30

 

 

There was no sense of awakening, no feeling of transition. Abruptly, like a brilliantly colored slide projected upon a white screen, he was conscious. Suddenly, like a marionette jerked into violent life, he was acting and moving.

He was not completely Thomas Blaine. He was Edgar Dyersen as well. Or he was Blaine within Dyersen, an integral part of Dyersen’s body, a segment of Dyersen’s mind, viewing the world through Dyersen’s rheumy eyes, thinking Dyersen’s thoughts, experiencing all the shadowy half- conscious fragments of Dyersen’s memories, hopes, fears and desires. And yet he was still Blaine.

Dyersen-Blaine came out of the ploughed field and rested against his wooden fence. He was a farmer, an old-fashioned South Jersey truck farmer, with a minimum of machines which he distrusted anyhow. He was close to seventy and in damn good health. There was still a touch of arthritis in his joints, which the smart young medico in the village had mostly fixed; and his back sometimes gave him trouble before rain. But he considered himself healthy, healthier than most, and good for another twenty years.

Dyersen-Blaine started toward his cottage. His gray workshirt was drenched in acrid sweat, and sweat stained his shapeless levis.

In the distance he heard a dog barking and saw, blurrily, a yellow and brown shape come bounding toward him. (Eyeglasses? No thank you. Doing pretty well with what I got.)

“Hey, Champ! Hey there, boy!”

The dog ran a circle around him, then trotted along beside him. He had something gray in his jaws, a rat or perhaps a piece of meat. Dyersen-Blaine couldn’t quite make it out.

He bent down to pat Champ’s head …

 

Again there was no sense of transition or of the passage of time. A new slide was simply projected onto the screen, and a new marionette was jerked into life.

Now he was Thompson-Blaine, nineteen years old, lying on his back half dozing on the rough planks of a sailing skiff, the mainsheet and tiller held loosely in one brown hand. To starboard lay the low Eastern shore, and to his port he could see a bit of Baltimore Harbor. The skiff moved easily on the light summer breeze, and water gurgled merrily beneath the forefoot.

Thompson-Blaine rearranged his lanky, tanned body on the planks, squirming around until he had succeeded in propping his feet against the mast. He had been home just a week, after a two year work and study program on Mars. It had sure been interesting, especially the archaeology and speleology. The sand-farming had gotten dull sometimes, but he had enjoyed driving the harvesting machines.

Now he was home for a two-year accelerated college course. Then he was supposed to return to Mars as a farm manager. That’s the way his scholarship read. But they couldn’t make him go back if he didn’t want to.

Maybe he would. And maybe not.

The girls on Mars were such dedicated types. Tough, capable, and always a little bossy. When he went back—if he went back—he’d bring his own wife, not look for one there. Of course there had been Marcia, and she’d really been something. But her whole kibbutz had moved to the South Polar Gap, and she hadn’t answered his last three letters. Maybe she hadn’t been so much, anyhow.

“Hey, Sandy!”

Thompson-Blaine looked up and saw Eddie Duelitle, sailing his Thistle, waving at him. Languidly Thompson-Blaine waved back. Eddie was only seventeen, had never been off Earth, and wanted to be a spaceliner captain. Huh! Fat chance!

The sun was dipping toward the horizon, and Thompson-Blaine was glad to see it go down. He had a date tonight with Jennifer Hunt. They were going dancing at Starsling in Baltimore, and Dad was letting him use the heli. Man, how Jennifer had grown in two years! And she had a way of looking at a guy, sort of coy and bold at the same time. No telling what might happen after the dance, in the back seat of the heli. Maybe nothing. But maybe, maybe …

Thompson-Blaine sat up and put the tiller over. The skiff came into the wind and tacked over. It was time to return to the yacht basin, then home for dinner, then …

* * *

The blacksnake whip flicked across his back.

“Get working there, you!”

