Going

Five

Dr. James came to see him a little while later, as night was enfolding the desert. Staunt was standing by the window, watching the brilliant stars appear, when the room annunciator told him of his visitor.

The doctor was a youngish man—forty, fifty, Staunt was no longer good at guessing ages—with a long fragile-looking nose and a gentle, faintly unctuous, I-want-you-to-have-a-lovely-Going sort of manner. His first words to Staunt were, “I’ve been looking through your medical file. I really must congratulate you on the excellent state of your health.”

“There’s something about music that keeps people in good shape,” Staunt said.

“Are you a conductor?”

“A composer. But I’ve conducted my own works quite often. Waving the baton—it’s obviously good exercise.”

“I don’t know much about music, I’m afraid. Some afternoon you must program some of your favorite pieces for me.” The doctor grinned shyly. “The simpler ones. Music for an unsophisticated medic, if you’ve written any.” He was silent a moment. Then he said, “You really do have an excellent medical history. Your doctor’s computer transferred your whole file to us this afternoon when your reservation was made. Naturally, while you’re with us we want you to remain in perfect health and comfort. You’ll receive the same kind of care here that you were getting at home—the muscle therapies, the ion-balance treatments, the circulatory clearances, and so forth. Including any special supportive therapy that may become necessary. Not that I anticipate someone like you to need a great deal of that.”

“I could last another fifty years, eh?”

Dr. James looked abashed. His plump cheeks glowed. “That choice is entirely up to you, Mr. Staunt.”

“Don’t worry. I’m not about to change my mind.”

“No one here will hurry you,” the doctor said. “We’ve had people remain at Omega Prime for three, even four years. Each man’s Leavetaking is the most important event in his life, after all; he’s entitled to go about it at his own pace, to disengage himself from the world as gradually as he wants. You do understand that there is no cost to you for any part of your residence here. The government underwrites the whole business.”

“I think Martin Bollinger explained that to me.”

“Good. Let me discuss with you, then, some of your Leavetaking options. Many Departing Ones prefer to begin their withdrawal from the world by making a grand tour—a kind of farewell to all the great sights, the Pyramids, the Taj Mahal, Notre Dame, the Sahara, Antarctica, whatever. We can make any such travel arrangements you’d like. We have several organized tours, on which you’d travel with five or six or ten other Departing Ones and several Guides—a one-month tour of the most famous places, a two-month tour, or a three-month tour. These are packaged in advance, but we can make changes in itinerary by unanimous consent of the Departing Ones. Or, if you prefer, you could travel alone, that is, just you and your Guide, to any part of the world that—”

Staunt looked at him in astonishment. Was this man a doctor or a travel agent?

And did he want to take any such tour? It was vaguely tempting. At government expense to see the temples of Chichen Itza by moonlight, to float over the Andes and descend into Machu Picchu, to smell the scent of cloves on Zanzibar, to look up at a sequoia’s distant blue-green crown, to see the hippos jostling in the Nile, to roam the crumbling dusty streets of Babylon, to drift above the baroque intricacies of the Great Barrier Reef, to see the red sandstone spires of Utah, to tramp along the Great Wall of China, to make his farewells to lakes and deserts and mountains and valleys, to cities and wastelands, to penguins, to polar bears—

But he had seen all those places. Why go back? Why bother to make a breathless pilgrimage, dragging his flimsy bones from place to place? Once was enough. He had his memories.

“No,” he said. “If I had any desire to travel anywhere, I wouldn’t have thought of Going in the first place. If you follow me. The flavor’s gone out of everything, do you see? I don’t have the motivation for hauling myself around. Not even to make sentimental gestures of farewell.”

“As you wish, Mr. Staunt. Most Departing Ones do take advantage of the travel option. But you’ll find no coercion here. If you feel no urge to travel, why, stay right where you are.”

“Thank you. What are some of the other Leavetaking options?”

