Polaris

by Jack McDevitt

  We walked back through the woods to the skimmer. It felt good to get into the cabin, where it was warm. We were in a glade, about a half kilometer from the summit. Alex sat listlessly, not saying anything, just staring out at the trees. I felt it, too. There was something depressing about that windblown hilltop. “It’s the weather,” I said.

  Alex made a rumbling sound in his throat. “Louise,” he said, speaking to the AI, “see what you can get on Edgar Crisp.” He’d left me to pick the name for the system, and I picked one at random that seemed warm, friendly, and nonthreatening. Alex wasn’t overwhelmed, but he didn’t say anything.

  There wasn’t much on Crisp. Birth. Death. Parents came to Rimway in 1391. Graduated from the Indira Khan Academy in Lakat, which was halfway across the ocean. Licensed to operate a skimmer 1397. Gained title to a skimmer 1398. Lived three years on Seaview Avenue in leased quarters before marrying Agnes. Employee of Allnight Recreation Services, the owner of the Easy Aces Casino. Died at twenty-eight.

  That was it. Edgar’s passage through the world had been unremarkable. He’d disturbed nothing, changed nothing, had only called attention to himself by the manner of his death. It was almost as if he’d never existed. I wondered who had attended his funeral.

  “That’s the way for most of us,” Alex said. “Birth, death, and good riddance. The world takes no note. Unless you’re lucky enough to overturn somebody’s favorite mythology.”

  I laughed. Alex was persuaded he’d achieved immortality by the Christopher Sim discoveries, and he was very likely right.

  “Louise,” he said, “check the graduation lists for the Khan Academy. Make it 1395 and 1396. See if an Edgar Crisp shows up.”

  “You don’t think the media had it right?” I said.

  “Just following my instincts.”

  Louise needed only a few seconds. “Lakat does not subscribe to the registry.”

  “Is there any way to verify his background? Short of going there?”

  “There is no off-line arrangement.”

  A couple of kids wandered past with backpacks. Headed toward the Point. If they were planning on staying outside, it was going to be cold.

  “Another one with no history,” I said. “How’d you know?”

  “I don’t think it’s a coincidence we keep running into people who come from places that don’t maintain a register.”

  I started the engine. “You think any of these people are going to turn out to be who they say they are?”

  “Don’t know,” he said. “What I’m wondering is where they’re coming from.”

  The Walpurgis Cemetery was less than a half hour’s walk from the home once occupied by Agnes and Ed Crisp. It occupied roughly a square kilometer, mostly on gently rolling hillside. The markers, like the town, were old and worn. It wasn’t used much anymore, because the local population had declined significantly and also because having one’s ashes given to the winds or the sea is now generally favored over other forms of disposal.

  We had heard that some of the graves went back eight hundred years, although we saw nothing that old. They were crowded together, three and four people in each plot, and I saw no part of the cemetery that wasn’t lacking space. It was crowded, and the town was empty.

  Markers were designed in a wide range of styles, depending mostly, I guess, on the wealth of the occupant and also, to some extent, on the era. Fashions come and go. Some were simple slates, set in the ground, with a name and dates. Others were larger, more elaborately carved headstones, expressing the sentiments of those left behind. Beloved father. Left us too soon. On some, the characters had become too smooth to read.

  Statuary ranged from modest to elegant to overblown. Angels stood guard, a young boy cradled a lamb, biblical figures bowed their heads, doves flew.

  It had gotten dark by the time we arrived. The snow had stopped, and the night was very still. I thought briefly of Tom Dunninger, who’d devoted his genius to life extension, who’d said he hated cemeteries, who was reported to have been on the track of a major breakthrough before he joined his colleagues on the Polaris. Well, Tom, nothing has changed. At best, people still live for maybe 120 or 130 years, tops, which is the way it’s been for a long time. Dunninger himself was pushing it when he headed out to Delta Kay. A hundred twenty-something, as I recall. I could understand his interest. All of us would like to think there’s a way of shutting down the ageing process, but if it hasn’t been done by now, I suspected that meant it couldn’t be done.

  We walked among the headstones, exchanging irrelevancies, contemplating mortality, trying to keep warm.

  Crisp’s grave was in the fold of a hillock, his marker one of four clustered together. It was unpretentious, a white stone, engraved with his name and dates, and the legend In loving memory. Someone had planted a sabula bush beside the headstone. It wasn’t much to look at in the face of approaching winter, but in the spring it would become a golden glory.

  The ground was a bit worn. When the weather got warm, the grass would grow. “I wonder who he is,” Alex said.

  Back in the skimmer, Alex called Fenn, told him where we were and what we’d been doing, and asked whether he could get an exhumation order for Crisp.

  I suppose I could say Fenn was reluctant. Irritated might be closer. “You’re not supposed to be involved in this,” he said.

  “I’m not breaking any laws, Fenn.”

  “Whoever this is you’re looking for, they’re dangerous, Alex. Can’t you just leave things alone?”

  Alex was good. He was skilled at dealing with people, and his professional persona surfaced. “Fenn,” he said, “I don’t think we’ve got the identity right on this guy. Find out who he is, and you might find out why somebody tried to kill us.”

