Читать книгу The Old Man of the Stars - John Burke - Страница 5

CHAPTER ONE

In the green twilight, warm with the promise of the long Elysian summer, the young men and women were strolling and talking below the white steps of the Community Palace. The pliant trees murmured in the faintest of breezes, and the planet’s two moons were rising above the distant hills.

The old man on the terrace sat with his eyes half-closed and thought about home—about Earth.

He did not look old. He had the smooth, handsome face of a young man of twenty-five, and there was no grey in his hair. There was something almost youthfully arrogant about his lean features and jutting chin. Only in his eyes was there the weariness of age. Brooding over the scene before him, he was conscious of the heavy weight of centuries on his shoulders. A great time and a great space separated him from the world of his birth.

A young woman walked slowly past him. She wore the loose, casual tunic and shorts that were customary during the leisure hours on Elysium: and most hours on this tranquil planet were leisure hours.

The old man reached out and caught hold of her golden-brown arm for a moment. She stopped, with a slight grimace of distaste.

He said: “This evening it is just like it was in the old world.”

“Indeed, Matthew?” she said politely.

“But of course we didn’t get this green light. The glow of sunset was something that nobody here but myself remembers. You’ve never known anything like it.”

“No, I’m afraid we haven’t.”

He was aware of the scent of her fresh young body; and aware also of the restraint and pity behind her politeness. Pity? There were times when he was sure it verged on contempt. Contempt...for him, the oldest and wisest of them all, who had been on this planet for centuries before any of them had existed!

He let go of her arm. A young man hurried up beside her. They exchanged smiles, nodded briefly to Matthew, and walked away.

“A romantic evening, isn’t it?” he called after them, but they did not reply. Perhaps they had not heard him. Or perhaps, like so many of their contemporaries, they could no longer be bothered with him.

Matthew sighed. They were bored by his reminiscences, and the young woman shrank from his touch. However young he might remain in appearance, he was too old.

He looked up into the heavens, where the stars seemed brighter and more magnificent than they had ever seemed on Earth. But at least on Earth they had been regarded as a challenge. Men had stared up and vowed to reach those distant worlds: they had launched themselves into space, braving its hazards and accepting the demands their explorations made on them. Men had been ambitious then.

Here on Elysium the challenge was ignored. Across the generations ambition had died. This was a planet of warmth and contentment, and today there were few who wished to reach any further.

There were even fewer who were interested in the prospects of a return journey that they would not live to finish. Only a handful of social misfits listened to Matthew’s pleas.

Thinking of his vain plans, he noticed Raymond in the distance, and beckoned him over. Raymond was a tall, middle-aged man with dark features, creased by lines of impatience. He walked with an aggressive briskness that was uncommon on this world. His gestures were curt and decisive. When he reached Matthew, he gave him a sort of mock salute and stood looking down at the older man with an air of exasperation that meant nothing—it was the expression he always wore.

Matthew said: “How are things going? I haven’t been over for a day or two.”

“I know that,” was the brusque response. “And you won’t find much change when you do come.”

“That hold-up over materials was settled, though, wasn’t it?”

“After a fashion. But it’s never really been a question of materials. Elysium is rich enough in mineral wealth. It’s the men themselves. They’re losing interest again.”

Matthew began to push himself up from his chair, then slumped back again. He said:

“But that new group seemed quite keen at first.”

“They always do,” said Raymond sardonically, “at first. Then they began to feel there’s no point in the whole thing; They start asking questions about why we want to send a ship back to Earth, and what good it will do anybody.”

“But that has all been explained and given official sanction by the Community Delegates.”

Raymond shrugged. “It’s being said that the Delegates only do it to humour you.”

“To humour me?”

“Of all the men and women who would come with you on the voyage,” said Raymond, “you would be the only one to reach the destination.”

“We’ve gone into all that before.”

“And quite apart from that,” the other went on, “there’s a very strong body of opinion that holds there isn’t any destination. There are experts who say that Earth is only a myth—a myth you’ve talked yourself into believing.

Matthew gave vent to a wild splutter of indignation. The presumptuousness of these idlers, these lotus-eaters, was becoming quite fantastic.

And yet he had had ample warning of this tendency in recent times. In the past, long ago, he had been respected by historians and scholars. They had come to him to check their facts. He had actually lived through the past ages, and was therefore a source of first-hand information. He could verify things, explain details that baffled the historians. Once or twice, though, they had caught him out in trivial errors. No one man could know everything that had happened at any given time, even if he had been alive then; but these mistakes made one or two experts say that Matthew was not reliable. He was accused of inventing things. His stories of the conquest of the far reaches of space, which had once been regarded as accurate history, came to be viewed with reserve. Gradually it was murmured that he was a maker of fables rather than a reliable chronicler. His reminiscences of life on Earth took on the character of a mythology. Historians who had worked along certain theories and then had them denied by Matthew, openly stated that Matthew was wrong. If he verified their findings, they quoted him. If he contradicted them, they shook their heads and said that he didn’t know what he was talking about. They were men of great learning, and who was this relic of the past that he should dare to question their knowledge?

