The Old Man of the Stars

by John Burke

  He shook his head. The world framed in the window shone green and promising in the sunlight. He said:

  “If I go away, it will be afterwards. A long time from now. For the time being I want to stay here. There may be trouble. There may be invaders from other worlds. We may not have long to live. I don’t know. But we must carry on as though the future were assured, and in our own hands. Once I killed a man on this Earth. It was in a struggle, and I did not want to kill him. But because of me and my greed for immortality he died. If I can make some restitution by starting all over again on this same Earth....”

  She grasped his hand. There was no more to be said. He knew that it was settled between them.

  Her mother, Alida, gave Matthew a sad smile when the news was broken to her. But there was something besides sadness in it. She said:

  “I think this is right, Matthew. You have suffered a great deal. I believe this is right, and I hope it brings you both happiness.”

  A small group took over the farmhouse and its neighbour on the hillside. The other two groups set off on their journeys, one to London and the other into the unknown reaches of the country. They were all possessed by a mood of confidence and eagerness.

  To Matthew it was as though the past had been wiped out. He did not let himself consider the burden of years that still lay ahead. He worked in the fields and came home tired and happy to his wife Eve. They worked on the renovation of the farmhouse and on the provision of crude furniture. As their skills improved, they replaced the original crudities with more accomplished work.

  Eve bore two sons, and sparkled with health and a vivacity that never failed to thrill Matthew. It was only after the birth of the second one that he had a fit of depression; he visualised his two sons growing old—passing him on the road of life, aging before his eyes.

  With determination he shook off this mood, and went on working.

  Two of the London party came back at the end of a year with news of the records they had unearthed, and after that first visit a regular contact was maintained. At the end of six years the small farming community was startled by the appearance of a well-constructed coach drawn by two horses.

  “Progress!” laughed Bellhouse as he shook Matthew’s hand. “There’s no telling what we’ll think of next!”

  They went into the house laughing, but in the doorway Bellhouse paused. He gave a puzzled frown.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Matthew.

  Bellhouse was staring at him. He said uncertainly: “You look older, Matthew. You’ve got a couple of grey hairs.”

  Eve, coming across the room to greet him, caught her breath. She said: “Yes. I know he has. But I never thought.... I’ve kept all thoughts about that sort of thing at the back of my mind, and somehow I just took the grey hairs for granted, and....”

  She was crying and laughing at the same time.

  Matthew strode past her and looked in the polished copper surface of the large pan over the fireplace. It told him nothing clearly. But were there lines under his eyes—faint lines, such as would be normal for a man who was no longer in his twenties but had passed on into the thirties.

  “It’s impossible to be sure,” he said. “You can’t tell. It may mean nothing. It’ll be a year or two before we can suppose anything’s really happening.”

  But they had not been mistaken. As the years went by, Matthew aged. He remembered what Philipson had said so long ago. “We may one day find planets on which the optimum conditions prevail. There will be none of the physical friction. On such a planet, a man who had been injected with this culture might be almost immortal. Only if he came back to Earth would he once more start—though slowly—to wear away.” Elysium had been the planet with ideal conditions. There, Matthew bad been an immortal. But he had come home to Earth, and the shock to his metabolism had evidently jarred him into the ordinary time stream of human existence once more.

  Perhaps centuries ago he would have been afraid. Like any other mortal, he was now faced with death at the enc of a short life. But instead of fear, he felt a great rush of thankfulness.

  It was a new life. All the past was cancelled out. The winds and the sunshine and the beauty of the world acquired a meaning. He would not be here to enjoy them forever, and that fact gave them far more splendour than they had possessed before.

  “I shall live out my life like any other man,” he said aloud, “and I shall grow old as my wife grows old, and at the end of it I shall die.”

  It was simple yet magnificent. It was more wonderful than any promises of immortality had ever been.

  And in Eve’s bright face he found the confirmation that this was the right and true existence, and that whatever happened now, their happiness was assured.

  THE RECUSANTS

  Of course I understand how Henning and Myrna came to spurn the regime of the Newmen. Who should have a better knowledge than I of the workings of their minds?

  Henning was the son of a couple who had married quite young, which probably accounts for the failure of the Newmen conditioning to ‘take’ as securely as it ought to have done. He inherited too many memories and too much youthful intransigence from his father—a reactionary who had never thoroughly assimilated the teachings of the pioneer Newmen. Henning’s father did not propose to submit to his children: he would not accept wisdom from them; and the stubborn hostility he thus implanted in his son’s mind was bound to set up a conflict there.

  No doubt the problem lay dormant during the early years. But when Henning married Myrna, they had to face up to it

  Myrna said: “When we have children....”

  She was small and dark, with a smooth olive skin and deep, wistful eyes. He was taller, and had a slight stoop—he gave the appearance of always bending protectively over her.

  “When we have children, what shall we do? We must decide.”

  The two of them were sitting in their three-roomed apartment overlooking the Thames. Henning had just pulsed a helicar, and they had two minutes to wait before they were taken out to dinner with friends. The thought of those friends was preying on them—they knew what to expect.

