“I think I'll like that,” Robinson said.
“Yes, I suppose you would. Well, good luck.”
“Good luck to you, Tom.”
Marie came up and kissed Blaine goodbye with icy lips. Blaine said, “What will you do?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “I don't know. I feel so numb… Tom, must you?”
“I must,” Blaine said.
He looked around once more at the palm trees whispering under the sun, the blue expanse of the sea, and the great dark mountain above him cut with silver waterfalls. Then he turned and entered the Suicide Booth, and closed the door behind him.
There were no windows, no furniture except a single chair. The instructions posted on one wall were very simple. You just sat down, and, at your leisure, closed the switch upon the right arm. You would then die, quickly and painlessly, and your body would be left intact for the next inhabitant. Blaine sat down, made sure of the location of the switch and leaned back, his eyes closed.
He thought again about the first time he died, and wished it had been more interesting. By rights he should have rectified the error this time, and gone down like Hull, hunted fiercely across a mountain ledge at sundown. Why couldn't it have been like that? Why couldn't death have come while he was battling a typhoon, meeting a tiger's charge, or climbing Mount Everest? Why, again, would his death be so tame, so commonplace, so ordinary?
But then, why had he never really designed yachts?
An enterprising death, he realized again, would be out of character for him. Undoubtedly he was meant to die in just this quick, commonplace, painless way. And all his life in the future must have gone into the forming and shaping of this death — a vague indication when Reilly died, a fair certainty in the Palace of Death, an implacable destiny when he settled in Taiohae.
Still, no matter how ordinary, one's death is the most interesting event of one's life. Blaine looked forward eagerly to his.
He had no complaint to make. Although he had lived in the future little over a year, he had gained its greatest prize — the hereafter! He felt again what he had experienced after leaving the Hereafter Building — release from the heavy, sodden, constant, unconscious fear of death that subtly weighed every action and permeated every movement. No man of his own age could live without the shadow that crept down the corridors of his mind like some grisly tapeworm, the ghost that haunted nights and days, the croucher behind corners, the shape behind doors, the unseen guest at every banquet, the unidentified figure in every landscape, always present, always waiting —
No more!
For now the ancient enemy was defeated. And men no longer died; they moved on!
But he had gained even more than an afterlife. He had managed to squeeze and compress an entire lifetime into that year.
He had been born in a white room with dazzling lights and a doctor's bearded face above him, and a motherly nurse to feed him while he listened, alarmed, to the babble of strange tongues. He had ventured early into the world, raw and uneducated, and had stared at the oriental marvel of New York, and allowed a straight-eyed fast-talking stranger to make a fool and nearly a corpse of him, until wiser heads rescued him from his folly and soothed his pain. Clothed in his fine, strong, mysterious body he had ventured out again, wiser this time, and had moved as an equal among men equipped with glittering weapons in the pursuit of danger and honor. And he had lived through that folly, too, and still older, had chosen an honorable occupation. But certain dark omens present at his birth finally reached fruition, and he had to flee his homeland and run to the farthest corner of the Earth. Yet he still managed to acquire a family on the way; a family with certain skeletons in the closet, but his all the same. In the fullness of manhood he had come to a land he loved, taken a wife, and, on his honeymoon, seen the mountains of Moorea flaming in the sunset. He had settled down to spend his declining months in peace and useful labor, and in fond recollection of the wonders he had seen. And so he had spent them, honored and respected by all. It was sufficient. Blaine turned the switch.
37
“Where am I? Who am I? What am I?”
No answer.
“I remember. I am Thomas Blaine, and I have just died. I am now in the Threshold, a very real and completely indescribable place. I sense Earth. And ahead, I sense the hereafter.”
“Tom —”
“Marie!”
“Yes.”
“But how could you — I didn't think —”
“Well, perhaps in some ways I wasn't a very good wife, Tom. But I was always a faithful one, and I did what I did for you. I love you, Tom. Of course I would follow.”
“Marie, this makes me very happy.”
“I'm glad.”
“Shall we go on?”
“Where, Tom?”
“Into the hereafter.”
“Tom, I'm frightened. Couldn't we just stay right here for a while?”
“It'll be all right. Come with me.”
“Oh, Tom! What if they separate us? What will it be like? I don't think I'm going to like it. I'm afraid it's going to be terribly strange and ghostly and horrible.”
“Marie, don't worry. I've been a junior yacht designer three times in two lifetimes. It's my destiny! Surely it can't end here!”
“All right. I'm ready now, Tom. Let's go.”
— The End —