Kate Wilhelm in Orbit - Volume One (27 page)

“Unfortunately. There was nothing that could be done. A fatal aneurism.…”

“How fortunate for you.”

“A matter of opinion. Sit down, Dr. Sayre. We want to talk with you quite seriously. It might take a while.” Wymann opened the door to an adjoining office and motioned. Two men in doctors’ coats entered, nodded at Martie, and sat down. One carried a folder.

“Dr. Conant, and Dr. Fischer.” Wymann closed the door and sat down in an easy chair. “Please do sit down, Sayre. You are free to leave at any time. Try the door if you doubt my word. You are not a prisoner.”

Martie opened the door. The hallway was empty, gleaming black and white tiles in a zigzag pattern, distant noise of an elevator, sound of a door opening and closing. A nurse emerged from one of the rooms, went into another. Martie closed the door again.

“Okay, your show. I suppose you are in charge?”

“No. I’m not in charge. We thought that since you know me, and in light of certain circumstances, it might be easier if I talked to you. That’s all. Either of these two… half a dozen others who are available. If you prefer, it doesn’t have to be me.”

Martie shook his head. “You wanted me. Now what?”

Wymann leaned forward. “We’re not monsters, no more than any other human being, anyway. Smithers had exactly what he said he had. You know about that. He really died of a heart attack. So much for history. It works, Sayre. For forty percent of the people. What would you do with it? Should we have made it public? Held a lottery? It would have gone underground even more than it has now, but it would be different. We don’t want to kill anyone. The others, the ones who couldn’t use it, would search us out and exterminate us like vermin. You know that. In the beginning we needed time. We were too accessible, too vulnerable. A handful of people knew what it was, how to prepare it, how to test for results, how to administer it, what to watch for, all the rest. It’s very complicated. We had to protect them and we had to add numbers.”

Martie watched him, thinking, Julia knew. The babies. Both of them. The new pregnancy. She was afraid time was running out. This man, or another like him. Had they done anything, or simply failed to do something for the first two? Was there any difference really? His skin felt clammy and he opened his hands when he realized that his fingers were getting stiff.

“It’s going on everywhere, more or less like here. Have you read…? No, of course not.… I’ll be frank with you, Sayre. The world’s on a powder keg, has been for over a year. Martial law in Spain, Portugal, Israel, most of the Mid-East. Nothing at all out of China. Japan ripped wide open by strikes and riots, tighter than a drum right now. Nothing’s coming out of there. It’s like that everywhere. Clampdown on all news. No travel that isn’t high-priority. France has been closed down for six months. More restrictions than when they were occupied. Same with England. Canada has closed her borders for the first time in history, as has Mexico. UNESCO recommended all this, in an effort to stop the epidemics, ostensibly. But really to maintain secrecy regarding the climbing death rate. And everyone’s panic-stricken, terrified of being hit next. It must have been like this during the Plague outbreaks. Walled cities, fear. Your story coming now would ignite the whole world. There’d be no way to maintain any sort of order. You know I’m right. We couldn’t let you and Boyle go on with it.”

Martie stood up. “If you try to sell yourselves as humanitarians, I might kill you right now.”

“It depends entirely on where you’re standing. Most men with any kind of scientific training see almost immediately that what we’ve done, how we’ve done it, was the only way this could have been handled. Out in the open, with more than half the people simply not genetically equipped to tolerate the RNA, there would have been a global catastrophe that would have destroyed all of mankind. Governments are made up of old men, Sayre. Old men can’t use it. Can you imagine the uprising against all the world governments that would have taken place! It would have been a holocaust that would have left nothing. We’ve prevented that.”

“You’ve set yourselves up as final judges, eliminating those who can’t take it.…”

“Eliminating? We upset the entire Darwinian framework for evolution by our introduction of drugs, our transplants, life-saving machines. We were perpetuating a planet of mental and physical degenerates, with each generation less prepared to live than the last. I know you think we’re murderers, but is it murder to fail to prescribe insulin and let a diabetic die rather than pass on the genes to yet another generation?” Wymann started to pace, after glancing at his watch, checking it against the wall clock.

