The Ganymede Club

by Charles Sheffield

  Danny had been thorough. Julius was fully certified and a genuine actuary, totally at home with and fascinated by the probabilities that governed human life expectancy. It was actually not far from the gambling life, except that vagaries of human heredity and environment took the place of a hand of cards or the spin of a roulette wheel.

  However, despite his genuine interest in statistics, Julius Szabo had, according to his own society statement of actuarial capability, long ago retired. He did not advertise his services. He did not seek clients. So it was astonishing and disturbing to receive a call when he had been established in his new home for one and a half Martian years.

  "Dr. Szabo?" The woman peering at him from the screen had bright violet-blue eyes embedded—that was the impression, jewels in jet—in a shiny black face surrounded by a halo of frizzy black hair.

  "Indeed, yes." Those dazzling eyes carried Julius back a full twenty years. He resisted the temptation to add, "my dear." The biggest danger in becoming a courtly, white-bearded gentleman was in overdoing it to the point of caricature. "I am Julius Szabo."

  "And I'm Neely Rinker. I need the services of an actuary. Can I come and see you? Today?"

  She didn't look or sound like anyone from the Organization. Of course, if she were any good she wouldn't. And if she were their agent, he would learn nothing by refusing to see her, while such a refusal could turn any vague suspicions to certainty. If he did see her, of course, there was a danger that she might try to dispose of him on the spot; but if he were lucky and skillful, he might learn something to protect himself. At the very least, he might gain some time. If everything went wrong, he had one other escape hole, but it was a dubious and frightening long shot, relying upon an emerging (and illegal) Belt technology that most people did not know existed. If he made it through the day, he would check that he was fully paid up for the service.

  Odds, odds, everything in the world was odds. You could calculate and calculate, but after all was said and done, you still had to throw the dice. Julius nodded. "If you wish to see me, then of course I will be happy to meet with you."

  "Right away?"

  "If you so desire. However, to avoid any possible misunderstanding at the outset, I want to be sure that you realize that I am retired, and have been for some years."

  "But you still have a mortality computer, don't you?"

  "I do. And of course I am still a member in good standing of the MSAC."

  "I'll be right up. I'm in the building, but I'm down at ground level."

  "My fees—"

  "Will not be an issue. I have plenty of money."

  She vanished, leaving Julius to his own thoughts. First, in the world of his own past, only a fool ever claimed to have lots of money. Second, Neely Rinker sounded oddly tense, while a professional from that same past world would never reveal tension. Third, if she thought she would "be right up," she was an optimist. The fastest lift tube needed half an hour to ascend eighty kilometers. Julius had ample time for preparations.

  He made sure that his weapons were unobtrusive and ready. With one movement of finger against thumb, he could apply force to stun or even kill anyone, anywhere in the apartment, from half a dozen different directions. When he had finished that review he called his special service and confirmed that they were on-line for a possible emergency. Finally, he forced himself to sit down in an easy chair in his study. Thus far, Neely Rinker had the feel of a genuine client. It would be curious if she were. Julius smiled. It was the rueful smile of a man who, for the first time in his whole life, was perhaps about to make money by legal means.

  Half an hour was an absolute minimum to get up from the ground level. He told himself that and tried to relax, as forty minutes passed and no one arrived. The final ring of the bell was both a release of tension and a new heightening of it. He pressed the door control before he could have second thoughts.

  She entered quickly, in a swirl of violet-blue cape that matched her bright eyes. She glanced around nervously as she entered. In person she was more striking than he had realized. The screen could not begin to capture the glow of total health, nor the beauty of perfect dark skin. Julius told himself, not for the first time, that total solitude wasn't working. He might pretend to eighty-three, but his hormones said otherwise.

  One thing at a time. He led her along the broad corridor that ran from the lift tubes to his usual living quarters, walking carefully behind her and studying her tall, slim figure. No sign of concealed weapons—but then, if they were visible they would not be concealed. He ushered her into his study and indicated a seat across from his. So long as she was sitting there, he could destroy her instantly in a dozen different ways.

  He sat down by the computer console and smiled at her. "Now, before you tell me just why you are here, satisfy my curiosity. How did you come to choose me, of all the actuaries in Oberth City? I feel sure that we have never met, for I would surely not have forgotten so beautiful a young woman."

  "No. We've never met. I just consulted the directory."

  "And picked my name? But how, Ms. Rinker? It could not have been alphabetical."

  "No. It wasn't. I used a different criterion." Neely Rinker cast another swift glance around the room. She licked her lips and leaned forward. "I consulted the directory, as I said, for actuaries. And I picked the one with a current active license who has done the least work as a consultant for the past five Mars years. That is you."

  After all his efforts to blend perfectly into the background, he had made himself conspicuous after all. Julius marveled at the irony of it, at the same time as he resolved to do something as soon as Neely Rinker was gone. He would change his society status from active member to associate member, on the grounds of increasing age.

  But she was continuing, with an earnest and pained intensity: "I didn't want someone with a busy practice, people wandering in and out of the office all the time. And I told you that money was not an issue. It is not. I will pay you well, and more than well. But I ask something in return. I need your promise that you will never talk about this meeting."