There came the time when few referred to Matthew at all. They said his memory wandered. They said he was at best inaccurate and feeble-minded, and at worst a teller of tall stories.

But it was not true. Matthew remembered all right: clearly and nostalgically across the centuries, he remembered everything.

* * * *

He remembered his friend Philipson, a biologist at a time when physicists were the great lords of the scientific world. Philipson professed to have no great interest in the conquest of space, but he pointed out one of the major problems that would confront the explorers when the time came.

“It’s all right to talk of new power drives that will send a ship to our neighbouring planets in a matter of months,” he said many times to Matthew; “even at the greatest speed that may be achieved in that way, how long is it going to take to reach the stars? Men will die of old age before they get there. The ships may survive—it may even be possible to develop fuel that will carry them on across the years—but there won’t be anyone left on board to pilot them.”

And when he had said that, he would chuckle and prophesy that one fine day even the interplanetary and interstellar flight technicians would be acknowledging the importance of a biologist’s work.

Philipson was working on the prolongation of human life. In moments of great enthusiasm, carried away by his obsession, he would declare that the secrets of immortality were within his grasp.

Matthew was several years younger than his friend. He was not a scientist. His interests lay in other directions. He looked forward to a career in the Interplanetary Development Corporation—a financial career. Already his father’s firm of brokers was expanding as the first stages of Martian colonisation and development took place. There were setbacks—a series of disasters to some of the early space ships, for example—but this was a time when a man with influence in the City used that influence to get his sons or relatives into the I.D.C. Matthew’s father had such influence, and Matthew had a head for figures.

“This is going to be something big,” said his father. “We won’t live to see the really colossal profits that will come as the I.D.C. spreads wider and wider, but at least we’ll be comfortable, and more than comfortable, for the rest of our lives.”

We won’t live to see the really colossal profits.... Comfortable for the rest of our lives....

The words echoed in Matthew’s mind. He could not help feeling a certain nagging resentment. He would be one of those who laid the foundations for a future generation that would reap huge profits. Life was too short. He wanted to live a long way into the future: he was ambitious, and he wanted time to get to the top, time to watch men going out to the stars, time to indulge in the pleasures that power and riches might bring.

If only that crank Philipson could strike lucky, and add a couple of hundred years to his life span! Never mind about immortality, a dream with many of the disturbing implications of a dream: two hundred years would do to be going on with.

But although he saw Philipson regularly and listened to his wilder theories over a period of three years in his early twenties, Matthew did not really pay a great deal of attention to what was said. He did not really believe in the possibility of any substantial extension of human life. Ever since the grafting and rejuvenation experiments of the mid-century, there had been steady progress in combatting the worst manifestations of old ages, but a man who lived to be more than a hundred was still a rarity. Senility was less obvious than it had once been, but death was not to be held back.

And then there came that day when, as though for the first time, Matthew took a long look at his friend Philipson and said:

“You’re looking very well. You look as though you’ve been on a long holiday or something.”

The other flushed. “Hard work, not holidays,” he said with a nervous laugh, and went on to chatter about some recent research in genetics that had attracted his attention.

Matthew did not listen. He studied the brightness of Philipson’s restless eyes, and his clear skin. The unhealthy pallor that had once been there was gone. Philipson did not appear to have aged at all in the last year or two. He might have been the same age as Matthew himself. Matthew was, he realized with shock and dawning suspicion, catching up with Philipson.

He suddenly interrupted the flow of technical jargon. He said harshly:

“Philipson, you’ve found what you were after.”

“Mm?” The off-handed reply was unconvincing.

“I believe you’ve found a serum—a process—something—that will give you immortality.”

“Oh, nothing like immortality,” Philipson rashly blurted out.

“Then a prolongation of life, at least. A renewal. That’s it, isn’t it?” Matthew demanded.

“My experiments have had a certain amount of success. But it’s early. It’s too soon to say. I mean....”

“You mean that you’re pretty certain you’ve done it, and in fact you’re confident enough to experiment on yourself.”

“Got to use some sort of guinea-pig,” said Philipson uneasily.

“Why not me?”

The two men stared at one another. Philipson backed away, resting his right hand on a drawer in a bench and tugging it slightly open.

