Stewards of the Flame (8 page)

“What did you see, Jess?” asked Peter gravely.

“You know, I think,” Jesse told him. “If I’m wrong—if it wasn’t the burial of a body—then set me straight. I know it’s not my business, but under the circumstances—”

“You’re entitled to an explanation,” Peter agreed. “My guess is that you’ll find it easier to understand than our fellow-citizens would. I doubt if you’re a man to be unduly worried by the legalities of the situation.”

“Maybe, maybe not.” And yet, Jesse thought, he was ready to believe any explanation that would let him keep trusting these people. He was as drawn to them as ever. It would take more than he’d seen tonight to make him doubt them.

The boat carrying Carla had come alongside. It was too dark to see her face, but her voice was soft, steady. “Jesse, one of our friends died in her bed this morning. She was ninety-seven, and knew she was dying; she didn’t want the ambulance. Would you want to spend your last hours in this world’s Hospital?”

“No,” Jesse admitted. “But why bury her here instead of in a cemetery?”

“If the authorities knew she was dead, they’d wonder why no ambulance got to her,” Liz said.

“That figures. I suppose if one wasn’t called, her family and friends could be accused of some crime.” As he spoke, it dawned on Jesse that what elsewhere would be ironic exaggeration was here, no doubt, the literal truth.

The boats separated; people took up paddles. “You don’t have to keep so quiet now that I’m here,” he pointed out.

“It’s best to be on the safe side,” Peter said. “We can never be sure outsiders’ boats won’t pass by—we’re within range of the mining camp on Verge Island.”

Back at the Lodge, he and Peter changed to dry clothes in silence. When they returned to the common room, people had gathered as usual around the fire. But there was no music, no casual chatter. They all seemed to be waiting.

Jesse looked for Carla, then froze. Anne was sitting beside her. Anne had indeed brought the plane, then, and the body. . . .

“Forget your first meeting with Anne,” Carla said easily. “She couldn’t tell me in public, but she knew there’d be a way to get you out—a better way, one with a legal signature.”

Days beforehand? Jesse thought, puzzled. Well, if Carla was satisfied, he would be too; he returned Anne’s friendly greeting. Still, he felt something had been held back.

“Okay, people, we need to talk,” Peter said. “Jess needs to know the truth about this world. Now that he’s seen what went on tonight, that’s more urgent than ever.”

Carla said, “We were going to tell you tonight, anyway. It’s a hard thing to speak of casually. Bear with us.”

Jesse nodded. “All right. I’m listening.” The truth about the world? he thought, with foreboding. Not just what he’d seen of its dictatorial health laws?

“I’ll ask you a hard question, straight out, Jess,” Peter said in a tone uncharacteristically serious. “What’s the worst thing you can imagine happening to you, that really could happen? I don’t mean some freak accident. What do you really fear about your own eventual end?”

Jesse froze. This was a taboo subject in any society he had ever known. You simply did not ask that question. Everybody already knew the answer to it, anyway.

“Don’t back away from it, Jesse,” Carla said. “We are not going to be shocked by what you say.”

All right, they wanted honesty. “Old age,” he confessed. “Outliving my capabilities. Being helpless, dependent on strangers, even on—” He broke off, unable to carry it through.

“On machines,” Bernie finished for him. “Or being mentally incapacitated, senile. Physical dependence might be tolerable, but disintegration of the mind’s harder to contemplate.”

Jesse bent his head. “Yes,” he agreed. He was older than they were; he had not supposed they’d even ventured to think about it yet. Still, the friend they’d buried had been elderly. “Do you think I’d question your not calling an ambulance for an old woman?” he asked. “Stop worrying—you don’t need to justify yourselves to me.”

“The issue goes deeper than that,” Kwame said. “Earlier, we mentioned shared fear—”

“And we have to explain the reasons for it,” Ingrid said. “Jesse, you may have to live out your life here. The Hospital provides custodial care. Does the idea frighten you?”

They were all looking at him very intently, and he perceived that he was being tested in some obscure way. With them, there was no end to the surprises. The only clear thing was that they did not like timidity—not in any form whatsoever. If you shrank from something, then that was the very thing they contrived to make you do.

