The J.T. McIntosh Bundle

Table of Contents

Flight from Rebirth

Transmigration

One in Three Hundred

The Norman Way

FLIGHT

FROM

REBIRTH

J. T. MCINTOSH

a division of F+W Media, Inc.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

Copyright

1

HE WAS ON THE RUN AGAIN, AND this time there was no exhilaration in it. Always before, if there was a thrill of fear, there had also been a thrill of pleasure: he was still cheating the world and still getting away with it. Always before, he had been alone, with no one to consider but himself, no one to hinder him, no one to care if he finally lost the game.

This time he wasn’t alone. As he sat on the beach under the blazing Florida sun, a tanned girl in a silver swimsuit who was running and jumping and laughing in the breakers turned every now and then and waved to him, keeping in contact with him, as if he could vicariously enjoy the delight of her youth and health and strength in the sun and sand and sea. She was right, too: he could and did.

His greatest advantage, next to being alone, had always been that the police, smugly certain that no crime could exist that they didn’t know about or had not already solved, got hot under the collar at the very suggestion of unsolved crimes. It was their Achilles heel.

And then, too, nobody would believe the truth. So nobody was likely to discover it.

If the police were not looking for him, he was as safe as ever. This was just possible; they had certainly started looking for him, but it was conceivable that after a preliminary probe they had given up. However, that was no more than a remote possibility. If they were still looking for him, the fact that it was for the wrong reason didn’t matter a damn. At any moment a heavy hand would fall on his shoulder, and his freedom and his life would be over.

He felt it would have been easier to bear if he had made a mistake. It was unfair that he hadn’t made one but still found himself with his head on the block, waiting for the rattle of the guillotine.

Well, had he made a mistake? Lacking second sight, he could hardly have foreseen the consequences of going to the Blue Moon night club. Still, perhaps it had been a mistake to go twice. You could do almost anything once and get away with it. It was the second time you showed up that people got curious and started trying to find out who you were and all the rest there was to know.

Yet if it hadn’t been that it would have been something else. You couldn’t buck the national register. A man could lose himself in a card-index handled by human beings. A computer’s memory bank was another matter. The Population Center at Washington didn’t lose people. Any time you took a job you had to have a name, and if you gave the wrong name, sooner or later a query came from Washington. Even if you were trying to hide, it was far safer to give your real identity than a false one. So long as the Population Center knew who you were and where you were, the idiot computer was satisfied. It was bothered only by details that didn’t jibe.

A bronzed young Adonis ran into the sea, straight for the girl in the silver swimsuit. Ignoring him, she blew a kiss up the beach, and the self-confidence of the Adonis faltered. He ran past her as if he had never noticed her, and swam strongly out to sea with much splashing to prove his manhood.

The man on the beach waved back. He knew she was in love with him, and tried dispassionately to calculate how deep her feelings were and how long they might last. He didn’t know if she really believed that he was not in love with her, despite the number of times he had told her. He wondered if she was going to be hurt.

Marita was certainly a lovely creature, one of the loveliest girls he had ever known. And he had known many.

‘Tis pity she’s a whore, he murmured, quoting the title of a centuries-old play.

Because he liked her — although he was not in love with her, he had a very deep affection for her — he went on to reflect that she had probably had very little choice. In this or any other age, supremely beautiful women had a natural asset which society virtually forced them to throw on the market in one way or another. And Marita was no actress. Maybe she’d make the grade as a dancer — she did have a certain talent, and with her body she wouldn’t need a lot. Physically she was quite perfect, the exception to the rule that a beautiful woman, no matter how beautiful, must have some fault. Her face was so lovely that she could have put all her eggs in one basket, wrapping up her body in the latest hidealls and making her face alone her fortune. But her figure, too, was so alluringly contoured that concealing it would have been like locking up a Rembrandt in a cellar.

What was a girl like that to do, left alone in the world? Perhaps only what she had done ten years ago. At fourteen, she had been too young to be an actress or showgirl, and well-endowed as she was even then she lacked three things: education, money and parents.

She did what she could, and she did it very well.

Two women passed him, walking along the beach. Self-indulgence had given them both bulges which nothing but self-denial could cure. One said: See that girl? That’s the type I mean.

What type? the other asked.

Too good to be true. Baby blue eyes. Curves she pretends she doesn’t know about. She’s playing in the water like a kid … but I bet she’s five years older than she looks and has forgotten more about men than you or I will ever know.

It was amazing, he thought as they passed on, how shrewd women could be about women. Catty, sure, but still shrewd.

Yes, Marita was playing in the water like a kid. She had discovered innocence. She was learning what it was like to be clean. Oh, certainly she was living with him, but that was nothing. He had offered to marry her if she liked. The symbolic significance of the ceremony might be reassuring to Marita. Of course, once the marriage went on record he’d be skewered, but he was skewered anyway.

Was there any chance?

Well, if he could somehow get past August 29 there might be a chance. But there were seventeen billion reasons why he wasn’t going to make it.

Seventeen billion dollars.

A lot of money, like a lot of mass, had inertia too great for one man. Moving a mountain from your path was child’s play compared with shifting a barrier like seventeen billion dollars. And it was so big you couldn’t go round it or over it. You had to go straight through.

• • •

A dozen feet from him the air crackled.

