Immortality, Inc
Page 19
“But you’re not to blame!” Marie said. “It would never have happened if Rex Power Systems and I hadn't created that special opportunity for you.”
“Yes. But I seized the opportunity,” Blaine said, “seized it and performed a cold-blooded murder just for fun, because I knew I could never be caught at it. My murder.”
“Well… Our murder,” she said.
“Yes.”
“All right, we’re murderers,” Marie said calmly. “Accept it, Tom. Don't get mushy-minded about it. We've killed once, we can kill again.”
“Never,” Blaine said.
“He's almost finished! I swear to you, Tom, there's not a month of life in him. He's almost played out. One blow and he's done for. One push.”
“I'm not that kind of murderer,” Blaine said.
“Will you let me do it?”
“I'm not that kind, either.”
“You idiot! Then just do nothing! Wait. A month, no more than that, and he's finished. You can wait a month, Tom —”
“More murder,” Blaine said wearily.
“Tom! You’re not going to give him your body! What about our life together?”
“Do you think we could go on after this?” Blaine asked. “I couldn't. Now stop arguing with me. I don't know if I'd do this if there weren't a hereafter. Quite probably I wouldn't. But there is a hereafter. I'd like to go there with my accounts as straight as possible, all bills paid in full, all restitutions made. If this were my only existence, I'd cling to it with everything I've got. But it isn't! Can you understand that?”
“Yes, of course,” Marie said unhappily.
“Frankly, I'm getting pretty curious about this afterlife. I want to see it. And there's one thing more.”
“What's that?”
Marie's shoulders were trembling, so Blaine put his arm around her. He was thinking back to the conversation he had had with Hull, the elegant and aristocratic Quarry.
Hull had said: “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 those bright pupils skip a grade or two of school?”
Blaine remembered how strange, dark, atavistic and noble Hull's lordly selection of death had seemed. Pretentious, of course; but then, life itself was a pretension in the vast universe of unliving matter. Hull had seemed like an ancient Japanese nobleman kneeling to perform the ceremonial act of hara-kiri, and emphasizing the importance of life in the very selection of death.
And Hull had said: “The deed of dying transcends class and breeding. It is every man's patent of nobility, his summons from the king, his knightly adventure. And how he acquits himself in that lonely and perilous enterprise is his true measure as a man.”
Marie broke into his reverie, asking, “What was that one thing more?”
“Oh.” Blaine thought for a moment. “I just wanted to say that I guess some of the attitudes of the 22nd century have rubbed off on me. Especially the aristocratic ones.” He grinned and kissed her. “But of course, I always had good taste.”
36
Blaine opened the door of the cottage. “Robinson,” he said, “come with me to the Suicide Booth. I'm giving you my body.”
“I expected no less of you, Tom,” the zombie said.
“Then let's go.”
Together they went slowly down the mountainside. Marie watched them from a window for a few seconds, then started down after them.
They stopped at the door to the Suicide Booth. Blaine said, “Do you think you can take over all right?”
“I'm sure of it,” Robinson said. “Tom, I'm grateful for this. I'll use your body well.”
“It's not mine, really,” Blaine said. “Belonged to a fellow named Kranch. But I've grown fond of it. You'll get used to its habits. Just remind it once in a while who's boss. Sometimes it wants to go hunting.”
“I think I'll like that,” Robinson said.
“Yes, I suppose you would. Well, good luck.”
“Good luck to you, Tom.”
Marie came up and kissed Blaine goodbye with icy lips. Blaine said, “What will you do?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “I don't know. I feel so numb… Tom, must you?”
“I must,” Blaine said.
He looked around once more at the palm trees whispering under the sun, the blue expanse of the sea, and the great dark mountain above him cut with silver waterfalls. Then he turned and entered the Suicide Booth, and closed the door behind him.
There were no windows, no furniture except a single chair. The instructions posted on one wall were very simple. You just sat down, and, at your leisure, closed the switch upon the right arm. You would then die, quickly and painlessly, and your body would be left intact for the next inhabitant. Blaine sat down, made sure of the location of the switch and leaned back, his eyes closed.
