Orc shook his head. “In order to bargain, Tom, you have to have something to bargain with. As long as you’re in New York, it's easier and safer for them to kill you.”
“I guess you’re right,” Blaine said. “How are you going to get me out?”
Orc and Joe looked at each other uncomfortably. Orc said, “Well, that was our big problem. There just didn't seem to be any way of getting you out alive”
“Heli or jet?”
“They have to stop at the air tolls, and hunters are waiting at all of them. Surface vehicle is equally out of the question.”
“Disguise?”
“Maybe it would have worked during the first hour of the hunt. Now it's impossible, even if we could get you a complete plastic surgery job. By now the hunters are equipped with identity scanners. They'd see through you in a moment.”
“Then there's no way out?” Blaine asked.
Orc and Joe exchanged another uneasy glance. “There is,” Orc said. “Just one way. But you probably won't like it.”
“I like to stay alive. What is it?”
Orc paused and lighted another cigar. “We plan to quick-freeze you to near absolute zero, like for spaceship travel. Then we'll ship your carcass out in a crate of frozen beef. Your body will be in the center of the load, so most likely it won't be detected.”
“Sounds risky,” Blaine said.
“Not too risky,” Orc said.
Blaine frowned, sensing something wrong. “I'll be unconscious through it, won't I?”
After a long pause. Orc said, “No.”
“I won't?”
“It can't be done that way,” Orc told him. “The fact is, you and your body will have to separate. That's the part I'm afraid you won't like.”
“What in hell are you talking about?” Blaine asked, getting to his feet.
“Take it easy,” Orc said. “Sit down, smoke a cigarette, have some more wine. It's like this, Tom. We can't ship out a quick-frozen body with a mind in it. The hunters are waiting for something like that. Can you imagine what happens when they run a quick scan over that shipment of beef and detect a dormant mind in it? Up goes the kite! Adieu la musique! I'm not trying to con you, Tom. It just can't be done like that.”
“Then what happens to my mind?” Blaine asked, sitting down again.
“That,” Orc said, “is where Joe comes in. Tell him, Joe.”
Joe nodded rapidly. “Transplant, my friend, is the answer.”
“Transplant?”
“I told you about it,” Joe said, “on that inauspicious evening when we first met. Remember? Transplant, the great pastime, the game any number can play, the jolt for jaded minds, the tonic for tired bodies. We've got a worldwide network of Transplantees, Mr. Blaine. Folks who like to switch around, men and women who get tired of switch around, men and women who get tired of wearing the same old body. We’re going to key you into the organization.”
“You’re going to ship my mind across the country?” Blaine asked.
“That's it! From body to body,” Joe told him. “Believe me, it's instructive as well as entertaining.”
Blaine got to his feet so quickly that he knocked over his chair. “Like hell!” he said, “I told you then and I'm telling you now, I'm not playing your lousy little game. I'll take my chances on the street.”
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!”