His heart sank. It could be nothing. Once or twice before he thought he had heard that noise, and nothing happened.

When you were peeped by transmitterless TV, the cops’ ultimate weapon, the air crackled. They’d never managed to get rid of the crackle. Maybe they didn’t want to. When it happened, people with clear consciences didn’t turn a hair, unless the crackle caught them at an awkward moment, like when they were kissing the boss’s wife. Then, knowing their rights, they’d call the local police HQ and yammer about invasion of privacy. However, people whose consciences weren’t clear, who had something to hide other than that they were kissing the boss’s wife (which was good clean fun and none of the cops’ business), were liable to jump up and run.

Feeling an impulse to jump up and run, he fought it and conquered it. If it really was TTV, the more unconcerned he could be the better. What you had to remember was that when the air popped, that was like seeing a cop. You were simply making trouble for yourself if every time you saw a cop you took to your heels.

All the crackle meant was that somebody had looked at him. That might be the end, it might be the beginning, or it might be an abortive, unimportant episode in the course of a search for somebody else.

He continued to watch Marita, taking pleasure in her lithe movements, pleasure in which there was not even a trace of eroticism. Others were able to take pleasure in poetry or fine prose: for him prose was good or bad depending on its truth and clarity, nothing else. Others took keen pleasure in a dramatic sunset; he merely noticed it was getting dark. Others took pleasure in music …

2

RIGHT TO THE FRONT DOOR, please, said Susan Sonnenburg firmly, as the helicab dipped to land at a station a block away from the Musicosmos Building in New York.

Sorry, lady, I got no VIP license, said the cab pilot. If I touched down on the Musicosmos frontage, the air would be blue with cops before you could get the door open.

No, it wouldn’t. I have a card.

Okay, flash it. Surprise me.

I’m not going to rummage for half an hour in my bag looking for a card. Kindly take my word for it.

I ain’t taking no chances, lady. You can walk from here.

"I most certainly can not walk from here, and I don’t intend to try. At my age I get quite enough exercise changing my mind."

The pilot grinned. You don’t look seventy, lady, but I guess you must be, at that. Something I’ve noticed — no woman under seventy ever says ‘at my age.’ Well, even if you’re seventy, you’ll still have to walk from here, because I’m not going to put down in a red zone for you or anybody else. No offense, lady.

Susan was mildly pleased. So she didn’t look seventy. Even if that was flattery, and she didn’t think it was, the cabbie certainly had no suspicion that she had passed her ninety-fifth birthday. She decided to give him ten dollars extra when he finally set her down at Musicosmos, not for saying she didn’t look seventy but for meaning it.

The pilot thought of something. Say, if you rate a card, I should know your name. Who are you, lady?

I told you I had a card. You very rudely doubt my word, proving you are no gentleman. Why should you believe me now when I tell you I’m Martha Washington?

The pilot suddenly looked down at her hands. Obstinately, perversely, she put them behind her.

She was too late. You’re Susan Sonnenburg, the pianist, he said. I should’ve known, but you don’t talk like a long-hair.

That’s a ridiculous expression, she sighed. For some centuries now, musicians have had much shorter and neater hair than those who sometimes listen to them.

I got your record of that Chopin sonata, the one in D Flat.

B Flat Minor.

Have it your way. Five flats, anyway. You play the funeral march too fast. But sure, you got a card. Why didn’t you say who you were?

The cab hopped the block to the Musicosmos Building and dropped gently toward the reserved landing area.

I don’t play it too fast, Susan retorted. You just listen too slowly.

And the movement before that, said the pilot, the one with the chromatic chords running up, you play too slow. And when it comes to the bit that ought to go faster, you keep it the same speed.

You ought to hear me play Minuet in G, said Susan acidly. Occasionally I get some of it nearly right.

I didn’t mean I didn’t like the way you play the Chopin sonata, Miss Sonnenburg. I just said you don’t play it right.

He touched the button that opened the door. When Susan opened her purse he shook his head. This one’s on me.

So she couldn’t even give him the fare, let alone the ten-dollar tip. Casting her mind back to the last time she had tried to be gracious, about fifty years ago, she thanked him like a great lady and hobbled inside, leaning on her stick.

The Musicosmos Building swelled to heaven like a hymn of praise. Music made money these days, even serious music. Some people thought the change had started when the schools began to teach children not to be scared of thinking, not to be afraid of being different, not even to be ashamed of secret cravings for culture. Others thought that when detection and punishment not only caught up with crime but got way ahead of it, there was no reason not to make love, reading books, watching TV and even listening to Beethoven and Brahms strictly legal. A third group, the supreme optimists, thought: Who knows, maybe the human race is maturing at last?

Sixty years after Borodin died, his music was made into a hit musical decorated by lush blondes, brunettes and redheads wearing diaphanous pants and jewels in their navels. Two hundred years after Borodin died, his second symphony topped the hit parade. It all seemed to prove something.

