James L. Halperin - The First Immortal

“AN ENTERTAINING READ ... INTRIGUING ...

Keeps the reader riveted ... Halperin’s characters are multidimensional, and he excellently sets up their

emotional conflict and psychological motivations. ... A real page turner, and a most recommended read.”

—The California Aggie

“Fascinating and often has the ring of genuine prediction. As in Halperin’s first novel, The Truth

Machine, the technology is always front and center, but this is ultimately a story of people and the

political and sociological implications of near immortality.”

— www.amazon.com

“True science fiction projects logical extensions of what mankind already knows scientifically. A shining

example is The First Immortal ... Layman readers can follow the scientific terminology and complex

story lines without the hocus-pocus that often beclouds science fiction.”

—United Press International

“The first novel to capture in realistic fashion the inexorable march of spirit and technology that will almost

certainly transform us in the twenty-first century from mortals to immortals.”

—Life Extension

“Halperin’s future is so detailed and plausible that you find yourself expecting to wake to it the next day.”

—Ernest Lilly, SF Revu

“Halperin zeroes in on issues that could make a big difference in how we and our children live in the next

century. His novels combine the immediacy of realistic fiction with the verve and boldness of science

fiction. Here is a writer for any reader who likes to explore big ideas.”

—David Brin

By James L. Halperin

Published by Del Rey® Books:

THE TRUTH MACHINE

THE FIRST IMMORTAL

Books published by The Ballantine Publishing Group are available at quantity discounts on bulk

purchases for premium, educational, fund-raising, and special sales use. For details, please call

1-800-733-3000. THE FIRST

IMMORTAL

James L. Halperin

DEL REY

A Del Rey® Book

BALLANTINE BOOKS • NEW YORK

Sale of this book without a front cover may be unauthorized. If this book is coverless, it may have been reported to the

publisher as “un-sold or destroyed” and neither the author nor the publisher may have received payment for it.

A Del Rey® Book

Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group

The Ballantine Pub-lishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York , and si-multaneously in Canada by

Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto . Originally published in slightly different form in hardcover in January

1998.

www.randomhouse.com/delrey/

Visit Del Rey’s Web site for The First Immortal: www.firstimmortal.com

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 98-96406

ISBN 0-345-42182-5

Manufactured in the United States of America

First Hardcover Edition: January 1998

First Mass Market Edition: December 1998

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To My Family

“There is but one evil, ignorance.”

—Socrates

“All that stand between us and eternal life are

fear and gullibility: Dread of the unknown

forges faith in the unknowable.”

—Benjamin Franklin Smith

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Observant second-time readers may recognize some changes in the text, and even a few new plot twists.

All such revisions are part of an obsessive quest to make The First Immortal the most severely

scrutinized—and therefore scientifically accurate—novel ever written on our potential for biological

immortality. In the first hardcover edition, I offered a bounty to each reader who was first to point out

any scientific or factual inaccuracies that I subsequently corrected. The bounty, a scarce Ivy Press first

edi-tion of The Truth Machine, my first novel, was enough to attract hundreds of submissions.

Fortunately for me, most were dupli-cates, but I did wind up awarding about two dozen books. Still, I’m

sure mistakes remain, so I now repeat the offer. Should you find any such errors, please e-mail me at

jim@heritagecoin.com, or write to me c/o Ballantine Books, 201 East 50th Street, New York, NY

10022, and include your mailing address.

And be sure to visit The First Immortal Web site at www.firstimmortal.com to post your comments

about this book and the topics and philosophies it examines. I intend to read every comment, and will

continue to post responses.

—JLH, 6/15/98

PROLOGUE

June 2, 1988

Echoes tumbled through the ambulance. Squeals, rattles, and torsion-bar sways came at him in waves,

magnified and omi-nous. The attendants standing over him seemed blurry, even extraneous. What

mattered was the beeping monitor and all--too-familiar stench of emergency medicine. And every single

sensation blended with the mundane smell of the rain-soaked streets beneath him.

