The Ganymede Club (41 page)

He rose from the spidery couch and stared at it with distaste. Its lower support strut was bowed noticeably in the middle.

"You've ruined it," Spook said.

"Let us hope so. The popular view of Security as a modern inquisition is now in large part confirmed. I propose to seek a more congenial setting."

He headed for the door and squeezed on through. Spook, scurrying along five steps behind him, suddenly paused. He turned and slowly made his way back to Lola and Bryce. "You know, I get the feeling that he doesn't want company."

Lola stared at him in astonishment. Spook had read Bat's feelings for himself, without even a hint from her. Maybe there was a possibility, just a faint one, that Spook was going to grow up and be human.

"Come on." She took him by the elbow. "I don't hold Bat's low opinion of Security, but I suggest that we all follow his lead. There has to be a more congenial setting."

26

The drugs were starting to lose their effectiveness. The patient still sat in the chair, but the telemetry feeds no longer provided inputs to the computer models. It was a perfectly ordinary ending to a haldane session.

Except that both haldane and patient knew that this one was different.

"It's the final session," Lola said. "You don't need a haldane any more. Integration of memories is going to take place at its own speed. It would be irresponsible of me to try to hurry that."

"I wondered." Danny Clay sat up in the chair and removed the electrodes and sensor cups without consulting Lola. "How long will it take?"

"I don't know. I suspect that the only people able to answer that question died in the war."

"Any suggestions as to what I ought to do while I'm waiting? I mean, I'm starting to
feel
like Danny Clay, but sometimes I still wonder who I am and where I am. Should I be back in the Sanctuary for War Victims?"

"That's the last place you want to be. You're not sick, and you're not a victim. You need to be surrounded by normal people." Lola hesitated. "I have a suggestion, but you may think it ridiculous."

"Try me. A lot of things have been ridiculous recently."

"I learned a good deal about you in our sessions together. Danny Clay had a fascination with probability and statistics, and he calculated odds as easily as other people breathe. He was channeled into gambling and crime because he saw it as the only escape from the gutter—the street-corner numbers game, and then the casino. But as Bryce Sonnenberg, you have a clean start. You have the chance to do anything you want. I think you should go back to being a mathematician. See how far you can take it."

"Lola, I'm getting on for sixty years old. Mathematics is a young man's game."

"You didn't worry about your age when you thought you were just Bryce Sonnenberg. Anyway, you didn't let me finish. Be a mathematician, but with a difference. Offer yourself to a medical facility as a test subject."

"You want me to be a guinea pig?"

"I don't think of it that way. At the moment you are a unique case, an older brain in a young body. But there will be others. The treatment you had will be repeated. You provide a unique source of valuable medical data."

"The experiments are illegal."

"Legal or illegal, people will do it. Weren't they illegal when you signed up? Do you think a detail like that is going to stop them? You saw the interest with even a
rumor
about humans living for three thousand years. No one mentions risks."

"Or side effects. You saw the coverage of the first Saturn expedition. Jason Cayuga and Athene Rios and the rest of them, so young and cheerful and full of fun. By the time they died they were cold-blooded killers without a scrap of feeling for anyone. Not even for their own kind." He hooked the electrodes he was holding onto the chair back and swung his feet around and onto the floor. "If that's what symbiosis does, you can have my share."

He did not sound quite convincing. It occurred to Lola that he was not the only one who had aged a lot in a short time. She could read the motives and actions of others as never before—and without the aid of drugs or machinery. She knew, for instance, that Danny/Bryce was not going to take her advice and return to mathematics.

"You have it wrong," she said. "It wasn't an alien invasion of their bodies that changed Jason Cayuga and Athene Rios. The change was in their
minds
, at the prospect of thousands of years of additional life. Maybe even immortality, because in another three thousand years technology may advance enough to make death an option. You or I or
anyone
would change if someone came along and offered the same package. We'd covet the prospect of all those years. Once we thought we had them, we'd do anything to keep them."

Danny Clay shrugged.

"Or to
get
them," Lola added. "If we saw the slightest chance that they might be available. You asked me what you ought to do. You didn't tell me what you want to do. But you've already made up your mind, haven't you?"

