Polaris

by Jack McDevitt

  “How’d he die?”

  “Not the way you think,” he said accusingly. “He died of heart failure. About nine years ago.”

  “Heart failure? Didn’t the process work on him?”

  “He never wanted it. Refused it.” He took a deep breath.

  “Why?”

  “He felt he’d betrayed Tom. He didn’t want to profit by it. Didn’t want to live with the knowledge of what he’d done.”

  “The rest of you seem to have adjusted pretty well.”

  Urquhart looked as if his patience was exhausted. “We don’t claim to be saints.”

  “Are there any others?” Alex asked. “Other than yourselves? Anyone else who knows about this? Any more immortals?” He let the word hang in air.

  “No,” said Klassner. “No one else knows the truth.”

  “And no one else has received the treatment?”

  “No. Warren was the only one who understood how to do it. And he swore, after us, no one else.”

  “Is the process on record somewhere? Do you know how it’s done?”

  “No. He destroyed everything.”

  Something on wings banged into a window and fluttered away. For a long time after that, no one spoke.

  “I suppose I should congratulate you,” Alex said, finally.

  The room remained quiet.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “They buried Dunninger’s work. Prevented its being used.”

  “They took it for themselves.”

  “No,” Boland said. His voice was simultaneously subdued and impassioned. “That was never our intention.”

  “It happened.”

  White held a hand up, fingers spread in defense. “It was too tempting,” she said. “To be young again. Forever. Who could resist that?”

  “That’s the whole point, isn’t it?” said Alex. “Nobody can say no. Other than, apparently, Mendoza.”

  I was getting annoyed. “You sound as if you think they did something admirable.”

  Alex took his time answering. “I’m not sure they didn’t.”

  “Oh, come on, Alex. They kidnapped Dunninger. They’re responsible, at least indirectly, for two murders.” I turned and looked at them. Klassner’s eyes never left me. Boland stared out the window, wishing he was somewhere else. White’s gaze had turned inward. Urquhart glowered, daring anyone to challenge him. “You’ve done all right for yourselves,” I continued, getting into a rhythm. “You grabbed the treatment that you denied everyone else. I’d say you haven’t done badly.”

  “Had we not intervened,” said Boland, “the population of Rimway would have doubled over the past sixty years. Earth would have over twenty billion people by now.”

  White got in: “Except that it wouldn’t. Earth doesn’t have the kind of resources to support a population anywhere close to that. So a lot of those people, millions of them, would have died. Of starvation. Or in wars over natural resources. Or disease. Governments would have collapsed. Most of the survivors would be living in misery.”

  “You don’t know that,” I said.

  “Sure we do,” continued White, relentless. “The numbers tell the story. Food production, clean water, even living space. Energy. Medical care. It’s just not there for twenty-plus billion people. The same as it wouldn’t be for us if we had twice the population. Take the trouble to inform yourself, Chase.”

  “Damn you,” I said, “you’re taking millions of lives into your hands. What gave you the right to make that sort of decision?”

  “Nobody else was in a position to,” said Klassner. “Either we took it into our own hands, or it went by default in Dunninger’s direction.”

  “You couldn’t dissuade him?” said Alex.

  Klassner’s eyes closed. “No. ‘They’ll find a way.’ That was his mantra. ‘Give them the gift, and they’ll find a way.’ ”

  “There are other worlds,” I said. “Help was there if someone was willing to ask.”

  Urquhart snorted. “It would have been the same everywhere,” he said, in a rich baritone. “The tidal wave would fill all ports. It would have introduced such suffering and catastrophe as the human race has never seen.”

  Upstairs, as if right on schedule with all the talk about doom, a clock struck. Nine-thirty.

  I heard shouts outside. Kids playing. “Where did the money come from?” asked Alex. “It took considerable resources to pull this off.”

  Urquhart replied: “The Council has a number of discretionary funds. They can be accessed if the need is sufficiently great.”

  “So some of the councillors knew about this.”

  “That doesn’t necessarily follow. But yes, it was known on the Council. Although not by everyone.”

  “They thought you were doing the right thing.”

  “Mr. Benedict, they were horrified by the possibility that this would get out.”

  “And they didn’t ask to share the secret?”

  “They didn’t know Dunninger had gotten as far as he had. And they certainly weren’t aware that the project would also produce a rejuvenation capability. We didn’t disabuse them.”

  “What kind of life span are you looking at?” I asked. “Is it indefinite?”

  “No,” said Boland. “We have parts, stem cells, nerve cells, with which the nanobots have limited capability.”

  “Barring accidents,” said Klassner, “Warren thought we’d live about nine hundred years.”

  “Our lives,” said White, “are not what they might appear to you. We had to abandon everything we cared about, including our families. Today, we can make no long-term commitments with anyone. We can establish no permanent relationship, take no mate, have no child. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  Klassner folded his hands and pressed his lips against them, like a man in prayer. He confronted Alex. “Look, none of this matters at the moment. If you go to the authorities with this story, you’ll succeed in punishing us. But it will be the story of the age. And all the researchers will need is a blood sample from any of us, and they’ll be able to work out the secret. So the question now is, what do you and your associate plan to do?”

