The Fountain of Age

by Nancy Kress

  But I do wake, and Geoffrey is sitting beside my bed.

  “Dad, what are you doing?”

  “Having renewal. What are you doing?”

  “Why did you transfer three hundred fifty million from the Feder Group on the very day of our merger with Shanghai Winds Corporation? Don’t you know how that made us look?”

  “No,” I say, even though I do know. I just don’t care. Carefully I raise my right arm above my head, and it goes up so fast and so easy that I laugh out loud. There’s no pressure on my bladder. I can feel the blood race in my veins.

  “It made us look undercapitalized and shifty, and Shanghai Winds have postponed the entire—Why did you transfer the money? And why now? You ruined the whole merger!”

  “You’ll get lots of mergers, boychik. Now leave me alone.” I sit up and swing my legs, a little too fast, over the side of the bed. I wait for my head to clear. “There’s something I need to do.”

  “Dad. . . .” He says, and now I see real fear in his eyes, and so I relent.”It’s all right, Geoffrey. Strictly legit. I’m not going back to my old ways.”

  “Then why do I have on my system six calls from three different federal agencies?”

  “They like to stay in practice,” I say, and lie down again. Maybe that’ll make him go away.

  “Dad . . .”

  I close my eyes. Briefly I consider snoring, but that might be too much. You can overdo these things. Geoff waits five more minutes, then goes away.

  Children. They tie you to the present, when sometimes all you want is the past.

  After the war, after I failed to find Daria in Cyprus, I went home. For a while I just drifted. It was the Change-Over, and half the country was drifting: unemployed, rioting, getting used to living on the dole instead of working. We weren’t needed. The Domes were going up, the robots suddenly everywhere and doing more and more work, only so many knowledge workers needed, blah blah blah. I did a little of this, a little of that, finally met and married Miriam, who made me pick one of the thats. So I found work monitoring security systems, because back then I had such a clean record. The Master of the Universe must love a good joke.

  We lived in a rat-hole way outside the Brooklyn Dome, next door to her mother. From the beginning, Miriam and I fought a lot. She was desperate for a child, but she didn’t like sex. She didn’t like my friends. I didn’t like her mother. She didn’t like my snoring. A small and stifling life, and it just got worse and worse. I could feel something growing in me, something dangerous, until it seemed I might burst apart with it and splatter my anguished guts all over our lousy apartment. At night, I walked. I walked through increasingly dangerous neighborhoods, and sometimes I stood on the docks at three in the morning—how insane is that?—and just stared out to sea until some robo-guard ejected me.

  Then, although I’d failed to find Daria, history found her instead.

  A Tuesday morning, August 24—you think I could forget the date? Not a chance. Gray clouds, ninety-two degrees, sixty percent chance of rain, air quality poor. On my way to work I passed a media kiosk in our crummy neighborhood and there, on the outside screen for twenty seconds, was her face.

  I don’t remember going into the kiosk or sliding in my credit chip. I do remember, for some reason, the poison green lettering on the choices, each listed in six languages: porn. library. commlink. financials. news. My finger trembled as I pushed the last button, then standard delivery. The kiosk smelled of urine and jism.

  “Today speculation swirls around ViaHealth Hospital in the Manhattan Dome. Last week Daria Cleary, wife of British billionaire-financier Peter Morton Cleary, underwent an operation to remove a brain tumor. The operation, apparently successful, was followed by sudden dizzying trading in ViaHealth stock and wild rumors, some apparently deliberately leaked, of strange properties associated with Mrs. Cleary’s condition. The Cleary establishment has refused to comment, but yesterday an unprecedented meeting was held at the Manhattan branch of Cleary Enterprises, a meeting attended not only by the CEOs of several American and British transnationals but also by high government officials, including Surgeon General Mary Grace Rogers and FDA chief Jared Vanderhorn.