He squirmed in his seat. "I guess I have."

"You knew before you even came here for this session."

"Yes." He shrugged. "Can't fool a haldane, can I? But you know me, I've lived my whole life playing the odds. How could I stop playing them now?"

"You've lost me."

"It's that word you used: 'immortality.' It's like a bet with an infinite payout. Any gambler
has
to make it. An investment of some time now, for the possible gain of an infinite time in the future . . ."

"That's known as Pascal's wager—he used it to argue that you should live well and believe in God while you were alive, even if there was only a tiny chance that God existed. Because the payoff was an infinite time in Paradise."

"I wouldn't know about that. All I know is that out there, somewhere in the Saturn system"—he waved his hand vaguely up toward the ceiling—"we may find our own bet with an infinite payoff. I have to look for it."

"So why did you come to see me today? You knew what you were going to do, and you knew I couldn't change your mind."

"I thought I might change yours. I thought you might like to join me."

There was a moment—a brief one—of temptation, then Lola shook her head. "That's not for me. I'm a haldane. My problems are here and now. Looking for longevity at the edge of the solar system is Security's job."

"I'll be working with Security. They've seen Bat's data, and they've listened to his logic. They don't quite buy it."

"But even so, they feel they can't afford to ignore it?"

"That's right." As he stood up, Lola detected on his face a look that she thought she might be seeing a lot in the years ahead. There was a questing, yearning gleam in his eyes.

"Pascal's wager," he said. "We may find something out there, or we may not. I'm not sure. But I'm sure of one thing: I have to look."

27

Beyond Jupiter the solar system moves at a different tempo. In the time that it takes Saturn and its attendant train of satellites to travel once around the Sun, Earth has made a dizzying thirty revolutions. If an Earth human lives for a century, should not a dweller in the Saturn system endure for millennia?

But the pulse of Saturn was changing. Its natural period had been disturbed. The tireless and energetic mayfly humans were all ready to swarm outward, assisted by their self-replicating machines. In another century or less they would have overrun Saturn, colonizing every one of its major and minor satellites.

The danger had been recognized since the time of the first Saturn expedition. At the time, little could be done. Now it could.

Simone Munzer stood alone on the surface of Helene. After the violent death of Cayuga the decision of the surviving Club members had been unanimous: Long-term safety could not be found in the inner system, or at Jupiter or Saturn. It did not even lie at Uranus or Neptune. The short-lived humans would be all over those outposts in the next hundred years. It was necessary to go beyond. Far beyond, to where the risk of death became vanishingly small. And they should go at once.

Every other member of the Club was already in position, lying in hibernation deep within the tunnels. The drive units were poised, ready to thrust. It was Simone's task to perform the final check and survey.

She looked sunward. If the solar furnace were diminished, compared with its brightness from Jupiter's distance, what would it look like from Helene when another fifty years had passed? Assuming that everything went as planned, Sol would be no more than one of many bright stars. Even a puny acceleration of a millionth of a gee had a huge effect when it continued for a sufficient time.

Simone turned her back on the Sun. Far beyond the planets of the solar system and the Jupiter Belt lay the Oort Cloud, extending a third of the way to the nearest star. Would
that
be far enough? Or would another millennium see humans at work there also?

No matter. Beyond the Oort Cloud shone the endless, quiet stars. Go far enough, with time enough, and safety was guaranteed.

She stopped stargazing and headed toward the nearest tunnel. Twenty minutes more, and the Diabelli drives, feeble but steady, would fire. Helene would begin to spiral slowly outward, away from Sol. Before that happened, Simone must be safe in the deep tunnels, along with the only others of her kind.

She took a last look around her and started down. Were they still human? She did not know. Certainly, she was not one of
those
humans, for whom a century was an unimaginably long time—long enough for memories to fade, for interest in an investigation to dissipate, for sometime reality to become the discredited stuff of legends. Every human now alive would be dust. But two hundred years was nothing for beings who aspired to outlive the Sun itself.

Simone reached the white membrane barrier and passed on through. The solar system would wait. When it was ready for them, and only then, the Ganymede Club would return.

THE END