"Not in the least." Griffin shrugged himself back in the seat,
staring out the window. Frightening, he'd said! It was paralyzing. He
moved his arms, first one, then the other, feeling the remnants of
the painful tightness under the smoothly-molded skin. Then his mind
drifted back, and he tried to remember the days of sickness, trying
to visualize physically how it had felt to be sick. He found that he
couldn't remember. He was no longer sick, and the pain and fright and
desperation were unpleasant memories, the first to be dulled, and
hidden from sight, and larded over with the frosting of forgetfulness.
And yet he knew that he had been sick. He had been older then, just
past fifty, and though he could not recreate those days in his mind, he
knew that he had known he was sick for a long time, a growing awareness
that health and youngness had somehow been left behind. There had been
the gasping rests at the top of the stairs while he had waited for
breath and energy to return; and the leaden tiredness at the end of
the day that had made the evenings a gauntlet to be endured. And there
had been those terrifying nights when he had awakened in a cold sweat,
strangling in the darkness, with hardly the strength left to drag
himself up into a sitting position; and then Marian, wide-eyed with
fright, barely able to hold back the tears, packing pillows behind him
as he sat gasping by the open window, wondering if this really might
be the end. And then, later, the stabbing, excruciating pain that cut
through his chest and down his arm, the vice-like wrenching pain that
tore the breath from him, and almost life itself. Angina, the doctor
had called it. Congestive failure. And he had sat there, by the window,
and known that he was staring death in the face.
The pain he could not remember now, but the fear was sharp in his
memory. And then there had been the day when old Doctor Barnez had come
in to see him, and settled back in the chair, smiling at him, and
said, "Griff, I think it's time you considered a repair job. A real
repair job. Because you won't be with us long if you don't--"
He had grasped at it with the desperation that can be born only of
staring death in the face, grasped at it as he stood literally in
the valley of shadows. Oh, he had heard of prosthesis. He could even
remember the bitter political battles that had raged. He could remember
the attacks on it from the pulpit, and the rabble-rousing speeches of
the men who used it as a football to carry them to power. But the laws
were passed in spite of them, and many people had taken the step. And
always Griffin had watched with desultory interest, and thought it a
thing of the remote future, never applicable to a strong, active man
like himself.
He stared out at the buildings, tall and proud in the gathering
darkness. When the chips were finally down, he had agreed, Life was
sweet. If it was within the power of medical techniques to restore
it, could he scorn such a chance? Could anyone? For after all, it was
the goal of hundreds of years of medical study. Gradually, over the
years, medicine had leaped the low hurdles of disease, of microbes, and
viruses, and creeping malignancies, and these had been the easy steps.
At the end, they had moved against the real last enemies of man: old
age, degeneration, the multitude of death's helpers which had held man
to a hundred years of life. And then those hurdles had been crossed--
Griffin shook his head as the cab took another turn and sped deeper
into the city. He had wanted a healthy body again. And they had
promised him a healthy body. The prosthesis was almost total, the
remodelling he could never have understood, the probing and repairing,
the replacing and regrowing and relearning. And he had come forth
with a healthy body, with his past life's full measure of memory and
experience, and another sixty years in which to use it. He had thought
that a healthy, whole body once more was all he could ever desire--
And now he wondered.
* * * * *
He knew now that he was going to see Dr. Barnez first, before he went
anywhere else. He leaned over and gave the driver the address, and
then settled back, waiting as the car reached the upper-level strips
of the New City. He found the doctor's house, and waited in the small
anteroom for a few moments. Then he saw the familiar, stooped figure,
beaming at him from the door of the inner office. "Come in, Griff, come
in!" he boomed. "Lord, man, what a change! You look like you never
looked before. They treated you well over there--" The old doctor
tossed him a cigar, and settled back, regarding him over silver-rimmed
glasses. "Any regret, Griff? Even cigars you can have again now!"
Griffin shook his head, feeling the uneasiness nibbling again at his
mind. "No--no regrets, nothing I can put my finger on--" He nipped the
cigar, feeling suddenly foolish to take such relish in contemplating
the acrid smoke of a dried-up weed.
