along.

“That damned stupid old man,” Marie Thorne was muttering.

“What old man?”

“Reilly, our brilliant president.”

“He decided against the publicity campaign?”

“He wants it hushed up completely. Oh God, it's just too much! Two years!”

“But why?” Blaine asked.

Marie Thorne shook her head wearily. “Two reasons, both of them stupid. First, the legal problem. I told him you'd signed the release, and the lawyers had the rest of the problem in hand, but he's scared. It's almost time for his reincarnation and he doesn't want any possible legal trouble with the government. Can you imagine it? A frightened old man running Rex! Second, he had a talk with that silly, senile old grandfather of his, and his grandfather doesn't like the idea. And that clinched it. After two years!”

“Just a minute,” Blaine said. “Did you say his reincarnation?”

“Yes, Reilly's going to try it. Personally I think he'd be smarter to die and get it over with.”

It was a bitter statement. But Marie Thorne didn't sound bitter making it. She sounded as though she were making a simple statement of fact.

Blaine said. “You think he should die instead of trying for reincarnation?”

“I would. But I forgot, you haven't been briefed. I just wish he'd made up his mind earlier. That senile old grandfather butting in now —”

“Why didn't Reilly ask his grandfather earlier?” Blaine asked.

“He did. But his grandfather wouldn't talk earlier:”

“I see. How old is he?”

“Reilly's grandfather? He was eighty-one when he died.”

“What?”

“Yes, he died about sixty years ago. Reilly's father is dead, too, but he won't talk at all, which is a pity because he had good business sense. Why are you staring at me, Blaine? Oh, I forgot you don't know the setup. It's very simple, really.”

She stood for a moment, brooding. Then she nodded emphatically, whirled and walked to the door.

“Where are you going?” Blaine asked.

“To tell Reilly what I think of him! He can't do this to me! He promised!” Abruptly her control returned. “As for you, Blaine, I suppose there's no further need of you here. You have your life, and an adequate body in which to live it. I suppose you can leave at any time you desire.”

“Thanks,” Blaine said, as she left the room.

Dressed in his brown slacks and blue shirt, Blaine left the infirmary and walked down a long corridor until he reached a door. A uniformed guard was standing beside it.

“Excuse me,” Blaine said, “does this door lead outside?”

“Huh?”

“Does this door lead outside the Rex Building?”

“Yeah, of course. Outside and onto the street.”

“Thank you.” Blaine hesitated. He wanted the briefing he had been promised but never given. He wanted to ask the guard what New York was like, and what the local customs and regulations were, and what he should see, and what he should avoid. But the guard apparently hadn't heard about the Man from the Past. He was staring pop-eyed at Blaine.

Blaine hated the idea of plunging into the New York of 2110 like this, without money or knowledge or friends, without a job or a place to stay, and wearing an uncomfortable new body. But it couldn't be helped. Pride meant something, after all. He would rather take his chances alone than ask assistance from the porcelain-hard Miss Thorne, or any of the others at Rex.

“Do I need a pass to get out?” he asked hopefully.

“Nope. Just to get back in.” The guard frowned suspiciously. “Say, what's the matter with you?”

“Nothing,” Blaine said. He opened the door, still not believing that they would let him leave so casually. But then, why not? He was in a world where men talked to their dead grandfathers, where there were spaceships and hereafter drivers, where they snatched a man from the past as a publicity stunt, then lightly discarded him.

The door closed. Behind him was the great grey mass of the Rex Building. Before him lay New York.

5

At first glance, the city looked like a surrealistic Bagdad. He saw squat palaces of white and blue tile, and slender red minarets, and irregularly shaped buildings with flaring Chinese roofs and spired onion domes. It looked as though an oriental fad in architecture had swept the city. Blaine could hardly believe he was in New York. Bombay perhaps, Moscow, or even Los Angeles, but not New York. With relief he saw skyscrapers, simple and direct against the curved Asiatic structures. They seemed like lonely sentinels of the New York he had known.

The streets were filled with miniature traffic. Blaine saw motorcycles and scooters, cars no bigger than Porsches, trucks the size of Buicks, and nothing larger. He wondered if this was New York's answer to congestion and air pollution. If so, it hadn't helped.

Most of the traffic was overhead. There were vane and jet operated vehicles, aerial produce trucks and one-man speedsters, helicopter taxis and floating busses marked “Skyport 2nd Level” or “Express to Montauk.” Glittering dots marked the vertical and horizontal lanes within which the traffic glided, banked, turned, ascended and descended. Flashing red, green, yellow and blue lights seemed to regulate the flow. There were rules and conventions; but to Blaine's inexperienced eye it was a vast fluttering confusion.

Fifty feet overhead there was another shopping level. How did people get up there? For that matter, how did anyone live and retain his sanity in this noisy, bright, congested machine? The human density was overpowering. He felt as though he were being drowned in a sea of flesh. What was the population of this super-city? Fifteen million? Twenty million? It made the New York of 1958 look like a country village.

He had to stop and sort his impressions. But the sidewalks were crowded, and people pushed and cursed when he slowed down. There were no parks or benches in sight.

He noticed a group of people standing in a line, and took a place on the end. Slowly the line shuffled forward. Blaine shuffled with it, his head pounding dully, trying to catch his breath.

In a few moments he was in control of himself again, and slightly more respectful of his strong, phlegmatic body. Perhaps a man from the past needed just that sort of fleshy envelope if he wanted to view the future with equanimity. A low-order nervous system had its advantages.

The line shuffled silently forward. Blaine noticed that the men and women standing on it were poorly dressed, unkempt, unwashed. They shared a common look of sullen despair.

