9

 

 

Mr. Reilly sat erect and almost lost in a great, soft, thronelike chair. He was a tiny, bald, spiderlike 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, every day 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.