The Old Man of the Stars

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

Copyright © 1953, 1957, 2011 by John Burke

Published by Wildside Press LLC

www.wildsidebooks.com

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

These stories were previously published in magazine form as follows, and are reprinted by permission of the author:

“The Old Man of the Stars” was first published in
Authentic Science Fiction
, September 1953. Copyright © 1953, 2011 by John Burke.

“The Recusants” was first published in
Authentic Science Fiction
, February 1957.
Copyright © 1957, 2011 by John Burke.

THE OLD MAN OF THE STARS

CHAPTER ONE

In the green twilight, warm with the promise of the long Elysian summer, the young men and women were strolling and talking below the white steps of the Community Palace. The pliant trees murmured in the faintest of breezes, and the planet's two moons were rising above the distant hills.

The old man on the terrace sat with his eyes half-closed and thought about home—about Earth.

He did not look old. He had the smooth, handsome face of a young man of twenty-five, and there was no grey in his hair. There was something almost youthfully arrogant about his lean features and jutting chin. Only in his eyes was there the weariness of age. Brooding over the scene before him, he was conscious of the heavy weight of centuries on his shoulders. A great time and a great space separated him from the world of his birth.

A young woman walked slowly past him. She wore the loose, casual tunic and shorts that were customary during the leisure hours on Elysium: and most hours on this tranquil planet were leisure hours.

The old man reached out and caught hold of her golden-brown arm for a moment. She stopped, with a slight grimace of distaste.

He said: “This evening it is just like it was in the old world.”

“Indeed, Matthew?” she said politely.

“But of course we didn't get this green light. The glow of sunset was something that nobody here but myself remembers. You've never known anything like it.”

“No, I'm afraid we haven't.”

He was aware of the scent of her fresh young body; and aware also of the restraint and pity behind her politeness. Pity? There were times when he was sure it verged on contempt. Contempt...for him, the oldest and wisest of them all, who had been on this planet for centuries before any of them had existed!

He let go of her arm. A young man hurried up beside her. They exchanged smiles, nodded briefly to Matthew, and walked away.

“A romantic evening, isn't it?” he called after them, but they did not reply. Perhaps they had not heard him. Or perhaps, like so many of their contemporaries, they could no longer be bothered with him.

Matthew sighed. They were bored by his reminiscences, and the young woman shrank from his touch. However young he might remain in appearance, he was too old.

He looked up into the heavens, where the stars seemed brighter and more magnificent than they had ever seemed on Earth. But at least on Earth they had been regarded as a challenge. Men had stared up and vowed to reach those distant worlds: they had launched themselves into space, braving its hazards and accepting the demands their explorations made on them. Men had been ambitious then.

Here on Elysium the challenge was ignored. Across the generations ambition had died. This was a planet of warmth and contentment, and today there were few who wished to reach any further.

There were even fewer who were interested in the prospects of a return journey that they would not live to finish. Only a handful of social misfits listened to Matthew's pleas.

Thinking of his vain plans, he noticed Raymond in the distance, and beckoned him over. Raymond was a tall, middle-aged man with dark features, creased by lines of impatience. He walked with an aggressive briskness that was uncommon on this world. His gestures were curt and decisive. When he reached Matthew, he gave him a sort of mock salute and stood looking down at the older man with an air of exasperation that meant nothing—it was the expression he always wore.

Matthew said: “How are things going? I haven't been over for a day or two.”

“I know that,” was the brusque response. “And you won't find much change when you do come.”

“That hold-up over materials was settled, though, wasn't it?”

“After a fashion. But it's never really been a question of materials. Elysium is rich enough in mineral wealth. It's the men themselves. They're losing interest again.”

Matthew began to push himself up from his chair, then slumped back again. He said:

“But that new group seemed quite keen at first.”

“They always do,” said Raymond sardonically, “at first. Then they began to feel there's no point in the whole thing; They start asking questions about why we want to send a ship back to Earth, and what good it will do anybody.”

