The sensories, good or bad, were here. Blaine entered the store to partake of them.

After looking over various models he bought a medium-priced Bendix player. Then, with the clerk's aid, he chose three popular recordings and took them into a booth to play. Fastening the electrodes to his forehead, he turned the first one on.

It was a popular historical, a highly romantic rendition of the Chanson de Roland, done in a low-intensity non-identification technique that allowed large battle effects and massed movements. The dream began.

… and Blaine was in the pass of Roncesvalles on that hot and fateful August morning in 778, standing with Roland's rear guard, watching the main body of Charlemagne's army wind slowly on toward Frankland. The tired veterans slumped in their high-cantled, saddles, leather creaked, spurs jingled against bronze stirrup-guards. There was a smell of pine and sweat in the air, a hint of smoke from razed Pampelona, a taste of oiled steel and dry summer grass…

Blaine decided to buy it. The next was a high-intensity chase on Venus, in which the viewer identified fully with the hunted but innocent man. The last was a variable-intensity recording of War and Peace, with occasional identification sections.

As he paid for his purchases, the clerk winked at him and said, “Interested in the real stuff?”

“Maybe,” Blaine said.

“I got some great party records,” the clerk told him. “Full identification with switches yet. No? Got a genuine horror piece — man dying in quicksand. The murderers recorded his death for the specialty trade.”

“Perhaps some other time,” Blaine said, moving toward the door.

“And also,” the clerk told him, “I got a special recording, legitimately made but withheld from the public. A few copies are being bootlegged around. Man reborn from the past. Absolutely genuine.”

“Really?”

“Yes, it's perfectly unique. The emotions come through clear as a bell, sharp as a knife. A collector's item. I predict it'll become a classic.”

“That I'd like to hear,” Blaine said grimly.

He took the unlabeled record back to the booth. In ten minutes he came out again, somewhat shaken, and purchased it for an exorbitant price. It was like buying a piece of himself.

The clerk and the Rex technicians were right. It was a real collector's item, and would probably become a classic.

Unfortunately, all names had been carefully wiped to prevent the police from tracing its source. He was famous — but in a completely anonymous fashion.

22

Blaine went to his job every day, swept the floor emptied the wastepaper basket, addressed envelopes, and did a few antique hulls on commission. In the evenings he studied the complex science of 22nd century yacht design. After a while he was given a few small assignments writing publicity releases. He proved talented at this, and was soon promoted to the position of junior yacht designer, He began handling much of the liaison between Jaakobsen Yachts, Ltd., and the various yards building to their design.

He continued to study, but there were few requests for classic hulls. The Jaakobsen brothers handled most of the stock boats, while old Ed Richter, known as the Marvel of Salem, drew up the unusual racers and multi-hulls. Blaine took over publicity and advertising, and had no time for anything else.

It was responsible, necessary work. But it was not yacht designing. Irrevocably his life in 2110 was falling into much the same pattern it had assumed in 1958.

Blaine pondered this carefully. On the one hand, he was happy about it. It seemed to settle, once and for all, the conflict between his mind and his borrowed body. Obviously his mind was boss.

On the other hand, the situation didn't speak too well for the quality of that mind. Here was a man who had travelled 152 years into the future, had passed through wonders and horrors, and was working again, with a weary and terrible inevitability, as a junior yacht designer who did everything but design yachts. Was there some fatal flaw in his character, some hidden defect which doomed him to inferiority no matter what his environment?

Moodily he pictured himself flung back a million or so years, to a caveman era. Doubtless, after a period of initial adjustment, he would become a junior designer of dugouts. Only not really a designer. His job would be to count the wampum, check the quality of the tree trunks and contract for outriggers, while some other fellow (probably a Neanderthal genius) did the actual running of the lines.

That was disheartening. But fortunately it was not the only way of viewing the matter. His inevitable return could also be taken as a fine example of internal solidarity, of human steadfastness. He was a man who knew what he was. No matter how his environment changed, he remained true to his function.

Viewed this way, he could be very proud of being eternally and forever a junior yacht designer.

He continued working, fluctuating between these two basic views of himself. Once or twice he saw Marie, but she was usually busy in the high councils of the Rex Corporation. He moved out of his hotel and into a small, tastefully furnished apartment. New York was beginning to feel normal to him.

And, he reminded himself, if he had gained nothing else, he had at least settled his mind-body problem.

But his body was not to be disposed of so lightly. Blaine had overlooked one of the problems likely to exist with the ownership of a strong, handsome, and highly idiosyncratic body such as his.

One day the conflict flared again, more aggravated than ever.

He had left work at the usual time, and was waiting at a corner for his bus. He noticed a woman staring intently at him. She was perhaps twenty-five years old, a buxom, attractive red-head. She was commonly dressed. Her features were bold, yet they had a certain wistful quality.

Blaine realized that he had seen her before but never really noticed her. Now that he thought about it, she had once ridden a helibus with him. Once she had entered a store nearly on his footsteps. And several times she had been passing his building when he left work.

She had been watching him, probably for weeks. But why?

He waited, staring back at her. The woman hesitated a moment, then said, “Could I talk to you a moment?” Her voice was husky, pleasant, but very nervous. “Please, Mr. Blaine, it's very important.”

So she knew his name. “Sure,” Blaine said. “What is it?”

“Not here. Could we — uh — go somewhere?”

Blaine grinned and shook his head. She seemed harmless enough; but Orc had seemed so, too.

Trusting strangers in this world was a good way of losing your mind, your body, or both.

“I don't know you,” Blaine said, “and I don't know where you learned my name. Whatever you want, you'd better tell me here.”

“I really shouldn't be bothering you,” the woman said in a discouraged voice. “But I couldn't stop myself, I had to talk to you. I get so lonely sometimes, you know how it is?”

“Lonely? Sure, but why do you want to talk to me?”

She looked at him sadly. “That's right, you don't know.”

“No, I don't,” Blaine said patiently. “Why?”

“Can't we go somewhere? I don't like to say it in public like this.”

“You'll have to,” Blaine said, beginning to think that this was a very complicated game indeed.

“Oh, all right,” the woman said, obviously embarrassed. “I've been following you around for a long time, Mr. Blaine. I found out your name and where you worked. I had to talk to you. It's all on account of that body of yours.”

“What?”

“Your body,” she said, not looking at him. “You see, it used to be my husband's body before he sold it to the Rex Corporation.” Blaine's mouth opened, but he could find no adequate words.