Just when everything was working out so beautifully, too! Why such a wildly improbable event as a collision in space, of all things? Was some jealous and elemental force of nature behind it—some Principle that resented this latest display of overweening cockiness by humanity in general and by Mark Keaflyn in particular?
He had been cocky, all right. No denying that. And proud as a peacock! All that talk to his ship about his "creative research"! Downright boastfulness!
But was the collision really a wild coincidence? Not on second thought. It was an event obviously destined to happen, even predictable, if men had bothered to be as wise as they were intelligent . . .
There was a project for somebody to work on—a study on how humans should go about acquiring wisdom. Most people doubtless thought intelligence and sanity were enough . . . or perhaps they thought wisdom automatically came enclosed in the same package.
But it did not, as he knew all too damned well. Wisdom came from . . . making mistakes? Well, it could, provided one learned the right things from the mistakes.
He certainly hadn't learned the proper lessons from his own! He hadn't even learned to consider all the obviously pertinent data in a situation before taking action. He could add two plus two, but he had not learned to add twelve years and five months to twelve years and five months and subtract the sum from 2855 and come up with the answer: the year in which the liner Brobdinagia mysteriously exploded in the vicinity of Rimni. Killing a nine-year-old girl-body inhabited by his beloved Tinker!
That wasn't incredible coincidence—it was incredible irony!
Because if Tinker had continued to live in that body, and had been waiting for him when he arrived at Splendiss-on-Terra, according to plan—well, this whole misbegotten mess would have never come to pass. Tinker was a competent medic as well as an ego-field therapist. So, when the Neg impinged on him and started pestering him with somatics, he would have had no reason to comm the local medic at Splendiss—a medic who happened to be a Sect Dualer and who thought a pleasure-impress was the way to exorcise a Neg!
No, Tinker would have handled his problem very differently than Dr. Arnod Smath . . . probably by devising a means that would allow him to live with his Neg in reasonable comfort, the way the Arlan Siblings lived with theirs. After treatment he would have gone on with the work the Neg was trying to prevent, and when the work was completed the Neg would have departed in defeat, and he and Tinker would have lived happily ever after. So he had to go back in time to destroy the Brobdinagia—as well as himself—for all the rest of it to happen.
It was over now, and his doom was sealed. He had added a real shocker of a death-trauma to his growing burden of garbage. And he couldn't even find that trauma, much less blow it. Whatever kind of body he had moved into must have a very primitive nervous system, to keep him from seeing that death trauma.
What kind of body was it?
Judging from the relaxed way he was sprawled on the ground (it felt mossy) he might be a worm or a caterpillar. But no, he was on his back, not his belly. Worms did not sprawl on their backs.
Also, he had two arms and two legs. He could feel them . . .
Mark Keaflyn opened his eyes and looked up, through the sunglow on fluttering leaves of oak and maple, at the patches of blue sky. It was a beautiful and vivid sight. He reveled in it for several minutes before taking much note of anything else.
Then he noticed the ground was mossy, and it sloped down to the small, shaded pool of a spring, just a few feet away. The smell of springy vegetation and the tinkle of water were delightful. Whatever kind of body he was in, it seemed to benefit from enhanced existence, he decided.
He looked at his body.
It was his own. It was the body of Mark Keaflyn, born twenty-six subjective years ago on Bensor.
"What the hell . . . " he muttered in surprise. Could he possibly have been rescued from the collision with the Brobdinagia? That just wasn't reasonable!
He rose and walked to the spring, to stare down at his reflection in the still surface of the little pool. Yes, it was his face, all right, and more glowing and serene than he had ever seen it. Now he realized why he couldn't find the death trauma. This was the face of a man with no traumas at all—the outward aspect of a totally clean ego-field.
Curious and curiouser, he thought interestedly.
"Ah, there, Mark! You made it!"
He whirled to face the source of the vaguely familiar voice. He recognized the bluff, pudgy man at once.
"Hi, Lafe. What are you doing here?"
Lafe chortled. "Where would I be but here on Avalon, old son? Where did you think you were?"
"I hadn't gotten around to thinking about that yet,"
Keaflyn mumbled, in a daze. "Avalon?"
"Sure! Your reward for a climactic life, Mark! No more marching around and around the old birth-and-death treadmill for you, man! Onward and upward! And we've got quite a welcoming celebration planned for you!" Keaflyn stood in silence, gazing at Lafe's jovial smile. Finally he shook his head. "This takes a while to get used to, Lafe. I was just thinking, a little while ago, what a conceited ass I was, but I was never conceited enough to anticipate this!"
"Not many who make it are, Mark," Lafe replied.
"And . . . and I wasn't ready for this!" Keaflyn protested. "My stabilities research wasn't finished!"
"So, what?" shrugged Lafe. "There are plenty of others to put on the final touches."
"And Tinker! This separates me from Tinker!"
Lafe gave a showy snort of disgust. "It never ceases to amaze me, the penchant we humans have for griping! Here you are, more fortunate than a soul in an early Christian heaven, and you start complaining about the broad you left behind! Oh, well, never mind. She'll be along shortly, anyway."
"You mean, Tinker will be here?" Keaflyn demanded.
"Sure. Couldn't you see she was working herself into a climactic life, too?"
"Oh . . . her research on the pleasure-impress," muttered Keaflyn.
"Yep. I may as well tell you, since you'll soon be able to see the near-future parts of the universe for yourself. She doesn't succeed with her research, not to the extent of blowing pleasure-impresses. Her work with animallevel ego-fields is pretty impressive, though.
"However, what will really get her here is that she's going to install a pleasure-impress on herself, to provide a human subject for testing. The tests will be flops."
"But that's . . . that's awful!"
"It would be if she weren't coming here," agreed Lafe.
"She'll die with the same expectation you had, of eternal degradation."
Slowly Keaflyn nodded. "If you're sure she'll make it to here, I suppose it's all right."
"I'm sure," Lafe told him, chuckling. "Now come on, old son! A welcoming party is waiting for you."
But Keaflyn still stood in awed silence. Finally he laughed. "Sorry to be so slow on the uptake, Lafe. I think I'm with you now. It's just that I never thought of my life as climactic."
"Let me put it to you like this," said Lafe as they moved away. "If you had another lifetime, how would you make it more climactic than the one you just finished without pulling the poor old universe apart at the seams?"
Which was, Keaflyn had to agree, a pertinent question.