Outnumbering the Dead

by Frederik Pohl

  It wasn't good, he thought, but it was enough. Raysia shut off her camera, thanked him, asked for an autograph and left; and as soon as the door was closed behind her Rafiel was grimly on the phone.

  But Mosay wasn't answering, had shut himself off. Rafiel left him a scorching message and sat down, with a drink in his hand, to go through his mail. He was not happy. He scrolled quickly through the easy part - requests for autographs, requests for personal appearances, requests for interviews. He didn't have to do anything about most of them; he rerouted them through Mosay's office and they would be dealt with there.

  A note from a woman named Hillaree could not be handled in that way. She was a dramaturge herself- had he ever heard of her? He couldn't be sure; there were thousands of them, though few as celebrated as Mosay. Still, she had a proposition for Rafiel. She wanted to talk to him about a 'wonderful' (she said) new script. The story took place on one of the orbiting space habitats, a place called Hakluyt, and she was, she said, convinced that Rafiel would be determined to do it, if only he would read the script.

  Rafiel thought for a moment. He wasn't convinced at all. Still, on consideration, he copied the script to file without looking at it. Perhaps he would read the script, perhaps he wouldn't; but he could imagine that, in some future conversation with Mosay, it might be useful to be able to mention this other offer.

  He sent a curt message to this Hillaree to tell her to contact his agent and then, fretful, stopped the scroll. He wasn't concentrating. Raysia's interview had bothered him. 'We have time' indeed! Of course they did. They had endless time, time to learn a dead language, just for the fun of it, as Rafiel himself might waste an afternoon trying to learn how to bowl or paraglide at some beach. They all had time - all but Rafiel himself and a handful of other unfortunates like him - and it wasn't fair!

  It did not occur to Rafiel that he had already had, in the nine decades since his birth, more lifetime than almost anyone in the long history of the human race before him. That was irrelevant. However much he had, everyone around him had so much more.

  Still, in his ninety years of life Rafiel had learned a great deal - even actors could learn more than their lines, with enough time to do it in. He had learned to accept the fact that he was going to die, while everyone he knew lived on after him. He had even learned why this was so.

  It was all a matter of the failings of the Darwinian evolution process.

  In one sense, Darwinian evolution was one of the nicest things that had ever happened to life on Earth. In the selection of desirable traits to pass on to descendants - the famous 'survival of the fittest' - virtue was rewarded. Traits that worked well for the organism were passed on, because the creatures that had them were more likely to reproduce than the ones lacking them.

  Over the billions of years the process had produced such neat things - out of the unpromising single-celled creatures that began it all - as eyes, and anuses, and resistance to the diseases that other organisms wanted to give you, and ultimately even intelligence. That was the best development, in the rather parochial collective opinion of the intelligent human race. Smarts had turned out to be an evolutionary plus; that was why there were ten trillion human beings around, and hardly any of such things as the blue whale, the mountain gorilla and the elephant.

  But there was one thing seriously wrong with the way the process works. From the point of view of the individual organism itself, evolution doesn't do a thing. Its benefits may be wonderful for the next generation, but it doesn't do diddly-squat for the organisms it is busily selecting, except to encourage the weaker ones to die before they get around to reproducing themselves.

  That means that some very desirable traits that every human being would have liked to have - say, resistance to osteoporosis, or a wrinkle-free face - didn't get selected for in the Darwinian lottery. Longevity was not a survival feature. Once a person (or any other kind of animal) had its babies, the process switched itself off. Anything that benefited the organism after it was finished with its years of reproducing was a matter of pure chance. However desirable the new trait might have been, it wasn't passed on. Once the individual had passed the age of bearing young, the Darwinian score-keepers lost interest.

  That didn't stop such desirable traits from popping up. Mutations appeared a million times which, if passed on, would have kept the lucky inheritors of subsequent generations hale for indefinite periods - avoiding, let us say, such inconveniences of age as going deaf at sixty, incontinent at eighty and mindless by the age of a hundred. But such genes came and went and were lost. As they didn't have anything to do with reproductive efficiency, they didn't get preserved. There wasn't any selective pass-through after the last babies were born.

