Equality: In the Year 2000 jw-2

by Mack Reynolds

  “But that was over thirty years ago, Julian. Today, we can not only cure you of your nightmares but give you a new set of pleasant dreams to order.”

  “Give me dreams?”

  “Yes, of course. Programmed dreams. Anything from pleasant dreams of childhood, to dreams of heroic deeds with you the hero. How would you like to be Horatius at the Bridge? Or we can give you erotic fantasies beyond your wildest dreams.” The academician chuckled at his own joke. “Now, I’m not suggesting that you turn to sleep to get your sexual release, but it can and has been done.”

  Julian slumped in his chair. “This has been the cross I’ve borne all my life. How often have you killed an eight-year-old child, Raymond? I do it vividly about once a month.”

  “I’ll get right on it.”

  The doctor put a call through to Vienna with Julian watching, hardly daring to breathe. To be cured of the exhausting, terrifying dreams that he’d had as far back as he could remember!

  Leete turned to him and indicated the phone screen. He had been speaking into it in Interlingua and using medical terminology with which Julian was unfamiliar.

  “Doctor Oswaldo Schon wishes to speak with you.”

  The face in the screen was typically Germanic, thin with very intense blue eyes.

  “It is very interesting to speak to you, Mr. West,” Dr. Schon said in excellent English. “Some time in the future, when you are more adjusted to your new environment, I would enjoy an opportunity to discuss medical practice of a third of a century ago.”

  “It would be a pleasure, Doctor,” Julian replied.

  The other asked him a series of questions which didn’t seem to probe too deeply. Evidently it wasn’t even necessary to see the patient in person. Finally, he asked to speak to Academician Leete again. The conversation swung back to Interlingua, and Dr. Leete took several notes before switching off the phone.

  He turned to Julian. “Evidently a very routine matter. I’ll see about the prescription immediately and treat you before evening.”

  Julian expressed his great relief, then said, “I’m surprised at how many people speak English—even this Austrian.”

  Leete chuckled. “He wasn’t speaking English; he was speaking Interlingua. The computer translated his Interlingua into English for you, and your English into Interlingua for him. You could talk to an Eskimo if you wished, and his tribal tongue would be translated into English for you.”

  Julian shook his head. “They were just beginning to experiment with computer translaters when I went under.” He shifted in his chair and said by way of changing the subject, “There have been a few questions that have accumulated that I wanted to ask you about.”

  “Of course.”

  “Edith mentioned the other day that if someone wanted to read pornography, he could do so until his eyes dropped out. Would that apply to everybody? Even to a six-year-old child?”

  “Why yes, certainly. A six-year-old usually can’t read any too well, even with our modern means of education, but if he was interested in books on sex, pornography or otherwise, I suppose he could look at the pictures.”

  Julian was unhappy with that answer. “As a doctor, don’t you think that would be bad for the child?”

  “Why? There’s nothing wrong with sex, and the sooner the youngster finds out about it, the better. The old arguments against freedom to portray sexual scenes were that they aroused sexual passions. So what? A photograph of a well-presented meal can arouse the appetite. Children become curious about sex at a very early age. They begin sex play with each other or with themselves almost as soon as they can toddle around. When 1 was a boy, grown-ups would discourage this. Which stopped the child not at all. If anything, it increased his curiosity. As a rule, he picked up most of his sex education in the streets, discussing the matter with other youngsters no more knowledgeable than he. Do you know that until I was almost fifteen I believed that masturbation would cause your eyes to go weak and your brain to deteriorate, especially if you did it too often? Not that it stopped me for a moment!”

  Julian laughed. “I believed the same thing but at that time in my life I imagine I must have averaged about three times a day. My father had some illustrated books that he had picked up in Paris. One day he caught me masturbating while I looked at them and gave me a good walloping.”

