Immortality, Inc

“I think I know what you mean,” Blaine said.

They looked at each other and burst out laughing.

32

Marie insisted upon staying at the South Seas Motel until a wedding could be arranged. Blaine suggested a quiet ceremony before a justice of the peace; but Marie surprised him by wanting as large a wedding as Taiohae could produce. It was held on Sunday, at the Mayor's house.

Mr. Davis loaned them a little cutter from the boatyard. They set sail at sunrise for a honeymoon cruise to Tahiti.

For Blaine, it had the sensation of a delicious and fleeting dream. They sailed across a sea carved of green jade, and saw the moon, yellow and swollen, quartered by the cutter's shrouds and tangled in its stays. The sun rose out of a long black cloud, reached its zenith and declined, scouring the sea into a gleaming bowl of brass. They anchored in the lagoon at Papeete and saw the mountains of Moorea flaming in the sunset, more fantastic than the mountains of the Moon.

And Blaine remembered a day on the Chesapeake when he had dreamed, Ah, Rai’atea, the mountains of Moorea, the fresh trade wind …

A continent and an ocean had separated him from Tahiti, and other obstacles besides. But that had been in another century.

They went to Moorea, rode horses up the slopes and picked the white tiare Tahiti. They returned to their boat anchored in the bay below, and set sail for the Tuamotos.

At last they returned to Taiohae. Marie started housekeeping, and Blaine began to work at the boatyard.

They waited anxiously through the first weeks, sca

Blaine's job at the boatyard was interesting and varied. The island cutters and ketches limped in with bent shafts or nicked propellers, with planks that had been splintered against a hidden coral head, with sails blown out by a sudden gale. There were underwater craft to be serviced, boats belonging to the nearby undersea pressure farms that used Taiohae as a supply base. And there were dinghies to build, and an occasional schooner.

Blaine handled all practical details with skill and dispatch. As time went by, he started to write a few publicity releases about the yard for the South Seas Courier. This brought in more business, which involved more paper work and a greater need for liaison between the Point Boatyard and the small yards to which it farmed out work. Blaine handled this, and took over advertising as well.

His job as Master Boatwright came to bear an unca

But this no longer bothered him. It seemed obvious to him now that nature had intended him to be a junior yacht designer, nothing more nor less. This was his destiny, and he accepted it.

His life fell into a pleasant routine built around the boatyard and the white bungalow, filled with Saturday night movies and the microfilm Sunday Times, quick visits to the undersea farms and to other islands in the Marquesas Group, parties at the Mayor's house and poker at the yacht club, brisk sails across Comptroller Bay and moonlight swimming on Temuoa Beach. Blaine began to think that his life had taken its final and definitive form.

Then, nearly four months after he had come to Taiohae, the pattern changed again.

One morning like any other morning Blaine woke up, ate his breakfast, kissed his wife goodbye and went down to the boatyard. There was a fat, round-bilged ketch on the ways, a Tuamotan boat that had gauged wrong trying to shoot a narrow pass under sail, and had been tide-set against a foam-splattered granite wall before the crew could start the engine. Six frames needed sistering, and a few planks had to be replaced. Perhaps they could finish it in a week.

Blaine was looking over the ketch when Mr. Davis came over.

“Say Tom,” the owner said, “there was a fellow around here just a little while ago looking for you. Did you see him?”

“No,” Blaine said. “Who was it?”

“A mainlander,” Davis said, frowning. “Just off the steamer this morning. I told him you weren't here yet and he said he'd see you at your house.”

“What did he look like?” Blaine asked, feeling his stomach muscles tighten.

Davis frowned more deeply. “Well, that's the fu

“Sounds peculiar,” Blaine said.

“Very peculiar. I'll swear his beard wasn't real.”

“No?”

“It looked like a fake. Everything about him looked fake. And he limped pretty bad.”

“Did he leave a name?”

“Said his name was Smith. Tom, where are you going?”

“I have to go home right now,” Blaine said. “I'll try to explain later.”

He hurried away. Smith must have found out who he was and what the co

33

When he told Marie, she went at once to a closet and took down their suitcases. She carried them into the bedroom and began flinging clothes into them.

“What are you doing?” Blaine asked.

“Packing.”

“So I see. But why?”

“Because we’re getting out of here.”

“What are you talking about? We live here!”

“Not any more,” she said. “Not with that damned Smith around. Tom, he means trouble.”

“I'm sure he does,” Blaine said. “But that's no reason to run. Stop packing a minute and listen! What do you think he can do to me?”

“We’re not going to stay and find out,” she said.

She continued to shove clothes into the suitcase until Blaine grabbed her wrists.

“Calm down,” he told her. “I'm not going to run from Smith.”

“But it's the only sensible thing to do,” Marie said. “He's trouble, but he can't live much longer. Just a few more months, weeks maybe, and he'll be dead. He should have died long before now, that horrible zombie! Tom, let's go!”

“Have you gone crazy or something?” Blaine asked. “Whatever he wants, I can handle it.”

“I've heard you say that before,” Marie said.

“Things were different then.”

“They’re different now! Tom, we could borrow the cutter again, Mr. Davis would understand, and we could go to —”

“No! I'm damned if I'll run from him! Maybe you've forgotten, Marie, Smith saved my life.”

“But what did he save it for?” she wailed. “Tom, I'm warning you! You mustn't see him, not if he remembers!”

“Wait a minute,” Blaine said slowly. “Is there something you know? Something I don't?”

She grew immediately calm. “Of course not.”

“Marie, are you telling me the truth?”

“Yes, darling. But I'm frightened of Smith. Please Tom, humor me this once, let's go away.”

“I won't run another step from anyone,” Blaine said. “I live here. And that's the end of it.”

Marie sat down, looking suddenly exhausted. “All right, dear. Do what you think is best.”

“That's better,” Blaine said. “It'll turn out all right.”

“Of course it will,” Marie said.

Blaine put the suitcases back and hung up the clothes. Then he sat down to wait. He was physically calm. But in memory he had returned to the underground, had passed again through the ornate door covered with Egyptian hieroglyphics and Chinese ideograms, into the vast marble-pillared Palace of Death with its gold and bronze coffin. And heard again Reilly's screaming voice speak through a silvery mist:

“There are things you can't see, Blaine, but I see them. Your time on Earth will be short, very short, painfully short. Those you trust will betray you, those you hate will conquer you. You will die, Blaine, not in years but soon, sooner than you could believe. You'll be betrayed, and you'll die by your own hand.”