The Fountains of Youth

by Brian Stableford

  The last thing Julius Ngomi said to me before I left the valley—the last thing he was to say to me for more than three hundred years, as things turned out—was, “History is okay for amateurs, kid, but it’s no work for real people. Historians have only interpreted the world and its révolutons —the point is to change it, carefully, constructively, and without any more revolutions.”

  I didn’t realize at the time that he was quoting or that the quote was deeply ironic. Nor did I realize that his parting shot and Mama Siorane’s reflected fundamentally dissonant views about the way the future would and ought to be shaped.

  “Forget what Papa Dom says about the Universe Without Limits,” she said. “He thinks that the imagination has no boundaries, but it keeps running into the most important boundary of all: the boundary of action. History is a good subject to study because it’s all about the waves of hopeful imagination breaking on the rocks of effective action. History will teach you that the future of humankind can’t be a matter of designing ever-more-comfortable VEs. History will teach you that if you don’t actually do it, you haven’t achieved anything at all—and when you’ve learned that, you’ll be a doer too, not a mere dreamer.”

  All Papa Domenico added to that was a rude observation about Mama Siorane being as full of shit as the mountain—by that time, alas, my secret had crept out. If Papa Dom could have foreseen that Mama Siorane would die on Titan, gloriously doing instead of merely dreaming, he might have modified his opinion—but he might not. They both deserve full credit for practicing what they preached—Papa Dom went to Antarctica to work for the UN and cultivate the delicious sensations of self-sufficiency, and he died in his VE hood exactly as he would have wished.

  The ostensible purpose of a university is to constitute a community of scholars in the interests of further education, but its real purpose is to constitute a community of actual bodies in the interests of further real-space interaction. It would, I think, be too great a wrench were young people to go straight from the flesh-intensive microcosm of a parental home to the adult world, where almost all relationships are conducted almost exclusively in virtual space.

  I had, of course, been interacting with other children of my own age in virtual space throughout my time in my parents’ hometree, but I had not met a single one in the flesh until I went to Adelaide. I felt that this put me at something of a disadvantage because almost all my contemporaries had been able to arrange occasional real-space encounters, and those who were city-bred were already used to actual crowds. On the other hand, that I had been reared in a remote mountain valley gave me a hint of exoticism that few of the other new arrivals possessed. I didn’t make friends easily, but no one did. I was exhilarated by those I did make, but I felt even as I made them that they would be temporary. The accident of contemporaneity hardly seemed to be a sound foundation for lasting intimacy. Perhaps I made too much, secretly as well as overtly, of my having climbed precipitous mountain slopes and seen things that normally remained hidden. Perhaps my fascination with history was magnified so rapidly partly in order to provide me with an excuse for solitary study and private preoccupation. In any case, I was less sociable than the average, but was not at all distressed by it.

  It was during my second year of study, in 2542, that the defining event of my life occurred: the event that took my magnified fascination and gave it a precise shape that was never significantly modified thereafter. Before I boarded the sailing-ship Genesis in March of that year, I was a dilettante historian pecking here and there at the whole broad sweep of social evolution; when I finally came safely to shore, I was a man with a mission, a man with a destiny.

  EIGHT

  Genesis was a cruise ship providing tours of the Creationist Islands of the Coral Sea. Many of the islands were natural, but the majority were artificial. Two centuries before, the first new islands raised from the seabed had been regarded as daring experiments paving the way for the more extravagant adventures of the Continental Engineers, but the business had soon been routinized. Custom-designed islands had been easy enough to sell or rent out during the twenty-fifth century, to provide bases for large-scale commercial endeavors in Liquid Artificial Photosynthesis and sea farming or to host the artistic ventures in ecosystem construction that gave the islands their familiar name. The latter market had weakened somewhat in the wake of the Moreau scandal, when the UN insisted on instituting much tighter controls and much more careful monitoring of the Creationists’ endeavors, but the longest-established islands remained significant arenas of ecological research as well as popular tourist attractions.

  Children reared in less unconventional environments than the one chosen by my foster parents were often taken on educational voyages like the one offered by Genesis. I had never believed Papa Domenico’s assurances that the habit was an obsolete and functionless vestige left over from more primitive times—like any child denied anything, I had instead formed the determination that as soon as I was my own master, I would make good on my parents’ omission. I had already toured the Blooming Outback and the reforested Nullarbor, the former by bus and the latter by hot-air balloon; the Genesis cruise seemed a logical next step.

  It was not only the series of destinations visited by Genesis that was held to be valuable but the experience of being under sail. Genesis was powered by wind alone, and its silver-controlled system of sails was represented by its owners as a marvel in its own right. The control of a sailing ship was said to be one of the most challenging of all the tasks given to artificial intelligence because of the complexity and unpredictability of the forces that had to be met and transformed into smooth directional travel. So, at least, Captain Christopher Cardigan—who insisted on referring to his own vessel’s AI as “Long John”—assured the party of twenty that boarded the Genesis in Brisbane on 22 March 2542.