Benjamin Franklin Smith, my great-grandfather, knew he was about to die.

The morning had delivered Ben’s third heart attack in six years-worse than either of its predecessors.

This time his chest felt vise-tight, more constricted than he’d imagined pos-sible. His oxygen-starved

muscles sagged like spent rubber, so weak he could barely feel them twitch, while a cold Novocain--like

river prickled his left arm from shoulder blade to fingertips: numb but so heavy.

Oh, Christ! he thought, remembering his first symptoms on that flight to Phoenix in 1982. He should

have known better. If he hadn’t stayed on the damn airplane, they could’ve given him treatment;

minimized the damage.

Now he was dying. Him, of all people. Ben snorted. Absent his pain and fear, it might have been a

laugh. Well, why in hell not him? He was sixty-three years old.

God, just sixty-three? Is that all I get? Please, Jesus, spare me this. Not yet ...

Two ambulance attendants wheeled Ben through the hospital emergency entrance, past check-in and

dozens of less critical cases, sprinting straight for intensive care. All ignored them ex-cept one nurse who,

recognizing the too-familiar patient, merely gaped. One of the attendants whispered to her, “Looks like

myocardial infarction. Probably massive.”

Still half conscious, Ben wondered if they realized he could hear them, or if they cared. He wondered

whether these profes-sionals tasted the same empathy for him that he had so often ex-perienced with his

own dying patients.

He also questioned his rationality.

His preparations over the previous half decade had included an oath to himself that he would betray

no ambivalence about the unusual instructions he’d left. This despite understanding that his chances of

staving off death remained slight.

And that if he succeeded, he might end up envying the dead.

Before surrendering consciousness, Dr. Benjamin Smith managed to whisper: “Call Toby Fiske.”

These words would set in motion all his plans—irrevocably changing the nature of his death.

Then, as the rush of unreality gathered speed and his aware-ness faded, his subconscious mind began

to play back the most important moments of life, as if by giving these experiences a new orderliness, he

might somehow absolve himself of, or at least comprehend, his mistakes.

Images assaulted him of his parents, his children, and the first time he ever made love to his wife

Marge. She was just a teenager then. How fiery and resilient she was. They were. Then he remembered

sitting at her bedside when she was dying. For six weeks he had fed and bathed her, consoled her with

stories and recollections, held her hand, and watched helplessly as the cancer consumed her body and

mind.

Now would he finally rejoin her?

Ben Smith also knew the world would keep turning without him. So at the end of things, he pleaded to

his God, praying that once he was dead, his only son might finally forgive him.

My great-grandfather was an only child. And despite his birth into near-poverty, his genetics and early

environment favored him with certain critical advantages. But timing was not among these: He was born

in 1925.

His attempt to become immortal is a tale of character, luck, and daring. Benjamin Franklin Smith’s

story might have be-fallen any person of his time—that era when death seemed in-evitable to every

human being on earth. Inevitable, and drawing ever closer.

1

THE FIRST IMMORTAL

January 14, 1925

My great-great-grandmother stared into a spiderweb crack spreading through the dilapidated ceiling

paint, its latticed shape taunting her as if she were a fly ensnared in its grip. For several hours she’d been

lying on their bed, shivering and con-vulsing, in that drab and tiny apartment. Now she felt a scream

welling in her chest, like a tidal wave drawing mass from the shallows. Alice Smith was only twenty years

old, but she knew something was deeply, perhaps mortally, wrong.

She shut her eyes, trying to focus on something, anything, other than the pain-fueled firestorm raging

inside of her. But there was only the tortured stench of her own sweltering flesh. A single tear found its

way into the corner of her mouth. It tasted of pain and fear, but she was surprised to discover another

flavor within it: hope and a coming of new life.

Her husband, Samuel, entered her consciousness as if to pro-vide an outlet; a cathartic conversion of

pain to anger. Like Alice, the man was a second-generation American. He was a grocer by trade, and,

also like herself, from Wakefield, Massa-chusetts. He had always been a hard worker and steadfast in

his tenderness. But he was not there! She was in agony, while he was stacking cans of peaches!

