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.”

“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 —