Slayton Ford had remained in the background throughout the discussion, and had done nothing to call attention to himself. At Rodney's answer he sat up. "Just a moment, Captain-"
"Eh? Yes?"
"Perhaps I can cut this short. You'll pardon me, Ralph?" He turned to Terra's representative. "Who am I?"
Rodney looked at him in some puzzlement. His expression changed from one of simple surprise at the odd question to complete and unbelieving bewilderment. "Why, you... you are Administrator Ford!"
Chapter 7
"ONE AT A TIME! One at a time," Captain King was saying. "Don't everybody try to talk at once. Go on, Slayton; you have the floor. You know this man?" Ford looked Rodney over. "No, I can't say that I do."
"Then it is a frame up." King turned to Rodney."Suppose you recognized Ford from historical stereos-is that right?" -
Rodney seemed about to burst. "No! I recognized him. He's changed but I knew him. Mr. Administrator-look at me, please! Don't you know me? I worked for you!"
"It seems fairly obvious that he doesn't," King said dryly.
Ford shook his head. "It doesn't prove anything, one way or the other, Captain. There were over two thousand civil service employes in my office. Rodney might have been one of them. His face looks vaguely familiar, but so do most faces."
"Captain-" Master Gordon Hardy was speaking. "If I can question Miles Rodney I might be able to give an opinion as to whether or not they actually have discovered anything new about the causes of old age and death."
Rodney shook his head. "I am not a biologist. You could trip me up in no time. Captain King, I ask you to arrange my return to Earth as quickly as possible. I'll not be subjected to any more of this. And let me add that I do not care a minim whether you and your-your pretty crew ever get back to civilization or not. I came here to help you, but I'm disgusted." He stood up.
Slayton Ford went toward him. "Easy, Miles Rodney, please! Be patient. Put yourself in their place. You would be just as cautious if you had been through what they have been through."
Rodney hesitated. "Mr. Administrator, what are you doing here?"
"It's a long and complicated story. I'll tell you later."
"You are a member of the Howard Families-you must be. That accounts for a lot of odd things."
Ford shook his head. "No, Miles Rodney, I am not. Later, please-I'll explain it. You -worked for me once-when?"
"From 2109 until you, uh, disappeared."
"What was your job?"
"At the time of the crisis of 2113 I was an assistant correlation clerk in the Division of Economic Statistics, Control Section."
"Who was your section chief?"
"Leslie Waldron."
"Old Waldron, eh? What was the color of his hair?"
"His hair? The Walrus was bald as an egg."
Lazarus whispered to Zaccur Barstow, "Looks like I was off base, Zack."
"Wait a moment," Barstow whispered back. "It still could be thorough preparation-they may have known that Ford escaped with us."
Ford was continuing, "What was The Sacred Cow?'
"The Sacred- Chief, you weren't even supposed to know that there was such a publication!"
"Give my intelligence staff credit for some activity, at least," Ford said dryly. "I got my copy every week."
"But what was it?" demanded Lazarus.
Rodney answered, "An office comic and gossip sheet that was passed from hand to hand."
"Devoted to ribbing the bosses," Ford added, "especially me." He put an arm around Rodney's shoulders. "Friends, there is no doubt about it. Miles and I were fellow workers."
"I still want to find out about the new rejuvenation process," insisted Master Hardy some time later.
"I think we all do," agreed King. He reached out and refilled their guest's wine glass. "Will you tell us about it, sir?'
"I'll try," Miles Rodney answered, "though I must ask Master Hardy to bear with me. It's not one process, but several-one basic process and several dozen others, some of them purely cosmetic, especially for women. Nor is the basic process truly a rejuvenation process. You can arrest the progress of old age, but you can't reverse it to any significant degree-you can't turn a senile old man into a boy."
"Yes, yes," agreed Hardy. "Naturally-but what is the basic process?"
"It consists largely in replacing the entire blood tissue in an old person with new, young blood. Old age, so they tell me, is primarily a matter of the progressive accumulation of the waste poisons of metabolism. The blood is supposed to carry them away, but presently the blood gets so clogged with the poisons that the scavenging process doesn't take place properly. Is that right, Doctor Hardy?'
"That's an odd way of putting it, but-"
"I told you I was no biotechnician."
"-essentially correct. It's a matter of diffusion pressure deficit-the d.p.d. on the blood side of a cell wall must be such as to maintain a fairly sharp gradient or there will occur progressive autointoxication of the individual cells. But I must say that I feel somewhat disappointed, Miles Rodney. The basic idea of holding off death by insuring proper scavenging of waste products is not new-I have a bit of chicken heart which has been alive for two and one half centuries through equivalent techniques. As to the use of young blood-yes, that will work. I've kept experimental animals alive by such blood donations to about twice their normal span-" He stopped and looked troubled.
"Yes, Doctor Hardy?"
Hardy chewed his lip. "I gave up that line of research. I found it necessary to have several young donors in order to keep one beneficiary from growing any older. There was a small, but measurable, unfavorable effect on each of the donors. Racially it was self-defeating; there would never be enough donors to go around. Am I to understand, sir that this method is thereby limited to a small, select part of the population?"
"Oh, no! I did not make myself clear, Master Hardy. There are no donors."
"Huh?'
"New blood, enough for everybody, grown outside the body-the Public Health and Longevity Service can provide any amount of it, any type."
Hardy looked startled. "To think we came so close... so that's it." He paused, then went on. "We tried tissue culture of bone marrow in vitro. We should have persisted."
"Don't feel badly about it. Billions of credits and tens of thousands of technicians engaged in this project before there were any significant results. I'm told that the mass of accumulated art in this field represents more effort than even the techniques of atomic engineering." Rodney smiled. "You see, they had to get some results; it was politically necessary-so there was an all-out effort." Rodney turned to Ford. 'When the news about the escape of the Howard Families reached the public, Chief, your precious successor had to be protected from the mobs."
Hardy persisted with questions about subsidiary techniques -tooth budding, growth inhibiting, hormone therapy, many others-until King came to Rodney's rescue by pointing out that the prime purpose of the visit was to arrange details of the return of the Families to Earth.
Rodney nodded. "I think we should get down to business. As I understand it, Captain, a large proportion of your people are now in reduced-temperature somnolence?"
("Why can't he say 'cold-rest'?" Lazarus said to Libby.)
"Yes, that is so."
"Then it would be no hardship on them to remain in that state for a time."
"Eh? Why do you say that, sir?"
Rodney spread his hands. "The administration finds itself in a somewhat embarrassing position. To put it bluntly, there is a housing shortage. Absorbing one hundred and ten thousand displaced persons can't be done overnight."
Again King had to hush them. He then nodded to Zaccur Barstow, who addressed himself to Rodney. "I fail to see the problem, sir. What is the present population of the North American continent?"