Fountain of Age

by Nancy Kress

  Space. The suite abuts the orbital shell, and only a clear-to-the-disappearing-point hull separates me from blackness dotted with stars. Immediately I opaque the window. Who needs to see all that room, all that cold? To me it brings no sense of wonder, only a chill. Three, maybe four atoms per square liter—who wants that? We're meant for warmth and air and the packed molecules of living flesh.

  Daria is up here. Somewhere, sequestered, reclusive. She's here. And I'm not going away until I find her.

  * * * *

  Before Stevan and I became wortácha, he insisted that I meet Rosie. He did not have to do this. Romani men do not need their wives’ cooperation to conduct their business affairs; they are not Episcopalians. But Rosie and Stevan did things their own way. He relied on her.

  And she was really something back then. In her late thirties, curly black hair, snapping dark eyes beside swinging gold earrings, voluptuous breasts in her thin white blouse. A pagan queen. Not since Daria had I seen a woman I admired so much. She hated me on sight.

  "Gajo,” she said, by way of acknowledgment. Her lips barely parted on the word.

  "Mrs. Adams, thank you for having me here,” I said. It came out too sarcastic. I was barely “here” at all; we stood outside the building that the kumpania was renting at the moment, a former dance club miles from the Philadelphia Dome. This neighborhood I never would have entered without Stevan and five of his seven brothers surrounding me. A few blocks away, something exploded. Rosie never flinched. She blocked the door to the building like a battalion defending a bridge.

  "Rosie,” Stevan said, somewhere between irritation and resignation.

  "You make a wortácha with my husband?"

  "Yes,” Stevan said. Irritation had won. “Come in, Max."

  Carefully I oozed past Rosie, entered directly into the large main room, and sat where Stevan pointed. No one else was present, but I didn't know then how significant this was. All doors from the dark, thickly curtained room stayed closed. The wall screen had been blanked, although a music cube played softly, something with a lot of bass. In one corner a very large holo of some saint raised his hands to heaven over and over, staring at me with reproachful eyes.

  Stevan said, “Some coffee, Rosie."

  She flounced off, returning too soon—tension had fallen like bricks the second she disappeared—with three coffees. Two in glasses rimmed with gold, one in the cheapest kind of disposable cup. I like sweetener in mine but I didn't ask for it. Nobody offered.

  Stevan explained to Rosie the tentative plans that he and I had discussed. She wasn't listening. Finally she interrupted him to talk to me.

  "You kidnap my husband, my son, my nephews, and now you want us to do business with you? To make a wortácha? With a gajo? Are you crazy?"

  "Getting there fast,” I said.

  Stevan said, almost pleadingly, “He's a Jew, Rosie."

  "Do I care? He's marimé and for you—Stevan!—for you to even—” Abruptly she switched into Romanes, which of course I didn't understand, but it no longer mattered because now I wasn't listening.

  "—died early am. Family mouth only said—” The soft music had given way to news; it hadn't been a music cube, after all, but one of the staccato newslinks that shot out information like rapid-fire weapons. “—no accident. Repeat, Peter Morton Cleary dead—"

  "Max?"

  "—and no accident! So —failure of D-treatment? All die? To—"

  "Max!"

  "—see later! Fire in Manhattan Dome—"

  Then Rosie was pouring water on my head and I was sputtering and gasping. A lot of water, much more water than necessary.

  Stevan said, with a certain disgust, “You fainted. What is it? Are you sick?"

  "It was the news,” Rosie said. “About that marimé gaji with the tumors. Have you had D-treatment, gajo?"

  "No!"

  She studied me. I could have been something staked out in a vivisection lab. “Then did you know this Cleary big man?"

  "No.” And then I said—was it despair or cunning? who knows these things—"But once, long ago, I met his wife. Briefly. Before she was ... when we were both kids."

  Stevan was not interested in this. Rosie was. She gazed at me a long time. I remembered all the old stories about gypsy fortunetellers, seers, dark powers. Nobody had looked at me like that before and nobody has looked at me like that since, for which I am seriously grateful. Some things are not decent.

