by C. L. Moore
In his ear a voice said, "He's one of the Old 'Uns." Mackenzie was using the inaudible sonor.
The man was old. Five hundred years old, Dyson thought, and suddenly was staggered by the concept. Five centuries had passed since this man was born, and he would go on without change while time flowed in flux without touching him.
What effect had immortality had upon this man?
For one thing, he had not been granted eternal youth. The half-time basic precluded that. Each year he grew older, but not quite as old as he had grown the preceding year. He was stooped—Dyson was to learn to recognize that particular stigmata of the Old 'Uns—and his body seemed to hang loosely from the rigid crossbars of his clavicle. His head, totally bald, thrust forward, and small eyes squinted inquisitively at Dyson. Nose and ears were grotesquely enlarged. Yet the man was merely old—not monstrous.
He said something Dyson could not understand. The sound held inquiry, and, at random, he said, "How do you do. My name is Dyson—"
"Shut up!" the sonor said urgently in his ear, and Mackenzie moved forward to intercept the old man, who was edging toward the escalator. Gibberish spewed from the interpreter's lips, and answering gibberish came from the Old 'Un. Occasionally Dyson could trace a familiar word, but the conversation made no sense to him.
The old man suddenly turned and scuttled off. Mackenzie shrugged.
"Hope he didn't catch your name. He probably didn't. There's a woman here with the same name—you said you had an ancestor in Cozy Nook, didn't you? We don't like the Old 'Uns to get any real concept of time. It unsettles them. If Mander should tell her—" He shook his head. "I guess he won't. Their memories aren't good at all. Let's find Fell."
He guided Dyson along one of the shaded walks. From porches bright eyes stared inquisitively at the pair. They passed workers, easily distinguishable from the Old 'Uns, and once or twice they passed one of the immortals. There could be no difficulty in recognizing them.
"What did Mander want?" Dyson asked.
"He wanted out," Mackenzie said briefly. "He's only a couple of hundred years old. Result of one of the freak radiation areas blowing off two centuries ago."
"Was he speaking English?"
"His form of it. You see—they lack empathy. They forget to notice how their words sound to the listener. They slur and mispronounce and in the end it takes a trained interpreter to understand them. Here's Fell's place." They mounted a porch, touched a sensitive plate, and the door opened. A young man appeared on the threshold.
"Oh, hello," he said, nodding to Mackenzie. "What's up?"
"Research business. How's Fell?"
The male nurse grimaced expressively. "Come in and find out. He's had breakfast, but—"
-
They went in. Fell was sitting by a fire, a hunched, huddled figure so bent over that only the top of his bald, white head was visible. The nurse retired, and Mackenzie, motioning Dyson to a chair, approached the Old 'Un.
"Professor Fell," he said softly. "Professor Fell. Professor Fell—"
It went on like that for a long time. Dyson's nerves tightened. He stared around the room, noticing the musty, choking atmosphere that not even a precipitron could eliminate. Here was none of the dignity of age. This foul-smelling, crouching old man huddled in his chair—
Fell lifted his head wearily and let it fall again. He spoke. The words were unintelligible.
"Professor Fell," Mackenzie said. "We've come for a talk. Professor—"
The figure roused again. It spoke.
Mackenzie used the sonor. "They understand English—some of 'em, anyway. Fell isn't like Mander. I'll have him talking soon."
But it took a long time, and Dyson had a throbbing headache before a grain of information was elicited from Fell. The Old 'Un had entirely lost the sense of selectivity. Or, rather, he had acquired his own arbitrary one. It was impossible to keep him from straying from the subject. Mackenzie did his best to act as a filter, but it was difficult.
And yet this old man had been alive five hundred years ago.
Dyson thought of a maté tube, pierced with a number of tiny holes at the end to admit the liquid. Fell was such a tube, stretching back into the unrecorded past—and he, too, was pierced with a thousand such holes through which the irrelevant came in painful, spasmic gushes. Someone had cooked an egg too long once—the price of wool was monstrous—some unknown politician was crooked—it must be arthritis, or else—that boy, what was his name? Tim, Tom, something like that—he'd been a genius-type, yes, but the poor boy—it isn't as warm now as it used to be—
Who? Don't bother me. I don't remember. I mean I don't want to be bothered. I'll tell you something, that reagent I made once—
It was all very dull; every schoolboy today knew about that reagent. But Mackenzie had to sit and listen to the interminable tale, though he mercifully spared Dyson most of it. Then, gradually, he edged Fell back to the subject.
