“You have some kind of controlling center for this too, don’t you?”

  “Yes. Transmitter Station, on Earth, is in Brazil. It holds all the records of such things as addresses, and it coordinates the millions of units all over the planet. It’s a huge, complicated affair, of course, but perfectly efficient. Since distance no longer means anything, it’s most practical to centralize the public-service units.

  “Well, from transmission it was but a step to recording the signal and reproducing it out of a bank of any other matter. So—the duplicator. The matter creator. You can imagine what that did to Sol’s economy! Today everybody owns one, and if he doesn’t have a record of what he wants he can have one duplicated and transmitted from Creator Station’s great ‘library’. Anything whatsoever in the way of material goods is his for the turning of a dial and the flicking of a switch.

  “And this, in turn, soon led to the Rebirth technique. It’s but an extension of all that has gone before. Your body is recorded at its prime of life, say around twenty years of age. Then you live for as much longer as you care to, say to thirty-five or forty or whenever you begin to get a little old. Then your neural pattern is recorded alone by special scanning units. Memory, as you surely know, is a matter of neural synapses and altered protein molecules, not too difficult to scan and record. This added pattern is superimposed electronically on the record of your twenty-year-old body. Then your own body is used as the matter bank for materializing the pattern in the altered record and—virtually instantaneously—your young body is created—but with all the memories of the old! You’re immortal!”

  “In a way,” said Felgi. “But it still doesn’t seem right to me. The ego, the soul, whatever you want to call it—it seems as if you lose that. You create simply a perfect copy.”

  “When the copy is so perfect it cannot be told from the original,” said Ramacan, “then what is the difference? The ego is essentially a matter of continuity. You, your essential self, are a constantly changing pattern of synapses bearing only a temporary relationship to the molecules that happen to carry the pattern at the moment. It is the design, not the structural material, that is important; And it is the design that we preserve.”

  “Do you?” asked Felgi. “I seemed to notice a strong likeness among Earthlings.”

  “Well, since the records can be altered there was no reason for us to carry around crippled or diseased or deformed bodies,” said Ramacan. “Records could be made of perfect specimens and all ego-patterns wiped from them; then someone else s neural pattern could be superimposed. Rebirth—in a new body! Naturally, everyone would want to match the prevailing beauty standard, and so a certain uniformity has appeared. A different body would of course lead in time to a different personality, man being a psychosomatic unit. But the continuity which is the essential attribute of the ego would still be there.”

  “Ummm—I see. May I ask how old you are?”

  “About seven hundred and fifty. I was middle-aged when Rebirth was established, but I had myself put into a young body.”

  Felgi’s eyes went from Ramacan’s smooth, youthful face to his own hands, with the knobby joints and prominent veins of his sixty years. Briefly, the fingers tightened, but his voice remained soft. “Don’t you have trouble keeping your memories straight?”

  “Yes, but every so often I have some of the useless and repetitious ones taken out of the record, and that helps. The robots know exactly what part of the pattern corresponds to a given memory and can erase it. After, say, another thousand years, I’ll probably have big gaps. But they wont be important.”

  “How about the apparent acceleration of time with age?”

  “That was bad after the first couple of centuries, but then it seemed to flatten out, the nervous system adapted to it. I must say, though,” admitted Ramacan, “that it as well as lack of incentive is probably responsible for our present static society and general unproductiveness. There’s a terrible tendency to procrastination, and a day seems too short a time to get anything done.”

  “The end of progress, then—of science, or art, of striving, of all which has made man human.”

  “Not so. We still have our arts and handicrafts and—hobbies, I suppose you could call them. Maybe we don’t do so much any more, but—why should we?”

  “I’m surprised at finding so much of Earth gone back to wilderness. I should think you’d be badly overcrowded.”

  “Not so. The creator and the transmitter make it possible for men to live far apart, in physical distance, and still be in as close touch as necessary. Communities are obsolete. As for the population problem, there isn’t any. After a few children, not many people want more. It’s sort of, well, unfashionable anyway.”

  “That’s right,” said Felgi quietly, “I’ve hardly seen a child on Earth.”

  “And of course there’s a slow drift out to the stars as people seek novelty. You can send your recording in a robot ship, and a journey of centuries becomes nothing. I suppose that’s another reason for the tranquility of Earth. The more restless and adventurous elements have moved away.”

  “Have you any communication with them?”

  “None. Not when spaceships can only go at half the speed of light. Once in a while curious wanderers will drop in on us, but it’s very rare. They seem to be developing some strange cultures out in the galaxy.”

  “Don’t you do any work on Earth?”

  “Oh, some public services must be maintained—psychiatry, human technicians to oversee various stations, and so on. And then there are any number of personal-service enterprises—entertainment, especially, and the creation of intricate handicrafts for the creators to duplicate. But there are enough people willing to work a few hours a month or week, if only to fill in their time or to get the credit-balance which will enable them to purchase such services for themselves if they desire.

  “It’s a perfectly stable culture, General Felgi. It’s perhaps the only really stable society in all human history.”

  “I wonder—haven’t you any precautions at all? Any military forces, any defenses against invaders—anything?”

