Immortals Read online

  Immortals

  EDITED BY

  JACK DANN & GARDNER DOZOIS

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  eISBN: 978-1-62579-113-9

  Copyright © 2013 by Gardner Dozois and Jack Dann

  First printing: July 1998

  Cover art by: Ron Miller

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  Electronic version by Baen Books

  Acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint the following material:

  'The Dying Man" by Damon Knight (formerly titled "Dio"). Copyright © 1957 by Royal Publications, Inc. First published in Infinity, September 1957. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  "Death Do Us Part" by Robert Silverberg. Copyright © 1996 by Robert Silverberg. First published electronically on Omni Online, December 1996. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  The Worm That Flies" by Brian W. Aldiss. Copyright © 1968 by Brian W. Aldiss. First published in The Farthest Reaches (Pocket Books). Reprinted by permission of the author.

  "Child of All Ages" by P.J. Plauger. Copyright © 1975 by The Conde Nast Publications Inc. First published in Analog, March 1975. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  "Grotto of the Dancing Deer" by Clifford D. Simak. Copyright © 1980 by The Conde Nast Publications Inc. First published in Analog, April 1980. Reprinted by permission of the author's estate and the agent for the estate, David W. Wixon.

  "Learning to Be Me" by Greg Egan. Copyright © 1990 by Interzone. First published in Interzone 37, July 1990. Reprinted by permission df the author.

  "The Secret" by Jack Vance. Copyright © 1978 by Jack Vance. First published in Impulse, March 1966. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author's agent, Ralph M. Vicinanza, Ltd.

  "Mortimer Gray's History of Death " by Brian Stableford. Copyright © 1995 by Bantam Doubleday Dell Magazines. First published in Asimov's Science Fiction, April 1995. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  PREFACE

  Immortality may be one of the oldest dreams of mankind. One of the oldest recorded myths, that of Gilgamesh, from ancient Sumer, over six thousand years old, deals with the idea of immortality, and it's an idea that has threaded its way through mythology and folklore ever since, from the Greek myth of Tithonus (perhaps the first tale to caution us that eternal life is no good without eternal youth as well) to folk traditions about the Wandering Jew, and on into the dreams of the Twentieth Century, in movies and TV shows such as Highlander and The Immortal, as well as in print SF. Immortality was one of the secrets searched for by the medieval alchemists, and one of the dreams of some modern scientists is to achieve an immortality of sorts by "downloading" our personalities and memories into a computer. The concept of immortality has fascinated writers from Swift to Shaw, and certainly the thought of what it would he like to live forever is one that must occur to all of us as we age and realize that the days ahead of us are numbered.

  Many religions, of course, offer the immortality of the spirit in the Afterlife, but what we're talking about here is corporeal immortality, immortality achieved right here on Earth, in our own physical bodies—and, since we're dreaming, we insist on the kind of immortality where we're eternally young and healthy and vigorous as well. And that's the kind of immortality we deal with in this anthology.

  With the exception of George Bernard Shaw's Back To Methuselah, most of the perspective on immortality to be found in mainstream literature has been overwhelmingly negative, with immortality seen as an intolerable burden, something that would smother all creativity, innovation, and joy in the human spirit. Even within the science fiction genre itself, opinion on immortality has been sharply mixed. Until recently, most SF stories about immortality have been cautionary tales, warning us against the cultural and evolutionary stagnation that immortality would bring. In recent years, however, the pendulum has begun to swing, and we are beginning to get more stories from writers who obviously approve of the idea of "living forever"—or at least for a very much longer amount of time than people get to live at the moment. ("Immortality," of course, is usually short-hand for "greatly extended life-span," with just how greatly extended varying from author to author, from hundreds to thousands of years, with a few of the more greatly daring even suggesting life-spans of millions of years.) Although we present stories here from both the positive and the negative perspectives, your editors themselves tend to agree with T.H. White, who said "You can learn astronomy in a lifetime, natural history in three, literature in six. And then, after you have exhausted a millard lifetimes in biology and medicine and theocriticism and geography and history and economics—why, you can start to make a cartwheel out of the appropriate wood, or spend fifty years learning to begin to learn to beat your adversary at fencing. After that you can start again on mathematics, until it is time to learn to plough." In other words, those who talk about the deadly tedium of immortality are those without much in the way of inner resources or imagination. No, just go ahead and give us an extra thousand years of life, and let us worry about finding interesting ways to fill the time! (It may be worth noting that from the perspective of ages past, when most people were old or dead by the age of thirty, most citizens of modern Western urban civilization are already living greatly extended lifetimes—both your editors would be ancient village gaffers by the standards of some eras—and I'm sure that a lifespan of a thousand years would seem just as "natural" to people once they got used to it; in fact, you'd probably soon get people lamenting that they had only a thousand years in which to do everything that they wanted to do.)

  Whether viewed as a blessing or a curse, though, the idea of immortality seems to call out the utmost in imagination and ingenuity in science fiction writers, and has always appealed to SF's most visionary authors and to its most profound thinkers—as you'll find amply demonstrated in the stories that follow.

  So open up this anthology and begin reading. Hurry up! You don't have forever to do it, you know! (At least, not yet . . .)

