Short Fiction by Poul Anderson (free ebook novel .txt) 📕

If you can show me valid reasons for not breaking this story, I won’t. I’ll even let you hypnocondition me against doing it, voluntarily or otherwise.”

“Thanks,” said the director. His mouth curved upward, but it was a shaken smile. “That’s decent of you, and we’ll accept⁠ ⁠… I think you’ll agree with our policy. What worries me is the rest of the world. If you could find out as much as you did⁠—”

Radek’s heart jumped between his ribs. “Then you do have immortality!”

“Yes. But I’m not immortal. None of our personnel are, except⁠—Here we are.”

There was a hidden susurrus of machinery as they stepped out into a small bare entryroom. Another guard sat there, beside a desk. Past him was a small door of immense solidity, the door of a vault.

“You’ll have to leave everything metallic here,” said Lang. “A steel object could jump so fiercely as to injure you. Your watch would be ruined. Even coins could get uncomfortably hot⁠ ⁠… eddy currents, you know. We’re about to go through the strongest magnetic field ever generated.”

Silently, dry-mouthed, Radek piled his things on the desk. Lang operated a combination lock on the door. “There are nervous effects too,” he said. “The field is actually strong enough to influence the electric discharges of your synapses. Be prepared for a few nasty seconds. Follow me and walk fast.”

The door opened on a low, narrow corridor several meters long. Radek felt his heart bump crazily, his vision blurred, there was panic screaming in his brain and a sweating tingle in his skin. Stumbling through nightmare, he made it to the end.

The horror faded. They were in another room, with storage facilities and what resembled a spaceship’s airlock in the opposite wall. Lang grinned shakily. “No fun, is it?”

“What’s it for?” gasped Radek.

“To keep charged particles out of here. And the whole set of chambers is 500 meters underground, sheathed in ten meters of lead brick and surrounded by tanks of heavy water. This is the only place in the Solar System, I imagine, where cosmic rays never come.”

“You mean⁠—”

Lang knocked out his pipe and left it in a gaboon. He opened the lockers to reveal a set of airsuits, complete with helmets and oxygen tanks. “We put these on before going any further,” he said.

“Infection on the other side?”

“We’re the infected ones. Come on, I’ll help you.”

As they scrambled into the equipment, Lang added conversationally: “This place has to have all its own stuff, of course⁠ ⁠… its own electric generators and so on. The ultimate power source is isotopically pure carbon burned in oxygen. We use a nuclear reactor to create the magnetic field itself, but no atomic energy is allowed inside it.” He led the way into the airlock, closed it, and started the pumps. “We have to flush out all the normal air and substitute that from the inner chambers.”

“How about food? Barwell said food was prepared in the kitchens and brought here.”

“Synthesized out of elements recovered from waste products. We do cook it topside, taking precautions. A few radioactive atoms get in, but not enough to matter as long as we’re careful. We’re so cramped for space down here we have to make some compromises.”

“I think⁠—” Radek fell silent. As the lock was evacuated, his unjointed airsuit spreadeagled and held him prisoner, but he hardly noticed. There was too much else to think about, too much to grasp at once.

Not till the cycle was over and they had gone through the lock did he speak again. Then it came harsh and jerky: “I begin to understand. How long has this gone on?”

“It started about 200 years ago⁠ ⁠… an early Institute project.” Lang’s voice was somehow tinny over the helmet phone. “At that time, it wasn’t possible to make really pure isotopes in quantity, so there were only limited results, but it was enough to justify further research. This particular set of chambers and chemical elements is 150 years old. A spectacular success, a brilliant confirmation, from the very beginning⁠ ⁠… and the Institute has never dared reveal it. Maybe they should have, back then⁠—maybe people could have taken the news⁠—but not now. These days the knowledge would whip men into a murderous rage of frustration; they wouldn’t believe the truth, they wouldn’t dare believe, and God alone knows what they’d do.”

Looking around, Radek saw a large, plastic-lined room, filled with cages. As the lights went on, white rats and guinea pigs stirred sleepily. One of the rats came up to nibble at the wires and regard the humans from beady pink eyes.

Lang bent over and studied the label. “This fellow is, um, 66 years old. Still fat and sassy, in perfect condition, as you can see. Our oldest mammalian inmate is a guinea pig: a hundred and forty-five years. This one here.”

Lang stared at the immortal beast for a while. It didn’t look unusual⁠ ⁠… only healthy. “How about monkeys?” he asked.

“We tried them. Finally gave it up. A monkey is an active animal⁠—it was too cruel to keep them penned up forever. They even went insane, some of them.”

Footfalls were hollow as Lang led the way toward the inner door. “Do you get the idea?”

“Yes⁠ ⁠… I think I do. If heavy radiation speeds up aging⁠—then natural radioactivity is responsible for normal aging.”

“Quite. A matter of cells being slowly deranged, through decades in the case of man⁠—the genes which govern them being mutilated, chromosomes ripped up, nucleoplasm and cytoplasm irreversibly damaged. And, of course, a mutated cell often puts out the wrong combination of enzymes, and if it regenerates at all it replaces itself by one of the same kind. The effect is cumulative, more and more defective cells every hour. A steady bombardment, all your life⁠ ⁠… here on Earth, seven cosmic rays per second ripping through you, and you yourself are radioactive, you include radiocarbon and radiopotassium and radiophosphorus⁠ ⁠… Earth and the planets, the atmosphere, everything radiates. Is it any wonder that at last our organic mechanism starts breaking down? The marvel is