Carefully he explained it all to Marie. She refused at first to believe him.

“It was so far back, Tom! How can you be sure of what happened?”

“I’m sure,” Blaine said. “I don’t think anyone could forget the way they died. I remember mine very well. That was how I died.”

“Still, you can’t call yourself a murderer because of one moment, one fraction of a second—”

“How long does it take to shoot a bullet or to drive in a knife?” Blaine asked. “A fraction of a second! That’s how long it takes to become a murderer.”

“But Tom, you had no motive!”

Blaine shook his head. “It’s true that I didn’t kill for gain or revenge. But then, I’m not that kind of murderer. That kind is relatively rare. I’m the grass-roots variety, the ordinary average guy with a little of everything in his makeup, including murder. I killed because, in that moment, I had the opportunity. My special opportunity, a unique interlocking of events, moods, train of thought, humidity, temperature, and lord knows what else, which might not have come up again in two lifetimes.”

“But you’re not to blame!” Marie said. “It would never have happened if Rex Power Systems and I hadn’t created that special opportunity for you.”

“Yes. But I seized the opportunity,” Blaine said, “seized it and performed a cold-blooded murder just for fun, because I knew I could never be caught at it. My murder.”

“Well… Our murder,” she said.

“Yes.”

“All right, we’re murderers,” Marie said calmly. “Accept it, Tom. Don’t get mushy-minded about it. We’ve killed once, we can kill again.”

“Never,” Blaine said.

“He’s almost finished! I swear to you, Tom, there’s not a month of life in him. He’s almost played out. One blow and he’s done for. One push.”

“I’m not that kind of murderer,” Blaine said.

“Will you let me do it?”

“I’m not that kind, either.”

“You idiot! Then just do nothing! Wait. A month, no more than that, and he’s finished. You can wait a month, Tom—”

“More murder,” Blaine said wearily.

“Tom! You’re not going to give him your body! What about our life together?”

“Do you think we could go on after this?” Blaine asked. “I couldn’t. Now stop arguing with me. I don’t know if I’d do this if there weren’t a hereafter. Quite probably I wouldn’t. But there is a hereafter. I’d like to go there with my accounts as straight as possible, all bills paid in full, all restitutions made. If this were my only existence, I’d cling to it with everything I’ve got. But it isn’t! Can you understand that?”

“Yes, of course,” Marie said unhappily.

“Frankly, I’m getting pretty curious about this afterlife. I want to see it. And there’s one thing more.”

“What’s that?”

Marie’s shoulders were trembling, so Blaine put his arm around her. He was thinking back to the conversation he had had with Hull, the elegant and aristocratic Quarry.

Hull had said: “We follow Nietzsche’s dictum— to die at the right time! Intelligent people don’t clutch at the last shreds of life like drowning men clinging to a bit of board. They know that the body’s life is only an infinitesimal portion of man’s total existence. Why shouldn’t those bright pupils skip a grade or two of school?”

Blaine remembered how strange, dark, atavistic and noble Hull’s lordly selection of death had seemed. Pretentious, of course; but then, life itself was a pretension in the vast universe of unliving matter. Hull had seemed like an ancient Japanese nobleman kneeling to perform the ceremonial act of hara-kiri, and emphasizing the importance of life in the very selection of death.

And Hull had said: “The deed of dying transcends class and breeding. It is every man’s patent of nobility, his summons from the king, his knightly adventure. And how he acquits himself in that lonely and perilous enterprise is his true measure as a man.”

Marie broke into his reverie, asking, “What was that one thing more?”

“Oh.” Blaine thought for a moment. “I just wanted to say that I guess some of the attitudes of the 22nd century have rubbed off on me. Especially the aristocratic ones.” He grinned and kissed her. “But of course, I always had good taste.”