  THE DYING MAN

  Damon Knight

  A multi-talented professional whose career as writer, editor, critic, and anthologist spans almost fifty years, Damon Knight has long been a major shaping force in the development of modern science fiction. He wrote the first important hook of SF criticism, In Search of Wonder, and won a Hugo Award for it. He was the founder of the Science Fiction Writers of America, co-founder of the prestigious Milford Writers' Conference, and, with his wife, writer Kate Wilhelm, is still involved in the operation of the Clarion workshop for new young writers, which was modeled after the Milford Conference. He was the editor of Orbit, the longest running original anthology series in the history of American science fiction, and has also produced important works of genre history such as The Futurians and Turning Points, as well as dozens of influential reprint anthologies. Knight has also been highly influential as a writer, and may well be one of the finest short story writers ever to work in the genre. His books include the novels A For Anything, The Other Foot, Hell's Pavement, The Man in the Tree, CV, A Reasonable World, and Why Do Birds, and the collections Rule Golden and Other Stories, Turning On, Far Out, The Best of Damon Knight, and the recent One Side Laughing. His most recent book is the critically acclaimed novel Humptey Dumptey: An Oval. Knight lives with his family in Eugene, Oregon.

  Here he gives us a vivid and powerful look at a languid, placid future world of hedonistic immortals who devote their seemingly endless lives to recreation and the arts—and who are about to find out that, even for them, it's always later t
han you think it is . . .

  I

  It is noon. Overhead the sky like a great silver bowl shimmers with heat; the yellow sand hurls it back; the distant ocean is dancing with white fire. Emerging from underground, Dio the Planner stands blinking a moment in the strong salt light; he feels the heat like a cap on his head, and his beard curls crisply, iridescent in the sun.

  A few yards away are five men and women, their limbs glinting pink against the sand. The rest of the seascape is utterly bare; the sand seems to stretch empty and hot for miles. There is not even a gull in the air. Three of the figures are men; they are running and throwing a beach ball at one another, with faroff shouts. The two women are half reclining, watching the men. All five are superbly muscled, with great arched chests, ponderous as Percherons. Their skins are smooth; their eyes sparkle. Dio looks at his own forearm: is there a trace of darkness? is the skin coarsening?

  He drops his single garment and walks toward the group. The sand's caress is briefly painful to his feet; then his skin adapts, and he no longer feels it. The five incuriously turn to watch him approach. They are all players, not students, and there are two he does not even know. He feels uncomfortable, and wishes he had not come. It isn't good for students and players to meet informally; each side is too much aware of the other's goodnatured contempt. Dio tries to imagine himself a player, exerting himself to be polite to a student, and as always, he fails. The gulf is too wide. It takes both kinds to make a world, students to remember and make, players to consume and enjoy; but the classes should not mix.

  Even without their clothing, these are players: the wide, innocent eyes that flash with enthusiasm, or flicker with easy boredom; the soft mouths that can be gay or sulky by turns. Now he deliberately looks at the blonde woman, Claire, and in her face he sees the same unmistakable signs. But, against all reason and usage, the soft curve of her lips is beauty; the poise of her dark-blonde head on the strong neck wrings his heart. It is illogical, almost unheard of, perhaps abnormal; but he loves her.

  Her gray eyes are glowing up at him like sea-agates; the quick pleasure of her smile warms and soothes him. "I'm so glad to see you." She takes his hand. "You know Katha of course, and Piet. And this is Tanno, and that's Mark. Sit here and talk to me, I can't move, it's so hot."

  The ball throwers go cheerfully back to their game. The brunette, Katha, begins talking immediately about the choirs in Bethany: has Dio heard them? No? But he must; the voices are stupendous, the choir-master is brilliant; nothing like it has been heard for centuries.

  The word "centuries" falls carelessly. How old is Katha—eight hundred, a thousand? Recently, in a three-hundred-year-old journal, Dio has been surprised to find a reference to Katha. Evidently he had known her briefly, forgotten her completely. There are so many people; it's impossible to remember. That's why the students keep journals; and why the players don't. He might even have met Claire before, and forgotten . . . "No," he says, smiling politely, "I've been busy with a project."

  "Dio is an Architectural Planner," says Claire, mocking him with the exaggerated syllables; and yet there's a curious, inverted pride in her voice. "I told you, Kat, he's a student among students. He rebuilds this whole sector, every year."

  "Oh," says Katha, wide-eyed, "I think that's absolutely fascinating." A moment later, without pausing, she has changed the subject to the new sky circus in Littlam—perfectly vulgar, but hilarious. The sky clowns! The tumblers! The delicious mock animals!

  Claire's smooth face is close to his, haloed by the sun, gilded from below by the reflection of the hot sand. Her half-closed eyelids are delicate and soft, bruised by heat; her pupils are contracted, and the wide gray irises are intricately patterned. A fragment floats to the top of his mind, something he has read about the structure of the iris: ray-like dilating muscles interlaced with a circular contractile set, pigmented with a little melanin. For some reason, the thought is distasteful, and he pushes it aside. He feels a little light-headed; he has been working too hard.

