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Title: Today is Forever

Author: Roger D. Aycock

Illustrator: Ed Emshwiller

Release date: January 9, 2016 [eBook #50884]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online
        Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TODAY IS FOREVER ***




Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net









                           Today is Forever

                             By ROGER DEE

                          Illustrated by EMSH

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                Galaxy Science Fiction September 1952.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]




           Boyle knew there was an angle behind the aliens'
               generosity ... but he had one of his own!


"These Alcorians have been on Earth for only a month," David Locke
said, "but already they're driving a wedge between AL&O and the
Social Body that can destroy the Weal overnight. Boyle, it's got to be
stopped!"

He put his elbows on Moira's antique conversation table and leaned
toward the older man, his eyes hot and anxious.

"There are only the two of them--Fermiirig and Santikh; you've
probably seen stills of them on the visinews a hundred times--and
AL&O has kept them so closely under cover that we of the Social Body
never get more than occasional rumors about what they're really
like. But I know from what I overheard that they're carbonstructure
oxygen-breathers with a metabolism very much like our own. What affects
them physically will affect us also. And the offer they've made
Cornelison and Bissell and Dorand of Administrative Council is genuine.
It amounts to a lot more than simple longevity, because the process can
be repeated. In effect, it's--"

"_Immortality_," Boyle said, and forgot the younger man on the instant.

The shock of it as a reality blossomed in his mind with a slow
explosion of triumph. It had come in his time, after all, and the fact
that the secret belonged to the first interstellar visitors to reach
Earth had no bearing whatever on his determination to possess it.
Neither had the knowledge that the Alcorians had promised the process
only to the highest of government bodies, Administrative Council. The
whole of AL&O--Administration, Legislation and Order--could not keep it
from him.

"It isn't _right_," Locke said heatedly. "It doesn't fit in with what
we've been taught to believe, Boyle. We're still a modified democracy,
and the Social Body _is_ the Weal. We can't permit Cornelison and
Bissell and Dorand to take what amounts to immortality for themselves
and deny it to the populace. That's tyranny!"

The charge brought Boyle out of his preoccupation with a start. For
the moment, he had forgotten Locke's presence in Moira's apartment. He
had even forgotten his earlier annoyance with Moira for allowing the
sophomoric fool visitor's privilege when it was Boyle's week, to the
exclusion of the other two husbands in Moira's marital-seven, to share
the connubial right with her.

But the opportunity tumbled so forcibly into his lap was not one to
be handled lightly. He held in check his contempt for Locke and his
irritation with Moira until he had considered his windfall from every
angle, and had marshalled its possibilities into a working outline of
his coup to come.

He even checked his lapel watch against the time of Moira's return from
the theater before he answered Locke. With characteristic cynicism, he
took it for granted that Locke, in his indignation, had already shared
his discovery with Moira, and in cold logic he marked her down with
Locke for disposal once her purpose was served. Moira had been the most
satisfactory of the four women in Boyle's marital-seven, but when he
weighed her attractions against the possible immortality ahead, the
comparison did not sway his resolution for an instant.

Moira, like Locke, would have to go.

       *       *       *       *       *

"You're sure there was no error?" Boyle asked. "You couldn't have been
mistaken?"

"I heard it," Locke said stubbornly.

He clenched his fists angrily, patently reliving his shock of
discovery. "I was running a routine check on Administration visiphone
channels--it's part of my work as communications technician at
AL&O--when I ran across a circuit that had blown its scrambler.
Ordinarily I'd have replaced the dead unit without listening to
plain-talk longer than was necessary to identify the circuit. But by
the time I had it tagged as a Council channel, I'd heard enough from
Cornelison and Bissell and Dorand to convince me that I owed it to the
Social Body to hear the rest. And now I'm holding a tiger by the tail,
because I'm subject to truth-check. That's why I came to you with this,
Boyle. Naturally, since you are President of Transplanet Enterprises--"

"I know," Boyle cut in, forestalling digression. Locke's job, not
intrinsically important in itself, still demanded a high degree of
integrity and left him open to serum-and-psycho check, as though he
were an actual member of AL&O or a politician. "If anyone knew what
you've overheard, you'd get a compulsory truth-check, admit your guilt
publicly and take an imprisonment sentence from the Board of Order. But
your duty came first, of course. Go on."

