Collected Short Fiction, page 79
The entire industrial machine was owned by the state, from mines and factories to stations where the products were distributed to the consumer. Every citizen was permitted to work as much or as little as he desired, at whatever task he performed most efficiently, being paid proportionately to the value of his services and the time he worked, in tokens of exchange. The entire production of industry was thus returned to the workers, physical and mental, except such a part as was necessary to maintain the equipment, to provide the necessities of life to all, and to pay government expenses such as that for maintaining the climate-control stations.
Laws were few and crimes fewer, he learned. Education took the place of policemen. Since the necessities of life were free to all men, and its luxuries might be had abundantly for a little work, men were not driven to crime by unemployment and resulting need, as they are in our day.
And to make their lives most valuable to themselves and to society, an elaborate system of education, whose officers were carefully trained, had full and sole charge of children, almost from birth to maturity. Thus the talents of every person were discovered and developed. And no child was born into a squalid sink, to grow up a professional criminal. Competent parents were permitted to rear their own children.
Once, while the lovely Thon Ahrora was instructing him in the written language of her race, and plying him, at the same time, with questions about his own time, which, it seemed, had been pretty well forgotten in the course of two million years, it entered Dick’s head to write a history, covering what he remembered of our age.
He disliked to accept the hospitality of the girl and her blind father without making some repayment, though they assured him that the burden was slight, food and shelter being supplied by society. He had applied to the state agency for employment, with poor results. It seemed that the schools trained every person in one or more useful occupations which he might choose. Dick had not been so trained. He volunteered to dig ditches, only to discover that ditches were now dug with a rather complicated device which dissociated the electrons of earth and rock, reassembling them into atoms of hydrogen and oxygen to make water vapor, which was condensed and piped away. He had had no training in the handling of this El Ray. Finally he had been put to digging up some blue flowering plants that had spread into a meadow where they did not belong—he could do this, even without the artistic training of a landscape gardener. Thon Ahrora had found him and made him come away, when his wages amounted only to a single little disk of green crystal—the token of exchange lowest in denomination. The girl had generously offered him a handful of them, with a few of the blue disks of greater value. But Dick refused, knowing that, like most scientists of our day, she and her father had few resources to spare from their experiments.
Now, it struck him, if others were as much interested in his own times as Thon Ahrora, he could write a book of history and sell it. The girl was delighted with the idea. She assured him that an interesting book would be paid for. And she offered to help him get it properly expressed in her language, and to help him interpret his facts from the point of view of her age—it is doubtful if his work could have succeeded without such assistance.
He immensely enjoyed the months while they were working on the book—though, to judge from his diary, he did not realize even then that he had fallen in love with the girl.
Besides the text, Dick was able to provide illustrations, making use of his college training in art. First he had thought of simple drawings to show the machines, the costumes, and the animals of his time—most of our domestic and wild animals being extinct, it seems. But Thon Ahrora produced a broad sheet of black material, and a small instrument which, by electrochemical means, could produce any color of the spectrum, or any combination of them upon the sheet. After he had mastered the use of it, he produced illustrations in full color for the work. Here, too, he had the girl’s assistance—she was a rather better artist than himself, it seems.
It would be interesting to see a copy of this book—which was printed on white sheets of the same material as the notes are written on. But Smith did not send one back. The writer would like to know how our civilization was interpreted in terms of that much higher culture of the future. Smith admits that his facts were not very accurate; he did not study his college history half so well as he should have done, he says. Even his illustrations must not have been strictly reliable—he mentions a difficulty in arranging the horns and ears of a cow.
Thon Ahrora took the work for him to the state department of publications, where it was printed. Dick was pleased to discover that all profits, above a certain part deducted as a sort of tax to support the general activities of society, would be his own—no publisher would profiteer upon his efforts.
THE book was successful—far more so than either of them had anticipated. Not only did the many billions of the earth’s population read it eagerly. It was sent by television to the planets spinning about a million other suns, and read by their uncounted multitudes, who were of the same race, speaking the same tongue, and maintaining the same interests as the people of the earth.
Any man, Dick found, who can aid or amuse a great many people, if only slightly, has done more good and is paid more highly than he who does much for a few. The amount of the profits which poured in from the far stars of the universe was astounding.
The tokens of exchange were little disks, much like our coins, with designs engraved on them. But they were of crystal substances, which, Dick learned, were synthetic gems. Green disks of emerald were used for small change. Sapphire tokens were more valuable; those of ruby more precious still. But the diamond disk was of the highest denomination, and the standard of value.
A whole high room in the habitation of Thon Ahrora and her father was soon piled full of coffers of these scintillant diamond coins. Dick kept one open where he could run his hand through the cold gems, letting them fall through his fingers in shimmering torrents of fire.
“It is wonderful!” Thon Ahrora told him, with shining eyes. “No book has ever been so famous! No man has ever earned so much! What will the stupid officials think, who put you to digging weeds?”
“You mean I am really the richest man in the world—in the universe?” Smith said in surprise.