Just when, she asked herself, had he judged his work more important than his wife? and soundlessly

cursed him with words women of the year 1925 weren’t supposed to know.

Why did she need him there, anyway? To share her torment, or to seek the comfort of him? All Alice

knew was that right then she hated and loved her husband in equal measure, and if this ordeal was to kill

her, she needed to see his face one last time.

To say goodbye.

No! she decided, as if her circumstance had been caused by nothing more than a failure of will. She

had to raise and love this child. She would not allow herself to die.

Alice’s membrane had ruptured twenty-six hours ago, yet she had not given birth. She’d once read

that in prolonged labor, omnipresent bacteria threatened to migrate inside, infecting both mother and

child. Even the hunched and hoary midwife, though ignorant of the danger in scientific terms, seemed well

aware of peril, per se; Alice could sense a fear of disaster in the woman’s every gesture.

Where in the hell was Sam?

Even in anguish, Alice understood this rage against her husband was misplaced. It had somehow

become a societal expectation that women should bear children with stoic grace. And it was absurd. A

student of history, she knew that anes-thetics had been used for many surgeries since the 1850s, yet had

found little acceptance in obstetrics, the pain of childbirth considered by doctors to be a duty women

were somehow meant to endure.

Still, it could have been worse; Alice was equally aware that her odds had improved. A hundred years

earlier, doctors would often go straight from performing autopsies to delivering ba-bies, seldom even

washing their hands. No wonder it had been common back then for men to lose several wives to

complica-tions of childbirth. At least now, sterilization was practiced with some modicum of care.

Her nineteen-year-old sister, Charlotte, and the midwife stood at Alice ’s bedside. The older

woman’s facial expression evinced kindly resignation, as if to say, It’s all we can do for you, dear, as

she held a wet towel, sponging Alice’s forehead. Charlotte Franklin’s intelligent eyes and sanguine aspect

seemed to magnify the midwife’s aura of incompetence.

“Just breathe through it,” said the midwife, who’d already told them that the suffering and peril of

delivery were “natural,” God’s punishment for the sins of womankind. “It’s in our Lord’s hands now,”

she added, as if these words held some sort of reassurance.

Alice felt her mind shove aside the hopeless bromide.

“You’ll be okay, Alice,” Charlotte whispered nervously, gently massaging her sister’s shoulders.

“You’re doing fine.”

“Quick now, fetch the boiling water for the gloves,” the mid-wife ordered. “Won’t be much longer.”

Alice screamed again, and Sam burst into the room. The snowstorm dripped its offerings from his

clothes onto the stained wooden floor. He shivered.

Thank God, Alice thought, her rage forgotten. Sam would see their child be born.

“Am I in time?” he asked stupidly.

His question went unanswered. “Head’s about through. Now push, girl!” the midwife shouted.

Alice pressed down. Slowly, painstakingly, Charlotte and the midwife managed to extract a perfect

baby boy.

Though bleeding heavily, Alice rallied a wan smile of opti-mism and hope, qualities she intended to

convey to her son, as-suming she survived.

Charlotte cut the cord. The midwife spanked the infant’s bottom. They washed him with warm water.

He wailed, but soon rested contentedly in his mother’s arms. His father gently stroked his back. The

caresses, tentative at first, easily pro-gressed in loving confidence.

“Benjamin Franklin Smith,” Sam declared, as if in the ritual of naming, his wife’s pain might be

banished to memory.

The next few days would be difficult. Having barely survived the ordeal, Alice sustained a dangerous

postpartum infection of the uterus and tubes. Her fever would reach 105 degrees, often consigning her to

the mad hands of delirium. She’d live through the illness, but not without loss: She would never bear

another child.

