The Shipshape Miracle

by Clifford D. Simak

  “I’ll deliver that million before the week is over.”

  Norton said: “I’ll start looking into things.”

  On the street outside, the senator’s step took on a jauntiness it had not known in years. He walked along briskly, flipping his cane.

  Those others, Carson and Galloway and Henderson, had disappeared, exactly as he would have to disappear once he got his extra hundred years. They had arranged to have their own deaths announced and then had dropped from sight, living against the day when immortality would be a thing to be had for the simple asking.

  Somewhere, somehow, they had got a new continuation, an unauthorized continuance, since a renewal was not listed in the records. Someone had arranged it for them. More than likely Norton.

  But they had bungled. They had tried to cover up their tracks and had done no more than call attention to their absence.

  In a thing like this, a man could not afford to blunder. A wise man, a man who took the time to think things out, would not make a blunder.

  The senator pursed his flabby lips and whistled a snatch of music.

  Norton was a gouger, of course. Pretending that he couldn’t make arrangements, pretending he was afraid of excommunication, jacking up the price.

  The senator grinned wryly. It would take almost every dime he had, but it was worth the price.

  He’d have to be careful, getting together that much money. Some from one bank, some from another, collecting it piecemeal by withdrawals and by cashing bonds, floating a few judicious loans so there’d not be too many questions asked.

  He bought a paper at the corner and hailed a cab. Settling back in the seat, he creased the paper down its length and started in on column one. Another health contest. This time in Australia.

  Health, thought the senator, they’re crazy on this health business. Health centers. Health cults. Health clinics.

  He skipped the story, moved on to column two.

  The head said:

  SIX SENATORS

  POOR BETS FOR

  RE-ELECTION

  The senator snorted in disgust. One of the senators, of course, would be himself.

  He wadded up the paper and jammed it in his pocket.

  Why should he care? Why knock himself out to retain a senate seat he could never fill? He was going to grow young again, get another chance at life. He would move to some far part of the earth and be another man.

  Another man. He thought about it and it was refreshing. Dropping all the old dead wood of past association, all the ancient accumulation of responsibilities.

  Norton had taken on the job. Norton would deliver.

  Mr. Miller: What I want to know is this: Where do we stop? You give this life continuation to a man and he’ll want his wife and kids to have it. And his wife will want her Aunt Minnie to have it and the kids will want the family dog to have it and the dog will want—

  Chairman Leonard: You’re facetious, Mr. Miller.

  Mr. Miller: I don’t know what that big word means, mister. You guys here in Geneva talk fancy with them six-bit words and you get the people all balled up. It’s time the common people got in a word of common sense.

  —From the Records of a hearing before the science subcommittee of the public policy committee of the World House of Representatives.

  “Frankly,” Norton told him, “it’s the first time I ever ran across a thing I couldn’t fix. Ask me anything else you want to, senator, and I’ll rig it up for you.”

  The senator sat stricken. “You mean you couldn’t—But, Norton, there was Dr. Carson and Galloway and Henderson. Someone took care of them.”

  Norton shook his head. “Not I. I never heard of them.”

  “But someone did,” said the senator. “They disappeared—”

  His voice trailed off and he slumped deeper in the chair and the truth suddenly was plain—the truth he had failed to see.

  A blind spot, he told himself. A blind spot!

  They had disappeared and that was all he knew. They had published their own deaths and had not died, but had disappeared.

  He had assumed they had disappeared because they had got an illegal continuation. But that was sheer wishful thinking. There was no foundation for it, no fact that would support it.

  There would be other reasons, he told himself, many other reasons why a man would disappear and seek to cover up his tracks with a death report.

  But it had tied in so neatly!

  They were continuators whose applications had not been renewed. Exactly as he was a continuator whose application would not be renewed.

  They had dropped out of sight. Exactly as he would have to drop from sight once he gained another lease on life.

  It had tied in so neatly—and it had been all wrong.

  “I tried every way I knew,” said Norton. “I canvassed every source that might advance your name for continuation and they laughed at me. It’s been tried before, you see, and there’s not a chance of getting it put through. Once your original sponsor drops you, you’re automatically cancelled out.

  “I tried to sound out technicians who might take a chance, but they’re incorruptible. They get paid off in added years for loyalty and they’re not taking any chance of trading years for dollars.”

  “I guess that settles it,” the senator said wearily. “I should have known.”

  He heaved himself to his feet and faced Norton squarely. “You are telling me the truth,” he pleaded. “You aren’t just trying to jack up the price a bit.”

  Norton stared at him, almost unbelieving. “Jack up the price! Senator, if I had put this through, I’d have taken your last penny. Want to know how much you’re worth? I can tell you within a thousand dollars.”

  He waved a hand at a row of filing cases ranged along the wall.

