Immortality, Inc

by Robert Sheckley

  “Berserker, berserker!”

  “Call the flathats!”

  “Watch out, berserker!”

  One man was down, clutching his torn shoulder and swearing. The berserker's face was fiery red now, and spittle came from his mouth. He waded deeper into the dense crowd, and people knocked each other down in their efforts to escape. A woman shrieked as she was pushed off balance, and her armload of parcels scattered across the pavement.

  The berserker swiped at her left-handed, missed, and plunged deeper into the crowd.

  Blue-uniformed police appeared, six or eight of them, sidearms out. “Everybody down!” they shouted. “Flatten! Everybody down!”

  All traffic had stopped. The people in the berserker's path flung themselves to the pavement. On Blaine's side of the street, people were also getting down.

  A freckled girl of perhaps twelve tugged at Blaine's arm, “Come on, Mister, get down! You wanna get beamed?”

  Blaine lay down beside her. The berserker had turned and was running back toward the policemen, screaming wordlessly and waving his knives.

  Three of the policemen fired at once, their weapons throwing a pale yellowish beam which flared red when it struck the berserker. He screamed as his clothing began to smoulder, turned, and tried to escape.

  A beam caught him square in the back. He flung both knives at the policemen and collapsed.

  An ambulance dropped down with whirring blades and quickly loaded the berserker and his victims. The policemen began breaking up the crowd that had gathered around them.

  “All right, folks, it's all over now. Move along!”

  The crowd began to disperse. Blaine stood up and brushed himself off. “What was that?” he asked.

  “It was a berserker, silly,” the freckled girl said. “Couldn't you see?”

  “I saw. Do you have many?”

  She nodded proudly. “New. York has more berserkers than any other city in the world except Manila where they’re called amokers. But it's all the same thing. We have maybe fifty a year.”

  “More,” a man said. “Maybe seventy, eighty a year. But this one didn't do so good.”

  A small group had gathered near Blaine and the girl. They were discussing the berserker much as Blaine had heard strangers in his own time discuss an automobile accident.

  “How many did he get?”

  “Only five, and I don't think he killed any of them.”

  “His heart wasn't in it,” an old woman said. “When I was a girl you couldn't stop them as easily as that. Strong they were.”

  “Well, he picked a bad spot,” the freckled girl said, “42nd Street is filled with flathats. A berserker can't hardly get started before he's beamed.”

  A big policeman came over. “All right, folks, break it up. The fun's over, move along now.”

  The group dispersed. Blaine caught his bus, wondering why fifty or more people chose to berserk in New York every year. Sheer nervous tension? A demented form of individualism? Adult delinquency?

  It was one more of the things he would have to find out about the world of 2110.

  15

  The address was a penthouse high above Park Avenue in the Seventies. A butler admitted him to a spacious room where chairs had been set up in a long row. The dozen men occupying the chairs were a loud, tough, weatherbeaten bunch, carelessly dressed and ill at ease in such rarefied surroundings. Most of them knew each other.

  “Hey, Otto! Back in the hunting game?”

  “Yah. No money.”

  “Knew you'd come back, old boy. Hi, Tim!”

  “Hi, Bjorn. This is my last hunt.”

  “Sure it is. Last ‘til next time.”

  “No, I mean it. I'm buying a seed-pressure farm in the North Atlantic Abyss. I just need a stake.”

  “You'll drink up your stake.”

  “Not this time.”

  “Hey, Theseus! How's the throwing arm?”

  “Good enough, Chico. Que tal?”

  “Not too bad, kid.”

  “There's Sammy Jones, always last in.”

  “I'm on time, ain't I?”

  “Ten minutes late. Where's your sidekick?”

  “Sligo? Dead. That Asturias hunt.”

  “Tough. Hereafter?”

  “Not likely.”

  A man entered the room and called out, “Gentlemen, your attention please!”

  He advanced to the center of the room and stood, hands on his hips, facing the row of hunters. He was a slender sinewy man of medium height, dressed in riding breeches and an open-necked shirt. He had a small, carefully tended moustache and startling blue eyes in a thin, tanned face. For a few seconds he looked the hunters over, while they coughed and shifted their feet uncomfortably.