Was he in a breadline?

He tapped the shoulder of the man in front of him. ”Excuse me,“ he said, ”where is this line going?“

The man turned his head and stared at Blaine with red-rimmed eyes. “Going to the suicide booths,” he said, jerking his chin toward the front of the line.

Blaine thanked him and stepped quickly out of the line. What a hell of an inauspicious way to start his first real day in the future. Suicide booths! Well, he would never enter one willingly, he could be absolutely sure of that. Things surely couldn't get that bad.

But what kind of a world had suicide booths? And free ones, to judge by the clientele… He would have to be careful about accepting free gifts in this world.

Blaine walked on, gawking at the sights and slowly growing accustomed to the bright, hectic, boisterous, overcrowded city. He came to an enormous building shaped like a Gothic castle, with pennants flying from its upper battlements. On its highest tower was a brilliant green light fully visible against the fading afternoon sun.

It looked like an important landmark. Blaine stared, then noticed a man leaning against the building, lighting a thin cigar. He seemed to be the only man in New York not in a tearing hurry. Blaine approached him.

“Pardon me, sir,” he said, “what is this building?”

“This,” said the man, “is the headquarters of Hereafter, Incorporated.” He was a tall man, very thin, with a long, mournful weatherbeaten face. His eyes were narrow and direct. His clothes hung awkwardly on him, as though he were more used to levis than tailored slacks. Blaine thought he looked like a Westerner.

“Impressive,” Blaine said, gazing up at the Gothic castle.

“Gaudy,” the man said. “You aren't from the city, are you?”

Blaine shook his head.

“Me neither. But frankly, stranger, I thought everybody on Earth and all the planets knew about the Hereafter building. Do you mind my asking where you’re from?”

“Not at all,” Blaine said. He wondered if he should proclaim himself a man from the past. No, it was hardly the thing to tell a perfect stranger. The man might call a cop. He'd better be from somewhere else.

“You see,” Blaine said. “I'm from — Brazil.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. Upper Amazon Valley. My folks went there when I was a kid. Rubber plantation. Dad just died, so I thought I'd have a look at New York,”

“I hear it's still pretty wild down there,” the man said.

Blaine nodded, relieved that his story wasn't being questioned. But perhaps it wasn't a very strange story for this day and age. In any event, he had found a home.

“Myself,” the man said, “I'm from Mexican Hat, Arizona. The name's Orc, Carl Orc. Blaine? Glad to meet you, Blaine. You know, I came here to cast a look around this New York and find out what they’re always boasting about. It's interesting enough, but these folks are just a little too up and roaring for me, if you catch my meaning. I don't mean to say we’re pokey back home. We’re not. But these people bounce around like an ape with a stick in his line.”

“I know just what you mean,” Blaine said.

For a few minutes they discussed the jittery, frantic, compulsive habits of New Yorkers, comparing them with the sane, calm, pastoral life in Mexican Hat and the Upper Amazon Valley. These people, they agreed, just didn't know how to live. “Blaine,” said Orc, “I'm glad I ran into you. What say we get ourselves a drink?”

“Fine,” Blaine said. Through a man like Carl Orc he might find a way out of his immediate difficulties. Perhaps he could get a job in Mexican Hat. He could plead Brazil and amnesia to excuse his lack of present-day knowledge. Then he remembered that he had no money. He started a halting explanation of how he had accidentally left his wallet in his hotel. But Orc stopped him in mid-sentence.

“Look here, Blaine,” Orc said, fixing him with his narrow blue eyes, “I want to tell you something. A story like that wouldn't cut marg with most people. But I figure I'm somewhat of a judge of character. Can't say I've been wrong too often. I'm not exactly what you'd call a poor man, so what say we have the evening on me?”

“Really,” Blaine said, “I couldn't —”

“Not another word,” Orc said decisively. “Tomorrow evening is on you, if you insist. But right now, let us proceed to inspect the internal nocturnal movements of this edgy little old town.”

It was, Blaine decided, as good as any other way of finding out about the future. After all, nothing could be more revealing than what people did for pleasure. Through games and drunkenness, man exhibits his essential attitudes toward his environment, and shows his disposition toward the questions of life, death, fate and free will. What better symbol of Rome than the circus? What better crystallization of the American West than the rodeo? Spain had its bullfights and Norway its ski-jumps. What sport, recreation or pastime would similarly reveal the New York of 2110? He would find out. And surely, to experience this in all its immediacy was better than reading about it in some dusty library, and infinitely more entertaining.

“Suppose we have a look at the Martian Quarter?” Orc asked.

“Lead away,” Blaine said, well-pleased at the chance to combine pleasure with stern necessity.

Orc led the way through a maze of streets and levels, through underground arcades and overhead ramps, by foot, escalator, subway and helicab. The interlocking complexity of streets and levels didn't impress the lean Westerner. Phoenix was laid out in the same way, he said, although admittedly on a smaller scale.

They went to a small restaurant that called itself the “Red Mars”, and advertised a genuine South Martian cuisine. Blaine had to confess he had never eaten Martian food. Orc had sampled it several times in Phoenix.

“It's pretty good,” he told Blaine, “but it doesn't stick to your ribs. Later we'll have a steak.”

The menu was written entirely in Martian, and no English translation was included. Blaine recklessly ordered the Number One Combination, as did Orc. It came, a strange-looking mess of shredded vegetables and bits of meat. Blaine tasted, and nearly dropped his fork in surprise. “It's exactly like Chinese food!”

“Well, of course,” Orc said. “The Chinese were the first on Mars, in ‘97 I think. So anything they eat up there is Martian food. Right?”

“I suppose so,” Blaine said.