“There have been hard decisions, there’ll be more even harder ones. Every one of us has lost someone he cared for. Every one! Conant lost his first wife. My sister… We aren’t searching out people to kill, unless they threaten us. But if they come to us for treatment, and we know that they are terminal, we let them die.”

Martie moistened his lips. “Terminal. You mean mortal, with a temporary sore throat, or a temporary appendix inflammation, things you could treat.”

“They are terminal now, Sayre. Dying in stages. Dying from the day they are born. We don’t prolong their lives.”

“Newborn infants? Terminal?”

“Would you demand that newborn idiots be preserved in institutions for fifty or sixty years? If they are dying, we let them die.”

Martie looked at the other doctors, who hadn’t spoken. Neither of them had moved since arriving and sitting down. He turned again to Wymann. “You called me. What do you want?”

“Your help. We’ll need people like you. Forty percent of the population, randomly chosen, means that there will be a shortage of qualified men to continue research, to translate that research into understandable language. The same sort of thing you’re doing now. Or, if you prefer, a change of fields. But we will need you.”

“You mean I won’t suffer a thrombosis, or have a fatal wreck for the next twenty years, if I play along?”

“More than that, Martie. Much more than that. During your last physical examination for insurance you were tested, a routine test by the way. Not conclusive, but indicative. You showed no gross reactions to the synthetic RNA. You would have to be tested more exhaustively, of course, but we are confident that you can tolerate the treatments…”

“What about Julia? What do you plan for her?”

“Martie, have you thought at all about what immortality means? Not just another ten years tacked on at the end, or a hundred, or a thousand. As far as we know now, from all the laboratory data, there is no end, unless through an accident. And with our transplant techniques even that is lessening every week. Forever, Martie. No, you can’t imagine it. No one can. Maybe in a few hundred years we’ll begin to grasp what it means, but not yet…”

“What about Julia?”

“We won’t harm her.”

“You’ve tested her already. You know about her.”

“Yes. She cannot tolerate the RNA.”

“If anything goes wrong, you’ll fold your hands and let her die. Won’t you?
Won’t you!
”

“Your wife is a terminal case! Can’t you see that? If she were plugged into a kidney machine, a heart-and-lung machine, with brain damage, you’d want the plug pulled. You know you would. We could practice preventive medicine on her, others like her, for the next forty years or longer. But for what? For what, Dr. Sayre? As soon as they know, they’ll turn on us. We can keep this secret only a few more years. We know we are pushing our luck even now. We took an oath that we would do nothing to prolong the lives of those who are dying. Do you think they would stop at that? If they knew today, we’d be hunted, killed, the process destroyed. Lepers would rather infect everyone with their disease than be eradicated. Your wife will be thirty-five when the child is born. A century ago she would have been doomed by such a late pregnancy. She would have been an old woman. Modern medicine has kept her youthful, but it’s an artificial youthfulness. She is dying!”

Martie made a movement toward Wymann, who stepped behind his desk warily. Conant and Fischer were watching him very closely. He sank back down in the chair, covering his face. Later, he thought. Not now. Find out what you can now. Try to keep calm.

“Why did you tell me any of this?” he asked after a moment. “With Boyle gone my job is gone. I couldn’t have hurt you.”

“We don’t want you to light that fuse. You’re a scientist. You can divorce your emotions from your reason and grasp the implications. But aside from that, your baby, Martie. We want to save the baby. Julia has tried and tried to find a book on obstetrics, hasn’t she? Has she been successful?”

He shook his head. The book. He had meant to ask about one at Harvard, and he’d forgotten. “The baby. You think it will be able to… The other two? Are they both…?”

“The only concern we have now is for the successful delivery of the child that your wife is carrying. We suspect that it will be one of us. And we need it. That forty percent I mentioned runs through the population, young and old. Over forty, give or take a year or two, they can’t stand the treatments. We don’t know exactly why yet, but we will eventually. We just know that they die. So that brings us down to roughly twenty-five percent of the present population. We need the babies. We need a new generation of people who won’t be afraid of death from the day they first grasp the meaning of the word. We don’t know what they will be, how it will change them, but we need them.”

“And if it isn’t able to take the RNA?”

