“So what?” Dennison challenged. “That’s how things are right now, without immortality. Besides, there have been cries of doom about every new invention or discovery. Gunpowder, the printing press, nitroglycerine, the atom bomb, they were all supposed to destroy the race. But mankind has learned how to handle them. It had to! You can’t turn back the clock, and you can’t undiscover something. If it’s there, mankind must deal with it!”
“Yes, in a bumbling, bloody, inefficient fashion,” said Mr. Bennet, with an expression of distaste.
“Well, that’s how Man is.”
“Not if he’s properly led,” Mr. Bennet said.
“No?”
“Certainly not,” said Mr. Bennet. “You see, the immortality serum provides a solution to the problem of political power. Rule by a permanent and enlightened elite is by far the best form of government; infinitely better than the blundering inefficiencies of democratic rule. But throughout history, this elite, whether monarchy, oligarchy, dictatorship or junta, has been unable to perpetuate itself. Leaders die, the followers squabble for power, and chaos is close behind. With immortality, this last flaw would be corrected. There would be no discontinuity of leadership, for the leaders would always be there.”
“A permanent dictatorship,” Dennison said.
“Yes. A permanent, benevolent rule by small, carefully chosen elite corps, based upon the sole and exclusive possession of immortality. It’s historically inevitable. The only question is, who is going to get control first?”
“And you think you are?” Dennison demanded.
“Of course. Our organization is still small, but absolutely solid. It is bolstered by every new invention that comes into our hands and by every scientist who joins our ranks. Our time will come, Dennison! We’d like to have you with us, among the elite.”
“You want me to join you?” Dennison asked, bewildered.
“We do. Our organization needs creative scientific minds to help us in our work, to help us save mankind from itself.”
“Count me out,” Dennison said, his heart beating fast.
“You won’t join us?”
“I’d like to see you all hanged.”
Mr. Bennet nodded thoughtfully and pursed his small lips. “You have taken your own serum, have you not?”
Dennison nodded. “I suppose that means you kill me now?”
“We don’t kill,” Mr. Bennet said. “We merely wait. I think you are a reasonable man, and I think you’ll come to see things our way. We’ll be around a long time. So will you. Take him away.”
Dennison was led to an elevator that dropped deep into the Earth. He was marched down a long passageway lined with armed men. They went through four massive doors. At the fifth, Dennison was pushed inside alone, and the door was locked behind him.
He was in a large, well-furnished apartment. There were perhaps twenty people in the room, and they came forward to meet him.
One of them, a stocky, bearded man, was an old college acquaintance of Dennison’s.
“Jim Ferris?”
“That’s right,” Ferris said. “Welcome to the Immortality Club, Dennison.”
“I read you were killed in an air crash last year.”
“I merely—disappeared,” Ferris said, with a rueful smile, “after inventing the immortality serum. Just like the others.”
“All of them?”
“Fifteen of the men here invented the serum independently. The rest are successful inventors in other fields. Our oldest member is Doctor Li, a serum discoverer, who disappeared from San Francisco in Nineteen-eleven. You are our latest acquisition. Our clubhouse is probably the most carefully guarded place on Earth.”
Dennison said, “Nineteen-eleven!” Despair flooded him and he sat down heavily in a chair. “Then there’s no possibility of rescue?”
“None. There are only four choices available to us,” Ferris said. “Some have left us and joined the Undertakers. Others have suicided.
A few have gone insane. The rest of us have formed the Immortality Club.”
“What for?” Dennison bewilderedly asked.
“To get out of this place!” said Ferris. “To escape and give our discoveries to the world. To stop those hopeful little dictators upstairs.”
“They must know what you’re planning.”
“Of course. But they let us live because, every so often, one of us gives up and joins them. And they don’t think we can ever break out. They’re much too smug. It’s the basic defect of all power-elites, and their eventual undoing.”
“You said this was the most closely guarded place on Earth?”
