Robert Sheckley: Immortality, Inc

Experimentally he smiled boyishly at the mirror. The result was a satyr's leer.

“I've been gypped,” Blaine said bitterly.

It was apparent to him that the qualities of his present mind and his new body were opposed. Cooperation between them seemed impossible. Of course, his personality might reshape his body; on the other hand, his body might have some demands to make on his personality.

“We'll see,” Blaine told his formidable body, “we'll see who's boss.”

On his left shoulder was a long, jagged scar. He wondered how the body had received so grievous a wound. Then he began wondering where the body's real owner was. Could he still be lodged in the brain, lying doggo, waiting for a chance to take over?

Speculation was useless. Later, perhaps, he would find out. He took a final look at himself in the mirror.

He didn't like what he saw. He was afraid he never would.

“Well,” he said at last, “you takes what you gets. Dead men can't be choosers.”

That was all he could say, for the moment. Blaine turned from the mirror and began dressing.

Marie Thorne came into his room late in the afternoon. She said, without preamble, “It's off.”

“Off?”

“Finished, over, through!” She glared bitterly at him, and began pacing up and down the white room. “The whole publicity campaign around you is off.”

Blaine stared at her. The news was interesting; but much more interesting were the signs of emotion on Miss Thorne's face. She had been so damnably controlled, so perfectly and grotesquely businesslike. Now there was color in her face, and her small lips were twisted bitterly.

“I've worked on this idea for two solid years,” she told him. “The company's spent I don't know how many millions to bring you here. Everything's set to roll, and that damned old man says drop the whole thing.”

She's beautiful, Blaine thought, but her beauty gives her no pleasure. It's a business asset, like grooming, or a good head for liquor, to be used when necessary, and even abused. Too many hands reached to Marie Thorne, he imagined, and she never took any. And when the greedy hands kept reaching she learned contempt, then coldness, and finally self-hatred.

It's a little fanciful, Blaine thought, but I'll keep it until a better diagnosis comes along.

“That damned stupid old man,” Marie Thorne was muttering.

“What old man?”

“Reilly, our brilliant president.”

“He decided against the publicity campaign?”

“He wants it hushed up completely. Oh God, it's just too much! Two years!”

“But why?” Blaine asked.

Marie Thorne shook her head wearily. “Two reasons, both of them stupid. First, the legal problem. I told him you'd signed the release, and the lawyers had the rest of the problem in hand, but he's scared. It's almost time for his reincarnation and he doesn't want any possible legal trouble with the government. Can you imagine it? A frightened old man running Rex! Second, he had a talk with that silly, senile old grandfather of his, and his grandfather doesn't like the idea. And that clinched it. After two years!”

“Just a minute,” Blaine said. “Did you say his reincarnation ?”

“Yes, Reilly's going to try it. Personally I think he'd be smarter to die and get it over with.”

It was a bitter statement. But Marie Thorne didn't sound bitter making it. She sounded as though she were making a simple statement of fact.

Blaine said. “You think he should die instead of trying for reincarnation?”

“I would. But I forgot, you haven't been briefed. I just wish he'd made up his mind earlier. That senile old grandfather butting in now —”

“Why didn't Reilly ask his grandfather earlier?” Blaine asked.

“He did. But his grandfather wouldn't talk earlier:”

“I see. How old is he?”

“Reilly's grandfather? He was eighty-one when he died.”

“ What ?”

“Yes, he died about sixty years ago. Reilly's father is dead, too, but he won't talk at all, which is a pity because he had good business sense. Why are you staring at me, Blaine? Oh, I forgot you don't know the setup. It's very simple, really.”

She stood for a moment, brooding. Then she nodded emphatically, whirled and walked to the door.

“Where are you going?” Blaine asked.

“To tell Reilly what I think of him! He can't do this to me! He promised!” Abruptly her control returned. “As for you, Blaine, I suppose there's no further need of you here. You have your life, and an adequate body in which to live it. I suppose you can leave at any time you desire.”

“Thanks,” Blaine said, as she left the room.

Dressed in his brown slacks and blue shirt, Blaine left the infirmary and walked down a long corridor until he reached a door. A uniformed guard was standing beside it.

“Excuse me,” Blaine said, “does this door lead outside?”

“Huh?”

“Does this door lead outside the Rex Building?”

“Yeah, of course. Outside and onto the street.”

“Thank you.” Blaine hesitated. He wanted the briefing he had been promised but never given. He wanted to ask the guard what New York was like, and what the local customs and regulations were, and what he should see, and what he should avoid. But the guard apparently hadn't heard about the Man from the Past. He was staring pop-eyed at Blaine.

Blaine hated the idea of plunging into the New York of 2110 like this, without money or knowledge or friends, without a job or a place to stay, and wearing an uncomfortable new body. But it couldn't be helped. Pride meant something, after all. He would rather take his chances alone than ask assistance from the porcelain-hard Miss Thorne, or any of the others at Rex.

“Do I need a pass to get out?” he asked hopefully.

“Nope. Just to get back in.” The guard frowned suspiciously. “Say, what's the matter with you?”

“Nothing,” Blaine said. He opened the door, still not believing that they would let him leave so casually. But then, why not? He was in a world where men talked to their dead grandfathers, where there were spaceships and hereafter drivers, where they snatched a man from the past as a publicity stunt, then lightly discarded him.

The door closed. Behind him was the great grey mass of the Rex Building. Before him lay New York.

At first glance, the city looked like a surrealistic Bagdad. He saw squat palaces of white and blue tile, and slender red minarets, and irregularly shaped buildings with flaring Chinese roofs and spired onion domes. It looked as though an oriental fad in architecture had swept the city. Blaine could hardly believe he was in New York. Bombay perhaps, Moscow, or even Los Angeles, but not New York. With relief he saw skyscrapers, simple and direct against the curved Asiatic structures. They seemed like lonely sentinels of the New York he had known.

The streets were filled with miniature traffic. Blaine saw motorcycles and scooters, cars no bigger than Porsches, trucks the size of Buicks, and nothing larger. He wondered if this was New York's answer to congestion and air pollution. If so, it hadn't helped.

Most of the traffic was overhead. There were vane and jet operated vehicles, aerial produce trucks and one-man speedsters, helicopter taxis and floating busses marked “Skyport 2nd Level” or “Express to Montauk.” Glittering dots marked the vertical and horizontal lanes within which the traffic glided, banked, turned, ascended and descended. Flashing red, green, yellow and blue lights seemed to regulate the flow. There were rules and conventions; but to Blaine's inexperienced eye it was a vast fluttering confusion.

Fifty feet overhead there was another shopping level. How did people get up there? For that matter, how did anyone live and retain his sanity in this noisy, bright, congested machine? The human density was overpowering. He felt as though he were being drowned in a sea of flesh. What was the population of this super-city? Fifteen million? Twenty million? It made the New York of 1958 look like a country village.