The Boat of a Million Years

by Poul Anderson

  “The basic question is, shall we surrender to the government and reveal to the world what we are, or shall we continue our masquerade, using new masks?

  “On the surface, there’s no great hue and cry out for us. Rosa Donau was spirited from the hospital. Corinne Macandal dropped from sight. Likewise did Kenneth Tannahill and a couple of house guests, but that was elsewhere, and he often goes out of town, is away much more than he is at home. No sensation in the news, not even Rosa’s disappearance. She’s obscure, few people really care about the patients in that hospital, nobody has claimed she was kidnapped or otherwise met foul play, and in fact none of the persons I’ve named are charged with anything.

  “I thought that must be too good to be true, and Corinne ., informs me it is. She’s queried her connections—twice, was it?—from her hiding places. Ned Moriarty is still very interested. The FBI thinks the matter is worth looking into. Could possibly involve drugs or espionage or antics less spectacular but just as unlawful. Have you any later information, Corinne?”

  Macandal shook her head. “No,” she replied quietly, “nor will I. Already I’ve put more strain on the honor of those men than I should have. I won’t call them again.”

  “I’ve pipelines of my own, from Seattle,” Hanno said, “but using them gets dicier for every day that passes. Tan-nahill is associated with Tomek Enterprises. The FBI will at least be inquiring into that. They may decide there’s nothing to it, that Tomek’s friends have no idea why Tannahill vamoosed. However, they certainly will not if they discover that those friends showed some awareness of the situation earlier. I’d rather not take that risk. We’ve a plenty as is.”

  He leaned forward, elbows on table. “In short,” he finished, “if we want to stay concealed, we’ll have to do a total job of it. Abandon everything as fast as possible, permanently. Including this ranch. Tomek brought Shan and Asagao over and installed them here. Somebody will come around to ask some questions. He’ll probably hear gossip about those visitors you had, so soon after the suspicious events. Once he gets descriptions of them, that’s all she wrote.”

  Aliyat’s voice trembled a little. She could walk by now, within limits, and color was back in her face, but it would be a few weeks yet before her full recovery, in body or spirit. “Then we can’t go. We have to give up. Or else ... be poor again—homeless—no,”

  Hanno smiled. “Have you forgotten what I’ve told you, or don’t you believe me?” he answered. “I’ve squirreled money and other reserves away, around a large part of the world, for close to a hundred years. I have places to live, excellent cover stories, all details taken care of. Yes, periodically checked and updated. We can disperse or we can go live together, as we individually choose, but we’ll be comfortable for at least the next fifty years, if this civilization lasts that long, and well prepared if it doesn’t. Meanwhile we can be laying the foundations of fresh careers.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I know considerable about this myself,” Wanderer said.

  “I am sure. If you’re afraid, Aliyat, why did you let us boost you out of that bed?”

  Her eyes flickered. “I was dazed, didn’t know what to think, hardly could think. I had an idea of buying time.”

  “That was my notion too,” Wanderer told the group. “I kept my mouth shut, like her, but today we must be honest.”

  Despite their comradeship, Hanno was jolted. “Huh?” he exclaimed. “You mean we should turn ourselves in? Why?”

  The response was grave: “If nothing else, I’ve heard Sam Giannotti on the subject. Once the world knows immortality is possible, they should be able to give it to everybody inside of—ten years? Twenty? Molecular biology’s already far along. Have we the right to sit on the knowledge? How many millions or billions would we condemn to unnecessary death?”

  Hanno sensed the undertone and pounced. “You don’t sound too convinced.”

  Wanderer grimaced like a man in pain. “I’m “not. I had to spell the issue out, but— Could Earth survive?” He waved at the living land around them. “How long before this would be under concrete, or polluted into an open sewer? Humans are already swamping in their own numbers. I wonder if it’s possible to escape the big dieback, or the extinction. We could hasten that day a lot.”

  “They’d practice birth control, when they didn’t need children to carry on for them,” Macandal said.

  “How many would?” Svoboda challenged. “Nor could the, the serum reach everybody at once. I foresee riots, revolutions, terror.”