Matthew went on remorselessly: “Why haven’t you published your results? Why are you keeping it all to yourself? You want to live on while others die: you want to take advantage of the rest of the human race.”

Philipson shook his head. “You don’t understand.”

“You’d better try to make me understand then.”

There was a long silence. A strange feeling of fear and apprehension seemed to enter into the untidy laboratory.

Matthew was suddenly possessed by the conviction that he had only to reach out and grasp a hundred years, two hundred years of the future: they were within reach, and he was not going to be cheated of them.

At last Philipson said: “There is not yet room enough in the universe. Already Earth is overcrowded, and although Mars is admirably suited to industrial development and can supply Earth with needed raw materials, it will not provide a home for ordinary people. With the conquest of disease the growth of population has been more rapid than ever before, and there has been no major war for thirty years. Unless we can find homes on the other planets for our people—and at present there is no indication that we shall be able to adapt ourselves very easily to the inimical conditions on most of the other planets in this solar system—we are going to face famine in a very short time. Yet you think, knowing all this, that I ought to try to prolong the life of every other human being? If the birth rate stays the same, can’t you imagine what the situation will be like? Instead of dying off and making at least a little room for the newcomers, old people will go on living. They won’t grow old. The Earth will never sustain them all.”

He spoke with conviction. But for Matthew it was not good enough. It might be true that the world would soon be overcrowded if human life were prolonged. But that didn’t mean that he, Matthew, was prepared to give up his longing for the future. He said:

“What do you propose to do, then? You can’t keep it to yourself.”

“My idea is that a small group of brilliant men and women might take advantage of the discovery, without letting the rest of the world know at first. Think of the advantages to everyone else! A man who can afford to spend a hundred years on, say, one piece of research, is going to be able to extend immeasurably the frontiers of knowledge. And in due course, when men have perfected a ship that will reach out to the other star systems, injections can be given to volunteers who will go along with that ship. The journey may take hundreds of years—but they will be alive at the end of it. And somewhere in all the galaxies must be many more planets on which the men of our race can be comfortable. When they have been discovered, longevity can be granted to everybody. Until then, it is best kept secret, shared by a few chosen beings only.”

“And did you propose,” asked Matthew shakily, “to include me in your choice?”

Philipson hesitated, then said: “No.”

“As an old friend, I should have thought—”

“We are friends,” Philipson said, “but that doesn’t mean I’m blind to your defects, Matthew. You are one of those who search for personal power. I think you might be dangerous. A man who lives beyond the normal span has too much time in which to work mischief. An undying dictator—even an undying financial juggler, holding the economic fate of millions in his hands—is a menace to the future of the race.”

Matthew said: “I intend to share in this experiment. You’ve no right to deny me this gift. After all the encouragement I’ve given you—”

“It’s no use trying to threaten me,” cried Philipson.

Matthew advanced towards him. Philipson leaned back against the bench, tugged at the drawer, and drew out a small electronic revolver. It sat in his hand like a little, gleaming cigarette lighter.

Matthew stopped.

“How much would you want?” he asked.

“The secret is not for sale.”

“I’m not asking for any secrets. Just give me an injection, or whatever it is. Immortality—”

“Not immortality,” snapped Philipson with childish irritation. “An extension of life, yes, but not immortality: not under the conditions that exist on Earth, anyway.”

“You mean that somewhere else—perhaps in a different atmosphere, on a different planet...?”

Philipson, once more regarding Matthew as the audience in whom he had so often confided, could not resist going on. He said:

“At the beginning of the twentieth century it was already surmised that there was a connection between the duration of life and the speed of intestinal putrefaction. The simpler theorists just advocated special diets, and every faddist in the world added his own pet idea. But basically the idea is obviously sound. Provided the conditions proper to it are maintained, there’s no reason why a living organism should not continue to live. Short of violent death or the onset of disease, every being is potentially immortal. But life is a matter of constant friction. The tissues wear away...but given optimum conditions, they renew themselves. The mid-century experiments in longevity revolved around the possibility of grafting tissue from such creatures as lizards, but they were only temporary expedients. I have always worked on the assumption that the problem would have to be tackled from inside—literally inside the human body.

“Metchnikoff made great play with the theory that the bacteria of putrefaction should be suppressed by another set of microbes. Complete sterilisation is not possible—in fact, it would mean eventual death. The body needs certain bacilli. I have been working all these years on the preparation of cultures that will fight against all the influences of putrefaction and at the same time carry on a steady renewal of the frailer human tissues.”

Matthew said: “And you’ve succeeded, haven’t you?”

