Equality: In the Year 2000

Chapter Eighteen The Year 2, New Calendar

He was not in the usual sweat brought on by the nightmares filled with memories of blood and horror and human suffering, but he was quite distressed.

Edith, her head on the pillow next to him, asked, “What’s wrong, Jule?”

“Bit of a nightmare, I guess,” he told her. “Nothing.”

“Nothing? You mean to tell me you have upsetting dreams?”

“’Upsetting dreams’ is a gentle way of putting it. I’ve had them all my life, these nightmares. They’re evidently more vivid than most people’s from what all the headshrinkers have told me.”

She sat up in bed. She hadn’t bothered to put on a nightgown before they fell asleep. Her body was superb, but right now he was in no mood for sex.

She said, “We must go and see Father immediately!”

“Why?”

But she had already hurried from the bed in the direction of the apartment’s order box to send for clothing. She said over her shoulder, “To tell him about your dreams.”

He shrugged, but got himself up and went into the bath. He in no way wanted to discuss his nightmares with Dr. Leete, but he supposed there was no choice. Supposedly he was still under medical care.

Dressed, they didn’t take their breakfast in his apartment but headed immediately down the hall to the Leete quarters. He hadn’t the vaguest idea what Edith’s father and mother thought about his relationship with their daughter. In his own time, people had at least paid lip service to appearances. But here he was, sleeping with Edith, and seemingly it was of no importance whatsoever to them. Well, at least hypocrisy wasn’t involved; certainly that was progress in the development of human relations.

The academician, his expression disgruntled, was staring into the library booster screen on the living room desk. He looked up when Edith and Julian entered.

“Ridiculous!” he said, gesturing at the screen.

“What’s ridiculous. Father?” Edith asked.

He looked at her, closing one eye in disgust. “My looking at the news. Every time I do, I become irritated.”

She sighed as though she had been through this before. “What is the world currently doing that you disapprove of?”

“This star probe to the Alpha Centauri system. Ridiculous!”

Julian asked with some surprise, “Has the space program gotten to that point?”

“No. That’s why it’s ridiculous,” Leete said. “Do you know what that robot spacecraft will find when it gets to Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B, assuming that the two companion stars have habitable planets?”

“No. What?”

“It’ll find men who have been there possibly for years.”

“Whatever are you talking about, Father?”

“About going off half-cocked. Why not wait another decade or two until we know more about space drive? What’s the hurry? It’s the same story all over again. Back in the 1950s when the United States and the Soviet Union began exploring space, instead of getting together—and utilizing German and British science as well—America went racing off. Billions upon billions of dollars, billions of man-hours of our top scientists and technicians, millions of tons of materials that were needed elsewhere.”

Julian said, “They made it, though. Landing a man on the moon was one of the biggest events in my time.”

The academician flicked off the screen in a gesture of disgust. “They made it; they put a man on the moon—two men, as I recall. Now, suppose they had taken their time, amalgamated their efforts with the Russians and any other interested countries: united effort would have cut the cost in half, and twice as much probably would have been learned.”

Edith said patiently, “What has that got to do with the Alpha Centauri probe?”

“It’s the same situation. What’s the hurry? In ten years we will have twice the information we have now. For all I know, we’ll have figured out a faster-than-light drive. By the time this ridiculous robot space probe gets to the vicinity, there’ll already be men there, waiting for it—if there’s any suitable place there for waiting.”

Julian was out of his depth, as usual.

“All right,” Edith said. “According to Stephen Dole, the F2 to Kl stars are of the spectral classes that might be suitable for the nurturing of planets habitable by mankind, planets that can be colonized. Sooner or later, we’ve got to reach out. This is the first step.”

“But premature! What is the damned hurry? Only twenty-five thousand years ago, we were painting bison and deer on the walls and ceilings of our caves. Why can’t we slow down a bit these days and wait until we’ve progressed a little further before sending out inadequate expeditions that will be anachronisms five years after they’ve taken off?”

Edith said, “Perhaps you’re right. However, we’ve got another problem on our hands at this moment. Jule has recurring nightmares.”

“Nightmares? In this day and age?”

Julian said wearily, “Remember, I’m not of this day and age.”

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

Edith interrupted, “I’ve got an errand to run for Jule. When this project began, our job was to take care of him as if he were a four-year-old child. Now we’ve gotten to the point where we’re running around on his projects.” She grinned at him to take the edge off her words, then turned to leave. “I’ll pick up breakfast somewhere along the way. I want to get to the museum when it first opens.”

When she was gone, the doctor waited for Julian to begin.

“It’s nothing important. I’ve had them since I was a kid. Very vivid. I usually wake up sweating. I saw an auto accident once when I was about twelve years old. Four people killed. They looked like mincemeat. The first dead persons I had ever seen. I’ve dreamed about it since then about once every two months. I know it’s abnormal, but I’ve been to a multitude of doctors, from psychiatrists to acupuncture specialists, and it’s never done me any good.”

