The Boy Who Would Live Forever

by Frederik Pohl

  It wasn’t all sex, though. They found plenty else to do with their time. They played word games, considered names for the baby, discussed Hypatia’s failings as a cook, chatted with Salt on the lookplate, played with those same lookplates in some of the many other ways they could be used.

  They even found a news program on one of the plates—human news, from Outside!—delivered by a human announcer whom Estrella thought exceptionally good-looking. Stan couldn’t see that at all. He didn’t care much for the program, either, because the announcer seemed to be in a constant, unwinnable race to keep up with the things that were happening in the outside galaxy. Each time he appeared he seemed farther behind. Elections came and were replaced by new ones like the flickering of fireflies. Disasters were healed by the time he finished describing them. And when there was something that sounded really interesting—what did he mean when he spoke of a Foe expedition to the Lesser Magellanic Cloud?—there never seemed to be any explanation or follow-up.

  But it still struck Stan as of great interest. “A human news broadcast!” he marveled. “Why, Strell, that has to mean that there are a lot of us in the Core now!”

  She managed not to laugh. “There sure are, hon. Weren’t you listening when Yellow Jade showed me how to access some of the others on the small plate?”

  He looked guilty. “I might’ve been resting.”

  “Oh, right,” she said, remembering. “You snored a lot, too. Anyway, right here on this planet there’s Alice and Sandra—she’s machine-stored, though—and there’s also Beth and Keichiko and Maureen and Daisy, but it’s harder to reach them because they’re on other planets. And there are lots of others, but some of them don’t speak English, and some don’t want to.”

  Stan blinked at that, was more startled still when she told him that, near as she could estimate, there were now several thousand other humans in the Core.

  “Where’d all those people come from?” he marveled.

  Estrella said wisely, “It’s the time differential, Stan. Like this Bill Tartch, trying to keep up with the news. Things move a lot faster Outside. There’s plenty of time to emigrate.”

  Stan found himself displeased. He had felt a lot more important when he and Estrella were rarer than they were now. Any time now, he thought, human beings they didn’t even know might be dropping in on them in person.

  What he hadn’t expected was that one of those fellow humans would arrive at their apartment that very day. But one did.

  The doorbell (they couldn’t think of what else to call it) told them that someone was waiting outside. It didn’t tell them that the person was female, good-looking, blonde, blue-eyed, carrying a little black bag and, above all, human. “Hello,” she said brightly. “Dr. von Shrink said I should come out and check you over. I’m an ob-gyny. My name is Dr. Dorothy Kusmeroglu.”

  An electric shock went through Stan when he heard the name. “Kusmeroglu? Really? You’re Turkish? Maybe from Istanbul—”

  “Oh, no. Not me. That could’ve been where my couple-of-greats-grandfather came from, though,” she said, looking around the apartment as though she were preparing to make an offer on it. “Somewhere on Earth, anyway, but I’ve never been there. I’m third-generation Martian. Can we use the bedroom, Estrella? And I think it’s better if Stan stays out here.”

  So Stan was again left to bite his fingernails while he waited for whatever had to be done with Estrella, now clearly the alpha star of their little constellation. It didn’t take long. When they came out both were smiling. “Everything is perfect, Stan,” the doctor told him. “You can see it for yourself, because I’ve got a little present for you.” She rummaged in her bag, pulled out an iridescent, olive-colored bracelet. “Put this on, Estrella. It’s the latest thing from Outside to see how your baby’s doing—I hear they call it ‘Stork,’ there, but maybe that’s too cute for you? Anyway, when you want to make it work you just say, ‘Stork, display.’” And then, when Estrella didn’t act at once, she said impatiently, “Come on, hon. I haven’t got all day.”

  Estrella looked at Stan, got no help there and finally sighed. “All right. Stork. Display.”

  A faint cloud of pale pink swirled beside Estrella’s body and immediately collapsed into a minute, doll-like figure. It floated in the air a meter or so from Estrella’s face, making her draw back in sudden surprise. It didn’t look like a baby to Stan. It looked like something you might step on in the street, and immediately try to scrub off your shoe.