  "Tired?" she asks gently.

  He relaxes a little. The brunette, Katha, is still talking; she is one of those who talk and never care if anyone listens. He answers, "This is our busiest time. All the designs are coming back for a final check before they go into the master integrator. It's our last chance to find any mistakes."

  "Dio, I'm sorry," she says. "I know I shouldn't have asked you." Her brows go up; she looks at him anxiously under her lashes. "You should rest, though."

  "Yes," says Dio.

  She lays her soft palm on the nape of his neck. "Rest, then. Rest."

  "Ah," says Dio wearily, letting his head drop into the crook of his arm. Under the sand where he lies are seventeen inhabited levels, of which three are his immediate concern, over a sector that reaches from Alban to Detroy. He has been working almost without sleep for two weeks. Next season there is talk of beginning an eighteenth level; it will mean raising the surface again, and all the force-planes will have to be shifted. The details swim past, thousands of them; behind his closed eyes, he sees architectural tracings, blueprints, code sheets, specifications.

  "Darling," says her caressing voice in his ear, "you know I'm happy you came, anyhow, even if you didn't want to. Because you didn't want to. Do you understand that?"

  He peers at her with one half-open eye. "A feeling of power?" he suggests ironically.

  "No. Reassurance is more like it. Did you know I was jealous of your work? . . . I am, very much. I told myself, if he'll leave it, now, today—"

  He rolls over, smiling crookedly up at her. "And yet you don't know one day from the next."

  Her answering smile is quick and shy. "I know, isn't it awful of me: but you do."

  As they look at each other in silence, he is aware again of the gulf between them. They need us, he thinks, to make their world over every year—keep it bright and fresh, cover up the past—but they dislike us because they know that whatever they forget, we keep and remember.

  Mis hand finds hers. A deep, unreasoning sadness wells up hi him; he asks silently, Why should I love you?

  He has not spoken, but he sees her face contract into a rueful, pained smile; and her fingers grip hard.

  Above them, the shouts of the ball throwers have changed to noisy protests. Dio looks up. Piet, the cotton-headed man, laughing, is afloat over the heads of the other two. He comes down slowly and throws the ball; the game goes on. But a moment later Piet is in the air again: the others shout angrily, and Tanno leaps up to wrestle with him. The ball drops, bounds away: the two striving figures turn and roll in midair. At length the cotton-headed man forces the other down to the sand. They both leap up and run over, laughing.

  "Someone's got to tame this wild man," says the loser, panting. "I can't do it, he's too slippery. How about you, Dio?"

  "He's resting," Claire protests, but the others chorus, "Oh, yes!" "Just a fall or two," says Piet, with a wide grin, rubbing his hands together. "There's lots of time before the tide comes in—unless you'd rather not?"

  Dio gets reluctantly to his feet. Grinning, Piet floats up off the sand. Dio follows, feeling the taut surge of back and chest muscles, and the curious sensation of pressure on the spine. The two men circle, rising slowly. Piet whips his body over, head downward, arms slashing for Dio's legs. Dio overleaps him, and, turning, tries for a leg-and-arm; but Piet squirms away like an eel and catches him in a waist lock. Dio strains against the taut chest, all his muscles knotting; the two men hung unbalanced for a moment. Then, suddenly, something gives way in the force that buoys Dio up. They go over together, hard and awkwardly into the sand. There is a surprised babble of voices.

  Dio picks himself up. Piet is kneeling nearby, white-faced, holding his forearm. "Bent?" asks Mark, bending to touch it gently.

  "Came down with my weight," says Piet. "Wasn't expecting—" He nods at Dio. "That's a new one."

  "Well, let's hurry and fix it," says the other, "or you'll miss the spout." Piet lays the damaged forearm acro
ss his own thighs. "Ready?" Mark plants his bare foot on the arm, leans forward and presses sharply down. Piet winces, then smiles; the arm is straight.

  "Sit down and let it knit," says the other. He turns to Dio. "What's this?"

  Dio is just becoming aware of a sharp pain in one finger, and dark blood welling. "Just turned back the nail a little," says Mark. "Press it down, it'll close in a second."

  Katha suggests a word game, and in a moment they are all sitting in a circle, shouting letters at each other. Dio does poorly; he cannot forget the dark blood falling from his fingertip. The silver sky seems oppressively distant; he is tired of the heat that pours down on his head, of the breathless air and the sand like hot metal under his body. He has a sense of helpless fear, as if something terrible has already happened; as if it were too late.

  Someone says, "It's time," and they all stand up, whisking sand from their bodies. "Come on," says Claire over her shoulder. "Have you ever been up the spout? It's fun."

  "No, I must get back, I'll call you later," says Dio. Her fingers lie softly on his chest as he kisses her briefly, then he steps away. "Goodbye," he calls to the others, "Goodbye," and turning, trudges away over the sand.

  The rest, relieved to be free of him, are halfway to the rocks above the water's edge. A white feather of spray dances from a fissure as the sea rushes into the cavern below. The water slides back, leaving mirror-wet sand that dries in a breath. It gathers itself; far out a comber lifts its green head, and rushes onward. "Not this one, but the next," calls Tanno.