Susan, who had seen much of this happening, thought cynically that the real reason why good music came into its own was a general loss of innocence. A Victorian audience could watch open-mouthed as the villain fed the heroine to a vast circular saw, naive enough to be thrilled although there wasn’t the slightest chance of the girl really being sawn in half. More sophisticated audiences a century later couldn’t watch this sort of thing without laughing; TV plays had to be crisper, tougher, full of twists. And people got more sophisticated musically too. The bathos of Victorian ballads, Tin Pan Alley, rock, soul, purge, pulse and basic finally, after a few centuries, made people laugh. Basic was the clincher. The so-called melody line was crude and elemental. You heard a number once, you knew it inside-out, backwards and forwards, edgewise, upside-down. If you heard it again, you either had to laugh or cry. Or possibly shoot yourself.

Now there was mental music, which was clever. But it only held a candle to the sun of musical genius, all-time genius, music by composers who put so much into their work that you couldn’t get it all at once and you couldn’t laugh. Who could laugh at the Beethoven Choral?

Modern composers worked hard, but without the concentration of the masters. Susan had recorded new works by Spink, Vorum, Eriaconsku, Merrill and Schneider, generally only once. You could go on and on listening to Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, even Nebulann, born 1991. She played these masterpieces over and over again …

• • •

Old Benny touched his cap to Susan as she entered the building. He was older than she was, only the personnel department knew how old. And the personnel department wasn’t telling — that would be invasion of privacy.

They’re ready for you in Studio Seven, he mumbled, shook his head for no obvious reason and gave her his arm. Susan took it gratefully.

She had had a bad fall eight months before, and though it was easy enough to pin the broken bones, she’d scarcely been as good as new since. Ironically, as science made life easier and easier for the average person, life became tougher for the semi-cripple. In the nineteenth century if you were old and tottery (and rich) you’d have servants to help you around, wrap you up, open doors for you, carry things and even carry you if necessary. Now there wasn’t a personal servant left in the United States, and you had to walk farther (because of the parking problem), climb more stairs (since there were no pedestrians on traffic lanes any more) and cope alone with more high steps (cabs, escalators, capsules, planes, subways, overways, buses) than any nineteenth-century lady of advanced years had ever had to do.

It was for this reason that Susan had always appreciated the shambling, gentle helpfulness of old Benny.

Benny, she said. I’m an old woman, and crotchety, and dried up. I hardly ever have a civil word for anybody. Why have you always been so nice to me?

The abrupt question was too much for him. His vacant, friendly face registered bewilderment and conflict. He seemed to feel something was demanded of him but had no idea what.

Never mind, said Susan. Ask a silly question and see what you get.

His face, however, was clearing. All he needed was time.

You’ve always been very kind to me, Miss Sonnenburg, he said.

Now it was Susan who was at a loss. Kind? Me?

You’ve always treated me right. I don’t mind when Mr. Weygand pushes past me and gets impatient with me, but you never do it, Miss Sonnenburg. I do mind a little when Mr. Simon bawls me out, though he’s got every right … But you, you wait for me. I think you’re the only person that waits for me.

She was touched, and rather relieved that she had not been impatient with him a few seconds earlier, as she might well have been. If she had any virtues, patience was not one of them. She understood that Benny didn’t mean waiting for him physically, but waiting for him to think things out. People in a hurry would tell him things, ask him things, and only afterwards realize, as they might have done from the start if they hadn’t been in such a hurry, that they had set in motion a ponderous old machine which would clank and whir and groan and wheeze for fully three or four seconds before delivering anything. Then, not having three or four seconds to spare, they said: Hell, why did I start this? and rushed on, leaving old Benny still clanking.

Susan knew she didn’t deserve the tribute. She would probably have rushed on like the others except that she wasn’t able to do any rushing any more.

It’s you who’s kind Benny, she said. Like now. Like getting cabs for me and making sure the pilots bring them right to the front door. Like fixing a room for me that day I didn’t feel well. Like cutting a bit off my stick when I found it was too long.

It’s my job, miss, said Benny, embarrassed.

No, it’s not. What I’m talking about are the things you do that aren’t part of your job.

Seems to me if you’re caretaker and odd-job man, anything nobody else wants to do is your job. He thought of something and added: Not that I mean I didn’t want to help you if I could, Miss Sonnenburg. I didn’t mean that at all.

She smiled and left him at the entrance to Studio Seven, knowing Benny would go in with her if she wanted him to, but would rather not.

He didn’t like music.

She found they weren’t ready for her after all. Collini, the conductor, hadn’t finished shaping the tuttis.

Since the advent of wave matching, most recordings had become jigsaw puzzles. Although some old-fashioned performers and conductors still adhered to the old hit-or-miss methods, what usually happened was that a visual master was prepared, a blueprint for a particular performance, a sort of picture of the desired orchestral sound. Of course, that was what a score had always been but a score was only a very general guide. Every time a new conducting school emerged, the new conductors claimed what they were doing was going back to what the composer really wrote. And somehow what the composer really wrote always turned out to be different from what everybody else had been doing up to then.

The visual master was far more detailed than any score, setting out exact tempos and dynamics, including the selective dynamics necessary when a solo bassoon marked mf had to dominate the whole string section also marked mf. When the master was complete, the orchestra would record the music and an automatic process of comparison would be carried out. The machines would ignore the nuances of expression and phrasing which they didn’t understand, but would point out the factual, measurable differences which they did — where the second trumpet’s E natural was cracked, where the second violins swamped the firsts, where a woodwind squeak registered like a note. The engineers, conductor, soloist if any, and supervisor would go over these points carefully, deciding what didn’t matter and what had to be done again.