  At last he said, “Good morning, gentlemen. I am Charles Hull, your employer and Quarry.” He gave them a smile of no warmth. “First, gentlemen, a word concerning the legality of our proceedings. There has been some recent confusion about this. My lawyer has looked into the matter fully, and will explain. Mr. Jensen!”

  A small, nervous-looking man came into the room, pressed his spectacles firmly against his nose and cleared his throat.

  “Yes, Mr. Hull. Gentlemen, as to the present legality of the hunt: In accordance with the revised statutes to the Suicide Act of 2102, any man protected by Hereafter insurance has the right to select any death for himself, at any time and place, and by any means, as long as those means do not constitute cruel and unnatural abuse. The reason for this fundamental ‘right to die’ is obvious: The courts do not recognize physical death as death per se, if said death does not involve the destruction of mind. Providing the mind survives, the death of the body is of no more moment, legally, than the sloughing of a fingernail. The body, by the latest Supreme Court decision, is considered an appendage of the mind, its creature, to be disposed of as the mind directs.”

  During this explanation Hull had been pacing the room with quick, catlike steps. He stopped now and said, “Thank you, Mr. Jensen. So there is no questioning my right to suicide. Nor is there any illegality in my selecting one or more persons such as yourselves to perform the act for me. And your own actions are considered legal under the Permitted Murder section of the Suicide Act. All well and good. The only legal question arises in a recent appendage to the Suicide Act.”

  He nodded to Mr. Jensen.

  “The appendage states,” Jensen said, “that a man can select any death for himself, at any time and place, by any means, etcetera, so long as that death is not physically injurious to others.”

  “That,” said Hull, “is the troublesome clause. Now, a hunt is a legal form of suicide. A time and place is arranged. You, the hunters, chase me. I, the Quarry, flee. You catch me, kill me. Fine! Except for one thing.”

  He turned to the lawyer. “Mr. Jensen, you may leave the room. I do not wish to implicate you.”

  After the lawyer had left, Hull said, “The one problem remaining is, of course, the fact that I will be armed and trying my very best to kill you. Any of you. All of you. And that is illegal.”

  Hull sank gracefully into a chair. “The crime, however, is mine, not yours. I have employed you to kill me. You have no idea that I plan to protect myself, to retaliate. That is a legal fiction, but one which will save you from becoming possible accessories to the fact. If I am caught trying to kill one of you, the penalty will be severe. But I will not be caught. One of you will kill me, thus putting me beyond the reach of human justice. If I should be so unfortunate as to kill all of you, I shall complete my suicide in the old-fashioned manner, with poison. But that would be a disappointment to me. I trust you will not be so clumsy as to let that happen. Any questions?”

  The hunters were murmuring among, themselves:

  “Slick fancy-talking bastard.”

  “Forget it, all Quarries talk like that.”

  “Thinks he's better than us, him and his classy legal talk.”

  “We'll see how good he talks with a bit of steel through
him.”

  Hull smiled coldly. “Excellent. I believe the situation is clear. Now, if you please, tell me what your weapons are.”

  One by one the hunters answered:

  “Mace.”

  “Net and Trident.”

  “Spear.”

  “Morning star.”

  “Bola.”

  “Scimitar.”

  “Bayonetted rifle,” Blaine said when his turn came.

  “Broadsword.”

  “Battle-axe.”

  “Saber.”

  “Thank you, gentlemen,” Hull said. “I will be armed with a rapier, naturally, and no armor. Our meeting will take place Sunday, at dawn, on my estate. The butler will give each of you a paper containing full instructions on how to get there. Let the bayonet man remain. Good morning to the rest of you.”

  The hunters left. Hull said, “Bayonetry is an unusual art. Where did you learn it?”

  Blaine hesitated, then said, “In the army, 1943 to 1945.”

  “You’re from the past?”

  Blaine nodded.

  “Interesting,” Hull said, with no particular sign of interest. “Then this, I daresay, is your first hunt?”

  “It is.”

  “You appear a person of some intelligence. I suppose you have your reasons for choosing so hazardous and disreputable an employment?”