“Martie, we abort a pregnancy when it is known that the mother had German measles, or if there is a high probability of idiocy. You know that. Unfortunately, our technique for testing the foetus is too imperfect to be certain, and we have to permit the pregnancy to come to term. But that’s the only difference. It would still be a therapeutic abortion.”

Martie and Julia lay side by side, not touching, each wakeful, aware that the other was awake, pretending sleep. Julia had dried tears on her cheeks. Neither of them had moved for almost an hour.

“But goddam it, which one is Cro-Magnon and which Neanderthal?” Martie said, and sat upright. Julia sat up too.

“What?”

“Nothing. I’m sorry. Go back to sleep, honey. I’m getting up for a while.”

Julia swung her legs off the bed. “Can we talk now, Martie? Will you talk to me about it now?”

Martie muttered a curse and left the room.

This was part of the plan, he knew. Drive them apart first, make it easier for him to join them later. He sat down in the kitchen with a glass half filled with bourbon and a dash of water.

“Martie? Are you all right?” Julia stood in the doorway. She was barely showing her pregnancy now, a small bulge was all. He turned away. She sat down opposite him. “Martie? Won’t you tell me?”

“Christ, Julia, will you shove off! Get off my back for a while?”

She touched his arm. “Martie, they offered you the treatment, didn’t they? They think you could take it. Are you going to?”

He jerked out of the chair, knocking it over, knocking his glass over. “What are you talking about?”

“That was the crudest thing they could have done right now, wasn’t it? After I’m gone, it would have been easier, but now…”

“Julia, cut it out. You’re talking nonsense.…”

“I’ll die this time, won’t I? Isn’t that what they’re planning? Did they tell you that you could have the babies if you want them? Was that part of it too?”

“Has someone been here?” Martie grabbed her arm and pulled her from the chair. She shook her head. He stared at her for a long time, and suddenly he yanked her against him hard.

“I must be out of my mind. I believed them. Julia, we’re getting out of here, now. Tomorrow.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know. Somewhere. Anywhere. I don’t know.”

“Martie, we have to stop running. There are physical limits to how much I can run now. But besides that, there’s really no place to run to. It’s the same everywhere. You haven’t found anyone who will listen to you. One check with your personal data file and that’s it. We may never know what they put on your record, but it’s enough to make every official pat you on the head and say, ‘Don’t worry, Dr. S. We’ll take care of it.’ We can’t get out of the country, passport requests turned down for medical reasons. But even if we could… more of the same.”

Julia was pale, with circles under her eyes. It was early in November, cold in Chicago, where the apartment overlooked Lake Michigan. A flurry of powdery snow blew in a whirlwind across the street. Martie nodded. “They’ve covered everything, haven’t they? Special maternity hospitals! For the safety and protection of the mother and child. To keep them from the filthy conditions that exist in most hospitals now. Keep them safe from pneumonia, flu, staph.… Oh, Christ!” He leaned his head against the glass and watched the dry dustlike snow.

“Martie…”

“Damn. I’m out of cigarettes, honey. I’ll just run out and get some.”

“Okay. Fine.”

“Want anything?”

“No. Nothing.” She watched him pull on his coat and leave, then stood at the window and watched until he emerged from the building and started to walk down the street. The baby kicked and she put her hand over her stomach. “It’s all right, little one. It’s all right.”

Martie was only a speck among specks standing at the corner, waiting for the light to turn. She could no longer pick out his figure from those around him. “Martie,” she whispered. Then she turned away from the window and sat down. She closed her eyes for a moment. They wanted her baby, this baby, not just another child who would become immortal. They were too aware of the population curve that rises slowly, slowly, then with abandon becomes an exponential curve. No, not just a child, but her particular child. She had to remember that always. The child would be safe. They wouldn’t let it be harmed. But they wouldn’t let her have it, and they knew that this time she wouldn’t give it up. So she’d have to die. The child couldn’t be tainted with her knowledge of death. Of course, if it too was unable to tolerate the RNA, there was no real problem. Mother and child. Too bad. No cures for… whatever they’d say killed them. Or would they keep her, let her try again? She shook her head. They wouldn’t. By then Martie would be one of them, or dead. This was the last child for her.