The Past Through Tomorrow (121 page)

“Service to you, sir. So you are the chief biologist—there was a time when you could have done a service to the whole human race. Think of it, sir—think how different things could have been. But, happily, the human race was able to worry out the secret of extending life without the aid of the Howard Families.”

Hardy looked vexed. “What do you mean, sir? Do you mean to say that you are still laboring under the delusion that we had some miraculous secret to impart, if we chose?”

Rodney shrugged and spread his hands. “Really, now, there is no need to keep up the pretense, is there? Your results have been duplicated, independently.”

Captain King cut in. “Just a moment—Ralph Schultz, is the Federation still under the impression that there is some ‘secret’ to our long lives? Didn’t you tell them?”

Schultz was looking bewildered. “Uh—this is ridiculous. The subject hardly came up. They themselves had achieved controlled longevity; they were no longer interested in us in that respect. It is true that there still existed a belief that our long lives derived from manipulation rather than from heredity, but I corrected that impression.”

“Apparently not very thoroughly, from what Miles Rodney has just said.”

“Apparently not. I did not spend much effort on it; it was beating a dead dog. The Howard Families and their long lives are no longer an issue on Earth. Interest, both public and official, is centered on the fact that we have accomplished a successful interstellar jump.”

“I can confirm that,” agreed Miles Rodney. “Every official, every news service, every citizen, every scientist in the system is waiting with utmost eagerness the arrival of the
New Frontiers
. It’s the greatest, most sensational thing that has happened since the first trip to the Moon. You are famous, gentlemen—all of you.”

Lazarus pulled Zaccur Barstow aside and whispered to him. Barstow looked perturbed, then nodded thoughtfully. “Captain—” Barstow said to King.

“Yes, Zack?”

“I suggest that we ask our guest to excuse us while we receive Ralph Schultz’ report.”

“Why?”

Barstow glanced at Rodney. “I think we will be better prepared to discuss matters if we are briefed by our own representative.”

King turned to Rodney. “Will you excuse us, sir?”

Lazarus broke in. “Never mind, Skipper. Zack means well but he’s too polite. Might as well let Comrade Rodney stick around and we’ll lay it on the line. Tell me this, Miles; what proof have you got that you and your pals have figured out a way to live as long as we do?”

“Proof?” Rodney seemed dumbfounded. “Why do you ask—Whom am I addressing? Who are you, sir?”

Ralph Schultz intervened. “Sorry—I didn’t get a chance to finish the introductions. Miles Rodney, this is Lazarus Long, the Senior.”

“Service. ‘The Senior’ what?”

“He just means ‘The Senior,’ period,” answered Lazarus. “I’m the oldest Member. Otherwise I’m a private citizen.”

“The oldest one of the Howard Families! Why—why, you must be the oldest man alive—think of that!”

“You think about it,” retorted Lazarus. “I quit worrying about it a couple o’ centuries ago. How about answering my question?”

“But I can’t help being impressed. You make me feel like an infant—and I’m not a young man myself; I’ll be a hundred and five this coming June.”

“If you can prove that’s your age, you can answer my question. I’d say you were about forty. How about it?”

“Well, dear me, I hardly expected to be interrogated on this point. Do you wish to see my identity card?”

“Are you kidding? I’ve had fifty-odd identity cards in my time, all with phony birth dates. What else can you offer?”

“Just a minute, Lazarus,” put in Captain King. “What is the purpose of your question?”

Lazarus Long turned away from Rodney. “It’s like this, Skipper—we hightailed it out of the Solar System to save our necks, because the rest of the yokels thought we had invented some way to live forever and proposed to squeeze it out of us if they had to kill every one of us. Now everything is sweetness and light—so they say. But it seems mighty funny that the bird they send up to smoke the pipe of peace with us should still be convinced that we have that so-called secret.

“It got me to wondering.

“Suppose they hadn’t figured out a way to keep from dying from old age but were still clinging to the idea that we had? What better way to keep us calmed down and unsuspicious than to tell us they had until they could get us where they wanted us in order to put the question to us again?”

Rodney snorted. “A preposterous idea! Captain, I don’t think I’m called on to put up with this.”

