“How old,” Staunt asked, “are the oldest living people now?”
“I think the oldest ones known are something like one hundred seventy-five or one hundred eighty. Which means they were born in the early part of the twentieth century, around the time of the First World War. Anyone born before that simply spent too much of his life in the era of medieval medicine to hope for a really long span. But if you were born, say, in 1920, you were still only fifty-five or sixty when the era of organ transplants and computerized health services and laser surgery was beginning, and if you were lucky enough to be in good shape in the 1970’s, the 1980’s, why, you could be kept going just about indefinitely thereafter. Into the era of tissue regeneration and all the rest. A few from the early twentieth century did hang on into the era of total medicine, and some of them are still with us. Politely declining to Go.”
“How much longer can they last?”
“Hard to say,” Bollinger replied. “We just don’t know what the practical limits of the human life-span are. Our experience with total medicine doesn’t go back far enough. I’ve heard it said that two hundred or two hundred ten is the top figure, but in another twenty or thirty years we may have some people who’ve reached that figure, and we’ll find that we can keep them going beyond it. Maybe there is no top limit, now that we can do the things we do to rebuild a decaying body. But how hideously antisocial it is of them to hang around for century after century just to test our medical skills!”
“But if they’re making valuable contributions to society through all those hundreds of years—”
“If,” Bollinger said. “But the fact is that ninety, ninety-five percent of all people never make any contributions to society, even when they’re young. They just occupy space, do jobs that could really be done better by machines, sire children who aren’t any more gifted than they are—and hang on, living and living and living. We don’t want to lose anyone who’s valuable, Henry; I’ve been through that with you already. But most people aren’t valuable to begin with, and get less valuable as they go along, and there’s no reason in the universe why they should live past one hundred or one hundred ten, let alone to two hundred or three hundred or whatever.”
“That’s a harsh philosophy. Cynical, even.”
“I know. But read Hallam. The wheel’s got to turn. We’ve reached an average life-span that would have seemed wild fantasy as late as the time when you were a child, Henry, but that doesn’t mean we have to strive to make everyone immortal. Not unless people are willing to give up having children, and they aren’t. It’s a finite planet. If there’s inflow, there has to be outflow, and I like to think that those flowing out are the ones who have the least to offer to the rest of us. The decrepit, the feeble, the slow-witted, the mean-souled. Thank God, most old folks agree. For every one who absolutely won’t give up his grip on life, there are fifty who are glad to go once they’ve hit one hundred or so. And as the remainder get even older, they change their minds about staying, just as you’ve done lately. Not many want to go on past one hundred fifty. The few who do, well, we’ll look on them as experiments in geriatrics, and let them be.”
“How old are those four who met my copter?” Staunt asked.
“I couldn’t tell you. One hundred twenty, one hundred thirty, something like that. Most of those who arrange for Leavetaking now are people born between 1960 and 1980.”
“Of my generation, then.”
“I suppose, yes.”
“Do I look as bad as they do? They’re a bunch of walking mummies, Martin. I’d have guessed they were fifty years older than I am.”
“I doubt that very much.”
“But I’m not like them, am I? I’ve got my teeth. My hair. My real eyes. I look old, but not ancient. Or am I fooling myself, Martin? Am I really a dried-up nightmare too? Is it just that I’ve grown accustomed to the way I look, I haven’t noticed the changes, decade after decade as I get older and older?”
“There’s a mirror,” Bollinger said. “Answer your own questions.”
Staunt stared at himself. Lines and wrinkles, yes: a contour map of time, the valleys and ravines of a long life. Blotches on the skin. The glittering eyes deeply recessed; the cheeks fleshless, revealing the sharp outlines of the skull beneath. An old face, tremendously old. But yet not like their faces. He was no mummy yet. He imagined that a man of the twentieth century would guess him to be no more than eighty or eighty-five, just as a man of the twentieth century would guess Paul to be in his late sixties and Martin Bollinger in his late fifties. Those others, those four, showed their true ages. It must take all the magic at their doctors’ command to keep them together. And now, weary of cheating death, they’ve come here to Go and be over with the farce. Whereas I am still strong, whereas I could continue easily, if only I wanted to continue.
“Well?” Bollinger asked.
“I’m in pretty good shape,” Staunt said. “I’m quitting while I’m ahead. It’s the right way to do it.” He picked up the data terminal again. “I wonder if they have any of my music in storage here,” he said, and opened the access node and made a request; and the room flooded with the first chords of his Twelfth Symphony. He was pleased. He closed his eyes and listened. When the movement ended, he looked around the room, and found that Bollinger had gone.
Five
Dr. James came to see him a little while later, as night was enfolding the desert. Staunt was standing by the window, watching the brilliant stars appear, when the room annunciator told him of his visitor.
The doctor was a youngish man—forty, fifty, Staunt was no longer good at guessing ages—with a long fragile-looking nose and a gentle, faintly unctuous, I-want-you-to-have-a-lovely-Going sort of manner. His first words to Staunt were, “I’ve been looking through your medical file. I really must congratulate you on the excellent state of your health.”
“There’s something about music that keeps people in good shape,” Staunt said.
“Are you a conductor?”
“A composer. But I’ve conducted my own works quite often. Waving the baton—it’s obviously good exercise.”
“I don’t know much about music, I’m afraid. Some afternoon you must program some of your favorite pieces for me.” The doctor grinned shyly. “The simpler ones. Music for an unsophisticated medic, if you’ve written any.” He was silent a moment. Then he said, “You really do have an excellent medical history. Your doctor’s computer transferred your whole file to us this afternoon when your reservation was made. Naturally, while you’re with us we want you to remain in perfect health and comfort. You’ll receive the same kind of care here that you were getting at home—the muscle therapies, the ion-balance treatments, the circulatory clearances, and so forth. Including any special supportive therapy that may become necessary. Not that I anticipate someone like you to need a great deal of that.”
“I could last another fifty years, eh?”
Dr. James looked abashed. His plump cheeks glowed. “That choice is entirely up to you, Mr. Staunt.”
“Don’t worry. I’m not about to change my mind.”
“No one here will hurry you,” the doctor said. “We’ve had people remain at Omega Prime for three, even four years. Each man’s Leavetaking is the most important event in his life, after all; he’s entitled to go about it at his own pace, to disengage himself from the world as gradually as he wants. You do understand that there is no cost to you for any part of your residence here. The government underwrites the whole business.”