  “Must it be that bad?” Tu Shan asked. “People will know what to expect before it happens. They can prepare. I do not want to lose what we have here.”

  “Nor forsake our children,” Asagao added.

  “And what would become of the Unity?” Macandal put in. She turned to Aliyat. “You know what it means to you. Think of the whole membership, your brothers and sisters.”

  The Syrian woman bit her lip before responding, “We’ve lost the Unity anyway, Corinne. If we came out in public, we couldn’t be the same to its people. We wouldn’t have time for them, either. And the whole world watching— No, the only way for the Unity to keep going, anything like what it was, is for us to disappear. If it’s as strong as we hope, it’ll find new leadership. If not, well, then it wasn’t that great after all.”

  “So you want to hide, now you know you’ll be safe?”

  “I didn’t say that. Uh, I don’t expect we’d have much in the way of legal problems. Even Hanno can probably pay fines, and make twice as much off lectures and a book and movie rights and endorsements and ... everything the biggest celebrities the world’ll ever see, short of the Second Coming, everything we’ll be offered.”

  “Except peace.” Asagao’s voice came troubled. “No, I fear— Shan, my husband, I fear we would never again have freedom of the soul. Let us make provision for the children and then let us retire, retreat, and seek for tranquility and virtue.”

  “I hate to lose this land,” Tu Shan protested.

  “Aliyat’s right, you’d be hounded off it regardless,” Hanno warned. “Or taken into protective custody. You’ve lived sheltered lives, you two. You don’t know how many murderous types are out there. Lunatics, fanatics, the insanely jealous, the little snots who’ll kill just to get noticed at last. Until immortality was common, I suspect we’d still need a squad of bodyguards around the clock for decades, before we got taken for granted. No, let me show you some fresh countryside.”

  He turned to Aliyat. “That kind of existence may look glamorous to you, my dear,” he continued. “Riches, high society, fame, fun. Maybe you wouldn’t mind the dangers, the need for guards—“ he chuckled—“provided they’re young, handsome, and virile, eh? But please think deeper. How much actual freedom would you have, how much real opportunity?”

  “You spoke of finding meaning, purpose, in the Unity,” Svoboda said softly, to Aliyat and Macandal both. “Can we not win to it together, we seven? Can we not work secretly for what is good, and do it better than in a glare of light and storm of noise?”

  Aliyat’s hand lay on the table. Macandal reached to take it in hers.

  “Of course, if any of us wants to go out and reveal himself or herself, the rest of us have no way of preventing it,” Hanno said. “We can only ask that you give us time to get well hidden. For my part, I intend to; and I and whoever goes with me will not leave behind any clues to our whereabouts. For one thing, I don’t want to be around and visible when this country becomes the People’s Republic of America”

  “I do not agree that is inevitable,” Macandal said. “We may be past that stage of history.”

  “Maybe. I’ll keep my options open.”

  “That would stick anybody who wanted to unmask with a problem,” Wanderer observed. “You’ve tucked away evidence that you’re an immortal, but how could we others prove we weren’t lying or crazy?”

  “I think we could provide enough indications that the authorities would be wil
ling to wait and see,” Macandal said meditatively.

  Hanno nodded. “Also,” he admitted, “Sam Giannotti whom I’ve told you about, he’d doubtless feel released from his vow of silence, and he’s a respected man.”

  “Might he talk if we all disappeared?” Svoboda wondered.

  “No, in that case he’ll have nothing to back so wild a story, and better sense than to spread it. He’ll be heartbroken, poor decent fellow, but he’ll plug on with the research. I’ll try to arrange continued funding for the Rufus Lab, mainly for his sake.”

  “Do you really mean to liquidate your companies?” Macandal asked. “You would lose ... what? Hundreds of millions of dollars?”