  “Why? Obviously you were learning more about the sex act than you would have talking about it with your schoolmates. Actually, we don’t call it pornography very much any more. But the International Data Banks are full of material on sex, fiction and otherwise.”

  “I guess it makes sense at that,” Julian nodded. “Another thing… With a situation as we have today in which ninety-eight percent of the population has full-time leisure, won’t the people deteriorate? Look at the Roman proletariat with its free bread and circuses. The Roman citizen had the equivalent of our Guaranteed Annual Income. And the Empire collapsed.”

  Leete nodded agreeably. “Wasted leisure can be a curse rather than a blessing. Right from the beginning we realized that preparing a student for a job was no longer the basic problem, since so few were needed. So we set our education sights on training our youth for leisure and happiness. Of course, each of us receives training in a field in which we might be chosen to work; but at the same time we also develop ourselves in a half-dozen or more other fields. For instance, since Edith was about ten she’s had a strong leaning toward gardening, plants, that sort of thing. It finally wound up with her being chosen on Muster Day to go into agriculture. But she also has a very keen interest in anthropology, archaeology, history, ceramics, and music. Believe me, if she is bounced out of her job, or when she reaches the age of retirement, Edith is going to have no trouble whatsoever in filling her leisure time. Education is the thing.”

  Julian said slowly, “I suppose you’re right. Without it, a third of a century ago, a working man often didn’t know what to do with his free time. He’d spend a fantastic amount of it watching television, and you can probably remember how bad that was. When I die, I want—”

  Dr. Leete choked. “Die?” he almost shouted. “Julian! You… you’re not contemplating suicide? I know you are unhappy about some of the changes that have taken place and the difficulties you’re having acclimating yourself. But suicide isn’t the answer.”

  “Oh no, you misunderstand. I meant eventually, through natural causes. When I’m older.”

  Leete shook his head. “You know, during the past few weeks we’ve had a continual quiz program going on. You ask a hundred questions and by the time we’ve answered, or half-answered them, we wind up saying we don’t have that any more. Things like money, banks, cities, pollution, population explosion…”

  “What’s that got to do with my realizing that death—”

  “Jule, we don’t die any more.”

  He gaped at the older man.

  Leete said hurriedly, “That isn’t exactly the way to put it. Of course, everything dies sooner or later. One day the solar system will cool. One day, probably, the galaxy itself will slow down. What I meant was—”

  “What do you mean you don’t die any more?”

  “Julian, we keep telling you, human knowledge is doubling every eight years. They defeated cancer shortly after you went into stasis. Heart, kidney, liver diseases are now a thing of the past. So are all contagious diseases. You must realize that medicine is at a point thirty-two times in advance of your period, and even in your time they were making fabulous breakthroughs.”

  Julian shook his head dumbly. He’d had some wild curves thrown him in the past few weeks, but this one won the game.

  Leete said, “Don’t you realize that some of the teeth in your head are new? That you’ve grown new ones? While you were in stasis, we took out all your bridgework, even all your teeth that had been filled, and seeded your jaw. You grew the new teeth while in hibernation.”

  It simply hadn’t occurred to him. All his life he’d had the best of dental care, of course, but he’
d had bridges, cavities. He ran his tongue around his mouth. His teeth were now perfect.

  The doctor chuckled. “Every few months, after you went into stasis, some great breakthrough would come. Do you know how we conquered venereal disease?”

  “No.”

  “Some genius came up with a new wonder antibiotic. We manufactured a sufficient quantity and then one day, within twenty-four hours, we gave everyone in the country a shot. Everyone—babes in arms, children, adults, the elderly. Nobody escaped: politicians and prostitutes, homosexuals and bishops, the President of the United States and the ambassador from England! The venereal bugs never knew what hit them; they never got the chance to breed up an immune strain. From then on, anybody who entered North America from abroad was given a shot at the border, unless he could prove he’d already had one. Of course, the medicine’s formula was immediately divulged to the whole world and similar steps were taken everywhere.”

