"Well, I don't feel any different." Griffin's voice had a sharp
defensive edge, and his eyes were suddenly bright with anger. "I
feel fine; just the same as I always felt. Why all this ridiculous
rigmarole?"
Cranstead sighed. "Take it easy, Griff. How do you know how you feel?
You haven't been outside the hospital walls since the prosthesis
started. You haven't met anyone or reacted to anything other than
carefully controlled hospital conditions. Don't be impatient. You don't
know yet what you'll want because you're literally a new man. You've
turned in your old worn out body for a new one. Give it a try before
you get excited."
Griffin scowled. "But why this insinuation that things will be
different? I remember my old life perfectly well. I liked it. I want to
go back. Why make it so difficult?"
Cranstead tossed him a cigarette. "Look at it this way," he said. "If
you hadn't come here to the Center for prosthesis, in about five years,
give or take a little, that death certificate would have been valid in
a very, very final sense. You'd have been gone and there'd have been no
bringing you back. But you did come here to the Center, under your own
steam, and submitted to a very thorough repair job; a repair job that
will last you another sixty to eighty years, starting now--"
"All right, I know that," snapped Griffin. "I still don't see--"
Cranstead held up his hand. "Wait a minute--you don't quite realize
that you may indeed be very dead to the world you knew before. The
doctors can't predict the personality changes you may have undergone.
Except for certain very broad limits, they can't predict how you'll
act. So we have to protect you, as well as the world you left when
you came here. The prosthesis is almost a total job--replaced organs,
replaced vascular system, replaced glandular system, even some repaired
nervous tissue. Some men come out almost exactly as they were before.
But some come out vastly different--"
Griffin blinked and stared at the death certificate. "And this," he
said slowly, "protects me."
"It makes the old Dan Griffin with the leaky heart and the bad kidneys
legally dead. Just as the death insurance protects your wife and
family. You can't be forced back into the old mold if you don't fit, so
you're cut loose as completely as possible. You have a year to adjust;
a year as a Free Agent, to go anywhere you wish and do anything you
like. You no longer exist in the eyes of the law. If you go back to
your old life, that's fine. And if you don't go back, and find yourself
a new life, that's fine too. It's up to you."
Dan Griffin stood up, a coldness growing in his mind like nothing
he had ever experienced; a sense of utter aloneness and total
helplessness. "It's hard to get used to," he said softly. "I don't know
what to think." He walked to the window and stared out at the city
that spread out for miles, and saw the shadows of the tall Upper Level
apartments falling across the busy curves of the throughways. "I just
don't know--"
"We'll help you in any way we can," said Cranstead. "But nobody but
yourself can influence your ultimate decision. You're a Free Agent. The
decision must be yours."
"It's frightening," said Griffin.
John Cranstead gave him a long look. "It may be the most frightening
thing in the world," he said.