  “No matter what so-called weather controllers may say,” Captain Cardigan assured us, “the winds answer to no man. They can be mean and they can be furious—but Long John can take anything they throw at us and turn it to our advantage.”

  I suppose he had every right to be proud and confident, and he certainly didn’t deserve to die, but I find it difficult to think of him as anything but a smug fool.

  The majority of my fellow passengers was made up by the family of an eight-year-old girl named Emily Marchant. She was traveling with all twelve of her parents, and I remember churlishly thinking that they must be a far more coherent and generous team than my own had ever been. Six more passenger berths were taken by couples a little older than myself, undertaking early experiments in the awkward social art of pair-bonding.

  On many occasions the ship might have had to set sail with its last remaining slot unfilled, because there were not many people likely to undertake such an expedition solo, but I was determined to make up at least some of the experience lost to me while I was raised in the shadow of Shangri-La. I was not intimidated by the thought of being an outsider in such a company. Captain Cardigan and his crew—which included a chef-programmer as well as the customary service staff—added a further eight to our number.

  I was looking forward to the Creationist Islands, especially Marsupial Glory, Dragon Island, and the most famous of all those in the southern hemisphere: Oscar Wilde’s Orgy of Perfumes. I had visited the first two as a virtual tourist, but there is something slightly absurd about VE reproductions of scent and taste, and I knew that Wilde’s Creation would have to be experienced in the flesh if it were to mean anything at all.

  I expected to spend the days that elapsed before we reached the islands sunning myself on the deck and reveling in the unusual experience of having nothing at all to do. Unfortunately, I was struck down by seasickness as soon as we left port. I had, of course, been on several virtual sea journeys without ever suffering a single qualm, but the movement of the actual ocean proved to be brutally different from its VE analogues.

  Seasickness, by virtue of being partly psychosomatic, is one of the very few diseases wit
h which modern internal technology is sometimes impotent to deal, and I was miserably confined to my cabin while I waited for my body and mind to make the necessary adaptive compact. I was bitterly ashamed of myself, for I alone out of the twenty-eight people on board had fallen prey to the atavistic malaise.

  I was ill throughout the night of the twenty-second and the following day. There was to be a lavish deck party on the night of the twenty-third, which was forecast to be calm and bright, and I convinced myself for all of five minutes that I might be well enough to attend. As soon as I had gotten to my feet, however, my stomach rebelled and my legs turned to jelly. I was forced to return to my bed in abject misery. While my traveling companions—to whom I had barely been introduced as we waited to board the vessel—were enjoying themselves hugely beneath the glorious light of the tropic stars, I lay in my bunk, half-delirious with discomfort and lack of sleep.

  I thought myself the unluckiest man in the world—although it turned out that I was, in fact, one of the luckiest.

  The combined resources of my internal nanotech and my solicitous suitskin could not make me well, but they could and did contrive to put me to sleep. I have a vague memory of disturbing dreams, but I am reasonably certain that I did not actually awake until I was hurled from my bed on to the floor of my cabin. From that moment on, however, my memory is crystal clear, even after all this time. Although this is the only passage in my autobiography for which I have no objective record to serve as a crutch, I am quite certain of its accuracy.

  NINE

  I thought at first that I had simply fallen—that I had been tossing and turning in consequence of my illness, which had thus contrived to inflict one more ignominy upon me. When I couldn’t recover my former position after spending long minutes fruitlessly groping about amid all kinds of mysterious debris, my first assumption was that I must be confused. When I couldn’t open the door of my cabin even though I had the handle in my hand, I took it for granted that my failure was the result of clumsiness. When I finally got out into the corridor, and found myself crawling in shallow water with the artificial bioluminescent strip beneath instead of above me, I thought I must be mad.

  One of the things Captain Cardigan had proudly told us as we were about to embark was that his pride and joy was absolutely guaranteed to be unsinkable. Even if Long John were to crash, he assured us, Genesis was so cleverly designed and constructed that it was physically impossible for her to be holed or overturned. I had taken note of his assurance because, having been raised in a high valley whose only source of water was melting snow, I had never learned to swim. When I finally worked out, therefore, that the boat seemed to be upside down, I could not quite believe the evidence of my eyes and my reason. When I also worked out that the hectic motion I was feeling really was the motion of the upturned boat and not a subjective churning of my guts, I was seized by the absurd notion that my seasickness had somehow infected the hull of the craft. No matter what mental gymnastics I performed, however, I could not find any other explanation for being on my hands and knees, fighting to keep my balance, and that my palms and kneecaps were pressed to a strip light that had definitely been situated on the ceiling of the corridor when I had gone into my cabin. What was more, both my forearms and my thighs were immersed in ten or twelve centimeters of hot water.

  There must be a second strip light in the floor, I told myself, uncertainly, which has now come on while the other has gone off. Somebody must have been running a bath, and the bath has overflowed. Perhaps the water has shorted out Long John’s circuits.