Piggot-Blaine redoubled his efforts, lifting the heavy pick high in the air and swinging it down into the dusty roadbed. The guard stood nearby, shotgun under his left arm, whip in his right, its lash trailing in the dust. Piggot-Blaine knew every line and pore of that guard’s thin, stupid face, knew the downward twist of the tight little mouth, knew the squint of the faded eyes just like he knew his own face.

Just wait, buzzard meat, he silently told the guard. Your time’s a-coming. Just wait, wait just a bit.

The guard moved away, walking slowly up and down the line of prisoners laboring under the white, Mississippi sun. Piggot-Blaine tried to spit, but couldn’t work up enough saliva. He thought, you talk about your fine modern world? Talk about your big old spaceships, your automatic farms, your big fine fat old hereafter? Think that’s how it is? Then ask ’em how they build the roads in Quilleg County, Northern Mississippi. They won’t tell you, so you better look for yourself and find out. Cause that’s the kind of world it really is!

Arny, working in front of him, whispered, “You ready, Otis? You ready for it?”

“I’m a-ready,” Piggot-Blaine whispered, his broad fingers clenching and unclenching on the pick’s plastic handle. “I’m past ready, Arny.”

“In a second, then. Watch Jeff.”

Piggot-Blaine’s hairy chest swelled expectantly. He brushed lank brown hair from his eyes and watched Jeff, five men ahead on the chain. Piggot-Blaine waited, his shoulders aching from sunburn. There were callused scars on his ankles from the hoofcuffs, and old seams on his back from earlier whippings. He had a raging thirst in his gut. But no dipperful of water could ever cut that thirst, nothing could, that crazy thirst that brought him in here after he’d dismembered Gainsville’s single saloon and killed that stinking old Indian.

Jeff’s hand moved. The chained line of prisoners sprang forward. Piggot-Blaine jumped toward the thin-faced guard, his pick swung high, as the guard dropped his whip and fumbled to bring up the shotgun.

“Buzzard meat!” Piggot-Blaine screamed, and brought the pick down fair in the guard’s forehead.

“Get the keys!”

Piggot-Blaine grabbed the keys from the dead guard’s belt. He heard a shotgun go off, heard a high scream of agony. Anxiously he looked up …

 

Ramirez-Blaine was piloting his heli above the flat Texas plains, heading for El Paso. He was a serious young man and he paid strict attention to his work, coaxing the last knot of speed out of the old heli so he could reach El Paso before Johnson’s Hardware Store closed.

He handled the balky rattletrap with care, and only an occasional thought came through his concentration, quick thoughts about the altitude and compass readings, a dance in Guanajuato next week, the price of hides in Ciudad Juárez.

The plain was mottled green and yellow below him. He glanced at his watch, then at the airspeed indicator.

Yes, Ramirez-Blaine thought, he would make El Paso before the store closed! He might even have time for a little …

* * *

Tyler-Blaine wiped his mouth on his sleeve and sopped up the last of the grease gravy on a piece of corn bread. He belched, pushed his chair back from the kitchen table and stood up. With elaborate unconcern he took a cracked bowl from the pantry and filled it with scraps of pork, a few greens, and a big piece of corn bread.

“Ed,” his wife said, “what are you doing?”

He glanced at her. She was gaunt, tangle- haired, and faded past her years. He looked away, not answering.

“Ed! Tell me, Ed!”

Tyler-Blaine looked at her in annoyance, feeling his ulcer stir at the sound of that sharp, worried voice. Sharpest voice in all California, he told himself, and he’d married it. Sharp voice, sharp nose, sharp elbows and knees, breastless and barren to boot. Legs to support a body, but not for a second’s delight. A belly for filling, not for touching. Of all the girls in California he’d doubtless picked the sorriest, just like the damn fool his Uncle Rafe always said he was.

“Where you taking that bowl of food?” she asked.

“Out to feed the dog,” Tyler-Blaine said, moving toward the door.

“We ain’t got no dog! Oh Ed, don’t do it, not tonight!”

“I’m doin’ it,” he said, glad of her discomfort.

“Please, not tonight. Let him shift for himself somewhere else. Ed, listen to me! What if the town found out?”

