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IMMORTALITY, INC.
ROBERT SHECKLEY
A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK NEW YORK
PART ONE
1
Afterwards, Thomas Blaine thought about the manner of his dying and
wished it had been more interesting. Why couldn’t his death have come
while he was battling a typhoon, meeting a tiger’s charge, or climbing a
windswept mountain? Why had his death been so tame, so commonplace,
so ordinary?
But an enterprising death, he realized, would have been out of character
for him. Undoubtedly he was meant to die in just the quick, common,
messy, painless way he did. And all his life must have gone into the
forming and shaping of that death—a vague indication in childhood, a fair
promise in his college years, an implacable certainty at the age of
thirty-two.
Still, no matter how commonplace, one’s death is the most
interesting.event of one’s life. Blaine thought about his with intense
curiosity. He had to know about those minutes, those last precious
seconds when his own particular death lay waiting for him on a dark New
Jersey highway. Had there been some warning sign, some portent? What
had he done, or not done? What had he been thinking? Those final
seconds were crucial to him. How, exactly, had he died?
He had been driving over a straight, empty white highway, his
headlights probing ahead, the darkness receding endlessly before him. His
speedometer read seventy-five. It felt like forty. Far down the road he saw
headlights coming toward him, the first in hours.
Blaine was returning to New York after a week’s vacation at his cabin
on Chesapeake Bay. He had fished and swum and dozed in the sun on the
rough planks of his dock. One. day he sailed his sloop to Oxford and
attended a dance at the yacht club that night. He met a silly, pert-nosed
girl in a blue dress who told him he looked like a South Seas adventurer,
so tanned and tall in his khakis. He sailed back to his cabin the next day,
to doze in the sun and dream of giving up everything, loading his sailboat
with canned goods and heading for Tahiti.
Ah Raiatea, the mountains of
Morrea, the fresh trade wind
…
But a continent and an ocean lay between him and Tahiti, and other
obstacles besides. The thought was only for an hour’s dreaming, and
definitely not to be acted upon. Now he was returning to New York, to his
job as a junior yacht designer for the famous old firm of Mattison &
Peters.
The other car’s headlights were drawing near. Blaine slowed to sixty.
In spite of his title, there were few yachts for Blaine to design. Old Tom
Mattison took care of the conventional cruising boats. His brother Rolf,
known as the Wizard of Mystic, had an international reputation for his
ocean-racing sailboats and fast one-designs. So what was there for a
junior yacht designer to do?
Blaine drew layouts and deck plans, and handled promotion,
advertising and publicity. It was responsible work, and not without its
satisfactions. But it was not yacht designing.
He knew he should strike out on his own. But there were so many yacht
designers, so few customers. As he had told Laura, it was rather like
designing arbalests, scorpions and catapults. Interesting creative work,
but who would buy your products? “You could find a market for your
sailboats,” she had told him, distressingly direct. “Why not make the
plunge?”
He had grinned boyishly, charmingly. “Action isn’t my forte. I’m an
expert on contemplation and mild regret.”
“You mean you’re lazy.”
“Not at all. That’s like saying that a hawk doesn’t gallop well, or a horse
has poor soaring ability. You can’t compare different species. I’m just not
the go-getter type of human. For me, dreams, reveries, visions, and plans
are meant only for contemplation, never for execution.”
“I hate to hear you talk like that,” she said with a sigh.
He
had
been laying it on a bit thick, of course. But there was a lot of
truth in it. He had a pleasant job, an adequate salary, a secure position.
He had an apartment in Greenwich Village, a hi-fi, a car, a small cabin on
Chesapeake Bay, a fine sloop, and the affection of Laura and several other
girls. Perhaps, as Laura somewhat tritely expressed it, he was caught in an
eddy on the current of life… But so what? You could observe the scenery
better from a gently revolving eddy.
The other car’s headlights were very near
Blaine noticed, with a sense of shock, that he had increased speed to
eighty miles an hour.
He let up on the accelerator. His car swerved freakishly, violently,
toward the oncoming headlights.
Blowout? Steering failure? He twisted hard on the steering wheel. It
wouldn’t turn. His car struck the low concrete separation between north
and south lanes, and bounded high into the air. The steering wheel came
free and spun in his hands, and the engine wailed like a lost soul.
The other car was trying to swerve, too late. They were going to meet
nearly head-on.
