John D. MacDonald

Immortality

Stephen Brale glanced nervously at his watch, and made one last, quick tour of inspection. He decided that the deep, native stone fireplace was the best feature of the huge stately room. It was an incredible break to get a chance to sublet the house.

He knew how pleased Jane Torin would be. Maybe her stipulation about not marrying until he had found a place for them to spend their first months was wise. Surely this beautiful home would be more than even Jane had anticipated.

The bell rang and he hurried down the front hall to the door, swung it wide.

“Steve! It’s beautiful!” Jane Torin said, and flushed with excitement.

“Shut your eyes, honey. No cheating.”

He took her wrist and guided her in. Her long, lovely eyes were shut, her face pale and sensitive in contrast to the mass of red-gold hair.

He shut the door behind her, kissed her lightly.

“No fair!” she said.

Taking her arm he led her into the big living room, turned her about so that she would be able to see the fireplace and the huge window-seat when she opened her eyes.

“Okay, darling,” said Steve. “Take a look.”

She opened her eyes and gasped. He was looking at her face with pleased anticipation. To his surprise she turned very pale, her eyes wide. He frowned. “What on earth is the matter?”

“Oh, Steve! It’s beautiful! But just for a moment, when I first looked at it I had the oddest feeling. It was as though you had brought me in here before and I had opened my eyes and seen this same room.”

“Did we live happily ever after?”

She put her arms around his neck and breathed, “Of course we did, darling!”

He kissed her and said, “You know, maybe that’s a good idea. Maybe we ought to go through this routine again and again. Every lifetime we have.”

She laughed. “Now you’re making fun of me!”

“Of you? Never. And the day after tomorrow I carry you over the threshold.”

They were the Seven.

Incredibly aged, they reclined in a circle on soft couches in a subterranean room far under the tough vitrified skin of the Planet Earth Eighty.

Far above them the tough crust of the planet neared absolute zero. For five thousand years there had been no atmosphere and hence no winds. The dimming sun shone with constantly decreasing warmth.

Beyond the small room where the Seven reclined there was the hum and pulse of power. The soft light that bathed the room gave them their nourishment. Enfeebled by the silent years, they brooded.

The oldest among them was the Leader — forbidden by Law to do other than summarize the arguments of the others. Their huge, naked, hairless skulls gleamed in the soft light. There was no sound in the room. And yet there were words among them. Words expressed in shafts of pure thought — clearer and more shining than words had ever been. For so many hundreds of thousands of years had speech been outmoded that the organs of speech had atrophied.

The soundless discussion had been going on for five years. It was a discussion that deserved proper analysis. It was a discussion that would determine the future of mankind. Though they were old and feeble of body, their minds were the greatest instruments in the millions of years of recorded history.

“We are Man. We have fought through countless millions of years, migrating to green worlds when old ones perished. There are no more green worlds. Our universe fades and dies. Let this then, be the end. Let us, the last Seven of mankind, perish here, considering the deeds of our race, the worlds made and destroyed, the universe plumbed to the outermost edges of eternal darkness. Let this be the end.”

Thus was the philosophy of three of the Seven expressed. A philosophy of resignation, of weariness beyond measure.

“Man does not have to perish. Near the fingers of the Leader is the switch that, once thrown, will make worlds green again, make mankind young again. We have looked into the future, my brothers. We know that there is nothing there but death. We have looked into the past and we know that it cannot be changed or altered in the slightest degree. We have the power. We are prepared. Why should we perish?”

Once the peril was known, all the genius of the race for the past ten thousand years had been concentrated on finding a mode of escape from the eventual extinction. As the universe had faded, so had faded the pro-creative and regenerative powers of the race. Only the Seven were left. But before the others had died, there had been constructed, on the surface of Earth Eighty, the greatest power source in recorded history. Drawing as it did on the orbitual fury of the dead planets, the surviving thunder of the suns, it would concentrate, at the flick of the switch at the Leader’s side, all of the remaining kinetic energy of the dying universe.

It was whether or not this energy was to be used, that was the source of the argument.