  “Both Mr. and Mrs. Cleary have interesting histories. Peter Morton Cleary, son of legendary ‘Charging Chatsworth’ Cleary, is known for personal eccentricity as well as very aggressive business practices. The third Mrs. Cleary, whom he met and married in Cyprus six years ago, has long been rumored to have been either a barmaid or paid escort. The—”

  Daria. A brain tumor. Married to a big-shot Brit. Now in Manhattan. And I had never known.

  The operation, apparently successful . . .

  I paid to watch the news clip again. And again. The words welded together and rasped, an iron drone. I simply stared at Daria’s face, which looked no older than when I had first seen her leaning on her elbows in that taverna. Again and again.

  Then I sat on the filthy curb like a drunk, a doper, a bum, and cried.

  It was easier to get into Manhattan back then, with the Dome only half-finished. Not so easy to get into ViaHealth Hospital. In fact, impossible to get in legitimately, too many rich people in vulnerable states of illness. It took me six weeks to find someone to bribe. The bribe consumed half of our savings, Miriam’s and mine. I got into the system as a cleaning-bot supervisor, my retinal and voice scans flimsily on file. A system-wide background check wouldn’t hold but why should anyone do a system-wide background check on a cleaning supervisor? The lowliest of the low.

  Then I discovered that the person I bribed had diddled me. I was in the hospital, but I didn’t have clearance for Daria’s floor.

  Robocams everywhere. Voice- and thumbprint-controlled elevators. I couldn’t get off my floor, couldn’t get anywhere near her. I’d bribed my way into the system for two days only. I had two days only off from my job.

  By the end of the second day, I was desperate. I ignored the whispered directions in my earcomm—”Send an F-3 ’bot to disinfect Room 678”—and hung around near the elevators. Ten minutes later a woman got on, an aging and overdressed and over-renewed woman in a crisp white outfit and shoes with jeweled heels. She put her thumb to the security pad and said, “Surgical floor.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the elevator said. Just before the door closed, I dashed in.

  “There is an unauthorized person on this elevator,” the elevator said, somehow combining calmness with urgency. “Mrs. Holmason, please disembark immediately. Unauthorized person, remain motionless or you will be neutralized.”

  I remained motionless, looked at Mrs. Holmason, and said, “Please. I knew Daria Cleary long ago, on Cyprus, I just want to see her again for a minute, please ma’am, I don’t mean anybody any harm, oh please . . .”

  It was on the word “harm” that her face changed. A small and cruel smile appeared at the corners of her mouth. She wasn’t afraid of me; I would have bet my eyes that she’d never been afraid of anything in her life. Cushioned by money, she’d never had to be.

  “There is an unauthorized person on this elevator,” the elevator repeated. “Mrs. Holmason, please disembark immediately. Unauthorized person, remain motionless or you—”

  “This person is my guest,” Mrs. Holmason said crisply. “Code 1693, elevator. Surgical floor, please.”

  A pause. The universe held its breath.

  “I have no front-desk entry in my system for such a guest,” the elevator said. “Please return to the front desk or else complete the verbal code for—”

  Mrs. Holmason said to me, still with the same small smile, “So did you know Daria when she was a prostitute on Cyprus?”

  This, then, was the price for letting me ride the elevator. But it’s not like reporters wouldn’t now ferret out everything about Daria, anyway.

  “Yes,” I said. “I did, and she was.”

  “Elevator, Code 1693 Abigail Louise. Surgical floor.” And the elevator closed its doors and rose.

  “And was she any good?” Mr
s. Holmason said.

  I wanted to punch her in her artificial face, to club her to the ground. The pampered lousy bitter bitch. I stared at her steadily and said, “Yes. Daria was good.”

  “Well, she would have to be, wouldn’t she?” Sweetly. The elevator opened and Mrs. Holmason walked serenely down the corridor.

  There were no names on the doors, but they all stood open. I didn’t have much time. The bitch’s secret code might have gotten me on this floor, but it wouldn’t keep me there. Peter Morton Cleary unwillingly helped me, or at least his ego did. The roboguard outside the third doorway bore a flashy logo: cleary enterprises. I dashed forward and it caught me in a painful vise.

  But Daria, lying on a white bed inside the room, was awake and had already seen me.

