“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 o
ff 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.
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