  “The pattern for us,” said Henning, with distaste, “will be the same as the pattern for Paul and Lucille Marsh. Or for anyone else.”

  “We’ve got to decide,” said Myrna. “There must be a way. We must be able to choose.”

  “As long as we live here, under the radiation blanket, we shall produce a child who will be our ruler.”

  Myrna got up and went to the door leading to the next room. In there, according to the architect’s design and also according to law, was to be a nursery. She looked at the bare walls on which their first child would tell them what pictures to hang; at the bare shelves, for which he or she would order chosen micro-recordings at the built-in cot with its adjacent control knobs for remote operation of the telescreen and audio amplifier.

  And she said: “You do want us to get out, don’t you Henning? Truly?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Before it’s too late. Before you have a child.”

  Her small red lips were pursed. Her strangely defenceless little face was pale and wry with wonderment.

  “It’s odd that we should have met and married two people as difficult as we are. The chances against our meeting....”

  “If I hadn’t met you,” he said with a warmth that brought the colour gratefully back to her cheeks, “I should never have married at all. It’s only because—”

  The helicar buzzed its signal from the roof, and they went up ten storeys to the exit.

  * * * *

  The trip was a short one. The car lifted them above London and turned north towards the residential blocks of St. Albans. Traffic was brisk at this time of the evening, but it was only a matter of moments before they swung off Skyway Beam A5 and dropped to the gleaming white estate below.

  Paul and Lucille Marsh were waiting for them on the roof.

  “So nice you could come,” said Lucille.

  The
y shook hands and smiled bright, conventional smiles.

  Myrna said: “What a lovely evening, isn’t it?”

  “Is it?”

  The Marshes, taken by surprise, stared up into the sky. The retreating helicar was, for a moment, an iridescent blob of silver against a rolling wave of cumulus, tinged with fading crimson. Paul Marsh looked puzzled. Myrna realized that she had embarrassed him—the Marshes were responsible, middle-aged citizens who did not make a point of gazing into the evanescent phenomena of the skies.

  Paul said: “Well, let’s go in, shall we?”

  The apartment was slightly larger than the one in which Henning and Myrna lived; but its essential features were the same: People today, after all, wanted more or less the same things. More spacious accommodation was a sign of a mounting age group and increased responsibility, but there was no reason for any eccentric variation in the main equipment. There was, however, one big difference here. The nursery was occupied.

  “Rowena,” said Lucille proudly, “is going to order the dinner.”

  Henning glanced surreptitiously at Myrna. They were both taut, trying to look polite and respectful—and finding it hard going.

  Their hosts seemed unaware of the tension. There was pride in Paul’s face as his wife went into the nursery; pride that glowed even more strongly when she returned, leading by the hand a two-year-old girl. Only it wasn’t quite that thought Henning with a shiver of distaste (I can feel that shiver of distaste now)—the child, not the mother, was the one in control—the child was, incongruously, the senior.

  “Hello, Rowena,” said her father, his greying head turned towards her as though waiting for her slightest command.

  Her wide eyes turned a cool, appraising stare up to him, and then glanced at the visitors. Her shrewd gaze focused on Henning.

  She said: “Good evening. I understand from Paul that you work in his office.”

  “That’s right,” said Henning stiffly.

  “We must have a talk one day. I’ve thought of several ways of reorganizing the electronic computer bankings.”

  “She doesn’t waste any time, does she?” said Paul with a deferential smile.

  Rowena’s brief glance in his direction was a mingling of tolerance and contempt. She sensed, as one could hardly fail to do, the confusion in his mind—the instinctive parental affection jarring with the awed realisation that the child represented a more advanced stage of human development and would soon be in legal charge of the household. Yes, Rowena understood; but there was no more than a formal pity in her understanding. She was already too far advanced to be capable of emotional states such as that of sympathy.

  She withdrew her hand from her mother’s, and moved towards the kitchen dial panel. Her small, stubby fingers began to prod and punch decisively.

  * * * *

  The food was splendid. There were combinations and piquant clashes of flavours such as Henning had never before imagined.

  And it was a relief to find that there were only four of them at table.

  Nevertheless, Myrna felt compelled to say: “What a pity Rowena couldn’t stay up to enjoy the dinner she’s ordered.”

  Lucille smiled. “The fact that she is mentally so advanced doesn’t mean that she is physically capable of our sort of living yet,” she said. “She has a flair for taste patterns, but her stomach needs to be older before it’s allowed to deal with such things at this time of day. Rowena herself would be the first to insist on our adhering to the regulations.”

  “It seems so odd.”

  “Odd?”

  “This...well, this business of being dominated by a child who can only just toddle—who has to go to bed early, whose stomach isn’t ready yet for large meals in the evening....” Myrna’s voice tailed away as she realised how shocked Lucille looked.

  Paul laughed bluffly. “It’ll all sort itself out when you have a child of your own. Not that that’ll happen for some years yet, eh?” he added.

  “Why not?” Myrna blurted out. “Henning and I would like to have children soon—while we’re still young.”

  Paul tried to preserve his bluff manner, but it was shot through with uneasiness. He lowered his voice, as though fearful that Rowena might be listening at the bedroom door.

