The Boat of a Million Years

by Poul Anderson

  Clara showed near-bewilderment. “What’ve you done, then, if you haven’t founded a church?”

  Laurace spoke quickly, impersonally: “Churches and their leaders are too conspicuous, especially if they achieve some success. Likewise revolutionary movements. Not that I wish for a revolution. I know how little bloodshed ever buys. That must be still more true of you.”

  “I never gave it your kind of thought,” Clara said humbly. Her cigarette smoldered unnoticed between her fingers.

  “What I am organizing is—call it a society, somewhat on the African and Haitian mode!. Remember, those outfits aren’t criminal, nor are they for pleasure; they are parts of the whole, the cultures, bone and muscle as well as spirit. Mine does contain elements of both religion and magic. In Canada I was exposed to Catholicism, which is one root of voudun. I don’t tefl anybody what church he should go to; but I open for him a vision of being not only a Christian, but belonging to the whole living universe. I don’t lay curses or give blessings, but I say words and lead rites in which I am—not a goddess or Messiah, not even a saint, but she who is closer than most to understanding, to power.

  “Oh, we have a practical aspect too. A Haitian would know what I mean by the surname I’ve taken. But I don’t call for gaining control—not by vote, like the Republicans and Democrats, or by violence, like the Communists, or by persuasion, like the Socialists. No, my politics is individuals quietly getting together under leadership they have freely accepted, helping each other, building a life and a future for themselves.”

  Clara shook her head. “I’m sorry, I can’t quite see what you mean.”

  “Don’t worry.” Warmth was in the reply. “For the time being, think of it on the spiritual side as offering my followers something better than booze and coke. As for the material part, now that breadlines have gotten long, more and more hear about us and come to us, black, white, Puerto Rican, every race. Openly, we’re just another among hundreds of volunteer groups doing poor relief. Quietly, as newcomers prove trustworthy and advance through our degrees of initiation—we take them into a community they can belong to, work in, believe in, modestly but adequately and with hope. In return, when I ask for it, they help me.”

  Laurace paused before continuing: “I can’t explain it much better than that, today. You’ll learn. Truth to tell, I’m learning too. I never laid out any grand scheme, I fumbled my way forward, and still do. Maybe this will crash to ruin, or decay. But maybe—I can’t foresee. Immortal leadership ought to make an important difference, but how to use it, I’m not yet sure. About all that I feel reasonably sure of is that we have to keep ourselves from being noticeable.”

  “Can you?”

  “We can try. ‘We’ includes you, I trust.” Laurace lifted her wine glass. “Here’s to tomorrow.”

  Clara joined in the toast but remained troubled. “What are your plans for ... for the near future?”

  “Considerable,” Laurace answered. “And you can do a great deal. You save your money, right? Well, we, the society, we’re stretched thin. We badly need operating capital. Opportunities go begging. For instance, since the crash, stocks are at rock-bottom prices.”

  “Because we’ve got a depression. I thought you said you left the market.”

  Laurace laughed. “If I’d foreseen exactly what would happen two years ago October, I’d have sold short at the right point and now own Wall Street. But I am not a sorceress—nor do I claim to be—and I’ve learned to play cautious. That doesn’t mean timid or unthinking. Look, depressions don’t last forever. People will always want homes, cars, a thousand different good, solid things; and sooner or later, they’ll again be able to buy them. It may take fifty years to collect our profit, but immortals can wait.”

  “I see.” Clara’s features came aglow. “Okay. With that to look forward to, I can stand another fifty years in the life.”

  “You needn’t. Times are changing.”

  “What men want won’t change.”

  “No, though the laws may. No matter. Clara, shake free of that sordidness as fast as you can unload.”

  “What for? What else can I do? I don’t know anything except—“ With forlorn determination: “I will not turn into a parasite on you. I won’t.”

  “Oh, no,” Laurace answered. “We take no parasites in. Quite aside from the money you contribute, you’ll earn your keep. You may not appreciate it yet, but you have fourteen hundred years of experience behind you, with the insight, the intuition, that must have brought. Yours may well be a bitter wisdom, but we need it.”

