by Chad Oliver
Harry considered. “Okay, I’ll buy that. Why can’t you put me in a young body?”
Mavor looked shocked. “It doesn’t work that way. We are not in the immortality business, Mr. Eddington. The transfer is only possible—mechanically and legally—between two persons of the same physiological age. We have a leeway of a week or two at best. If you had studied The Dynamic Mechanics of Personality Transfer….”
“I’ll take your word for it. Look, if this is such a good deal for me, how come the other guy is so willing to take my place?”
Mavor waved at the pictures on the walls. “People are funny, Mr. Eddington. One man’s meat, you know.”
“It can’t be that simple.”
“It is and it isn’t. Look at it this way. What we have in the modern world is a situation in which most of the people—numerically speaking, if that isn’t overly redundant—live in what amounts to the same basic culture, the urban, industrialized, technologically sophisticated culture that you and I grew up in. The rest of the people—small in total numbers, but rich in diversity—live in the remnants of primitive societies or in peasant enclaves. In your case, there is no point to shifting from one area to another within the same basic culture pattern. You have to go elsewhere, into the primitive world. Now, to most primitive peoples, romantic gush to the contrary, the chance to have a shot at this glittering outside world of ours is overwhelmingly attractive. Such a man, perhaps regrettably, doesn’t think much in terms of subtle satisfactions and delicate personality adjustments. He hasn’t got much of anything, by our standards, and he wants a car, a copter, a big house with a fancy bathroom, a TV, money, power. In short, he wants what you have got. You have to live as a poor, powerless man before you can appreciate the other side of the coin. And you have to live as a rich, lonely man to understand the rewards of other ways of living. Neither man can tell the other one anything, but we have found that both are eager and willing to make the exchange.”
“It doesn’t cost the other guy anything?”
“He hasn’t any wealth, in our terms. It has to be paid for at this end.”
Harry nodded slowly. He thought he would know a snow job when he heard one, and Mavor seemed to be giving him straight answers. “I thought these—uh—savages were dying out. What if there’s no place to go? Suppose the culture fizzles out while I’m still alive?”
Richard Mavor, who wouldn’t see forty again, was an experienced man. He had a lot at stake, and he had the answers to tougher questions than the ones that Harry Eddington was asking. “It’s a funny thing, actually. You’d be surprised how many primitive cultures there are left, to say nothing of peasant societies. We always tend to think that the whole world is like ourselves; that’s been true all through history. But God knows how many cultures there were on this planet that never even heard of the Roman Empire, say. Even now, there are quite a few cultures kicking around that are radically different from our own—in Africa, in India, in South America, in New Guinea and other places. Our job is to know where those cultures are and what they are like. We employ as many anthropologists as the ten leading universities in this country combined, and we spend a great deal of money to ensure that those cultures will survive for a reasonable length of time. But let’s be frank about this, Mr. Eddington. If you’re looking for a romantic, untouched island full of beautiful, happy people who are totally uncontaminated by any taint of contact with the outside world, you can forget it. It doesn’t exist. All we have to offer are real people and real places. We have no convenient time machine at our disposal. We can’t put you in Utopia. But you certainly wouldn’t be happy in never-never land anyway, believe me. There have to be a few problems or there is no zest to living—and that’s the whole idea, isn’t it?”
Harry felt a growing sense of excitement. There might be a catch in it somewhere, but he couldn’t see it. It was a little like heaven; nobody ever came back to give you a first-hand report. But what did he have to lose?
“Where could I go?” he asked. “What would it be like?”
Richard Mavor smiled with considerable relief. He knew exactly where Harry was going. He even had the agreement ready with the man Harry was scheduled to replace. The man’s name was Wambua. Mavor was pleased for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that he felt a certain kinship with Harry. Of course, it wouldn’t do to move too fast. He had to be careful.