“Besides, this stuff is made with genuine Martian-grown vegetables and mutated herbs and spices. Or so they advertise.”

Blaine didn't know whether to be disappointed or relieved. With good appetite he ate the C’kyo-Ourher, which tasted just like shrimp chow mein, and the Trrdxat, or egg roll.

“Why do they give it such weird names?” Blaine asked, ordering the Hggshrt for dessert.

“Man, you’re really out of touch!” Orc said, laughing. “Those Martian Chinese went all the way. They translated the Martian rock-carvings and suchlike, and started to talk Martian, with a strong Cantonese accent I presume, but there wasn't no one around to tell them different. They talk Martian, dress Martian, think Martian. You call one of them a Chinese now, he'd up and hit you. He's a Martian, boy!”

The Hggshrt came, and turned out to be an almond cookie.

Orc paid the check. As they left, Blaine asked, “Are there many Martian laundries?”

“Hell yes. Country's filled with them.”

“I thought so,” Blaine said, and paid a silent tribute to the Martian Chinese and their firm grip on traditional institutions.

They caught a helicab to the Greens Club, a place that Orc's Phoenix friends had told him not to miss. This small, expensive, intimate little club was world-famous, an absolute must for any visitor to New York. For the Greens Club was unique in presenting an all-vegetable floor show.

They were given seats on a little balcony, not far from the glass-fenced center of the club. Three levels of tables surrounded the center, and brilliant spotlights played upon it. Behind the glass fence was what looked like a few square yards of jungle, growing in a nutrient solution. An artificial breeze stirred the plants, which were packed tight together, and varied widely in size, shape and hue.

They behaved like no plants Blaine had ever seen. They grew rapidly, fantastically, from tiny seeds and root tendrils to great shrubs and rough-barked trees, squat ferns, monstrous flowers, dripping green fungus and speckled vines; grew and quickly completed their life-cycle and fell into decay, casting forth their seeds to begin again. But no species seemed able to reproduce itself. Sports and mutants sprang from the seeds and swollen fruit, altered and adapted to the fierce environment, battled for root space below and air space above, and struggled toward the artificial suns that glowed above them. Unsuccessful shrubs quickly molded themselves into parasites, clung to the choked trees, and discovered new adaptations clinging to them in turn. Sometimes, in a burst of creative ambition, a plant would surmount all obstacles, put down the growths around it, strangle the opposition, conquer all. But new species already grew from its body, pulled it down and squabbled over the corpse. Sometimes a blight, itself vegetable, would attack the jungle and carry everything before it in a grand crescendo of mold. But a courageous sport would at last take root in it, then another, and on went the fight. The plants changed, grew larger or smaller, transcended themselves in the struggle for survival. But no amount of determination, no cunning, no transcendence helped. No species could prevail, and every endeavor led to death.

Blaine found the spectacle disturbing. Could this fatalistic pageant of the world be the significant characteristic of 2110? He glanced at Orc.

“It's really something,” Orc told him, “what these New York labs can do with quick-growing mutants. It's a freak show, of course. They just speed up the growing rate, force a contra-survival situation, throw in some radiation, and let the best plant try to win. I hear these plants use up their growth potential in about twenty hours, and have to be replaced.”

“So that's where it ends,” Blaine said, watching the tortured but ever-optimistic jungle. “In replacements.”

“Sure,” said Orc, blandly avoiding all philosophical complications. “They can afford it, at the prices they charge here. But it's freak stuff. Let me tell you about the sandplants we grow in Arizona.”

Blaine sipped his whiskey and watched the jungle growing, dying and renewing itself. Orc was saying. “Right on the burning face of the desert. Fact. We've finally adapted fruit and vegetable-bearing plants to real desert conditions, without increasing their bulk water supply, and at a price which allows us to compete with the fertile areas. I tell you, boy, in another fifty years the entire concept of fertile is, going to change. Take Mars, for example…”

They left the Greens Club and worked their way from bar to bar, toward Times Square. Orc was showing a certain difficulty in focusing, but his voice was steady as he talked about the lost Martian secret of growing on sand. Someday, he promised Blaine, we'll figure out how they produced the sandplants without the added nutrients and moisture-fixatives.

Blaine had drunk enough to put his former body into a coma twice over. But his bulky new body seemed to have an inexhaustible capacity for whiskey. It was a pleasant change, to have a body that could hold its liquor. Not, he added hastily, that such a rudimentary ability could offset the body's disadvantages.

They crossed Times Square's garish confusion and entered a bar on 44th Street. As their drinks were served, a furtive-eyed little man in a raincoat stepped up to them. “Hey, boys,” he said tentatively.

“Whatcha want, podner?” Orc asked.

“You boys out looking for a little fun?”

“You might say so,” Orc said expansively. “And we can find it ourselves, thank you kindly.”

The little man smiled nervously. “You can't find what I'm offering.”

“Speak up, little friend,” Orc said. “What exactly are you offering?”

“Well, boys, it's — hold it! Flathats!” Two blue-uniformed policemen entered the bar, looked around and left.

“OK,” Blaine said. “What is it?”

“Call me Joe,” the little man said with an ingratiating grin. “I'm a steerer for a Transplant game, friends. The best game and highest jump in town!”

“What in hell is Transplant?” Blaine asked. Both Orc and Joe looked at him.

Joe said, “Wow, friend, no insult but you must really be from down on the farm. Never heard of Transplant? Well I'll be griped!”

“OK, so I'm a farmboy,” Blaine growled, thrusting his fierce, square, hard-planed face close to Joe's. “What is Transplant!”

