Cannibalism. At Chou-kou-tien, Dragon Bone Hill, twenty-five miles southwest of Peking, paleontologists excavating a cave early in the twentieth century discovered the fossil skulls of Peking Man, Pithecanthropus pekinensis. The skulls had been broken away at the base, which led Franz Weidenreich, the director of the Dragon Bone Hill digs, to speculate that Peking Man was a cannibal who had killed his own kind, extracted the brains of his victims through openings in the base of their skulls, cooked and feasted on the cerebral meat—there were hearths and fragments of charcoal at the site—and left the skulls behind in the cave as trophies. To eat your enemy's flesh: to absorb his skills, his strengths, his knowledge, his achievements, his virtues. It took mankind five hundred thousand years to struggle upward from cannibalism. But we never lost the old craving, did we? there's still easy comfort to gain by devouring those who are younger, stronger, more agile than you. We've improved the techniques, is all. And so now they eat us raw, the old ones, they gobble us up, organ by throbbing organ. Is that really an improvement? At least Peking Man cooked his meat.
Our brave new society, where all share equally in the triumphs of medicine, and the deserving senior citizens need not feel that their merits and prestige will be rewarded only by a cold grave—we sing its praises all the time. How pleased everyone is about the organ draft! Except, of course, a few disgruntled draftees.
The ticklish question of priorities. Who gets the stockpiled organs? they have an elaborate system by which hierarchies are defined. Supposedly a big computer drew it up, thus assuring absolute godlike impartiality. You earn salvation through good works: accomplishments in career and benevolence in daily life win you points that nudge you up the ladder until you reach one of the high-priority classifications, 4-G or better. No doubt the classification system is impartial and is administered justly. But is it rational? Whose needs does it serve? In 1943, during World War II, there was a shortage of the newly discovered drug penicillin among the American military forces in North Africa. Two groups of soldiers were most in need of its benefits: those who were suffering from infected battle wounds and those who had contracted venereal disease. A junior medical officer, working from self-evident moral principles, ruled that the wounded heroes were more deserving of treatment than the self-indulgent syphilitics. He was overruled by the medical officer in charge, who observed that the VD cases could be restored to active duty more quickly, if treated; besides, if they remained untreated they served as vectors of further infection. Therefore he gave them the penicillin and left the wounded groaning on their beds of pain. The logic of the battlefield, incontrovertible, unassailable.
The great chain of life. Little creatures in the plankton are eaten by larger ones, and the greater plankton falls prey to little fishes, and little fishes to bigger fishes, and so on up to the tuna and the dolphin and the shark. I eat the flesh of the tuna and I thrive and flourish and grow fat, and store up energy in my vital organs. And am eaten in turn by the shriveled wizened seniors. All life is linked. I see my destiny.
In the early days, rejection of the transplanted organ was the big problem. Such a waste! the body failed to distinguish between a beneficial though alien organ and an intrusive, hostile microorganism. The mechanism known as the immune response was mobilized to drive out the invader. At the point of invasion, enzymes came into play, a brush-fire war designed to rip down and dissolve the foreign substances. White corpuscles poured in via the circulatory system, vigilant phagocytes on the march. Through the lymphatic network came antibodies, high-powered protein missiles. Before any technology of organ grafts could be developed, methods had to be devised to suppress the immune response. Drugs, radiation treatment, metabolic shock—one way or another, the organ-rejection problem was long ago conquered. I can't conquer my draft-rejection problem. Aged and rapacious legislators, I reject you and your legislation.
My call notice came today. They'll need one of my kidneys. The usual request. "You're lucky," somebody said at lunchtime. "They might have wanted a lung. "
Kate and I walk into the green glistening hills and stand among the blossoming oleanders and corianders and frangipani and whatever. How good it is to be alive, to breathe this fragrance, to show our bodies to the bright sun! Her skin is tawny and glowing. Her beauty makes me weep. She will not be spared. None of us will be spared. I go first, then she, or is it she ahead of me? Where will they make the incision? Here, on her smooth rounded back? Here, on the flat taut belly? I can see the high priest standing over the altar. At the first blaze of dawn his shadow falls across her. The obsidian knife that is clutched in his upraised hand has a terrible fiery sparkle. The choir offers up a discordant hymn to the god of blood. The knife descends.