  Julian hadn’t followed that very well. His brain was in turmoil.

  “But… immortality…”

  Leete became slightly impatient. “It’s not immortality. As I told you, everything that lives dies sooner or later. The difference is that for a indefinite time you won’t die from the old causes. Of course, an accident or suicide will kill you; but otherwise your body cells will continue to replace themselves. You’re probably not up on the subject, but scientists have known for a long time that there were some forms of life, mostly very small ones, that never died except by accident. The human animal usually began to slow down in the replacement of its cells in the middle twenties. By the time it reached the sixties, seventies, or eighties, usually some organ would have degenerated to the point where death resulted. To put it simply, science found out what it was that caused the failure to replace body cells.”

  “But the population! It must be growing like mad!”

  Leete nodded. “One of our greatest problems. Obviously our birth rate must be kept practically nil. We can afford to bring new children into the world only at the rate the older generations die.”

  “But you said they don’t die any more.”

  “Save through accident or suicide. Suicide, by the way, no longer carries the stigma it once did. Some of our people who attempt to project into the future suspect that the rate will go up considerably as the knowledge explosion continues. The generation gaps will be such that the older generations will find it so difficult to adapt they will no longer wish to continue to live.”

  “I know how they feel,” Julian said. “But I’ve seen old people, age seventy or so. If you don’t age…”

  “When the breakthrough came, we were able to so-to-speak freeze each person into the age he had reached. Today, of course, a child ages to adulthood and is given the privilege of deciding the age at which he wishes to remain. Edith chose twenty-five, which I thought very sensible of her.”

  Dr. Leete’s face was suddenly grim. “You see, Julian, what we’ve been telling you about this being no Utopia is quite true. We have our problems. Indeed, heaven only knows how we’ll solve some of these that near-immortality has created. We can thank the powers that be, if any, that the desire to have children fell off so drastically just when we needed them so little.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  The Year 2, New Calendar

  It should be borne in mind that there is nothing more difficult to arrange, more doubtful of success, and more dangerous to carry through than initiating changes in a state’s constitution. The innovator makes enemies of all those who prospered under the older order …

  —Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince

  Edith didn’t return until late afternoon and by that time Julian was plugging away at his Interlingua. In actuality, by now he had it pretty down pat save for a sufficient vocabulary. The door opened automatically and she entered, a package under one arm.

  He looked up from the auto-teacher screen and got to his feet.

  “I had to go all the way to the Manhattan Museum.” She hesitated before adding, “I still think you are being ridiculous. People don’t need guns in this era.”

  “As you say. However, at least one of the men I am meeting this evening carries one.”

  He unwrapped the package. “You even managed to get a holster for me!” He took out the gun and checked it. He knew the weapon, an M-35 Browning millimeter. It had a staggered box magazine which could take fourteen cartridges. Some of the Australians in Vietnam had been equipped with them; Julian liked the feel of the gun and had acquired one. He ejected the clip, which he noted to be empty, and threw the breech to be sure there wasn’t a round in the barrel.

  Edith was eying him apprehensively. “What men are you meeting tonight?”

  In the package was a box of cartridges and, sheathed in metal, a combat knife of the type the American marines had carried. Very efficient.

  As he fed bullets into the magazine of the Browning, he said to Edith, “The men who think a social change is pending and believe that your father is one of those who are standing in the way. These reform measures he is proposing are concealed measures of reaction—from their viewpoint.”

  With the heel of his hand he slapped the clip back into the gun, jacked a cartridge into the barrel, and set the safety. Happily, the clothes he was wearing today sported a belt. He attached the holster to it at his left side, under the jacket. He didn’t particularly like that kind of a draw, but he was stuck with it unless he wanted to stick the weapon in his belt directly. His clothes didn’t provide a pocket big enough for the gun without it being obvious. He strapped on the combat knife in the place his right hip pocket would have occupied if these pants had a hip pocket.

