For long minutes he sat there, unstirring. He scarcely seemed to breathe. And Knight, even from where he stood in the doorway of the study, imagined that he could feel the tension and the ache in that straight-held body.
And after those long moments of tensed sitting, the man rose to his feet and started back down the aisle again, hat still clutched tightly to his breast, marching out of the church exactly as he had entered it. There had not been, Knight was sure, at any time, a single flicker of expression in that frozen face, and the body was still as ramrod-straight, as uncompromising, as it had been before.
A man who had come inside seeking something and had not found it and now was leaving, knowing now, perhaps, that he would never find it.
Knight stepped out of the study and moved quietly toward the entrance. But the man, he saw, would reach the door, and be out, before he could intercept him.
He spoke softly: "My friend."
The man jerked around, fear etched upon his face.
"My friend," said Knight, "is there something I can do for you?"
The man mumbled, but he did not move. Knight moved closer to him.
"You need help," said Knight. "I am here to help you."
"I don't know," said the man. "I just saw the open door and came in."
"That door is never closed."
"I thought," said the man. "I hoped…"
His words ran out and he stood dumb and stupid.
"All of us must hope," said Knight. "All of us have faith."
"I guess that's it," said the man. "I haven't faith. How does a man get faith? What is there for a man to have some faith in?"
"An everlasting life," Knight told him. "We must have faith in that. And in much else, besides."
The man laughed—a low, vicious, brutal laugh. "But we have that already. We have everlasting life. And we do not need the faith."
"Not everlasting life," said Knight. "Just continued life. Beyond that continued life there is another life. a different kind of life, a better life."
The man raised his head and his eyes grew hard, like two small points of fire.
"You believe that, Shepherd? You are the shepherd, aren't you?"
"Yes, I am the shepherd. And yes, I do believe it."
"Then what sense does all this make-this continuation? Wouldn't it be better…"
Knight shook his head. 'I don't know," he said. "I can't pretend to know. But I can't bring myself to question God's purpose in allowing it."
"But if He allows it, why?"
"Perhaps a longer life to prepare ourselves the better when our times does come to die."
"They talk," said the man, "of life forever, of immortality, of no need of dying. Then what's the use of God? We won't need the other life, for well already have it."
"Yes," said Knight, "perhaps we will. But then we'll cheat ourselves. And the immortality that they talk about may not be something that we want. We may grow tired of it."
"And you, Shepherd? What of you?"
"What of me? I don't understand."
"Which of these other lives for you? Are you freezer-bound?"
"Why, I…"
"1 see," the other said. "Good day, Shepherd, and many thanks for trying."
10
Frost wearily climbed the stairs and let himself into his room. He closed the door behind him and hung up his hat. He slumped into an old and battered easy chair and stared about the room.
And for the first time in his life, the poverty and the squalor of it struck him across the face.
The bed stood in one corner and in another corner a tiny stove and a keeper for his stock of food. A mangy carpet, with holes worn here and there, made an ignoble effort to cover the bareness of the floor. A small table stood before the one lone window and here he ate or wrote. There were several other chairs and a narrow chest of drawers and the open door of a tiny closet, where he stored his clothes. And that was all there was.
This is the way we live, he thought. Not myself alone, but many billion others. Not because we want to, not because we like it. But because it is a wretched way
of life we've imposed upon ourselves, a meanness and a poverty, a down payment on a second life—the fee, perhaps, for immortality.
He sat, sunk in bitterness, half drowsy with his bitterness and hurt.
A quarter million dollars, he thought, and he'd had to turn it clown. Not, he admitted to himself, that he was above the taking of it, not because of any nobleness, but because of fear. Fear that the entire setup had been no more than a trap devised by Marcus Ap-pleton.
Joe Gibbons, he told himself, was a friend and a faithful worker, but Joe's friendship could be bought if the sum were great enough. All of us, he thought, with the sour taste of truth lying in his mouth, can be bought. There was no man in the world who was not up for sale.
And it was, he told himself, because of the price that each must pay for that second life, the grubbing and the saving and the misery that was banked as a stake to start the second life.
It all had started less than two centuries before— in 1964, by a man named Ettinger. Why, asked Ettinger, did man need to die? Die now of cancer, when a cure for cancer might be only ten years off.? Die now of old age when old age was no more than an ailment that in another hundred years might be susceptible to cure?
It was ridiculous, said Ettinger. It was a pity and a waste and fraud. There was no need of death. There was a way to beat it.
Men had talked of it before, had speculated on it, but it had been Ettinger who had said: Let us do something—now!
Let's develop a technique by which those who die can be frozen and stored away against that day when the maladies of which they died can be treated'medically. Then, when this is possible, revive the dead, wipe away the ravages of old age, banish the malignancy of cancer, repair the weakened heart, and give them all a second chance at life.
The idea had been slow to gain acceptance, had been ignored by all except a few, had gathered guffaws on television shows, had been treated gingerly by writers who did not want to identify themselves with the fringe of fanaticism.
Slow to gain acceptance, but it grew. It grew stubbornly as the dedicated few labored day and night to do the necessary basic research, to devise the technology that was necessary, to erect the installations, and to perfect the organization that would hold it all together.
The years went on and the idea crept into the consciousness of men—that death might be defeated, that death was not an end, that not only a spiritual but a physical second life was possible. That it was there for those who wanted it, that it was no longer just a long-range gamble, but a business proposition with a good chance of success.
Still no one would say publicly that they were about to take advantage of it, for in the public image it was still a crackpot scheme. But as the years went on more and more made surreptitious contracts and when they died were frozen and were stacked away against the day of their revival.
And each of those who was stacked away left in trust with the organization built so painfully from nothing, the pittance or the fortune they had scraped together in their lifetime, to be invested until that time when they would be revived.
There had been a congressional inquiry in Washington, which had come to nothing, and a question had been raised on the floor of Commons, which likewise came to nothing. The movement still was regarded crackpot, but it had the virtue of being non-obnoxious. It did not push itself, it did not foist itself upon the public consciousness, it did no preaching. And while more and more it became a matter of private conversation and of public interest, it was paid no official heed, possibly because officialdom did not know just what attitude to take. Or perhaps because, like the ancient UFO squabble, it was too controversial to touch.