My last chance to escape across the border. I've been up all night, weighing the options. There's no hope of appeal. Running away leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Father, friends, even Kate, all say stay, stay, stay, face the music. The hour of decision. Do I really have a choice? I have no choice. When the time comes, I'll surrender peacefully.
I report to Transplant House for conscriptive donative surgery in three hours.
After all, he said coolly, what's a kidney? I'll still have another one, you know. And if that one malfunctions, I can always get a replacement. I'll have Preferred Recipient status, 6-A, for what that's worth. But I won't settle for my automatic 6-A. I know what's going to happen to the priority system; I'd better protect myself. I'll go into politics. I'll climb. I'll attain upward mobility out of enlightened self-interest, right? Right. I'll become so important that society will owe me a thousand transplants. And one of these years I'll get that kidney back. Three or four kidneys, fifty kidneys, as many as I need. A heart or two. A few lungs. A pancreas, a spleen, a liver. They won't be able to refuse me anything. I'll show them. I'll show them. I'll out-senior the seniors. There's your Bodily Sanctity activist for you, eh? I suppose I'll have to resign from the League. Good-bye, idealism. Good-bye, moral superiority. Good-bye, kidney. Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye.
It's done. I've paid my debt to society. I've given up unto the powers that be my humble pound of flesh. When I leave the hospital in a couple of days, I'll carry a card testifying to my new 6-A status.
Top priority for the rest of my life.
Why, I might live for a thousand years.
Geriatric Ward
by Orson Scott Card
Orson Scott Card is the best-selling author of more than forty novels, including Ender's Game, which was a winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards. The sequel, Speaker for the Dead, also won both awards, making Card the only author to have captured science fiction's two most coveted prizes in consecutive years. Card is also the winner of the World Fantasy Award, eight Locus Awards, and a slew of other honors. He has also published more than eighty short stories, which have been collected in several volumes, most notably in Maps in the Mirror and Keeper of Dreams. His most recent book is a young adult novel called Pathfinder.
Switch on the television and wait a few minutes—there's certain to be an ad for hair dye or anti-aging skin cream. A quick perusal of any women's magazine will uncover at least one article that fights wrinkles or cellulite or some other symptom of time's march across the body. Humans are afraid of death in whatever form it takes, but growing older is perhaps its most reviled shape. Unlike a homicidal maniac or a car accident, old age makes its victims survive decades of indignity.
No wonder we fight it so much.
But our next story gives us a future where the battle against old age has become even more of a losing proposition. Lifespans have plummeted. Senility can hit a person in only his mid-twenties, and despite efforts to start adulthood at a younger age, there's only so much living anyone can cram into a quarter of a decade. It's hard to lead a full life in so little time.
Here is a world of quiet desperation, full of people fighting for one more day with a loved one. One more day of sunshine. One more day as a geriatric.
Sandy started babbling on Tuesday
morning and Todd knew it was the end.
"They took Poogy and Gog away from me," Sandy said sadly, her hand trembling, spilling coffee on the toast.
"What?" Todd mumbled.
"And never brought them back. Just took them. I looked all over. "
"Looked for what?"
"Poogy," Sandy said, thrusting out her lower lip. The skin of her cheeks was sagging down to form jowls. Her hair was thin and fine, now, though she kept it dyed dark brown. "And Gog. "
"What the hell are Poogy and Gog?" Todd asked.
"You took them," Sandy said. She started to cry. She kicked the table leg. Todd got up from the table and went to work.
The university was empty. Sunday. Damn Sunday, never anyone there to help with the work on Sunday. Waste too much damn time looking up things that students should be sent to find out.