“You are many times richer than any man in the Union,” she told him. “For each man has only what others are willing to give him in exchange for his own efforts. Men do not seize the machinery of industry, and rob others of the just fruits of their toils, as some did in your day.
“No, you are rich beyond imagination. You might buy anything that men desire. You could build an interplanetary flier, finer than has ever been made, hire a crew, and go exploring to the ends of the universe if you wished. Your smallest coffer would pay for that!”
“I’ll think it over,” Dick said. “But, you know, I’ve been having a very interesting time right here on earth—” he paused, then ventured to add—“with you!” The girl said nothing, but smiled at him with an odd light in her glorious blue eyes.
“By the way,” Smith asked after a little time, “what are you going to do with your share?”
“My share?” Thon repeated in surprise.
“Half of all these boxes of diamonds are yours, you know,” he said. “We were partners in the undertaking, you remember.”
“No I can’t take it,” the girl objected. Oddly, tears stood out in her eyes, glistening. She choked back a little sob. Suddenly, to Smith’s confusion—and to his intense delight—she threw her strong, smooth arms around his neck, and kissed him on the lips. He was dumfounded at the moment; later he reflected that it was not amazing that human emotions had a bit more freedom of play after two million years—and that Thon was a rather straightforward sort of person, apt to show her feelings openly.
Now she drew back suddenly, with a hurt look, noticing his astonishment. “Oh, I’m sorry—if you care!” she cried in a pained voice. “You look—”
“Not a bit,” said Dick. “I like it. Just surprised. I’m not used to things here, you know.”
“Forgive me! I didn’t mean to hurt you!”
“Nothing to forgive,” Dick said, looking into her blue eyes. “Just try it again. I’ll try to behave better, next time!”
Thon stepped back, her smooth skin flushed a little. “Don’t make fun of me!” she cried, almost angrily. “I didn’t think—And it was so good of you to offer me the share of the tokens!”
“They are yours!” he responded. “I’ll never look at any of them again, unless you take half. I couldn’t have written the book without you, and you know it! And if you go broke, I’ll lend you part of my share!” The lovely girl turned suddenly and hurried away—to keep him from seeing that she was crying, Smith was sure.
Dick had been a year in the world of the future when Midos Ken and his daughter performed the great experiment of which they had spoken. The apparatus had been built with part of Thon Ahrora’s share of the treasure of diamond tokens, which Dick had forced her to accept, in the end.
Early one morning, crowded into the little, swiftflying vehicle in which Smith and the girl had visited the space-port, they set out for the lofty range of mountains in the east—it is impossible to identify these with any mountains of the present day; when Smith examined an atlas, he found the continental outlines strange to him; Bardon is located, he thinks, on a continent risen from what was once the floor of the Pacific.
“Father, dear, I’m certain that today we will succeed,” Thon cried, after she had started the little ship toward their destination with a few musical notes. “Isn’t it wonderful—after so many years of disappointment!”
“I’m not so sure, child,” the old blind scientist said slowly. “Many times I have thought myself on the verge of success. For sixty years, you know, I have toiled to that one goal. For a quarter of a century I have known we must have that catalyst—though only a few ounces would be enough. I have failed a hundred times to synthesize it; I feel that we may fail again today. Then there is no hope; even most of the scouts I sent to explore the unknown planets, as a last resort, have returned without an atom of the precious substance.”
“Cheer up, dad!” the girl encouraged him. “I know we’ll win! The experiment cannot fail!”
“What is the experiment?” Dick asked, for the second time.
“What is it that is now most necessary for the happiness of man?” Midos Ken replied with another question.
“I can’t think of anything you lack,” Smith said. “You control the weather. You synthesize food, or almost anything else you want, out of water vapor. You have conquered time and distance, with your television and interplanetary ships. You have eliminated most things that made life dangerous or unpleasant in the old world. There are no harmful insects, no disease germs—I haven’t seen a real weed! Your people all enjoy freedom of a degree that was impossible in the old world, and luxuries that were beyond reach of our emperors. Crime, ignorance, and superstition are gone. I have seen none not strong of mind and body; none without every reason to be perfectly happy.”
“How about myself?” the old man asked.
SMITH looked at him, was struck like a blow by the relentless marks of age upon him—the whiteness of his hair—the wrinkles that corrugated his noble face. There was a slight stoop of his shoulders—a thinness of his hands, and a nervousness that kept them always trembling a little.
“I am old,” said Midos Ken. “All men grow old. There is only a taste of youth, of boundless strength and joy, and then their strength begins to fail. Their bodies stiffen and grow ugly as they weaken. And in a few years they die.
“Is it not a tragedy? The artist has but time to learn to ply his brush, before his hand is too palsied to hold it. The scientist can but learn to handle his tools, before his mind becomes too dull to understand them. The thinker can only begin to survey the wonders of the universe, before his brain decays.
“Is it not terrible, for a mind to know that it must die, slowly, and hideously? A swift death, in full strength and vigor, would be better than the slow decay of body and mind, that is age.
“Death is not so terrible, perhaps, to the lower animals. They do not foresee it. Their bodies are restored, in each new generation, more perfect than before. Death is not dreadful to an animal, to a body, for it is natural.