"They were discussing the Alcorians' offer of longevity when I cut
into the circuit. Bissell and Dorand were all for accepting at once,
but Cornelison pretended indecision and had to be coaxed. Oh, he came
around quickly enough; the three of them are to meet Fermiirig and
Santikh tomorrow morning at nine in the AL&O deliberations chamber for
their injections. You should have heard them rationalizing that, Boyle.
It would have sickened you."

"I know the routine--they're doing it for the good of the Social Body,
of course. What puzzles me is why the Alcorians should give away a
secret so valuable."

"Trojan horse tactics," Locke said flatly. "They claim to have
arrived at a culture pretty much like our own, except for a superior
technology and a custom of prolonging the lives of administrators
they find best fitted to govern. They're posing as philanthropists
by offering us the same opportunity, but actually they're sabotaging
our political economy. They know that the Social Body won't stand for
the Council accepting an immortality restricted to itself. That sort
of discrimination would stir up a brawl that might shatter the Weal
forever."

Deliberately, Boyle fanned the younger man's resentment. "Not a bad
thing for those in power. But it _is_ rough on simple members of the
Social Body like ourselves, isn't it?"

"It's criminal conspiracy," Locke said hotly. "They should be
truth-checked and given life-maximum detention. If we took this to the
Board of Order--"

"No. Think a moment and you'll understand why."

Boyle had gauged his man, he saw, to a nicety. Locke was typical of
this latest generation, packed to the ears with juvenile idealism
and social consciousness, presenting a finished product of AL&O's
golden-rule ideology that was no more difficult to predict than a
textbook problem in elementary psychology. To a veteran strategist
like Boyle, Locke was more than a handy asset; he was a tool shaped
to respond to duty unquestioningly and to cupidity not at all, and
therefore an agent more readily amenable than any mercenary could have
been.

"But I _don't_ understand," Locke said, puzzled. "Even Administration
and Legislation are answerable to Order. It's the Board's duty to bring
them to account if necessary."

"Administration couldn't possibly confirm itself in power from the
beginning without the backing of Order and Legislation," Boyle pointed
out. "Cornelison and Bissell and Dorand would have to extend the
longevity privilege to the other two groups, don't you see, in order
to protect themselves. And that means that Administrative Council is
not alone in this thing--it's AL&O as a body. If you went to the Board
of Order with your protest, the report would die on the spot. So,
probably, would you."

He felt a touch of genuine amusement at Locke's slack stare of horror.
The seed was planted; now to see how readily the fool would react to a
logical alternative, and how useful in his reaction he might be.

"I know precisely how you feel," Boyle said. "It goes against our
conditioned grain to find officials venal in this day of compulsory
honesty. But it's nothing new; I've met with similar occasions in my
own Transplanet business, Locke."

He might have added that those occasions had been of his own devising
and that they had brought him close more than once to a punitive
truth-check. The restraining threat of serum-and-psycho had kept him
for the greater part of his adult life in the ranks of the merely rich,
a potential industrial czar balked of financial empire by the necessity
of maintaining a strictly legal status.

Locke shook himself like a man waking out of nightmare.

"I'm glad I brought this problem to a man of your experience," he said
frankly. "I've got great confidence in your judgment, Boyle, something
I've learned partly from watching you handle Transplanet Enterprises
and partly from talking with Moira."

Boyle gave him a speculative look, feeling a return of his first acid
curiosity about Locke and Moira. "I had no idea that Moira was so
confidential outside her marital-seven," he said dryly. "She's not by
any chance considering a _fourth_ husband, is she?"

"Of course not. Moira's not _unconventional_. She's been kind to me a
few times, yes, but that's only her way of making a practical check
against the future. After all, she's aware it can't be more than a
matter of--"

He broke off, too embarrassed by his unintentional blunder to see the
fury that discolored the older man's face.

The iron discipline that permitted Boyle to bring that fury under
control left him, even in his moment of outrage, with a sense of grim
pride. He was still master of himself and of Transplanet Enterprises.
Given fools enough like this to work with and time enough to use them,
and he would be master of a great deal more. Immortality, for instance.