“I believe so. But the atmosphere of our planet is a strongly destructive force. You know how coastlines are eroded: you’ve seen how wood can be rubbed away with sandpaper. The human frame is like that: quite apart from the sharper action of bacteria and disease, there is the constant erosion and weakening caused by the mere act of living and breathing. My discovery will prolong life: but I believe we may one day find planets on which the optimum conditions prevail. There will be none of this physical friction. On such a planet, a man who had been injected with this culture might be almost immortal. Only if he came back to Earth would he once more start—though slowly—to wear away.”

And as his hand relaxed, letting the electronic revolver sag, Matthew struck at him suddenly, knocking him sideways. When he recovered his balance, Matthew was holding the gun.

Matthew said: “Now. Come on. I’m not asking much. I just want to take part in your experiment. You can regard me as guinea-pig. I’m willing to take a chance.”

Philipson had turned pale. He tried to stammer an appeal, but Matthew was prepared to waste no more time. He barked a peremptory command, and in another minute Philipson was filling a long hypodermic from a small grey culture bottle.

“And no funny business,” said Matthew.

Philipson shook his head sadly. He looked at the syringe that he had just laid gently on the bench, and then at Matthew.

“No,” he said with sudden violence. “You are not worth it. You’re not.”

And he jumped.

They crashed against the bench. There was a tinkle of glass and a pungent smell.

Matthew struck Philipson on the side of the head and sent him reeling. Philipson came back with a furious attack that took Matthew’s breath away. He hadn’t realised the man had it in him.

But Philipson was wasting his breath; shouting, “You’re not fit to go on, even as a guinea-pig. I won’t let you.”

It was not with any deliberately murderous intent that Matthew fired the gun. His hand had closed about it instinctively and suddenly his thumb found the small plunger. Trying to force Philipson away from him, he was conscious of nothing but a blur of anger and the urgency of his need to get hold of that hypodermic, in which lay the seeds of all that the future could hold for him.

He pressed the plunger, and the searing cartridge exploded into white light in Philipson’s head. There was a great glow about him, and as he fell backwards a flame licked up ravenously from the end of the bench.

Matthew grabbed the syringe. He plunged the needle into the vein on his left forearm, feeling a strange heat racing up his arm, more agonising than the heat of the flames that raced along the bench and engulfed a whole shelf in a matter of seconds.

He dropped the gun into his pocket and ran for the door.

The laboratory had been transformed into a furnace. Philipson and all the things that Philipson had been working on were utterly consumed. The telecasts that evening paid tribute to a great but little appreciated scientist, and one of the learned societies a month later staged a memorial discussion of various aspects of his work.

Nothing was said about longevity and immortality that wasn’t rather mocking. Philipson’s main interest had not been taken very seriously by his colleagues. They thought his line of approach had been doomed to frustration.

And Matthew at a later date destroyed the gun, after being congratulated by the police on his narrow escape and thanked for the assistance he had given them in their routine inquiries.

A year or so later, wishing to make still further advances in his social position and also within the Corporation itself, he married the wealthy and beautiful daughter of one of the directors.

* * * *

At first it was a successful marriage from the worldly point of view. He and his wife were both selfish, and both acknowledged the fact, so that they struck a working compromise and lived fairly happily together for a time.

For a time: for some years....

Then he noticed that she was looking at him as he had once, speculatively and incredulously, looked at Philipson.

Her face was becoming lined while his remained smooth. She grew middle-aged and shrewish while he stayed young. She began to hate him, her envy turning her speech sour, and she accused him of having affairs with other women. When she became really viciously abusive, he admitted that she was right: he turned on her and scoffed at her fading charms, and boasted of his other conquests. He was still young and vigorous, and by now he was wealthy.

In her anger she did what he ought to have guessed she would do. Her father was dead, but two of her brothers served on the board of directors of the I.D.C., and she went to them with her bitter complaints. They had so far regarded Matthew as being merely a remarkably healthy man who was lucky or intelligent enough to keep in splendid physical condition. “Just what a pack of unobservant men would think!” jeered their sister. Now they studied him, and were staggered by what they saw. They had not realised how many years had gone by since Matthew had married: they had not realised how old he was, and now they faced up to the fact that no man of his age had any natural right to have such a fresh, almost boyish appearance. It was so unnatural as to be frightening.

There were questions. The telecast newsmen got on to the story. Portable cameras whirred in Matthew’s face as he came to the I.D.C. translucent perslite tower for a board meeting,

Who was this man who did not grow old? A scared, jealous muttering spread through the city and reached out into the rest of the country. Wild rumours circulated. An immortal man? Even in these enlightened times there were those who could talk fearfully of pacts with the devil.