“Yes, I fear that,” he repeated forthrightly. “I guess we all hope to go quickly when our time comes. But it doesn’t happen often nowadays, after all—not as it used to before all fatal disease except aging became curable. I’m not likely to have much choice.”

“On some worlds I hear they do,” Nathan said pointedly.

“Assisted suicide, you mean? Yes, it’s legal on Earth, in fact. But—” Jesse paused, guessing now why they’d hidden the death and hesitant to risk offending. They sat silent, not letting him off the hook. Hell, he thought, if anyone takes this as an insult, they asked for it! “It’s not my business to judge others,” he said, “but that’s not the choice I’d make for myself. It’s always struck me as cheating, somehow. I mean, where does it stop and start, if you believe in that? Where do you draw the line? Certainly not at mere inability to function well; plenty of disabled people stick it out and find life worthwhile. Not at pain—in my book, that’s simple cowardice. So where, then?”

“You can’t say,” Ingrid agreed. “So what will you do when you are old and feel your time has come, if you don’t believe in cheating?”

“Well,” said Jesse, “if you want frankness on this subject, I’ll do what people who don’t talk about it do. They refrain from doing anything. They don’t try to prolong the natural process. That’s how my great-granddad went, and nobody questioned it, and what he didn’t tell the doctors was left unsaid.” God, he thought, does it have to be spelled out for them? Are they all too young to have figured it out for themselves?

But they
had
figured it out—they had, perhaps, acted on that basis. Were they looking to him for validation?

“In other words,” said Carla, “you believe there are times not to seek treatment.”

“Sure I do. I’d even go so far as to refuse advised treatment—” He broke off, aghast at the implications of what he was saying. He knew where they were leading him, now.

“You’d refuse just as you refused treatment for alcoholism,” Peter agreed. “But that’s an option we don’t have here.”

“Oh, God,” Jesse said. “You’re saying it wasn’t a matter of whether to call the ambulance. Your friend had to be hidden from one already after her.” It had become all too clear. The city’s ambulances, after all, had police powers.

“She was due for a mandatory checkup,” Anne said, “and this time, she’d have been held permanently. Even if her condition had stabilized.”

“You mean everyone—everyone on this world who’s not killed outright—dies slowly in that damned hospital, hooked to machines?” Jesse persisted. “You all know that’s what you’re facing? It’s not even a matter of odds?”

“I wish that were what we meant,” Bernie said. There was an uneasy silence. Then, with irony, he went on, “But you see, we have the galaxy’s finest medical facility in this colony—”

“So I’ve been told. That’s not quite how I’d describe it.”

“And,” Kwame declared, “the galaxy’s finest medical facility can’t let people die.”

“Till they’ve disintegrated from old age, you mean.” God. It might take years, with unlimited forced treatment. . . .

“No, Jesse. It can’t let them die at all. At least not according to the Meds’ criteria.”

He stared at Kwame. “I guess I don’t quite see.”

“You wouldn’t,” Carla said gently, “and yet you have to, in order to live here even for a while. It’s better that you hear the facts from us than by chance, from strangers. You’re not going to like what you hear.”

Jesse was silent.

“Our medical facility,” Bernie told him, “really is an advanced one. From the technological standpoint it’s superb. It has developed sophisticated techniques not common elsewhere, and as you know, its funds are unlimited. The law says everyone must be treated for everything. So you see, bodies are just—maintained. Indefinitely.”

“Even after they’re brain-dead?” Jesse asked in a low voice.

“Yes—like bodies from which organs for transplant were taken, back in the days before cloned organs were perfected. Sometimes there’s minimal brain stem activity, but no possibility of subconscious mental functioning.”

“Surely the goal must be to restore the mind, or perhaps someday transplant it.”

“No. We’re not talking about coma. People in comas have an interior life, some form of consciousness, whether or not they show evidence of it. But even in principle, technology can’t restore or transplant a mind that no longer physically exists.”

“The law holds that personhood resides in mere flesh,” Liz said. “The general public perceives maintenance as eternal life. But though some religions once held that only if a soul were still present could bodily functions be made to continue, that can hardly be said now that our technology’s so advanced.”