He went to the lab. Ryan was there. They looked over the computer readouts. "Blood," said Ryan, "just plain ain't worth the paper it's printed on. "
"Not one thing," Todd said.
"Plenty of tests left to run. "
"No tests left to run except the viral microscopy, and that's next week. "
Ryan smiled. "Well, then, the problem must be viral. "
"You know damn well the problem isn't viral. "
Ryan looked at him sharply, his long grey hair tossing in the opposite direction. "What is it then? Sunspots? Aliens from outer space? God's punishment? the Jews? Yellow Peril?"
Todd didn't answer. Just settled down to double checking the figures. Outside he heard the Sunday parade. Pentecostal. Jesus Will Save You, Brother, When You Go Without Your Sins. How could he concentrate?
"What's wrong?" Ryan asked.
"Nothing's wrong," Todd answered. Nothing. Sweet Jesus, you old man, if I could live to thirty-three I'd let them hang my corpse from any cross they wanted. If I could live to thirty.
Twenty-four. Birthday June 28. They used to celebrate birthdays. Now everyone tried to keep it secret. Not Todd, though. Not well-adjusted Todd. Even had a few friends over, they drank to his health. His hands shook at night now, like palsy, like fear, and his teeth were rotting in his mouth. He looked down at the paper where his hands were following the lines. The numbers blurred. Have to have new glasses again, second time this year. The veins on his hands stuck out blue and evil-looking.
And Sandy was over the edge today.
She was only twenty-two; it hit the women first. He had met her just before college, they had married, had nine children in nine years—duty to the race. It must be child-bearing that made the women get it sooner. But the race had to go on.
Somehow. And now their older children were grown up, having children of their own. Miracles of modern medicine. We don't know why you get old so young, and we can't cure it, but in the meantime we can give you a little more adulthood—accelerated development, six-month gestation, puberty at nine, not a disease left you could catch except the one. But the one was enough. Not as large as a church door, but 'tis enough, 'twill serve.
His chin quivered and tears dropped down wrinkled cheeks onto the page.
"What is it?" Ryan asked, concerned. Todd shook his head. He didn't need comfort, not from a novice of eighteen, only two years out of college.
"What is it?" Ryan persisted.
"It's tears," Todd answered. "A salty fluid produced by a gland near the eye, used for lubrication. Also serves double-duty as a signal to other people that stress cannot be privately coped with. "
"So don't cope privately. What is it?"
Todd got up and left the room. He went to his office and called the medical center.
"Psychiatric," he said to the moronic voice that answered.
Psychiatric was busy. He called again and got through. Dr. Lassiter was in.
"Todd," Lassiter said.
"Val," Todd answered. "Got a problem. "
"Can it wait? Busy day. "
"Can't wait. It's Sandy. She started babbling today. "
"Ah," said Val. "I'm sorry. Is it bad?"
"She remembers her separation therapy. Like it was yesterday. "
"That's it then, Todd," Val said. "I'm really sorry. Sandy's a wonderful woman, good researcher, but there's nothing we can do. "
"Aren't we supposed to be able to see signs before she reaches this stage?"
"Usually," Val answered, "but not always. Think back, though. I'm sure you'll remember signs. "
Todd swallowed. "Have you got a space, Val? You knew Sandy back in the old days, back when we were kids in the—"
"Is this pressure, Todd?" Val asked abruptly. "Appeal to friendship? Don't you know the law?"
"I know the law, dammit, I'm asking you, one medical researcher to another, is there room?"
"There's room, Todd," Val answered, "for the treatables. But if she's reverted to separation therapy, then what can I do? It's a matter of weeks. For your own safety you have to turn her over, never know what's going to happen during the final senility, you know. Hallucinations. Sometimes violence. There's still strength in the old bones. "
"She's committed no crime. "
"It's also the law," Val reminded him. "Good-bye. "
Todd hung up the phone. Turn her over? He'd never thought it would come to Sandy so suddenly. He couldn't just turn her over, she'd hate him, she had enough of herself left in herself to know what was going on. They'd been married thirteen years.