  "That will be no problem, Ms. Rinker." Except, why did she want such a promise? "Although actuaries are seldom the recipients of the system's most exciting secrets, it is our general practice to respect client confidentiality."

  "Good. I want you to tell me my life expectancy. Actually, I want to know two life expectancies. I assume you can calculate that."

  "Indeed, I can." Julius reached over to the computer and pulled the entry unit onto his knee. Neely Rinker's request suddenly made a lot more sense. She was planning some kind of long-term relationship, and she wanted to know if she was likely to outlive her partner.

  "A life expectancy," he went on, "is exactly what a mortality computer is designed to provide. However, I assume that you realize that what you will get is no more than a probability? It answers the question, given a very large number of individuals just like you: What is the average life of all those people? It promises nothing about you in particular, or indeed any specific person."

  "I understand that."

  "Very well. And a life expectancy depends on many more things than the age of a person." He rubbed at his nose—an old habit, damn it, that he somehow had to break—and went on, "So, Ms. Rinker, if you do not mind giving me the answers to a rather large number of questions—some of which, I'm afraid, must be quite personal . . ."

  When she nodded, he began. The first few variables were so standardized that he expected no problems: name, personal ID number— "No."

  Julius looked up. "I beg your pardon? All I need—"

  "No. I can't tell you my personal ID number."

  "But really, my dear Ms. Rinker, this is just to save you time and money. I need your ID number to pull from the data files the most general information about you. Nothing personal. Just things like your place of birth, age, height, weight—"

  "I will give all of those to you directly. Please go on."

  Julius shook his head in
pretended bewilderment. Actually, he ought to be the last person to complain if Neely Rinker—surely an assumed name—chose to hide her true identity. That made two of them. But what was she hiding? He might find out in due course. He already had one piece of information that she had probably never intended to give him: that she was not from Mars. If she were, she would have said she picked the actuary who had done "the least work as a consultant for the past five years," rather than "for the past five Mars years."

  He went on. Age (thirty-one), height (one-point-eight meters), weight (sixty kilos), education, profession, health profile from infancy, personality profile, children (none), long-term liaisons (none), parents' and grandparents' health history, health profile of siblings, food preferences, use of stimulants, sleep needs, sexual preferences and habits.

  Julius paused. This was the place where people often became coy.

  Neely Rinker described the strength of her sexual needs and the frequency of their fulfillment, including her tastes for and extensive experience with vaginal, oral, and anal sex. She spoke calmly, fully, and clearly, without batting an eye. Julius felt that the answer was affecting him a lot more than her.

  But the very next question was: "Current residence?"

  And she was hesitating, biting her full purple-black lower lip. "You really need to know that?"

  "Certainly, or I would not be asking. Low-gravity environments induce calcium loss. High-gravity environments impose excessive cardiovascular load. Nonstandard atmospheres change blood ionic balance. Deep habitats often introduce a high level of ambient radioactivity. Need I continue?"

  "I guess not." Neely Rinker drew in a long breath. "All right, I'll tell you. I live on Ganymede. In Moira Cavern, forty kilometers below the Hebe access point."

  Julius nodded and entered the data into the computer. His deduction had been confirmed. After all the secrecy, it was nothing even to raise an eyebrow. Ganymede was by far the most populous of the Jovian satellites, even though the hot prospects for development today were on Callisto and, as soon as the Von Neumanns got through with their work, on Titan. Ganymede was a safe, settled, and well-regulated environment. If the Earth-Belt situation deteriorated further, he might even head for Ganymede himself.

  He went on, working his way through the second-order variables: hobbies and recreations, religious beliefs, phobias, dream patterns, ambitions. When he had everything, he paused.

  "That's it. Unless there is something else that you think may be significant, and want to tell me about? Remember, a mortality computer can't do better than the data fed into it."

  She stared back, the beautiful dark face as expressionless as an obsidian mask. "Nothing else, Dr. Szabo."

  "Very well." Julius performed the run. The results came back without even a request for backup data. "According to what you have given me, your future life expectancy is one hundred and nineteen years. I assume that you would like a printed and signed statement confirming the input and output?"

  "That is not necessary. A hundred and nineteen? All right, now I want to do the second case."

  Julius nodded. "I might add that one hundred and nineteen is rather good. The average life expectancy for all females of your age is ninety-two years. But now, I wonder if we will in fact be able to run the other case that you need. Unless you can provide equally complete input data for your proposed partner—or for whoever that other person might be—"

  "That won't be a problem." But suddenly she was restless, unwilling to proceed, standing up from her chair and walking across to the window. She showed none of the fear of open spaces that a Ganymede cavern dweller typically showed, but leaned against the thick transparent plastic to watch the setting sun strike the silvered sides of buildings, thirty or forty kilometers away. The ziggurat's next level was a full half-kilometer down, and beyond Oberth City the naked red plain stretched far and wide.

  "How old are you?" she asked suddenly. "How old are you really?" She spat out the question without warning, as she turned back to face Julius.

  The temptation was to destroy her instantly, annihilate her where she stood. She knew—she must know, to ask such a thing. But if she knew, why did she ask?