  Stevan said, disgust still coloring his voice, “Max, if you're not well, maybe I —"

  "No,” Rosie said, and the President of the United States should have such authority in her voice. “It's all right. Set up your wortácha. It's all right."

  She left the room, not flouncing this time, and I didn't see her again for twenty years. This was fine with both of us. She didn't need a gajo in her living room, and I didn't need a seer in my soul. Everybody has limits.

  * * * *

  Peter Cleary's death set off world-wide panic. He'd had D-treatment and all his tissues were supposed to be constantly regenerating to the age at which he'd had it, which was fifty-four. He shouldn't have died unless a building fell on him. Never was an autopsy more anxiously awaited by the world. The dead Jesus didn't get such attention.

  The press swarmed from the hive. Peter Cleary hadn't been the first to get D-treatment because somewhere there had to be anonymous beta-testers. Volunteers, LifeLong had said, and this turned out to be true. None of them stayed anonymous now. Prisoners on Death Row, heartbreaking children dying of diseases with no cure, a few very old and very rich people. Thirty-two people before Peter Cleary had received pieces of Daria's tumors, and all thirty-two of them were now dead.

  Each one died exactly twenty years after receiving D-treatment.

  Daria Cleary was still alive.

  But was she? That's what a corporate spokesman said, but no one had seen her for years. She and Cleary lived in the London Dome. He went to meetings, to parties, to court. She did not. Rumors had flown for years: Daria was a prisoner, Daria had been crippled by her constantly harvested tumors, Daria had died and been replaced by a clone (never mind that no had ever succeeded in cloning humans). Every once in a while a robocam snapped a picture of her—if it was really her—in her garden. She still looked eighteen. But now even these illegal images stopped.

  For two weeks I stayed home and watched the newsholos. Moshe handled my business. Stevan, my new partner, didn't contact me; maybe Rosie had something to do with that. More people who had received D-treatment died: a Japanese singer, a Greek scientist working on the new orbitals, a Chinese industrialist, an American actor. King James of England, perpetually thirty-nine, made a statement that said nothing, elegantly. Doctors spoke, speculating about delayed terminator genes and foreign hosts and massively triggered cell apoptosis and who knows what else. A woman standing in a museum talked about somebody named Dorian Gray.

  I waited, knowing what must happen.

  The mob appeared to start spontaneously, but nobody intelligent believed that. Cleary stock, not only LifeLong but all of it, had tumbled to nearly nothing. The wild trading that followed plunged three small countries into bankruptcy, more into recession. Court claims blossomed like mushrooms after rain. The attacks on the LifeLong facility and on the Clearys had never stopped, not for twenty years, but not like this. It might have been organized by any number of groups. Certainly the professional terrorists involved were not Dome citizens—at least, not all of them.

  The London Dome police would have died to a soldier to stop terrorists, but firing on several thousand of their own citizens, mostly the idealistic young—this they couldn't bring themselves to do. And maybe the cops disapproved of D-treatment, too. A lot of class resentment came in here, and who can tell from the British class system? For whatever reason, the mob got through. The Cleary force fences went down—somebody somewhere knew what they were doing—and the compound went up in flame.

  Press robocams zoomed in for close-ups of t
he mess. Each time they showed a body, my stomach turned to mush. But it was never her.

  "Dad,” Geoffrey said beside me. I hadn't even heard him come into my bedroom.

  "Not now, Geoff."

  He said nothing for so long that finally I had to look at him. Sixteen, taller than I ever thought of being, a nice-looking boy but with a kind of shrinking around him. Timid, even passive. Where does such a thing come from? Miriam hadn't exactly been a shy wren and me ... well.

  "Dad, have you had D-treatment? Are you going to die?"

  I could see what it cost him. Even I, the worst father in the world, could see that. So I tore my eyes away from the news and said, “No. I haven't had D-treatment. I give you my word."

  His expression didn't change but I felt the shift inside him. I could smell it, with that tingling high in the nose that I never ignore. I smelled it with horror but not, I realized, much surprise. Nor even with enough horror.

  Geoff was disappointed.

  "Don't worry, son,” I said wryly, “you'll take over all this soon enough. Just not this week."