  “I'm low on funds,” Blaine said, “and I can't find anything else to do.”

  “Of course,” Hull said, as though he had known it all along. “So you turned to hunting. Yet hunting is not a thing merely to turn to; and hunting the beast Man is not for everyone. The trade calls for certain special abilities, not the least of which is the ability to kill. Do you think you have the innate talent?”

  “I believe so,” Blaine said, though he hadn't considered the question until now.

  “I wonder,” Hull mused. “In spite of your bellicose appearance, you don't seem the type. What if you find yourself incapable of killing me? What if you hesitate at the crucial moment when steel grates on steel?”

  “I'll chance it,” Blaine said.

  Hull nodded agreeably. “And so will I. Perhaps, hidden deep within you, a spark of murder burns. Perhaps not. This doubt will add spice to the game — though you may not have time to savour it.”

  “That's my worry,” Blaine said, feeling an intense dislike for his elegant and rhetorical employer. “Might I ask you a question?”

  “Consider me at your service.”

  “Thank you. Why do you wish to die?”

  Hull stared at him, then burst into laughter. “Now I know you’re from the past! What a question!”

  “Can you answer it?”

  “Of course,” Hull said. He leaned back in his chair, and his eyes took on the dreamy look of a man forming rhetoric.

  “I am forty-three years old, and weary of nights and days. I am wealthy man, and an uninhibited one. I have experimented, contrived, laughed, wept, loved, hated, tasted and drunk — my fill. I have sampled all Earth has to offer me, and I choose not to tediously repeat the experience. When I was young, I pictured this excellent green planet revolving mysteriously around its flamboyant yellow luminary as a treasure-trove, a brass box of delights inexhaustible in content and immeasurable in their effect upon my ever-eager desires. But now, sadly, I have lived longer and have witnessed sensation's end. And now I see with what bourgeois complacency our fat round Earth circles, at wary distance and unvarying pace, its gaudy dreaded star. And the imagined treasure chest of the Earth seems now a child's painted toy box, shallow in its contents and mediocre in its effect upon nerves too quickly deadened to all delight.”

  Hull glanced at Blaine to note the effect of his words, and then went on.

  “Boredom stretches before me now like a vast, arid plain — and I choose not to be bored. I choose, instead, to move on, move forward, move out; to sample Earth's last and greatest adventure — the adventure of Death, gateway to the afterlife. Can you understand that?”

  “Of course,” Blaine said, irritated yet impressed by Hull's theatrics. “But what's the rush? Life might have some good things still in store for you. And death is inevitable. Why rush it?”

  “Spoken like a true 20th Century optimist,” Hull said, laughing. “ ‘Life is real, life is earnest…’ In your day, one had to believe that life was real and earnest. What alternative was there? How many of you really believed in a life after death?”

  “That doesn't alter the validity of my point,” Blaine said, hating the stodgy, cautious, reasonable position he was forced to assume.

  “But it does! The perspective on life and death has changed now. Instead of Longfellow's prosy advice, we follow Nietzsche's dictum — to die at the right time! Intelligent people don't clutch at the last shreds of life like drowning men clinging to a bit of board. They know that the body's life is only an infinitesimal portion of man's total existence. Why shouldn't they speed the body's passing by a few years if they so desire? Why shouldn't those bright pupils skip a grade or two of school? Only the frightened, the stupid, the uneducated grasp at every possible monotonous second on Earth.”

  “The frightened, stupid and uneducated,” Blaine repeated. “And the unfortunates who can't afford Hereafter insurance.”

  “Wealth and class have their privileges,” Hull said, smiling faintly, “and their obligations as well. One of those obligations is the necessity of dying at the right time, before one becomes a bore to one's peers and a horror to oneself. But the deed of dying transcends class and breeding. It is every man's patent of nobility, his summons from the king, his knightly adventure, the greatest deed of his life. And how he acquits himself in that lonely and perilous enterprise is his true measure as a man.”

  Hull's blue eyes were fierce and glittering. He said, “I do not wish to experience this crucial event in bed. I do not wish a dull, tame, commonplace death to sneak over me disguised as sleep. I choose to die — fighting!”