  But then, as it slowly rotated before their eyes, it began to look like—well, not like anything you’d call human, but a little like one of those crude, prehistoric attempts to capture a human form in stone. There was a head—eyeless, earless, but with something rather like a chin. There were spindly limbs and tiny hands and feet. And there was—

  “My God,” Stan breathed. “Has he got an erection already?”

  Dr. Kusmeroglu gave him a patient little laugh. “That’s the umbilical cord. He hasn’t got a penis yet—hold on,” she interrupted herself, peering hard at the tiny animalcule. “Huh,” she said. “Never will have, either. You see the external genitalia, up there in the crotch? Well, up to now the embryo hasn’t had any gender, but around now is when the genitalia migrate. If they go up it’s a girl, down they turn into testicles and it’s a boy. And this one’s migrating up.” She lifted her eyes to meet Estrella’s. “So you’ve got a little girl, hon. Congratulations.”

  While Stan was trying to get used to the proposition that he was not only becoming a father, but a father to an actual, visible (if not yet fully formed) human being, complete with arms, legs and gender, Dr. Kusmeroglu snapped her bag shut. “By the way,” she said, “she isn’t an embryo anymore. From now on she’s a fetus. Now I have to get moving. I don’t want to miss my flight to Mostly Water Planet of Bright Yellow Star.”

  “You came in a spaceship? Just to see us?” Stan marveled.

  “Of course. There aren’t that many pregnant human beings in the Core right now, are there? Now, when we move to the implantation procedure—” She paused, biting her lip in thought.

  That scared Stan. “Is something the matter?” he demanded.

  “Oh, no, of course not. Not really. It’s just that I don’t think there are any suitable implantation animals here. That kind of thing is usually done earlier in the pregnancy, but that’s mostly for the mother’s convenience. There’s no great hurry. We can order a suitable surrogate from Outside—”

  “Stop!” Estrella commanded. “What are you talking about?”

  Dr. Kusmeroglu looked faintly bewildered. “Didn’t I make myself clear? I’m talking about a surrogate mother, of course, what else? A mammal large enough to carry your baby to term—of course, one that has been genetically modified so that it won’t reject the fetus. So the question is, what kind would you prefer? In most of the world it’s usually water buffalo. They’re a good size, and they’re cheap and plentiful. I prefer to use cows, myself.”

  Estrella was looking at the woman in horror. “My baby? Inside an animal?”

  “Of course inside an animal,” the doctor said impatiently. “What else would you do? You don’t want to go through parturition yourself, do you? All that pain and mess? Not to mention nine months of trying to get comfortable with a belly that keeps getting bigger and bigger every day? Nobody does now, except—Oh, wait.” She paused and gave Estrella a more appraising look. “Listen, you’re not one of those religious fanatics, are you?”

  Estrella tried to answer but couldn’t. She settled for just shaking her head.

  The doctor sighed and stood up. “Look,” she said kindly, “I know this is a big step for you. Talk it over, the two of you. If you’ve got something against using bovids, there are other mammalian choices. One or two species of bear are good, and sometimes we can time the pregnancy to coincide with their hibernation so there’s not even the slight risk of accident you get when your surrogate is left out to feed and so on. That bear procedure, or the wat
er buffalo, is done mostly in Hindu areas, because, you know, they’ve got that cow thing. I’ve even heard of people using one of the marine mammals, now and then, though I can’t imagine why. Not on Mars, of course; even now we don’t have that kind of bodies of water, so I don’t have any personal experience. Anyway, I think it would be pretty troublesome to try to bring an orca here. Excuse me.” She turned away, raising her hand apologetically. To the air she said, “Time?” She listened for a moment, then grimaced. “I really have to get going, and anyway I guess you’ve got the picture. Call me if you have any questions—and, of course, when you’ve made up your mind about the surrogate.”

  And she was gone. Stan and Estrella looked at each other. Stan said, “What do you think, would you want to do something like that?”

