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He asked the question in a tensed tone, and when there was no answer, caught the old man’s shoulder. At his touch the body fell limply forward. Startled, he lowered it gently to the floor. With a jerky movement, Gosseyn knelt and listened over the still heart. Slowly he climbed to his feet. And he was thinking, and his lips were forming the unspoken words: “But you didn’t tell me enough. I’m in the dark about all the main points.”
The thought quieted reluctantly. He realized that this was life itself he was experiencing. Life in which nothing was ever finally explained. He was free, and this was victory.
He knelt down and began to search the old man’s pockets. They were empty. He was about to stand up again when:
“My God, man, give me that gun!”
Gosseyn froze, and then with a gasp realized that he had heard no sound and that he had received the thought of a dead man. Indecisively at first, then with greater determination, he began to shake the body gently. The cells of the human brain were extremely mortal, but they didn’t die immediately after the heart stopped beating. If one thought had come, then others should be available. The minutes fled. It was the intricate process of dying, Gosseyn thought, that was causing the delay. It had already partially destroyed some of the similarity that Lavoisseur had established between them.
“Might as well stay alive for a while, Gosseyn. The next group of bodies are around eighteen years old. Wait till they’re thirty-that’s it, thirty. . . .”
That was all, but Gosseyn thrilled with excitement. He must have stimulated a tiny mass of cells. Once again, the minutes flowed by, and then:
“—Memory certainly turned out to be a remarkable . . . But between your group and mine, the continuity was broken. My accident was too much for the process. Too bad-but, still, you’ve already had the experience of apparently surviving as an individual, so you know how complete—”
This time, there was only the tiniest pause, then the next thought followed:
“. . . I used to wonder if there wasn’t someone else. I thought of myself as a queen in the game-in such a setup you would be a pawn on the seventh row, just about ready to queen. But then I’d come to a blank, for a queen no matter how powerful is only a piece. Who, then, is the player? Where did all this start? . . . Once more . . . (incoherently) . . . the circle is completing, and we are no further ahead—”
Frantically, Gosseyn fought to hold the co
“. . . Gosseyn, more than five hundred years ago . . . I nourished Null-A, which someone else started. I was looking for a place to settle, and for something to be that was more than mere continuity; and it seemed to me that the Non-Aristotelian Man was it . . . Our secret of immortality could not, of course, be given to the unintegrated, who would, like Thorson, think of it as a means to supreme power—”
The blur came back, and during the minutes that followed it was evident the cells were losing their unity of personality. Wild cells remained, bewildered groups, masses of neurons, holding their separate pictures unsteadily against the encroaching death. Finally, he caught another coherent thought:
“. . . I discovered the galactic base, and visited the universe . . . I came back and superintended the construction of the Games Machine-only a computer could in the begi
That was all he got. Minutes and minutes passed, and there was only an occasional blur. Gosseyn climbed at last to his feet. He felt the glowing excitement of a man who had triumphed over death itself. But it was too bad that the vital information of body duplication had not surfaced. Except for that and one other thing, he was satisfied. The other thing: He had, he realized, allowed one meaning to slide by him. But, now, it came to the fore, with its implications: “. . . Between your group and mine the continuity was broken!”
Odd, how all these minutes, that had not really penetrated. The idea of a co
Feverishly, he went in search of shave salve. He found a jar in a washroom down the hall. With trembling fingers, he rubbed it over the beard of the still, dead face.
The beard came off easily into a towel. Gosseyn knelt there looking down at a face that was older than he had thought, seventy-five, possibly eighty years old. It was an unmistakable face, and of itself answered many questions. Here beyond all argument was the visible end-reality of his search.
The face was his own.