Nester Belton hugged himself, thin arms wrapped around thin chest.
This was the time to be alive, he thought.
And he thought in horror of those days when men had died and stayed dead, when there had been no thought of other life beyond the frail and tottering promise of a medieval faith that tried to make of faith the Very stuff of knowing.
All those other poor dead people, who had died without assurance that death was only temporary—who had feared death as an end and nothingness, who had feared it in spite of their oft protested faith, who had shrank from it and thrust it back into an obscure place within their minds each time they thought of it, because they did not want to think of it, could not bear to think of it.
A thin wind fretted at the eaves above him and it was a lonely sound. The shadows of the yard were diluted shadows that seemed to have no substance. The far-off whiteness of Forever Center was a misty light against the night-black sky. As if, he thought, dawn might not be too far distant. And that was how it must have seemed at times, he told himself, to the men of Forever Center working toward the dawn. But encountering setbacks and disappointments when it seemed that the final accomplishments were within their grasp. Now, however, from what one heard, from the filtered rumor spoken everywhere, dawn (no false dawn this time) was at last in sight and man in a few more years would have been brought to that final perfection of purpose and expression that had been inherent in that first feeble thread of life born in the primal seas.
And he, Nestor Belton, hopefully would have a hand in it. He and the other counselors, when the people were revived, would perform the necessary function oi rehabilitation, so that the revived could fit into the present culture.
But to do a job like that, a man must know so much, must be so thoroughly trained as an accomplished historian, with an especial knowledge of the last two centuries.
Six long years of study—if he ranked high enough in the exams that he faced tomorrow.
He took one last look at the misty whiteness of Forever Center and went back to his books.
14
The dinner tapers flickered, almost burned out, and the scent of roses filled the dingy room—although, in the candlelight, the room was not so dingy. And both of them, the tapers and the roses, had spelled extravagance, but Frost found that he could not regret the money they had cost. It was the first time in years that he had not eaten alone and he could not remember any evening as pleasant as this one had turned out to be.
Ann.Harrison had not again referred to the Chapman matter, but there had been much to talk about—the European art exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (they both, it turned out, had been to see it, on one of the free days); the new historical novel that everyone was talking about, a romance of the early days of space flight; the unreasonable attitude of the traffic cops; the wisdom of investing in other commodities than Forever stock—and themselves.
Ann had been born and reared in Manhattan, she told him, had completed her law course at Columbia, had spent one vacation in France and another in Japan, but now no longer took vacations, for it was a waste of time and money, and aside from this, her law practice now took all her time—too much work for one person, not enough for two.
And he, in turn, had told her about the vacations he spent as a boy, on his grandfather's farm in Wisconsin, no longer a farm, of course, for there were no farms, but a sort of family summer place.
"Although," he said, "it isn't even a summer place now. The family doesn't own it. At the time of my grand-
— parents' death it was sold to one of the big land companies and the proceeds turned into Forever stock. I went out to Chicago several years ago on business and took a day off and drove up to the place. It's way out west, on the bluffs above a little town named Bridgeport. The buildings still were standing, but there was no one there, of course, and the place is beginning to look shabby and rundown."
"It seems a shame," said Anne, "that there aren't any farms. All that land going back to wilderness. You'd think that the government would encourage farming. It would supply a lot of people with employment." He shook his head. "I regret it, too. There was something solid about a farm. And a nation without farms seems a sort of shaky setup. But there really was no reason to keep them going and there is all sort of reason to tool up the converter plants to full capacity. We'll need those plants and in operating order, when revivals start. So far as employment is concerned…"
"Yes, I know," she said. "All the facilities to be built. Block after block of apartments and each one standing empty. Not only here, but in all the world. When I was in Japan they were building acres of them."
"We'll need them all," he told her. "Almost a hundred billion frozen and a present population not much less than half of that."
"Where are we going to put them all?" she asked, "I know that…"
"Bigger buildings, if necessary. Forever Center is a bit better than a mile in height. It was built as a model, really, to see if a building that large could be built and stand. And it seems to be all right. There was a little settling to start with, but nothing too alarming. You can't build that high everywhere, of course. It depends on the basement rock. But the engineers now are saying that if you go deep enough…"
"You mean living underground?"
"Well, yes, both under and above. Go deep enough to find good underpinning, then build up from there, as high as you can build. That way, you can take care of, say, several million people in a single building. What would be the equivalent of a small city in a single structure."
"But there is a limit."
"Oh, certainly," he agreed. "There will come a time, some centuries from now, even with the best that we can do, when there'll no longer be any room."
"And then we migrate into time?"
"Well, yes," he said, "we hope so."
"You haven't got it yet?"
"Not yet," he said, "but close."
"And immortality?"
"Ten years," he said. "Twenty maybe. Unless we hit a snag."
"Dan," she said, "was it smart, the way we did it— to keep all those people frozen until we could hand them immortality? We know what to do with cancer, how to repair the weakened heart, how to handle old age. We could have started revivals almost a hundred years ago, but we just keep on, stacking up the bodies. We said what difference does it make if they sleep a little longer. They will never know. So let us make it worth their while, let's give them a surprise, those old ones, when they wake up. Let's give them life eternal."
He laughed. "I don't know. You can't get me to argue that one. Too many words already have been wasted on it. Personally, I don't see what difference it could make."
"But with all those billions, think of all the time that it will take. Each one of them must be processed…"
"I know, but there are corps of technicians, thousands of them, ready to start work the moment that the word is given. And there are other corps of counselors standing by."
"But it will take time."
"Yes," he said. "It will take a lot of time. It would have been simpler, the way it first was planned. But then along came this social security business. I know