“It is,” Ferris said.
“And some of you have been trying to break out for fifty years? Why, it’ll take forever to escape!”
“Forever is exactly how long we have,” said Ferris. “But we hope it won’t take quite that long. Every new man brings new ideas, plans. One of them is bound to work.”
“Forever,” Dennison said, his face buried in his hands.
“You can go back upstairs and join them,” Ferris said, with a hard note in his voice, “or you can suicide, or just sit in a comer and go quietly mad. Take your pick.”
Dennison looked up. “I must be honest with you and with myself. I don’t think we can escape. Furthermore, I don’t think any of you really believe we can.”
Ferris shrugged his shoulders.
“Aside from that,” Dennison said, “I think it’s a damned good idea. If you’ll bring me up to date, I’ll contribute whatever I can to the Forever Project. And let’s hope their complacency lasts.”
“It will,” Ferris said.
The escape did not take forever, of course. In one hundred and thirty-seven years, Dennison and his colleagues made their successful breakout and revealed the Undertakers’ Plot. The Undertakers were tried before the High Court on charges of kidnapping, conspiracy to overthrow the government, and illegal possession of immortality. They were found guilty on all counts and summarily executed.
Dennison and his colleagues were also in illegal possession of immortality, which is the privilege only of our governmental elite. But the death penalty was waived in view of the Immortality Club’s service to the State.
This mercy was premature, however. After some months the members of the Immortality Club went into hiding, with the avowed purpose of overthrowing the Elite Rule and disseminating immortality among the masses. Project Forever, as they termed it, has received some support from dissidents, who have not yet been apprehended. It cannot be considered a serious threat.
But this deviationist action in no way detracts from the glory of the Club’s escape from the Undertakers. The ingenious way in which Dennison and his colleagues broke out of their seemingly impregnable prison, using only a steel belt buckle, a tungsten filament, three hens’ eggs, and twelve chemicals that can be readily obtained from the human body, is too well known to be repeated here.
THE SWEEPER OF LORAY
“Absolutely impossible,” declared Professor Carver.
“But I saw it,” said Fred, his companion and bodyguard. “Late last night, I saw it! They carried in this hunter—he had his head half ripped off—and they—”
“Wait,” Professor Carver said, leaning forward expectantly.
They had left their spaceship before dawn, in order to witness the sunrise ceremonies in the village of Loray, upon the planet of the same name. Sunrise ceremonies, viewed from a proper distance, are often colorful and can provide a whole chapter for an anthropologist’s book; but Loray, as usual, proved a disappointment.
Without fanfare, the sun rose, in answer to prayers made to it the preceding night. Slowly it hoisted its dull red expanse above the horizon, warming the topmost branches of the great rain-forest that surrounded the village. And the natives slept on...
Not all the natives. Already the Sweeper was out, cleaning the debris between huts with his twig broom. He slowly shuffled along, human-shaped but unutterably alien. The Sweepe
r’s face was a stylized blank, as though nature had drawn there a preliminary sketch of intelligent life. His head was strangely knobbed and his skin was pigmented a dirty gray.
The Sweeper sang to himself as he swept, in a thick, guttural voice. In only one way was the Sweeper distinguishable from his fellow Lorayans: painted across his face was a broad black band. This was his mark of station, the lowest possible station in that primitive society.
“Now then,” Professor Carver said, after the sun had arisen without incident, “a phenomenon such as you describe could not exist. And it most especially could not exist upon a debased, scrubby little planet like this.”
“I saw what I saw,” Fred maintained. “I don’t know from possible, Professor. I saw it. You want to pass it up, that’s up to you.”
He leaned against the gnarly bole of a stabicus tree, folded his arms across his meager chest and glowered at the thatch-roofed village. They had been on Loray for nearly two months and Fred detested the village more each day.
