“Occupational risk!” I said.
“Not for long, though. It hit him one day what it would be like if they all came home to roost, so he went and had them all expunged and started over with people he chose himself, the way anyone else does. And round about then it all dried up. People don’t come and spill their troubles any more. The need has mostly gone. And the other big reason for going to bars—chance company—that’s faded out too. Now that people know they don’t have to be scared of the biggest loneliness of all, it makes them calm and mainly self-reliant. Me, I’m looking round for another trade. Bars are closing down all over.”
“You’d make a good Contact consultant,” I suggested, not more than half-joking. He didn’t take it as a joke, either.
“I’ve considered it,” he said seriously. “I might just do that. I might just.”
I looked around again. Now Geraghty had spelled it out for me, I could see how it must have happened. My own case, even if I hadn’t realized it till now, was an illustration. I’d spilled troubles to bartenders in my time, gone to bars to escape loneliness. Contact had come in about three years ago, about two years ago it took fire and everyone but everyone lined up for the treatment, and a few months after that I quit coming here, where I’d formerly been as much of a fixture as the furniture. I’d thought nothing of it— put it down to being married and planning a family and spending money other ways.
But it wasn’t for that. It was that the need had gone.
In the old style, there was a mirror mounted on the wall behind the bar, and in that mirror I could see some of the booths reflected. All were empty except one, and in that one was a couple. The man was nothing out of the ordinary, but the girl—no, woman—took my eye. She wasn’t so young; she could be forty or so, but she had a certain something. A good figure helped, but most of it was in the face. She was thin, with a lively mouth and laughter wrinkles round the eyes, and she was clearly enjoying whatever she was talking about. It was pleasant to watch her enjoying it. I kept my eyes on her while Geraghty held forth.
“Like I say, it makes people more careful, and less careful. More careful about the way they treat others, because if they don’t behave, their own Contacts are liable to expunge them, and then where will they be? Less careful about the way they treat themselves, because they aren’t scared much of dying any more. They know that if it happens quick, without pain, it’ll just be a blur and then confusion and then picking up again and then melting into someone else. No sharp break, no stopping. Have you picked anyone up, Mr. Hale?”
“Matter of fact, I have,” I said. “I picked up my father just about a year ago.”
“And was it okay?”
“Oh, smooth as oil. Disconcerting for a while—like having an itch I couldn’t scratch—but that passed in about two or three months and then he just blended in and there it was.”
I thought about it for a moment. In particular, I thought about the peculiar sensation of being able to remember how I looked in my cradle, from outside, and things like that. But it was comforting as well as peculiar, and anyway there was never any doubt about whose memory it was. All the memories that came over when a Contact was completed had indefinable auras that labeled them and helped keep the receiver’s mind straight.
“And you?” I said.
Geraghty nodded. “Guy I know in the Army. Just a few weeks back he had a car smash. Poor guy lived for ten days with a busted back, going through hell. He was in bad shape when he came over. Pain—it was terrible!”
“Ought to write your Congressman,” I said. “Get this new bill through. Hear about it?”
“Which one?”
“Legalize mercy killing provided the guy has a valid Contact. Everyone has nowadays, so why not?”
Geraghty looked thoughtful. “Yes, I did hear about it. I wasn’t happy about it. But since I picked up my buddy and got his memory of what happened—well I guess I’m changing my mind. I’ll do like you say.”
We were quiet for a bit then, thinking about what Contact had done for the world. Geraghty had said he wasn’t happy at first about this euthanasia bill—well, I and a lot of other people weren’t sure about Contact at first, either. Then we saw what it could do, and had a chance to think the matter out, and now I felt I didn’t understand how I’d gone through so much of my life without it. I just couldn’t think myself back to a world where when you died you had to stop. It was horrible!
With Contact, that problem was solved. Dying became like a change of vehicle. You blurred, maybe blacked out, knowing you would come to, as it were, looking out of somebody’s eyes that you had Contact with. You wouldn’t be in control any more, but he or she would have your memories, and for two or three months you’d ease around, fitting yourself to your new partner and then bit by bit there’d be a shift of viewpoint, and finally a melting together, and click. No interruption; just a smooth painless process taking you on into another instalment of life as someone who was neither you nor someone else, but a product of the two.
For the receiver, as I knew from experience, it was at worst uncomfortable, but for someone you were fond of you could take far more than discomfort.
Thinking of what life had been like before Contact, I found myself shuddering. I ordered another drink—a double this time. I hadn’t been out drinking for a long while.
I’d been telling Geraghty the news for maybe an hour, and I was on my third or fourth drink, when the door of the bar opened and a guy came in. He was medium-sized, rather ordinary, fairly well-dressed, and I wouldn’t have looked at him twice except for the expression on his face. He looked so angry and miserable I couldn’t believe my eyes.
He went up to his booth where the couple were sitting— the one where the woman was that I’d been watching—and planted his feet on the ground facing them. All the attractive light went out of the woman’s face, and the man with her got half to his feet as if in alarm.
“You know,” Geraghty said softly, “that looks like trouble. I haven’t had a row in this bar for more than a year, but I remember what one looks like when it’s brewing.”
He got up off his stool watchfully, and moved down the bar so he could go through the gap in the counter if he had to.
I swiveled on my stool and caught some of the conversation. As far as I could hear, it was going like this.
“You expunged me, Mary!” the guy with the miserable face was saying. “Did you?”
“Now look here!” the other man cut in. “It’s up to her whether she does or doesn’t.”
“You shut up,” the newcomer said. “Well, Mary? Did you?”
“Yes, Mack, I did,” she said. “Sam had nothing to do with it. It was entirely my idea—and your fault.”
I couldn’t see Mack’s face, but his body sort of tightened up, shaking, and he put his arms out as though he was going to haul Mary out of her seat. Sam—I presumed Sam was the man in the booth—seized his arm, yelling at him.
That was where Geraghty came in, ordering them to quit where they were. They didn’t like it, but they did, and Mary and Sam finished their drinks and went out of the bar, and Mack, after glaring after them, came up and took a stool next but one to mine.
“Rye,” he said. “Gimme the bottle—I’ll need it.”
His voice was rasping and bitter, a tone I realized I hadn’t heard in maybe months. I suppose I looked curious; anyway, he glanced at me and saw I was looking at him, and spoke to me.
“Know what that was all about?”
I shrugged. “Lost your girl?” I suggested.