He thought again about the first time he died, and wished it had been more interesting. By rights he should have rectified the error this time, and gone down like Hull, hunted fiercely across a mountain ledge at sundown. Why couldn't it have been like that? Why couldn't death have come while he was battling a typhoon, meeting a tiger's charge, or climbing Mount Everest? Why, again, would his death be so tame, so commonplace, so ordinary?
But then, why had he never really designed yachts?
An enterprising death, he realized again, would be out of character for him. Undoubtedly he was meant to die in just this quick, commonplace, painless way. And all his life in the future must have gone into the forming and shaping of this death — a vague indication when Reilly died, a fair certainty in the Palace of Death, an implacable destiny when he settled in Taiohae.
Still, no matter how ordinary, one's death is the most interesting event of one's life. Blaine looked forward eagerly to his.
He had no complaint to make. Although he had lived in the future little over a year, he had gained its greatest prize — the hereafter! He felt again what he had experienced after leaving the Hereafter Building — release from the heavy, sodden, constant, unconscious fear of death that subtly weighed every action and permeated every movement. No man of his own age could live without the shadow that crept down the corridors of his mind like some grisly tapeworm, the ghost that haunted nights and days, the croucher behind corners, the shape behind doors, the unseen guest at every banquet, the unidentified figure in every landscape, always present, always waiting —
No more!
For now the ancient enemy was defeated. And men no longer died; they moved on!
But he had gained even more than an afterlife. He had managed to squeeze and compress an entire lifetime into that year.
He had been born in a white room with dazzling lights and a doctor's bearded face above him, and a motherly nurse to feed him while he listened, alarmed, to the babble of strange tongues. He had ventured early into the world, raw and uneducated, and had stared at the oriental marvel of New York, and allowed a straight-eyed fast-talking stranger to make a fool and nearly a corpse of him, until wiser heads rescued him from his folly and soothed his pain. Clothed in his fine, strong, mysterious body he had ventured out again, wiser this time, and had moved as an equal among men equipped with glittering weapons in the pursuit of danger and honor. And he had lived through that folly, too, and still older, had chosen an honorable occupation. But certain dark omens present at his birth finally reached fruition, and he had to flee his homeland and run to the farthest corner of the Earth. Yet he still managed to acquire a family on the way; a family with certain skeletons in the closet, but his all the same. In the fullness of manhood he had come to a land he loved, taken a wife, and, on his honeymoon, seen the mountains of Moorea flaming in the sunset. He had settled down to spend his declining months in peace and useful labor, and in fond recollection of the wonders he had seen. And so he had spent them, honored and respected by all. It
was sufficient. Blaine turned the switch.
37
“Where am I? Who am I? What am I?”
No answer.
“I remember. I am Thomas Blaine, and I have just died. I am now in the Threshold, a very real and completely indescribable place. I sense Earth. And ahead, I sense the hereafter.”
“Tom —”
“Marie!”
“Yes.”
“But how could you — I didn't think —”
“Well, perhaps in some ways I wasn't a very good wife, Tom. But I was always a faithful one, and I did what I did for you. I love you, Tom. Of course I would follow.”
“Marie, this makes me very happy.”
“I'm glad.”
“Shall we go on?”
“Where, Tom?”
“Into the hereafter.”
“Tom, I'm frightened. Couldn't we just stay right here for a while?”
“It'll be all right. Come with me.”
“Oh, Tom! What if they separate us? What will it be like? I don't think I'm going to like it. I'm afraid it's going to be terribly strange and ghostly and horrible.”
“Marie, don't worry. I've been a junior yacht designer three times in two lifetimes. It's my destiny! Surely it can't end here!”
“All right. I'm ready now, Tom. Let's go.”
— The End —
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Table of Contents
PART ONE
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
PART TWO
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
PART THREE
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
PART FOUR
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37