“That still is the concept,” Dr. Smith said, coldly.
“But the people grow impatient.”
“That is just too bad,” Smith told him. “The people will simply have to wait.”
“As a race, they may be willing to,” explained the senator. “As individuals, they’re not.”
“I fail to see your point, senator.”
“There may not be a point,” said the senator. “In late years I’ve often debated with myself the wisdom of the whole procedure. Life continuation is a keg of dynamite if it fails of immortality. It will breed system-wide revolt if the people wait too long.”
“Have you a solution, senator?”
“No,” confessed the senator. “No, I’m afraid I haven’t. I’ve often thought that it might have been better if we had taken the people into our confidence, let them know all that was going on. Kept them up with all developments. An informed people are a rational people.”
The director did not answer and the senator felt the cold weight of certainty seep into his brain.
He knows, he told himself. He knows the party had decided not to ask that I be continued. He knows that I’m a dead man. He knows I’m almost through and can’t help him any more—and he’s crossed me out. He won’t tell me a thing. Not the thing I want to know.
But he did not allow his face to change. He knew his face would not betray him. His face was too well trained.
“I know there is an answer,” said the senator. “There’s always been an answer to any question about immortality. You can’t have it until there’s living space. Living space to throw away, more than we ever think we’ll need, and a fair chance to find more of it if it’s ever needed.”
Dr. Smith nodded. “That’s the answer, senator. The only answer I can give.”
He sat silent for a moment, then he said: “Let me assure you on one point, senator. When Extrasolar Research finds the living space, we’ll have the immortality.”
The senator heaved himself out of the chair, stood planted solidly on his feet.
“It’s good to hear you say that, doctor,” he said. “It is very heartening. I thank you for the time you gave me.”
Out on the street, the senator thought bitterly:
They have it now. They have immortality. All they’re waiting for is the living space and another hundred years will find that. Another hundred years will simply have to find it.
Another hundred years, he told himself, just one more continuation, and I would be in for good and all.
Mr. Andrews: We must be sure there is a divorcement of life continuation from economics. A man who has money must not be allowed to purchase additional life, either through the payment of money or the pressure of influence, while another man is doomed to die a natural death simply because he happens to be poor.
Chairman Leonard: I don’t believe that situation has ever been in question.
Mr. Andrews: Nevertheless, it is a matter which must be emphasized again and again. Life continuation must not be a commodity to be sold across the counter at so many dollars for each added year of life.
The senator sat before the chessboard and idly worked at the problem. Idly, since his mind was on other things than chess.
So they had immortality, had it and were waiting, holding it a secret until there was assurance of sufficient living space. Holding it a secret from the people and from the government and from the men and women who had spent many lifetimes working for the thing which already had been found.
For Smith had spoken, not as a man who was merely confident, but as a man who knew. When Extrasolar Research finds the living space, he’d said, we’ll have immortality. Which meant they had it now. Immortality was not predictable. You would not know you’d have it; you would only know if and when you had it.
The senator moved a bishop and saw that he was wrong. He slowly pulled it back.
Living space was the key, and not living space alone, but economic living space, self-supporting in terms of food and other raw materials, but particularly in food. For if living space had been all that mattered, Man had it in Mars and Venus and the moons of Jupiter. But not one of those worlds was self-supporting. They did not solve the problem.
Living space was all they needed and in a hundred years they’d have that. Another hundred years was all that anyone would need to come into possession of the common human heritage of immortality.
Another continuation would give me that hundred years, said the senator, talking to himself. A hundred years and some to spare, for this time I’ll be careful of myself. I’ll lead a cleaner life. Eat sensibly and cut out liquor and tobacco and the woman-chasing.
There were ways and means, of course. There always were. And he would find them, for he knew all the dodges. After five hundred years in world government, you got to know them all. If you didn’t know them, you simply didn’t last.
Mentally he listed the possibilities as they occurred to him.
ONE: A person could engineer a continuation for someone else and then have that person assign the continuation to him. It would be costly, of course, but it might be done.
You’d have to find someone you could trust and maybe you couldn’t find anyone you could trust that far—for life continuation was something hard to come by. Most people, once they got it, wouldn’t give it back.
Although on second thought, it probably wouldn’t work. For there’d be legal angles. A continuation was a gift of society to one specific person to be used by him alone. It would not be transferable. It would not be legal property. It would not be something that one owned. It could not be bought or sold, it could not be assigned.
If the person who had been granted a continuation died before he got to use it—died of natural causes, of course, of wholly natural causes that could be provable—why, maybe, then—But still it wouldn’t work. Not being property, the continuation would not be part of one’s estate. It could not be bequeathed. It most likely would revert to the issuing agency.
Cross that one off, the senator told himself.
TWO: He might travel to New York and talk to the party’s executive secretary. After all, Gibbs and Scott were mere messengers. They had their orders to carry out the dictates of the party and that was all. Maybe if he saw someone in authority—
But, the senator scolded himself, that is wishful thinking. The party’s through with me. They’ve pushed their continuation racket as far as they dare push it and they have wrangled about all they figure they can get. They don’t dare ask for more and they need my continuation for someone else most likely—someone who’s a comer; someone who has vote appeal.
And I, said the senator, am an old has-been.
Although I’m a tricky old rascal, and ornery if I have to be, and slippery as five hundred years of public life can make one.
After that long, said the senator, parenthetically, you have no more illusions, not even of yourself.
I couldn’t stomach it, he decided. I couldn’t live with myself if I went crawling to New York—and a thing has to be pretty bad to make me feel like that. I’ve never crawled before and I’m not crawling now, not even for an extra hundred years and a shot at immortality.