He was an underweight, unlovely young man and he wore his hair in a bristling crewcut which accentuated the narrowness of his brow. He had accompanied the professor for close to ten years, had journeyed with him to dozens of planets, and had seen many strange and wonderful things. Everything he saw, however, only increased his contempt for the Galaxy at large. He desired only to return, wealthy and famous, or wealthy and unknown, to his home in Bayonne, New Jersey.
“This thing could make us rich,” Fred accused. “And you want to pass it up.”
Professor Carver pursed his lips thoughtfully. Wealth was a pleasant thought, of course. But the professor didn’t want to interrupt his important scientific work to engage in a wild goose chase. He was now completing his great book, the book that would fully amplify and document the thesis that he had put forth in his first paper, “Color Blindness Among the Drang Peoples.” He had expanded the thesis in his book, Lack of Coordination in the Drang Race. He had generalized it in his monumental Intelligence Deficiencies Around the Galaxy, in which he proved conclusively that intelligence among Non-Terrans decreases arithmetically as their planet’s distance from Terra increases geometrically.
Now the thesis had come to full flower in Carver’s most recent work, his unifying effort, which was to be titled Underlying Causes of Implicit Inferiority of Non-Terran Peoples.
“If you’re right—” Carver said.
“Look!” Fred cried. “They’re bringing in another! See for yourself!”
Professor Carver hesitated. He was a portly, impressive, red-jowled man, given to slow and deliberate movement. He was dressed in a tropical explorer’s uniform, although Loray was in a temperate zone. He carried a leather swagger stick, and strapped to his waist was a large revolver, a twin to the one Fred wore.
“If you’re right,” Carver said slowly, “it would indeed be, so to speak, a feather in the cap.”
“Come on!” said Fred.
Four srag hunters were carrying a wounded companion to the medicine hut, and Carver and Fred fell in beside them. The hunters were visibly exhausted; they must have trekked for days to bring their friend to the village, for the srag hunts ranged deep into the rainforest.
“Looks done for, huh?” Fred whispered.
Professor Carver nodded. Last month he had photographed a srag, from a vantage point very high in a very tall, stout tree. He knew it for a large, ill-tempered, quick-moving beast, with a dismaying array of claws, teeth, and horns. It was also the only non-taboo meat-bearing animal on the planet. The natives had to kill srags or starve.
But the wounded man had not been quick enough with spear and shield, and the srag had opened him from throat to pelvis. The hunter had bled copiously, even though the wound had been hastily bound with dried grasses. Mercifully, he was unconscious.
“That chap hasn’t a chance,” Carver remarked. “It’s a miracle he’s stayed alive this long. Shock alone, to say nothing of the depth and extent of the wound—”
“You’ll see,” Fred said.
The village had suddenly come awake. Men and women, gray-skinned, knobby-headed, looked silently as the hunters marched toward the medicine hut. The Sweeper paused to watch. The village’s only child stood before his parents’ hut, and, thumb in mouth, stared at the procession. Deg, the medicine man, came out to meet the hunters, already wearing his ceremonial mask. The healing dancers assembled, quickly putting on their makeup.
“Think you can fix him, Doc?” Fred asked.
“One may hope,” Deg replied piously.
They entered the dimly lighted medicine hut. The wounded Loray was laid tenderly upon a pallet of grasses and the dancers began to perform before him. Deg started a solemn chant.
“That’ll never do it,” Professor Carver pointed out to Fred, with the interested air of a man watching a steam shovel in operation. “Too late for faith healing. Listen to his breathing. Shallower, don’t you think?”
“Absolutely,” Fred said.
Deg finished his chant and bent over the wounded hunter. The Lorayan’s breathing was labored. It slowed, hesitated...
“It is time!” cried the medicine man. He took a small wooden tube out of his pouch, uncorked it, and held it to the dying man’s lips. The hunter drank. And then—
Carver blinked, and Fred grinned triumphantly. The hunter’s breathing was becoming stronger. As they watched, the great gash became a line of scar tissue, then a thin pink mark, then an almost invisible white line.