August 15, 1929

Oh! Ah! The next flash card displayed a tug wearing an impish grin and belching smoke from its only

funnel. As Ben saw it, he felt his cheeks puff into a smile. His first impulse was to reach for the drawing;

get a good close look at the happy work boat. But doing that would be bad. Might ruin the game.

B-O-A-T, yes, yes, yes! He could see the letters forming in his mind’s eye and was delighted. The

mental picture of the vessel and the alphabetic characters defining it jumped from his cerebrum into his

eyes and mouth.

“Boat! B-O-A-T, boat!”

“Wonderful.” Alice grinned. Oh, he’s so special, she thought, even knowing that her excitement was

exponentially enhanced because this delightful four-year-old was her own. Although they said John Stuart

Mill could translate Cicero at this age ...

She showed him the next card.

“Train,” he said, but did not attempt the spelling.

“I’m so proud of you!” she exclaimed, turning the card over. “That’s eighteen in a row. And you

spelled half of them. Enough for today?”

“Just a few more, Mommy. Please?” Ben loved this time with his mother. Everything he said seemed

to please her so.

“As many as you want, sweetheart.”

They still occupied the same tiny Wakefield apartment where Ben had been born, but much of the

furniture was new. Colorful drapes now hung at their only window. Several Maxfield Par-rish prints

adorned the walls. Some new floor lamps were there to provide their place a bright, almost cheerful

atmosphere. Sam’s career had begun to advance; he was now manager of the modest neighborhood

grocery.

And like so many of his neighbors, he’d made a little money in the stock market.

It was almost seven P.M. Sam walked through the door, after another fourteen-hour day. He hid it

well. Or perhaps seeing the two people he loved most in the world simply energized him; they were still

sitting at the table, playing an addition and sub-traction game Alice had invented for their boy.

He kissed Alice on her cheek. She returned his kisses on the mouth. Ben dashed to his father and

hugged him. “Daddy, I missed you.”

“Missed you, too, buddy boy. Wanna go outside and play some ball?”

“Yeah!” Ben said excitedly, and raced in search of his mitt and ball. At his age he could barely throw

the softball and had yet to catch it from more than five feet away, but he loved playing with his dad.

“Stock market went up again,” Sam said to Alice. “Few more runs like today’s and we can move out

of here.”

“I’m perfectly happy where we are,” she said. “Long as I have my men.” She kissed Sam again.

“Don’t you think it’s get-ting awfully high? Can’t go up forever.”

“Feels like it will. All my friends think so, too.”

“Sam,” Alice said in a voice that implied I’m just a woman, yet somehow commanded full attention,

“have you ever seen a lightbulb just before it burns out?”

As Ben and Sam left the apartment, Sam shook his head and smiled in bemused amazement. He

knew that this discussion with his very prudent wife was far from over, and the outcome inevitable:

Tomorrow he would be selling their stocks.

Almost every evening after dinner, Charlotte Franklin would drop by to keep Alice company while Sam

updated his inven-tory register in the kitchen. As usual, little Ben snuggled under his soft bed sheet,

listening to their conversation in covert, fas-cinated silence.

“Mom’s just beside herself,” Charlotte whispered, “that I’m twenty-three and still not married.”

“She told you that?”

“Not in so many words. Just another of her you-never-know-how-things’ll-turn-out discourses. She,

of course, always fig-ured I’d have a brood by now, and you’d be the spinster schoolmarm.”

“So did I,” Alice laughed, “till I met Sam.”

“That’s what I told Mom: ‘Soon as I find a man like Sam Smith.’ Then she starts whimpering a little,

y’know how she does it, and suddenly she’s talking about that winter ... Lord, it’s been ... ten years ...

when Sophie fell through the ice. Like maybe I’m s’posed to give her some grandchildren to replace our

sister or something …”

“I’m sure that’s not how she meant it. And even if she did, Charlotte, it’s a longing, not a wish.

They’re not the same, you know.”