  “Oh, c’mon, Alex. A guy who died twenty years ago?”

  “I think there’s a very good possibility that all this is connected. Fenn, I don’t ask for much—”

  They went back and forth for a couple of minutes, Fenn growing less adamant. Finally, he began to cave. “I would if I could, Alex. But you’re talking about something that’s really old news. What’s your evidence?”

  “There are too many people involved in this who seem to come and go without leaving tracks. Barber. Agnes, who may or may not be her mother. Crisp. Maybe even Taliaferro.”

  “Taliaferro has a long history, Alex. He did not walk in out of nowhere.”

  “No. But he walked off. And seven more people disappeared out of the Polaris. I think it would be helpful if we could find out who’s in Crisp’s grave.”

  Fenn held up both hands, the way people do when they want you to calm down. Or when they’re pretending you’re hysterical. “Look,” he said, “Crisp died when? Fourteen oh-five? Oh-four? And nobody has seen Agnes Shanley since.” He pushed back in his chair. “I’ll pass along what you’ve told me to the jurisdiction up there. With a recommendation they take a second look at the case. Okay? Will that satisfy you?”

  “Are they likely to take a look at the body?”

  I could see him debating whether to tell us what he really thought. “No,” he said at last. “From their point of view, no matter who’s in the grave, there’s nobody to prosecute anyhow. So why bother?”

  FOUrTeeN

  People should only die when they fall off bridges. Or swim with the sharks. No one’s lights should go out because a clock hidden in his cells has struck midnight. We seem to have a notion that when nature decrees we self-destruct, it is somehow wrongheaded to do anything about it, and we should go contentedly to our graves. Me, I’m looking for a detour.

  —Thomas Dunninger,

  Right to Life

  Nature cares only that you reproduce and rear the kids. After you’ve done that, get out of the way.

  —Charmon Colm,

  Chaos and Symmetry

  Alex talked about digging him up ourselves. I don’t know how serious he was, but I pointed out that there were severe penalties for grave desecration. And I wasn�
�t sure what good it would do even if we did find out who was buried there. It was a guessing game. Alex admitted that. And he backed off the idea when I started suggesting what the headlines would look like.

  ANTIQUITIES DEALER TURNS GRAVE ROBBER

  BENEDICT CHARGED IN DESECRATION PLOT

  Sitting in the skimmer on the perimeter of the cemetery, watching the moon drift through the sky, I found myself thinking of Tom Dunninger, who had dreamed of doing away with graveyards. Or, at least, of reducing the need for them.

  We decided to stay over in Walpurgis. Most of the restaurants and the larger hotels were closed for the season, but we got a suite overlooking the ocean at the Fiesta and ate in the dining room, which was inauspiciously named Monk’s. But the food was good, and a few other people drifted in, so we weren’t completely alone.

  I don’t remember what we talked about. What I remember is that I kept thinking about the grave, and wondering whether it had been an accident or a crime of passion. Or whether it had been something else entirely: Had someone found it necessary, or expedient, to kill Ed Crisp? Had he known something?

  I had trouble sleeping. I got up in the middle of the night and fixed myself a snack. The sky was full of gauzy clouds, giving the moon a halo effect. For reasons I don’t understand, other than maybe because I associated him with graveyards, I called up Tom Dunninger’s avatar, which materialized in the center of the room and said hello. He was tall, dark-skinned, with somber features and white hair. He didn’t look like the kind of guy who enjoyed a good laugh.

  I had settled onto the sofa, with a donut and coffee at my disposal. “What can I do for you, Chase?” he asked. He was impeccably dressed in creased slacks, a blue jacket, and a white shirt with a string tie.

  The last update to the avatar had been made in 1364, a full year before the Polaris flight. This was a Dunninger whose face was lined with age. His knees appeared to be giving him trouble, and he grimaced as he sat down.

  “Can we just talk for a bit, Professor?”

  “My time is yours,” he said. He glanced around the room. “A hotel?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where are we?”

  “Walpurgis.”

  “Ah, yes. The resort. You know, I don’t believe I ever took a vacation. In my entire adult life.”

  “You didn’t have time?”

  “Didn’t have the interest.” He smiled. “I don’t think I’d have enjoyed myself in these sorts of places.”

  “Probably not,” I said. “Professor, you achieved a great deal during your lifetime, but you’re best known for your pursuit of life extension.”

  “It’s nice of you to say so, that I made some contributions. But I didn’t manage the one that mattered.”

  “—Because people still get old?”

  “Yes. Because people are still betrayed by their bodies. Because they live only a relative handful of years before they begin to decay.”

  “But isn’t that the natural way of things? What would happen if people stopped dying? Where would we put everybody?”

  “It’s the natural way of things that people run through the forests of Earth, chasing deer and wild pigs, I would guess. And getting chased. And huddling around fires on nights like this. Is it as cold out there as it looks?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is that how you’d prefer to live your life? The way your distant ancestors did?”

  “I’m not much into hunting. No.”