The system didn’t produce music of any greater artistic worth, it merely produced more immaculate, more accurate music much quicker. It also helped musicians who knew what they wanted to ensure that they got it.

Since Collini wasn’t quite ready for her, Susan withdrew to a rest room off the studio. To her disgust, Weygand followed her.

So this is the last series of recordings Susan Sonnenburg will ever make, Weygand sighed sententiously.

When someone makes a statement like ‘It’s raining,’ or ‘It’s Tuesday’ or ‘Well, well, here we are,’ or the one you just made, one cannot but agree with him, said Susan.

He was a fussy, conventional little man. Indeed, it was his job to be conventional. He was one of the directors of Musicosmos, and what he liked, nearly everyone would like.

The Brahms concertos, he mused. A strange choice for your last sessions. A remarkable choice. One hopes, not a mistaken choice.

"You mean you hope. I won’t be here."

Aren’t you a little sad … a little regretful? After all, you probably won’t be a pianist again. You may not even be a musician.

On the other hand, I don’t suppose I’ll have to go to bed alone any more.

Weygand had a literal mind. Yes, you will, for years yet. At least four years.

Susan resigned herself to the conversation. If she was honest with herself, as she usually was, she was forced to admit that the only real reason for her dislike of Weygand was the practical musician’s contempt for the theoretical musician. Plus the fact that you always knew what he was going to say before he said it.

I’ve done most things a pianist can do in music, she said. I wouldn’t want to do them all over again.

Wouldn’t you? said Weygand wistfully. He was not a theoretical musician by choice.

Maybe this time I’ll be a jazz trumpeter or a blues singer.

He sniffed. That wouldn’t be right. You’re a great artiste, Miss Sonnenburg.

I’ve got a fair rating on the mechanical side. Perhaps I’ll turn out to be a physicist or a doctor this time.

A scientist! said Weygand, horrified.

Oh, it’s all right, Susan assured him blandly. According to my rating, I could certainly be a scientist, but not a very good one. That makes it all right, doesn’t it?

Weygand was struck speechless, a consummation devoutly to be wished.

Thinking back, Susan realized that she had never been very close to any male musician, theoretical or practical. Her husband had been a computer expert. Urged by her, he had done a lot of work on the visual master system, which had scarcely changed since he died more than seventy years ago. But his work was technical, not musical.

Susan, married at seventeen, had had three wonderful years before being left a widow at twenty. There had never been another man in her life.

Recovering, Weygand broke into her thoughts. I think I see what you mean. You’ve done most things in music, but never the two Brahms piano concertos. So you chose them for your last sessions.

Yes, Susan murmured incredulously. How could anyone consider it worthwhile to make so many statements of the obvious?

I know you never recorded them. Did you ever play them?

Quite often, at concerts. I was never satisfied. Perhaps there was a block there, a trauma. Gerard, who could take music or leave it, liked Brahms. Said he could see a great mind working. No doubt, he admitted, he should be able to see in Beethoven’s music an even greater mind working, but he couldn’t. His fault, not Beethoven’s, he also admitted.

And through Gerard’s eyes — for in those three wonderful years she had come to see nearly everything through Gerard’s eyes — Susan saw the grandeur of Brahms and always remained a little in awe of it. Although she played all the Brahms solo piano music with complete confidence, the concertos remained unsealed peaks.

Weygand coughed, which meant he was going to say something which he thought might be resented. Miss Sonnenburg, do you really think it’s possible? The Brahms concertos are … ah … exclusively male. Few women have been successful in them, even women in the prime of life and health —

My health is excellent, Susan said firmly, or Rebirth would not have been left until now. You know that.

Of course. I understand. He disengaged hastily. Naturally. Jobermann the cellist went at seventy-four, and he had been failing for some time. The Institute naturally doesn’t like to lose anybody —

Susan laughed at a sudden grotesque picture of the Rebirth Institute as an undertaking establishment watching ghoulishly over its clients in life for fear of losing them to somebody else in death. Of course, it was the other way round: the Institute watched over its selected prospective clients in fear that the grim sickle of Time would beat the Institute to it.

As she laughed she suddenly felt a little dizzy, and said abruptly: Mr. Weygand, I think I need a rest. Would you mind leaving me? I’ll be all right in a few minutes. Whenever Collini is ready.

He was instantly anxious. I’ll send for a doctor. I’ll —

"Mr. Weygand, send for no doctor, lay no eggs, have no kittens, cease to bother me, simply go away," she interjected firmly.

He left, making allowances for age and artistic temperament.

What she had told him about her health was true. She had scarcely known illness. Until the fall eight months ago she had seldom encountered a doctor or nurse professionally.

All her long life she had regretted not having children. But Gerard was firm about that. She had to finish her musical studies, because that was her bent and if she abandoned music she might be laying the foundations for a wasted life. When she was twenty-three (they fixed the figure arbitrarily for reasons which she had not forgotten) they would start a family.

By the time she was twenty-three, Gerard had been three years in his grave. There was no Rebirth then, and it would have made no difference if there had been, because although Gerard would undoubtedly have qualified, he died by accident, and accidents cheated Rebirth.