Oh, the genius boy—he developed migraine. The specific didn't work long. Medicine's got a lot to learn. I remember once—
Dyson made a few notes.
What he most wanted were factors in the physiomental off-norm variations of the genius-types that had been produced at random by the Blowup. Fell had been a technician at that time, and an excellent research man. But all his notes, naturally, had vanished in the aftermath, when painfully rebuilt units of civilization kept tumbling down again, and the man's memory was leaky. Once Dyson made careful notes before he realized that Fell was giving him the formula for a Martini in chemical terminology.
Then Fell got irritable. He hammered weakly on the arm of his chair and demanded an eggnog, and Mackenzie, with a shrug, got up and let the male nurse take over. The interpreter went out into the filtered sunlight with Dyson.
-
"Any luck?"
"Some," Dyson said, referring to his notes. "It's a very spotty picture, though."
"You've got to allow for exaggerations. It's necessary to double-check their memories before you can believe 'em. Luckily, Fell isn't a pathological liar like some of the Old 'Uns. Want to look up the Hobson woman?"
Dyson nodded, and they strolled through the village. Dyson saw eyes watching him suspiciously, but most of the Old 'Uns were engrossed in their own affairs.
"Just what's the angle on your research?" Mackenzie asked. "Or is it confidential?"
"We're trying to increase mental capacity," Dyson explained. "You remember the I.Q. boys born after the Blowup. Or, rather, you've heard stories about them."
"Geniuses. Uh-huh. Some were crazy as bedbugs, weren't they?"
"Specialized. You've heard of Ahmed. He had a genius for military organization, but after he'd conquered, he didn't know how to reconstruct. He ended up very happy, in a private room playing with tin soldiers. Trouble is, Mackenzie, there's a natural check-and-balance. You can't increase intelligence artificially without loading the seesaw, at the wrong end. There are all kinds of angles. We want to build up mental capacity without weakening the brain-colloid in other directions. The brainier you are, the less stable you are, usually. You're too apt to get off on one particular hobby and ride it exclusively. I've heard stories about a man named Ferguson, born about three hundred years ago, who was pretty nearly a superman. But he got interested in chess, and pretty soon that was all he cared about."
"The Old 'Uns won't play games, especially competitive ones. But they're certainly not geniuses."
"None of them?"
Mackenzie said, "At the climacteric, their minds freeze into complete inelasticity. You can date them by that. Their coiffures, their clothes, their vocabularies—that's the label. I suppose senility is just the stopping point."
Dyson thought of half-time, and then stopped short as a musical note thrummed through the village. Almost instantly there was a crowd in the street. The Old 'Uns gathered, thronging closely and moving toward the sound. Mackenzie said, "It's a fire."
"You're not fireproofed?"
"Not agai
nst arson. Some fool probably decided he was being persecuted or ignored and started a fire to get even. Let's—" He was thrust away from Dyson by the mob. The musty odor became actively unpleasant. Dyson, pressed in on all sides by the grotesque, deformed Old 'Uns, told himself desperately that physical aspects were unimportant. But if only he were more used to deformity—
He pushed his way free and felt a hand on his arm. He looked down into the face of Mander, the Old 'Un he had met at the foot of the escalator that had brought him down to Cozy Nook. Mander was grimacing and beckoning furiously. Gibberish, urgent and unintelligible, poured from his lips. He tugged at Dyson's arm.
-
Dyson looked around for Mackenzie, but the interpreter was gone. He tried vainly to interrupt the Old 'Un; it was impossible. So he let himself be pulled a few yards away, and then stopped.
"Mackenzie," he said slowly. "Where is Mackenzie?"
Mander's face twisted as he strained to understand. Then his bald head bobbed in assent. He pointed, gripped Dyson's arm again, and started off. With some misgivings, Dyson let himself accompany the Old 'Un. Did the man really understand?