“Maybe, but I shouldn’t feel like I’m letting them down, should I? I mean, it’s my life. And it wasn’t

my fault about—”

“Not at all,” Alice interrupted. “Not the least bit your fault. Goodness, Charlotte, you were thirteen;

she was seventeen. How were you supposed to talk her out of anything? I’m just thankful you didn’t go

skating with her. Might’ve been both of you they’d had to fish from that pond.”

“Maybe if I’d gone—”

“Hush,” Alice said, dismissing the notion. “I’ll never forget sneaking into our icehouse to look at her

the day before the fu-neral. She looked so …”

“So alive. I remember.”

“Yes, alive,” Alice said. “It was as though a lightning bolt could’ve struck her, and she’d’ve …”

“Woke right up and started dancing?”

“Exactly.”

Ben’s eyes opened wide. He knew more time than usual would pass before sleep enfolded him

tonight.

This conversation comprised the last words between his mother and his beloved Aunt Charlotte that Ben

would ever hear. The next day, Charlotte felt too weak to come over, and soon Alice would begin

spending evenings with her sister at their parents’ home. Less than a month later, Charlotte Franklin’s

malady would be diagnosed as incurable, and six weeks after that she’d be dead from leukemia.

December 4, 1941

Ben Smith looked at the schoolroom clock, saw it was only 1:47 P.M., and smiled. Well, Mom, guess I

nailed another one, he thought, as if she were in the room with him.

Although he’d skipped a grade, all his exams had so far been a cinch. It was not so much that

knowledge adhered to him, though by and large it did; the fact was that work itself came naturally. When

dealing with any task, he stepped wholly into the job. He became the goal. Be it physical labor or a

complex algorithm, Ben saw, did, absorbed, and moved on.

So far as he knew, he’d never been taught this methodology. (His mother knew differently.) It was ...

well, just an obvious choice; the most efficient path to success. He understood that this approach was

rare among his friends. It was as if any sight or sound or flight of fancy could distract them, and for them

to return to the immediate task required considerable will, or the guiding hand of another. He understood,

yes, but only as an ob-server. He had no idea how it felt to have such a response.

Ben expected to go to whatever college he chose. From there he would attend medical school and

become a doctor specializing in whichever field offered him the greatest potential for achievement. He

would make his parents proud.

He scanned the room. His time could just as well have been spent reading the paperback copy of We

the Living stuffed into his hip pocket. But he knew everyone in the room, and Sam and Alice Smith had

taught him a self-aware respect for others.

The bell rang, sparing Ben a sixth reread just as he’d become certain that no power in the universe

could prevent him from drumming his fingers. He stretched his lean, six-foot frame and took a last look

around the room. As his blue-green eyes passed over the faces, he could tell which students did well and

which had choked. He sympathized with the latter, sometimes won-dering what would happen to them in

the real world.

Over the previous three years, America had stumbled toward a tenuous recovery from the Great

Depression. Most of his class-mates worried that the day’s relative prosperity was temporary. The

general expectation was that Fortress Britain would even-tually fall to the Nazis, and their Canadian

neighbors would be forced to seek annexation by the U.S., probably costing America’s economy more

than it could afford.

But Ben harbored no such fears or consequent xenophobia. He regarded himself as a neo-immigrant,

not with embarrass-ment, but with a self-assured dignity. His own family’s circum-stances, though still

modest, had steadily risen over the years, and he trusted that, given time, life would continue to improve.

He dreaded no new addition to the “melting pot,” begrudged no rival for the American dream. There was

plenty for anyone willing to work for it. Another of Alice’s lessons which Ben had been unaware of being

taught.

He left the classroom and hurried through the halls. Over-head hung newly installed fluorescent lights,

a recent innova-tion, radiating a pale, stingy luminescence. Several of the tubes announced their

impending expiration by casting an annoying flicker. Ben absorbed the ambience as metaphor: the new

al-ready fading into anachronism.

As he walked toward the street, he lost himself in reflection about his future; an exciting world, where

science would progress at an exponential rate. In fact it was his optimism that drew him to the field of

medicine. He believed medical re-searchers would eventually discover cures for smallpox, polio, cancer,

heart disease, diabetes, possibly aging itself. People would live longer and healthier lives, and in the

distant future might not die at all.