  “Over my dead body,” Estrella said firmly. “Let’s get something to eat. If we’re going to keep that baby inside me where it belongs, we’d better feed it.”

  II

  Stork was a wonderful toy. Surprisingly, more for Stan than for Estrella; she was interested in seeing it four or five times a day but not much more, while Stan would sit, studying the tiny molecule, for an hour or two at a time, until Estrella got tired of doing odds and ends without him and informed him she wasn’t getting enough exercise for the baby’s good. So they went for more of those long walks in the countryside, enjoying the fragrance of growing things, pleased by the beauty of the tall trees with their frizzy crown of branches. On this day, the little animals that pretended to be plants were flowering, yellow and blue and red, and the ruse was working for them. Clouds of tiny flying things hovered around them, not evidently discouraged by the fact that so many of them were being eaten. There were fish in the pond, too, nasty snakelike things with bright orange eyes. If Estrella had had some thought of a quick swim she gave that up as soon as she saw them writhing around, just below the surface.

  But the day had a pleasant surprise. When they got back to their apartment they found a stack of hexagonal boxes, great and small, just inside the door. What they contained was the personal possessions they had had in their Five, left behind on Door and finally returned to them by some considerate Heechee. The smallest of the boxes held half a dozen of Stan’s old sheet-music selections, and that was all they needed to get their instruments out of the wall cupboard and begin to play. It was a nice way to end a day.

  And, the next morning, a nice way to begin one, too. It was Estrella’s flute, played as she was sitting on the side of their bed, that woke Stan up, and he only took a moment to use the waste disposer before he joined her in a couple of choruses of “Stardust” and “The Jelly Roll Rag.” Then Stan remembered that he hadn’t used the drencher that morning, and he invited Estrella to join him, and one thing led to another and they found themselves right back in bed again. After that Stan didn’t think he had gone back to sleep again, but the next thing he knew he heard that soft, deep-down low-frequency rumble that meant there was something in the food dispenser. “Estrella?” he called.

  It took a moment for her to show herself, coming in off the balcony and still brushing her hair. “What?” she asked.

  “Did you order lunch?”

  She frowned. “Well, I did say, out loud, that I was getting hungry.”

  Which led Stan to observe that, as a matter of fact, so was he. “Let’s see what we’ve got,” he said.

  When they had punctured the bubble-covers, what they’d got was a total surprise to both. The smell of Estrella’s meal identified itself even before Stan saw what it was: chili. Served in a bread bowl, with sides of guacamole and two kinds of salsa, with a dab of sour cream on top and a scattering of corn chips all around. “Real Texas-style chili,” Estrella announced, as soon as she had had a taste.

  Stan objected, “You weren’t from Texas, were you?”

  “I said Texas-style. The only style worth eating. I even think I can taste a little rattlesnake meat in it. But what’ve you got?”

  Stan had already eaten two of his half-dozen slippery-looking green things, and was covetously eyeing the platter of some kind of a roast surrounded by vegetables. “Stuffed grape leaves.” he announced. “Haven’t had those since my last birthday, and the meat looks good. And, look—” pointing to a pouted copper pot, accompanied by a pair of tiny cups, “there’s real Turkish coffee, too.”

  Estrella tasted a forkful of the perfectly prepared guacamole. “We should thank her,” she said meditatively.

  Stan had already moved on to the next course. “I think it’s lamb,” he said, tasting. “You know, I never had roast lamb before? Couldn’t afford it.”

  Estrella didn’t answer. After a moment of struggling with her notions of acceptable behavior, she gave up and licked the plate. They gazed at each other in rapture. “Things are definitely looking up,” Stan told Estrella.

  She nodded, but had a question. “Do you have any idea what’s going on?”

  “God knows. I don’t. All I know is that’s about the best meal I’ve had since—since—” He frowned, casting his mind back over the rations in their Five, the occasional splurge in Gateway’s spindle, Mrs. Kusmeroglu’s cooking way back in Istanbul. “Since ever,” he finished. “Now how about we take another look at our daughter?”

