“Sure,” Blaine said. “What did he discover?”

“Nothing, really. But he got the ball rolling. Then Kralski took over the work at Vilna, and shoved it ahead some. That was 1987, the year the Pirates won their first World Series. Around 2000 there was Von Leddner. Outlined the general theory of the hereafter, but didn't have any proofs. And finally we come to Professor Michael Vanning.

“Professor Vanning is the boy who pinned it all down. He proved that people survive after death. Contacted them, talked with them, recorded them, all that stuff. Offered absolute sure-enough concrete scientific proof of life after death. So of course there were big arguments about it, a lot of religious talk. Controversy. Headlines. A big-time professor from Harvard named James Archer Flynn set out to prove the whole thing was a hoax. He and Vanning argued back and forth for years.

“By this time Vanning was an old man and decided to take the plunge. He sealed a lot of stuff in a safe, hid stuff here and there, scattered some code words and promised to come back, like Houdini promised but didn't. Then —”

“Pardon me,” Blaine interrupted, “if there is life after death, why didn't Houdini come back?”

“It's very simple, but please, one thing at a time. Anyhow, Vanning killed himself, leaving a long suicide note about man's immortal spirit and the indomitable progress of the human race. It's reprinted in a lot of anthologies. Later they found out it was ghost-written, but that's another story. Where was I?”

“He suicided.”

“Right. And damned if he didn't contact Professor James Archer Flynn after dying and tell him where to find all that hidden stuff, the code words, and so forth. That clinched it, buddy. Life after death was in.”

Melhiil stood up, stretched, and sat down again. “The Vanning Institute,” he said, “warned everybody against hysteria. But hysteria there was. The next fifteen years are known as the Crazy Forties.”

Melhill grinned and licked his lips. “Wish I'd been around then. Everybody just sort of let go. ‘Doesn't matter what you do,’ the jingle ran, ‘pie in the sky is waitin’ for you.‘ Saint or sinner, bad or good, everybody gets a slice. The murderer walks into the hereafter just like the archbishop. So live it up, boys and girls, enjoy the flesh on Earth while you’re here, ’cause you'll get plenty of spirit after death. Yep, and they really lived it up. Anarchy it was. A new religion popped up calling itself ‘Realization’. It started telling people that they owed it to themselves to experience everything, good or bad, fair and foul, because the hereafter was just a long remembrance of what you did on Earth. So do it, they said, that's what you’re put on Earth for, do it, or you'll be shortchanged in the afterlife. Gratify every desire, satisfy every lust, explore your blackest depths. Live high, die high. It was wacky. The real fanatics formed torture clubs, and wrote encyclopedias on pain, and collected tortures like a housewife would collect recipes. At each meeting, a member would voluntarily present himself as a victim, and they'd kill him in the most excruciating damned ways they could find. They wanted to experience the absolute most in pleasure and pain. And I guess they did.”

Melhill wiped his forehead and said, more sedately, “I've done a little reading on the Crazy Years.”

“So I see,” Blaine said.

“It's sort of interesting stuff. But then came the crusher. The Vanning Institute had been experimenting all this time. Around 2050, when the Crazy Years were in full swing, they announced that there was a hereafter, sure enough; but not for everyone.”

Blaine blinked, but made no comment.

“A real crusher. The Vanning Institute said they had certain proof that only about one person in a million got into the hereafter. The rest, the millions and millions, just went out like a light when they died. Pouf! No more. No afterlife. Nothing.”

“Why?” Blaine asked.

“Well, Tom, I'm none too clear on that part myself,” Melhill told him. “If you asked me something about flow-mechanics, I could really tell you something; but psychic theory isn't my field. So try to stick with me while I struggle through this.”

He rubbed his forehead vigorously. “What survives or doesn't survive after death is the mind. People have been arguing for thousands of years about what a mind is, and where and how it interacts with the body, and so forth. We haven't got all the answers, but we do have some working definitions. Nowadays, the mind is considered a high-tension energy web that emanates from the body, is modified by the body, and itself modifies the body. Got that?”

“I think so. Go on.”

“So, the way I got it, the mind and body interact and intermodify. But the mind can also exist independently of the body. According to a lot of scientists, the independent mind is the next stage of evolution. In a million years, they say, we won't even need a body except maybe for a brief incubation period. Personally I don't think this damned race will survive another million years. It damn well doesn't deserve to.”

“At the moment I agree with you,” Blaine said. “But get back to the hereafter.”

“We've got this high-tension energy web. When the body dies, that web should be able to go on existing, like a butterfly coming out of a cocoon. Death is simply the process that hatches the mind from the body. But it doesn't work that way because of the death trauma. Some scientists think the death trauma is nature's ejecting mechanism, to get the mind free of the body. But it works too hard and louses up everything. Dying is a tremendous psychic shock, and most of the time the energy web gets disrupted, ripped all to hell. It can't pull itself together, it dissipates, and you’re but completely dead.”

Blaine said, “So that's why Houdini didn't come back.”

“Him and most others. Right. A lot of people did some heavy thinking, and that ended the Crazy Years. The Vanning Institute went on working They studied Yoga and stuff like that, but on a scientific basis. Some of those Eastern religion had the right idea, you know. Strengthen the mind. That's what the Institute wanted: a way to strengthen the energy web so it would survive the death process.”

“And they found it?”

“In spades. Along about that time they changed their name to Hereafter, Inc.”

Blaine nodded. “I passed their building today. Hey, wait a minute! You say they solved the mind strengthening problem? Then no one dies! Everyone survives after death!”

Melhill grinned sardonically. “Don't be a farmer, Tom. You think they give it away free? Not a chance. It's a complex electrochemical treatment, pal, and they charge for it. They charge plenty.”

“So only the rich go to heaven,” Blaine said.

“What else did you expect? Can't have just anyone crashing in.”

“Sure, sure,” Blaine said. “But aren't there other ways, other mind-strengthening disciplines? What about Yoga? What about Zen?”

“They work,” Melhill said. “There are at least a dozen government tested and approved home-survival courses. Trouble is, it takes about twenty years of really hard work to become an adept. That's not for the ordinary guy. Nope, without the machines to help you, you’re dead.”

“And only Hereafter, Inc. has the machines?”

“There's one or two others, the Afterlife Academy and Heaven, Ltd., but the price stays about the same. The government's getting to work on some death-survival insurance, but it won't help us.”

“I guess not,” Blaine said. The dream, for a moment, had been dazzling; a relief from mortal fears; the rational certainty of a continuance and existence after the body's death; the knowledge of an uninterrupted process of growth and fulfillment for his personality to its own limits — not the constricting limits of the frail fleshy envelope that heredity and chance had imposed on him.“