How distant? Ben pondered. Maybe in time for his grand-children, or even his own generation.

He walked the few blocks separating Wakefield High School from downtown. A tall ladder leaned

against Alfred’s Men’s Store; every pedestrian circled around it, but Ben decided to take his chances.

Sometimes delights were found in the smallest defiances.

Several people stared, wondering if the boy had maybe lost his mind. What would he do next? Follow

a black cat?

He arrived at the Colonial Spa ice cream parlor, the usual gathering place for his friends.

He smiled as he made his way through the after-school crowd to join his girlfriend, Margaret

Callahan, and their mu-tual best friend, Tobias Fiske. It was odd—“peculiar,” was the word most of his

friends would employ—in 1941 for a girl to count a male not as her “boyfriend,” but as her best friend.

Yet Ben found he enjoyed the raised eyebrows Marge and Toby’s buddy-relationship occasioned.

As Ben joined them, Marge raised her head, smiling in ac-knowledgment and welcome. To her, this

well-proportioned, fair-haired boy’s body personified the spirit it housed. She ad-mired and trusted his

ability and dedication, trademarks of her own father’s character. This emotional context carried an

old-shoe familiarity, and she nestled comfortably within it. But there was more; a newer, more compelling

feeling, which deli-ciously seasoned her response to Ben.

“Hey,” he said, taking a seat and joining the now-completed foursome. Marge covered his hand with

her own.

Toby’s latest girlfriend, number four of the school year by Ben and Marge’s count, was a pretty blond

classmate named Sally Nowicki. She seemed bright and lively and was clearly sweet on Toby, but Ben

knew the courtship had a less than even chance of ringing in the new year. The two were engrossed in a

random flow of airy conversation and light, playful petting; a replay of the previous week, except the

girl’s name had been Lydia Gabrielson. And Denise Vroman a few weeks before that.

Toby Fiske, compact, dark-complexioned, and nimble of mind and body, was a brilliant young man,

but as Marge had once observed, “Toby’s about as disciplined as a ten-week-old puppy.” Because

Toby’s parents considered him overly suscep-tible to the influence of others, they were pleased that their

son had fallen under Ben Smith’s tutelage; it was one of the few things upon which Theodore and

Constance Fiske actually agreed.

Ben knew how it felt to be the recipient of subtle feminine overtures; it was always pleasant and

flattering, but to him, after the day he met Marge in the spring of 1940, utterly resistible. She was his only

and first serious girlfriend.

Marge was a natural beauty; straight brown hair, brown eyes, delicate features, and flawless skin; five

feet seven inches tall, with long, perfectly shaped legs and a lean yet curvaceous figure.

Ben lifted her hand and kissed it.

“How’d your exam go?” she asked.

“I was ready for it,” he told her. “How was yours?”

“Okay, I think, but I doubt it’ll be enough to get into Radcliffe.”

“You’ll get in,” he said, squeezing her hand. “Or Wellesley at least.” Marge was probably just being

modest, he thought.

Ben hated even to think about separate schools. Wellesley was ten miles from Harvard, and that was

too far. He looked at her beautiful, serious, intelligent face and knew she was the only girl he would ever

love; as Marge had told Ben that he was the one with whom she wanted to spend the rest of her life.

Suddenly the image popped into his mind, as it often did, of their most recent evening together, kissing

passionately, then touching, first everywhere, but eventually just there. Harder and harder until the urge

became irresistible, and finally, ec-static relief.

In a biblical sense, Ben and Marge had never consummated their love, although recently they had not

left each other unsat-isfied. Their hands knew many secrets.

“Hey, Toby,” Ben called across the table, “what time ya con-tin’ over tonight?”

It took his friend a few seconds to extricate himself from Sally and regain his composure. “Tonight?

Oh. After dinner, I guess. That okay?”