  She said, “That’s ridiculous. A social change is not pending; it has already taken place. There are still some changes that need to be made and Father is helping further them. But these opponents of his want to go backward, not forward. All change is not progress.”

  “Meanwhile,” he said dryly, “they don’t see it that way, and they seem to be on the dedicated side.”

  “See here, Jule. Admittedly society continues to change, but there are two types: evolution and revolution. Take for example an egg. Inside, it is slowly evolving into a chick, slowly, slowly becoming a more complicated organism. That’s evolution. But it is still an egg. It finally grows a beak, little wings, feet, feathers. Evolution. But it is still an egg. Finally, if it is to live, the chick must break the shell and get out. When it does, it is no longer an egg but has become a chick. That’s the revolution. The new chick has various problems that haven’t all been solved by the revolution of getting out of the eggshell. It has to learn to eat and drink, it has to grow larger, it has to grow more feathers to keep it warm. That’s the stage we’re at now: learning to grow up. These opponents of Father’s are the reactionaries. If they could, they’d probably crawl back into the eggshell.”

  Julian had to laugh at that. “You’d be surprised how persuasive some of their arguments are,” he told her. He went back to his desk and dialed Sean O’Callahan, while Edith stared at him in frustration.

  When Sean’s face had appeared, Julian asked, “Is there any chance of your little group getting together again this evening?”

  “Yes, I would think so. Except for your old friend, Bert Melville, who lives in the Bahamas. Harrison and Ley are living together in a hotel not far from here, and Dave Woolman is currently in residence at the university upgrading his background in radio interferometers.” O’Callahan paused. “I would think we could get together within the hour if you had something special in mind.”

  “I’ll be right over,” Julian told him, and flicked the phone off.

  “What in the world is going on?”

  Julian grinned at Edith. “Maybe I’m going over to join up, darling. Possibly I’m one of the chicks that wants to get back into the shell.”

  He headed for the door.

  Somewhat to his surprise, Harrison, Ley, and Woolman were already at Sean O’Callahan’s apartment
when he arrived. One of the things he wasn’t at all clear about was the group’s intense interest in him. He had already come to the conclusion that his first meeting with Sean through Edith was a put-up job; the young would-be archaeologist had been sent by the group to contact him.

  They all stood at his entrance and Julian went around shaking hands.

  He said, naming them in turn, “William Dempsey Harrison, Fredric Madison Ley, Dave Woolman, Sean O’Callahan. It’s a pleasure to see you all again.”

  After they were seated once more, and Sean had taken drink orders and delivered them, they looked at Julian expectantly.

  He took a sip of his Scotch, a deep breath, and said, “All right, I’m in. Obviously this world as it is now isn’t for me. But the big question in my mind is what you expect of me. I’m thirty years behind the times.”

  “We’ll tell you all about that,” Harrison said, obviously pleased with Julian’s announcement. “But first, a little more background. Tell me, after several weeks, what do you think of Academician Leete?”

  Julian grunted and shrugged. “Kind of a fuddy-duddy and in full agreement with the way society is run today.”

  “He sure as hell is,” Sean said. “If he had his way, we’d get to the point where 99.9 percent of the population had nothing to do and everybody would be sitting around on their asses painting or writing poetry.”

  Harrison made a rather abrupt gesture at Sean, silencing him. He said to Julian, “I have a confession to make. I am not a resident of this area, Julian West.”

  Julian fixed his eyes on him, waiting.

  Harrison said, “Mr. West, we need a man of charisma. We need a leader. My residence is actually in Seattle, where I am one of the three Presidors of the Society for Return to Civilization. The Society sent me here to contact you.”

  “I am sure you don’t need someone thirty years behind the times.”

  Woolman bent forward; his voice was sincere. “That is exactly what we need. A man who knew the world when it was a world of action, full of life, aggression, ambition. A man who stops at nothing to achieve his ends. A leader of the old school.”