“Generally, you were,” Frigate said. “You did have a long-lived reputation as a sinister clown, a failure, and a toady.” Burton was surprised. He had not known that the fellow would stand up to someone who had power of life and death over him or who had treated him so painfully. But then perhaps Frigate hoped to be killed.
It was probable that he was banking on Goring’s curiosity.
Goring said, “Explain your statement. Not about my reputation. Every man of importance expects to be reviled and misunderstood by the brainless masses. Explain why I am not the same man.”
Frigate smiled slightly and said, “You are the product, the hybrid, of a recording and an energy-matter converter. You were made with all the memories of the dead man Hermann Goring and with every cell of his body a duplicate. You have everything he had. So you think you are Goring. But you are not! You are a duplication, and that is all! The original Herman Goring is nothing but molecules that have been absorbed into the soil and the air and so into plants and back into the flesh of beasts and men and out again as excrement, und so wieter!
“But you, here before me, are not the original, any more than the recording on a disc or a tape is the original voice, the vibrations issuing from the mouth of a man and detected and converted by an electronic device and then replayed.” Burton understood the reference, since he had seen an Edison phonograph in Paris in 1888. He felt outraged, actually violated, at Frigate’s assertions.
Goring’s wide-open eyes and reddening face indicated that he, too, felt threatened down to the core of his being.
After stuttering, Goring said, “And why would these beings go to all this trouble just to make duplicates?”
Frigate shrugged and said, “I don’t know.” Goring heaved up from his chair and pointed the stem of his pipe at Frigate.
“You lie!” he screamed in German. “You lie, scheisshund!”
Frigate quivered as if he expected to be struck over the kidneys again, but he said, “I must be right. Of course, you don’t have to believe what I say. I can’t prove anything. And I understand exactly how you feel. I know that I am Peter Jairus Frigate, born 1918, died A.D. 2008. But I also must believe, because logic tells me so, that I am only, really, a being who has the memories of that Frigate who will never rise from the dead. In a sense, I am the son of that Frigate who can never exist again. Not flesh of his flesh, blood of his blood, but mind of his mind. I am not the man who was born of a woman on that lost world of Earth. I am the byblow of science and a machine. Unless…”
Goring said, “Yes? Unless what?”
“Unless there is some entity attached to the human body, an entity which is the human being. I mean, it contains all that makes the individual what he is, and when the body is destroyed, this entity still exists. So that, if the body were to be made again, this entity, storing the essence of the individual, could be attached again to the body. And it would record every thing that the body recorded: And so the original individual would live again. He would not be just a duplicate.”
Burton said, “For God’s sake, Pete! Are you proposing the soul?”
Frigate nodded and said, “Something analagous to the soul Something that the primitives dimly apprehended and called a soul.” Goring laughed uproariously. Burton would have laughed, but he did not care to give Goring any support, moral or intellectual.
When Goring had quit laughing, he said, “Even here, in a world which is clearly the result of science, the supernaturalists won’t quit trying. Well, enough of that. To more practical and immediate matters. Tell me, have you changed your mind? Are you ready to join me?”
Burton glared and said, “I would not be under the orders of a man who rapes women; moreover, I respect the Israelis. I would rather be a slave with them than free with you.” Goring scowled and said, harshly, “Very well. I thought as much. But I had hoped … well, I have been having trouble with the Roman. If he gets his way, you will see how merciful I have been to you slaves. You do not know him. Only my intervention has saved one of you being tortured to death every night for his amusement.” At noon, the two returned to their work in the hills. Neither got a chance to speak to Targoff or any of the slaves, since their duties happened not to bring them into contact. They did not dare make an open attempt to talk to him, because that would have meant a severe beating.
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