Immortality, Inc

“I thought so,” Blaine said, and paid a silent tribute to the Martian Chinese and their firm grip on traditional institutions.

They caught a helicab to the Greens Club, a place that Orc's Phoenix friends had told him not to miss. This small, expensive, intimate little club was world-famous, an absolute must for any visitor to New York. For the Greens Club was unique in presenting an all-vegetable floor show.

They were given seats on a little balcony, not far from the glass-fenced center of the club. Three levels of tables surrounded the center, and brilliant spotlights played upon it. Behind the glass fence was what looked like a few square yards of jungle, growing in a nutrient solution. An artificial breeze stirred the plants, which were packed tight together, and varied widely in size, shape and hue.

They behaved like no plants Blaine had ever seen. They grew rapidly, fantastically, from tiny seeds and root tendrils to great shrubs and rough-barked trees, squat ferns, monstrous flowers, dripping green fungus and speckled vines; grew and quickly completed their life-cycle and fell into decay, casting forth their seeds to begin again. But no species seemed able to reproduce itself. Sports and mutants sprang from the seeds and swollen fruit, altered and adapted to the fierce environment, battled for root space below and air space above, and struggled toward the artificial suns that glowed above them. Unsuccessful shrubs quickly molded themselves into parasites, clung to the choked trees, and discovered new adaptations clinging to them in turn. Sometimes, in a burst of creative ambition, a plant would surmount all obstacles, put down the growths around it, strangle the opposition, conquer all. But new species already grew from its body, pulled it down and squabbled over the corpse. Sometimes a blight, itself vegetable, would attack the jungle and carry everything before it in a grand crescendo of mold. But a courageous sport would at last take root in it, then another, and on went the fight. The plants changed, grew larger or smaller, transcended themselves in the struggle for survival. But no amount of determination, no cu

Blaine found the spectacle disturbing. Could this fatalistic pageant of the world be the significant characteristic of 2110? He glanced at Orc.

“It's really something,” Orc told him, “what these New York labs can do with quick-growing mutants. It's a freak show, of course. They just speed up the growing rate, force a contra-survival situation, throw in some radiation, and let the best plant try to win. I hear these plants use up their growth potential in about twenty hours, and have to be replaced.”

“So that's where it ends,” Blaine said, watching the tortured but ever-optimistic jungle. “In replacements.”

“Sure,” said Orc, blandly avoiding all philosophical complications. “They can afford it, at the prices they charge here. But it's freak stuff. Let me tell you about the sandplants we grow in Arizona.”

Blaine sipped his whiskey and watched the jungle growing, dying and renewing itself. Orc was saying. “Right on the burning face of the desert. Fact. We've finally adapted fruit and vegetable-bearing plants to real desert conditions, without increasing their bulk water supply, and at a price which allows us to compete with the fertile areas. I tell you, boy, in another fifty years the entire concept of fertile is, going to change. Take Mars, for example…”

They left the Greens Club and worked their way from bar to bar, toward Times Square. Orc was showing a certain difficulty in focusing, but his voice was steady as he talked about the lost Martian secret of growing on sand. Someday, he promised Blaine, we'll figure out how they produced the sandplants without the added nutrients and moisture-fixatives.

Blaine had drunk enough to put his former body into a coma twice over. But his bulky new body seemed to have an inexhaustible capacity for whiskey. It was a pleasant change, to have a body that could hold its liquor. Not, he added hastily, that such a rudimentary ability could offset the body's disadvantages.

They crossed Times Square's garish confusion and entered a bar on 44th Street. As their drinks were served, a furtive-eyed little man in a raincoat stepped up to them. “Hey, boys,” he said tentatively.

“Whatcha want, podner?” Orc asked.

“You boys out looking for a little fun?”

“You might say so,” Orc said expansively. “And we can find it ourselves, thank you kindly.”

The little man smiled nervously. “You can't find what I'm offering.”

“Speak up, little friend,” Orc said. “What exactly are you offering?”

“Well, boys, it's — hold it! Flathats!” Two blue-uniformed policemen entered the bar, looked around and left.

“OK,” Blaine said. “What is it?”

“Call me Joe,” the little man said with an ingratiating grin. “I'm a steerer for a Transplant game, friends. The best game and highest jump in town!”

“What in hell is Transplant?” Blaine asked. Both Orc and Joe looked at him.

Joe said, “Wow, friend, no insult but you must really be from down on the farm. Never heard of Transplant? Well I'll be griped!”

“OK, so I'm a farmboy,” Blaine growled, thrusting his fierce, square, hard-planed face close to Joe's. “What is Transplant!”

“Not so loud!” Joe whispered, shrinking back. “Take it easy, farmer, I'll explain. Transplant is the new switch game, buddy. Are you tired of living? Think you've had all the kicks? Wait ‘til you try Transplant. You see, farmer, folks in the know say that straight sex is pretty moldy potatoes. Don't get me wrong, it's fine for the birds and the bees and the beasts and the brutes. It still brings a thrill to their simple animal hearts, and who are we to say they’re wrong? As a means or propagating the species, old nature's little sex gimmick is still the first and the best. But for real kicks, sophisticated people are turning to Transplant.

“Transplant is democratic, friends. It gives you the big chance to switch over into someone else and feel how the other ninety-nine percent feels. It's educational, you might say, and it takes up where Straight sex leaves off. Ever get the urge to be a high-strung Latin, pal? You can, with Transplant. Ever wonder what a genuine sadist feels? Tune in with Transplant. And there's more, more, so much more! For example, why be a man all your life? You've proved your point by now, why belabor it? Why not be a woman for a while? With Transplant you can be aboard for those gorgeous moments in the life of one of our specially selected gals.”

“Voyeurism,” Blaine said.

“I know them big words,” Joe said, “and it ain't true. This is no peeping-Tom's game. With Transplant you are there, right in the old corpus, moving those exotic muscles, experiencing those sensations. Ever get the urge to be a tiger, farm-boy, and go loping after a lady tiger in the old mating season? We got a tiger, friend, and a lady tiger too. Ever ask yourself what thrill a man could possibly find in flagellation, shoe-fetishism, necrophilia, or the like? Find out with Transplant. Our catalogue of bodies reads like an encyclopedia. You can't go wrong at Transplant, friends, and our prices are set ridiculously —”

“Get out,” Blaine said.

“What, buddy?”

Blaine's big hand shot out and grabbed Joe by the raincoat front. He lifted the little pusher to eye level and glared at him.

“You take your perverted little notions out of here,” Blaine said. “Guys like you have been selling off-beat kicks since the days of Babylon, and guys like me haven't been buying. Get out, before I break your neck for a quick sadistic thrill.”

He released him. Joe smoothed his raincoat and smiled nervously. “No offense, buddy, I'm going. Don't feel like it tonight. There's always another night. Transplant's in your future, farmboy. Why fight it?”