Lazarus stared coldly. “It was preposterous the first time, bub—but it happened. The burnt child is likely to be skittish.”

“Just a moment, both of you,” ordered King. “Ralph, how about it? Could you have been taken in by a put-up job?”

Schultz thought about it, painfully. “I don’t think so.” He paused. “It’s rather difficult to say. I couldn’t tell from appearance of course, any more than our own Members could be picked out from a crowd of normal persons.”

“But you are a psychologist. Surely you could have detected indications of fraud, if there had been one.”

“I may be a psychologist, but I’m not a miracle man and I’m not telepathic. I wasn’t looking for fraud.” He grinned sheepishly. “There was another factor. I was so excited over being home that I was not in the best emotional condition to note discrepancies, if there were any.”

“Then you aren’t sure?”

“No. I am emotionally convinced that Miles Rodney is telling the truth—”

“I am!”

“—and I believe that a few questions could clear the matter up. He claims to be one hundred and five years old. We can test that.”

“I see,” agreed King. “Hmm…you put the questions, Ralph?”

“Very well. You will permit, Miles Rodney?”

“Go ahead,” Rodney answered stiffly.

“You must have been about thirty years old when we left Earth, since we have been gone nearly seventy-five years, Earth time. Do you remember the event?”

“Quite clearly. I was a clerk in Novak Tower at the time, in the offices of the Administrator.”

Slayton Ford had remained in the background throughout the discussion, and had done nothing to call attention to himself. At Rodney’s answer he sat up. “Just a moment, Captain—”

“Eh? Yes?”

“Perhaps I can cut this short. You’ll pardon me, Ralph?” He turned to Terra’s representative. “Who am I?”

Rodney looked at him in some puzzlement. His expression changed from one of simple surprise at the odd question to complete and unbelieving bewilderment. “Why, you…you are
Administrator Ford!
”

“
ONE AT A TIME
! One at a time,” Captain King was saying. “Don’t everybody try to talk at once. Go on, Slayton; you have the floor. You know this man?” Ford looked Rodney over. “No, I can’t say that I do.”

“Then it
is
a frame up.” King turned to Rodney. “I suppose you recognized Ford from historical stereos—is that right?”

Rodney seemed about to burst. “No! I recognized him. He’s changed but I knew him. Mr. Administrator—look at me, please! Don’t you know me? I
worked
for you!”

“It seems fairly obvious that he doesn’t,” King said dryly.

Ford shook his head. “It doesn’t prove anything, one way or the other, Captain. There were over two thousand civil service employees in my office. Rodney might have been one of them. His face looks vaguely familiar, but so do most faces.”

“Captain—” Master Gordon Hardy was speaking. “If I can question Miles Rodney I might be able to give an opinion as to whether or not they actually have discovered anything new about the causes of old age and death.”

Rodney shook his head. “I am not a biologist. You could trip me up in no time. Captain King, I ask you to arrange my return to Earth as quickly as possible. I’ll not be subjected to any more of this. And let me add that I do not care a minim whether you and your—your pretty crew ever get back to civilization or not. I came here to help you, but I’m disgusted.” He stood up.

Slayton Ford went toward him. “Easy, Miles Rodney, please! Be patient. Put yourself in their place. You would be just as cautious if you had been through what they have been through.”

Rodney hesitated. “Mr. Administrator, what are
you
doing here?”

“It’s a long and complicated story. I’ll tell you later.”

“You are a member of the Howard Families—you must be. That accounts for a lot of odd things.”

Ford shook his head. “No, Miles Rodney, I am not. Later, please—I’ll explain it. You worked for me once—when?”

“From 2109 until you, uh, disappeared.”

“What was your job?”

“At the time of the crisis of 2113 I was an assistant correlation clerk in the Division of Economic Statistics, Control Section.”

“Who was your section chief?”

“Leslie Waldron.”

“Old Waldron, eh? What was the color of his hair?”

“His hair? The Walrus was bald as an egg.”

Lazarus whispered to Zaccur Barstow, “Looks like I was off base, Zack.”

“Wait a moment,” Barstow whispered back. “It still could be thorough preparation—they may have known that Ford escaped with us.”

Ford was continuing, “What was
The Sacred Cow
?”