  What, indeed?

  It had been growing dark outside. Gathering clouds. Four lamps began to glow, one at either end of the sofa, one in a corner of the room, one on a table beside Urquhart.

  Klassner cleared his throat. Young or not, this was a man accustomed to having people pay attention when he spoke. “We were gratified that you did not immediately blow the whistle. That tells us you understand the consequences of a rash decision.”

  “It would do nothing for your reputation either, Professor.”

  “My reputation does not matter. We risked everything to make this work.”

  I sat staring at Maddy’s jacket. I thought about how sweet life was, how good young men and jelly donuts and ocean sunsets and night music and all-night parties are. What would happen to the way we live if the secret got out?

  Throughout the conversation I’d been trying to think of a compromise, a way to seize permanent youth and simultaneously persuade people to stop having children.

  It wouldn’t happen.

  “You don’t have to worry,” Alex said. “We’ll keep your secret.”

  You could hear everyone exhale. And I have to confess that at that moment I had no idea what the right course of action might be. But I was annoyed, at Alex, at Klassner, at all of them. They were starting to get up. Smiles were breaking out. “One second,” I said, and when I had their attention: “Alex doesn’t speak for me.”

  TWeNTY-eiGHT

  Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,

  So do our minutes hasten to their end.

  —William Shakespeare

  I’d been sitting there wondering how Dunninger’s gift had changed them. Perspective. Empathy. A sense of proportion. What’s it like not to have to worry about getting old? To see other people as creatures of a day?

  It had begun to snow. Big we
t flakes. No wind was blowing, and they were coming straight down. I wished for a blizzard big enough to bury the problem.

  All eyes were on me, and Klassner, his voice calm and reasonable, apologized that I had been overlooked. “Surely, Chase, you can see the wisdom of letting this go no farther.”

  It was hard to believe I was speaking to Martin Klassner, the cosmological giant of the previous century, reinvigorated, somehow returned to life and sitting in our living room. Not only because the event seemed biologically unlikely, but also because it was hard to believe such a man could have known about Maddy and not found a way to heal her. Or at least render her harmless.

  “I’m not sure I do,” I said. “You of all people, Martin, know what it is to be old. To watch the years pile up, and feel the first pains in joints and ligaments. To watch the outside world grow dim. You have it in your power to step in, to prevent people from being betrayed by their own bodies. And you’ve done nothing. For sixty years, you’ve not lifted a finger.”

  He started to speak, but I cut him off. “I know the arguments. I know what overpopulation means. If I didn’t realize it earlier, I certainly came to understand it these last few weeks. So we have an ethical dilemma.

  “You’ve withheld Tom Dunninger’s gift. No, don’t say anything for a moment. You and your friends would be in a far stronger position to bring up ethics had you not grabbed the opportunity for yourselves.”

  “That’s no reason,” rumbled Urquhart, “to compromise everything we’ve accomplished. Simply because we couldn’t resist the temptation. Our failure makes the point.”

  “You’re right. The issues are too serious for that. Alex has said he’ll keep your secret. But I won’t. I see no compelling reason to protect you.”

  “Then,” said Klassner, “you doom everybody.”

  “You have a tendency to overstate things, Martin. You’re in a position to stop the ageing process. Or not. Either way, as you would have it, people will die. In large numbers.

  “But if we make the treatment available, maybe we’ll learn to live with it. We survived the ice ages. And the Black Plague. And God knows how many wars. And thousands of years of political stupidity. We even picked a fight with the only other intelligent species we found. If we survived all that, we can survive this.”

  “You don’t know that’s so,” said White. “This is different.”

  “It’s always different. You know what’s wrong with you? The four of you? You give up too easily. You decide there’s a problem, and you think we have to arrange things so we don’t have to deal with it.” I looked over at Alex, whose face revealed nothing. “I say we put the Dunninger formula on the table where everybody can see it. And then we talk about it. Like adults.”

  “No,” said White. Her eyes radiated a hunted look. “You really don’t understand.”

  “No, I don’t. I can’t understand your giving in without a fight. I don’t want to live the rest of my life watching people die, knowing I had the means to save them.”

  Lines showed up around Boland’s eyes and mouth. He literally looked in pain.

  “I’ll go this far for you: We’ll be in touch with you within the next few days. We’ll arrange to have one of you donate a blood sample. We’ll get it analyzed and let the chips fall. I’ll say nothing about where I got it. And I’ll say nothing about you or the Polaris. You can keep your reputations intact, and you can go on living happily for the next thousand years or so.

  “Although I should tell you that if you’re as virtuous as you like to think, as I’d like to believe, you’ll reveal yourselves, admit to what you’ve done, and argue your case in the public forum.”

  It wasn’t what they were expecting. Alex frowned and shrugged. I hope you know what you’re doing.

  Well, it was, as they say, the old conversation stopper. One by one they got to their feet. Klassner hoped that after I had a chance to think things over, I’d reconsider. White took my hand, pressed it, and bit her lip. She was close to tears.