  “Why in the cosmos should we fear that?” exclaimed Ramacan. “Who would come invading over light-years—at half the speed of light? Or if they did, why?”

  “Plunder—”

  Ramacan laughed. “We could duplicate anything they asked for and give it to them.”

  “Could you, now?” Suddenly Felgi stood up. “Could you?”

  Ramacan rose too, with his nerves and muscles tightening again. There was a hard triumph in the Procyonite’s face, vindictive, threatening.

  Felgi signaled to his men through the door. They trotted up on the double, and their blasters were raised and something hard and ugly was in their eyes.

  “Coordinator Ramacan,” said Felgi, “you are under arrest.”

  “What—what—” The Earthling felt as if someone had struck him a physical blow. He clutched for support. Vaguely he heard the iron tones:

  “You’ve confirmed what I thought. Earth is unarmed, unprepared, helplessly dependent on a few undefended key spots. And I captain a warship of space filled with soldiers.

  “We’re taking over!”

  -2-

  “Tiger, Tiger”

  Avi’s current house lay in North America, on the middle Atlantic seaboard. Like most private homes these days, it was small and low-ceilinged, with adjustable interior walls and furnishings for easy variegation. She loved flowers, and great brilliant gardens bloomed around her dwelling, down toward the sea and landward to the edge of the immense forest which had returned with the end of agriculture.

  They walked between the shrubs and trees and blossoms, she and Harol. Her unbound hair was long and bright in the sea breeze, her eighteen-year-old form was slim and graceful as a young deer’s. Suddenly he hated the thought of leaving her.

  “I’ll miss you, Harol,” she said.

  He smiled lopsidedly. “You’ll get over that,” he said. “There are others. I suppose you’ll be looking up some of those spacemen they say arrived from Procyon a few days ago.”

  “Of course,” she said innocently. “I’m surprised you don’t stay around and try for some of the women they had along. It would be a change.”

  “Not much of a change,” he answered. “Frankly, I’m at a loss to understand the modern passion for variety. One person seems very much the same as another in that regard.”

  “It’s a matter of companionship,” she said. “After not too many years of living with someone, you get to know him too well. You can tell exactly what he’s going to do, what he’ll say to you, what he’ll have for dinner and what sort of show he’ll want to go to in the evening. These colonists will be—new! They’ll have other ways from ours, they’ll be able to tell of a new, different planetary system, they’ll—” She broke off. “But now so many women will be after the strangers, I doubt if I’ll have a chance.”

  “But if it’s conversation you want—oh, well.” Harol shrugged. “Anyway, I understand the Procyonites still have family relationships. They’ll be quite jealous of their women. And I need this change.”

  “A carnivore—!” Avi laughed, and Harol thought again what music it was. “You have an original mind, at least.” Suddenly she was earnest. She held both his hands and looked close into his eyes. “That’s always been what I liked about you, Harol. You’ve always been a thinker and adventurer, you’ve never let yourself grow mentally lazy like most of us. After we’ve been apart for a few years, you’re always new again, you’ve gotten out of your rut and done something strange, you’ve learned something different, you’ve grown young again. We’ve always come back to each other, dear, and I’ve always been glad of it.”

  “And I,” he said quietly. “Though I’ve regretted the separations too.” He smiled, a wry smile with a tinge of sorrow behind it. “We could have been very happy in the old days, Avi. We would have been married and together for life.”

  “A few years, and then age and feebleness and death.” She shuddered. “Death! Nothingness! Not even the world can exist when one is dead. Not when you’ve no brain left to know about it. Just—nothing. As if you had never been! Haven’t you ever been afraid of the thought?”

  “No,” he said, and kissed her.

  “That’s another way you’re different,” she murmured. “I wonder why you never went out to the stars, Harol. All your children did.”

  “I asked you to go with me, once.”

  “Not I. I like it here. Life is fun, Harol. I don’t seem to get bored as easily as most people. But that isn’t answering my question.”

  “Yes, it is,” he said, and then clamped his mouth shut.

  He stood looking at her, wondering if he was the last man on Earth who loved a woman, wondering how she really felt about him. Perhaps, in her way, she loved him—they always came back to each other. But not in the way he cared for her, not so that being apart was a gnawing pain and reunion was—No matter.

  “I’ll still be around,” he said. “I’ll be wandering through the woods here; I’ll have the Rebirth men transmit me back to your house and then I’ll be in the neighborhood.”

  “My pet tiger,” she smiled. “Come around to see me once in a while, Harol. Come with me to some of the parties.”

  A nice spectacular ornament—“No, thanks. But you can scratch my head and feed me big bloody steaks, and I’ll arch my back and purr.”

  They walked hand in hand toward the beach. “What made you decide to be a tiger?” she asked.