“But that has all been explained and given official sanction by the Community Delegates.”

Raymond shrugged. “It's being said that the Delegates only do it to humour you.”

“To humour me?”

“Of all the men and women who would come with you on the voyage,” said Raymond, “you would be the only one to reach the destination.”

“We've gone into all that before.”

“And quite apart from that,” the other went on, “there's a very strong body of opinion that holds there isn't any destination. There are experts who say that Earth is only a myth—a myth you've talked yourself into believing.

Matthew gave vent to a wild splutter of indignation. The presumptuousness of these idlers, these lotus-eaters, was becoming quite fantastic.

And yet he had had ample warning of this tendency in recent times. In the past, long ago, he had been respected by historians and scholars. They had come to him to check their facts. He had actually lived through the past ages, and was therefore a source of first-hand information. He could verify things, explain details that baffled the historians. Once or twice, though, they had caught him out in trivial errors. No one man could know everything that had happened at any given time, even if he had been alive then; but these mistakes made one or two experts say that Matthew was not reliable. He was accused of inventing things. His stories of the conquest of the far reaches of space, which had once been regarded as accurate history, came to be viewed with reserve. Gradually it was murmured that he was a maker of fables rather than a reliable chronicler. His reminiscences of life on Earth took on the character of a mythology. Historians who had worked along certain theories and then had them denied by Matthew, openly stated that Matthew was wrong. If he verified their findings, they quoted him. If he contradicted them, they shook their heads and said that he didn't know what he was talking about. They were men of great learning, and who was this relic of the past that he should dare to question their knowledge?

There came the time when few referred to Matthew at all. They said his memory wandered. They said he was at best inaccurate and feeble-minded, and at worst a teller of tall stories.

But it was not true. Matthew remembered all right: clearly and nostalgically across the centuries, he remembered everything.

* * * *

He remembered his friend Philipson, a biologist at a time when physicists were the great lords of the scientific world. Philipson professed to have no great interest in the conquest of space, but he pointed out one of the major problems that would confront the explorers when the time came.

“It's all right to talk of new power drives that will send a ship to our neighbouring planets in a matter of months,” he said many times to Matthew; “even at the greatest speed that may be achieved in that way, how long is it going to take to reach the stars? Men will die of old age before they get there. The ships may survive—it may even be possible to develop fuel that will carry them on across the years—but there won't be anyone left on board to pilot them.”

And when he had said that, he would chuckle and prophesy that one fine day even the interplanetary and interstellar flight technicians would be acknowledging the importance of a biologist's work.

Philipson was working on the prolongation of human life. In moments of great enthusiasm, carried away by his obsession, he would declare that the secrets of immortality were within his grasp.

Matthew was several years younger than his friend. He was not a scientist. His interests lay in other directions. He looked forward to a career in the Interplanetary Development Corporation—a financial career. Already his father's firm of brokers was expanding as the first stages of Martian colonisation and development took place. There were setbacks—a series of disasters to some of the early space ships, for example—but this was a time when a man with influence in the City used that influence to get his sons or relatives into the I.D.C. Matthew's father had such influence, and Matthew had a head for figures.

“This is going to be something big,” said his father. “We won't live to see the really colossal profits that will come as the I.D.C. spreads wider and wider, but at least we'll be comfortable, and more than comfortable, for the rest of our lives.”

We won't live to see the really colossal profits.... Comfortable for the rest of our lives....

The words echoed in Matthew's mind. He could not help feeling a certain nagging resentment. He would be one of those who laid the foundations for a future generation that would reap huge profits. Life was too short. He wanted to live a long way into the future: he was ambitious, and he wanted time to get to the top, time to watch men going out to the stars, time to indulge in the pleasures that power and riches might bring.

If only that crank Philipson could strike lucky, and add a couple of hundred years to his life span! Never mind about immortality, a dream with many of the disturbing implications of a dream: two hundred years would do to be going on with.

