“Certainly. Though I cannot guarantee his behavior. The death trauma, though grossly overrated, is still capable of —”
“Yes, fine.” The girl walked over to Blaine and bent over him. She was a very pretty girl, Blaine noticed. Her features were clean-cut, her skin fresh and glowing. She had long, gleaming brown hair pulled too tightly back over her small ears, and there was a faint hint of perfume about her. She should have been beautiful; but she was marred by the immobility of her features, the controlled tenseness of her slender body. It was hard to imagine her laughing or crying. It was impossible to imagine her in bed. There was something of the fanatic about her, of the dedicated revolutionary; but he suspected that her cause was herself.
“Hello, Mr. Blaine,” she said. “I'm Marie Thorne.”
“Hello,” Blaine said cheerfully.
“Mr. Blaine,” she said, “where do you suppose you are?”
“Looks like a hospital. I suppose —” He stopped. He had just noticed a small microphone in her hand.
“Yes, what do you suppose?”
She made a small gesture. Men came forward and wheeled heavy equipment around his bed.
“Go right ahead,” Marie Thorne said. “Tell us what you suppose.”
“To hell with that,” Blaine said moodily, watching the men set up their machines around him. “What is this? What is going on?”
“We’re trying to help you,” Marie Thorne said. “Won't you cooperate?”
Blaine nodded, wishing she would smile. He suddenly felt very unsure of himself. Had something happened to him?
“Do you remember the accident?” she asked.
“What accident?”
“Do you remember being hurt?”
Blaine shuddered as his memory returned in a rush of spinning lights, wailing engine, impact and breakage.
“Yes. The steering wheel broke. I got it through the chest. Then my head hit.”
“Look at your chest,” she said softly.
Blaine looked. His chest, beneath white pajamas, was unmarked.
“Impossible!” he cried. His own voice sounded hollow, distant, unreal. He was aware of the men around his bed talking as they bent over their machines, but they seemed like shadows, flat and without substance. Their thin, unimportant voices were like flies buzzing against a window.
“Nice first reaction.”
“Very nice indeed.”
Marie Thorne said to him, “You are unhurt.”
Blaine looked at his undamaged body and remembered the accident. “I can't believe it!” he cried.
“He's coming on perfectly.”
“Fine mixture of belief and incredulity.”
Marie Thorne said, “Quiet, please. Go ahead, Mr. Blaine.
“I remember the accident,” Blaine said. “I remember the smashing, I remember — dying.”
“Get that?”
“Hell, yes. It really plays!”
“Perfectly spontaneous scene.”
“Marvellous! They'll go wild over it!”
She said, “A little less noise, please. Mr. Blaine, do you remember dying?”
“Yes, yes, I died!”
“His face!”
“That ludicrous expression heightens the reality.”
“I just hope Reilly thinks so.”
She said, “Look carefully at your body, Mr. Blaine. Here's a mirror. Look at your face.”
Blaine looked, and shivered like a man in fever. He touched the mirror, then ran shaking fingers over his face.
“It isn't my face! Where's my face? Where did you put my body and face?”
He was in a nightmare from which he could never awaken. The flat shadow men surrounded him, their voices buzzing like flies against a window, tending their cardboard machines, filled with vague menace, yet strangely indifferent, almost unaware of him. Marie Thorne bent low over him with her pretty, blank face, and from her small red mouth came gentle nightmare words.
“Your body is dead, Mr. Blaine, killed in an automobile accident. You can remember its dying. But we managed to save that part of you that really counts. We saved your mind, Mr. Blaine, and have given you a new body for it.”
Blaine opened his mouth to scream, and closed it again. “It's unbelievable,” he said quietly.
And the flies buzzed.
“Understatement.”
“Well, of course. One can't be frenetic forever.”
“I expected a little more scenery-chewing.”
“Wrongly. Understatement rather accentuates his dilemma.”
“Perhaps, in pure stage terms. But consider the thing realistically. This poor bastard has just discovered that he died in an automobile accident and is now reborn in a new body. So what does he say about it? He says, ‘It's unbelievable.’ Damn it, he's not really reacting to the shock!”
“He is! You’re projecting!”
“Please!” Marie Thorne said. “Go on, Mr. Blaine.”
Blaine, deep in his nightmare, was hardly aware of the soft, buzzing voices. He asked, “Did I really die?”
She nodded.
“And I am really born again in a different body?”
She nodded again, waiting. Blaine looked at her, and at the shadow men tending their cardboard machines. Why were they bothering him? Why couldn't they go pick on some other dead man? Corpses shouldn't be forced to answer questions. Death was man's ancient privilege, his immemorial pact with life, granted to the slave as well as the noble. Death was man's solace, and his right. But perhaps they had revoked that right; and now you couldn't evade your responsibilities simply by being dead.
They were waiting for him to speak. And Blaine wondered if insanity still retained its hereditary privileges. With ease he could slip over and find out.
But insanity is not granted to everyone. Blaine's self-control returned. He looked up at Marie Thorne.
“My feelings,” he said slowly, “are difficult to describe. I've died, and now I'm contemplating the fact. I don't suppose any man fully believes in his own death. Deep down he feels immortal. Death seems to await others, but never oneself. It's almost as though — ”
“Let's cut it right here. He's getting analytical,”
“I think you’re right,” Marie Thorne said. “Thank you very much, Mr. Blaine.”
The men, solid and mundane now, their vague menace disappeared, began rolling their equipment.
“Wait —” Blaine said.
“Don't worry,” she told him. “We'll get the rest of your reactions later. We just wanted to record the spontaneous part now.”
“Damn good while it lasted.”
“A collector's item.”
“Wait!” Blaine cried. “I don't understand. Where am I? What happened? How —”
Marie Thorne said. ”I'm terribly sorry, I must hurry now and edit this for Mr. Reilly.“
The men and equipment were gone. Marie Thorne smiled reassuringly, and hurried away.
Blaine felt ridiculously close to tears. He blinked rapidly when the fat and motherly nurse came back.
“Drink this,” said the nurse. “It'll make you sleep. That's it, take it all down like a good boy. Just relax, you had a big day, what with dying and being reborn and all.”
Two big tears rolled down Blaine's cheeks.
“Dear me,” said the nurse, “the cameras should be here now. Those are genuine spontaneous tears if I ever saw any. Many a tragic and spontaneous scene I've witnessed in this infirmary, believe me, and I could tell those snooty recording boys something about genuine emotion if I wanted to, and they thinking they know all the secrets of the human heart.”
“Where am I?” Blaine asked drowsily. “Where is this?”
“You'd call it being in the future,” the nurse said.
“Oh,” said Blaine.