  “I have plenty hoarded, and I can make more,” Hanno assured her. “The termination must be done as plausibly as is consistent with speed. Tomek will die and be cremated abroad, in accordance with his wishes. Robert Cauldwell— m-m, something similar had better happen to him, because unfortunately, he’s left a potential trail. Joe Levine will get a job offer from an out-of-state firm... Oh, I’ll be busy for the rest of this year, but I do have standing preparations for a variety of emergencies, and I expect I can make things fade out in natural-looking ways. There’ll be loose ends, inevitably; but then, there generally are in ordinary life, and the investigators will leave them dangling once it seems dear they wouldn’t lead to anything much. Policemen don’t lack for work, you know. Their lot is not a happy one.”

  “But you could do so much with the money,” she begged. “Yes, and with the power you, we, would have, the influence of our fame, in spite of any drawbacks. So much that cries out for doing.”

  “Do you feel we are being selfish in wanting to stay hidden?” Svoboda queried.

  “Well— Do you, then, want to?”

  “Yes. And not for myself, or ourselves. I am afraid for the world.”

  Wanderer nodded. Svoboda smiled at him, warmly though without mirth. “You don’t quite understand,” she said in his direction. “You think of nature destroyed, the environment. But I think of humankind. I have seen revolutions, wars, breakdowns, ruin, for a thousand years. We Russians have learned to fear anarchy above all else. We would rather have tyranny than it. Hanno, you do wrong to look on people’s republics, strong governments of every kind, as always evil. Freedom is perhaps better, but chaos is worse. If we let go our secret today, we let loose unforeseeable forces. Religion, politics, economics—yes, how shall a world of immortals order its economy?—a million contending dreams and dreads, for which men will war around the world. Can civilization itself endure that? Can the planet?”

  “Muhammad came out of nowhere,” Aliyat whispered.

  “And many another prophet, revolutionary, conqueror,” Svoboda said. “The intentions can be noble. But who foresaw that the idea of democracy hi France would bring the Reign of Terror, Napoleon, and a generation of war? Who foresaw that after Marx and Lenin would come Stalin and, yes, Hitler? The world volcano already smokes and shivers. Put this new thing in it that nobody ever thought of before, and I would hope for a tyranny that can prevent the final explosion; but I wonder if any such rule will be possible.”

  “It won’t be for lack of trying,” Hanno said. He had turned entirely grim. “At the bare least, every corrupt politician and fat cat in the West, every totalitarian dictatorship abroad, every dirty little warlord who battens on backwardness, all will jump to screw down then- power forever. Yes, death robs us of our loves and finally of ourselves. But death is also good riddance to bad rubbish. Do we dare change that? My friends, being ageless does not make us gods, and most certainly does not make us God.”

  16

  Nearly full, the moon frosted earth with light and dappled it with shadow. Air had gone still, but hour by hour a breath of autumn flowed down from the mountains. Somewhere an owl hooted, hunting. Windows glowed yellow in houses strewn across miles. They seemed almost as remote as the stars.

  Hanno and Svoboda had driven from town, out onto the range, to walk alone. The wish was hers. “Tomorrow evening what was ours begins coming to an end,” she had said. “Can we steal a last few hours of peace? This country is very like the homeland I once had, wide and lonely.”

  Their footfalls crunched on a dirt road. He broke a lengthy silence. “You spoke of peace,” he said. Voices were, small in the vastness. “We’ll have it again, dear. Yes, we’ve got a frantic time to go through first, and it’ll hurt, but afterward— I believe the whole seven of us will be glad of the place we’re going to.”

  “I am sure it is lovely,” she replied, “and we will be safely away from the world for as long as we need to be.”

  “Not forever, remember. In fact, that wouldn’t work. We’re only gaining another mortal lifetime, the same as so often before. Then we’ll have to start fresh under new masks.”

  “I know. Until someday, perhaps soon, the scientists find immortality by themselves, and we may as well come forth.”

  “Someday,” he said, more skeptically than enthusiastically.

  “That is not what I think about, though,” Svoboda went on. “Now we must think about us. We seven. It will not be easy. We are so different. And ... three men, four women.”

  “We’ll work out our arrangements.”

  “For the rest of time? Nothing to change, ever?”