“We’ll have to run some tests, match you up with what we have available. We want you to be completely satisfied, as I told you. Until the contracts are signed, however—”
Harry stood up. “My lawyer is outside,” he said firmly. “Let’s get on with it.”
Two weeks later, on Harry’s last night as Harry Eddington, he took Emily to a movie. It was a very modern movie: it was filmed in jerky movements like a silent film, it was equipped with smell and sensations, and it had neither beginning nor ending. Harry didn’t care; his mind was on tomorrow.
When they got home, both of them seemed preoccupied. Emily smiled at him, which was unusual. “Goodnight, Harry,” she said, and went into her own room and locked the door.
“Goodbye, Emily,” said Harry.
He was smiling too.
The African sun gave little warmth in April. It was the middle of the long rains in Kenya, and the hills of Ngelani were damp and chilly. Wambua wa Mathenge, who had once been a man named Harry Eddington, pulled his tattered gray blanket around his naked shoulders and shivered.
“I will have more beer,” he said, extending his tin cup.
Ndambuki poured from the calabash without comment. Wambua’s cup was clean, as usual, but then Wambua had been a little peculiar lately.
Wambua took a sip of beer and spat it on the ground for the aimu, the ancestors. The aimu were welcome to it, in Wambua’s opinion; the beer, made from quickly fermented sugar cane juice, was a far cry from Budweiser.
He looked around. The fields, each one marked off by a hedge of sisal, stretched forlornly over the treeless hillsides. Even now the women were working with the crops, as was fitting. A group of boys walked along the valley trail, pushing a herd of skinny hump-backed cattle. Wambua smiled, showing his filed and pointed teeth. He liked to look at cows. Cows were wealth, and cows could pay the bride-price for his sons when Wambua was good and ready for them to marry.
A jet screamed through the sky, flashing over the huts of sun-dried brick and thatch, headed for Nairobi. Wambua’s smile vanished. Those damned American tourists …
“Wambua!” It was Kioko who spoke, Kioko of the splendid beard. “You are dreaming, mutumia. Have you forgotten that we have a case to decide when the council meets tomorrow?”
Wambua felt a small glow of pleasure. Kioko had called him mutumia, elder. He was an elder, of course, as were most men of his age among the Kamba. All of the men seated around the little fire and sharing beer from the calabash were elders, as was only proper. “I am giving the matter much thought. More beer, Ndambuki?”
Ndambuki, who was the junior elder present, poured again.
Wambua was thinking; that was true enough. But it was hard to concentrate. He was sure that a witch was after his cows. Two of them had gone lame in the past week alone. It was high time he went to the mundu mue and had the doctor cast his bead. Of course, he was not unmindful of his duty. His opinion had been sought in an important legal case. If the elders did not maintain law and order, who would?
He sipped his beer thoughtfully. “I will tell you this, Kioko,” he said. “When you need nine men, Wathome is number ten.”
The elders gathered around the calabash chuckled. That was a good proverb, very apt indeed.
“A frog cannot stop a cow from drinking,” Wambua continued. “Moreover, a neighbor makes a smelling sheath.”
Ndambuki slapped his thigh. Wambua might be acting a little strange, but he was no dumb Masai when it came to legal cases.
Wambua delivered his opinion on the case at some length. He was enjoying himself hugely. Let the wome
n work the fields and haul the firewood on their backs, this was a job for a man. This took real skill.
“Never fight a war with your finger,” he concluded solemnly.
The discussion went on all afternoon. The beer dwindled in the calabash until nothing was left but a sticky residue for the flies. The fire died down to an orange pile of hissing coals.
Wambua glanced up in time to see Muema, the first son of his first wife, walking down the trail toward him. Muema stopped at a respectful distance from the knot of elders. “Father,” he said, “your food has been prepared, if you desire to eat it.”
