He started toward the door.
Joe said, “I know it's a little frightening, but —”
“No!”
Orc shouted, “Damn it, Blaine, will you at least let the man speak?”
“All right,” Blaine said. “Speak.”
Joe poured himself half a glass of wine and threw it down. He said, “Mr. Blaine, it's going to be difficult explaining this to you, a guy from the past. But try to understand what I'm saying.”
Blaine nodded warily.
“Now then. Transplant is used as a sex game these days, and that's how I peddle it. Why? Because people are ignorant of its better uses, and because a reactionary government insists on banning it. But Transplant is a lot more than a game. It's an entire new way of life! And whether you or the government like it or not, Transplant represents the world of the future.”
The little pusher's eyes glowed. Blaine sat down again.
“There are two basic elements in human affairs,” Joe said sententiously. “One of them is man's eternal struggle for freedom: Freedom of worship, freedom of press and assembly, freedom to select government — freedom! And the other basic element in human affairs is the efforts of government to withhold freedom from the people.”
Blaine considered this a somewhat simplified view of human affairs. But he continued listening.
“Government,” Joe said, “withholds freedom for many reasons. For security, for personal profit, for power, or because they feel the people are unready for it. But whatever the reason, the basic facts remain: Man strives for freedom, and government strives to withhold freedom. Transplant is simply one more in a long series of the freedoms that man has aspired to, and that his government feels is not good for him.”
“Sexual freedom?” Blaine asked mockingly.
“No!” Joe cried. “Not that there's anything wrong with sexual freedom. But Transplant isn't primarily that. Sure, that's how we’re pushing it — for propaganda purposes. Because people don't want abstract ideas, Mr. Blaine, and they don't go for cold theory. They want to know what a freedom will do for them. We show them a small part of it, and they learn a lot more themselves.”
“What will Transplant do?” Blaine asked.
“Transplant,” Joe said fervently, “gives man the ability to transcend the limits imposed by his heredity and his environment!”
“Huh?”
“Yes! Transplant lets you exchange knowledge, bodies, talents and skills with anyone who wishes to exchange with you. And plenty do. Most men don't want to perform a single set of skills all their life, no matter how satisfying those skills are. Man is too restless a creature. Musicians want to be engineers, advertising men want to be hunters, sailors want to be writers. But there usually isn't time to acquire and exploit more than one set of skills in a lifetime. And even if there were time, the blind factor of talent is an insurmountable stumbling block. With Transplant, you can get the inborn talents, the skills, the knowledge that you want. Think about it, Mr. Blaine. Why should a man be forced to live out his lifetime in a body he had no part in selecting? It's like telling him he must live with the diseases he's inherited, and mustn't try to cure them. Man must have the freedom to choose the body and talents best suited to his personality needs.”
“If your plan went through,” Blaine said, “you'd simply have a bunch of neurotics changing bodies every day.”
“The same general argument was raised against the passage of every freedom,” Joe said, his eyes glittering. “Throughout history it was argued that man didn't have the sense to choose his own religion, or that women didn't have the intelligence to use the vote, or that people couldn't be allowed to elect their own representatives because of the stupid choices they'd make. And of course there are plenty of neurotics around, people who'd louse up heaven itself. But you have a much greater number of people who'd use their freedoms well.”
Joe lowered his voice to a persuasive whisper. “You must realize, Mr. Blaine, that a man is not his body, for he receives his body accidentally. He is not his skills, for those are frequently born of necessity. He is not his talents, which are produced by heredity and by early environmental factors. He is not the sicknesses to which he may be predisposed, and he is not the environment that shapes him. A man contains all these things, but he is greater than their total. He has the power to change his environment, cure his diseases, advance his skills — and, at last, to choose his body and talents! That is the next freedom, Mr. Blaine! It's historically inevitable, whether you or I or the government like it or not. For man must have every possible freedom!”
Joe finished his fierce and somewhat incoherent oration red-faced and out of breath. Blaine stared at the little man with new respect. He was looking, he realized, at a genuine revolutionary of the year 2110.
Orc said, “He's got a point, Tom. Transplant is legal in Sweden and Ceylon, and it doesn't seem to have hurt the moral fibre much.”
“In time,” Joe said, pouring himself a glass of wine, “the whole world will go Transplant. It's inevitable.”
“Maybe,” Orc said. “Or maybe they'll invent some new freedom to take its place. Anyhow, Tom, you can see that Transplant has some moral justifications. And it's the only way of saving that body of yours. What do you say?”
“Are you a revolutionary, too?” Blaine asked.
Orc grinned. “Could be. I guess I'm like the blockade runners during the American Civil War, or the guys who sold guns to Central American revolutionaries. They worked for a profit, but they weren't against social change.”
“Well, well,” Blaine said sardonically. “And up to now I thought you were just a common criminal.”
“Skip it,” Orc said pleasantly. “Are you willing to try?”
“Certainly. I'm overwhelmed,” Blaine said. “I never thought I'd find myself in the advance guard of a social revolution.”
Orc smiled and said, “Good. Hope it works out for you, Tom. Roll up your sleeve. We'd better get started.”
Blaine rolled up his left sleeve while Orc took a hypodermic from a drawer.
“This is just to knock you out,” Orc explained. “The Yoga Machine is in the next room. It does the real work. When you come to, you'll be a guest in someone else's mind, and your body will be travelling cross country in deep freeze. They'll be brought together as soon as it's safe.”
“How many minds will I occupy?” Blaine asked. “And for how long?”
“I don't know how many we'll have to use. As for how long in each, a few seconds, minutes, maybe half an hour. We'll move you along as fast as we can. This isn't a full Transplant, you know. You won't be taking over the body. You'll just be occupying a small portion of its consciousness, as an observer. So stay quiet and act natural. Got that?”
Blaine nodded. “But how does this Yoga Machine work?”
“It works like Yoga,” Orc said. “The machine simply does what you could do yourself if you were thoroughly trained in Yoga exercises. It relaxes every muscle and nerve in your body, focuses and calms your mind, helps build up your concentration. When you've reached potential, you’re ready to make an astral projection. The machine does that for you, too. It helps you release your hold on the body, which a Yoga adept could do without mechanical assistance. It projects you to the person we've selected, who yields room. Attraction takes care of the rest. You slip in like a stranded fish going back into water.”
“Sounds risky,” Blaine said. “Suppose I can't get in?”