“Not so loud!” Joe whispered, shrinking back. “Take it easy, farmer, I'll explain. Transplant is the new switch game, buddy. Are you tired of living? Think you've had all the kicks? Wait ‘til you try Transplant. You see, farmer, folks in the know say that straight sex is pretty moldy potatoes. Don't get me wrong, it's fine for the birds and the bees and the beasts and the brutes. It still brings a thrill to their simple animal hearts, and who are we to say they’re wrong? As a means or propagating the species, old nature's little sex gimmick is still the first and the best. But for real kicks, sophisticated people are turning to Transplant.

“Transplant is democratic, friends. It gives you the big chance to switch over into someone else and feel how the other ninety-nine percent feels. It's educational, you might say, and it takes up where Straight sex leaves off. Ever get the urge to be a high-strung Latin, pal? You can, with Transplant. Ever wonder what a genuine sadist feels? Tune in with Transplant. And there's more, more, so much more! For example, why be a man all your life? You've proved your point by now, why belabor it? Why not be a woman for a while? With Transplant you can be aboard for those gorgeous moments in the life of one of our specially selected gals.”

“Voyeurism,” Blaine said.

“I know them big words,” Joe said, “and it ain't true. This is no peeping-Tom's game. With Transplant you are there, right in the old corpus, moving those exotic muscles, experiencing those sensations. Ever get the urge to be a tiger, farm-boy, and go loping after a lady tiger in the old mating season? We got a tiger, friend, and a lady tiger too. Ever ask yourself what thrill a man could possibly find in flagellation, shoe-fetishism, necrophilia, or the like? Find out with Transplant. Our catalogue of bodies reads like an encyclopedia. You can't go wrong at Transplant, friends, and our prices are set ridiculously —”

“Get out,” Blaine said.

“What, buddy?”

Blaine's big hand shot out and grabbed Joe by the raincoat front. He lifted the little pusher to eye level and glared at him.

“You take your perverted little notions out of here,” Blaine said. “Guys like you have been selling off-beat kicks since the days of Babylon, and guys like me haven't been buying. Get out, before I break your neck for a quick sadistic thrill.”

He released him. Joe smoothed his raincoat and smiled nervously. “No offense, buddy, I'm going. Don't feel like it tonight. There's always another night. Transplant's in your future, farmboy. Why fight it?”

Blaine started to move forward, but Orc held him back. The little pusher scuttled out the door.

“He isn't worth dropping,” Orc said. “The flat-hats would just take you in. It's a sad, sick, dirty world, friend. Drink up.”

Blaine threw down his whiskey, still seething. Transplant! If that was the characteristic amusement of 2110 he wanted no part of it. Orc was right, it was a sad, sick, dirty world. Even the whiskey was beginning to taste funny.

He grabbed at the bar for support. The whiskey tasted very funny. What was wrong with him? The stuff seemed to be going to his head.

Orc's arm was around his shoulder. He was saying, “Well, well, my old buddy's taken himself that one too many. Guess I'd better take him back to his hotel.”

But Orc didn't know where his hotel was. He didn't even have a hotel to be taken to. Orc, that damned quick-talking straight-eyed Orc must have put something in his drink while he was talking to Joe.

In order to roll him? But Orc knew he had no money. Why then?

He tried to shake the arm off his shoulders. It was clamped in place like an iron bar. “Don't worry,” Orc was saying, “I'll take care of you, old buddy.”

The barroom revolved lazily around Blaine's head. He had a sudden realization that he was going to find out a great deal about 2110 by the dubious method of direct experience. Too much, he suspected. Perhaps a dusty library would have been better after all.

The barroom began to revolve more rapidly. Blaine passed out.

6

He recovered consciousness in a small, dimly lighted room with no furniture, no doors or windows, and only a single screened ventilation outlet in the ceiling. The floors and walls were thickly padded, but the padding hadn't been washed in a long time. It stank.

Blaine sat up, and two red-hot needles stabbed him through the eyes. He lay down again.

“Relax,” a voice said. “Them knock drops take a while to wear off.”

He was not alone in the padded room. There was a man sitting in a corner, watching him. The man was wearing only shorts. Glancing at himself, Blaine saw that he was similarly dressed.

He sat up slowly and propped himself against a wall. For a moment he was afraid his head would explode. Then, as the needles drove viciously in, he was afraid it wouldn't.

“What is this?” he asked.

“End of the line,” the man said cheerfully. “They boxed you, just like me. They boxed you and brought you in like fabrit. Now all they got to do is crate you and label you.”

Blaine couldn't understand what the man was saying. He was in no mood to decipher 2110 slang. Clutching his head, he said, “I don't have any money. Why did they box me?”

“Come off it,” the man said. “Why would they box you? They want your body, man!”

“My body?”

“Right. For a host.”

A host body, Blaine thought, such as he was now occupying. Well, of course. Naturally. It was obvious when you came to think about it. This age needed a supply of host bodies for various and sundry purposes. But how do you get a host body? They don't grow on trees, nor can you dig for them. You get them from people. Most people wouldn't take kindly to selling their own bodies; life is so meaningless without one. So how to fill the supply?

Easy. You pick out a sucker, dope him, hide him away, extract his mind, then take his body.

It was an interesting line of speculation, but Blaine couldn't continue it any longer. It seemed as though his head had finally decided to explode.

Later, the hangover subsided. Blaine sat up and found a sandwich in front of him on a paper plate, and a cup of some dark beverage.

“It's safe to eat,” the man told him. “They take good care of us. I hear the going black market price for a body is close to four thousand dollars.”

“Black market?”

“Man, what's wrong with you? Wake up! You know there's a black market in bodies just like there's an open market in bodies.”