"She's quite right to be provident, of course," he said equably. "I
_am_ getting old. I'm past the sixty-mark, and it can't be more than
another year or two before the rejuvenators refuse me further privilege
and I'm dropped from the marital lists for good."

"Damn it, Boyle, I'm sorry," Locke said. "I didn't mean to offend you."

The potential awkwardness of the moment was relieved by a soft chime
from the annunciator. The apartment entrance dilated, admitting Moira.

She came to them directly, slender and poised and supremely confident
of her dark young beauty, her ermine wrap and high-coiled hair
glistening with stray raindrops that took the light like diamonds. The
two men stood up to greet her, and Boyle could not miss the subtle
feminine response of her to Locke's eager, athletic youth.

_If she's planning to fill my place in her marital-seven with this
crewcut fool_, Boyle thought with sudden malice, _then she's in for a
rude shock. And a final one._

"I couldn't enjoy a line of the play for thinking of you two patriots
plotting here in my apartment," Moira said. "But then the performance
was shatteringly dull, anyway."

Her boredom was less than convincing. When she had hung her wrap in a
closet to be aerated and irradiated against its next wearing, she sat
between Boyle and Locke with a little sigh of anticipation.

"Have you decided yet what to do about this dreadful immortality scheme
of the Councils, darlings?"

       *       *       *       *       *

Boyle went to the auto-dispenser in a corner and brought back three
drinks, frosted and effervescing. They touched rims. Moira sipped at
her glass quietly, waiting in tacit agreement with Locke for the older
man's opinion.

"This longevity should be available to the Social Body as well as to
AL&O," Boyle said. "It's obvious even to non-politicals like Locke and
myself that, unless equal privilege is maintained, there's going to be
the devil to pay and the Weal will suffer. It's equally obvious that
the Alcorians' offer is made with the deliberate intent of undermining
our system through dissension."

"To their own profit, of course," Locke put in. "Divide and conquer...."

"Whatever is to be done must be done quickly," Boyle said. "It would
take months to negotiate a definitive plebiscite, and in that time the
Alcorians would have gone home again without treating anyone outside
AL&O. And there the matter would rest. It seems to be up to us to get
hold of the longevity process ourselves and to broadcast it to the
public."

"The good of the Body is the preservation of the Weal," Locke said
sententiously. "What do you think, Moira?"

Moira touched her lips with a delicate pink tongue-tip, considering.
To Boyle, her process of thought was as open as a plain-talk teletape;
immortality for the Social Body automatically meant immortality for
Moira and for David Locke. Both young, with an indefinite guarantee of
life....

"Yes," Moira said definitely. "If some have it, then all should. But
how, Philip?"

"You're both too young to remember this, of course," Boyle said,
"but until the 1980 Truth-check Act, there was a whole field of
determinative action applicable to cases like this. It's a simple
enough problem if we plan and execute it properly."

His confidence was not feigned; he had gone over the possibilities
already with the swift ruthlessness that had made him head of
Transplanet Enterprises, and the prospect of direct action excited
rather than dismayed him. Until now he had skirted the edges of
illegality with painstaking care, never stepping quite over the line
beyond which he would be liable to the disastrous truth-check, but at
this moment he felt himself invincible, above retaliation.

"This present culture is a pragmatic compromise with necessity," Boyle
said. "It survives because it answers natural problems that couldn't
be solved under the old systems. Nationalism died out, for example,
when we set up a universal government, because everyone belonged to the
same Social Body and had the same Weal to consider. Once we realized
that the good of the Body is more important than personal privacy, the
truth-check made ordinary crime and political machination obsolete.
Racial antagonisms vanished under deliberate amalgamation. Monogamy
gave way to the marital-seven, settling the problems of ego clash,
incompatability, promiscuity and vice that existed before. It also
settled the disproportion between the male and female population.

