The old doctor pushed his way through the directors and bent down beside the host. “Not Reilly?” he said. “Are you Fitzsimmons?”
“No,” said the host, “I'm not Fitzsimmons, the poor damned fool! And I'm not Reilly. Reilly tried to get into this body but I was too quick. I got into the body first. It's my body now.”
“Who are you?” the doctor asked.
The host stood up. The directors stepped away from him, and one man quickly crossed himself.
“It was dead too long,” Marie Thorne said.
The host's face now bore only the faintest and most stylized resemblance to the pale, frightened face of William Fitzsimmons. There was nothing of Fitzsimmons’ determination, nothing of Reilly's petulance and good humor in that face. It resembled nothing but itself.
The face was dead white except for black dots of stubble on its cheeks and jaw. The lips were bloodless. A lock of black hair was plastered against its cold white forehead. When Fitzsimmons had been in residence the features had blended pleasantly, harmoniously, nondescriptly. But now the individual features had coarsened and grown separate. The unharmonious white face had a thick and unfinished look, like iron before tempering or clay before firing. It had a slack, sullen, relaxed look because of the lack of muscle tone and tension in the face. The calm, flaccid, unharmonious features simply existed, revealing nothing of the personality behind them. The face seemed no longer completely human. All humanity now resided in the great, patient, unblinking Buddha's eyes.
“It's gone zombie,” Marie Thorne whispered, clinging to Blaine's shoulder.
“Who are you?” the old doctor asked.
“I don't remember,” it said. “I don't.” Slowly it turned and started walking down the stage. Two directors moved tentatively to bar its path.
“Get away,” it said to them. “It's my body now.”
“Leave the poor zombie alone,” the old doctor said wearily.
The directors moved out of its way. The zombie walked to the end of the stage, descended the steps, turned, and walked over to Blaine.
“I know you!” it said.
“What? What do you want?” Blaine asked nervously.
“I don't remember,” the zombie said, staring hard at him. “What's your name?”
“Tom Blaine.”
The zombie shook its head. “Doesn't mean anything to me. But I'll remember. It's you, all right. Something… My body's dying, isn't it? Too bad. I'll remember before it gives out. You and me, you know, together. Blaine, don't you remember me?”
“No!” Blaine shouted, shrinking from the suggested relationship, the idea of some vital link between him and this dying thing. It couldn't be! What shared secret was this thief of corpses, this unclean usurper hinting at, what black intimacy, what sniggering knowledge to be shared like a dirty crust of bread for just Blaine and himself?
Nothing, Blaine told himself. He knew himself, knew what he was, knew what he had been. Nothing like this could arise legitimately to confront him. The creature had to be crazy, or mistaken.
“Who are you?” Blaine asked.
“I don't know!” The zombie flung his hands into the air, like a man caught in a net. And Blaine sensed how his mind must feel, confused, disoriented, nameless, wanting to live and caught in the fleshy dying embrace of a zombie body.
“I'll see you again,” the zombie said to Blaine. “You’re important to me. I'll see you again and I'll remember all about you and me.”
The zombie turned and walked down the aisle and out of the theater. Blaine stared after him until he felt a sudden weight on his shoulder.
Marie Thorne had fainted. It was the most feminine thing she had done so far.
PART TWO
11
The head technician and the bearded doctor were arguing near the reincarnation machine, with their assistants ranged respectfully behind them. The battle was quite technical, but Blaine gathered that they were trying to determine the cause of the reincarnation failure. Each seemed to feel that the fault lay in the other's province.
The old doctor insisted that the machine settings must have been faulty, or an uncompensated power drop had occurred. The head technician swore the machine was perfect. He felt certain that Reilly hadn't been physically fit for the strenuous attempt.
Neither would yield an inch. But being reasonable men, they soon reached a compromise solution. The fault, they decided, lay in the nameless spirit who had fought Reilly for possession of Fitzsimmons’ body, and had supplanted him.
“But who was it?” the head technician asked. “A ghost, do you think?”
“Possibly,” the doctor said, “though it's damned rare for a ghost to possess a living body. Still, he talked crazy enough to be a ghost.”
“Whoever he was,” the head technician said, “he took over the host too late. The body was definitely zombie. Anyhow, no one could be blamed for it.”
“Right,” said the doctor. “I'll certify to the apparent soundness of the equipment.”
“Fair enough,” said the head technician. “And I'll testify to the apparent fitness of the patient.”
They exchanged a look of perfect understanding.
The directors were holding an immediate conference of their own, trying to determine what the short-range effects would be upon the Rex corporate structure, and how the announcement should be made to the public, and whether all Rex personnel should be given a day off to visit the Reilly Family Palace of Death.
Old Reilly's original body lay back in its chair, beginning to stiffen, wearing a detached, derisive grin.
Marie Thorne recovered consciousness. “Come on,” she said, leading Blaine out of the theater. They hurried down long grey corridors to a street door. Outside, she hailed a helicab and gave the driver an address.
“Where are we going?” Blaine asked, as the helicab climbed and banked.
“To my place. Rex is going to be a madhouse for a while.” She began rearranging her hair.
Blaine settled back against the cushions and looked down on the glittering city. From that height it looked like an exquisite miniature, a multi-colored mosaic from the Thousand and One Nights. But somewhere down there, walking the streets and levels was the zombie, trying to remember — him.
“But why me?” Blaine asked out loud.
Marie Thorne glanced at him. “Why you and the zombie? Well, why not? Haven't you ever made any mistakes?”
“I suppose I have. But they’re finished and done with.”
She shook her head. “Maybe mistakes ended for good in your time. Today nothing ever dies for certain. That's one of the great disadvantages of a life after death, you know. One's mistakes sometimes refuse to lie decently dead and buried. Sometimes they follow you around.”
“So I see,” Blaine said. “But I've never done anything that would bring up that.”
She shrugged indifferently. “In that case, you’re better than most of us.”
Never had she seemed more alien to him. The helicab began a slow decent. And Blaine brooded over the disadvantages inherent in all advantages.
In his own time he had seen the control of disease in the world's backward areas result in an exploding birthrate, famine, plague. He had seen nuclear power breed nuclear war. Every advantage generated its own specific disadvantages. Why should it be different today?
A certified, scientific hereafter was undoubtedly an advantage to the race. Manipulation had again caught up with theory! But the disadvantages… There was a certain inevitable weakening of the protective barrier around mundane life, some rips in the curtain, a few holes in the dike. The dead refused to lie decently still, they insisted upon mingling with the quick. To whose advantage? Ghosts, too — undoubtedly logical, operating within the boundaries of known natural laws. But that might be cold comfort to a haunted man.