  The Renewal Center keeps me for an extra week. I protest, but not too much. What good will it be if I leave early and fall down, an old man in the street? Okay, I could rent a roboguard—not a good idea to take one from the Feder Group, I don’t want Geoffrey tracking me. It’s not like I won’t already have Agent Alcozer and the other Agent, the hard-eyed beauty, whose name I can’t remember. Memory isn’t what it used to be. Renewal only goes so far.

  It’s not, after all, D-treatment.

  But I don’t want a roboguard, so I spend the extra week. I refuse Geoffrey’s calls. I do the physical therapy the doctors insist on. I worry the place on my bony finger where my ring used to be. I don’t look at the news. There’s going to be something, at my age, that I haven’t seen before? Solomon was right. Nothing new under the sun, and the sun itself not all that interesting either. At least not to somebody who hasn’t left the Brooklyn Dome in ten years.

  Then, on my last day in the Center, the courier finally shows up. I say, “About time. Why so long?” He doesn’t answer me. This is irritating, so I say, “Katar aves? Stevan?” Do you come from Stevan?

  He scowls, hands me the package, and leaves.

  This is not a good sign.

  But the package is as requested. The commlink runs quantum-encrypted, military-grade software piggy-backing on satellites that have no idea they’re being used. The satellites don’t know, the countries owning them don’t know, the federal tracking system—and the feds track everything, don’t believe the civil-rights garbage you hear at kiosks—can’t track this. I take the comm out into the garden, use it to sweep for bugs, jam two of them, and make some calls.

  The next day I check myself out. I wave at the federal agent in undercover get-up as a nurse, get into the car that pulls up to the gate, and disappear.

  “Max,” Daria said from her hospital bed all those decades ago, in her voice a world of wonder. She snapped something in Farsi to the guard ’bot. It let me go and returned to its post by the door.

  “Daria.” I approached the bed slowly, my legs barely able to carry me. Half her head was shaved, the right half, while her wild black hair spilled down from the other side. There were angry red stitches on the bare scalp, dark splotches under her eyes, a med patch on her neck like a purple bruise. Her lips looked dry and cracked. I went weak—weaker—with desire.

  “How . . . how you have . . .” Her English had improved in ten years, but her accent remained unchanged, and so did that adorable little catch in her low voice. To me that little catch was femininity, was Daria. No other woman ever had it. Her green eyes filled with water.

  “Daria, are you all right?” The world’s stupidest question—she lay in a hospital room, a tumor in her brain, looking like she’d seen a ghost. But was the ghost me, or her? I remembered Daria in so many moods, laughing and lusting and weeping and once throwing a vase at my head. But never with that trapped look, that bitterness in her green, green eyes. “Daria, I looked for you, I—”

  She waved her hand, a sudden crackling gesture that brought back a second flood of memories. Nobody had ever had such expressive hands. And I knew instantly what she meant: the room was monitored. Of course it was.

  I leaned close to her ear. She smelled faintly sour, of medicine and disinfectant, but the Daria smell was there, too. “I’ll take you away. As soon as you’re well. I’ll—”

  She pushed me off and stared incredulously at my face. And for a second the universe flipped and I saw what Daria saw: a raggedy unshaven putz, with a wedding ring on my left hand, whom she had not seen or heard from in eight years.

  I let her go and backed away.

  But she reached for me, one slim hand with the sleeve of the lace nightgown falling back from her delicate wrist, and the Daria I remembered was back, my Daria, crying on a rocky beach the morning my shore leave ended. “Oh, Max, stay!” she’d cried then, and I had said, “I’ll be AWOL. I can’t!”

  “I can’t,” she whispered now. Is not possible . . . Max . . .” Then her eyes went wide as she gazed over my shoulder.

  He looked older than his holograms, and bigger. Dressed in a high-fashion business suit, its diagonal sash an aggressive crimson, the clothes cut sleek because a man like this has no need to carry his own electronics, or ID, or credit chips. Brown hair, brown beard, but pale gray eyes, almost white. Like glaciers.