  Blaine nodded in spite of himself and felt regret at his own prosaic death. A car accident! How dull, tame, and commonplace! And how strange, dark, atavistic and noble seemed Hull's lordly selection of death. Pretentious, of course; but then, life itself was a pretension in the vast universe of unliving matter. Hull was like an ancient Japanese nobleman calmly kneeling to perform the ceremonial act of hara-kiri and emphasizing the importance of life in the very selection of death. But hara-kiri was a passive Eastern avowal; while Hull's manner of dying was a Western death, fierce, violent, exultant.

  It was admirable. But intensely irritating to a man not yet prepared to die.

  Blaine said, “I have nothing against you or any other man choosing his death. But what about the hunters you plan to kill? They haven't chosen to die, and they won't survive in the hereafter.”

  Hull shrugged his shoulders. “They choose to live dangerously. In Nietzsche's phrase, they prefer to run risk and danger, and play dice with death. Blaine, have you changed your mind?”

  “No.”

  “Then we will meet Sunday.”

  Blaine went to the door and took his paper of instructions from the butler. As he was leaving, he said, “I wonder if you've considered one last thing.”

  “What is that?” Hull asked.

  “You must have thought of it,” Blaine said. “The possibility that this whole elaborate setup — the scientific hereafter, voices of the dead, ghosts — are merely a gigantic hoax, a money-making fraud perpetrated by Hereafter, Inc.”

  Hull stood perfectly still. When he spoke there was a hint or anger in his voice. “That is quite impossible. Only a very uneducated man could think such a thing.”

  “Maybe,” Blaine said. “But wouldn't you look silly if it were a hoax! Good morning, Mr. Hull.”

  He left, glad to have shaken up that smooth, smug, fancy, rhetorical bastard even for a moment — and sad that his own death had been so dull, tame, and commonplace.

  16

  The following day, Saturday, Blaine went to Franchel
's apartment for his rifle, bayonet, hunter's uniform and pack. He was given half his salary in advance, less ten percent and the cost of the equipment. The money was very welcome, for he had been down to three dollars and change.

  He went to the Spiritual Switchboard, but Melhill had left no further messages for him. He returned to his hotel room and spent the afternoon practicing lunges and parries.

  That evening Blaine found himself tense and despondent, and nervous at the thought of the hunt beginning in the morning. He went to a small West Side cocktail lounge that had been designed to resemble a 20th Century bar, with a dark gleaming bar, wooden stools, booths, a brass rail, and sawdust on the floor. He slid into a booth and ordered beer. The classic neon lights glowed softly, and a genuine antique juke box played the sentimental tunes of Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman. Blaine sat, hunched over his glass of beer, drearily asking himself who and what he was.

  Was it truly he taking casual employment as a hunter and killer of men?

  Then what happened to Tom Blaine, the former designer of sailboats, former listener to high-fidelity music, former reader of fine books, former viewer of good plays? What happened to that quiet, sardonic, non-aggressive man?

  Surely that man, housed in his slender, nervous, unassuming body, would never choose to kill!

  Would he?

  Was that familiar and regretted Blaine defeated and smothered by the large, square-muscled, quick-reflexed fighter's body he had acquired? And was that body, with its own peculiar glandular secretions dripping into the dark bloodstream, its own distinct and configurated brain, its own system of nerves and signals and responses — was that domineering body responsible for everything, dragging its helpless owner into murderous violence?

  Blaine rubbed his eyes and told himself that he was dreaming nonsense. The truth simply was: He had died through circumstances beyond his control, been reborn in the future, and found himself unemployable except as a hunter. Q.E.D.

  But that rational explanation didn't satisfy him, and he no longer had time to search out the slippery and elusive truth.

  He was no longer a detached observer of 2110. He had become a biased participant, an actor instead of an onlooker, with all of an actor's thoughtless sweep and rush. Action was irresistible, it generated its own momentary truth. The brakes were off, and the engine Blaine was rolling down the steep hill Life, gathering momentum but no moss. Perhaps this, now, was his last chance for a look, a summing up, a measured choice…