“The Meds are fully aware that they’re dealing with bodies that would be pronounced dead on any other world,” Ingrid added. “And they aren’t maintaining them for religious reasons. On the contrary, they reject any concept of soul. To them the body alone is central, the definition of human life and therefore sacred. So the aim is to preserve its biological operation.”

“You’re right that I don’t like it,” Jesse said, knowing no way to strengthen the understatement. “But aren’t they going to run out of bed space someday?”

“Well, they don’t use regular rooms,” Carla said painfully. “The bodies are kept in stasis units, like those that were once used on slow starships. Besides the treatment floors there are maintenance floors. That’s a euphemism. The more accurate term is vaults. It’s another reason the Hospital is so large.”

“Carla,” Jesse protested. “You work in that place! You mean all the time, while you’re working there, you know these stasis vaults are around . . . and that someday—”

They all stared at him in clear dismay. Carla averted her face, stricken, suddenly, by feeling too deep for words. With chagrin he saw that his outburst had hurt her, touched some sensitive point that the others knew to avoid. He longed to comfort her, but he didn’t know what he could say.

“Let’s drop it,” Peter put in quickly. “We’ve got other issues to clear up now. For one thing, Jess, we need you to be aware that what you saw tonight was a crime involving all of us—even you, should it ever become known that you witnessed it. That’s why we gave you a chance to stay out. According to the law you’re now an accessory to murder.”

“Murder? All I got a glimpse of was a wrapped body, already dead. That’s all any of you saw, except maybe Anne.”

“But officially, you see, there is no death from natural causes here. This world has no cemeteries. To bury a body is
murder, unless it’s been in an accident and is not intact.”

“We could all be arrested for this? Imprisoned?” There were no prisons, Jesse recalled in horror. There was only the Hospital, which no doubt had methods for dealing with murderers. How could they have dared to take such a chance? The whole group—a formal ceremony—when a single boat with two men would have been sufficient. . . .

Peter nodded. He leaned across the table, held Jesse with his eyes. “Jess, I’d guess that at this point you’ve got some serious doubts in your mind about the wisdom of our legal system. Am I right?”

“Damned right,” Jesse declared grimly. “I wouldn’t ordinarily mix in colonial politics, but this—”

“This is not a political issue, except in the sense that any government, anywhere, seeks to reinforce and extend its own power. The Meds are in control because they’re supported by the public. No form of political action could help matters.”

“Why not? If enough others were willing to confront reality as you people do, the law or the constitution or whatever could be changed. You do have free elections—”

“And if we held one, even after raising the public’s consciousness, the vast majority would vote against change. People don’t want to die. They may not like to discuss the Vaults, still they see them as a form of immortality.”

“You don’t. I don’t.”

“But we are exceptions. Our particular group of friends is composed of exceptions. Would you have us impose our view on the public by force? Should we be trying to run the government in the name of what we think is good for people, instead of what the Meds think is good for them?”

Jesse shook his head. “That would be self-defeating,” he conceded, “if you’re for freedom. But there should be individual choice.”

“There should be, but again, people will not vote for that. Not on a matter of health policy.”

True enough, thought Jesse. He’d seen that himself, even before hearing of this far more disturbing issue. Not to be treated might be crime here; elsewhere, it was sin. People would not vote to permit what they’d been taught to feel guilty about, whatever they might do privately by themselves.

“Furthermore,” Kwame said, “they won’t vote to cut off their income. The people in the Vaults, you see, are legally alive. Their accounts in offworld banks still earn interest. That’s why we’re all relatively wealthy here—though we can’t touch the principal, we get steady income on money inherited from our forebears, generations back, starting with those who got rich on homesteaders’ diamond-mining rights. The government takes most of it in taxes, but it knows better than to confiscate it all. It won’t risk jeopardizing a system that not only pays the cost of preserving bodies, but fills the treasury as well.”

“I’d think the banks would have caught on by now,” Jesse protested.

“Banks don’t turn away depositors,” Ingrid pointed out, “not without official death certificates, which they’ll never receive from Undine.”

“The banks are heavily invested in the pharmaceutical companies,” Nathan added, “and for obvious reasons, Undine is the pharmaceutical companies’ model of heaven. No way will its policies ever be criticized.”