“It’s past sundown,” Tyler-Blaine said, standing beside the door with his bowl of food.

“People spy,” she said. “Ed, if they find out they’ll lynch us, you know they will.”

“You’d look mighty spry from the end of a rope,” Tyler-Blaine remarked, opening the door.

“You do it just to spite me!” she cried.

He closed the door behind him. Outside, it was deep twilight. Tyler-Blaine stood in his yard near the unused chicken coop, looking around. The only house near his was the Flannagan’s, a hundred yards away. But they minded their own business. He waited to make sure none of the town kids were snooping around. Then he walked forward, carefully holding the bowl of food.

He reached the edge of the scraggly woods and set the bowl down. “It’s all right,” he called softly. “Come out, Uncle Rafe.”

A man crawled out of the woods on all fours. His face was leaden-white, his lips bloodless, his eyes blank and staring, his features coarse and unfinished, like iron before tempering or clay before firing. A long cut across his neck had festered, and his right leg, where the townsfolk had broken it, hung limp and useless.

“Thanks, boy,” said Rafe, Tyler-Blaine’s zombie uncle.

The zombie quickly gulped down the contents of the bowl. When he had finished, Tyler-Blaine asked, “How you feeling, Uncle Rafe?”

“Ain’t feeling nothing. This old body’s about through. Another couple days, maybe a week, and I’ll be off your hands.”

“I’ll take care of you,” Tyler-Blaine said, “just as long as you can stay alive, Uncle Rafe. I wish I could bring you into the house.”

“No,” the zombie said, “they’d find out. This is risky enough … Boy, how’s that skinny wife of yours?”

“Just as mean as ever,” Tyler-Blaine sighed.

The zombie made a sound like laughter. “I warned you, boy, ten years ago I warned you not to marry that gal. Didn’t I?”

“You sure did, Uncle Rafe. You was the only one had sense. Sure wish I’d listened to you.”

“Better you had, boy. Well, I’m going back to my shelter.”

“You feel confident, Uncle?” Tyler-Blaine asked anxiously.

“That I do.”

“And you’ll try to die confident?”

“I will, boy. And I’ll get me into that Threshold, never you fear. And when I do, I’ll keep my promise. I truly will.”

“Thank you, Uncle Rafe.”

“I’m a man of my word. I’ll haunt her, boy, if the good Lord grants me Threshold. First comes that fat doctor that made me this. But then I’ll haunt her. I’ll haunt her crazy. I’ll haunt her ’til she runs the length of the state of California away from you!”

“Thanks, Uncle Rafe.”

The zombie made a sound like laughter and crawled back into the scraggly woods. Tyler-Blaine shivered uncontrollably for a moment, then picked up the empty bowl and walked back to the sagging washboard house …

 

Mariner-Blaine adjusted the strap of her bathing suit so that it clung more snugly to her slim, supple young body. She slipped the air tank over her back, picked up her respirator and walked toward the pressure lock.

“Janice?”

“Yes mother?” she said, turning, her face smooth and expressionless.

“Where are you going, dear?”

“Just out for a swim, Mom. I thought maybe I’d look at the new gardens on Level 12.”

“You aren’t by any chance planning to see Tom Leuwin, are you?”

Had her mother guessed? Mariner-Blaine smoothed her black hair and said, “Certainly not.”

“All right,” her mother said, half smiling and obviously not believing her. “Try to be home early, dear. You know how worried your father gets.”

She stooped and gave her mother a quick kiss, then hurried into the pressure lock. Mother knew, she was sure of it! And wasn’t stopping her! But then, why should she? After all, she was seventeen, plenty old enough to do anything she wanted. Kids grew up faster these days than they did in Mom’s time, though parents didn’t seem to realize it. Parents didn’t realize very much. They just wanted to sit around and plan out new acres for the farm. Their idea of fun was to listen to some old classic recording, a Bop piece or a Rock ’n’ Roll, and follow it with scores and talk about how free and expressionistic their ancestors had been. And sometimes they’d go through big, glossy art books filled with reproductions of 20th century Comic Strips, and talk about the lost art of satire. Their idea of a really Big Night was to go down to the gallery and stare reverently at the collection of Saturday Evening Post covers from the Great Period. But all that longhair stuff bored her. Nuts to art, she liked the sensories.