  “What for?”

  “For the building of our strength.”

  “Huh? Wait, you said—”

  “I said I do not intend to overthrow the government, take over the country, anything stupid and ephemeral like that,” Laurace declared. “My aim is the exact opposite. I want to build something so strong that with it we can say ‘No’ to the slavers, the lynch mobs, and the lords of state.

  “Men seized my father, bore him away in chains, and sold him. They hounded me when I escaped, and would have caught me if other men had not broken their law. A few years ago, they shot down the man I loved, for nothing worse than providing a pleasure they said nobody must have. At that, he was lucky. He might have died earner, in their damned useless war. I £ould go on, but why? You could tell more, as much longer as you’ve lived.

  “What’s brought this death and misery, but that men have had power over other men?

  “Don’t mistake me. I am not an anarchist. Human beings are so made that the few will always rule the many. Sometimes they mean well—in spite of everything, I believe the founders of the United States did—but that doesn’t long outlive them.

  “The only partial security we who want to lead our own lives will ever have, we must create from within us. Oneness. Ongoing resolution. The means to live independent of the overlords. Only by guiding the poor and helpless toward this can we immortals win it for ourselves.

  “Are you with me?”

  XVI. Niche

  The hotel was new and rather soulless, but it stood near Old Town, with a fine tenth-floor view of roofs and narrow streets climbing to the stones of the Citadel. That mass stood darkling athwart stars dimmed by lamps and lightful panes. On the west side, the comer suite overlooked modem Ankara, Ulus Square, the boulevard, radiance glaring and flashing, opulent storefronts, crowded sidewalks, hasty automobiles. Heat.of a day in late summer lingered, and the windows stood open to catch whatever coolness crept in off the river and hinterland. Height muffled traffic noise, even car horns, to an undertone hardly more loud than the large fan whining on its stand.

  For the American patron and his dinner guest, room service had set an elegant table and carried up an excellent meal. Through most of it they had sparred with small talk. The language in which they could most readily converse turned out to be Greek. Now they were at the stage of cheese, coffee, and liqueurs.

  Oktay Saygun leaned back, held his Drambuie to the light before he sipped, creased his jowls with a smile. He was a stocky, paunchy man, his nose the single impressive thing about him. While not shabby, his business suit had clearly been years in use and inexpensive when bought. “Ah,” he murmured, “delicious. You are a most knowledgeable gentleman, Kyrie McCready.”

  “I am glad you enjoyed this,” replied the other. “I hope you feel more at ease with me.”

  Saygun cocked his head in birdlike fashion, if the bird be a well-fed owl or parrot. David McCready was two or three centimeters taller than he, lean and timber. Though the dark hawk visage showed only geniality, the eyes—oddly Levantine for the name he bore—met his own and searched. “Did I give you the opposite impression?” Saygun asked. “I’m sorry. What a poor return for your hospitality. Not my intention at all, I assure you.”

  “Oh, I don’t blame you. A telephone call, an invitation from a perfect stranger. I might want to lure you into some criminal scheme. Or I might be a foreign agent, a spy. These days they must
swarm in every capital.”

  Saygun chuckled. “Who would bother to subvert a little bureaucrat in the purely civilian archives? If anything, you would be the endangered one. Think. You have had your dealings with our bureaucracy. It is impossible not to, especially if one is a foreigner. Believe me, when we set our minds to it we can tangle, obstruct, and bring to a dead halt a herd of stampeding elephants.”

  “Still, this is an uneasy time.”

  Saygun turned grave. His look wandered out the window, nightward. “Indeed,” he said low. “An evil time. Herr Hitler was not content with engulfing Austria, was he? I fear Mister Chamberlain and Monsieur Daladier will let him work his will on Czechoslovakia too. And nearer home, the ambitions.of the Tsars live on in Red Russia.” He turned his attention back, took forth a handkerchief, wiped his narrow brow and sleeked down his black hair. “Pardon me. You Americans prefer optimism always, not so? Well, whatever happens, civilization will survive. It has thus far, no matter what changing guises it wears.”