  "I don't—"

  "At least be honest, kid. At least that.” And may the Master of the Universe forgive me for my tone. The cat-o'-nine-tails.

  Geoff felt it. He hardened—maybe there was more in him than I thought. “All right, I will be honest. Are you what they say you are at school? Are you a crook?"

  "Yes. Are you a mensch?"

  "A what?"

  "Never mind. Just drink it down. I'm a crook and you're the son of a crook who eats and lives because of what I do. Now what are you going to do about it?"

  He looked at me. Not levelly—he was not one of Stevan's sons, he would never be that—but at least he didn't flinch. His voice wobbled, but it spoke. “What I'm going to do about it is shut down all your businesses. Or make them honest. As soon as they're mine.” He walked out of the room.

  It was the proudest of him I had ever been. A fool but, in his own deluded way, himself. You have to give credit for that.

  I went back to searching the news for Daria.

  She appeared briefly the next day. Immediately the world doubted it was her: a holo, a pre-recording, blah blah blah. But I knew. She said only that she was alive and in hiding. That scientists now told her that only she could host the D-treatment tumors without eventually dying. That she deeply regretted the unintentional deaths. That the Cleary estate would compensate all D-treatment victims. A stiff little speech, written by lawyers. Only the tears, unshed but there, were her own.

  I stared at her beautiful young face, listened to the catch in her low voice, and I didn't know what I felt. I felt everything. Anger, longing, contempt, misery, revenge, protection. Nobody can stand such feelings too long. I contacted Moshe and then Stevan, and I went back to work.

  * * * *

  My first evening at Sequene I spend in bed. Nothing hurts, not with a pain patch on my neck, but I'm weaker than I expect. This is not the fault of Sequene. The gravity here, the wall screen cheerily informs me, is 95 percent of Earth's, “just slightly enough lower to put a spring in your step!” The air is healthier than any place on Earth has been for a long time. The water is pure, the food miraculous, the staffs “robotic and human” among the finest in the world. So enjoy your stay! Anything you need can be summoned by simply instructing the wallscreen aloud!

  I need Daria, I don't say aloud. “So tell me about Sequene. Its history and layout and so forth.” I've already memorized the building blueprints. Now I need current maps.

  "Certainly!” the screen says, brightening like a girl drinking in boyish attention. “The name ‘Sequene’ derives from a fascinating European and American legend. In 1513—nearly six hundred years ago, imagine that!—an explorer from Spain, one Ponce de León, traveled to what is now part of the United States. To Florida."

  Views of white sand beaches, nothing like the sodden, overgrown, bio-infested swamp that is Florida now.

  "Of course, back then Florida was habitable, and so were various islands in the Caribbean Sea! They were inhabited by a tribe called the Arawak."

  Images of Indians, looking noble.

  "These people told the Spanish that one of their great chiefs, Sequene, had heard about a Fountain of Youth in a land to the north, called ‘Biminy.’ Sequene took a group of warriors, sailed for Biminy, and found the Fountain of Youth. Supposedly he and his tribesmen lived there happily forever.

  "Of course, no one can actually live forever—"

  Daria?

  "—but here on Sequene we can guarantee you—yes, guarantee you!—twenty more years without aging a day older than you are now! Truly a miraculous ‘fountain.’ As you undergo this proven scientific procedure—"

  Pictures of deliriously happy people, drunk on science.

  "—we on Sequene want you to be as comfortable, amused, and satisfied as possible. To this end, Sequene contains luxurious accommodations, five-star dining rooms—"

  I said, “Map?"

  "Certainly!"

  For the next half hour I study maps of Sequene. I can't request too much, I have to look like just one more chump willing to gamble that twenty years of non-aging life is better than whatever I would have gotten otherwise. It's clear the hotel, the hospital, the casino and mini-golf course, and other foolishness don't take up more than one-third of the orbital's usable space. Even allowing for storage and maintenance, there's still a hell of a lot going on up here that's officially unaccounted for. Including, somewhere, Daria.

  But it's not going to be easy to find her.