“It’s customary for the Departing Ones to seek experiences they may have missed during their lifetimes, or to repeat ones that they found particularly rewarding. If there’s some special type of food that you enjoy—”

“I was never a gourmet.”

“Or works of music you want to hear again, masterpieces you’d like to live with one last time—”

“There are some,” Staunt said. “Not many. Most of them bore me now. When Mozart and Bach and Beethoven begin to bore a man, he knows it’s time to Go. Do you know, even Staunt has begun to seem less interesting to me lately?”

Dr. James did not smile.

He said, “In any event, you’ll find that we’re programmed for every imaginable work of music, and if there are any you know of that we don’t have and ought to have, I hope you’ll tell us. It’s the same with books. Your screen can give you any work in any language—just put in the requisition. A number of Departing Ones use this opportunity at last to read War and Peace, or Ulysses, or The Tale of Genji, say.”

“Or The Encyclopæaedia Britannica,” Staunt said, “from ‘Aardvark’ to ‘Zwingli.’ ”

“You think you’re joking. We had a Departing One here five years ago who set out to do just that.”

“How far did he get?” Staunt wanted to know. “ ‘Antimony’? ‘Betelgeuse’?”

“ ‘Magnetism,’ I think. He was quite dedicated to the job.”

“Perhaps I’ll do some reading, too, doctor. Not the Britannica. But Hallam, at least. Maybe Montaigne, and maybe Hobbes, and maybe Ben Jonson. For about sixty years I’ve been meaning to read my way through Ben Jonson. I suppose this is my last chance.”

“Another option,” Dr. James said, “is a memory jolt.”

“Which is?”

“Chemical stimulation of the mnemonic centers. It stirs up the memories, awakens things you may not have thought about for eighty or ninety years, sends images and textures and odors and colors of past experiences through your mind in a remarkably vivid way. In a sense, it’s a trip through your entire past. I don’t know any Departing One who’s done it and not come out of it in a kind of ecstasy, a radiant glow of joy.”

Staunt frowned. “I’d guess that it could be a painful experience. Disturbing. Depressing.”

“Not at all. Never. It’s emotion recollected in tranquility: the experiences may have been painful originally, but the replay of them never is. The jolt allows you to come to terms with all that you’ve been and done. I’ve known people to ask to Go within an hour of coming out of the jolt, and not because they were depressed; they simply want to take their leave on a high note.”

“I’ll think about it,” Staunt said.

“Other than the things I’ve mentioned, your period of Leavetaking is completely unstructured. You write the script. Your family will come to see you, and your friends; I think you’ll get to know some of the other Departing Ones here; there’ll be Leavetaking parties as one by one they opt to Go, and then there’ll be Farewell ceremonies for them, and they’ll Go; and eventually, a month, six months, as you choose, you’ll request your own Leavetaking party and Farewell ceremony, and finally you’ll Go. You know, Mr. Staunt, I feel a tremendous sense of exhilaration here every day, working with these wonderful Departing Ones, helping to make their last weeks beautiful, watching the serenity with which they Go. My own time of Going is still ninety or a hundred years away, I suppose, and yet in a way I look forward to it now; I feel a certain impatience, knowing that the happiest hours of my life will come at the very end of it. To Go when still healthy, to step voluntarily out of the world in an atmosphere of peace and fulfillment, to know that you cap a long and successful life by the noblest of all deeds, letting the wheel turn, giving younger people an opportunity to occupy your place—how marvelous it all is!”

“I wish,” Staunt said, “that I could orchestrate your aria. Shimmering tremolos in the strings—the plaintive wail of the oboes—harps, six harps, making celestial noises—and then a great crescendo of trombones and French horns and bassoons, a sort of Valhalla music welling up—”

Looking baffled, Dr. James said, “I told you, I don’t really know much about music.”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t mock, not at my age. I’m sure it is beautiful and marvelous. I’m very happy to be here.”

“A pleasure to have you,” said Dr. James.