  Urquhart asked me not to do anything irrevocable until I’d had a chance to sleep on it. “When it starts,” Boland said, “when governments become oppressive about containing the birth rate, when we run out of places to live, when the first famines hit, it’s going to be your fault.”

  They filed out, each of them sending silent signals to Alex, pleading with him, or directing him, to use his influence to get me to make sense. I watched them walk through the intensifying snow down to the pad and climb on board their skimmer. They didn’t look back. The doors swung shut, and the aircraft lifted into the sky and disappeared quickly into the storm.

  Alex asked me if I was okay.

  Actually, I wasn’t. I’d just made what might have been the biggest decision in human history, and I most definitely was not okay.

  “Nevertheless,” he said, “it was the right thing to do. We’ve no need of secret cabals.”

  “You voted with them,” I said.

  We were standing out on the deck, watching the snow splat against the windows. He put his palm against the glass, feeling the cold. “I know,” he said. “It was the easiest way out. The least painful. But you’re right. This needs to be in the open.” He kissed me. “I suspect, though, that we’re going to find it’s a mixed gift.”

  “Because we get too many people.”

  “That, too.” He lowered himself into one of the chairs and put his feet up. “We might discover that when life goes on indefinitely, it’s not quite—” He struggled for the word. “—Quite as fulfilling. As valuable.”

  Well, I thought that was nonsense, and I said so.

  He laughed. “You’re a sweetheart, Chase.”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  “How about we go out and get something to eat?”

  The storm was intensifying. We could no longer see the line of trees at the edge of the property. “Are you serious?” I said. “You want to go out in this?”

  “Why not?”

  “No,” I said. “Let’s eat here. It’s safer.”

  We had just finished when Jacob interrupted. “There is a news report that may be of interest,” he said. “Something exploded out over the ocean a few minutes ago. They don’t know what it is yet.”

  God help me, I knew right away. So did Alex. “How far out, Jacob?” he asked.

  “Fifty kilometers. Over the trench.” A deep part of the ocean. “The way they’re describing it, it must have been a pretty big blast.”

  Damn.

  “They’re saying no survivors.”

  ePiLOG

  True to the end.

  Whatever they used as an explosive device, it was pretty thorough. All the authorities ever found was a charred piece of one of the antigrav pods.

  The interest in the Polaris generated by the anniversary events and the attack at Survey had subsided. Everything went back to normal.

  We passed messages to several microbiologists that we had reason to believe that Dunninger had been on the right track. They assured us they’d look into it.

  Morton College is still in operation. The Lockhart Foundation, which specializes in education for genius-level types, has taken it over.

  I’ve always thought of that morning as if two separate conversations took place, one between Alex and the men, the other between Nancy White and me.

  She looked young and vibrant and, in some ways, more than human. Or different from human. Maybe knowing you won’t grow old, at least for a very long time, does that for you, adds a certain sense of who and what you are, that you’ve stepped outside the ordinary run of mankind, and indeed of the natural world. Maybe at that point you become almost a neutral observer, sympathetic to humanity in the way that one might be sympathetic to a lost kitten, but nevertheless possessing the sure and certain knowledge that you are different in kind, and not simply in degree.

  When the people you meet in daily life become temporary, transient, their significance must necessarily lessen. Jiggle the equipment in Shawn Walker�
��s skimmer so that he goes into orbit, and what is lost? Only a few decades. In the short term, he was dead anyhow. Is that how it is?

  I’ve thought of it often, sitting on the big porch at the end of the day, before setting out for home. Nancy White was trying to tell me something that morning, something more than simply that she’d had to jettison everyone and everything she knew and start life over. I think she was trying to underscore what Alex said later, that the treatment would have been, at best, a mixed gift. That she had become something else.

  Metahuman. The next stage. Whatever. Maybe it was the original Nancy White, locked up somewhere inside, trying to connect with me.

  You know about the cemetery at the edge of the woods. You can’t get a good look at it unless you go up to the fourth floor. But there has never been a day, since the visit from Klassner and the others, that I haven’t thought about it. When I come in each morning, dropping down past the trees, my eyes are drawn to it, to its pale white markers, and its stone figures. Last stop. Terminal City. I’m a little more conscious of it than I used to be.

  It reminds me every day of Klassner’s rejoinder when I told them I wasn’t going to sit on everything for them. Then you doom everybody. Over the top, I’d thought. People never really talk like that. And I’d assumed he meant Alex and me as well as the four of them, and the entire human race. But I don’t think that was it at all. We were in the office, and he was talking about the device they’d planted in the skimmer, that they planned to use if the meeting didn’t go well.

  It hadn’t gone well.

  “But I think we’ve answered one question,” said Alex.

  “And what’s that?”

  “Maddy was an aberration. The mere fact of having your life prolonged doesn’t cause you to become something other than human.”

  “—Because the more sensible thing for them to do would have been to blow us up—”

  “Absolutely. Instead they found an elegant solution to their problem.”

  “Elegant? You call committing suicide elegant?”