  “It’s all there, senator. You and all the other big shots. Complete files on every one of you. When a man comes to me with a deal like yours, I look in the files and strip him to the bone.”

  “I don’t suppose there’s any use of asking for some of my money back?”

  Norton shook his head. “Not a ghost. You took your gamble, senator. You can’t even prove you paid me. And, besides, you still have plenty left to last you the few years you have to live.”

  The senator took a step toward the door, then turned back.

  “Look Norton, I can’t die! Not now. Just one more continuation and I’d be—”

  The look on Norton’s face stopped him in his tracks. The look he’d glimpsed on other faces at other times, but only glimpsed. Now he stared at it—at the naked hatred of a man whose life is short for the man whose life is long.

  “Sure, you can die,” said Norton. “You’re going to. You can’t live forever. Who do you think you are!”

  The senator reached out a hand and clutched the desk.

  “But you don’t understand.”

  “You’ve already lived ten times as long as I have lived,” said Norton, coldly, measuring each word, “and I hate your guts for it. Get out of here, you sniveling old fool, before I throw you out.”

  Dr. Barton: You may think that you would confer a boon on humanity with life continuation, but I tell you, sir, that it would be a curse. Life would lose its value and its meaning if it went on forever, and if you have life continuation now, you eventually must stumble on immortality. And when that happens, sir, you will be compelled to set up boards of review to grant the boon of death. The people, tired of life, will storm your hearing rooms to plead for death.

  Chairman Leonard: It would banish uncertainty and fear.

  Dr. Barton: You are talking of the fear of death. The fear of death, sir, is infantile.

  Chairman Leonard: But there are benefits—

  Dr. Barton: Benefits, yes. The benefit of allowing a scientist the extra years he needs to complete a
piece of research; a composer an additional lifetime to complete a symphony. Once the novelty wore off, men in general would accept added life only under protest, only as a duty.

  Chairman Leonard: You’re not very practical-minded, doctor.

  Dr. Barton: But I am. Extremely practical and down to earth. Man must have newness. Man cannot be bored and live. How much do you think there would be left to look forward to after the millionth woman, the billionth piece of pumpkin pie?

  —From the Records of the hearing before the science subcommittee of the public policy committee of the World House of Representatives.

  So Norton hated him.

  As all people of normal lives must hate, deep within their souls, the lucky ones whose lives went on and on.

  A hatred deep and buried, most of the time buried. But sometimes breaking out, as it had broken out of Norton.

  Resentment, tolerated because of the gently, skillfully fostered hope that those whose lives went on might some day make it possible that the lives of all, barring violence or accident or incurable disease, might go on as long as one would wish.

  I can understand it now, thought the senator, for I am one of them. I am one of those whose lives will not continue to go on, and I have even fewer years than the most of them.

  He stood before the window in the deepening dusk and saw the lights come out and the day die above the unbelievably blue waters of the far-famed lake.

  Beauty came to him as he stood there watching, beauty that had gone unnoticed through all the later years. A beauty and a softness and a feeling of being one with the city lights and the last faint gleam of day above the darkening waters.

  Fear? The senator admitted it.

  Bitterness? Of course.

  Yet, despite the fear and bitterness, the window held him with the scene it framed.

  Earth and sky and water, he thought. I am one with them. Death has made me one with them. For death brings one back to the elementals, to the soil and trees, to the clouds and sky and the sun dying in the welter of its blood in the crimson west.

  This is the price we pay, he thought, that the race must pay, for its life eternal—that we may not be able to assess in their true value the things that should be dearest to us; for a thing that has no ending, a thing that goes on forever, must have decreasing value.

  Rationalization, he accused himself. Of course, you’re rationalizing. You want another hundred years as badly as you ever did. You want a chance at immortality. But you can’t have it and you trade eternal life for a sunset seen across a lake and it is well you can. It is a blessing that you can.

  The senator made a rasping sound within his throat.

  Behind him the telephone came to sudden life and he swung around. It chirred at him again. Feet pattered down the hall and the senator called out: “I’ll get it, Otto.”

  He lifted the receiver. “New York calling,” said the operator. “Senator Leonard, please.”

  “This is Leonard.”

  Another voice broke in. “Senator, this is Gibbs.”

  “Yes,” said the senator. “The executioner.”

  “I called you,” said Gibbs, “to talk about the election.”

  “What election?”

  “The one here in North America. The one you’re running in. Remember?”

  “I am an old man,” said the senator, “and I’m about to die. I’m not interested in elections.”

  Gibbs practically chattered. “But you have to be. What’s the matter with you, senator? You have to do something. Make some speeches, make a statement, come home and stump the country. The party can’t do it all alone. You have to do some of it yourself.”

  “I will do something,” declared the senator. “Yes, I think that finally I’ll do something.”

  He hung up and walked to the writing desk, snapped on the light. He got paper out of a drawer and took a pen out of his pocket.