You didn’t go for Rebirth at twenty-eight. As a rule, it was only after you were about forty or forty-five that the Rebirth Council began to consider your case seriously.

Rebirth was not immortality. It was not invulnerability. It was the conqueror of death from old age, and that was all. If you died, you died, and you couldn’t be brought back.

Since Gerard died improbably and messily when a robot ran wild (about the only time this ever happened outside the early science-fiction horror stories), the Rebirth Institute, even if it had existed then and had awarded him one of the coveted places, would never have had a chance to save him.

It would have lost a client.

But its loss would have been very little compared to that of Susan, who lost a large and important part of her life. Rebirth meant more to her than to most others: it meant a new life in which she would not, could not, know the loss of Gerard, and therefore had a chance of being whole again for the first time in more than seventy years.

• • •

Susan shuddered at the horrible memory, for it was she who found what was left of Gerard under the emotionlessly vicious steel murderer.

Then she realized that the shudder was a shiver, and that she was ill.

Bracing herself, she banished both memory and her doubts about her physical capacity to cope with the demanding Brahms concertos. The fool Weygand had started this. She didn’t blame him; he couldn’t help being a fool any more than old Benny could help being what he was. But she should not have allowed Weygand to discompose her.

Just for a moment she thought: Suppose I’m really ill and I die before Rebirth?

Her own terrified reaction shocked her. She had not realized she was depending so heavily on Rebirth, and she was ashamed of her deep fear of death.

When you were young, death was far away, neither frightening nor particularly interesting. Young people took reckless chances and quite often got themselves killed. Even if they had an incredibly lucky escape, this seldom made them any more careful.

Life was a thing you prized more the longer you had it.

Her sudden stab of naked fear at the thought of dying because she had deliberately delayed her Rebirth date shocked her and made her take a grip on herself.

I am not, she told herself firmly, going to give in to this fear. She meant to record the two Brahms concertos. Two or three sessions within forty-eight hours might do it, or it might take two weeks, four weeks, six weeks. However long it took she was not going to abandon the project, not because it was so important to her, but because human dignity was. She would not become like some of those people who did not rate Rebirth, begging, pleading, grovelling, conniving, all in the desperate and futile hope that after all they need not die.

If she died before she finished this last job, so be it.

She was still afraid, but she had conquered her fear.

After a few minutes’ rest she had conquered her shivering, too, and when a still anxious Weygand came for her, she assured him that she was perfectly all right.

Collini didn’t speak; he had his baton already raised. He was impatient. Now that he was ready for her, Susan should be ready for him. Time was being wasted.

Off the rostrum Collini was a mild and very friendly man, with much of the warmth and none of the violence of his native Sicily. With a baton in his hand he was a tiger, liable to fly into maniacal rage if a musician missed a cue or played a wrong note.

As Susan made her way to the piano, there was a subdued murmur of welcome from the orchestra, and even Collini’s most outraged glare could not entirely quell it. Susan smiled at them; she had never found out why she was popular with orchestras, but it helped her a lot. An orchestra could make things very easy for a soloist, or impossibly difficult.

The engineers nodded, and Collini’s stick came down. The maestoso opening fairly sizzled with dramatic tension. Susan had chosen Collini for these sessions because he could be relied on to bring out all the power of Brahms. She hoped to provide the poetry.

After Susan’s entry at bar 91 all went well until the trills, which she fumbled. They did not stop at once, but at the ff chords a few bars later piano and orchestra had parted company.

Collini rapped for silence and glared at Susan. In the world of music she was even more distinguished than he, but on the rostrum he was boss, and if she blundered he would flay her like anyone else.

Apologetically, hating to be forced to be apologetic, Susan said: I’m afraid I’m not hearing too well. I’m sorry, I can’t go on.

There was a buzz in the orchestra, and for a moment Collini hesitated, poised between the musical martinet who would accept no excuse and the kindly plump man who was always good for a touch. Seeing that Susan was flushed and shivering, he stepped off the rostrum and rushed to her with concern.

Before he reached her, she collapsed over the keyboard.

• • •

Please go, all of you, said Susan, except Benny.

Nobody knew why Benny was there with Collini, Weygand, the chief engineer and the leader of the orchestra surrounding the couch on which Susan had been laid, but nobody was particularly surprised. Whenever anything went wrong, the old doorman generally turned up. Quite often he was able to be of help, because musicians in general are not very practical, and whatever he was not, old Benny was practical.

The doctor will be here very soon, said Weygand. He was more anxious than Susan, more concerned, which was easy, because Susan did not appear concerned at all.

I know, she said. You told me. Several times.

Would you like me to send in one of the women members of the orchestra, or Stephanie?

No! Particularly not Stephanie. I grant her efficiency, but she has all the tender solicitousness of a hooded cobra.

Do you think you’ll be able to go on later? Collini asked.

Appearances are against it. Now please go away, all of you.

They left her with Benny, who looked a little bewildered. Is there something you want me to do, Miss Sonnenburg?

No. Just stay with me. You can’t help me this time, Benny.

He looked alarmed. Are you really ill, miss? You feel bad?

I’m all right if nobody bothers me. But my fingers were like rubber just now. And voices seem to come from far away. One thing, though — it isn’t a stroke.