  He forced himself to smile and to ask in reply: "Now why do you want such an uninteresting piece of information? However, it is no secret. I am eighty-three years old. May I inquire as to the reason for your question? And what do you mean, how old am I really?"

  "Because you look old, but you don't seem it." She came close to him, her jeweled amethyst eyes staring into his. Strong young hands gripped his thin arms, specially treated to reduce their natural muscle fiber. "There's something about you, the way you look, the way you look at me. You don't act like an old man."

  Bad news. So much for safety and security. Julius felt his smile freeze on his face. "But I am old, my dear," he said gently. "Maybe it is you. Maybe there is something about you that makes me wish that I were not old, that I could be young again."

  If she treated it as a geriatric come-on and grabbed him, he would do his bit or die trying. Close-up, she smelled delicious. Mostly, though, he was just trying for a change of subject.

  He got one.

  "That's a very charming compliment." And then, before he could speak, she asked, "Have you lived on Mars your whole life?" Her question again unsettled him before he could gain his mental balance. He had just enough self-possession to make the quick calculation.

  "Hardly. Ms. Rinker, the first Mars colony was not established until forty-three years ago."

  She was staring at him with what seemed to be genuine astonishment. Didn't young people know any history any more?

  "At the time," he went on, "I was already forty years old. Like everyone else in the solar system, I was living on Earth. I came to Mars at the age of fifty-two."

  This last statement was, as it happened, absolutely true. But one more wild question and he would lose control.

  And here it came.

  "What does it feel like, being old?" Neely Rinker was standing closer, gazing into his eyes. "I can read about aging, and I can think about it, but I can't feel it."

  "Age is—shall we say?—not an unmixed blessing." Julius caught his breath and tried to smile again. "Your bones ache, your senses dim, you sleep fitfully, your desires exceed your energies. Everyone wants to live a long time. But no one would choose to be old."

  "That's what I needed to hear." Again, there came the tangential change of subject. She released her grasp on his arms and headed back to her chair. "Thank you, Dr. Szabo. What you just said is exactly what I had to know. I'm sorry, I've been wasting your time. When you are ready, I want to do the second calculation."

  "But the profile—are you sure that you can provide me with all the inputs?"

  "I already did. They are the same as before."

  "Your own parameters?" Julius was calm again, back with something he knew how to handle. "My dear, although the mortality computer works to provide us with probabilities, there is no indeterminacy or random element in its calculations. With the same profile, you will obtain exactly the same answer as before."

  "I understand that. I want to change just one of the assumptions. Suppose that everything about me is the same, except that I won't die of disease, or of general degeneration due to old age. Suppose that the only way I can die is from some kind of accident. What would my life expectancy be then?"

  "There is no way that the mortality computer can answer such a question. It does not contain suitable tables, or appropriate computational procedures." But even as Julius Szabo spoke, Danny Clay came chiming in. It wasn't a question for an actuary, but it was a natural for someone who could handle probability calculations in his sleep.

  Assume that the only way to die was from an accident. Suppose that the chance of avoiding such a fatal accident was a constant, P, the same every year. Start with a large population—say, a million people. Then the number living at the end of the first year would be a million times P. During the second y
ear, of those remaining, a fraction of P would avoid dying by accident, so at the end of the second year, a million times P2 would be left. Keep going: in the third year, a million times P3; in the fourth . . .

  "Dr. Szabo?"

  "I'm sorry, Ms. Rinker." Julius came back down. He wondered, for the thousandth time, what the young Danny Clay might have become if he had not been forced to claw his way to adulthood in a city desensitized and brutalized by its ruling gangs. Then he denied, for the thousandth time, that he had ever in his life known a person called Danny Clay. "I was saying, the mortality computer cannot provide an answer. It is not designed to do so. But I can do it. I can easily work it out for you from first principles, from the known risks that you will die of different forms of accidents. However, it may take me a minute or two."

  "I can wait."

  Even if Neely Rinker had said she was leaving at once and had no further interest in the answer, Julius would not have been able to resist doing the calculation. The only hard step was to determine her risk of accidental death. He had to retrieve part of the mortality computer's data, and allow for all possible accidental causes. He found that there was one chance in 2,935 that Neely Rinker—assuming she had not lied about her habitat and lifestyle— would die from an accident in the next year.

  Then it was easy. Take the individual terms of the P series, weight them by the year number, and calculate the sum of the whole series to infinity. The answer was surprisingly simple. Her life expectancy was just the reciprocal of the chance that she would die during one year. In other words, a disease-free and aging-free Neely Rinker would live, on average, for 2,935 years.

  Julius stared at his answer with a mixture of pleasure and annoyance. Pleasure, that the answer had come so quickly and cleanly. Annoyance, because the result had no meaning in the real world. The oldest validated age in the solar system was one hundred and fifty-seven Earth years.

  He looked up, to find Neely Rinker displaying her own mixture of emotions, a combination of worry and anticipation.

  "Well." She moved to look over his shoulder at what he had written. Since it consisted of one number and three formulas, he doubted that it could provide her with much satisfaction.