  The telephone went insane and he paid it no attention. It rang on and on and finally Otto came and answered.

  “New York calling, sir,” he said.

  The senator shook his head and he heard Otto talking softly and the phone did not ring again.

  The senator wrote:

  To Whom It May Concern:

  Then crossed it out.

  He wrote:

  A statement to the world:

  And crossed it out.

  He wrote:

  A Statement by Senator Homer Leonard:

  He crossed that out, too.

  He wrote:

  Five centuries ago the people of the world gave into the hands of a few trusted men and women the gift of continued life in the hope and belief that they would work to advance the day when longer life spans might be made possible for the entire population.

  From time to time, life continuation has been granted additional men and women, always with the implied understanding that the gift was made under the same conditions—that the persons so favored should work against the day when each inhabitant of the entire world might enter upon a heritage of near-eternity.

  Through the years some of us have carried that trust forward and have lived with it and cherished it and bent every effort toward its fulfillment.

  Some of us have not.

  Upon due consideration and searching examination of my own status in this regard, I have at length decided that I no longer can accept further extension of the gift.

  Human dignity requires that I be able to meet my fellow man upon the street or in the byways of the world without flinching from him. This I could not do should I continue to accept a gift to which I have no claim and which is denied to other men.

  The senator signed his name, neatly, carefully, without the usual flourish.

  “There,” he said, speaking aloud in the silence of the night-filled room, “that will hold them for a while.”

  Feet padded and he turned around.

  “It’s long past your usual bedtime, sir,” said Otto.

  The senator rose clumsily and his aching bones protested. Old, he thought. Growing old again. And it would be so easy to start over, to regain his youth and live another lifetime. Just the nod of someone’s head, just a single pen stroke and he would be young again.

  “This statement, Otto,” he said. “Please give it to the press.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Otto. He took the paper, held it gingerly.

  “Tonight,” said the senator.

  “Tonight, sir? It is rather late.”

  “Nevertheless, I want to issue it tonight.”

  “It must be important, sir.”

  “It’s my resignation,” said the senator.

  “Your resignation! From the senate, sir?”

  “No,” said the senator. “From life.”

  Mr. Michaelson: As a churchman, I cannot think otherwise than that the proposal now before you gentlemen constitutes a perversion of God’s law. It is not within the province of man to say a man may live beyond his allotted time.

  Chairman Leonard: I might ask you this: How is one to know when a man’s allotted time has come to an end? Medicine has prolonged the lives of many persons. Would you call a physician a perverter of God’s law?

  Mr. Michaelson: It has become apparent through the testimony given here that the eventual aim of continuing research is immortality. Surely you can see that physical immortality does not square with the Christian concept. I tell you this, sir: You can’t fool God and get away with it.

  —From the Records of a hearing before the science subcommittee of the public policy committee of the World House of Representatives.

  Chess is a game of logic.

  But likewise a game of ethics.

  You do not shout and you do not whistle, nor band the pieces on the board, nor twiddle your thumbs, nor move a piece then take it back again.r />
  When you’re beaten, you admit it. You do not force your opponent to carry on the game to absurd lengths. You resign and start another game if there is time to play one. Otherwise, you just resign and you do it with all the good grace possible. You do not knock all the pieces to the floor in anger. You do not get up abruptly and stalk out of the room. You do not reach across the board and punch your opponent in the nose.

  When you play chess you are, or you are supposed to be, a gentleman.

  The senator lay wide-awake, staring at the ceiling.

  You do not reach across the board and punch your opponent in the nose. You do not knock the pieces to the floor.

  But this isn’t chess, he told himself, arguing with himself. This isn’t chess; this is life and death. A dying thing is not a gentleman. It does not curl up quietly and die of the hurt inflicted. It backs into a corner and it fights, it lashes back and does all the hurt it can.

  And I am hurt. I am hurt to death.

  And I have lashed back. I have lashed back, most horribly.

  They’ll not be able to walk down the street again, not ever again, those gentlemen who passed the sentence on me. For they have no more claim to continued life than I and the people now will know it. And the people will see to it that they do not get it.

  I will die, but when I go down I’ll pull the others with me. They’ll know I pulled them down, down with me into the pit of death. That’s the sweetest part of all—they’ll know who pulled them down and they won’t be able to say a word about it. They can’t even contradict the noble things I said.

  Someone in the corner said, some voice from some other time and place: You’re no gentleman, senator. You fight a dirty fight.

  Sure I do, said the senator. They fought dirty first. And politics always was a dirty game.

  Remember all that fine talk you dished out to Lee the other day?

  That was the other day, snapped the senator.

  You’ll never be able to look a chessman in the face again, said the voice in the corner.

  I’ll be able to look my fellow men in the face, however, said the senator.

  Will you? asked the voice.

  And that, of course, was the question. Would he?