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Ebook has 176 lines and 9611 words, and 4 pages

What Shall It Profit?

BY POUL ANDERSON

"The chickens got out of the coop and flew away three hundred years ago," said Barwell. "Now they're coming home to roost."

"Oh, damn," said Barwell. "I'm broke."

Radek shrugged and gave the slot a two-credit piece. It slid the whisky out on a tray with his change. He stuck the coins in his pouch and took another careful sip of beer.

There was an Asian whine to the music drifting past the curtains into the booth. Radek could hear the talk and laughter well enough to catch their raucous overtones. Somebody swore as dice rattled wrong for him. Somebody else shouted coarse good wishes as his friend took a hostess upstairs.

He wondered why vice was always so cheerless when you went into a place and paid for it.

"I am going to get drunk tonight," announced Barwell. "I am going to get so high in the stony sky you'll need radar to find me. Then I shall raise the red flag of revolution."

"And tomorrow?" asked Radek quietly.

Barwell grimaced. "Don't ask me about tomorrow. Tomorrow I will be among the great leisure class--to hell with euphemisms--the unemployed. Nothing I can do that some goddam machine can't do quicker and better. So a benevolent state will feed me and clothe me and house me and give me a little spending money to have fun on. This is known as citizen's credit. They used to call it a dole. Tomorrow I shall have to be more systematic about the revolution--join the League or something."

"The trouble with you," Radek needled him, "is that you can't adapt. Technology has made the labor of most people, except the first-rank creative genius, unnecessary. This leaves the majority with a void of years to fill somehow--a sense of uprootedness and lost self-respect--which is rather horrible. And in any case, they don't like to think in scientific terms ... it doesn't come natural to the average man."

Barwell gave him a bleary stare out of a flushed, sagging face. "I s'pose you're one of the geniuses," he said. "You got work."

"I'm adaptable," said Radek. He was a slim youngish man with dark hair and sharp features. "I'm not greatly gifted, but I found a niche for myself. Newsman. I do legwork for a major commentator. Between times, I'm writing a book--my own analysis of contemporary historical trends. It won't be anything startling, but it may help a few people think more clearly and adjust themselves."

"Not everything about it no. So there is a wave of antiscientific reaction, all over Earth. Science is being made the scapegoat for all our troubles. But like it or not, you fellows will have to accept the fact that there are too many people and too few resources for us to survive without technology."

"Some technology, sure," admitted Barwell. He took a ferocious swig from his glass. "Not this hell-born stuff we've been monkeying around with. I tell you, the chickens have finally come home to roost."

Radek was intrigued by the archaic expression. Barwell was no moron: he'd been a correlative clerk at the Institute for several years, not a position for fools. He had read, actually read books, and thought about them.

And today he had been fired. Radek chanced across him drinking out a vast resentment and attached himself like a reverse lamprey--buying most of the liquor. There might be a story in it, somewhere. There might be a lead to what the Institute was doing.

Barwell leaned forward, his finger wagged. "Three hundred years now. I think it's three hundred years since X-rays came in. Damn scientists, fooling around with X-rays, atomic energy, radioactives ... sure, safe levels, established tolerances, but what about the long-range effects? What about cumulative genetic effects? Those chickens are coming home at last."

"No use blaming our ancestors," said Radek. "Be rather pointless to go dance on their graves, wouldn't it?"

Barwell moved closer to Radek. His breath was powerful with whisky. "But are they in those graves?" he whispered.

"Huh?"

Radek sipped his beer. He'd been drinking slowly, and the beer had gotten warmer than he liked, but he needed a clear head. "That's common knowledge," he stated. "The lifespan hasn't been shortened any, either."

"Because of more medicines ... more ways to help cells patch up radiation damage. All but worst radiation sickness been curable for a long time." Barwell waved his hand expansively. "They knew, even back then," he mumbled. "If radiation shortens life, radiation sickness cures ought to prolong it. Huh? Reas'nable? Only the goddam scientists ... population problem ... social stasis if ever'body lived for centuries ... kept it secret. Easy t' do. Change y'r name and face ever' ten, twen'y years--keep to y'rself, don't make friends among the short-lived, you might see 'em grow old and die, might start feelin' sorry for 'em an' that would never do, would it--?"

Coldness tingled along Radek's spine. He lifted his mug and pretended to drink. Over the rim, his eyes stayed on Barwell.

"Tha's why they fired me. I know. I know. I got ears. I overheard things. I read ... notes not inten'ed for me. They fired me. 'S a wonder they didn' murder me." Barwell shuddered and peered at the curtains, as if trying to look through them. "Or d'y' think--maybe--"

"No," said Radek. "I don't. Let's stick to the facts. I take it you found mention of work on--shall we say--increasing the lifespan. Perhaps a mention of successes with rats and guinea pigs. Right? So what's wrong with that? They wouldn't want to announce anything till they were sure, or the hysteria--"

Barwell smiled with an irritating air of omniscience. "More'n that, friend. More'n that. Lots more."