Blaine sipped the dark beverage, which turned out to be coffee. The man introduce himself as Ray Melhill, a flow-control man off the spaceship Bremen. He was about Blaine's age, a compact, redheaded, snub-nosed man with slightly protruding teeth. Even in his present predicament he carried himself with a certain jaunty assurance, the unquenchable confidence of a man for whom something always turns up. His freckled skin was very white except for a small red blotch on his neck, the result of an old radiation burn.

“I should of known better,” Melhill said. “But we'd been transiting for three months on the asteroid run and I wanted a spree. I would of been fine if I'd stuck with the boys, but we got separated. So I wound up in a dog kennel with a greasy miranda. She knocked my drink and I wound up here.”

Melhill leaned back, his hands locked behind his head. “Me, of all people! I was always telling the boys to watch out. Stick with the gang I was always telling them. You know, I don't mind the thought of dying so much. I just hate the idea of those bastards giving my body to some dirty fat decrepit old slob so he can play around for another fifty years. That's what kills me, the thought of that fat old slob wearing my body. Christ!”

Blaine nodded somberly.

“So that's my tale of woe,” Melhill said, growing cheerful again. “What's yours?”

“Mine's a pretty long one,” Blaine said, “and a trifle wild in spots. Do you want to hear it all?”

“Sure. Plenty of time. I hope.”

“OK. It starts in the year 1958. Wait, don't interrupt me. I was driving my car…”

When he had finished, Blaine leaned back against the padded wall and took a deep breath. “Do you believe me?” he asked.

“Why not? Nothing so new about time travel. It's just illegal and expensive. And those Rex boys would pull anything.”

“The girls, too,” Blaine said, and Melhill grinned.

They sat in companionable silence for a while. Then Blaine asked, “So they’re going to use us for host bodies?”

“That's the score.”

“When?”

“When a customer totters in. I've been here a week, close as I can figure. Either of us might be taken any second. Or it might not come for another week or two.”

“And they just wipe our minds out?”

Melhill nodded.

“But that's murder!”

“It sure is,” Melhill agreed. “Hasn't happened yet, though. Maybe the flathats will pull a raid.”

“I doubt it.”

“Me too. Have you got hereafter insurance? Maybe you'll survive after death.”

“I'm an atheist,” Blaine said. “I don't believe in that stuff.”

“So am I. But life after death is a fact.”

“Get off it,” Blaine said sourly.

“It is! Scientific fact!”

Blaine stared hard at the young spacemen. “Ray,” he said, “how about filling me in? Brief me on what's happened since 1958.”

“That's a big order,” Melhill said, “and I'm not what you'd call an educated guy.”

“Just give me an idea. What's this hereafter stuff? And reincarnation and host bodies? What's happening?”

Melhill leaned back and took a deep breath. “Well, let's see. 1958. They put a ship on the moon somewhere around 1960, and landed on Mars about ten years later. Then we had that quickie war with Russia over the asteroids — strictly a deep-space affair. Or was it with China?”

“Never mind,” Blaine said. “What about reincarnation and life after death?”

“I'll try to give it to you like they gave it to me in high school. I had a course called Survey of Psychic Survival, but that was a long time ago. Let's see.” Melhill frowned in deep concentration. “Quote. ‘Since earliest times man has sensed the presence of an invisible spirit world, and has suspected that he himself will participate in that world after the death of his body.’ I guess you know all about that early stuff, The Egyptians and Chinese and the European alchemists and those. So I'll skip to Rhine. He lived in your time. He was investigating psychic phenomena at Duke. Ever hear of him?”

“Sure,” Blaine said. “What did he discover?”

“Nothing, really. But he got the ball rolling. Then Kralski took over the work at Vilna, and shoved it ahead some. That was 1987, the year the Pirates won their first World Series. Around 2000 there was Von Leddner. Outlined the general theory of the hereafter, but didn't have any proofs. And finally we come to Professor Michael Vanning.

“Professor Vanning is the boy who pinned it all down. He proved that people survive after death. Contacted them, talked with them, recorded them, all that stuff. Offered absolute sure-enough concrete scientific proof of life after death. So of course there were big arguments about it, a lot of religious talk. Controversy. Headlines. A big-time professor from Harvard named James Archer Flynn set out to prove the whole thing was a hoax. He and Vanning argued back and forth for years.

“By this time Vanning was an old man and decided to take the plunge. He sealed a lot of stuff in a safe, hid stuff here and there, scattered some code words and promised to come back, like Houdini promised but didn't. Then —”

“Pardon me,” Blaine interrupted, “if there is life after death, why didn't Houdini come back?”

“It's very simple, but please, one thing at a time. Anyhow, Vanning killed himself, leaving a long suicide note about man's immortal spirit and the indomitable progress of the human race. It's reprinted in a lot of anthologies. Later they found out it was ghost-written, but that's another story. Where was I?”

“He suicided.”

“Right. And damned if he didn't contact Professor James Archer Flynn after dying and tell him where to find all that hidden stuff, the code words, and so forth. That clinched it, buddy. Life after death was in.”

Melhiil stood up, stretched, and sat down again. “The Vanning Institute,” he said, “warned everybody against hysteria. But hysteria there was. The next fifteen years are known as the Crazy Forties.”