  “You are quite well-informed, Kyrie Saygun,” McCready said slowly. “And something of a philosopher, it seems.”

  The Turk shrugged. “One reads the newspapers. One listens to the radio. The coffee shops have become a Babel of politics. I seek occasional relief hi old books. They help me tell the transient from the enduring.”

  He drained his glass. McCready refilled it and asked, “Cigar?”

  “Why, yes, thank you very much. That humidor of yours appears to hold promise.”

  McCready fetched two Havanas, a clipper which he offered first to his guest, and a lighter. As he settled himself again, his voice shivered the least bit. “May I get to my business now?”

  “Certainly. You would have been welcome to do so earlier. I assumed you, wished to become acquainted. Or, if I may put it thus, to feel me out.”

  McCready’s grin was wry. “You did the better job of that, on me.”

  “Oh? I simply enjoyed a pleasant conversation with an interesting person. Everybody is fascinated by your wonderful country, and your career as a businessman has been remarkable.”

  McCready started his visitor’s cigar for him and became occupied with his own. “We went on at length about me, when talk didn’t ramble over ordinary matters. The upshot was that scarcely anything got said about you.”

  “There was nothing to say, really. I am as dull and insignificant a man as you will ever find. I cannot imagine you maintaining any interest in me.” Saygun drank smoke, rolled it around his tongue, exhaled luxuriously, chased it with a taste of liqueur. “However, at the moment I am glad. Pleasures like this seldom come to a minor official in a routine-bounded department of government. Turkey is a poor country, and President Ataturk was rather ruthless about corruption.”

  McCready’s tobacco kindled less smoothly. “My friend, you are anything but dull. You’ve proved yourself very shrewd, very skillful at hiding whatever you want to hide. Well, it’s no great surprise. People in our situation who don’t have those qualities, or can’t acquire them, probably don’t last long.”

  Beady eyes widened. “’Our’ situation? What might that be?”

  “Still cautious, are you? Understandable. If you are what I hope, that’s an old, old habit. If not, then you are wondering whether I am a confidence man or a madman.”

  “No, no. Please. Your newspaper advertisement last year attracted me. Enigmatic, but somehow ... genuine. Indeed, wonderfully phrased.”

  “Thank you. Though composing it was largely the work of my partner. He has a gift for words.”

  “I take it you placed the advertisement in many places around the world?” McCready nodded and Saygun continued: “I suppose not only the language but the text, the message, varied according to region. Here—how did it go?—Those who have lived so long that our forefathers are like brothers and comrades to them—yes, that appeals to a Near Easterner, a citizen of an ancient land. Yet the average person who chances to see it gets the impression that a scholar is interested in meeting old people who have studied and meditated upon history, with a view to exploring whatever wisdom may be theirs. Did many respond?”

  “No. Most who did were not quite right in the head or tried to cadge money. You were the only one in this country whom my agent decided I might care to follow up.”

  “It has taken you a considerable time. I had begun to think your organization was not serious, perhaps a hoax.”

  “I had to study a number of reports. Most I discarded. Then I started off around the world. This is my third interview.”

  “I gather an agent of yours met those who answered the advertisements everywhere that they were placed. Clearly, you have substantial resources, Kyrie McCready. For a purpose you have yet to reveal to me and, I daresay, have told none of the agents.”

  The American nodded. “I gave them certain secret criteria to apply.” Peering through the smoke: “The most important was that a respondent look young and in good health, even though the call seemingly was for old people. I explained that I don’t want the fact publicized but I am searching for natural-born geniuses, with knowledge and insight far beyond their years, especially in history. With minds like that from different civilizations brought into contact, we may found a real science of it, beyond anything that thinkers like Spengler and Toynbee have proposed. The agents doubtless consider me a crackpot on this subject. However, I pay well.”

  “I see. Have the previous two whom you met proven satisfactory?”

  “You know that isn’t what I am really searching for,” McCready said.