“It is known that we cannot step backward in time as independent entities. To do so would be to disturb the probability stream, leading to the mistaken concept of tangential worlds. On this same basis, an entire planet, or even an entire section of the universe cannot step backward in time. The universe must be returned as a unit, because the whole is the smallest fraction that can be shifted in the time stream without altering in any way the probabilities involved. I say that it must be done.”

The room was silent, each of the Seven concerned with his own thoughts.

“But it is the ultimate horror. It means that all of life and all of existence will be caught up in an enclosed circle with no exit. Should we decide that the switch is to lie pressed by the Leader, the universe we know will be returned through time to the earliest days of unrecorded history, the tropic days of eons ago when man was a hairy creature who fought mammoths with stone axes. Through the millions of years the probabilities will remain unaltered.

“Mankind will fight up out of the swamps, will at least break the boundaries of Earth One and expand to the distant stars, beginning to die at the moment of his greatest fulfillment, contracting, decreasing, until at last we Seven will once more sit in this room and be faced with this same problem. And we will once again throw the switch, once again go through the incredible cycle.”

“Possibly it is destined. Possibly it is meant that mankind must, through all of eternity, pace this endless circle from birth to death and back to birth again.”

“That is mysticism. There is no basis for mysticism. Imagine the incredible horror of every war, every death, every cruelty being repeated an infinite number of times for all of eternity.”

“By the same token, every godlike act of kindness, of selflessness, of human mercy will also be repeated through all of infinity at intervals of billions of years.”

Once again the silver flow of thoughts was stopped. It was a million years since the last bit of vegetation had disappeared from the last planet of the universe.

Each of the Seven was lost in his own thoughts. There was no doubt but what the plan would work. The involved astrophysics and mathematics had been checked and rechecked over a five-thousand-year period as the time for decision grew ever closer. Each of the Seven knew that when the decision was made to throw the switch, that same decision would be made each time the time cycle returned them to that room.

At last the Leader sent his thought to all of them.

“My brothers, have you thought that possibly this is not the first time we have met here? Have you thought that possibly we are already in the closed circle and that our decision is inevitable? Have you thought that we have passed this way before? In each cycle, mankind will have no memory of the preceding cycle.”

“A few will have such memories, without knowing them for what they are. A strange room that is oddly familiar. Words spoken that awake the deep subconscious stirrings of the race memory. An act performed that is oddly familiar.”

The Leader’s triumphant thought was like a sharp blade gleaming. “We have all known these things, my brothers. The act is then — inevitable. Do you agree?”

The thoughts came slowly, and at last they were in agreement. Each of the Seven knew at that moment that the switch must be thrown.

“Even this act of reaching for the switch, my brothers, is oddly familiar to me.”

The fear raced through their minds with a touch of fire. The atrophied muscles were not strong enough to throw the switch. The withered fingers touched it. In their minds they felt the agony of his effort. They threw their own strength in invisible silver shafts toward him. Would it end this way? Would mankind die forever because of one ounce of effort? Slowly the switch moved. When it touched the metal stop...

Where Earth Eighty had been was but the empty horror of space. The Universe was unlike the most active star maps. Younger. More vital. Earth One, misted, glowing, verdant, turned lazily in its orbit around the hot young sun. In a cave mouth midway up a vast stone shoulder of a mountain a man sat, biting with strong white teeth as, with the dried tendons of an animal, he lashed a flat hard rock to the end of a stout club.

As they were about to leave, Steve Brale took Jane Torin in his arms and kissed her. He looked down into her face and traced the line of her brow with a gentle finger. “Hello, Mystic,” he said.

She looked puzzled, “Oh! You mean about thinking I’d been in that room before? Heavens, darling! Thousands of people get that feeling. Don’t you?”

He grinned. “I used to. When I was in my teens. I’ve outgrown it.”

“The first time you ever kissed me, I had the feeling that you’d kissed me before. In some other life maybe.”

“Reincarnation?”

“No. Not exactly that. I can’t explain it.”

“I can,” he said.

“How, Steve?”

“Easy. You’re a mystic! I told you that once.”

“Oaf!” she whispered. He kissed her again and they left together.

Content

John D. MacDonald
Immortality