But although he saw Philipson regularly and listened to his wilder theories over a period of three years in his early twenties, Matthew did not really pay a great deal of attention to what was said. He did not really believe in the possibility of any substantial extension of human life. Ever since the grafting and rejuvenation experiments of the mid-century, there had been steady progress in combatting the worst manifestations of old ages, but a man who lived to be more than a hundred was still a rarity. Senility was less obvious than it had once been, but death was not to be held back.

And then there came that day when, as though for the first time, Matthew took a long look at his friend Philipson and said:

“You're looking very well. You look as though you've been on a long holiday or something.”

The other flushed. “Hard work, not holidays,” he said with a nervous laugh, and went on to chatter about some recent research in genetics that had attracted his attention.

Matthew did not listen. He studied the brightness of Philipson's restless eyes, and his clear skin. The unhealthy pallor that had once been there was gone. Philipson did not appear to have aged at all in the last year or two. He might have been the same age as Matthew himself. Matthew was, he realized with shock and dawning suspicion, catching up with Philipson.

He suddenly interrupted the flow of technical jargon. He said harshly:

“Philipson, you've found what you were after.”

“Mm?” The off-handed reply was unconvincing.

“I believe you've found a serum—a process—something—that will give you immortality.”

“Oh, nothing like immortality,” Philipson rashly blurted out.

“Then a prolongation of life, at least. A renewal. That's it, isn't it?” Matthew demanded.

“My experiments have had a certain amount of success. But it's early. It's too soon to say. I mean....”

“You mean that you're pretty certain you've done it, and in fact you're confident enough to experiment on yourself.”

“Got to use some sort of guinea-pig,” said Philipson uneasily.

“Why not me?”

The two men stared at one another. Philipson backed away, resting his right hand on a drawer in a bench and tugging it slightly open.

Matthew went on remorselessly: “Why haven't you published your results? Why are you keeping it all to yourself? You want to live on while others die: you want to take advantage of the rest of the human race.”

Philipson shook his head. “You don't understand.”

“You'd better try to make me understand then.”

There was a long silence. A strange feeling of fear and apprehension seemed to enter into the untidy laboratory.

Matthew was suddenly possessed by the conviction that he had only to reach out and grasp a hundred years, two hundred years of the future: they were within reach, and he was not going to be cheated of them.

At last Philipson said: “There is not yet room enough in the universe. Already Earth is overcrowded, and although Mars is admirably suited to industrial development and can supply Earth with needed raw materials, it will not provide a home for ordinary people. With the conquest of disease the growth of population has been more rapid than ever before, and there has been no major war for thirty years. Unless we can find homes on the other planets for our people—and at present there is no indication that we shall be able to adapt ourselves very easily to the inimical conditions on most of the other planets in this solar system—we are going to face famine in a very short time. Yet you think, knowing all this, that I ought to try to prolong the life of every other human being? If the birth rate stays the same, can't you imagine what the situation will be like? Instead of dying off and making at least a little room for the newcomers, old people will go on living. They won't grow old. The Earth will never sustain them all.”

He spoke with conviction. But for Matthew it was not good enough. It might be true that the world would soon be overcrowded if human life were prolonged. But that didn't mean that he, Matthew, was prepared to give up his longing for the future. He said:

“What do you propose to do, then? You can't keep it to yourself.”

“My idea is that a small group of brilliant men and women might take advantage of the discovery, without letting the rest of the world know at first. Think of the advantages to everyone else! A man who can afford to spend a hundred years on, say, one piece of research, is going to be able to extend immeasurably the frontiers of knowledge. And in due course, when men have perfected a ship that will reach out to the other star systems, injections can be given to volunteers who will go along with that ship. The journey may take hundreds of years—but they will be alive at the end of it. And somewhere in all the galaxies must be many more planets on which the men of our race can be comfortable. When they have been discovered, longevity can be granted to everybody. Until then, it is best kept secret, shared by a few chosen beings only.”