  Then the little girl spoke to me, saying, “Mister Mortimer? Is that you, Mister Mortimer?”

  I thought for an instant that the voice was a delusion and that I was lost in a nightmare. It wasn’t until she touched me and tried to drag me upright with her tiny, frail hands that I was finally able to focus my thoughts and admit to myself that something was horribly, horribly wrong.

  “You have to get up, Mister Mortimer,” said Emily Marchant. “The boat’s upside down.”

  She was only eight years old, but she spoke quite calmly and reasonably, even though she had to support herself against the wall in order to save herself from falling over as the boat rocked and lurched.

  “That’s impossible,” I told her, stupidly. “Genesis is unsinkable. There’s no way it could turn upside down. Captain Cardigan said…”

  “But it is upside down,” she insisted—unnecessarily, given that I had conceded the point as my assurances trailed off into silence. “The water’s coming in.”

  “Yes,” I said, raising myself up to a less ignominious kneeling position and reaching out a hand to brace myself against the wall. “Yes, it is. But why is it hot?”

  I put my free hand to my lips and tasted the water on my fingers. It was salty. The water that fed our bathrooms was supposed to be desalinated, and this flood was far too copious in any case.

  Emily was right. Genesis had turned upside down and was letting in water.

  “I don’t know why it’s hot,” she said, “but we have to get out. We have to get to the stairs and swim.”

  The light put out by the ceiling strip was no dimmer than usual, but the rippling water overlaying it made it seem faint and uncertain. The girl’s little face, lit from below, seemed terribly serious within the frame of her dark and curly hair. She was looking up at me; even though I was on my knees, she wasn’t as tall as I was.

  I was thinking clearly enough to see the implications of having to “get to the stairs.” The stairs had led up to the deck—but now they led down, into the ocean depths. Above us, there was nothing but the machine deck and the boat’s unbreachable hull.

  “I can’t swim,” I said, flatly.

  Emily Marchant looked at me as if I were insane.

  “I mean it,” I said. “I can’t swim.”

  “You have to,” she said. “It’s not hard.”

  My reflexive response was to change the subject. “Where’s everyone else gone to?” I asked. The boat lurched more violently as I spoke, and the little girl reached out to me for support. I took my hand away from the wall and clasped both of her hands in mine.

  “Mama Janine put me to bed,” Emily said. “Then she went back to the party. Everyone was at the party. There’s only us, Mister Mortimer. We have to get out. No one will come, Mister Mortimer.”

  Like me, Emily Marchant had been raised contented and well adjusted, and she was as wise and level-headed as any eight year old in all the world. Her IT and her suitskin were both tuned to compensate for panic, but she was not immune to fear. Fear, like pain, is universally recognized to be necessary and healthy, in moderation. She was free to feel fear, if not sheer, stark, paralyzing terror. So was I. No one will come, Mister Mortimer, she had said, packing all the tragedy of the moment into those few, almost dispassionate, words. She was afraid, as I was—and we had every reason to be afraid.

  Everyone but the two of us had been on deck at the party—all twenty-six of them. Whatever impossibility had flipped Genesis onto her back had thrown every last one of them into the sea: the impossibly warm and impossibly violent sea.

  Ten

  I scrambled to my feet. While I held Emily fast in my right hand I put out my left to steady myself against the upside-down wall. The water was knee-deep and still rising—not very quickly, but inexorably. The upturned boat was rocking from side to side, but it also seemed to be trying to spin around. I could hear the rumble of waves breaking on the outside of the hull. The noise wasn’t loud, but I knew that the hull must be muffling the sound.

  “My name’s Emily, Mister Mortimer,” the little girl told me. “I’m frightened.”

  I resisted the temptation to say So am I. Somewhere in the corridor, I knew, there were lockers containing emergency equipment: not merely life jackets but “survival pods,” whose shells were self-inflating plastic life rafts. There was light enough to find them, if I could only adjust my mind to the fact that everything was upside down. Once we
had one, we still had to get it out, and I still couldn’t swim—but how hard could it be, if I could get into a life jacket?

  “This way,” I said, as soon as I had figured out which way the emergency locker was. Unsurprisingly, it was in the logical place, next to the stairs, which now descended into angry darkness. I marveled at my being able to speak so soberly and marveled even more that I no longer felt seasick. My body had been shocked back to sanity, if not to normality.

  As we moved along the corridor, I couldn’t shake the horror of the thought that Emily Marchant’s entire family might have been wiped out at a single stroke and that she might now be that rarest of all rare beings, an orphan. It was barely imaginable. What possible catastrophe, I wondered, could have done that? And what other atrocities must that same catastrophe have perpetrated?

  “Do you have any idea what happened, Emily?” I asked, as I wrestled with the handle of the locker. It was easy enough to turn it the “wrong” way, but not so easy to drag the door open against the increasing pressure of the water.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Are we going to die?” The word too hung unspoken at the end of the sentence. She was only eight, but she understood the implications of the fact that everyone else had been on deck when the boat flipped over, defying every precaution taken by its careful designers.