“But that was over thirty years ago, Julian. Today, we can not only cure you of your nightmares but give you a new set of pleasant dreams to order.”

“Give me dreams?”

“Yes, of course. Programmed dreams. Anything from pleasant dreams of childhood, to dreams of heroic deeds with you the hero. How would you like to be Horatius at the Bridge? Or we can give you erotic fantasies beyond your wildest dreams.” The academician chuckled at his own joke. “Now, I’m not suggesting that you turn to sleep to get your sexual release, but it can and has been done.”

Julian slumped in his chair. “This has been the cross I’ve borne all my life. How often have you killed an eight-year-old child, Raymond? I do it vividly about once a month.”

“I’ll get right on it.”

The doctor put a call through to Vienna with Julian watching, hardly daring to breathe. To be cured of the exhausting, terrifying dreams that he’d had as far back as he could remember!

Leete turned to him and indicated the phone screen. He had been speaking into it in Interlingua and using medical terminology with which Julian was unfamiliar.

“Doctor Oswaldo Schon wishes to speak with you.”

The face in the screen was typically Germanic, thin with very intense blue eyes.

“It is very interesting to speak to you, Mr. West,” Dr. Schon said in excellent English. “Some time in the future, when you are more adjusted to your new environment, I would enjoy an opportunity to discuss medical practice of a third of a century ago.”

“It would be a pleasure, Doctor,” Julian replied.

The other asked him a series of questions which didn’t seem to probe too deeply. Evidently it wasn’t even necessary to see the patient in person. Finally, he asked to speak to Academician Leete again. The conversation swung back to Interlingua, and Dr. Leete took several notes before switching off the phone.

He turned to Julian. “Evidently a very routine matter. I’ll see about the prescription immediately and treat you before evening.”

Julian expressed his great relief, then said, “I’m surprised at how many people speak English—even this Austrian.”

Leete chuckled. “He wasn’t speaking English; he was speaking Interlingua. The computer translated his Interlingua into English for you, and your English into Interlingua for him. You could talk to an Eskimo if you wished, and his tribal tongue would be translated into English for you.”

Julian shook his head. “They were just beginning to experiment with computer translaters when I went under.” He shifted in his chair and said by way of changing the subject, “There have been a few questions that have accumulated that I wanted to ask you about.”

“Of course.”

“Edith mentioned the other day that if someone wanted to read pornography, he could do so until his eyes dropped out. Would that apply to everybody? Even to a six-year-old child?”

“Why yes, certainly. A six-year-old usually can’t read any too well, even with our modern means of education, but if he was interested in books on sex, pornography or otherwise, I suppose he could look at the pictures.”

Julian was unhappy with that answer. “As a doctor, don’t you think that would be bad for the child?”

“Why? There’s nothing wrong with sex, and the sooner the youngster finds out about it, the better. The old arguments against freedom to portray sexual scenes were that they aroused sexual passions. So what? A photograph of a well-presented meal can arouse the appetite. Children become curious about sex at a very early age. They begin sex play with each other or with themselves almost as soon as they can toddle around. When 1 was a boy, grown-ups would discourage this. Which stopped the child not at all. If anything, it increased his curiosity. As a rule, he picked up most of his sex education in the streets, discussing the matter with other youngsters no more knowledgeable than he. Do you know that until I was almost fifteen I believed that masturbation would cause your eyes to go weak and your brain to deteriorate, especially if you did it too often? Not that it stopped me for a moment!”

Julian laughed. “I believed the same thing but at that time in my life I imagine I must have averaged about three times a day. My father had some illustrated books that he had picked up in Paris. One day he caught me masturbating while I looked at them and gave me a good walloping.”

“Why? Obviously you were learning more about the sex act than you would have talking about it with your schoolmates. Actually, we don’t call it pornography very much any more. But the International Data Banks are full of material on sex, fiction and otherwise.”

“I guess it makes sense at that,” Julian nodded. “Another thing… With a situation as we have today in which ninety-eight percent of the population has full-time leisure, won’t the people deteriorate? Look at the Roman proletariat with its free bread and circuses. The Roman citizen had the equivalent of our Guaranteed Annual Income. And the Empire collapsed.”

Leete nodded agreeably. “Wasted leisure can be a curse rather than a blessing. Right from the beginning we realized that preparing a student for a job was no longer the basic problem, since so few were needed. So we set our education sights on training our youth for leisure and happiness. Of course, each of us receives training in a field in which we might be chosen to work; but at the same time we also develop ourselves in a half-dozen or more other fields. For instance, since Edith was about ten she’s had a strong leaning toward gardening, plants, that sort of thing. It finally wound up with her being chosen on Muster Day to go into agriculture. But she also has a very keen interest in anthropology, archaeology, history, ceramics, and music. Believe me, if she is bounced out of her job, or when she reaches the age of retirement, Edith is going to have no trouble whatsoever in filling her leisure time. Education is the thing.”