The hunter sat up, scratched his head, grinned foolishly, and asked for something to drink, preferably intoxicating.
Deg declared a festival on the spot.
Carver and Fred moved to the edge of the rain-forest for a conference. The professor walked like a man in a dream. His pendulous lower lip was thrust out and occasionally he shook his head.
“How about it?” Fred asked.
“It shouldn’t be possible,” said Carver dazedly. “No substance in nature should react like that. And you saw it work last night also?”
“Damned well right,” Fred said. “They brought in this hunter—he had his head pulled half off. He swallowed some of that stuff and healed right before my eyes.”
“Man’s age-old dream,” Carver mused. “A universal panacea!”
“We could get any price for stuff like that,” Fred said.
“Yes, we could—as well as performing a duty to science,” Professor Carver reminded him sternly. “Yes, Fred, I think we should obtain some of that substance.”
They turned and, with firm strides, marched back to the village.
Dances were in progress, given by various members of the beast cults. At the moment, the Sathgohani, a cult representing a medium-sized deerlike animal, were performing. They could be recognized by the three red dots on their foreheads. Waiting their turn were the men of the Dresfeyxi and the Taganyes, cults representing other forest animals. The beasts adopted by the cults were taboo and there was an absolute injunction against their slaughter. Carver had been unable to discover the rationale behind this rule. The Lorayans refused to speak of it.
Deg, the medicine man, had removed his ceremonial mask. He was seated in front of his hut, watching the dancing. He arose when the Earthmen approached him.
“Peace!” he said.
“Sure,” said Fred. “Nice job you did this morning.”
Deg smiled modestly. “The gods answered our prayers.”
“The gods?” said Carver. “It looked as though the serum did most of the work.”
“Serum? Oh, the sersee juice!” Deg made a ceremonial gesture as he mentioned the name. “Yes, the sersee juice is the mother of the Lorayan people.”
“We’d like to buy some,” Fred said bluntly, ignoring Professor Carver’s disapproving frown. “What would you take for a gallon?”
“I am sorry,” Deg said.
“How about some nice beads? Mirrors? Or maybe a couple of steel knives?”
“It cannot be done,” the medicine man asse
rted. “The sersee juice is sacred. It must be used only for holy healing.”
“Don’t hand me that,” Fred said, a flush mounting his sallow cheek. “You gooks think you can—”
“We quite understand,” Carver broke in smoothly. “We know about sacred things. Sacred things are sacred. They are not to be touched by profane hands.”
“Are you crazy?” Fred whispered in English.
“You are a wise man,” Deg said gravely. “You understand why I must refuse you.”
“Of course. But it happens, Deg, I am a medicine man in my own country.”
“Ah? I did not know this!”
“It is so. As a matter of fact, in my particular line, I am the highest medicine man.”
“Then you must be a very holy man,” Deg said, bowing his head.
“Man, he’s holy!” Fred put in emphatically. “Holiest man you’ll ever see around here.”
“Please, Fred,” Carver said, blinking modestly. He said to the medicine man, “It’s true, although I don’t like to hear about it. Under the circumstances, however, you can see that it would not be wrong to give me some sersee juice. On the contrary, it is your priestly duty to give me some.”
The medicine man pondered for a long time while contrary emotions passed just barely perceptibly over his almost blank face. At last he said, “It may be so. Unfortunately, I cannot do what you require.”
“Why not’“
“Because there is so little sersee juice, so terribly little. There is hardly enough for the village.”
Deg smiled sadly and walked away.
Life in the village continued its simple, invariant way. The Sweeper moved slowly along, cleaning with his twig broom. The hunters trekked out in search of srags. The women of the village prepared food and looked after the village’s one child. The priests and dancers prayed nightly for the sun to rise in the morning. Everyone was satisfied, in a humble, submissive fashion.
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