  Saygun laughed. “In the present case, that is just as well. I am no genius of any kind. No, a total mediocrity. And content with it, which shows I am doubly dull.” He paused. “But what about those other two?”

  McCready chopped air with his cigar. “Damnation,” he exclaimed, “must we shilly-shally all night?”

  Saygun leaned back in his chair. The broad face and small bland smile could be a visor over wariness, glee, anything. “God forbid I repay your generosity with discourtesy,” he said. “Perhaps it would be best if you took the lead and made a forthright statement.”

  “I will!” McCready sat half crouched. “If I’m wrong about you, you won’t take me for merely eccentric, you’ll believe I’m a raving lunatic. In that case, I suggest you go home and never speak of this evening to anybody; because I’ll deny everything and you’ll be the one to look silly.” In haste: “That’s not a threat. For the convenience of us both, I request your silence.”

  Saygun elevated his glass. “From your viewpoint, you are about to take a risk,” he replied. “I understand. I promise.” He drank as if in pledge.

  McCready stood up. “What would you say,” he asked softly, “if I told you I am not an American by birth—that I was born in these parts, nearly three thousand years ago?”

  Saygun gazed into his drink a while. The city mumbled. A drape stirred ever so slightly to the first night breath off the plateau of Anatolia. When he raised his eyes, he had gone expressionless. “I would call that a most unusual statement.”

  “No miracles, no magic,” McCready said. “Somehow it happens. Once in ten million births, a hundred million, a billion? The loneliness— Yes, I am a Phoenician, from Tyre when Tyre was new.” He began pacing, to and fro on the carpet. “I’ve spent most of all that time seeking for others, any others like me.”

  “Have you found them?”

  McCready’s tone harshened. “Three certain, and of them a single one is still alive to my knowledge, my partner whom I mentioned. He’s tracked down two possibilities himself. As for the other two, we don’t age, you know, but we can be killed the same as anybody else.” Savagely, he ground his cigar out in an ashtray. “Like that.”

  “Then I suppose the two you have spoken with on this journey, they were disappointments?”

  McCready nodded. He slammed fist into palm. “They’re what I am officially after, highly intelligent and thoughtful ... young people. Maybe I can find a
place for them, I do have my enterprises, but—“ He stopped on the floor, legs wide apart, and stared. “You’re taking this very calmly, aren’t you?”

  “I admitted I am a dull person. Phlegmatic.”

  “Which gives me reason to think you’re different from them. And my agent did make a quiet investigation. You could pass for a man in his twenties, but you’ve held your present job more than thirty years.”

  “My friends remark on it. Not with much envy; I am no Adonis. Well, some individuals are slow to grow wrinkled and gray.”

  “Friends— You’re neither sociable nor unsociable. Affable, but never intimate. Effective enough at your desk, promoted according to seniority, but unambitious; you do everything by the book. Unmarried. That’s uncommon in Turkey, but not unheard of, and nobody is interested enough in you to wonder seriously.”

  “Your judgment is less than flattering.” Saygun didn’t sound offended. “Reasonably accurate, though. I have told you, I am content to be what I am.”

  “An immortal?” McCready flung at him.

  Saygun lifted a palm, cigar between fingers. “My dear sir, you leap to conclusions.”

  “It fits, it fits. Listen, you can be honest with me! Or at least bear with me. I can show you evidence that’s convinced men more intelligent than either of us, if you’ll cooperate. And— How can you just sit there like that?”

  Saygun shrugged.

  “If nothing else, even if I’m wrong about you and you suppose I’m crazy, you ought to show some excitement,” McCready snapped. “A desire to escape, if nothing else. Or— But I think you are ageless yourself, you can join us and together we can— How old are you, anyway?”

  Into the stillness that followed, Saygun said, a new steel in his tone: “Credit me with some brains, if you please. I have told you I read books. And I have had a year to consider what might lie behind that curious, evasive procedure of yours; and conceivably before then I have speculated about these matters. Would you mind taking your seat again? I prefer to talk in civilized wise.”