He went back to Ryan in the lab and told him to put the computers on the viral microscopy tomorrow.
"That's unscientific, to rush it," said Ryan.
"Damned unscientific," Todd agreed. "Do it. "
"OK," Ryan answered. "It's Sandy, isn't it?"
"It's handwriting," Todd said. "It's all over the walls. "
Todd went home and found Sandy in the living room, cuddling a pillow and watching the tube. Someone was yelling at someone else. Sandy didn't care. She was stroking the pillow, making love noises. Todd sat on the chair and watched for her almost an hour. She never noticed him. She did, however, change pillows.
"Gog," she said.
She listened for an answer, nodded, smiled, held the pillow to her breasts. Todd chewed his fingernails. His heart was fluttering.
He went into the kitchen and fixed dinner. She ate, though she spilled a great deal and threw her spoon on the floor.
He put her to bed. Then he showered, came back out, and crawled into bed beside her.
"What the hell do you think you're doing," she challenged, her voice husky and mature.
"Going to bed," Todd answered.
"Not in my bed, you bastard," she said, shoving at him.
"My bed, you mean," he said, even though he knew better.
She growled. Like a tiger, Todd thought. Then she clawed as his face. Her nails were long. He lurched back, his face on fire with pain. The motion carried him off the bed. He landed heavily on the floor. His brittle old bones ached at the impact. He felt for his eyes, to see if they were still there. they were.
"If you ever come back," she said, "I'll have my husband eat you alive. "
Todd didn't bother arguing. He went into the living room and curled up on the couch. For the first time he wished that children still lived at home nowadays. That even the two-year-old were there to talk to. He touched the pillow, pulled it toward him, then stopped himself. Pillows. One of the signs.
Not me, he thought.
He fell asleep surrounded by nightmares of childhood, attacked on all sides by sagging flesh and fragile bones and eyes and ears that had forgotten all they ever knew how to do.
He woke with the blood clotted stiffly on his face. His back was sore where he had struck the floor last night. He walked stiffly to the bathroom. When he washed the blood off his face the cuts opened again, and he spent a half hour stanching the bleeding.
When he left home, Sandy was sitting at the kitchen table, holding a tea party for herself and the pillows.
"Good-bye, Sandy," Todd said.
"More tea,
Gog?" she answered.
He did not go to the lab. Instead he went to the library and used his top security clearance to gain access to the gerontology section. It was illegal to use security clearance for personal purposes, but who would know? Who would care, for that matter. He found a volume entitled Psychology of Accelerated Aging by V.
N. Lassiter. He finished it at 1:00. Ryan looked irritated when Todd finally came in. "We've been running the series without you," he said, "but holy hell, Todd,
everybody's been on my back for doing it early. If you're going to give me a
screwed-up order, at least be here to take the lumps. "
"Sorry. " Todd started looking over the early readouts.
"You won't find anything yet," Ryan said.
"I know," Todd answered. "But the meeting is on Friday. "
Ryan slammed down a sheaf of papers on his desk.
"We'll make the report then," Todd went on.
"If we make a report then it will be worth exactly nothing," Ryan said angrily.
"If we make a report then—and we will make a report then—it will be as accurate as human understanding can make it. Do you think we'll miss anything now? there's nothing. Our blood is no different from the blood of our great great grandfathers who lived to be ninety-five. There are no microbes. And viruses are just corkscrews. "
"If you do this," Ryan said, "I'll recommend that you be removed from your post and the viral microscopy series be run again. "
Todd laughed. "Calm down," he said. "I'm twenty-four. "
Ryan looked at the floor. "I'm sorry. "
"Hey," Todd said, "don't worry about it. In a few months, you can run the whole thing over again if you want. And the guy after you, and the one after him, run it over and over and over again through eternity. I won't care. You'll have your time in the sun, Ryan. You'll have six years as head of the department and you'll write papers, conduct research, and then you'll roll over like the rest of us and wiggle your feet in the air for a while and then you'll die. "
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