Blaine held her close for a moment and stroked her sleek dark hair. She cared for him, she wanted him to be safe. But he was in no mood for warnings. He had survived the dangers of the hunt, had passed through the iron door into the underworld and won through again to the light. Now, sitting in Marie's sunny kitchen, he felt elated and at peace with the world. Danger seemed an academic problem not worthy of discussion at the moment, and the idea of running away from New York was absurd.
“Tell me,” Blaine said lightly, “among the things I've disrupted — is one of them you?”
“I'm probably going to lose my job, if that's what you mean.”
“That's not what I mean.”
“Then you should know the answer… Tom, will you please get out of New York?”
“No. And please stop sounding so panicky.”
“Oh Lord,” she sighed, “We talk the same language but I'm not getting through. You don't understand. Let me try an example.” She thought for a moment. “Suppose a man owned a sailboat —”
“Do you sail?” Blaine asked.
“Yes, I love sailing. Tom, listen to me! Suppose a man owned a sailboat in which he was planning an ocean voyage —”
“Across the sea of life,” Blaine filled in.
“You’re not funny,” she said, looking very pretty and serious. “This man doesn't know anything about boats. He sees it floating, nicely painted, everything in place. He can't imagine any danger. Then you look the boat over. You see that the frames are cracked, teredos have gotten into the rudder post, there's dry rot in the mast step, the sails are mildewed, the keel bolts are rusted, and the fastenings are ready to let go.”
“Where'd you learn so much about boats?” Blaine asked.
“I've been sailing since I was a kid. Will you please pay attention? You tell that man his boat is not seaworthy, the first gale is likely to sink him.”
“We'll have to go sailing sometime,” Blaine said.
“But this man,” Marie continued doggedly, “doesn't know anything about boats. The thing looks all right. And the hell of it is, you can't tell him exactly what is going to happen, or when. Maybe the boat will hold together for a month, or a year, or maybe only a week. Maybe the keel bolts will go first, or perhaps it'll be the mast. You just don't know. And that's the situation here. I can't tell you what's going to happen, or when. I just know you’re unseaworthy. You must get out of here!”
She looked at him hopefully. Blaine nodded and said, “You'll make one hell of a crew.”
“So you’re not going?”
“No. I've been up all night. The only place I'm going now is to bed. Would you care to join me?”
“Go to hell!”
“Darling, please! Where's your pity for a homeless wanderer from the past?”
“I'm going out,” she said. “Help yourself to the bedroom. You'd better think about what I told you.”
“Sure,” Blaine said. “But why should I worry when I have you looking out for me?”
“Smith's looking for you, too,” she reminded him. She kissed him quickly and left the room.
Blaine finished his breakfast and turned in. He awoke in the early afternoon. Marie still hadn't returned, so before leaving he wrote her a cheerful note with the address of his hotel.
During the next few days he visited most of the yacht design agencies in New York, without success. His old firm, Mattison & Peters, was long defunct. The other firms weren't interested. Finally, at Jaakobsen Yachts, Ltd., the head designer questioned him closely about the now-extinct Chesapeake Bay and Bahamas work boats. Blaine demonstrated his considerable knowledge of the types, as well as his out-of-date draftsmanship.
“We get a few calls for antique hulls,” the head designer said. “Tell you what. We'll hire you as office boy. You can do classic hulls on a commission basis and study up on your designing, which, frankly, is old-fashioned. When you’re ready, we'll upgrade you. What do you say?”
It was an inferior position; but it was a job, a legitimate job, with a fine chance for advancement. It meant that at last he had a real place in the world of 2110. “I'll take it,” Blaine said, “with thanks.”
That evening, by way of celebrating, he went to a Sensory Shop to buy a player and a few recordings. He was entitled, he thought, to a little basic luxury.
The sensories were an inescapable part of 2110, as omnipresent and popular as television had been in Blaine's day. Larger and more elaborate versions of the sensories were used for theater productions, and variations were employed for advertising and propaganda. They were to date the purest and most powerful form of the ready-made dream, tailored to fit anyone.
But they had their extremely vocal opponents, who deplored the ominous trend toward complete passivity in the spectator. These critics were disturbed by the excessive ease with which a person could assimilate a sensory; and in truth, many a housewife walked blank-eyed through her days, a modern-day mystic plugged into a continual bright vision.
In reading a book or watching television, the critics pointed out, the viewer had to exert himself, to participate. But the sensories merely swept over you, vivid, brilliant, insidious, and left behind the damaging schizophrenic impression that dreams were better and more desirable than life. Such an impression could not be allowed, even if it were true. Sensories were dangerous! To be sure, some valid artistic work was done in the sensory form. (One could not discount Verreho, Johnston or Telkin; and Mikkelsen showed promise.) But there was not much good work. And weighed against the damaging psychic effects, the lowering of popular taste, the drift toward complete passivity…
In another generation, the critics thundered, people will be incapable of reading, thinking or acting!
It was a strong argument. But Blaine, with his 152 years of perspective, remembered much the same sort of arguments hurled at radio, movies, comic books, television and paperbacks. Even the revered novel had once been bitterly chastised for its deviation from the standards of pure poetry. Every innovation seemed culturally destructive; and became, ultimately, a cultural staple, the embodiment of the good old days, the spirit of the Golden Age — to be threatened and finally destroyed by the next innovation.
The sensories, good or bad, were here. Blaine entered the store to partake of them.
After looking over various models he bought a medium-priced Bendix player. Then, with the clerk's aid, he chose three popular recordings and took them into a booth to play. Fastening the electrodes to his forehead, he turned the first one on.
It was a popular historical, a highly romantic rendition of the Chanson de Roland, done in a low-intensity non-identification technique that allowed large battle effects and massed movements. The dream began.
… and Blaine was in the pass of Roncesvalles on that hot and fateful August morning in 778, standing with Roland's rear guard, watching the main body of Charlemagne's army wind slowly on toward Frankland. The tired veterans slumped in their high-cantled, saddles, leather creaked, spurs jingled against bronze stirrup-guards. There was a smell of pine and sweat in the air, a hint of smoke from razed Pampelona, a taste of oiled steel and dry summer grass…
Blaine decided to buy it. The next was a high-intensity chase on Venus, in which the viewer identified fully with the hunted but innocent man. The last was a variable-intensity recording of War and Peace, with occasional identification sections.
As he paid for his purchases, the clerk winked at him and said, “Interested in the real stuff?”