Seri had recognized them from the office, but she said nothing to me until I had worked it out for myself. Then she confirmed it. "I can't remember all their names. The woman with the silver hair, she's called Treeca. I quite liked her. One of the men is called Kerrin, I think. They're all from Glaund."
Glaund: the enemy country. There was enough of the north still in me to think of them as foes, but enough of the islands to recognize the instinct as irrelevant. Even so, the war had been going on for most of my life, and I had never before left Faiandland. We sometimes saw propaganda films in Jethran cinemas about the Glaundians, but I had never given them much credence.
Factually, the Glaundians were a fairer-skinned race than mine, their country was more industrialized and they had a history of being territorially ambitious; less authentically, they were supposed to be ruthless businessmen, indifferent sportsmen and incompetent lovers. Their political system was different from ours. While we lived under the benevolent feudalism of the Seignior, and the whole impenetrable apparatus of the Tithe Laws, the Glaundians operated a system of state socialism, and were supposed to be socialized equals.
These five appeared not to recognize me as being one of them, which suited me. I was disguised from them by my youth, and by the fact I was with Seri. To them we must have seemed to be mere drifters, island-hoppers, young and irresponsible. None of them seemed to recognize Seri without her uniform.
They were wrapped up in themselves, united in their impending athanasia.
As the days passed I went through a number of different states of mind about them. For a time I simply disliked them for the vulgarity of the way they displayed their luck. Then I began to pity them: two of the women were obese, and I tried to imagine what an eternity of waddling breathlessness would be like. Then I felt sorry for them all, seeing them as plain people to whom great fortune had come late in life, and celebrating it in the only way they knew how. Soon afterwards I underwent a period of self--dislike, knowing that I was patronizing them and that I was no better than them, just younger and healthier.
Because of the link between us, because I was just like them, I several times was tempted to approach them and find out what they thought about the prize. Perhaps they had the same doubts about it as I had; I only assumed they were hurrying to salvation, and did not know for sure. But the thought of being drawn into their card-playing, good-natured drinking circle deterred me.
They would be, inevitably, as interested in me as I could not help being interested in them.
I tried to understand this stand-offishness and explain it to myself.
Because I was unsure of my own intentions I did not wish to have to explain myself, either to them or to me. I frequently overheard snatches of their conversations: rambling and imprecise, they often spoke of what they were going to do "afterwards". One of the men was convinced that great wealth and influence would he his after he left Collago. The other kept repeating that he would be "set up for life", as if he only needed enough athanasia to see him through the rest of his retirement, a nice little nest egg to tell his grandchildren about.
I knew, though, that if someone asked me what use I should put my own long life to, my answer would be equally vague. I too would utter homilies about embarking on good works in the community, or returning to university, or joining the Peace Movement. Each of these would he untrue, but they were the only things I could think of as worthwhile, as sufficient moral excuse for accepting the treatment.
The best use to which I could put a long life would he the selfish one of living for a long time, of avoiding death, of being perpetually twenty-nine years old. My only ambition for "afterwards" was to travel around the islands with Seri.
As the voyage progressed I therefore slipped into a more introspective mood than ever before, feeling unaccountably sad about what I had become involved in. I concentrated on Seri, I watched the ever-changing islands. The names slipped hy--Tumo, Lanna, Winho, Salav, Ia, Lillen-cay, Paneron, Junno--sorne of them names I had heard, sonic of them not. We were a long way south now, and for a time we could see the distant coast of the wild southern continent: here the Qataari Peninsula reached northwards into the islands, stacked high behind rocky cliffs, but beyond this the land receded southwards and the illusion of endless sea returned, more temperate in this latitude.
After the barren appearance of some of the islands in the tropics, the scenery here was soothing to the eye: it was greener and more forested, with tidy towns rising up the hills from the sea, and domestic farm animals grazing, and cultivated crops and orchards. The cargoes we loaded and unloaded also revealed the gradual southwards progress: we carried bulk food and oils and machinery in the equatorial seas, later we carried grapes and pomegranates and beer, later still it was cheese and apples and hooks.
Once I said to Seri: "Let's get off. I want to see this place."
The island was Ia, a large, wooded island with sawmills and shipyards.
Watching from the deck I liked the way Ia Town was laid out, and I admired the unhurried efficiency of the docks. Ia was an island I wanted to walk in, and sit on grass and smell the earth. From the look of the place you could visualize cold springs and wild flowers and whitewashed farmhouses.
Seri, suntanned from her long idle hours on deck, was beside me as I leaned on the rail.
"We'll never get to Collago if we do."
"No more ships?"
"No more resolution. We can always come back here."
Seri had the will to get me to Collago. She remained something of a mystery to me, however much time we spent together. We never talked together very much, and so we argued rarely; by the same token, though, we reached a level of intimacy beyond which it seemed we would never proceed. The plans for islandhopping were hers. I was included in them, and included to the extent that when once I revealed a hesitancy about them she was prepared to abandon them, but I felt I was incidental to them. Her interest in lovemaking was disconcertingly sporadic. Sometimes we would crawl into our tiny bunk in the cramped cabin, and she would say she was too tired or too hot, and that would be the end of it; at other times she would exhaust me with her passions. She was sometimes intensely caring and affectionate, and I liked that. When we talked she asked me all sorts of questions about myself and my past life, yet about herself she was uncommunicative.
Throughout the long voyage, as my doubts about the athanasia treatment remained, the relationship with Seri was dogged by a growing feeling of my own inadequacy. W7hen I was apart from her--when she sunbathed alone, or I was in the bar on was speculating about my fellow would-be immortals--I could not help but wonder what she saw in me. I obviously fulfilled some need in her, but it seemed an unselective need. I sometimes had a suspicion that if someone else came along she would leave me for him. But no one else appeared, and in general I judged it better not to question what was in many ways an ideal, casual friendship.
Towards the end I unpacked my long-neglected manuscript, and took it to the bar, intending to read it through.
It was now two years since I had finished work on it, and it was strange to hold the loose pages again and remember the period I had been writing them.
I wondered if I had left it too long, if I had grown away from the person who had tried to resolve a temporary crisis by committing himself to the permanence of the written word. As we grow we do not see ourselves changing--
there is the apparent continuity of the mirror, the daily awareness of immediate past--and it takes the reminders of old photographs or old friends to point out the differences. Two years was a substantial period, yet for all that time I had been in a sort of stasis.
In that sense, my attempt to define myself had been a success. By describing my past I had intended to shape my future. If I believed that my true identity was contained in the pages, then I had never left them.