  Their daughter had to wait, while Estrella called Klara’s home to thank her, or maybe Hypatia, but in any case whoever had provided that meal. Curiously, there was no answer.

  When Stork had done its thing, Estrella took a good, long look at the baby and decided she hadn’t changed much. Stan was less sure. “Is that an eye?” he demanded. “What’s it doing on the side of her head? And what’s that thing at the back of her head, right where it joins the neck? Some kind of wart?”

  “Babies in the womb don’t get warts. I think.” She was on the little lookplate again.

  Stan took his mind off the unborn child long enough to ask what she was looking at. She moved slightly so he could see the plate. “Our new neighbors,” she said.

  What the lookplate showed was a lanai very like their own. It looked out on the same valley and the same Mica Mountains beyond. Eight or ten inarguable humans, male and female, were sharing a meal on it, passing around oddly shaped ceramic dishes and small wicker baskets.

  “They’re Chinese or something,” he pointed out. Estrella didn’t dispute it. “Well, maybe we should visit them sometime. What’s on the other plates?”

  The answer to that was, not much, or, alternatively, far too much to take in. Stan watched the parade of strange-looking people doing unidentifiable things in unrecognized places. “Oh, hell,” he grumbled at last. “I don’t have a clue.”

  She was sympathetic. “Me, too.” They left it at that. They both knew that the villain was that terrible ratio, 40,000 to 1. To compress forty thousand Outside hours into one one Core hour program meant that a lot—in fact, nearly everything—had to be left out.

  “Well, hell,” Stan said moodily. “I guess it doesn’t matter. We’re never going to go Outside again anyway.”

  They had another meal, very nearly as rapturous as the one before, and as Stan was gathering up the dishes to put in the waste the door growled at them. It was Salt, belly muscles nervously rippling under her gown. “Did not wish to interrupt your feeding,” she said. “But all right to enter now?”

  “Sure,” Stan said, thinking that Salt was not looking her best. Her skin color seemed—well, not exactly right, though with a Heechee how could you tell?

  Once inside she brightened. She sat down on the edge of an actual chair, her pod sticking awkwardly into air. She accepted a cup of tea and nibbled on the chocolate-covered biscuits the dispenser had included with the tea quite as though enjoying them. She gave the little sneeze that was the Heechee equivalent of clearing her throat, then began: “Have request to request of you. Human courtesy custom, however, requires I first ask of you what questions or requests you may have of me?”

  “Well,” Stan said, “actually we’ve been wondering if Klara is
at home. We haven’t spoken to her in quite a while—”

  “Have not?” Salt asked politely. “Wish to verify?”

  She didn’t wait for an answer to that, but turned to the lookplates. A few soft-voiced commands to the small one—in one of the Heechee languages, of course—and it displayed an interior view of Klara’s apartment. The view changed as they watched, as though the camera were hunting through the rooms. All the rooms were in order—bedroom and bathroom included—but there was no sign of either Klara or her shipmind.

  “Quite sorry,” Salt apologized. “Not present, as you have seen.”

  “And you don’t have any idea of where she’s gone?”

  Salt’s skull muscles twitched. “Any idea? But yes, have some idea, simply do not know if it is good idea. She spoke of persons called ‘Old Ones,’ now resident on One Moon Planet of Pale Yellow Star Fourteen. Perhaps has gone to see them.”

  Stan gave another of those dissatisfied grunts he was getting really good at, and Salt again politely sneezed. “May I at present time request I spoke of?”

  Stan shrugged. “Request on.”

  “Is perhaps excessive, this request,” she said regretfully. “All the same wish to request it. Have greatly enjoyed peculiar ‘musical’ sounds produced by you, on balcony and elsewhere. Is possible you produce same sounds in other venue? That is, in place you term ‘institution’? Doing same for entertainment and education of persons resident therein and nearby?”

  Then, before either of them could answer, she rose. “Am aware, as stated, request possibly excessive. I will now depart, leaving time for you, and also you, Estrella, to consider before giving answer. But would be quite greatly appreciated.”