Julian said slowly, “I suppose you’re right. Without it, a third of a century ago, a working man often didn’t know what to do with his free time. He’d spend a fantastic amount of it watching television, and you can probably remember how bad that was. When I die, I want—”

Dr. Leete choked. “Die?” he almost shouted. “Julian! You… you’re not contemplating suicide? I know you are unhappy about some of the changes that have taken place and the difficulties you’re having acclimating yourself. But suicide isn’t the answer.”

“Oh no, you misunderstand. I meant eventually, through natural causes. When I’m older.”

Leete shook his head. “You know, during the past few weeks we’ve had a continual quiz program going on. You ask a hundred questions and by the time we’ve answered, or half-answered them, we wind up saying we don’t have that any more. Things like money, banks, cities, pollution, population explosion…”

“What’s that got to do with my realizing that death—”

“Jule, we don’t die any more.”

He gaped at the older man.

Leete said hurriedly, “That isn’t exactly the way to put it. Of course, everything dies sooner or later. One day the solar system will cool. One day, probably, the galaxy itself will slow down. What I meant was—”

“What do you mean you don’t die any more?”

“Julian, we keep telling you, human knowledge is doubling every eight years. They defeated cancer shortly after you went into stasis. Heart, kidney, liver diseases are now a thing of the past. So are all contagious diseases. You must realize that medicine is at a point thirty-two times in advance of your period, and even in your time they were making fabulous breakthroughs.”

Julian shook his head dumbly. He’d had some wild curves thrown him in the past few weeks, but this one won the game.

Leete said, “Don’t you realize that some of the teeth in your head are new? That you’ve grown new ones? While you were in stasis, we took out all your bridgework, even all your teeth that had been filled, and seeded your jaw. You grew the new teeth while in hibernation.”

It simply hadn’t occurred to him. All his life he’d had the best of dental care, of course, but he’d had bridges, cavities. He ran his tongue around his mouth. His teeth were now perfect.

The doctor chuckled. “Every few months, after you went into stasis, some great breakthrough would come. Do you know how we conquered venereal disease?”

“No.”

“Some genius came up with a new wonder antibiotic. We manufactured a sufficient quantity and then one day, within twenty-four hours, we gave everyone in the country a shot. Everyone—babes in arms, children, adults, the elderly. Nobody escaped: politicians and prostitutes, homosexuals and bishops, the President of the United States and the ambassador from England! The venereal bugs never knew what hit them; they never got the chance to breed up an immune strain. From then on, anybody who entered North America from abroad was given a shot at the border, unless he could prove he’d already had one. Of course, the medicine’s formula was immediately divulged to the whole world and similar steps were taken everywhere.”

Julian hadn’t followed that very well. His brain was in turmoil.

“But… immortality…”

Leete became slightly impatient. “It’s not immortality. As I told you, everything that lives dies sooner or later. The difference is that for a indefinite time you won’t die from the old causes. Of course, an accident or suicide will kill you; but otherwise your body cells will continue to replace themselves. You’re probably not up on the subject, but scientists have known for a long time that there were some forms of life, mostly very small ones, that never died except by accident. The human animal usually began to slow down in the replacement of its cells in the middle twenties. By the time it reached the sixties, seventies, or eighties, usually some organ would have degenerated to the point where death resulted. To put it simply, science found out what it was that caused the failure to replace body cells.”

“But the population! It must be growing like mad!”

Leete nodded. “One of our greatest problems. Obviously our birth rate must be kept practically nil. We can afford to bring new children into the world only at the rate the older generations die.”

“But you said they don’t die any more.”

“Save through accident or suicide. Suicide, by the way, no longer carries the stigma it once did. Some of our people who attempt to project into the future suspect that the rate will go up considerably as the knowledge explosion continues. The generation gaps will be such that the older generations will find it so difficult to adapt they will no longer wish to continue to live.”

“I know how they feel,” Julian said. “But I’ve seen old people, age seventy or so. If you don’t age…”

“When the breakthrough came, we were able to so-to-speak freeze each person into the age he had reached. Today, of course, a child ages to adulthood and is given the privilege of deciding the age at which he wishes to remain. Edith chose twenty-five, which I thought very sensible of her.”

Dr. Leete’s face was suddenly grim. “You see, Julian, what we’ve been telling you about this being no Utopia is quite true. We have our problems. Indeed, heaven only knows how we’ll solve some of these that near-immortality has created. We can thank the powers that be, if any, that the desire to have children fell off so drastically just when we needed them so little.”