James Gunn - The Immortals

“I’m feeling fine, I said.” Weaver’s voice lifted a little before it dropped back to a conversational tone. “We wanted to have a little talk—about cooperation.”

Pearce looked at Jansen. “Funny—I don’t feel very talkative. I’ve had a hard day.”

Weaver’s eyes didn’t leave Pearce’s face. “Get out, Carl,” he said calmly.

“But, Mister Weaver—” Jansen began, his gray eyes tightening.

“Get out, Carl,” Weaver repeated. “Wait for me in the car.”

After Jansen was gone, Pearce sank down in the armchair facing Weaver. He let his gaze drift around the room, lingering on the polished darkness of the music center and the slightly lighter wood of the desk in the corner. “Did you find anything?” he asked.

“Not what we were looking for,” Weaver replied.

“What was that?”

“Cartwright’s location.”

“What makes you think I’d know anything about that?”

Weaver clasped his hands lightly in his lap. “Can’t we work together?”

“Certainly. What would you like to know—about your health?”

“What did you do with those samples of blood you took from me? You must have taken back that pint I got.”

“Almost. Part of it we separated. Got the plasma. Separated the gamma globulin from it with zinc. Used it on various animals.”

“And what did you find out?”

“The immunity is in the gamma globulin. It would be, of course. That’s the immunity factor. You should see my old rat. As frisky as the youngest rat in the lab.”

“So it’s part of me, too?” Weaver asked.

Pearce shook his head slowly. “That’s just the original globulins diluted in your blood.”

“Then to live forever I would have to have periodic transfusions?”

“If it’s possible to live forever,” Pearce said, shrugging.

“It is. You know that. There’s at least one person who’s going to live forever—Cartwright. Unless something happens to him. That would be a tragedy, wouldn’t it? In spite of all precautions, accidents happen. People get murdered. Can you imagine some careless kid spilling that golden blood into a filthy gutter? Some jealous woman putting a knife in that priceless body?”

“What do you want, Weaver?” Pearce asked evenly. “You’ve got your reprieve from death. What more can you ask?”

“Another. And another. Without end. Why should some nobody get it by accident? What good will it do him? Or the world? He needs to be protected—and used. Properly handled, he could be worth—well, whatever men will pay for life. I’d pay a million a year—more if I had to. Other men would pay the same. We’d save the best men in the world, those who have demonstrated their ability by becoming wealthy. Oh, yes. Scientists, too—we’d select some of those. People who haven’t gone into business—leaders, statesmen…”

“What about Cartwright?”

“What about him?” Weaver blinked as if recalled from a lovely dream. “Do you think anyone who ever lived would have a better life, would be better protected, more pampered? Why, he wouldn’t have to ask for a thing! No one would dare say no to him for fear he might kill himself. He’d be the hen that lays the golden eggs.”

“He’d have everything but freedom.”

“A much overrated commodity.”

“The one immortal man in the world.”

“That’s just it,” Weaver said, leaning forward. “Instead of only one, there would be many.”

Pearce shook his head from side to side as if he had not heard. “A chance meeting of genes—a slight alteration by cosmic ray or something even more subtle and accidental—and immortality is created. Some immunity to death—some means of keeping the circulatory system young, resistant, rejuvenated. ‘Man is as old as his arteries,’ Cazali said. Take care of your arteries, and they will keep your cells immortal.”

“Tell me, man! Tell me where Cartwright is before all that is lost forever.” Weaver leaned farther forward, as if he could transmit his urgency.

“A man who knows he’s got a thousand years to live is going to be pretty darned careful,” Pearce said.

“That’s just it,” Weaver said, his eyes narrowing. “He doesn’t know. If he’d known, he’d never have sold his blood.” His face changed subtly. “Or does he know—now?”

“What do you mean?”

“Didn’t you tell him?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t you? Don’t you remember going to the Abbot Hotel on the evening of the ninth, of asking for Cartwright, of talking to him? You should. The clerk identified your picture. And that night Cartwright left.”

Pearce remembered the Abbot Hotel all right, the narrow, dark lobby, grimy, infested with flies and roaches. He had thought of cholera and bubonic plague as he crossed it. He remembered Cartwright, too—that fabulous creature, looking seedy and quite ordinary, who had listened, though, and believed and taken the money and gone…

“I don’t believe it,” Pearce said.

“I should have known right away,” Weaver said, as if to himself. “You’re smart. You would have picked up on it right off, maybe as soon as I woke up, and you would have realized what it meant.”

“Presuming I did. If I did all that you say, do you think it would have been easy for me? To you he’s money. What do you think he would have been to me? That fantastic laboratory, walking around! What wouldn’t I have given to study him! To find out how his body worked, to try to synthesize the substance. You have your drives, Weaver, but I have mine.”

“Why not combine them, Pearce?”

“They wouldn’t mix.”

“Don’t get so holy, Pearce. Life isn’t holy.”

“Life is what we make it,” Pearce said softly. “I won’t have a hand in what you’re planning.”

Weaver got up quickly from his chair and took a step toward Pearce. “Some of you professional men get delusions of ethics,” he said in a kind of muted snarl. “Not many. A few. There’s nothing sacred about what you do. You’re just craftsmen, mechanics—you do a job—you get paid for it. There’s no reason to get religious about it.”

“Don’t be absurd, Weaver. If you don’t feel religious about what you do, you shouldn’t be doing it. You feel religious about making money. That’s what’s sacred to you. Well, life is sacred to me. That’s what I deal in, all day long, every day. Death is an old enemy. I’ll fight him until the end.”

Pearce propelled himself out of his chair. He stood close to Weaver, staring fiercely into the man’s eyes. “Understand this, Weaver. What you’re planning is impossible. What if we all could be rejuvenated? Do you have the slightest idea what would happen? Have you considered what it might do to civilization?

“No, I can see you haven’t. Well, it would bring your society tumbling down around your pillars of gold. Civilization would shake itself to pieces like an unbalanced flywheel. Our culture is constructed on the assumption that we spend two decades growing and learning, a few more producing wealth and progeny, and a final decade or two decaying before we die.

“Look back! See what research and medicine have done in the past century. They’ve added a few years—just a few—to the average lifespan, and our society is groaning at the readjustment. Think what forty years more would do! Think what would happen if we never died!

“There’s only one way something like this can be absorbed into the race—gradually, so that society can adjust, unknowing, to this new thing inside it. All Cartwright’s children will inherit the mutation. They must. It must be dominant. And they will survive, because this has the greatest survival factor ever created.”