CV

26

When Stevens found out that Professor Newland was convalescing in the room next to his, he was sufficiently amused to drop in and introduce himself. By comparing notes, they discovered that they had been stricken within a few minutes of each other. The infection had passed from Stevens to a woman in the elevator, from her to the steward Kim Lee, and from Kim to Newland. “It almost makes you think there’s some meaningful connection, doesn’t it?” Newland said.

“As if we were intended to meet?” Stevens said. “I should have preferred some other way.”

Newland smiled. “Well, I would too, but we don’t always get to choose. Don’t you feel, when you look back at your life, that everything important has been the result of some accident?”

“No,” said Stevens. “I don’t believe in accidents.”

It had crossed his mind, in fact, that there might be nothing accidental about the epidemic; that it might be the work of the group that employed him; certainly, if he had identified them correctly, nothing could have been more apt to their purpose. But if they had planned such a thing, his employment would not have been necessary and he would not be here.

He had wondered, too, whether there was any point now in the assassination he had been paid to carry out. Again assuming that he knew his employers’ motives, surely Newland’s death would go almost unnoticed in the general catastrophe and would serve no purpose. But he was not paid to speculate. He had received no new instructions, and did not expect any.

More to the point, he no longer knew what he wanted. He found that he rather liked Newland; under other circumstances it would have been a pleasure to cultivate his friendship. It amused him to contemplate the fact that Newland’s life hung on an essentially whimsical decision which he had yet to make.

For the first time in many years, he was curious about his own motives. For the fanatics and tyrants who employed him he had nothing but contempt. He had never killed out of passion or conviction. Professionalism aside, he killed in order to confront death by giving it.

Now he had begun to wonder if his attitudes and beliefs were merely the chemical residues of early experiences in his brain, like those of other men. Would he have been different if his father had not killed himself, in a dirty Paris hotel, when Stevens was thirteen? Or if his childhood lover, Maria Talliavera, had not been killed by her stepfather in the attic of the house on the rue des Jardins? Was there another Stevens who might have existed, might still exist, crying inside like an unborn twin?

The talk turned to L-5 and then to Sea Venture. “I can see all the obvious similarities,” Newland said. “They’re striking, and they were very effective on Capitol Hill. Sea Venture is the prototype of a self-sufficient habitat in a partly explored element; it has some of the same technical problems—integrity of the hull, life support, communications, airlocks, and so on. Even some of the solutions are the same.”

“Then, do you think it makes sense to go into the oceans instead of into outer space?” Stevens asked politely.

“If we can’t do both?” Newland said. “I honestly don’t know. I suppose it depends on what you want. One of the great attractions of L-Five was always that it meant going into an absolutely alien medium, a place where humankind had never been. Extending our range, not by just a few million square miles, but almost indefinitely. That had a very powerful appeal. But I’m not sure anymore why we do what we do.”

“Or whether it is a good thing for human beings to exist?”

Newland glanced at him curiously. “That’s something I hadn’t given much thought to. I suppose we take it as a given.”

“But not for any logical reason?”

“No, not a logical reason. Do you hate the human race, John?”

“Oh, no. Schopenhauer said that to hate every miserable creature one meets would take all one’s time, whereas one can despise them with perfect ease.”

"I see.” Newland stroked his chin. “And that’s your philosophy?”

“Like you. I’m not sure anymore what my philosophy is. At one time I thought it was enough to be aware of the absurdity of the human animal, to eat well, sleep well, and have a healthy conscience.”

“And how do you manage that?”

“I don’t anymore. A healthy conscience, I must tell you, is like a healthy liver—when it is healthy, it doesn’t bother you. But that was when I was thirty-nine.”

“How old are you now?”

“I was forty three days ago.”

“A great age,” said Newland gravely.

Stevens grinned. "Touché. And you, Paul, how old are you?”

“I'm sixty-three. For what it’s worth, I’ve been through four of these age things. The first one was when I was a little over thirty. I thought, here I am, thirty-one or thirty-two, my life is half over, and what have I done?”

“Yes.”

“And then again in my forties, and fifties. And the sixties. It’s the numbers; they’re like the numbers on an odometer: every time the big one changes, it calls your attention to the time that’s gone.”

Stevens was watching him intently. “Do you ever think it would be better just to have done with it?”

“Oh.” Newland looked at his hands. “No, not seriously. There's always been something more to do, and I’ve always known that when you get out of one of these troughs, things look bright again.”

“Darkest before the dawn,” said Stevens, not quite keeping the irony out of his voice.

Newland folded his hands. “All I can tell you,” he said, “is that I still have a strong sense of some meaning in life, even if I can’t say what it is. We all have to decide for ourselves whether that’s enough. Give yourself a chance.”