Melhill grinned and licked his lips. “Wish I'd been around then. Everybody just sort of let go. ‘Doesn't matter what you do,’ the jingle ran, ‘pie in the sky is waitin’ for you.‘ Saint or sinner, bad or good, everybody gets a slice. The murderer walks into the hereafter just like the archbishop. So live it up, boys and girls, enjoy the flesh on Earth while you’re here, ’cause you'll get plenty of spirit after death. Yep, and they really lived it up. Anarchy it was. A new religion popped up calling itself ‘Realization’. It started telling people that they owed it to themselves to experience everything, good or bad, fair and foul, because the hereafter was just a long remembrance of what you did on Earth. So do it, they said, that's what you’re put on Earth for, do it, or you'll be shortchanged in the afterlife. Gratify every desire, satisfy every lust, explore your blackest depths. Live high, die high. It was wacky. The real fanatics formed torture clubs, and wrote encyclopedias on pain, and collected tortures like a housewife would collect recipes. At each meeting, a member would voluntarily present himself as a victim, and they'd kill him in the most excruciating damned ways they could find. They wanted to experience the absolute most in pleasure and pain. And I guess they did.”

Melhill wiped his forehead and said, more sedately, “I've done a little reading on the Crazy Years.”

“So I see,” Blaine said.

“It's sort of interesting stuff. But then came the crusher. The Vanning Institute had been experimenting all this time. Around 2050, when the Crazy Years were in full swing, they announced that there was a hereafter, sure enough; but not for everyone.”

Blaine blinked, but made no comment.

“A real crusher. The Vanning Institute said they had certain proof that only about one person in a million got into the hereafter. The rest, the millions and millions, just went out like a light when they died. Pouf! No more. No afterlife. Nothing.”

“Why?” Blaine asked.

“Well, Tom, I'm none too clear on that part myself,” Melhill told him. “If you asked me something about flow-mechanics, I could really tell you something; but psychic theory isn't my field. So try to stick with me while I struggle through this.”

He rubbed his forehead vigorously. “What survives or doesn't survive after death is the mind. People have been arguing for thousands of years about what a mind is, and where and how it interacts with the body, and so forth. We haven't got all the answers, but we do have some working definitions. Nowadays, the mind is considered a high-tension energy web that emanates from the body, is modified by the body, and itself modifies the body. Got that?”

“I think so. Go on.”

“So, the way I got it, the mind and body interact and intermodify. But the mind can also exist independently of the body. According to a lot of scientists, the independent mind is the next stage of evolution. In a million years, they say, we won't even need a body except maybe for a brief incubation period. Personally I don't think this damned race will survive another million years. It damn well doesn't deserve to.”

“At the moment I agree with you,” Blaine said. “But get back to the hereafter.”

“We've got this high-tension energy web. When the body dies, that web should be able to go on existing, like a butterfly coming out of a cocoon. Death is simply the process that hatches the mind from the body. But it doesn't work that way because of the death trauma. Some scientists think the death trauma is nature's ejecting mechanism, to get the mind free of the body. But it works too hard and louses up everything. Dying is a tremendous psychic shock, and most of the time the energy web gets disrupted, ripped all to hell. It can't pull itself together, it dissipates, and you’re but completely dead.”

Blaine said, “So that's why Houdini didn't come back.”

“Him and most others. Right. A lot of people did some heavy thinking, and that ended the Crazy Years. The Vanning Institute went on working They studied Yoga and stuff like that, but on a scientific basis. Some of those Eastern religion had the right idea, you know. Strengthen the mind. That's what the Institute wanted: a way to strengthen the energy web so it would survive the death process.”

“And they found it?”

“In spades. Along about that time they changed their name to Hereafter, Inc.”

Blaine nodded. “I passed their building today. Hey, wait a minute! You say they solved the mind strengthening problem? Then no one dies! Everyone survives after death!”

Melhill grinned sardonically. “Don't be a farmer, Tom. You think they give it away free? Not a chance. It's a complex electrochemical treatment, pal, and they charge for it. They charge plenty.”

“So only the rich go to heaven,” Blaine said.

“What else did you expect? Can't have just anyone crashing in.”

“Sure, sure,” Blaine said. “But aren't there other ways, other mind-strengthening disciplines? What about Yoga? What about Zen?”

“They work,” Melhill said. “There are at least a dozen government tested and approved home-survival courses. Trouble is, it takes about twenty years of really hard work to become an adept. That's not for the ordinary guy. Nope, without the machines to help you, you’re dead.”

“And only Hereafter, Inc. has the machines?”

“There's one or two others, the Afterlife Academy and Heaven, Ltd., but the price stays about the same. The government's getting to work on some death-survival insurance, but it won't help us.”

“I guess not,” Blaine said. The dream, for a moment, had been dazzling; a relief from mortal fears; the rational certainty of a continuance and existence after the body's death; the knowledge of an uninterrupted process of growth and fulfillment for his personality to its own limits — not the constricting limits of the frail fleshy envelope that heredity and chance had imposed on him.“

But that was not to be. His mind's desire to expand was to be checked, rudely, finally. Tomorrow's promises were forever not for today.

“What about reincarnation and host bodies?” he asked.

“You should know,” Melhill told him. “They reincarnated you and put you in a host. There's nothing complicated about mind-switching, as the Transplant operators will gladly tell you. Transplant is only temporary occupancy, however, and doesn't involve full dislodgement of the original mind. Hosting is for keeps. First, the original mind must be wiped out. Second, it's a dangerous game for the mind attempting to enter the host body. Sometimes, you see, that mind can't penetrate the host and breaks itself up trying. Hereafter conditioning often won't stand up under a reincarnation attempt. If the mind doesn't make it into the host — pouf!”

Blaine nodded, now realizing why Marie Thorne had thought it better for Reilly to die. Her advice had been entirely in his best interests.

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 me?”

“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. This 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 —”

“No,” Blaine said. “I won't kill myself. I'm afraid you'll have to hire it done.”