  I have dinner in my room, sleep with the help of yet another patch, and wake just as discouraged as last night. I can't communicate with Stevan, not without equipment they didn't let me bring upstairs. I can't do anything that will get me kicked out. All I have is my money—never negligible, granted—and my wits. This morning neither seems enough.

  All I really have is an old man's stupid dream.

  Eventually I slump into the dining room for breakfast. A waiter—human—rushes over to me. I barely glance at him. Across the room is Agent Joseph Alcozer. And sitting at a table by herself, drinking orange juice or something that's supposed to be orange juice, is Rosie Adams.

  * * * *

  A year and a half after Peter Cleary died, D-treatments resumed. And there were plenty of takers.

  Does this make sense? Freeze yourself at one age for twenty years and then zap! you're dead. All right, so maybe it made sense for the old who didn't want more deterioration, the dying who weren't in too much pain. Although you couldn't be too far gone or you wouldn't have strength enough to stand the surgery that would save you. But younger people took D-treatments, too. Men and women who wanted to stay beautiful and didn't mind paying for that with their lives. Even some very young athletes who, I guess, couldn't imagine life without slamming at a ball. Dancers. Holo stars. Crazy.

  LifeLong, Inc. reorganized financially, renamed itself Sequene, and moved out of London to a Greek island. The King of England died of his D-treatment, a famous actress died of hers, the sultan of Bahrain died. It made no difference. People kept coming to Sequene.

  Other people kept attacking Sequene. By that time, force fences had replaced or reinforced domes; there should have been no attacks on the island. But this is a mathematical Law of the Universe: As fast as new defenses multiply, counterweapons will multiply faster. Nothing is ever safe enough.

  So the Greek island was blown up by devices that burrowed under the sea and into subterranean rock. Again Daria survived. Nine months later Sequene reopened on another island. Customers came.

  That was the same year Geoffrey and I finally reconciled. Sort of.

  For three years we'd lived in the same house, separate. I admit it—I was a terrible father. What kind of man ignores his sixteen-year-old son? His seventeen-, eighteen-, nineteen-year-old son? But this was mostly Geoff's choice. He wouldn't talk to me, wouldn't answer me, and what could I do? Shoot him? He went to school, had his meals in
his room, studied hard. The school sent me his reports, all good. My office, the legitimate Feder Group, paid his bills. For a kid with a large amount of credit behind him, he didn't spend much. When he left high school and started college, I signed the papers. That was all. No discussion. Yes, I tried once or twice, but not very hard. I was busy.

  My business had gotten bigger, more complicated, riskier. One thing led me to another, and then another. Stevan Adams and I made a good team. But I took all the risks, since the Rom would rather lose deals than end up in jail. Maybe I took too many risks—at least Moshe said so. He never liked Stevan. “Dirty gypsy keeps his hands clean,” he said. Not a master of clear language, my Moshe. But the profits increased, and that he didn't complain about.

  Federal surveillance increased as well.

  Then one October night when the air smelled of apples, a rare night I was home early and watching some stupid holo about Luna City, Geoffrey came into the room. “Max?"

  He was calling me “Max” now? I didn't protest—at least he was talking. “Geoff ! Come in, sit down, you want a beer?"

  "No. I don't drink. I want to tell you something, because you have a right to know."

  "So tell me.” My heart suddenly trembled. What has he done? He stood there leaning forward a little on the balls of his feet, like a fighter, which he was not. Thin, not tall, light brown hair falling over his eyes. Miriam's eyes, I saw with a sudden pain I never expected. Geoff didn't dress in the strange things that kids do. He looked, standing there, like an underage actor trying to play a New England accountant.

  "I want to tell you that I'm getting married."

  "Married?” He was nineteen, just starting his second year of college! This would be expensive, some little tart to be paid off, how did he even meet her....

  "I'm marrying Gwendolyn Jameson. Next week."

  I was speechless. Gwendolyn—the accountant Moshe had made me hire, the “brilliant” weird one that had first noticed Stevan's penetration of the Feder Group. Her cult dress and hat were gone, but she was still a mousy, skinny nothing, the kind of person you forget is even in the room. How did—