He had an entire dome to himself. Interior walls divided it into a bedroom, a sitting room, and a kind of utility room; everything was airy and tastefully simple, and the temperature was twenty-five degrees cooler than outside. A window faced the garden.
The staff people and the quartet of Departing Ones vanished, leaving Staunt alone with his Guide. Bollinger said, “Each of the residents has a suite like this. You can eat here, if you like, although there’s a community dining room under the courtyard. There are recreational facilities there too—a library, a theater, a game room—but you can spend all of your time perfectly happily right where you are.”
Staunt lowered himself gingerly into a webfoam hammock. As his weight registered, tiny Mechanical hands began to massage his back. Bollinger smiled.
“This is your data terminal,” he said, handing Staunt a copper-colored rod about eight inches long. “It’s a standard access unit. You can get any book in the library—and there are thousands of them—screened on request, and you can play whatever music you’d like, and it’s also a telephone input. Ask it to connect you with anyone at all. Go on. Ask.”
“My son Paul,” Staunt said.
“Ask it,” said Bollinger.
Staunt activated the terminal and gave it Paul’s name and access number. Instantly a screen came to life just beside the hammock. Staunt’s son appeared in its silvery depths. The screen could almost have been a mirror, a strange sort of time-softening mirror that was capable of taking the face of a very old man and reflecting it as that of a man who was merely old. Staunt beheld someone who was a younger version of himself, though far from young: cool gray eyes, thin lips, lean bony face, a dense mane of white hair.
Paul’s face was deeply lined but still vigorous. At the age of ninety-one he had not yet retired from the firm of architects he headed. So long as a man’s health was good and his mind was sound and he still found his career rewarding, there was no reason to retire; when mind or body failed or career lost its savor, that was the time to withdraw and make oneself ready to Go.
Staunt said, “I’m calling you from Omega Prime.”
“What’s that, Henry?”
“You’ve never heard of it? A House of Leavetaking in Arizona. It looks like a lovely place. Martin Bollinger brought me here this evening.”
Paul looked startled. “Are you thinking of Going, Henry?”
“I am.”
“You never told me you had any such thing in mind!”
“I’m telling you now.”
“Are you in poor health?”
“I feel fine,” Staunt said. “Everyone asks me that, and I say the same thing. My health is excellent.”
“Then why—”
“Do I have to justify it? I’ve lived long enough. My life is over.”
“But you’ve been so alert, so involved—”
“It’s my decision to make. It’s ungracious of you to quarrel with me over it.”
“I’m not quarreling,” Paul said. “I’m trying to adapt to it. You know, you’ve been part of my life for nine decades. I don’t give a damn what the social conventions are: I can’t simply smile and nod and say how sweet when my father announces he’s going to die.”
“To Go.”
“To Go,” Paul muttered. “Whatever. Have you told Crystal?”
“You’re the first member of the family to know. Except for your mother, that is.”
“My mother?”
“The cube,” said Staunt.
“Oh. Yes. The cube.” A thin, edgy laugh. “All right. I’ll tell the others. I suppose I’ll have to learn how to be head of the family, finally. You’re not going to be doing this immediately, are you?”
“Naturally not. Where do you get such ideas? I’ll have a proper Leavetaking. Graceful. Serene. A few weeks, a month or two—the usual thing.”
“And we can visit you?”
“I’ll expect you to,” Staunt said. “That’s part of the ritual.”
“What about—pardon me—what about the legal aspects? Disposition of property, things like that?”
“It’ll all be managed in the customary way. The Office of Fulfillment is supposed to help me. Don’t worry: you’ll get everything that’s coming to you.”
“That isn’t a kind way to phrase it, Henry.”
“I don’t have to be kind any more. I don’t even have to make sense. I’m just a crazy old man getting ready to Go.”
“Henry—Father—”
“All right. I’m sorry. Somehow this conversation hasn’t worked right at all. Shall we start it over?”
“I’d like to,” Paul said.
Staunt realized he was quivering. The muscles of his face were drawn taut. He made a deliberate attempt to relax, and after a moment, said quietly, “It’s a perfectly normal, desirable step to take. I’m old and tired and lonely and bored. I’m no use to myself or to anybody else, and there’s really no sense troubling my doctors to keep me functioning any longer. So I’m going to Go. I’d rather Go now, when I’m still reasonably healthy and clear-witted, instead of trying to hang on another few decades until I’ve slid into senility. I’ve moved to Omega Prime, and you’ll all come to visit me before my Leavetaking, and it’ll be a peaceful and beautiful Going, I hope. That’s all. There’s nothing to weep about. In forty or fifty years you’ll understand all this a lot better.”
“I understand it now,” Paul said. “You caught me by surprise when you called, but I understand. Of course. Of course. We don’t want to lose you, but that’s only our selfishness talking. You’ve lived a full life, and, well, the wheel has to turn.”
How smoothly he does it, Staunt thought. How easily he slips into the jargon. How readily he agrees with me, after his first reflexive moment of shock. Yes, Henry, certainly, Henry, it’s wise of you to Go, Henry, you’ve lived long enough. Staunt wondered which was the fraud: Paul’s initial resistance to the idea of his Going, or his philosophical acquiescence. And what difference did it make? Why, Staunt asked himself, should I be offended if my son thinks it’s right for me to Go when I was offended two minutes earlier by his trying to talk me out of it?
He was beginning to be unsure of his own ground. Perhaps he did want to be talked out of it.
I must read Hallam shortly, he told himself.
He said to Paul, “I have a great deal to do this evening. I’ll call you tomorrow. Or you call me.”
The screen went blank.
Bollinger said, “He took it rather well, I thought. The children don’t always accept the idea that a parent is Going. They accept the theory of Leavetaking, but they always assume that it’s someone else’s old folks who’ll Go.”
“They want their own parents to live forever, even if the parents don’t feel like staying around any longer?”
“That’s it.”
“What if someone does feel like staying forever?” Staunt asked.
Bollinger shrugged. “We never try to force the issue. We hint a little, as subtly as we know how, if someone is one hundred forty or one hundred fifty or so, and really a wreck, but clinging to life anyway. For that matter, if he’s eighty or ninety, even, and just going through the motions of living, held together by his doctors alone, we’ll try to encourage Going. We have gentle ways of working through doctors or friends or relatives, trying to overcome the fear of dying in the ones who linger, trying to get across the idea that it’s not only best for society for them to move on, it’s best for themselves. If they don’t take the hint, there’s nothing we can do. Involuntary euthanasia just isn’t part of our system.”