It wasn't far to their destination. Dyson didn't really expect Mackenzie to be in the antique wooden house he entered, but by this time he was curious. There was a darkened room, a sickening sweet odor that was patchouli, though Dyson did not identify it, and he was looking at a shapeless huddle in an armchair, a thing that stirred and lifted a face that had all run to fat, white violet-veined, with sacks of fat hanging loosely and bobbing when the tiny mouth opened and it spoke.
It was very dim in the room. The furniture, replicas of old things made to the Old 'Uns' description, loomed disturbingly. Through the patchouli came other odors, indescribable and entirely out of place in this clean, aseptic, modern age.
"Im'n-s'n," the fat woman said thinly.
Dyson said, "I beg your pardon. I'm looking for Mackenzie—"
Mander clutching painfully at his biceps, a bickering argument broke out between the two Old 'Uns. The woman shrilled Mander down. She beckoned to Dyson, and he came closer. Her mouth moved painfully. She said, with slow effort:
"I'm Jane Dyson. Mander said you were here."
His own ancestor. Dyson stared. It was impossible to trace any resemblance, and certainly there was no feeling of kinship, but it was as though the past had stooped and touched him tangibly. This woman had been alive five hundred years ago, and her flesh was his own. From her had come the seed that became, in time, Sam Dyson.
He couldn't speak, for there was no precedent to guide him. Mander chattered again, and Jane Dyson heaved her huge body forward and wheezed, "They're not fooling me ... no war... I know there's no war! Keeping me locked up here—You get me out of here!"
"But—wait a minute! I'd better get Mackenzie—"
Again Mander squealed. Jane Dyson made feeble motions. She seemed to smile.
"No hurry. I'm your aunt—anyway? We'll have a cup of tea—"
Mander rolled a table forward. The tea service was already laid out, the tea poured in thermocups that kept it at a stable temperature.
"Cup of tea. Talk about it. Sit—down!"
All he wanted to do was escape. He had never realized the sheer, sweating embarrassment of meeting an ancestor, especially such a one as this. But he sat down, took a cup, and said, "I'm very busy. I can't stay long. If I could come back later—"
"You can get us out of here. Special exits—we know where, but we can't open them. Funny metal plates on them—"
Emergency exits were no novelty, but why couldn't the locks be activated by the Old 'Uns? Perhaps the locks had been keyed so that they would not respond to the altered physiochemistry of the immortals. Wondering how to escape, Dyson took a gulp of scalding, bitter tea—
Atrophied taste buds made delicacy of taste impossible. Among the Old 'Uns there were no gourmets. Strong curries, chiles—
Then the drug hit him, and his mind drowned in slow, oily surges of lethargic tides.
-
Some sort of hypnotic, of course. Under the surface he could still think, a little, but he was fettered. He was a robot. He was an automaton. He remembered being put in a dark place and hidden until nightfall. Then he remembered being led furtively through the avenues to an exit. His trained hands automatically opened the lock. Those escape doors were only for emergency use, but his will was passive. He went out into the moonlight with Jane Dyson and Mander.
It was unreclaimed country around the Home. The Old 'Uns didn't know that highways were no longer used. They wanted to hit a highway and follow it to a city. They bickered endlessly and led Dyson deeper and deeper into the wilderness.
They had a motive. Jane Dyson, the stronger character, overrode Mander's weak objections. She was going home, to her husband and family. But often her mind failed to grasp that concept, and she asked Dyson questions he could not answer.
It wasn't shadowy to him; it was not dreamlike. It had a pellucid, merciless clarity, the old man and the old woman hobbling and gasping along beside him, guiding him, talking sometimes in their strange, incomprehensible tongue, while he could not warn them, could not speak except in answer to direct orders. The drug, he learned, was a variant of pentothal.
"I seen them use it," Jane Dyson wheezed. "I got in and took a bottle of it. Lucky I did, too. But I knew what I was doing. They think I'm a fool—"
Mander he could not understand at all. But Jane Dyson could communicate with him, though she found it painful to articulate the words with sufficient clarity.