“Sure thing. Should only take a couple of hours, if I can keep your brain switch at the on position.”

Toby chuckled good-naturedly. “It’d take all night if we tried to study at my place.”

“Parents fighting again?”

“When don’t they?”

“Well, it’s not like they beat each other up or throw dishes or anything,” Ben said. “They just like to

argue is all. Some couples are like that.”

“Mine sure are,” Sally interjected.

“Yeah, but at least your parents like each other,” Toby said. “My parents must’ve, too, once. But

now they’re each con-vinced they married the Antichrist!”

“But they love you,” Ben said. “You’re the reason they’re still together.” In fact their religion forbade

divorce under virtu-ally all circumstances. But such a notion was foreign to Ben, whose parents, though

devout, embraced religion mostly as an expression of gratitude for their lives.

“Yeah, some consolation,” Toby said. “Don’t know if I’ll ever get married myself. Too damn risky.”

Ben noticed Sally’s face clouding. “But wouldn’t it be worse,” he asked, “to spend your old age

alone?”

“Not from where I sit. Alone seems a lot better than living the next forty years with somebody you

can’t stand.”

Sally recovered quickly. “Then where do you imagine your-self in forty years?”

Toby laughed. “Cemetery, probably, pushing up daisies.”

“Y’know,” Ben said seriously, “I was thinking we might all be around longer than we realize. What if

you could live for-ever? Wouldn’t you want to?”

“No way,” Toby said. “Heaven’s gotta be a whole lot better than Wakefield.”

“Who said you’re going to heaven?” Marge cracked.

“Good point. Actually, hell might be better than Wakefield. But just hypothetically, Ben, are you

asking if I’d want everyone to live forever, or just me?”

“Everyone, I suppose.”

“Everyone? Interesting.” Toby paused. “But then, what’d keep us from abusing each other? I mean, if

we all knew we’d live forever, never having to face God’s judgment for our sins, well, aren’t most people

crazy enough as it is?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Marge offered. “People who expected to live forever might be nicer. After all, if

you never died, what-ever you did to others would eventually come back to you one way or another.”

“Exactly,” Ben agreed. “Any act of kindness, or spite, is sorta like a stone pitched into an endless sea.

Y’know how ripples spread from the impact? If you plan to sail those waters forever, you might be more

careful about what you toss into ‘em.”

“What do you mean?” Sally asked. “Like, for example?”

“Well, most everyone claims to believe in heaven and hell, but some people obviously don’t. So how

do you set penalties to fit the crime? For instance, suppose some despot who only pretends to believe in

God enslaves a million people for twenty years. What’s the worst punishment he’d expect? Maybe if he

gets unlucky, his life gets shortened by a decade or two. He’d probably figure it’s worth the gamble;

dictators usually think they’re invincible, anyway.”

“Yeah?” Toby asked. “And how does death enter into it?”

“See, if that same man had the potential to live forever, he might become more interested in building

up goodwill; helping society improve. He could still be amoral, but only really de-ranged people do things

they know they’ll be punished for. Maybe he’d decide that fifty, or a hundred, or a thousand years from

now, he’d be better off if he suppressed his impulses now.”

“Yeah, that’s possible, I guess,” Toby conceded. “But still, it’s natural to die.”

“Oh, it’s natural all right,” Ben said. “Just like hurricanes, floods, and diseases are natural.

Earthquakes and ice ages, too. Some even say war is natural. Maybe we should think of nature as an

adversary.”

Marge offered no opinion, but Sally did: “I think nature’s wonderful and we should respect it. When

it’s my time to go, I’ll be ready.”

“Nature is wonderful, if you’re dealing with it successfully,” Ben argued. “Yeah, looking at it, or

contesting it with a fishing rod or a test tube. It’s easy to say you’ll be ready to give in to it, too. That

you’ll be ready to go when it’s time, until the time ap-proaches, then you’ll fight against it, that’s for sure.”

His voice was calm, serious, without a trace of mockery.

James L. Halperin - The First Immortal

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