The senator gave them no help. He sat quietly in his chair and held the whiskey glass in a steady hand and did not ask what it was all about, acting as if he didn’t really care.
Gibbs floundered slightly. “It’s a rather personal matter, senator,” he said.
“It’s this life continuation business,” blurted Andrew Scott.
They sat in shocked silence, all three of them, for Scott should not have said it that way. In politics, one is not blunt and forthright, but devious and slick.
“I see,” the senator said finally. “The party thinks the voters would like it better if I were a normal man who would die a normal death.”
Gibbs smoothed his face of shocked surprise.
“The common people resent men living beyond their normal time,” he said. “Especially—”
“Especially,” said the senator, “those who have done nothing to deserve it.”
“I wouldn’t put it exactly that way,” Gibbs protested.
“Perhaps not,” said the senator. “But no matter how you say it, that is what you mean.”
They sat uncomfortably in the office chairs, with the bright Geneva sunlight pouring through the windows.
“I presume,” said the senator, “that the party, having found I am no longer an outstanding asset, will not renew my application for life continuation. I suppose that is what you were sent to tell me.”
Might as well get it over with, he told himself grimly. Now that it’s out in the open, there’s no sense in beating around the bush.
“That’s just about it, senator,” said Scott.
“That’s exactly it,” said Gibbs.
The senator heaved his great body from the chair, picked up the whiskey bottle, filled their glasses and his own.
“You delivered the death sentence very deftly,” he told them. “It deserves a drink.”
He wondered what they had thought that he would do. Plead with them, perhaps. Or storm around the office. Or denounce the party.
Puppets, he thought. Errand boys. Poor, scared errand boys.
They drank, their eyes on him, and silent laughter shook inside him from knowing that the liquor tasted very bitter in their mouths.
Chairman Leonard: You are agreed then, Mr. Chapman, with the other witnesses, that no person should be allowed to seek continuation of life for himself, that it should be granted only upon application by someone else, that—
Mr. Chapman: It should be a gift of society to those persons who are in the unique position of being able to materially benefit the human race.
Chairman Leonard: That is very aptly stated, sir.
The senator settled himself carefully and comfortably into a chair in the reception room of the Life Continuation Institute and unfolded his copy of the North American Tribune.
Column one said that system trade was normal, according to a report by the World Secretary of Commerce. The story went on at length to quote the secretary’s report. Column two was headed by an impish box that said a new life form may have been found on Mars, but since the discoverer was a spaceman who had been more than ordinarily drunk, the report was being viewed with some skepticism. Under the box was a story reporting a list or boy and girl health champions selected by the state of Finland to be entered later in the year in the world health contest. The story in column three gave the latest information on the unstable love life of the world’s richest woman.
Column four asked a question:
WHAT HAPPENED
TO DR. CARSON?
NO RECORD OF
REPORTED DEATH
The story, the senator saw, was by-lined Anson Lee and the senator chuckled dryly. Lee was up to something. He was always up to something, always ferreting out some fact that eventually was sure to prove embarrassing to someone. Smart as a steel trap, that Lee, but a bad man to get into one’s hair.
There had been, for example, that matter of the spaceship contract.
Anson Lee, said the senator underneath his breath, is a pest. Nothing but a pest.
But Dr. Carson? Who was Dr. Carson?
The senator played a little mental game with himself, trying to remember, trying to identify the name before he read the story.
Dr. Carson?
Why, said the senator, I remember now. Long time ago. A biochemist or something of the sort. A very brilliant man. Did something with colonies of soil bacteria, breeding the things for therapeutic work.
Yes, said the senator, a very brilliant man. I remember that I met him once. Didn’t understand half the things he said. But that was long ago. A hundred years or more.
A hundred years ago—maybe more than that.
Why, bless me, said the senator, he must be one of us.
The senator nodded and the paper slipped from his hands and fell upon the floor. He jerked himself erect. There I go again, he told himself. Dozing. It’s old age creeping up again.
He sat in his chair, very erect and quiet, like a small scared child that won’t admit it’s scared, and the old, old fear came tugging at his brain. Too long, he thought. I’ve already waited longer than I should. Waiting for the party to renew my application and now the party won’t. They’ve thrown me overboard. They’ve deserted me just when I needed them the most.
Death sentence, he had said back in the office, and that was what it was—for he couldn’t last much longer. He didn’t have much time. It would take a while to engineer whatever must be done. One would have to move most carefully and never tip one’s hand. For there was a penalty—a terrible penalty.
The girl said to him: “Dr. Smith will see you now.”
“Eh?” said the senator.
“You asked to see Dr. Dana Smith,” the girl reminded him. “He will see you now.”
“Thank you, miss,” said the senator. “I was sitting here half dozing.”
He lumbered to his feet.
“That door,” said the girl.
“I know,” the senator mumbled testily. “I know. I’ve been here many times before.”
Dr. Smith was waiting.
“Have a chair, senator,” he said. “Have a drink? Well, then, a cigar, maybe. What is on your mind?”
The senator took his time, getting himself adjusted to the chair. Grunting comfortably, he clipped the end off the cigar, rolled it in his mouth.
“Nothing particular on my mind,” he said. “Just dropped around to pass the time of day. Have a great and abiding interest in your work here. Always have had. Associated with it from the very start.”
The director nodded. “I know. You conducted the original hearings on life continuation.”
The senator chuckled. “Seemed fairly simple then. There were problems, of course, and we recognized them and we tried the best we could to meet them.”
“You did amazingly well,” the director told him. “The code you drew up five hundred years ago has never been questioned for its fairness and the few modifications which have been necessary have dealt with minor points which no one could have anticipated.”
“But it’s taken too long,” said the senator.
The director stiffened. “I don’t understand,” he said.
The senator lighted the cigar, applying his whole attention to it, flaming the end carefully so it caught even fire.
He settled himself more solidly in the chair. “It was like this,” he said. “We recognized life continuation as a first step only, a rather blundering first step toward immortality. We devised the code as an interim instrument to take care of the period before immortality was available—not to a selected few, but to everyone. We viewed the few who could be given life continuation as stewards, person who would help to advance the day when the race could be granted immortality.”