"Can't fool us ... keeping us locked up! We'll fix 'em. Get to my folks ... uh! Got to rest—"
She was inordinately fat, and Mander was cramped and crippled and bent into a bow. Under the clear moonlight it was utterly grotesque. It could not happen. They went on and on, dragging themselves painfully down gullies, up slopes, heading northward for some mysterious reason, and more and more the hands that had originally been merely guiding became a drag. The Old 'Uns clung to Dyson as their strength failed. They ordered him to keep on. They hung their weight on his aching arms and forced their brittle legs to keep moving.
There was a cleared field, and a house, with lights in the windows. Jane Dyson knocked impatiently on the door. When it opened, a taffy-haired girl who might have been seven stood looking up inquiringly. Dyson, paralyzed with the drug, saw shocked fear come into the clear blue eyes.
But it passed as Jane Dyson, thrusting forward, mumbled, "Is your mother home? Run get your mother, little girl. That's it."
The girl said, "Nobody's home but me. They won't be back till eleven."
The old woman had pushed her way in, and Mander urged Dyson across the threshold. The girl had retreated, still staring. Jane plopped herself into a relaxer and panted.
"Got to rest ... where's your mother? Run get her. That's it. I want a nice cup of tea."
The girl was watching Dyson, fascinated by his paralysis. She sensed something amiss, but her standards of comparison were few. She fell back on polite habit.
"I can get you some maté, ma'am."
"Tea? Yes, yes. Hurry, Betty."
The girl went out. Mander crouched by a heating plate, mumbling. Dyson stood stiffly, his insides crawling coldly.
-
Jane Dyson muttered, "Glad to be home. Betty's my fourth, you know. They said the radiations would cause trouble ... that fool scientist said I was susceptible, but the children were all normal. Somebody's been changing the house around. Where's Tom?" She eyed Dyson. "You're not Tom. I'm ... what's this?" The girl came back with three maté gourds. Jane seized hers greedily.
"You mustn't boil the water too long, Betty," she said.
"I know. It takes out the air—"
"Now you be still. Sit down and be quiet."
Jane drank her maté noisily, but without comment. Dyson had a queer thought, but she and the child were at a contact point, passing each other, in a temporal dimension. They had much in common. The child had li
ttle experience, and the old woman had had much, but could no longer use hers. Yet real contact was impossible, for the only superiority the Old 'Un had over the child was the factor of age, and she could not let herself respect the child's mentality or even communicate, save with condescension.
Jane Dyson dozed. The child sat silent, watching and waiting, with occasional puzzled glances at Mander and Dyson. Once Jane ordered the girl to move to another chair so she wouldn't catch cold by the window—which wasn't open. Dyson thought of immortality and knew himself to be a fool.
For man has natural three-dimensional limits, and he also has four-dimensional ones, considering time as an extension. When he reaches those limits, he ceases to grow and mature, and forms rigidly within the mold of those limiting walls. It is stasis, which is retrogression unless all else stands still as well. A man who reaches his limits is tending toward subhumanity. Only when he becomes superhuman in time and space can immortality become practical.
Standing there, with only his mind free, Dyson had other ideas. The real answer might be entirely subjective. Immortality might be achieved without extending the superficial life span at all. If you could reason sufficiently fast, you could squeeze a year's reasoning into a day or a minute—
For example, each minute now lasted a hundred years.
Jane Dyson woke up with a start. She staggered to her feet. "We can't stay," she said. "I've got to get on home for dinner. Tell your mother—" She mumbled and hobbled toward the door. Mander, apathetically silent, followed. Only Jane remembered Dyson, and she called to him from the threshold. The little girl, standing wide-eyed, watched Dyson stiffly follow the others out.
They went on, but they found no more houses. At last weariness stopped the Old 'Uns. They sheltered in a gully. Mander crawled under a bush and tried to sleep. It was too cold. He got up, hobbled back, and pulled off the old woman's cloak. She fought him feebly. He got the cloak, went back, and slept, snoring. Dyson could do nothing but stand motionless.
Jane Dyson dozed and woke and talked and dozed again. She brought up scattered, irrelevant memories of the past and spread them out for Dyson's approval. The situation was almost ideal. She had a listener who couldn't interrupt or get away.