From outside Bollinger said, “Can I come in, Henry?”
“Let him in,” Staunt murmured. One of the sensors in the studio wall picked up the command and relayed it to the front door, which opened. “Tell him I’m in the studio,” Staunt said, and the house guided Bollinger in. With a flick of two fingers Staunt cut down the volume of the music.
Bollinger, as he entered, nodded and said pleasantly, “I’ve always loved that quartet.”
Staunt embraced him. “So have I. How good to see you, Martin.”
“I’m sorry it’s been so long. Two weeks, isn’t it?”
“I’m glad you’ve come. Although—to be really honest—I’m not going to be free this afternoon, Martin. I’m expecting someone else.”
“Oh?”
“In fact, someone from the very organization whose vehicle you seem to have borrowed. How do you happen to come here in one of their copters, anyway?”
“Why not?” Bollinger asked.
“I can’t understand why you should. It makes no sense.”
“When I come on official business, I use an official copter, Henry.”
“Official business?”
“You asked for a Guide.”
Staunt was shaken. “You?”
“When they told me who had called, I insisted I be given the assignment, or I’d resign instantly. So I came. So here I am.”
“I never realized you were with Fulfillment, Martin!”
“You never asked.”
Staunt managed a baffled smile. “How long ago did you go into it?”
“Eight, ten years. A while ago.”
“And why?”
“A sense of public duty. We all have to help out if the wheel’s going to keep turning smoothly. Eh, Henry? Eh?” Bollinger came close to Staunt, looked up at him, staring straight into his eyes, and flashed an unexpectedly brilliant, somehow overpowering grin. Then he said in a crisp, aggressive tone, “What’s all this about wanting to Go, Henry?”
“The idea came to me this morning. I was strolling around the house when suddenly I realized there was no further point in my staying here. I’m done: why not admit it? Turn the wheel. Clear a space.”
“You’re still relatively young.”
Staunt laughed harshly. “Coming up on one hundred and thirty-six.”
“I know men of one hundred sixty and one hundred seventy who haven’t even dreamed of Going.”
“That’s their problem. I’m ready.”
“Are you ill, Henry?”
“Never felt better.”
“Are you in any kind of trouble, then?”
“None whatever. My life is unutterably tranquil. I have only the purest of motives in applying for Leavetaking.”
Bollinger seemed agitated. He paced the studio, picked up and set down one of Staunt’s Polynesian carvings, clasped his hands to his elbows, and said finally:
“We have to talk about this first, Henry. We have to talk about this!”
“I don’t understand. Isn’t it a Guide’s function to speed me serenely on the way to oblivion? You sound as if you’re trying to talk me out of Going!”
“It’s the Guide’s function,” Bollinger said, “to serve the best interests of the Departing One, whatever those interests may be. The Guide may attempt to persuade the Departing One to delay his Going, or not to Go at all, if in his judgment that’s the proper course to take.”
Staunt shook his head. “There’s a whole bustling world full of healthy young people out there who want to have more children, and who can’t have them unless useless antiquities like myself get out of the way. I volunteer to make some space available. Are you telling me that you’d oppose my Going, Martin, if—”
“Maintaining the level of population at a consistent quantity is only one aspect of our work,” Bollinger said. “We’re also concerned with maintaining quality. We don’t want useful older citizens taking themselves out of the world merely to make room for a newcomer whose capabilities we can’t predict. If a man still has something important to give society—”
“I have nothing important left to give.”
“If he does,” Bollinger went on smoothly, “we will try to discourage him from Going until he’s given it. In your case I think Going may be somewhat premature, and so I’ve wangled the assignment to be your Guide so that I can help you explore the consequences of what you propose to do, and perhaps—”
“What do you think I still can offer the world, Martin?”
“Your music.”
“Haven’t I written enough?”
“We can’t be certain of that. You may have a masterpiece or two lurking in you.” Bollinger began to pace again. “Henry, have you read Hallam’s Turning of the Wheel?”
“I’ve glanced at it. This morning, in fact.”
“Did you look at the section in which he explains why our society is unique in western civilization?”
“It may have slipped my mind.”
Bollinger said, “Henry, ours is the first that accepts the concept of suicide as a virtuous act. In the past, you know, suicide was considered filthy and evil and cowardly; religions condemned it as an attack against the will of God, and even people who weren’t religious tended to try to cover it up when a friend or a relative killed himself. Well, we’re into a different concept. Since our medical skills are now so highly developed that almost no one ever dies naturally, even enlightened birth-limitation measures can’t keep the world from filling up with people. So long as anyone is born at all, and no one dies, there’s a constant and dangerous build-up of population, so that—”
“Yes, yes, but—”
“Let me finish. To cope with our population problem, we eventually decided to regard the voluntary ending of one’s life as a noble sacrifice, and so forth. Hence the whole mystique of Going. Even so, we haven’t entirely lost our old moral outlook on suicide. We still don’t want valuable people to Go, because we feel they have no right to throw away their gifts, to deprive us of what they have to give. And so one of the functions of the Office of Fulfillment is to lead the old and useless toward the exit in a civilized and gentle way, but another of our functions is to keep the old and useful from Going too soon. Therefore—”
“I understand,” Staunt said softly. “I agree with the philosophy. I merely deny that I’m useful any more.”
“That’s open to question.”
“Can it be, Martin, that you’re letting personal factors interfere with your judgment?”
“What do you mean? That I’d keep you from Going because I prize your friendship so dearly?”
“I mean my promise to set your poems to music.”
Bollinger reddened faintly. “That’s absurd. Do you believe that my ego is so bound up in those poems that I’d meddle with your Going, simply so that you’d live to—No. I like to think that my judgment is objective.”
“You could be wrong. You might disqualify yourself from being my Guide. Simply on the chance that—”
“No. I’m your Guide.”
“Are we going to fight, then, over whether I’ll be allowed to Go?”
“Of course not, Henry. We just want you to understand the significance of the step you’ve asked to take.”
“The significance is that I’ll die. Is that such a complicated thing to understand?”
Bollinger looked disturbed by Staunt’s blunt choice of words. One tried not to connect Going and dying. One was supposed to resort to the euphemisms.
He said, “Henry, I just want to follow orderly procedure.”
“Which is?”
“We’ll get you into a House of Leavetaking. Then we’ll ask you to examine your soul and see if you’re as truly ready to Go as you think you are. That’s all. The final decision about when you Go will remain in your hands. If you insisted, you could Go this evening; we wouldn’t stop you. Couldn’t. But of course such haste would be unseemly.”