Mariner-Blaine adjusted her face mask and respirator, put on her flippers and turned the valve. In a few seconds the lock was filled with water. Impatiently she waited until the pressure had equalized with the water outside. Then the lock opened automatically and she shot out.

Her dad’s pressure farm was at the hundred foot level, not far from the mammoth underwater bulk of Hawaii. She turned downward, descending into the green bloom with quick, powerful strokes. Tom would be waiting for her at the coral caves.

The darkness grew as Mariner-Blaine descended. She switched on her headlamp and took a firmer bite on her respirator. Was it true, she wondered, that soon the undersea farmers would be able to grow their own gills? That’s what her science teacher said, and maybe it would happen in her own lifetime. How would she look with gills? Mysterious, probably, sleek and strange, a fish goddess.

Besides, she could always cover them with her hair if they weren’t becoming.

In the yellow glow of her lamp she saw the coral caves ahead, a red and pink branched labyrinth with cozy, airlocked places deep within, where you could be sure of privacy. And she saw Tom.

Uncertainty flooded her. Gosh, what if she had a baby? Tom had assured her it would be all right, but he was only nineteen. Was she right in doing this? They had talked about it often enough, and she had shocked him with her frankness. But talking and doing were very different things. What would Tom think of her if she said no? Could she make a joke out of it, pretend she’d just been teasing him?

Long and golden, Tom swam beside her toward the caves. He flashed hello in finger talk. A trigger fish swam by, and then a small shark.

What was she going to do? The caves were very near, looming dark and suggestive before them. Tom smiled at her, and she could feel her heart melting …

 

Elgin-Blaine sat upright, realizing that he must have dozed off. He was aboard a small motor vessel, sitting in a deck chair with blankets tucked around him. The little ship rolled and pitched in the cross-sea, but overhead the sun was brilliant, and the trade wind carried the diesel smoke away in a wide dark plume.

“You feeling better, Mr. Elgin?”

Elgin-Blaine looked up at a small, bearded man wearing a captain’s cap. “Fine, just fine,” he said.

“We’re almost there,” the captain said.

Elgin-Blaine nodded, disoriented, trying to take stock of himself. He thought hard and remembered that he was shorter than average, heavily muscled, barrel chested, broad shouldered, with legs a little short for such a herculean torso, with large and callused hands. There was an old, jagged scar on his shoulder, souvenir of a hunting accident …

Elgin and Blaine merged.

Then he realized that he was back at last in his own body. Blaine was his name, and Elgin was the pseudonym under which Carl Orc and Joe must have shipped him.

The long flight was over! His mind and his body were together again!

“We were told you weren’t well, sir,” the captain said. “But you’ve been in this coma for so long—”

“I’m fine now,” Blaine told him. “Are we far from the Marquesas?”

“Not far. The island of Nuku Hiva is just a few hours away.”

The captain returned to his wheelhouse. And Blaine thought about the many personalities he had met and mingled with.

He respected the staunch and independent old Dyersen walking slowly back to his cottage, hoped young Sandy Thompson would return to Mars, felt regret for the warped and murderous Piggot, enjoyed his meeting with the serious and upright Juan Ramirez, felt mingled sorrow and contempt for the sly and ineffectual Ed Tyler, prayed for the best for pretty Janice Mariner.

They were with him still. Good or bad, he wished them all well. They were his family now. Distant relatives, cousins and uncles he would never meet again, nieces and nephews upon whose destiny he would brood.

Like all families they were a mixed lot; but they were his, and he could never forget them.

“Nuku Hiva in sight!” the captain called.

Blaine saw, on the edge of the horizon, a tiny black dot capped by a white cumulus cloud. He rubbed his forehead vigorously, determined to think no more about his adopted family. There were present realities to deal with. Soon he would be coming to his new home; and that required a little serious thinking.