“That's not my way,” Mr. Reilly said. “I won't coerce you. But come to my reincarnation this afternoon. Get a glimpse of the hereafter. Perhaps you'll change your mind.”

Blaine hesitated, and the old man grinned at him.

“No danger, I promise you, and no tricks! Did you fear I might steal your body? I selected my host months ago, from the open market. Frankly, I wouldn't have your body. You see, I wouldn't be comfortable in anything so gross.”

The interview was over. Marie Thorne led Blaine out.

10

The reincarnation room was arranged like a small theater. It was often used, Blaine learned, for company lectures and educational programs on an executive level. Today the audience had been kept small and select. The Rex board of directors was present, five middle-aged men sitting in the back row and talking quietly among themselves. Near them was a recording secretary. Blaine and Marie Thorne sat in front, as far from the directors as possible.

On the raised stage, under white floodlights, the reincarnation apparatus was already in place. There were two sturdy armchairs equipped with straps and wires. Between the chairs was a large glossy black machine. Thick wires connected the machine to the chair, and gave Blaine the uneasy feeling that he was going to witness an execution. Several technicians were bent over the machine, making final adjustments. Standing near them was the bearded old doctor and his red-faced colleague.

Mr. Reilly came on the stage, nodded to the audience and sat down in one of the chairs. He was followed by a man in his forties with a frightened, pale, determined face. This was the host, the present possessor of the body that Mr. Reilly had contracted for. The host sat down in the other chair, glanced quickly at the audience and looked down at his hands. He seemed embarrassed. Perspiration beaded his upper lip, and the armpits of his jacket were stained black. He didn't look at Reilly, nor did Reilly look at him.

Another man came on the stage, bald and earnest-looking, wearing a dark suit with a cleric's collar and carrying a little black book. He began a whispered conversation with the two seated men.

“Who's that?” Blaine asked.

“Father James,“ Marie Thorne told him. ”He's a clergyman of the Church of the Afterlife.“

“What's that?”

“It's a new religion. You know about the Crazy Years? Well, during that time there was a great religious controversy…”

The burning question of the 2040’s was the spiritual status of the hereafter. It became even worse after Hereafter, Inc. announced the advent of the scientific hereafter. The corporation tried desperately hard to avoid any religious involvement; but involvement couldn't very well be avoided. Most churchmen felt that science was unfairly preempting their territory. Hereafter, Inc., whether they liked it or not, was considered the spokesman for a new scientific religious position: That salvation lay, not through religious, moral or ethical considerations, but through an applied, impersonal, invariant scientific principle.

Convocations, meetings and congresses were held to decide the burning question. Some groups adopted the view that the newly revealed scientific hereafter was obviously not heaven, salvation, nirvana or paradise; because the soul was not involved.

Mind, they held, is not synonymous with soul; nor is the soul contained in or a part of the mind. Granted, science had found a means of extending the existence of one portion of the mind-body entity. That was fine, but it didn't affect the soul at all, and certainly didn't mean immortality or heaven or nirvana or anything like that. The soul could not be affected by scientific manipulation. And the soul's disposition after the eventual and inevitable death of the mind in its scientific hereafter would be in accordance with traditional moral, ethical and religious practices.

“Wow!” Blaine said. “I think I get what you mean. They were trying to achieve a co-existence between science and religion. But wasn't their reasoning a little subtle for some people?”

“Yes,” Marie Thorne said, “even though they explained it much better than I've done, and backed it up with all sorts of analogies. But that was only one position. Others didn't attempt co-existence. They simply declared that the scientific hereafter was sinful. And one group solved the problem by joining the scientific position and declaring that the soul is contained in the mind.”

“I suppose that would be the Church of the Afterlife?”

“Yes. They splintered off from other religions. According to them, the mind contains the soul, and the hereafter is the soul's rebirth after death, with no spiritual ifs and buts.”

“That's keeping up with the times,” Blaine said. “But morality —”

“In their view, this didn't dispense with morality. The Afterlifers say that you can't impose morals and ethics on people by a system of spiritual rewards and punishments; and if you could, you shouldn't. They say that morality must be good in its own right, first in terms of the social organism, second in terms of the individual man's best good.”

To Blaine this seemed a lot to ask of morality. “I suppose it's a popular religion?” he asked.

“Very popular,” Marie Thorne answered.

Blaine wanted to ask more, but Father James had begun speaking.

“William Fitzsimmons,” the clergyman said to the host, “you have come to this place of your own free will, for the purpose of discontinuing your existence upon the earthly plane and resuming it upon the spiritual plane?”

“Yes, Father,” the pale host whispered.

“And the proper scientific instrumentality has been performed so that you may continue your existence upon the spiritual plane?”

“Yes, Father.”

Father James turned to Reilly. “Kenneth Reilly, you have come to this place of your own free will for the purpose of continuing your existence upon Earth in the body of William Fitzsimmons?”

“Yes, Father,” Reilly said, small and hard-faced.

“And you have made possible for William Fitzsimmons an entrance into the hereafter; and have paid a sum of money to Fitzsimmons’ heirs; and have paid the government tax involved in transactions of this kind?”

“Yes, Father,” Reilly said.

“All these things being so,” Father James said, “no crime is involved, civic or religious. Here there is no taking of life, for the life and personality of William Fitzsimmons continues unabated in the hereafter, and the life and personality of Kenneth Reilly continues unabated upon Earth. Therefore, let the reincarnation proceed!”

To Blaine it seemed a hideous mixture of wedding ceremony and execution. The smiling clergyman withdrew. Technicians secured the men to their chairs, and attached electrodes to their arms, legs and foreheads. The theater grew very still, and the Rex directors leaned forward expectantly in their seats.