  “Well—“ She could hear the reluctance. “Of course none of us can bind the rest. We’ll each be free to leave, whenever we like. I do hope we’ll stay in touch and ready to give help. Isn’t freedom the whole of what we’re trying to keep?”

  “No, I do not feel that is enough,” she told him gravely. “There must be more. I do not know what it is, not yet. But we must have something beyond survival to live for, or we shall not survive. The future will be too strange.”

  “The future always was,” he answered from his three thousand years.

  “What is coming, more strange than ever before.” She raised her eyes. Stars gleamed through the moon-glow, golden-red Arcturus, blue-white Altair, Polaris of the sailors, Vega where lately men had found spoor of planets. “In Odysseus, Hamlet, Anna Karenina, we still see ourselves. But tomorrow, will they know those people, or us? Can we understand them, our children?”

  She caught his left arm. He laid his right hand across hers, for whatever comfort that might give in the night.

  They had talked of this already, a little. Once, while they rested for a day on their long journey from the east, she had guided him in trying to imagine what might happen...

  XIX. Thule

  1

  As rr rose out of the darknesses that had severed it from Hanno, his machine self came back to him. Abruptly he was again down in the world that filled his human vision.

  Clouds towered mountain-high. Their nether caverns were full of night and lightning. Then- flanks billowed and streamed, streaked with strange tawnies and ochers, where winds beyond all hurricanes roared. Their thunderhead peaks caught sunlight, to blaze white against imperial blue.

  Moment by moment the robot lifted, air thinned, linkage strengthened toward fullness: Hanno felt its haste in his bones, the jet thrust like blood and muscle. It burned, brawled, shouted into the storms that grabbed at it, spurned the monstrous gravity underneath. Heaven deepened to purple, to black and stars. Now he saw with eyes open to, every color of light from radio to gamma. He tasted and smelled the changing chemistries until they thinned away and radiation sharpened. Sound likewise died; when the ion drive kindled, that was barely a thrum, less in his awareness than the flows of mathematics by which the robot guided itself to rendezvous with his ship.

  Throughout, he was also a man looking forth, afloat in silence. At synchronous-orbit distance, he must turn his head a little if he would look from edge to edge of Jupiter. The king planet was at present half daylit. Intricacies wove along the frontiers of belts and zones. The effect was of pallid serenity. Deceptive—how well he knew. He had been there.

  After a fashion. No worthwhile transmission could be mad
e from the lower atmosphere. He would never experience yonder world-ocean, he would watch reconstructions and replays of what the robot had known through robotic senses, unless he ordered the data downloaded into his brain; and that would not be the exploration, but merely the borrowed memory of a machine.

  People on Earth had wondered why he went to so much trouble and, yes, risk, for so small and scientifically valueless an accomplishment. He had refrained from arguing, simply replied that he wanted to do this. Having arranged suitable precautions, for a torchcraft mishandled could work more havoc than most ancient wars, the authorities let him. After all, he was the oldest man in existence. One must expect him to keep archaic urges.

  They never heard him say, “Trial run.”

  The robot closed in. Hanno broke contact and uncoupled from the neuroinduction unit. Docking maneuvers would be both tedious and confusing to a human intellect. Masses moved readily enough, but the right phase-in was essential, lest the dance of electromagnetic fields around the ship be perturbed. Let it falter for one second, and the ambient radiation would end a life that began in the early Iron Age.

  As always, for a span he felt stunned. The robot’s input had been so much greater than anything unaided flesh and blood could ever perceive. Still more had been his partnership, slight though it was, with the computer. Bereft of it, he seemed witless.

  The longing receded. He was again Hanno, a man with a man’s unique part to play. Few on Earth understood that any longer. They thought they did, and in a way they were right, but they did not think like him.

  He made his preparations. When the ship told him, “All clear” he was ready. Obedient to his orders, it calculated the vectors of an optimum course for his next goal. Well aft of him, matter met antimatter and energy flamed. Weight came back. Jupiter drifted across the viewfield until the forward screen held only stars.