“Yes, you did,” Blaine said quietly.
“So what!” Marie screamed. “So he saved your life. That doesn't mean he owns it! One doesn't save a life and expect it to be forfeited upon request. Tom, don't listen to him!”
Robinson said, “I have no means or intention of forcing you, Blaine. You will decide what you think is right, and I will abide by it. You will remember everything.”
Blaine looked at the zombie almost with affection. “So there's more to it. Much more. Isn't there, Robinson?”
Robinson nodded, his eyes fixed on Blame's face.
“But how did you know?” Blaine asked. “How could you possibly know?”
“Because I understand you. I've made you my lifetime work. My life has revolved around you. I've thought about nothing but you. And the better I knew you, Blaine, the more certain I was about this.”
“Perhaps,” Blaine said.
Marie said, “What on earth are you talking about? What more? What more could there be?”
“I have to think about this,” Blaine said. “I have to remember. Robinson, please wait outside for a little while.”
“Certainly,” the zombie said, and left immediately.
Blaine waved Marie into silence. He sat down and buried his head in his hands. Now he had to remember something he would rather not think about. Now, once and for all, he had to trace it back and understand it.
Etched sharp in his mind still were the words Reilly had screamed at him in the Palace of Death: “You’re responsible! You killed me with your evil murdering mind! Yes you, you hideous thing from the past, you damned monster! Everything shuns you except your friend the dead man! Why aren't you dead, murderer!”
Had Reilly known?
He remembered Sammy Jones saying to him after the hunt: “Tom, you’re a natural-born killer. There's nothing else for you.”
Had Sammy guessed?
And now the most important thing of all. That most significant moment of his life — the time of his death on a night in 1958. Vividly he remembered:
The steering wheel was working again, but Blaine ignored it, filled with a sudden fierce exultancy, a lightning switch of mood that welcomed the smash, lusted for it, and for pain and cruelty and death …
Blaine shuddered convulsively as he relived the moment he had wanted to forget — the moment when he might have avoided catastrophe, but had preferred to kill.
He lifted his head and looked at his wife. He said, “I killed him. That's what Robinson knew. And now I know it, too.”
35
Carefully he explained it all to Marie. She refused at first to believe him.
“It was so far back, Tom! How can you be sure of what happened?”
“I'm sure,” Blaine said. “I don't think anyone could forget the way they died. I remember mine very well. That was how I died.”
“Still, you can't call yourself a murderer because of one moment, one fraction of a second —”
“How long does it take to shoot a bullet or to drive in a knife?” Blaine asked. “A fraction of a second! That's how long it takes to become a murderer.”
“But Tom, you had no motive!”
Blaine shook his head. “It's true that I didn't kill for gain or revenge. But then, I'm not that kind of murderer. That kind is relatively rare. I'm the grass-roots variety, the ordinary average guy with a little of everything in his makeup, including murder. I killed because, in that moment, I had the opportunity. My special opportunity, a unique interlocking of events, moods, train of thought, humidity, temperature, and lord knows what else, which might not have come up again in two lifetimes.”
“But you’re not to blame!” Marie said. “It would never have happened if Rex Power Systems and I hadn't created that special opportunity for you.”
“Yes. But I seized the opportunity,” Blaine said, “seized it and performed a cold-blooded murder just for fun, because I knew I could never be caught at it. My murder.”
“Well… Our murder,” she said.
“Yes.”
“All right, we’re murderers,” Marie said calmly. “Accept it, Tom. Don't get mushy-minded about it. We've killed once, we can kill again.”
“Never,” Blaine said.
“He's almost finished! I swear to you, Tom, there's not a month of life in him. He's almost played out. One blow and he's done for. One push.”
“I'm not that kind of murderer,” Blaine said.
“Will you let me do it?”
“I'm not that kind, either.”
“You idiot! Then just do nothing! Wait. A month, no more than that, and he's finished. You can wait a month, Tom —”
“More murder,” Blaine said wearily.
“Tom! You’re not going to give him your body! What about our life together?”
“Do you think we could go on after this?” Blaine asked. “I couldn't. Now stop arguing with me. I don't know if I'd do this if there weren't a hereafter. Quite probably I wouldn't. But there is a hereafter. I'd like to go there with my accounts as straight as possible, all bills paid in full, all restitutions made. If this were my only existence, I'd cling to it with everything I've got. But it isn't! Can you understand that?”
“Yes, of course,” Marie said unhappily.
“Frankly, I'm getting pretty curious about this afterlife. I want to see it. And there's one thing more.”
“What's that?”
Marie's shoulders were trembling, so Blaine put his arm around her. He was thinking back to the conversation he had had with Hull, the elegant and aristocratic Quarry.
Hull had said: “We follow Nietzsche's dictum — to die at the right time! Intelligent people don't clutch at the last shreds of life like drowning men clinging to a bit of board. They know that the body's life is only an infinitesimal portion of man's total existence. Why shouldn't those bright pupils skip a grade or two of school?”
Blaine remembered how strange, dark, atavistic and noble Hull's lordly selection of death had seemed. Pretentious, of course; but then, life itself was a pretension in the vast universe of unliving matter. Hull had seemed like an ancient Japanese nobleman kneeling to perform the ceremonial act of hara-kiri, and emphasizing the importance of life in the very selection of death.
And Hull had said: “The deed of dying transcends class and breeding. It is every man's patent of nobility, his summons from the king, his knightly adventure. And how he acquits himself in that lonely and perilous enterprise is his true measure as a man.”
Marie broke into his reverie, asking, “What was that one thing more?”
“Oh.” Blaine thought for a moment. “I just wanted to say that I guess some of the attitudes of the 22nd century have rubbed off on me. Especially the aristocratic ones.” He grinned and kissed her. “But of course, I always had good taste.”
36
Blaine opened the door of the cottage. “Robinson,” he said, “come with me to the Suicide Booth. I'm giving you my body.”
“I expected no less of you, Tom,” the zombie said.
“Then let's go.”
Together they went slowly down the mountainside. Marie watched them from a window for a few seconds, then started down after them.
They stopped at the door to the Suicide Booth. Blaine said, “Do you think you can take over all right?”
“I'm sure of it,” Robinson said. “Tom, I'm grateful for this. I'll use your body well.”
“It's not mine, really,” Blaine said. “Belonged to a fellow named Kranch. But I've grown fond of it. You'll get used to its habits. Just remind it once in a while who's boss. Sometimes it wants to go hunting.”