“
The Sacred
—Chief, you weren’t even supposed to know that there was such a publication!”

“Give my intelligence staff credit for some activity, at least,” Ford said dryly. “I got my copy every week.”

“But what was it?” demanded Lazarus.

Rodney answered, “An office comic and gossip sheet that was passed from hand to hand.”

“Devoted to ribbing the bosses,” Ford added, “especially me.” He put an arm around Rodney’s shoulders. “Friends, there is no doubt about it. Miles and I were fellow workers.”

“I still want to find out about the new rejuvenation process,” insisted Master Hardy some time later.

“I think we all do,” agreed King. He reached out and refilled their guest’s wine glass. “Will you tell us about it, sir?”

“I’ll try,” Miles Rodney answered, “though I must ask Master Hardy to bear with me. It’s not one process, but several—one basic process and several dozen others, some of them purely cosmetic, especially for women. Nor is the basic process truly a rejuvenation process. You can arrest the progress of old age, but you can’t reverse it to any significant degree—you can’t turn a senile old man into a boy.”

“Yes, yes,” agreed Hardy. “Naturally—but what is the basic process?”

“It consists largely in replacing the entire blood tissue in an old person with new, young blood. Old age, so they tell me, is primarily a matter of the progressive accumulation of the waste poisons of metabolism. The blood is supposed to carry them away, but presently the blood gets so clogged with the poisons that the scavenging process doesn’t take place properly. Is that right, Doctor Hardy?”

“That’s an odd way of putting it, but—”

“I told you I was no biotechnician.”

“—essentially correct. It’s a matter of diffusion pressure deficit—the d.p.d. on the blood side of a cell wall must be such as to maintain a fairly sharp gradient or there will occur progressive autointoxication of the individual cells. But I must say that I feel somewhat disappointed, Miles Rodney. The basic idea of holding off death by insuring proper scavenging of waste products is not new—I have a bit of chicken heart which has been alive for two and one half centuries through equivalent techniques. As to the use of young blood—yes, that will work. I’ve kept experimental animals alive by such blood donations to about twice their normal span.” He stopped and looked troubled.

“Yes, Doctor Hardy?”

Hardy chewed his lip. “I gave up that line of research. I found it necessary to have several young donors in order to keep one beneficiary from growing any older. There was a small, but measurable, unfavorable effect on each of the donors. Racially it was self-defeating; there would never be enough donors to go around. Am I to understand, sir that this method is thereby limited to a small, select part of the population?”

“Oh, no! I did not make myself clear, Master Hardy. There are no donors.”

“Huh?”

“New blood, enough for everybody, grown outside the body—the Public Health and Longevity Service can provide any amount of it, any type.”

Hardy looked startled. “To think we came so close…so that’s it.” He paused, then went on. “We tried tissue culture of bone marrow
in vitro
. We should have persisted.”

“Don’t feel badly about it. Billions of credits and tens of thousands of technicians engaged in this project before there were any significant results. I’m told that the mass of accumulated art in this field represents more effort than even the techniques of atomic engineering.” Rodney smiled. “You see, they
had
to get some results; it was politically necessary—so there was an all-out effort.” Rodney turned to Ford. “When the news about the escape of the Howard Families reached the public, Chief, your precious successor had to be protected from the mobs.”

Hardy persisted with questions about subsidiary techniques—tooth budding, growth inhibiting, hormone therapy, many others—until King came to Rodney’s rescue by pointing out that the prime purpose of the visit was to arrange details of the return of the Families to Earth.

Rodney nodded. “I think we should get down to business. As I understand it, Captain, a large proportion of your people are now in reduced-temperature somnolence?”

(“Why can’t he say ‘cold-rest’?” Lazarus said to Libby.)

“Yes, that is so.”

“Then it would be no hardship on them to remain in that state for a time.”

“Eh? Why do you say that, sir?”

Rodney spread his hands. “The administration finds itself in a somewhat embarrassing position. To put it bluntly, there is a housing shortage. Absorbing one hundred and ten thousand displaced persons can’t be done overnight.”

Again King had to hush them. He then nodded to Zaccur Barstow, who addressed himself to Rodney. “I fail to see the problem, sir. What is the present population of the North American continent?”