In the face of the inquiries of his directors and the growing clamour that the telecast scaremongers were whipping up, Matthew lost patience. The truth would have to come out sooner or later. He told it now. He told the truth to his unbelieving, angry directors, and then went on to an interview, which was televised all over the country.

He was called a liar. He was called a freak. He was denounced by public speakers, scientists, and ministers of religion. A fanatic tried to shoot him. Somebody else demanded an investigation into the death of Philipson all those years ago.

But whatever suspicions might attach to the circumstances of Philipson’s death, no evidence remained today. Matthew’s story remained unshaken. In the original inquiry he had said nothing about the injection he had received, because, he now said, he had not known if it would work

He was Philipson’s friend, and had offered to act as Philipson’s guinea-pig. At the time he had been sceptical. If he had told the full story at the inquest, he would have been laughed at. Now, however, he knew that Philipson had been right. If only poor Philipson had lived, what a boon he could have bestowed on mankind!

He had always realised that the man in the street would resent the existence of someone else with a long life span, but he had not anticipated quite such jealousy and bitterness as he now had to endure. Life was almost intolerable. Although he was taken up by some of the fashionable hostesses, and asked to give innumerable interviews this phase did not last; only resentment and suspicion were left.

He was forced to resign from the I.D.C. and seek a quieter life in the country. There, boredom crept up on him. The local inhabitants soon discovered who he was, and shunned him or peered at him with dark, superstitious hostility. Occasionally scientists would travel out to see him, trying to sift his memories in the hope that he could give them some clue as to Philipson’s work so that they could pursue it and find the answer. But what had he known of the technicalities? Even if he had listened more carefully to Philipson, he would not have understood what he heard.

In the middle of the first interplanetary war with Martian colonists, he tried to join up, giving his age as twenty-five. But he was recognised, and scoffed at. His real age, incredible as it was, was known. It was absurd that any attention should be paid to such a conventional point, when he was obviously fit for service: but it soon came home to him that they did not want him—they did not trust him. He was almost an outcast, thrust away from the rest of the human race.

He considered marrying again at one time, then visualised the same weary process taking place again. His wife would grow old and unattractive and would suffer untold miseries as she saw him remaining young.

Monotony weighed down on him. He had wanted to be a great man, and the world would not let him be one. He was feared. He was a freak. Filled with confused ambitions, he had no outlet for all his energies and forceful impulses.

It was not until he was approaching the end of his second century that escape came.

On that sunny morning in June that he would never forget, a government helicar dropped swiftly from the skies outside his house, and an elderly man in grey uniform came up to the door. He studied Matthew’s face with the expression of faint wonderment that everyone wore at such times.

Indoors, he got to the point at once.

“I have come to ask if you are willing to work for us. There is a great challenge in the heavens, and the time has come when we must answer it.”

Matthew gazed at him stupidly for a moment. He had sunk into a dull, slumberous existence, and could not respond quickly. He said at length:

“I don’t quite get you.”

The other man folded his arms. “It is simple enough. We are ready to send out a ship to the stars.”

“You mean—”

“I mean that we are going to go beyond the confines of our own solar system. It has taken us a long time to reach this stage. Now we are ready. But there are snags. Serious difficulties, in fact.”

Memory stirred. Matthew remembered old conversations old dreams. He said:

“It will take a long time to get there?”

“Several generations will live and die on the ship in the course of the voyage. We have men and women who are prepared to set out in full awareness of that fact. But in addition to them we felt that we should take a chance—we should run the risk of asking you to go also, in the hope that you would survive the whole journey.”

There was no hesitation in Matthew’s mind. He said: “I’ll go.”

“It is a great hazard. You may all perish within a very short time. If you do survive, and reach the nearest star systems, none of the people who have set out will ever come home: they will all have died, with the exception of yourself. There is every chance that under such conditions you will all go mad.”

“But the attempt has to be made,” said Matthew softly. “The stars have been there, waiting for us, for a long time. It’s a challenge we can’t refuse.”

An appreciative smile crossed the other’s face. He held out his hand. They shook hands, and as the visitor rose to go he said: “I was doubtful of you when I came here. Now I feel confident. You are one man who must go on this enterprise.”

Matthew nodded. “I shall go.”

* * * *

And here, after the weary years in space, when children had been born and grown old and died, after adventures on fantastic worlds with generations now dead and forgotten, he was; here he was on Elysium, an old man whose knowledge was regarded as nonsense, whose factual narratives were called fables. An old man in his physical prime but mentally weary, wanting one thing and one thing only—to go home, no matter how long it might take.