And Blaine thought, yes, I’m one of them. I’m one of those silly bastards
you read about whose cars go out of control and kill innocent people.
Christ! Modern cars and modern roads and higher speeds and the same
old sloppy reflexes…
Suddenly, unaccountably, the steering wheel was working again, a
razor’s edge reprieve. Blaine ignored it. As the other car’s headlights
glared across his windshield, his mood suddenly changed from regret to
exultance. For a moment he welcomed the smash, lusted for it, and for
pain, destruction, cruelty and death.
Then the cars came together. The feeling of exultance faded as quickly
as it had come. Blaine felt a profound regret for all he had left undone, the
waters unsailed, movies unseen, books unread, girls untouched- He was
thrown forward. The steering wheel broke off in his hands. The steering
column speared him through the chest and broke his spine as his head
drove through the thick safety glass.
At that instant he knew he was dying.
An instant later he was quickly, commonly, messily, painlessly dead.
2
He awoke in a white bed in a white room.
“He’s alive now,” someone said.
Blaine opened his eyes. Two men in white were standing over him. They
seemed to be doctors. One was a small, bearded old man. The other was
an ugly red-faced man in his fifties.
“What’s your name?” the oid man snapped
“Thomas Blaine.”
“Age?”
“Thirty-two. But—”
“Marital status?”
“Single. What—”
“Do you see?” the old man said, turning to his red-faced colleague.
“Sane, perfectly sane.”
“I would never have believed it,” said the red-faced man.
“But of course. The death trauma has been overrated. Grossly overrated,
as my forthcoming book will prove.”
“Hmm. But rebirth depression—”
“Nonsense,” the old man said decisively. “Blaine, do you feel all right?”
“Yes. But I’d like to know—”
“Do you see?” the old doctor said triumphantly. “Alive again and sane.
Now
will you co-sign the report?”
“I suppose I have no choice,” the red-faced man said. Both doctors left.
Blaine watched them go, wondering what they-had been talking about.
A fat and motherly nurse came to his bedside. “How do you feel?” she
asked.
“Fine,” Blaine said. “But I’d like to know—”
“Sorry,” the nurse said, “No questions yet, doctor’s orders. Drink this,
it’ll pep you up. That’s a good boy. Don’t worry, everything’s going to be all
right.”
She left. Her reassuring words frightened him. What did she mean,
everything’s going to be all right
? That meant something was wrong!
What was it, what was wrong? What was he doing here, what had
happened?
The bearded doctor returned, accompanied by a young woman.
“Is he all right, doctor?” the young woman asked.
“Perfectly sane,” the old doctor said. “I’d call it a good splice.”
“Then I can begin the interview?”
“Certainly. Though I cannot guarantee his behavior. The death trauma,
though grossly overrated, is still capable of—”
“Yes, fine.” The girl walked over to Blaine and bent over him. She was a
very pretty girl, Blaine noticed. Her features were clean-cut, her skin fresh
and glowing. She had long, gleaming brown hair pulled too tightly back
over her small ears, and there was a faint hint of perfume about her. She
should have been beautiful; but she was marred by the immobility of her
features, the controlled tenseness of her slender body. It was hard to
imagine her laughing or crying. It was impossible to imagine her in bed.
There was something of the fanatic about her, of the dedicated
revolutionary; but he suspected that her cause was herself.
“Hello, Mr. Blaine,” she said. “I’m Marie Thorne.”
“Hello,” Blaine said cheerfully.
“Mr. Blaine,” she said, “where do you suppose you are?”
“Looks like a hospital. I suppose—” He stopped. He had just noticed a
small microphone in her hand.
“Yes, what do you suppose?”
She made a small gesture. Men came forward and wheeled heavy
equipment around his bed.
“Go right ahead,” Marie Thorne said. “Tell us what you suppose.”
“To hell with that,” Blaine said moodily, watching the men set up their
machines around him. “What is this? What is going on?”
“We’re trying to help you,” Marie Thorne said. “Won’t you cooperate?”
Blaine nodded, wishing she would smile. He suddenly felt very unsure of
himself. Had something happened to him?
“Do you remember the accident?” she asked.
“What accident?”
“Do you remember being hurt?”
Blaine shuddered as his memory returned in a rush of spinning lights,
wailing engine, impact and breakage.
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