Wambua grunted. It was the duty of a son to assist his father when his father had been long at the beer calabash, but Wambua felt perfectly capable of navigating. Still, it would be pleasant to walk with his son. He stood up and checked his charms. The ball of lion hair and the small antelope horn were in their proper places, along with his cigarette lighter and package of filter-tips. Wambua had not yet adapted to snuff.
“Do you wish me to take your arm?” asked Muema.
“I can walk,” Wambua assured him. The boy was being very careful with his manners. He had better be, Wambua thought. Otherwise, Wambua would not give him any cows, and that would be a disaster. No cows, no bride.
Wambua picked up his elder’s staff. It was made of hard brown wood, smoothly polished from years of use. It was seven feet long and had a little fork at the top end. Only an elder could carry such a stick.
His son fell in behind him and Wambua started up the steep trail that led to his cluster of huts. He blinked his eyes against the gray drizzle. The huts would be warm and pleasantly smoky. He had not yet decided which wife he would favor tonight. A man should try to be fair. It was really Syomiti’s turn. There was too much witchcraft around to take needless chances. On the other hand, Mbinya was young and appealing….
He gripped his stick firmly and hummed a little tune.
Wambua did not regret the choice he had made, not for a moment.
He would not have changed places with anyone else in the world.
Emily Eddington stared out of the window of the TV room and frowned with annoyance. The damned cows were still there in her backyard, standing placidly in the moonlight. She could smell them right through the air conditioner.
What was worse, she could smell Harry too. Harry wasn’t much of a one for taking baths.
Harry wasn’t much of a one for anything, if it came to that. He spent his time staring at the TV or zooming through the city air in his copter. Emily had been expecting a bit of a thrill from being married to a man who was, after all, something of a savage. She had been disappointed, to say the least. Harry treated his cows with more consideration than he showed her.
Emily turned away from the window. She had on her most seductive negligee and her sexiest gown under it.
“I’m going to bed, Harry,” she said softly.
Harry Eddington, who had once been a man named Wambua wa Mathenge, continued to gaze with rapt fascination at a western program on TV. There were lots of cows in the show. He did not bother to look up at Emily.
“I will inform you when you are wanted,” Harry said.
Emily went up the stairs, boiling mad.
Tomorrow, she was going to have a good long talk with dear old Richard.
“I can’t stand it, do you hear?” Emily said.
“It won’t be for long, dear,” Richard Mavor said patiently. “You really shouldn’t come here to the office. It’s too dangerous.”
Emily began to cry. “You don’t love me any more,” she said, crossing her admirable legs.
Mavor kissed her gently. “You know better than that, Emily. I don’t like this waiting either. But we have to be careful. If the Exchange finds out about that kickback—”
“You said you could work everything out.”
“I am working everything out. Be reasonable, darling. When you first came to me about Harry—the first Harry, that is—I told you that I could arrange it so that you would get part of that seven million back. You got it, didn’t you? You are still a very wealthy woman, Emily.”
“I don’t care. I did it for you, Richard, you know that. And now here I am stuck with that—that cowboy—”
Mavor felt a warm glow. She did care for him, at least a little. He knew Emily’s faults; he had no illusions about her. But he had fallen hard for Emily Eddington. He had wanted her from the first moment he had seen her, and he still wanted her. Their clandestine meetings were not enough, not nearly enough….
Mavor put on his most convincing manner, which could be quite convincing indeed when he set his mind to it. And he set his mind to it without reservation: his whole future depended on it. “We can’t stretch the law too far, darling. We have to wait until Harry—the second Harry, that is—gets tired of his new toys and starts thinkin’. It will take a few years, that’s all. Then, when you’ve made him thoroughly miserable, we can plant that ad about the cattle ranch where he’ll be sure to see it. I’ve explained all this before, sugar; we both agreed to the plan, and we have to stick with it. Harry Number Two is not Harry Number One, not quite. He won’t put up with a difficult wife, and he won’t be tempted by any primitive society—he’s been there. Harry Number Two will take the divorce route, which will be just fine. He’ll have his cattle ranch, you’ll still have plenty of money, and we can get married.”