  “Or being hunted. So the first argument is turned out of court. And you ask, what would happen if people stopped dying? I’d argue, to begin with, it’s the wrong question. Rather, we need to know what would happen if people were able to retain youth and vigor indefinitely. I propose, to begin with, that we would remove, at a single pass, the bulk of human suffering. Not all of it, of course. It’s beyond our power ever to do that. But if we can stop the automatic funeral, kill it dead in its tracks, if we can stop the slow degradation that leads eventually to the grave, we will have given the human race a gift beyond measure.”

  “Professor, a lot of people feel death is not necessarily a bad thing. That a life that goes on too long becomes terribly dull—”

  “—It only becomes dull because the body becomes stiff and fragile. Things break easily. The energy level declines.”

  “—That it becomes a burden both to the individual and to his family—”

  “—Again, because of weakness. Of course the extremely old are a burden. I proposed to prevent that very condition.”

  I hung in there as best I could: “It might be that art arises from our sense of the transience of beautiful things. That death is part of what makes us human. That people need to get out of the way so their children can move on.”

  “Hogwash. Chase, you’re babbling. All that is fine when you’re talking in the abstract. Death is acceptable as part of the human condition as long as we mean somebody else. As long as we are only talking statistics and other people. Preferably strangers.”

  “But if you succeeded, where would we put everybody? We don’t have limitless land space. Or resources.”

  “Of course not. There’d be a price to be paid. Humans would have to stop reproducing.”

  “They wouldn’t do that.”

  He smiled in a way that suggested he had heard all this before. “You think not?”

  “I’m sure of it.”

  “Then I would put it to you that if you offer a young couple the choice between having children, or living forever in young bodies, never having to lose one another, that their response would not be the one you predict.”

  “You really believe that?”

  “I have no doubt.”

  “So we stop having kids.”

  “We’d have a few. Have to have a few, to replace those lost in accidents. It would be necessary to work that out, but it would be only a detail.”

  “What about evolution?”

  “What about it?”

  “The race would stop evolving.”

  “That probably happened shortly after we climbed down out of the trees.” He sighed. “Okay, that was over the top. But do you really believe that some far-off descendent of yours will be smarter than you are?”

  Well, no. But I thought other people could stand a lot of improvement.

  When I didn’t respond, he plunged on: “We have no obligation to give nature what it wants. Our obligation is to ourselves, to make ourselves comfortable, to provide the means to live fruitful lives, to eliminate the pain and degradation allotted to us by the natural order, to preserve individual personalities. As far as the evolutionists are concerned, if they like dying so much, let them volunteer to be carried out. If we truly want to see stronger bodies, genetic engineering can already take care of that. If we want smarter people, we have enhancement techniques.”

  “I don’t know, Professor. It doesn’t seem right.”

  “That’s because people have been getting old and dying for several million years. We’ve gotten used to it. And like any other necessity imposed by nature, because we couldn’t do anything about it, we pretend to approve. Wouldn’t have it any other way. I’ve actually heard people—women, primarily—say they wouldn’t want to live their lives again under any circumstances.

  “But we don’t like dying. That’s why we have religion. We’ve always tried to circumvent it, to tell ourselves that we’re immortal. So we embrace physical death and at the same time pretend it doesn’t happen.”

  “Professor, somebody said the human race progresses one funeral at a time. People become less flexible mentally as they age. Wouldn’t we end with a lot of elderly cranks in young bodies?”

  “Oh, well, you have something there. There’d be some problems. Bosses would never retire. Never die. You get very little fresh talent. Funeral directors would have to branch out. Find another line of work. Politicians would try to hang on literally forever. But we’ve always shown ourselves to be an adaptive species. I think, for one thing, that if people d
id not have to face the ageing process, they’d be less likely to defend lifelong opinions. They tend to be crutches, principles people hold on to ever more desperately as the end approaches. But if no end is approaching—” He held out his hands, palms up. What could be more obvious? “There would be a period of adjustment. But I think the end result would be more than satisfactory.”

  “What happened to you?” I asked.

  “How do you mean, Chase?”

  “Most of us accept death and loss as the price we pay for our lives. What happened to you? Did you lose someone especially close?”

  “Listen to yourself, Child. Who has not lost someone especially close? A father, a sister, a daughter. A friend. A lover. We sit at memorial services and pretend they’ve gone into some sunny upland. We talk about the happy hereafter and how they’re better off. We tell each other we are immortal, and that there is a part of us that lives on. But the truth, Chase, as everyone who’s thought about it knows in his heart, is that dead is dead. Gone. Forever.

  “You can see I’m not young. But if you want to know why I’ve worked on the problem, it’s because I’ve watched too many people die. It’s that simple. I want it stopped. And I saw a way to do it.” The room was illuminated by a single lamp. He gazed at it a long moment. “We love the light,” he said.

  “What’s the stumbling block? I mean, I know we’re able to get cells to reproduce indefinitely. That should mean virtual immortality, right? But it doesn’t happen.”

  “What’s your background, Chase?”

  “I sell antiquities.”

  “Really?”

  “Well, I also pilot superluminals.”

  “Ah. Would you be interested in life extension for yourself? If I could offer it?”

  “No. I’m satisfied with what I have.”

  “A sensible position, my dear. But self-deluding. And ultimately dishonest.”