  So longevity was a do-it-yourself industry. There was no help from Darwin. But....

  But once molecular biology got itself well organized, there were things that could be done. And were done. For most of the human population. But now and then, there were an unfortunate flawed few who missed out on the wonders of modem life-prolonging science because some undetectable and incurable quirks in their systems rejected the necessary treatment....

  Like Rafiel. Who scrolled through, without actually seeing, the scores of trivial messages - fan letters, requests for him to appear at some charitable function in some impossible place, bank statements, bills - that had arrived for him while he was away. And then, still fretful, turned off his communications and blanked his entertainment screen and even switched off the music as, out of habit and need, he practised his leaps and entrechats in the solitude of his home, while he wondered bitterly what the point was in having a life at all, when you knew that it would sooner or later end.

  5

  People do still die now and then. It isn't just the unfortunates like Rafiel who do it, either, though of course they are the ones for whom it is inevitable. Even normal people sometimes die as well. They die of accident, of suicide, of murder, sometimes just of some previously unknown sickness or even of a medical blunder that crashes the system. The normal people simply do not do that very often. Normal people expect to live normally extended lives. How long those lives can be expected to last is hard to say, because even the oldest persons around aren't yet much more than bicentenarians (that's the time since the procedures first became available), and they show no signs of old age yet. And, of course, since people do go on giving birth to other people, all that longevity has added up to quite an unprecedented population explosion. The total number of human beings living today is something over ten trillion - that's a one followed by thirteen zeroes - which is far more than the total number of previous members of the genus Homo in every generation since the first Neanderthalers appeared. Now the living overwhelmingly outnumber the dead.

  When Rafiel woke the next morning he found his good nature had begun to return. Partly it was the lingering wisps of his last designer dream - Alegretta had starred in it, as ordered, and that lost and cherished love of his life had never been more desirable and more desiring, for that matter, because that was the kind of a dream he had specified. So he woke up in a haze of tender reminiscence. Anyway, even the terminally mortal can't dwell on their approaching demise all the time, and Rafiel was naturally a cheerful man.

  Getting out of bed in the morning was a cheerful occasion, too, for he was surrounded with the many, many things he had to be cheerful about. As he breakfasted on what the servers brought him he turned on the vid tank and watched half a dozen tapes of himself in some of the highlights of his career. He was, he realized, quite good. In the tank his miniature self sang love ballads and jiving patter numbers and even arias, and his dancing - well, yes, now and then a bit trembly, he conceded to himself, but with style - was a delight to watch. Even for the person who had done it, but who, looking in the tank, could only see that imaged person as a separate and, really, very talented entity.

  Cheerfully Rafiel moved to the barre to begin his morning warm-ups. He started gently, because he was still digesting h
is breakfast. There wasn't any urgency about it. Rehearsal call was more than an hour away, and he was contentedly aware that the person he had been looking at on the vid was a star.

  In a world where the living far outnumbered the dead, space was precious. On the other hand, so was Rafiel, and stars were meant to be coddled. Mosay had taken a rehearsal room the size of a tennis court for Rafiel's own private use. The hall was high up in the arcology, and it wasn't just a big room. It was a very well-equipped one. It had bare powder-blue walls that would turn into any colour Rafiel wanted them to be at the touch of a switch, a polished floor of real hardwood that clacked precisely to his taps, and, of course, full sound and light projection. Mosay, fussing over his star's accommodations, touched the keypad, and the obedient projectors transformed the bare walls into a glittering throne room.

  Tm afraid that it's the wrong period, of course,' Mosay apologized, looking without pleasure at the palace of Versailles, 'no roi soleil in Thebes, is there, but I want you to get the feel of the kingship thing, sapete? We don't have the programs for the Theban backdrops yet. Actually I don't know if we will, because as far as my research people can tell, the Thebans really didn't have any actual throne rooms anyway.'

