Well, he resented them occupying his brand-new building. That wasn't a nice thought, and he was sorry at once for even thinking a thing like that. This wasn't his building; he was just one of the men on the design team who had stayed on for construction. The eldsters had as much right here as he did, more so, since this was their home. And a pleasant compromise it had been, too. This building, New Town, was designed for the future, but the future was rather slow coming, since you could accelerate almost everything in the world except fetal growth. Nine months from conception to birth, in either bottle or womb. Then the slow years of childhood, the quick years of puberty. It would be wasteful for the city to stay vacant all those years.
That was where the eldsters came in, the leftover debris of an overpopulated world. Geriatrics propped them up and kept them going. They were growing older together, the last survivors of the greedy generations. They were the parents who had fewer children and even fewer grandchildren as the realities of famine, disease, and the general unwholesomeness of life were driven home to them. Not that they had done this voluntarily. Left alone they would have responded as every other generation of mankind had done: selfishly. If the world is going to be overpopulated — it is going to be overpopulated with my kids. But the breakthrough in geriatric treatment and drugs came along at that moment and provided a far better carrot than had ever been held in front of the human donkey before. The fewer children you had the more treatment you received. The birthrate dived to zero almost overnight. The indifferent over-populators had decided to overpopulate with themselves instead of their children. If life was being granted, they preferred to have granted to them.
The result was that a child of the next generation might have, in addition to his mother and father, a half-dozen surviving relatives who were elders. A married couple might have ten or fifteen older relatives, all of them alone in the world, looking to their only younger kin. There could be no question of this aging horde moving in with the present generation, who had neither room for them nor money to support them. They were a government burden and would remain so. A decreasing burden that required less money every year as old machinery, despite the wonders of medicine, finally ran down. When the new cities were being designed for the future, scientifically planned generations, the wise decision had been made to move the eldsters into them. The best of food, care, and medicine could be provided with the minimum effort and expense. Life in the older cities would be happier, relieved of the weight of the solid block of aging citizenry. And since the geriatric drugs didn't seem to work too well past the middle of the second century, a timetable could be established for what was euphemistically called "phasing out." Dying was a word no one liked to use. So as the present inhabitants were phased out to the phasing place of their choice, the growing generations would move in. All neat. All tidy.
As long as you stayed away from the eldster floors.
Looking straight ahead, Gust went swiftly along the street-like corridor. Ignoring the steam rooms and bathing rooms, tropical gardens and sandy beaches that opened off to either side. And the people. The next bank of elevators was a welcome sight, and this time he very clearly enunciated "fif-tee" as the door closed.
When he reached the end of the unfinished corridor, the work shift was just going off duty. The flooring terminated here, and ahead was just the rough gray of raw cement still showing the mold marks where it had been cast in place; floodlights stood high on wiry legs.
"Been having trouble with the squatter, Mr. Crabb," the shift boss complained. These men had grown up in a world of smoothly operating machines and were hurt when they occasionally proved fallible.
"I'll take a look at it. Anything in the hopper?"
"Half full. Should I empty it out?"
"No, leave it. I'll try a run before I call maintenance."
As the motors on the machines were turned off one by one, an echoing silence fell on the immense and cavernlike area. The men went away, their footsteps loud, calling to each other, until Gust was alone. He climbed the ladder to the top of the hulking squatter and unlocked the computer controls. When he typed a quick condition query the readout revealed nothing wrong. These semi-intelligent machines could analyze most of their own troubles and deliver warnings, but there were still occasional failures beyond their capacity to handle or even recognize. Gust closed the computer and pressed the power button.
There was a far-off rumble and the great bulk of the machine shuddered as it came to life. Most of the indicator lights blinked on red, turning swiftly to green as the motors came to speed. When the operation-ready light also turned green, he squinted at the right-hand television screen, which showed the floor level buried under the squatter. The newly laid flooring ended abruptly where the machine had stopped. He backed it a few feet so the sensors could come into operation, then started it forward again at the crawling pace of working speed.
As soon as the edge was reached the laying began again. The machine guided itself and controlled the mix and pouring. About all the operator had to do was turn the entire apparatus on and off. Gust watched the hypnotically smooth flow of new floor appear and could see nothing wrong. It was pleasant here, doing a simple yet important job like this.
A warning buzzer sounded and a light began flashing red on the controls. He blinked and had a quick glimpse of something black on the screen before it moved swiftly out of sight. He stopped the forward motion and put the squatter into reverse again, backing the huge mass a good ten feet before killing all the power and climbing back down. The newly laid plastic flooring was still hot under his feet and he trod gingerly almost up to the forward edge. There was a cavity in the flooring here, like a bowl or a bubble a foot wide. As though the machine had burped while spewing out its flow. Perhaps it had. The technicians would set it right. He spoke a note to call them in his pocket phone, killed all except the standby lights, then went back to the elevators. Calling out his floor number very carefully.
Dr. Livermore and Leatha were bent over a worktable in the lab, heads lowered as though at a wake. As perhaps they were. Gust came in quietly, listening, not wanting to interrupt.
"There were some of the most promising new strains here," Leatha said. "The Reilly-Stone in particular. I don't know how much computer time was used in the preliminary selection, but the technicians must have put in a hundred hours on this fertilized ovum alone."
"Isn't that a little unusual?" Livermore asked.
"I imagine so, but it was the first application of the Ber-shock multiple-division cross-trait selection, and you know how those things go."
"I do indeed. It will be easier the next time. Send the records back, noting the failures. Get them started on replacements. Hello, Gust, I didn't hear you come in."
"I didn't want to bother you."
"No bother. We are finished in any case. Had some bottle failures today."
"So I heard. Do you know why?"
"If I knew everything, I would be God, wouldn't I?"
Leatha looked at the old man, shocked. "But Doctor, we do know why the embryos were killed. The valve failed on the input—"
"But why did the valve fail? There are reasons beyond reasons in everything."
"We're going to Old Town, Doctor," Gust said, uncomfortable with this kind of abstract conversation and eager to change the subject.