Benny would scarcely know the significance of that. Rebirth, like all the works of man, was something less than a miracle. It could take care of all normal bodily ills, but it could not grow a new leg or restore damaged brain cells. After certain strokes or hemorrhages, when the brain had been drained of blood for too long, permanent damage was done which even the Rebirth process could not cure.

And when that happened, Rebirth was reluctantly refused. If the Institute knew it was impossible to make you as good as new, it didn’t try.

I don’t want to see the doctor, but I suppose I must. I once knew a very brilliant doctor. His advice was ‘If there’s something the matter with you, go to bed and see if it goes away.’ That’s what I’d like to do. But of course I can’t. I won’t be allowed to leave it at that.

Why not, Miss Sonnenburg?

She remembered her thoughts about the Rebirth Institute, and smiled faintly.

The Institute didn’t like to be cheated.

Only about one percent of the population was considered valuable enough to rate Rebirth. The other ninety-nine could not argue themselves onto the list or buy a place on it. The Rebirth Council was above all pressures; it had to be, for if the billions passed over by the Council ever had reason to suspect graft and corruption, they would rise up in massive fury and destroy the international Rebirth Council, all the Rebirth Institutes, and all the governments of the world which had set them up. Even the governments could not dictate in matters of Rebirth; the Institutes were financed by legacies, which was by no means an ideal situation, but the best that had been found in less than a half-century of Rebirth. Those who did not pay the piper could not expect to call the tune. And those who did pay the piper could not call the tune because they ceased to know any tunes when they were Reborn and had to learn them all over again.

Ironically, though nothing the ninety-nine percent could do could get them on the list, nothing the one percent could do could get them off it. Once you were on the list (and Susan had been on it since the very beginning, since the first selection made by the first Rebirth Council forty years ago), the Institute did its best to ensure you didn’t take any dangerous chances.

Not many wanted to get off the list, of course. That wasn’t the problem, the problem, naturally, was that many of the chosen wanted to get others on the list too. A man whose wife was refused Rebirth, whose children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren did not any of them rate Rebirth, was liable to take a stand and say firmly: Okay, I don’t want it either.

He wasn’t compelled to go for Rebirth. But he wasn’t taken off the list. And usually he weakened in the end. Or if he didn’t, they got him another way — as they might now get Susan, before she was quite ready to go.

Rebirth was, after all, the supreme medical treatment. If it couldn’t grow a new arm or leg, it could grow almost anything short of that, including a new set of perfect teeth.

It was cell regeneration, replacement. Just as plants could be propagated from seed or by cutting or sometimes from a leaf, human cells bore the imprint of the whole organism and the same sort of thing was possible. Grow a new human from seed (and parthogenesis was now possible, though seldom practiced) and you got a new human, not necessarily like the parent or parents, just as a seed from a Victoria plum might produce a tree, even a plum tree, but it wouldn’t produce Victoria plums. Growing a relatively new human by replacing the cells, however, could justifiably be called Rebirth. You didn’t get a different human; you got the same one with youth restored.

Just incidentally, fevers and heart trouble and even what used to be known as the killer diseases were phased out. They didn’t have to be treated directly, specifically.

So a sick old man or woman on the Rebirth list was liable to be told the best treatment was Rebirth, and what about it? Weak and ill, he usually went back on his bold stand and muttered: Well, all right. I’m ready.

The doctor arrived, a woman doctor not much younger than Susan. Now that people commonly lived to be 150, even without Rebirth, the general age of retirement was nearly 100.

Leave us, please, she said to Benny, rather coldly.

But don’t go far, Susan added.

It was only after Dr. Roberts had made a thorough physical examination that Susan leaned she was from the Institute. It was, however, not surprising. Nor was the turn events took.

Dr. Roberts said briskly: In the ordinary way I wouldn’t admit this, Miss Sonnenburg, but frankly I don’t know exactly what you’ve picked up. It appears to be some sort of tropical fever with some motor paralysis. In any case, it doesn’t matter. We’ll take you straight to the Institute, and the normal Rebirth process will take care of you without any need for special treatment of this infection.

No, said Susan. No and no and no.

What do you mean, no?

I’ve got a job to finish first. I need another week or two.

That’s ridiculous, Miss Sonnenburg. You’re in no condition to do any job at the moment —

I will be after a couple of days in bed.

Possibly. On the other hand, complications may set in and you may die.

Then I die. Too bad, how sad.

The woman doctor breathed deeply. Miss Sonnenburg, you’re privileged. There are millions of people in this country who would give all they possess to be similarly privileged.

I know. I’m not arguing.

"It may interest you to know that although I myself am an Institute doctor, I do not rate Rebirth. If I were you, I should certainly not be so foolish."

Ah, but you see, foolish or not, I rate Rebirth and you don’t. Could there be a moral there?

The woman flushed angrily. Are you aware that the Institute has powers to refuse Rebirth if people chosen do not cooperate?

Susan laughed out loud. Oh, really, Dr. Roberts, could anything be more ridiculous? Are you really suggesting that if I won’t take Rebirth now, I can’t have it in two weeks?

Such things have been done, said Dr. Roberts stiffly.