  'It doesn't matter,' Rafiel said absently, slipping into his tap shoes.

  'It does to me! You know how I am about authenticity.'

  Seeing what Rafiel was doing Mosay hastily turned to touch the control keys again. Victorium's overture began to tinkle from the hidden sound system. 'C'est beau, le son? It's just a synthesizer arrangement so far.'

  'It's fine,' said Rafiel.

  'Are you sure? Well, bon. Now, bitte, do you want to think about how you want to do the first big scene? That's the one where you're onstage with all the townspeople. They'll be the chorus. You're waiting to find out what news your brother-in-law, Creon, has brought back from the Delphic oracle; he went to find out what you had to do to get things straightened out in Thebes....'

  'I've read the script, of course,' said Rafiel, who had in fact finished scrolling through it at breakfast.

  'Of course you have,' said Mosay, rebuked. 'So I'll let you alone while you try working out the scene, shall I? Because I want to start checking out shooting locations tomorrow, and so I've got a million things to do today.' 'Go and do them,' Rafiel bade him. When the dramaturge was gone Rafiel lifted his voice and commanded: 'Display text, scene one, from the top. With music.'

  The tinkling began again at once, and so did the display of the lines. The words marched along the upper parts of the walls, all four walls at once so that wherever Rafiel turned he saw them. He didn't want to dance at this point, he thought. Perhaps just march back and forth - yes, remembering that the character was lame - yes, and a king too, all the same.... He began to pantomime the action and whisper the words of his part:

  CHORUS: Ecco Creon, crowned with laurels.

  'He's going to say,' Rafiel half-sang in his turn, 'what's wrong's our morals.'

  [Enter CREON.]

  CREON: D 'accord, but I've still worse to follow.

  It's not me speaking. It's Apollo.

  Rafiel stopped the crawl there and thought for a second. There were some doubts in his mind. How well was that superstitious mumbo-jumbo going to work? You couldn't expect a modern audience to take seriously some mumble from a priestess. On the other hand, and equally of course, Oedipus had not been a modern figure. Would he have taken it seriously? Yes, Rafiel decided, he had to, or else the story made no sense to begin with. In playing Oedipus, then, the most he could do was to show a little tolerant exasperation at the oracle's nagging. So he started the accompaniment again, and mimed a touch of amused patience at Creon's line, turning his head away And caught a glimpse of an intruder watching him rehearse from the doorway.

  It was a small, unkempt-looking young man in a lavender kilt. He was definitely not anyone Rafiel had seen as a member of Mosay's troupe and therefore no one who had a right to be here. Rafiel gave him a cold stare and decided to ignore him.

  He realized he'd missed a couple of Creon's lines, and his own response was coming up. He sang:

  OEDIPUS: We'll take care of all this hubble-bubble

  as Soon as you tell us what the real trouble is.

  But his concentration was gone. He clapped his hands to stop the music and turned to scowl at the intruder.

  Who advanced to meet him, saying seriously, 'I hope I'm not interfering. But on that line-'

  Rafiel held up a forbidding hand. 'Who are you?'

  'Oh, sorry. I'm Charlus, your choreographer. Mosay said-'

  'I do my own choreography!'

  'Of course you do, Rafiel,' the man said patiently. 'You're Rafiel. I shouldn't have said choreographer, when all Mosay asked me to do was be your assistant. Do you remember me? From when you did Make Mine Mars, twenty years ago it must have been, and I tried out for the chorus line?'

  Then Rafiel did identify him, but not from twenty years ago. 'You sired Docilia's little one.'

  Charlus looked proud. 'She told you, then? Evvero. We're both so happy - but, look, maestro, let me make a suggestion on that bubble-as, trouble-is bit. Suppose....'

  And the man became Oedipus on the spot, as he performed a simultaneous obscene gesture and courtly bow, ending on one knee.