  “Who is your guest, Daria?” Cleary said in that cool voice the Brits do better than anybody else. I served under enough of them in the war. Although not like this one; no one like this had crossed my path before.

  She was afraid of him. I felt it rather than saw it. But her voice held steady when she said, “An old friend.”

  “I can imagine. I think it’s time for your friend to leave.” Within an hour, I was sure, he would know everything there was to know about me.

  “Yes, Peter. After two more minutes. Alone, please.”

  They gazed at each other. She had always had courage, but that look chilled me down to my cells. Only years later did I know enough to recognize it, when the Feder Group was involved with hostile negotiations: I offer you this for that, but I despise you for making me do it. Done? The look stretched to a full minute, ninety seconds. There seemed to be no air left in the room.

  Finally he said, “Of course, darling,” and stepped out into the hall.

  Done? Done!

  What had Daria become since that morning on the rocky Cyprus beach?

  She pulled me close. “Nine tonight by Linn’s in alley Amsterdam big street. Be careful you are not followed.” It was breathed in my ear, so softly that erotic memories swamped me. And with them, anguish.

  She was not my Daria. She had stolen my Daria, who might have sold her body but never her soul. My Daria was gone, taken over by this manipulating, lying bitch who belonged to Peter Morton Cleary, lived with him, fucked him. . . .

  I hope I never know anger like that again. It isn’t human, that anger.

  I hit her. Not on her half-shaven scalp, and not hard. But I slapped her across her beautiful mouth and said, “Face it, Daria. You always were a whore.” And I left.

  May the Master of the Universe forgive me.

  I have never been able to remember the hours between ViaHealth Hospital and the alley off Amsterdam Avenue. What did I do? I must have done something, a man has a physical body and that body must be in one place or another. I must have dodged and doubled back and done all those silly things they do in the holos to lose pursuers. I must have dumped my commlink; those things can be traced. Did I eat? Did I huddle somewhere behind trash cans? I remember nothing.

  Memory snaps back in when I stand in the alley behind Linn’s, a sleazy VR-parlor franchise. Then every detail is clear. Hazy figures passed me as they headed for the back door, customers maybe, going after fantasies pornographic or exciting or maybe just as sad as mine. A boy in one of the ridiculous caped-and-mirrored sweaters that were the newest fashion among the young. A woman in a long black coat, hands in her pocket. An old man with the bluest eyes I have ever seen. These are acid-etched in my memory. I could still draw any one of them today. The alley stunk of garbage cans and urine—how did Daria even know of such a place?

  And what was I expecting? Th
at she would come to me, sick and thin from illness, wobbling toward me in the fading light? Or that Peter Cleary would arrive with goons and guns? That these were my last minutes on Earth, here in a reeking alley under the shadow of the half-finished struts that would eventually support the Manhattan Dome?

  I expected all of that. I expected nothing. I was out of my mind, as I have never been before or since. Not like that, not like that.

  At nine o’clock a boy brushed past me and went into the V-R parlor. He kept his head down, like a teenager ashamed or embarrassed about going into Linn’s, and so I only glimpsed his face. He might have been Greek, or Persian, or Turkish, or Arab. He might even have been a Jew. The package dropped into my pocket was so light that I didn’t even feel it. Only his hand, light as a breeze.

  It was a credit chip, tightly wrapped in a tiny bit of paper that brought to mind that other paper, with Daria’s kiss. In ink that faded and disappeared even as I read it, childish block letters said lifelong, inc. must to buy tonight!

  The chip held a half million credits.

  I hadn’t even known that she could read and write.

  The car that takes me from the Brooklyn Renewal Center is followed, of course. By the feds and maybe by Geoffrey, too, although I don’t think he’s that smart. But who knows? It’s never good to underestimate people. Even a chicken can peck you to death.

  The car disappears into the underground streets. Aboveground is for the parks and paths and tiny shops and everything else that lets Dome dwellers pretend they don’t live in a desperate, angry, starving, too-hot world. I lean forward, toward the driver.