Susan shook her head in such wonder that the woman flushed anew. Please don’t remain under the delusion I made a threat. You VTC is high. It is unthinkable that you should be lost to —

Then don’t let’s think about it. Personally, I’m not going to think about it at all. I’m going home to rest for a few days. Oh, don’t let it worry you. I’ll be attended by my own doctor, and a nurse will be engaged. Let me remind you of something, doctor. My so-called value depends on music and nothing else. Personally I consider the recording of the two Brahms concertos a valuable enough undertaking to justify a little risk.

Dr. Roberts said icily: I can arrange for an ambulance to take you straight to the Institute. I won’t order an ambulance to take you home.

Susan sat up and rose to her feet. She was a little light-headed, that was all. Her heart had always been sound.

Then I shall ask the doorman to take me home. Goodbye, Dr. Roberts. I won’t thank you for being kind and helpful and understanding, because you haven’t been. The doorman could give you some tips.

Benny did take her home, because the doctor would not climb down. She was the kind of wintry woman inclined to deliver ultimata she felt it impossible to go back on. If the doctor had been a different sort, Susan thought, her VTC might have been higher and she might have rated Rebirth.

Before Benny left Susan at her home after doing all he could to make her comfortable, she said: I once hurt your feelings by offering you a tip. I won’t do it again. I know you don’t do things for any reward.

It’s my job, Miss Sonnenburg.

I understand. But have you heard of an honorarium?

Orrorarian?

Sometimes when someone’s done something over and above his job, or his obligations, people want to express their gratitude somehow. So they give him something and call it an honorarium. That isn’t like a tip. Anyone can accept an honorarium. It isn’t an insult, it’s an honor.

What does an orrorarian look like? Benny asked doubtfully.

All I can give you just at this moment is money. But you can take it and buy anything you like, and whatever you buy will remind you of me.

You’re not going away?

You know I’m going away soon. For good.

Yes, but I’ll see you again, miss. I’d better look in tonight to make sure you’re all right and see if there’s anything you want —

That won’t be necessary, Benny. My doctor will be here soon and he’ll arrange for a nurse to attend me.

Well, even if I don’t see you here you’ll be back at Musicosmos, won’t you?

Of course. This is just in case by any chance I … oh well, it doesn’t matter. I have every intention of coming back. I’ve never yet failed to finish anything I started.

Outside, Benny looked at the five crumpled notes in his hand and painstakingly smoothed them out.

Five hundred dollars.

3

WHEN BENNY GOT BACK TO MUSICOSMOS, Stephanie, the bright blonde at the desk, said: Benny, Mr. Weygand wants to see you.

Noting his alarm, she said with her usual metallic charm: Now, it’s all right, Benny. You haven’t done anything wrong. It’s something about Miss Sonnenburg and the Rebirth Institute.

Do I have to go up to the big office?

She hesitated. She had previously been a secretary, but now she was chief receptionist and better paid. There had been so many foul-ups when the position was occupied by a succession of pretty girls just a little brighter than Benny that the experiment of putting a girl of executive rank behind the desk that was the mammoth organization’s first line of defense was tried in desperation.

Since then, things had run smoothly. Things ran smoothly because Stephanie, intelligent and inquisitive and beautiful and with a heart of solid steel, knew many things without having to be told, and one of the things she knew without being told was that Weygand didn’t want old Benny in his long coat and muddy boots clumping through the vast administrative suites on the top floors of the building. No need for that, Benny, she said. I’ll call Mr. Weygand and he’ll call you in your office.

Benny’s office was a concealed hutch from which he could watch the foyer. But it had a phone, and he had scarcely arrived there when it began to ring.

Oh, Benny, said Weygand. How is Miss Sonnenburg?

Fine, Mr. Weygand. She says all she wants is peace, but I think I’ll look in after work to make sure she’s all right, though she said it wasn’t necesessary.

"She didn’t tell you not to come?"

No, I really think she wouldn’t mind seeing me. If she does I won’t go back, but I think —

Good, good. Somebody at the New York Rebirth Institute wants to see you. Do you know where it is?

Yes, Mr. Weygand.

Then get over there right away. Take a cab. I don’t know exactly what they want, but it may be urgent.

Benny put down the phone slowly, thoughtfully. Something crawled in his guts at the thought of going to the Rebirth Institute. However, there was no help for it. He left a note in bold black letters, OUT ON BUSYNESS, on the table, and closed the hutch door.

In the foyer, as he checked out on the board, the staff supervisor stopped him. Where do you think you’re going? he demanded.

I have to go out, Mr. Simon.

Like hell you do. Get back on the door.

But I was told —

Listen, old man, you’re the doorman here, remember that. If somebody upstairs wants to send you messages, that’s okay, if they ask me first.

Yes, sir. But Mr. Weygand —

I don’t care if God Himself sent you out, I’m the staff supervisor and you’re the doorman, and if you’re not on the door I want to know why, and if I don’t know why, you’re on the door. Got that?

Yes, Mr. Simon, said Benny doubtfully. He shifted from one foot to the other, as he was inclined to do when faced with an insoluble dilemma. He had to obey Mr. Simon, of course. Mr. Simon was a very important man. But Mr. Weygand was even more important, and disobeying a direct order from Mr. Weygand was unthinkable.

He wished something would happen.