"Well, what?"

Barwell peered about him with exaggerated caution. "One thing I found in files ... plans of whole buildin's an' groun's--great, great big room, lotsa rooms, way way underground. Secret. Only th' kitchen was makin' food an' sendin' it down there--human food. Food for people I never saw, people who never came up--" Barwell buried his face in his hands. "Don' feel so good. Whirlin'--"

Radek eased his head to the table. Out like a spent credit. The newsman left the booth and addressed a bouncer. "Chap in there has had it."

"Uh-huh. Want me to help you get him to your boat?"

"No. I hardly know him." A bill exchanged hands. "Put him in your dossroom to sleep it off, and give him breakfast with my compliments. I'm going out for some fresh air."

The rec house stood on a Minnesota bluff, overlooking the Mississippi River. Beyond its racket and multi-colored glare, there was darkness and wooded silence. Here and there the lights of a few isolated houses gleamed. The river slid by, talking, ruffled with moonlight. Luna was nearly full; squinting into her cold ashen face, Radek could just see the tiny spark of a city. Stars were strewn carelessly over heaven, he recognized the ember that was Mars.

Perhaps he ought to emigrate. Mars, Venus, even Luna ... there was more hope on them than Earth had. No mechanical packaged cheer: people had work to do, and in their spare time made their own pleasures. No civilization cracking at the seams because it could not assimilate the technology it must have; out in space, men knew very well that science had carried them to their homes and made those homes fit to dwell on.

Radek strolled across the parking lot and found his airboat. He paused by its iridescent teardrop to start a cigaret.

Suppose the Institute of Human Biology was more than it claimed to be, more than a set of homes and laboratories where congenial minds could live and do research. It published discoveries of value--but how much did it not publish? Its personnel kept pretty aloof from the rest of the world, not unnatural in this day of growing estrangement between science and public ... but did they have a deeper reason than that?

Suppose they did keep immortals in those underground rooms.

A scientist was not ordinarily a good political technician. But he might think he could be. He might react emotionally against a public beginning to throw stones at his house and consider taking the reins ... for the people's own good, of course. A lot of misery had been caused the human race for its own alleged good.

Or if the scientist knew how to live forever, he might not think Joe Smith or Carlos Ib??ez or Wang Yuan or Johannes Umfanduma good enough to share immortality with him.

Radek took a long breath. The night air felt fresh and alive in his lungs after the tavern staleness.

He was not currently married, but there was a girl with whom he was thinking seriously of making a permanent contract. He had friends, not lucent razor minds but decent, unassuming, kindly people, brave with man's old quiet bravery in the face of death and ruin and the petty tragedies of everyday. He liked beer and steaks, fishing and tennis, good music and a good book and the exhilarating strain of his work. He liked to live.

Maybe a system for becoming immortal, or at least living many centuries, was not desirable for the race. But only the whole race had authority to make that decision.

Radek smiled at himself, twistedly, and threw the cigaret away and got into the boat. Its engine murmured, sucking 'cast power; the riding lights snapped on automatically and he lifted into the sky. It was not much of a lead he had, but it was as good as he was ever likely to get.

He set the autopilot for southwest Colorado and opened the jets wide. The night whistled darkly around his cabin. Against wan stars, he made out the lamps of other boats, flitting across the world and somehow intensifying the loneliness.

Work to do. He called the main office in Dallas Unit and taped a statement of what he knew and what he planned. Then he dialed the nearest library and asked the robot for information on the Institute of Human Biology.

There wasn't a great deal of value to him. It had been in existence for about 250 years, more or less concurrently with the Psychotechnic Institute and for quite a while affiliated with that organization. During the Humanist troubles, when the Psychotechs were booted out of government on Earth and their files ransacked, it had dissociated itself from them and carried on unobtrusively. Since the Restoration, it had grown, drawing in many prominent researchers and making discoveries of high value to medicine and bio-engineering. The current director was Dr. Marcus Lang, formerly of New Harvard, the University of Luna, and--No matter. He'd been running the show for eight years, after his predecessor's death.

Or had Tokogama really died?

He couldn't be identical with Lang--he had been a short Japanese and Lang was a tall Negro, too big a jump for any surgeon. Not to mention their simultaneous careers. But how far back could you trace Lang before he became fakeable records of birth and schooling? What young fellow named Yamatsu or Hideki was now polishing glass in the labs and slated to become the next director?

How fantastic could you get on how little evidence?

Radek let the text fade from the screen and sat puffing another cigaret. It was a while before he demanded references on the biology of the aging process.

That was tough sledding. He couldn't follow the mathematics or the chemistry very far. No good popularizations were available. But a newsman got an ability to winnow what he learned. Radek didn't have to take notes, he'd been through a mind-training course; after an hour or so, he sat back and reviewed what he had gotten.

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