“But a mind is a higher thing than a mere physical body, dependent upon one as it is. It is capable of infinite growth and development, until it is killed by the decay of the body. That is why men have dreamed of immortality, and promised themselves another life beyond death. The mind cannot endure the thought of death.”
“Then your great experiment is a search for the elixir of youth?” Dick asked, amazed.
“We are seeking to extend the life and the youth of man,” said Midos Ken, “to give the mind full period for its development, so that men can drink the pure joy of life to the full, before they pass it, satisfied, and willing to go. So that the thinker may live in the keen vigor of youth until he has evolved his philosophy. So that the scientist may study deeply, and forge deliberately toward his goal, unhampered by age and the fear of age. So that the poet and the artist may give the world the full measure of his genius, before they leave it. So, too, that great lovers may quaff their bliss untroubled by fear of the end, that great adventurers may roam the far worlds of the universe as long as the call of the unknown leads them!”
“A wonderful vision!” Dick mused, lost in a reverie of what such a discovery might bring.
“There isn’t anything impossible about it, either,” Thon Ahrora said practically. “For ages we have known that life is altogether chemical in nature, though the chemistry of it is very complex. All such changes in the body as growth, mature development, and age, are caused by the chemicals secreted by the various glands.
“Age is just as natural as growth. It is necessary, under the conditions of primeval life, in order that the old may give place to the young, allowing the improvement of the race. But now the human body has reached ultimate perfections. And the human mind needs a longer period of life than an animal body.
“Natural death does not accompany life universally. Many simple animals do not die—the mature adult merely divides, by the process of binery fission, forming two individuals. That is true, even, of the individual cells in the human body, which are immortal when grown in cultures outside the body.
“All that is needed to make eternal youth possible is a chemical which will neutralize the glandular secretions causing old age. We have isolated from a certain endocrine gland this substance which causes age. An injection of it made a subject die of old age in a single day!
“We know the formula of the compound which we must have to neutralize it, to cause immortal youth. A hundred times we have tried to make it by synthetic means. But always our atoms break down before the goal is reached. We must have a catalyst—an agent, you know, which aids a chemical reaction, without being itself affected.
“A few ounces of this catalyst would be enough to enable us to make enough of the elixir of youth, as you call it, to lengthen the days of all the trillions of the Galaxy! Father has had his agents scouring the planets for it in vain. Today, we are making a last attempt to synthesize it.”
“Immortality! Endless youth!” Dick said, musingly. The idea was fascinating, wonderful.
“A great vision,” said Midos Ken. “It might be a disaster to a primitive race, for it would tend to stop development. But now, mankind has reached the ultimate—there has been no upward progress in a hundred thousand years. There can be no advancement until men live longer, and have more time for accomplishment.”
They reached the end of the trip. With a low, trilling note, Thon Ahrora brought the little flier down in a peaceful mountain valley, the white veil of a cataract flung from one of its wooded walls.
Below the fall was a huge, solitary building of glistening white metal, vast as a dirigible hangar. Thon drove the little craft through a wide door in its end, and they emerged inside the building.
An enormous machine filled the whole of the shed-like structure.
An immense platform of black, glistening, jet-like substance fifty feet wide, and four hundred, at least, in length, was supported on massive pillars, fifty feet above the floor. Underneath it was a maze of machinery—suggesting, to Dick, colossal dynamos, huge vacuum tubes, and enormous tuning coils and variable condensers; that is, it somehow made him think of a radio receiver on a prodigious scale.
Above the black platform, at the end, was a great disk of green metal. And at the other was a similar disk of sapphire crystal, a foot thick and twenty in diameter, aglow with soft blue fires.
As they mounted by a stair to a little stage built against the wall of the huge building, overlooking the vast black table, Thon briefly explained the huge mechanism to Dick.
“All matter is electrical, you know,” she began. “Its atoms are composed of protons, or positive charges of electricity, together with bound electrons, forming a nucleus, with free electrons revolving around it. The kind of atom, be it gold or hydrogen, is determined by the number of protons and electrons that make it up.
“We know the secret of the electron. We can strip them from the atom, and use their energy to heat our planets, and drive our ships through space. We can take the electrons of one substance apart, and put them together to make another.
“You know how the atom of radium breaks up, finally forming helium and lead. With such machines as this, we cause such changes to occur as we will. From water drawn from the fall outside, we can make food, clothing, metal, diamond—anything whose chemistry we have mastered. And the El Ray, which turns all substances back to water, rids us of all refuse, and replenishes the precious fluid in our oceans.
“Today we are trying once more to synthesize the catalyst we need so vitally.”
She turned to a bench at the end of the stage that bore long banks of keys—thousands of them. Looking curiously at Dick, she began depressing the keys in intricate combinations, strong slender fingers flying over them. A deep rhythmic hum, vibrant and powerful, came from the apparatus beneath the enormous black table. The sapphire disk at its farther end glowed brighter, with intense, living fires. Throbbing energy seemed to pulse across from it to the green disk, like the electronic stream from the cathode of a vacuum tube.