“Go ahead,” Reilly said, looking at Blaine and smiling slightly.

The chief technician turned a dial on the black machine. It hummed loudly, and the floodlights dimmed. Both men jerked convulsively against the straps, then slumped back.

Blaine whispered, “They’re murdering that poor Fitzsimmons bastard.”

“That poor bastard,” Marie Thorne told him, “knew exactly what he was doing. He's thirty-seven years old and he's been a failure all his life. He's never been able to hold a job for long, and had no previous chance for survival after death. This was a marvellous opportunity for him. Furthermore he has a wife and five children for whom he has not been able to provide. The sum Mr. Reilly paid will enable the wife to give the children a decent education.”

“Hurray for them!” Blaine said. “For sale, one father with slightly used body in excellent condition. Must sell! Sacrifice!”

“You’re being ridiculous,” she said. “Look, it's over.”

The machine was turned off, and the straps were removed from the two men. Reilly's wrinkled, grinning old corpse was ignored as the technicians and doctors examined the body of the host.

“Nothing yet!” the bearded old doctor called.

Blaine could sense apprehension in the room, and a hint of fear. The seconds dragged by while the doctors and technicians clustered around the host.

“Still nothing!” the old doctor called, his voice going shrill.

“What's happening?‘ Blaine asked Marie Thorne.

“As I told you, reincarnation is tricky and dangerous. Reilly's mind hasn't been able to possess the host-body yet. He doesn't have much longer.”

“Why not?”

“Because a body starts dying the moment it's untenanted. Irreversible death processes start if a mind isn't at least dormant in the body. The mind is essential. Even an unconscious mind controls the automatic processes. But with no mind at all —”

“Still nothing!” the old doctor shouted.

“I think it's too late now,” Marie Thorne whispered.

“A tremor!” the doctor said. “I felt a tremor!”

There was a long silence.

“I think he's in!” the old doctor cried. “Now, oxygen, adrenalin!”

A mask was fitted over the host's face. A hypodermic was slipped into the host's arm. The host stirred, shivered, slumped back, stirred again.

“He's made it!” the old doctor cried, removing the oxygen mask.

The directors, as though on cue, hurried out of their chairs and went up on the stage. They surrounded the host, which was now blinking its eyes and retching.

“Congratulations, Mr. Reilly!”

“Well done, sir!”

“Had us worried, Mr. Reilly!”

The host stared at them. It wiped its mouth and said, “My name is not Reilly.”

The old doctor pushed his way through the directors and bent down beside the host. “Not Reilly?” he said. “Are you Fitzsimmons?”

“No,” said the host, “I'm not Fitzsimmons, the poor damned fool! And I'm not Reilly. Reilly tried to get into this body but I was too quick. I got into the body first. It's my body now.”

“Who are you?” the doctor asked.

The host stood up. The directors stepped away from him, and one man quickly crossed himself.

“It was dead too long,” Marie Thorne said.

The host's face now bore only the faintest and most stylized resemblance to the pale, frightened face of William Fitzsimmons. There was nothing of Fitzsimmons’ determination, nothing of Reilly's petulance and good humor in that face. It resembled nothing but itself.

The face was dead white except for black dots of stubble on its cheeks and jaw. The lips were bloodless. A lock of black hair was plastered against its cold white forehead. When Fitzsimmons had been in residence the features had blended pleasantly, harmoniously, nondescriptly. But now the individual features had coarsened and grown separate. The unharmonious white face had a thick and unfinished look, like iron before tempering or clay before firing. It had a slack, sullen, relaxed look because of the lack of muscle tone and tension in the face. The calm, flaccid, unharmonious features simply existed, revealing nothing of the personality behind them. The face seemed no longer completely human. All humanity now resided in the great, patient, unblinking Buddha's eyes.

“It's gone zombie,” Marie Thorne whispered, clinging to Blaine's shoulder.

“Who are you?” the old doctor asked.

“I don't remember,” it said. “I don't.” Slowly it turned and started walking down the stage. Two directors moved tentatively to bar its path.

“Get away,” it said to them. “It's my body now.”

“Leave the poor zombie alone,” the old doctor said wearily.

The directors moved out of its way. The zombie walked to the end of the stage, descended the steps, turned, and walked over to Blaine.

“I know you!” it said.

“What? What do you want?” Blaine asked nervously.

“I don't remember,” the zombie said, staring hard at him. “What's your name?”

“Tom Blaine.”

The zombie shook its head. “Doesn't mean anything to me. But I'll remember. It's you, all right. Something… My body's dying, isn't it? Too bad. I'll remember before it gives out. You and me, you know, together. Blaine, don't you remember me?”

“No!” Blaine shouted, shrinking from the suggested relationship, the idea of some vital link between him and this dying thing. It couldn't be! What shared secret was this thief of corpses, this unclean usurper hinting at, what black intimacy, what sniggering knowledge to be shared like a dirty crust of bread for just Blaine and himself?

Nothing, Blaine told himself. He knew himself, knew what he was, knew what he had been. Nothing like this could arise legitimately to confront him. The creature had to be crazy, or mistaken.

“Who are you?” Blaine asked.

“I don't know!” The zombie flung his hands into the air, like a man caught in a net. And Blaine sensed how his mind must feel, confused, disoriented, nameless, wanting to live and caught in the fleshy dying embrace of a zombie body.

“I'll see you again,” the zombie said to Blaine. “You’re important to me. I'll see you again and I'll remember all about you and me.”

The zombie turned and walked down the aisle and out of the theater. Blaine stared after him until he felt a sudden weight on his shoulder.

Marie Thorne had fainted. It was the most feminine thing she had done so far.