"But a multitude of things you can't quite put your finger on, eh?" The
old man was smiling.
Griffin nodded slowly.
"You'll find the readjustment troublesome at times. But as a Free
Agent, it's infinitely easier." The old man paused. "You've seen
Marian?"
Griffin flushed. "No. I haven't been home. I'm--I'm a little afraid to
go."
"Don't be. Marian will be there."
"Oh, I don't mean that. It's just--I've been waiting so long, and
hoping so much. I don't know what to expect of Marian, I'm afraid
she'll be different, somehow--"
"_She_ won't be changed."
Griffin's eyes caught the old man's. "I know it. But what about me? I
don't feel any different--"
Dr. Barnez held up a wrinkled, blue-veined hand. "It's to be expected,
isn't it? You're not the same man you were. Your mind is intact, but
there are many more things that make a man what he is than his mind,
Griff. You've been changed in many ways--physical changes, chemical
changes, endocrine changes. That's why you're a Free Agent. They've
learned the hard way that they can't force the new form into the old
mold. It just didn't work."
Griffin sat forward, his eyes burning on the old man's face. "What's
happened to the others, doctor? I want it straight."
Doctor Barnez shook his head. "Why torture yourself, Griff? Go home to
Marian, see how you feel--"
"I want it straight."
The doctor shrugged. "All right. Some have gone back and stayed. But
many haven't stayed. A great many."
"Where have they gone?"
"Who knows? They're dead as far as the world they left is concerned.
Who knows where they've gone?"
"But I don't want to change! Can't you see that? I love Marian. She's
been my life. For years she's been more to me than anything else. I
wouldn't change that for life itself--"
The old doctor stood up, shaking his head. "You mustn't worry," he said
gently. "Ultimately, the choice is yours. It will be you who stays, or
leaves, in the end. Not Marian."
* * * * *
He opened the door of his house, and walked in, and found himself face
to face with a total stranger.
She looked the same, of course. The same dark, beautiful eyes, the
same finely molded face, the same tiny figure, kept amazingly slender
and youthful over the years. Her hair was graying more than he had
remembered, but it was the same Marian he had left, eight months
before. And yet, he knew the moment that he saw her that something was
gone, and could never be replaced, not in a thousand years of life.
Her lips trembled as she searched his face, and she said, "I'm glad
you're back, Griff--" and he walked into the room like a ghost, moving
about as though he were not really here at all, but seeing things
in a strange, subtly distorted dream. The desk, with its perpetual
litter just as he had left it; the honey barrel full of pipes, charred
and scratched from years of use, still slightly fragrant from the
last smoking. And there were the soft chairs, the worn carpet, the
pictures on the walls. The same, fine, smooth architectural lines
that had pleased him so when the house was built five years before;
scientifically fitted to their personalities in a thousand subtle ways,
as any house should be. He sat down gingerly, as though expecting
to fall through into the dust beneath the house, and looked again
at Marian, his lovely, wonderful Marian--for the house which had
fit so well was a nightmare to his sensibilities now, garish and
impossible--and a Marian he didn't know was waiting eagerly for him to
speak.
And then he knew it was only a dream, his memories of the life before.
He waited for the surge of excitement, waited for the eager words
to come into his throat, the words telling her how very much he had
missed her, what plans he had made for them--and his throat was dry,
and no words came. He waited for the joy of returning to sweep through
him, and it did not come. It was dead, as dead as the ashes in that
last-smoked pipe.
He didn't say a word. He didn't have to, because he saw it in her eyes,
wide heart-broken eyes. He looked at her, and all he felt was pity.
He didn't even feel shame, though he felt he should. And he knew that
words would only make it harder, would be whiplashes to make the wounds
deeper and more vicious.
He picked up his hat, and brushed her cheek with his lips, and without
a word he walked out through the door.
Marian had not changed, not in any way. The house was the same, kept in
readiness, waiting for him. No, Marian hadn't changed.
It was he who had changed.