"But stability is vulnerable. Since it never changes, it cannot
stand against an attack either too new or too old for its immediate
experience. So if we're going after this Alcorian longevity process,
I'd suggest that we choose a method so long out of date that there's no
longer a defense against it. _We'll take it by force!_"

       *       *       *       *       *

It amused him to see Moira and Locke accept his specious logic without
reservation. Their directness was all but childlike. The thought of
engaging personally in the sort of cloak-and-sword adventure carried
over by the old twentieth-century melodrama tapes was, as he had
surmised, irresistible to them.

"I can see how you came to be head of Transplanet, Boyle," Locke said
enviously. "What's your plan, exactly?"

"I've a cottage in the mountains that will serve as a base of
operations," Boyle explained. "Moira can wait there for us in the
morning while you and I take a 'copter to AL&O. According to your
information, Cornelison and Bissell and Dorand will meet the Alcorians
in the deliberations chamber at nine o'clock. We'll sleep-gas the lot
of them, take the longevity process and go. There's no formal guard at
Administration, or anywhere else, nowadays. There'll be no possible way
of tracing us."

"Unless we're truth-checked," Locke said doubtfully. "If any one of us
should be pulled in for serum-and-psycho, the whole affair will come
out. The Board of Order--"

"Order won't know whom to suspect," Boyle said patiently. "And they
can't possibly check the whole city. They'd have no way of knowing
even that it was someone from this locale. It could be anyone, from
anywhere."

       *       *       *       *       *

When Locke had gone and Moira had exhausted her fund of excited
small talk, Boyle went over the entire plan again from inception to
conclusion. Lying awake in the darkness with only the sound of Moira's
even breathing breaking the stillness, he let his practical fancy run
ahead.

Years, decades, generations--what were they? To be by relative
standards undying in a world of ephemerae, with literally nothing that
he might not have or do....

He dreamed a dream as old as man, of stretching today into forever.

Immortality.

       *       *       *       *       *

The coup next morning was no more difficult, though bloodier, than
Boyle had anticipated.

At nine sharp, he left David Locke at the controls of his helicar on
the sun-bright roof landing of AL&O, took a self-service elevator
down four floors and walked calmly to the deliberation chamber where
Administrative Council met with the visitors from Alcor. He was armed
for any eventuality with an electronic freeze-gun, a sleep-capsule of
anesthetic gas, and a nut-sized incendiary bomb capable of setting
afire an ordinary building.

His first hope of surprising the Council in conference was dashed
in the antechamber, rendering his sleep-bomb useless. Dorand was a
moment late; he came in almost on Boyle's heels, his face blank with
astonishment at finding an intruder ahead of him.

The freeze-gun gave him no time for questions.

"Quiet," Boyle ordered, and drove the startled Councilor ahead of him
into the deliberations chamber.

He was just in time. Cornelison had one bony arm already bared for the
longevity injection; Bissell sat in tense anticipation of his elder's
reaction; the Alcorian, Fermiirig, stood at Cornelison's side with a
glittering hypodermic needle in one of his four three-fingered hands.

For the moment, a sudden chill of apprehension touched Boyle. There
should have been _two_ Alcorians.

"Quiet," Boyle said again, this time to the group. "You, Fermiirig,
where is your mate?"

The Alcorian replaced the hypodermic needle carefully in its case, his
triangular face totally free of any identifiable emotion and clasped
both primary and secondary sets of hands together as an Earthman might
have raised them overhead. His eyes, doe-soft and gentle, considered
Boyle thoughtfully.

"Santikh is busy with other matters," Fermiirig said. His voice was
thin and reedy, precise of enunciation, but hissing faintly on the
aspirants. "I am to join her later--" his gentle eyes went to the
Councilors, gauging the gravity of the situation from their tensity,
and returned to Boyle--"if I am permitted."

"Good," Boyle said.

He snapped the serum case shut and tucked it under his arm, turning
toward the open balcony windows. "You're coming with me, Fermiirig. You
others stay as you are."

The soft drone of a helicar descending outside told him that Locke had
timed his descent accurately. Cornelison chose that moment to protest,
his wrinkled face tight with consternation at what he read of Boyle's
intention.

"We know you, Boyle! You can't possibly escape. The Ordermen--"

Boyle laughed at him.