Emily dried her eyes. “Oh, I know—you’re right, dear—but I hate this waiting….”
“So do I. But it’s the only way. Our time will come.”
“Kiss me again, Richard. Really kiss me.”
Mavor did so. It was quite a kiss.
“I’ll go now,” she said, her spirits much restored. “Same time and place as usual?”
“I’ll be there.”
“Don’t forget about me, Richard.”
“Not a chance,” he assured her.
He showed her out, his heart pounding.
Richard Mavor sat behind his polished desk and smiled with pardonable pride. He figured that by any reasonable standard he had done pretty well for a mere wage-earner faced with retirement.
“Everybody wins,” he said aloud.
Harry Number One, he was sure, was a happier man today. He knew all about Harry Number One; they were a lot alike in many ways, even down to such details as having fallen for the same woman. Harry Number Two was having a good time, and would enjoy himself even more with his cattle ranch. And Emily—
Well, Emily Eddington was as probably as happy as she could ever be. She was a restless woman, she would always move from one man to another, but she was basically satisfied in a culture that completely suited her.
Richard Mavor wanted his woman to be happy. He was going to marry her as soon as it could be arranged, and he was going to do his best to make the marriage a good one. But he did not delude himself. Emily had not been content with Harry Number One, she was not content with Harry Number Two, and she would not be content with Richard Mavor when she got him.
Well, that was the way it was. A man had to be practical.
At the very least, he would have Emily to himself for a few years. He would have a taste of luxury while it lasted.
And when she tired of him, or he of her—
He smiled. There was a remedy available. He was an expert in that particular field.
He looked up at his favorite picture. The African man in the butter-yellow sunlight was still leaning on his staff, gazing out at the herd of thin, hump-backed cattle.
“Save a stick for me, Harry,” Richard Mavor said quietly.
OLD FOUR-EYES
It was not fear that she felt. Fear was natural to her. Fear was a part of the innate caution of her species.
This was terror.
Her liquid brown eyes stared without hope from her gray-streaked mask of fur. Her long flattened ears quivered against her shoulders. Her old-ivory claws dug convulsively into the dry grass that lined her nest. She could not retract them.
She had never known loneliness but she knew it now. He was not coming back to her. He could not come back.
She had never been trapped. There had always been a way out. So casually, it seemed, so uncaringly, there was nowhere to go.
The sounds of death were all around her. Death? Worse than death. Extinction. She knew the concept.
There was a hunger in her to climb the sky. If she could fly, she could escape. She often watched the birds. It seemed to her that the higher they flew the more freedom they had. If she could soar above the sun and beyond the stars, she might live forever.
But she could not fly. Not alone. The best she could do was to climb a tree. That wasn’t good enough.
The noises surrounded her, tearing at her guts. The steady unyielding clank of machinery. The whine of car tires on the hot hard road slashes. The betrayal of barking dogs. And the worst sound, the one that lanced her heart: the screeching high-pitched beep-beep-beep of the metal construction dragons running in reverse.
She understood what was happening. It was not mysterious to her.
The strongest instincts she had urged her to wait, to blend, to make no moves. That was the way.
But she could smell the Enemy in the windless oily air, and the Enemy was swarming. The Enemy controlled the technology and it was too much to fight. She could not hide. There was no space.
The Enemy. Was he not always and eternally the same? A killer, a chopper, a mindless destroyer? Once, long before the complex machines, he had eaten anything that moved. Lizards, snakes, bugs, turtles. Her own kind he had stone-boiled alive. She could call up the images from the meshing of memories. Now, she was not even meat. Boys who neither knew nor cared what she was fired pellets at her for sport. Steel blades tried to scoop her up for garbage. Metallic treads crushed her nests so completely that sometimes she could not locate them.
She was not in the way, not really. She was too small for that.