Something did. Just a minute. It was Stephanie from the desk, trim and slim and unusually grim. Instead of shouting across the hall, she had come over and joined them silently. Mr. Simon, Benny has to go out. I believe it’s quite important.

Simon was big and sharp at all his edges, particularly the edge of his tongue. He had got where he was by being aggressive, and his aggressiveness was going to stop him getting any further.

This old bastard doesn’t leave the building, he said deliberately, until somebody tells me —

I’m telling you.

Simon was big and Stephanie was tiny. Most of her small stature seemed to be accounted for by her legs, which were shapely and bare, her uniform consisting of a neat blue tunic and a very short skirt.

He could have lifted her by the scruff of the neck and shaken her like a dog, but he didn’t. There had been war between them ever since an earlier occasion when he said this will be done and she said that will be done, and after the thing had been taken as high as it could go, what was done turned out to be that.

Since he knew that if he went any further with his present beef, justifiable though it was, the same thing would happen again, so he grunted and moved away. Stephanie nodded to Benny, who went out, not very happily. Mr. Simon would, of course, take it out on him later.

Benny was well over a hundred years old, and sometimes he looked it, as when Simon had been bawling him out. But once clear of the Musicosmos Building and Simon and Stephanie, he gradually straightened, his eyes brightened, his chest expanded, until by the time he had walked a mile he could have passed for forty-nine. And that was quite young these days. The long-delayed defeat of the killing diseases, one by one, had naturally put up life expectation.

He didn’t dream of taking a cab, as Weygand had said. He liked walking. Physically Benny was a remarkable specimen, so remarkable that to avoid too much notice at Musicosmos, where only the personnel department knew exactly how old he was, he habitually moved a little more slowly and much more awkwardly than he might have done. Outside Musicosmos he was always prepared to pretend to be fifty if he could get away with it. Usually he could.

With luck, he had some forty good years left.

The Institute was, from the outside, a cold, white, bare, impersonal building. Inside, the difference was startling.

The blonde receptionist was like Stephanie only in her sex and the color of her hair. She was tall, loose-limbed, and had none of Stephanie’s steely efficiency. Across her considerable bosom, contained but not restrained by a white sweater, was emblazoned in red: Rose. She had none of Stephanie’s professional, elegant charm. Rose was plain friendly.

From Musicosmos? she said. Now I wonder who wants you, and what for. Take a seat, pop, and I’ll roll a few dice.

How an enormous building enclosing extensive gardens could look lived in was a puzzle to Benny, but this one did. Everything was clean but not too clean. The seats scattered around were a comfortable miscellany. There were no old magazines. Along one side were windows looking out on a corridor and beyond that a vegetable garden, and along the corridor passed people young and old, but mostly young, who seemed to be having a good time.

Although Rose was the only person in the room apart from himself, this was clearly an unusual state of affairs, because there was a pile of dirty cups on one of her three tables, apparently awaiting collection.

Before I roll the dice, pop, she said, do you like strong tea?

Yes, he said. Very much.

Okay, soak this. It’s so strong by now the spoon stands up in it. She poured him a thick mug of black liquid and waved at the milkjug and sugarbowl.

Then she picked up the phone. Unlike Stephanie, who was surrounded by as much electronic equipment as a recording engineer, she had only one phone and no intercoms. Dr. Collins? Rose here. I got a nice old guy from Musicosmos, says he was sent for. Would you know anything about that? … You don’t know what Musicosmos is? You must be kidding. They’re bigger than we are … Sure it isn’t you? Oh well. Yes, I guess you would know if it was you.

She dialled again. "Dr. Martin? I got a nice old guy here from Musicosmos … Oh, you want him? Okay. I’ll send him up once he’s soaked his tea … Well, all right, you come down. I know you like strong tea."

As she hung up she said: That’s not bad. That’s pretty good. Only two calls and I get the right guy. Say, pop, do you want more tea?

Dr. Martin arrived almost at once and accepted a cup of tea absently, as if drinking tea while doing something else was as natural as breathing while doing something else. Evidently at the Institute it was. He looked little more than twenty. In fact, he was twenty-seven.

Benny? he said. I heard about you from Dr. Roberts.

Benny’s face often showed what he was thinking better than his words did. Martin’s keen gaze didn’t miss much, and he interpreted Benny’s expression as saying, If he heard about me from Dr. Roberts, he didn’t hear anything good.

Perhaps Dr. Roberts handled things wrong today, Martin said. In fact, she admits it herself. Anyway, no harm done. I understand Miss Sonnenburg likes and trusts you?

I wouldn’t know anything about that, Dr. Martin. Like many people who were not too bright, Benny never forgot a face or a name and always addressed people correctly.

Well, I guess she must, from what I’ve heard. And I guess you’re all for her, am I right?

She’s a fine lady, said Benny cautiously.

You like music, do you?

No, not much. She plays pretty, but it goes on too long.

But she’s always been nice to you?

Oh yes. A real fine lady.

Some people aren’t nice to you? In fact, not many are?

Oh no, it’s not like that at all, Dr. Martin. This lady here is very nice. And Stephanie at Musicosmos is quite nice too, but you always feel she’s thinking about something else, being nice but working something out at the same time.

Martin smiled. I guess you think I’m like that too, being nice but working something out at the same time.

"No, I never thought of that. I like this place, what I’ve seen of it.