  “That’s not advisable, you know,” he murmured. “Not advisable at all.”

  His wife nodded confirmation. She licked her lips, nodded again, and said: “You don’t give the baby a chance. You and Henning need to mature before transmitting your knowledge to your child.” The words came out swiftly and mechanically, like a well-learnt lesson. “The longer you wait, the finer the inheritance for your child.”

  “Yes, but....”

  Myrna caught Henning’s eye, and stopped.

  For the rest of the evening, conversation was general. Henning warily avoided provocative topics. Paul Marsh was his boss—you didn’t argue with your boss, or let your wife argue with your boss.

  Particularly about the principles of the Newmen.

  Now that he had met Rowena, Henning found that there were questions in his mind. Questions he could not ask. He could not ask Paul Marsh how soon it would be before control of the research wing passed into the hands of that small girl sleeping in that next room. He could not ask whether, when Paul had to take a back seat, there would be other changes, new instructions.

  So they talked about the new pulsator, which had simplified interplanetary transmissions, and about the daily office and laboratory routine from which one might have thought they would have been glad to escape. It was all safe and unprovocative.

  Even so, Lucille could not help bringing Rowena’s name in at intervals. Her mind went back to her over and over again. The household revolved around the child. And even when Paul did not mention her by name, the thought of her was clearly there.

  Rowena, it leaked out, had conceived a wonderful idea for a much larger telescreen projection without having to buy the commercial equipment. So simple, yet so brilliant. Rowena had taken a vague promotion scheme of her father’s, and developed an entirely new angle on it. Rowena had combined her mother’s and father’s ideas on redecoration of the flat, and come up with a splendid new scheme.

  Rowena....

  Lucille hummed as she lifted the table flap and pressed it against the wall for the plates to be discharged into the disposal chute. And she turned and said:

  “That tune...Rowena remembered it for me. Did I tell you, Paul?”

  “No,” said Paul.

  “She must have taken it over from me, along with everything else. I’d forgotten all about it—such a pretty tune, I used to love it—and suddenly she started singing it this morning. To be able to pull that up out of my memory—only of course it’s her memory now—isn’t it wonderful?”

  Yes, wonderful.

  I know that even Henning and Myrna, in revolt as they were against the whole regime of the Newmen, nevertheless thought it was wonderful.

  And loathsome.

  They were early Newmen themselves, but they had been produced by parents who resented the existence of the radiation blanket. They had not been allowed to dominate their homes; their fathers had angrily condemned those early experiments and their gradual introduction into the life of the country and then of the world.

  The original experiments had been greeted by many other people with hostility—but by a great many more with incredulity. There had been shouts of derision. Television comedians in every country built a succession of jokes round the idea. New reporters went looking for new variations on the story, new gimmicks, new details of freaks and freakish happenings.

  KIDS TO RULE THE ROOST, boomed the headlines. ORDERS FROM THE CRADLE.... JUNIOR FOR PRESIDENT.... NO SECRETS FROM BABY....

  Jokes about mothers-in-law were swiftly converted into extravagant and improbable jokes about daughters-in-law—aged two and under.

  But scorn was no weapon against reality. The Newmen had arrived.

  The experiments continued, the chi
ldren were born, and gradually those parents who had refused treatment began to realize that their own nice, ordinary children were going to be left behind in life’s struggle. A baby who inherited his mother’s and father’s combined memories—with all the technical and practical knowledge and skills of both parents, plus a clear picture of their emotional relationships and problems—stood a better chance of getting on in the world than did an ordinary child whose education was spread over the first twenty years of life. Formal schooling could not give a quarter of what was given to Newmen babies at the moment of birth, and before.

  As more generations came along, the variation would be more and more marked. Grandchildren and great-grandchildren would be born with even more comprehensive knowledge. Their intellects would be the sum of all those preceding intellects, which had blended into their own.

  The protests began to change their tune. Those who had howled most loudly against this impious tampering with nature began to howl with equal force for similar treatment for themselves. They didn’t intend to see their children overhauled and left behind by the children of others. Democracy demanded an inheritance of brilliance for all, not for a chosen few, whose brainpower would soon put them in a position to rule the world and outwit any opponents.

  “But this is a complex process,” the technicians protested. “Individual results can be guaranteed. The difficulties in mass application....”

  They might as well have advocated the view that automobiles should all be hand-made, for the benefit of a select few.

  “Find a way,” said the governments of the world, harassed by their peoples.

  The scientists reconsidered their original findings, and took steps to find a way.

  The fact that it was possible to transmit the entire contents of a human mind into the embryo mind of a child not yet born had been discovered during investigations into the reactions of dogs to atomic motors. It had been noticed very early in the days of atomic-powered vehicles, that dogs were seriously disturbed by them. Radiations not perceptible to humans—and, apparently, in no way harmful—were emitted by the new motors, and these had the same effect on certain animals as a painful supersonic vibration might have. Research was instituted at once; and after a series of tests on various theories, it was found that a development of these same radiations could produce remarkable effects in human children.