  Rafiel pursed his lips, considering. It was an okay step. No, he admitted justly, it was more than that. It wasn't just an okay step, it was an okay Rafiel step, with just a little of Rafiel's well-known off-balance stagger as the right knee bumped the floor.

  He made up his mind. 'Khorashaw,' he said. 'I don't usually work with anybody else, but I'm willing to give it a try.'

  'Spasibo, Rafiel,' the man said humbly.

  ‘De nada. Have you got any ideas about the next line?'

  Charlus looked embarrassed. 'Hai, sure but est-ce possible to go back a little bit, to where you come in?'

  'My first entrance, at the beginning of the scene?'

  Charlus nodded eagerly. 'Right there, pensez-vous we might try something real macho? You are a king, after all and you can enter like....'

  He turned and repeated Oedipus's entrance to the hall, but slowly, s-l-o-w-l-y, with his head rocking and a ritualistic, high-stepping strut and turn before he descended sedately to a knee again. It was the same finish as the other step, but a world different in style and meaning.

  Rafiel pursed his lips. 'I like it,' he said, meditating, 'but do you think it really looks, well, Theban? I'd say it's peutetre basically Asian - maybe Thai?'

  Charlus looked at him with new respect. 'Close enough. It's meno o mino the Javanese patjak-kulu movement. Am I getting too eclectic for you?'

  Rafiel acknowledged, 'Well, I guess I'm pretty eclectic myself.'

  'I know,' said Charlus, smiling.

  While Charlus was showing the mincing little gedruk step he thought would be good for Jocasta, Mosay looked in, eyebrows elevated in the obvious question.

  Charlus was tactful. 'I've got to make a trip to the benjo,' he said, and Rafiel answered the unspoken question as soon as the choreographer was gone.

  'Mind his helping out? No, I don't mind, Mosay. He's no performer himself, but as a choreographer, hai, he's good.' Rafiel was just. The man was not only good, he was bursting with ideas. Better still, it was evident that he had watched every show Rafiel had ever done, and knew Rafiel's style better than Rafiel did himself.

  ‘Bene, bene,’ Mosay said with absent-minded satisfaction. 'When you hire the best people you get the best results. Oh, and senti, Rafiel' - remembering, as he was already moving toward the door - 'those messages you forwarded to me? A couple of them were personal, so I routed them back to your machine. They'll be waiting for you. Continuez, mes enfants.' And a pat on the head for the returning Charlus and the dramaturge was gone, and they started again.

  It was hard work, good work, with Rafiel happy with the way it was going, but long work, too; they barely stopped to eat a couple of sandwiches for lunch, and even then, thou
gh not actually dancing, Rafiel and Charlus were working with the formatting screen, moving computer-generated stick figures about in steps and groupings for the dance numbers of the show, Rafiel getting up every now and then to try a step, Charlus showing an arm gesture or a bob of the head to finish off a point.

  By late afternoon Rafiel could see that Charlus was getting tired, but he himself was going strong. He had forgotten his hospital stay and was beginning to remember the satisfactions of collaboration. Having a second person help him find insights into the character and action was a great plea- sure, particularly when that person was as unthreatening as the eager and submissive Charlus. 'So now,' Rafiel said, towelling some sweat away, 'we're up to where we've found out that Thebes won't get straight until the assassin of the old king is found and punished, right? And this is where I sing my vow to the gods-'

  'Permesso?’ Charlus said politely. And took up a self-important strut, half tap, almost cakewalk, swinging his lavender kilt as he sang the lines: 'I swear, without deceit or bias, We'll croak the rat who croaked King Laius.'

  'Yes?' said Rafiel, reserving judgment.

  'And then Creon gives you the bad news. He tells you that, corpo di bacco, things are bad. The oracle says that the murderer is here in Thebes. I think right there is when you register the first suspicion that there's something funny going on. You know? Like…' miming someone suddenly struck by an unwanted thought.

  'You don't think that's too early?'

  'It's what you think that counts, Rafiel,' Charlus said submissively, and looked up toward the door.