"There'll be no culprit for the Ordermen," he said, "nor any
witnesses. You've wiped out ordinary crime with your truth-checks and
practicalities, Cornelison, but you've made the way easier for a man
who knows what he wants."

He pressed the firing stud of his weapon. Cornelison fell and lay
stiffly on the pastel tile. Bissell and Dorand went down as quickly,
frozen to temporary rigidity.

Boyle tossed his incendiary into the huddle of still bodies and shoved
the Alcorian forcibly through the windows into the hovering aircar.

Locke greeted the alien's appearance with stark amazement. "My God,
Boyle, are you _mad_? You can't kidnap--"

The dull shock of explosion inside the deliberations chamber jarred the
helicar, throwing the slighter Alcorian to the floor and staggering
Boyle briefly.

"Get us out of here," Boyle said sharply. He turned the freeze-gun on
the astounded Locke, half expecting resistance and fully prepared to
meet it. "You fool, do you think I'm still playing the childish game I
made up to keep you and Moira quiet?"

A pall of greasy black smoke poured after them when Locke, still
stunned by the suddenness of catastrophe, put the aircar into motion
and streaked away across the city.

Boyle, watching the first red tongue of flame lick out from the
building behind, patted the serum case and set himself for the next
step.

Immortality.

       *       *       *       *       *

Locke took the helicar down through the mountains, skirting a clear
swift river that broke into tumultuous falls a hundred yards below
Boyle's cottage, and set it down in a flagstone court.

"Out," Boyle ordered.

Moira met them in the spacious living room, her pretty face comical
with surprise and dismay.

"Philip, what's _happened_? You look so--"

She saw the alien then and put a hand to her mouth.

"Keep her quiet while I deal with Fermiirig," Boyle said to Locke. "I
have no time for argument. If either of you gives me any trouble...."

He left the threat to Locke's stunned fancy and turned on the Alcorian.

"Let me have the injection you had ready for Cornelison. Now."

The Alcorian moved his narrow shoulders in what might have been a
shrug. "You are making a mistake. You are not fitted for life beyond
the normal span."

"I didn't bring you here to moralize," Boyle said. "If you mean to see
your mate again, Fermiirig, give me the injection!"

"There was a time in your history when force was justifiable,"
Fermiirig said. "But that time is gone. You are determined?" He shook
his head soberly when Boyle did not answer. "I was afraid so."

He took the hypodermic needle out of its case, squeezed out a pale drop
of liquid and slid the point into the exposed vein of Boyle's forearm.

Boyle, watching the slow depression of the plunger, asked: "How long a
period will this guarantee, in Earth time?"

"Seven hundred years," Fermiirig said. He withdrew the instrument and
replaced it in its case, his liquid glance following Boyle's rising
gesture with the freeze-gun. "At the end of that time, the treatment
may be renewed if facilities are available."

_Immortality!_

"Then I won't need you any more," Boyle said, and rayed him down. "Nor
these other two."

Locke, characteristically, sprang up and tried to shield Moira with
his own body. "Boyle, what are you thinking of? You can't murder us
without--"

"There's a very effective rapids a hundred yards down river," Boyle
said. "You'll both be quite satisfactorily dead after going through
it, I think. Possibly unrecognizable, too, though that doesn't matter
particularly."

He was pressing the firing stud, slowly because something in the
tension of the moment appealed to the sadism in his nature, when an
Orderman's freeze-beam caught him from behind and dropped him stiffly
beside Fermiirig.

       *       *       *       *       *

The details of his failure reached him later in his cell,
anticlimactically, through a fat and pimply jailer inflated to bursting
with the importance of guarding the first murderer in his generation.

"AL&O kept this quiet until the Council killing," the turnkey said,
"but it had to come out when the Board of Order went after you. The
Alcorians are telepathic. Santikh led the Ordermen to your place in the
mountains. Fermiirig guided her."

He grinned vacuously at his prisoner, visibly pleased to impart
information. "Lucky for you we don't have capital punishment any more.
As it is, you'll get maximum, but they can't give you more than life."

Lucky? The realization of what lay ahead of him stunned Boyle with a
slow and dreadful certainty.

A sentence of life.

Seven hundred years.

Not immortality--

Eternity.







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