  “My psychiatrist recommended an animal rebirth,” he replied. “I’m getting terribly neurotic, Avi. I can’t sit still five minutes and I get gloomy spells where nothing seems worthwhile any more, life is a dreadful farce and—well, it seems to be becoming a rather common disorder these days. Essentially it’s boredom. When you have everything without working for it, life can become horribly flat. When you’ve lived for centuries, tried it all hundreds of times—no change, no real excitement, nothing to call forth all that’s in you—Anyway, the doctor suggested I go to the stars. When I refused that, he suggested I change to animal for a while. But I didn’t want to be like everyone else. Not an ape or an elephant.”

  “Same old contrary Harol,” she murmured, and kissed him. He responded with unexpected violence.

  “A year or two of wild life, in a new and unhuman body, will make all the difference,” he said after a while. They lay on the sand, feeling the sunlight wash over them, hearing the lullaby of waves and smelling the clean, harsh tang of sea and salt and many windy kilometers. High overhead a gull circled, white against the blue.

  “Won’t you change?” she asked.

  “Oh, yes. I won’t even be able to remember a lot of things I now know. I doubt if even the most intelligent tiger could understand vector analysis. But that won’t matter, I’ll get it back when they restore my human form. When I feel the personality change has gone as far as is safe, I’ll come here and you can send me back to Rebirth. The important thing is the therapy—a change of viewpoint, a new and challenging environment—Avi!” He sat up, on one elbow and looked down at her. “Avi, why don’t you come along? Why don’t we both become tigers?”

  “And have lots of little tigers?” she smiled drowsily. “No, thanks, Harol. Maybe some day, but not now. I’m really not an adventurous person at all.” She stretched, and snuggled back against the warm white dune. “I like it the way it is.”

  And there are those starmen—Sunfire, what’s the matter with me? Next thing you know I’ll commit an inurbanity against one of her lovers. I need that therapy, all right.

  “And then you’ll come back and tell me about it,” said Avi.

  “Maybe not,” he teased her. “Maybe I’ll find a beautiful tigress somewhere and become so enamored of her I’ll never want to change back to human.”

  “There won’t be any tigresses unless you persuade someone else to go along,” she answered. “But will you like a human body after having had such a lovely striped skin? Will we poor hairless people still look good to you?”

  “Darling,” he smiled, “to me you’ll always look good enough to eat.”

  Presently they went back into the house. The sea gull still dipped and soared, high in the sky.

  The forest was great and green and mysterious, with sunlight dappling the shadows and a riot of ferns and flowers under the huge old trees. There were brooks tinkling their darkling way between cool, mossy banks, fish leaping like silver streaks in the bright shallows, lonely pools where quiet hung like a mantle, open meadows of wind-rippled grass, space and solitude and an unending pulse of life.

  Tiger eyes saw less than human; the world seemed dim and flat and colorless until he got used to it. After that he had increasing difficulty remembering what color and perspective were like. And his other senses came alive, he realized what a captive within his own skull he had been—looking out at a world of which he had never been so real a part as now.

  He heard sounds and tones no man had ever perceived, the faint hum and chirr of insects, the rustling of leaves in a light, warm breeze, the vague whisper of an owl’s wings, the scurrying of small, frightened creatures through the long grass—it all blended into a rich symphony, the heartbeat and breath of the forest. And his nostrils quivered to the infinite variety of smells, the heady fragrance of crushed grass, the pungency of fungus and decay, the sharp, wild odor of fur, the hot drunkenness of newly spilled blood. And he felt with every hair, his whiskers quivered to the smallest stirrings, he gloried in the deep, strong play of his muscles—he had come alive, he thought; a man was half dead compared to the vitality that throbbed in the tiger.

  At night, at night—there was no darkness for him now. Moonlight was a white, cold blaze through which he stole on feathery feet; the blackest gloom was light to him—shadows, wan patches of luminescence, a shifting, sliding fantasy of gray like an old and suddenly remembered dream.

  He laired in a cave he found, and his new body had no discomfort from the damp earth. At night he would stalk out, a huge, dim ghost with only the amber gleam of his eyes for light, and the forest would speak to him with sound and scent and feeling, the taste of game on the wind. He was master then, all the woods shivered and huddled away from him. He was death in black and gold.

  Once an ancient poem ran through the human part of his mind. He let the words roll like ominous thunder in his brain and tried to speak them aloud. The forest shivered with the tiger’s coughing roar.

  Tiger, tiger, burning bright

  In the forest of the night,

  What immortal hand or eye

  Dared frame thy fearful symmetry?

  And the arrogant feline soul snarled response: I did!

  Later he tried to recall the poem, but he couldn’t.

  At first he was not very successful, too much of his human awkwardness clung to him. He snarled his rage and bafflement when rabbits skittered aside, when a deer scented him lurking and bolted. He went to Avi’s house and she fed him big chunks of raw meat and laughed and scratched him under the chin. She was delighted with her pet.

  Avi, he thought, and remembered that he loved her. But that was with his human body. To the tiger, she had no esthetic or sexual value. But he liked to let her stroke him, he purred like a mighty engine and rubbed against her slim legs. She was still very dear to him, and when he became human again—

  But the tiger’s instincts fought their way back; the heritage of a million years was not to be denied no matter how much the technicians had tried to alter him. They had accomplished little more than to increase his intelligence, and the tiger nerves and glands were still there.