Frederik Pohl - The Boy Who Would Live Forever

The

Boy Who

Would Live

Forever

FrederikPohl

TOR

A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK

New York

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel

are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

THE BOY WHO WOULD LIVE FOREVER

Portions of this novel have been previously published in different form.

"From Istanbul to the Stars" and "In the Steps of Heroes" were published as "The Boy Who

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Pohl.

"A Home for the Old Ones" was published in30thAnniversary DAW Science Fiction, edited by

"Hatching the Phoenix" appeared as a two-part serial inAmazing Stories, Fall 1999 and Winter

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Edited by James Frenkel

Book Design by Mary A. Wirth

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

175 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10010

www.tor.com

Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Pohl, Frederik.

The boy who would live forever : a novel of Gateway/Frederik Pohl.—1st ed.

p. cm.

"A Tom Doherty Associates book."

ISBN 0-765-31049-X

EAN 978-0765-31049-1

1. Human-alien encounters—Fiction. 2. Space colonies—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3566.O36B69 2004

813'.6—dc22

2004049579

First Edition: October 2004

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Printed in the United States of America

0987654321

To Ian Ballantine

Contents

1. From Istanbul to the Stars

2. In the Steps of Heroes

3. Hunting the Hunters

4. Three Days on Door

5. A Home for the Old Ones

6. The One Who Hated Humans

7. Hatching the Phoenix

8. On the Forested Planet

9. The Story of a Stovemind

10. The Dream Machine

11. Waveland

12. Fatherhood

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13. Stovemind in the Core

14. Motherhood

15. Happiness

16. Working for Wan

17. In Achiever's Ship

18. The Threat

19. Captivity

20. What Klara Wants

21. A Season on Arabella

22. The Rescue

23. In Orbis's Ship

24. On the Way to Forever

Author's Note:On theMutability of Science

1

From Istanbul to the Stars

I

On Stan's seventeenth birthday the Wrath of God came again, as it had been doing every six weeks or

so. At the time Stan was alone in the apartment, cutting up vegetables for his birthday dinner. When he

felt that familiar, sudden, overwhelming, disorienting,horny rush of vertigo he knew that it was what

everybody he knew called "the Wrath of God" and nobody understood at all. Screams and sirens from

outside the building told him that everybody else in that part of Istanbul was feeling it, too. Stan managed

to drop the paring knife to the floor so he wouldn't cut himself. Then he staggered to a kitchen chair to

wait it out.

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People said the Wrath was a terrible thing. Well, that was true enough. Whatever the Wrath of God

really was, it struck everyone in the world at once—and not just the people still living on Earth, either.

Ships in space, the colonies on Mars and Venus, as long as human beings were still within the confines of

the Solar System, they all were caught up in its madness at the same moment, and the Wrath's costs in

accidents and disasters were enormous. Personally, Stan didn't mind it all that much. What it felt like to

him was like suddenly being overwhelmed by a vast, lonely, erotic nightmare. Like, Stan thought,

probably what it would be like to get good and drunk. The erotic part was not very different from some

of the yearnings Stan himself felt often enough.

It didn't last very long. When it passed, Stan shook himself, picked up the things he had knocked to the

floor and turned on the local IV news to see how it had gone this time.

It had gone badly enough. Fires, car smashes—Istanbul's aggressive drivers relied on their split-second

reflexes to avert disaster, and when the Wrath took away their skill the crashes came fast. The single

worst thing that happened this time was an oil tanker that had been coming into the Golden Horn. With

everyone on both the tanker's tugs and its own bridge suddenly incapacitated, the vessel had plowed,

dead slow and irresistible, into one of the cruise-ship docks on the Old City side, and there it had

exploded into flame.

That was a really bad accident. Like any teenager, however, Stan had a high tolerance for other people's

misfortunes. He yawned and got back to his chores, hoping only that the commotion wouldn't make his

father too late in getting back home with the saffron and mussels for the birthday stew. When Stan

finished with the vegetables he put them in a pot of cold water, and put a couple of his precious old disks

on to play. This time it was Dizzy Gillespie, Jack Teagarden and the Firehouse Five Plus Three. Then he

sat down to wait as he listened, thumbing through some of his comics and wondering if, this time, his

father would have stayed sober long enough to get him some kind of a present for his birthday.

That was the moment at which the polis came to the door.

There were two of them, male and female, and they looked around the shabby apartment suspiciously.

"Is this where the American citizen Walter Avery lived?" the woman demanded, and the past tense of the

verb told Stan the whole story.

It didn't take the polis long to tell Stan just how it was that the Wrath had made a statistic of his father.

Walter Avery had fallen down while crossing the street and a spellbound taksi driver ran right over him.

There was no hope of holding the driver responsible, the woman said at once; the Wrath, you know.

Anyway, the driver had long since disappeared. And, besides, witnesses said that Stan's father had been

drunk at the time. Of course.

The male polis took pity on Stan's wretched stare. "At least he didn't suffer," he said gruffly. "He died

right away. There was no pain."

The woman was impatient. "Yes, I suppose that is possible," she said, and then: "So you've been

notified. You have to come to the morgue to collect the body before midnight, otherwise there'll be a

charge for holding it an extra day. Good-bye."

And they left.

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II

Since there would be neither mussels nor saffron for his birthday meal, Stan found a few scraps of

leftover ham and tossed them into the pot with the vegetables. While they were simmering he sat down

with his head in his hands, to think about what it meant to be an American—well, half

American—orphan, alone in the city of Istanbul.

Two facts presented themselves. First, that long dreamed-of day when his father would sober up, take

him back to America and there make a new life for the two of them—that day, always unlikely, was now

definitely never going to come. From that fact it followed that, second, there was never going to be the

money to pay for his college, much less to indulge his dream of flying to the Gateway asteroid and its

wondrous adventure. He wasn't ever going to become one of those colorful and heroic Gateway

prospectors who flew to strange parts of the Galaxy. He wasn't going to discover a hoard of priceless

artifacts left by the vanished old race of Heechee. And he wasn't going to become both famous and rich.

Neither of these new facts was a total surprise to Stan. His faith in either had been steadily eroding since

skepticism and the first dawn of puberty arrived simultaneously, when he was thirteen. Still, they had

seemed at least theoreticallypossible. Now, nothing seemed possible at all.

That was when Stan at last allowed himself to cry.

While Stan was drearily cleaning up the kitchen after his flavorless birthday meal, Mr. Ozden knocked

on the door.

Mr. Ozden was probably around seventy years old. To Stan he looked more like a hundred—a

shriveled, ugly old man, hairless on the top of his head, but with his mustache still bristly black. He was

the richest man Stan had ever met. He owned the ramshackle tenement where Stan lived, and the two

others that flanked it, as well as the brothel that took up two floors of one of them. Mr. Ozden was a

deeply religious man, so devout in his observances that he did not allow alcohol on his premises

anywhere except in the brothel, and there only for the use of non-Islamic tourists. "My deepest

sympathies to you on your loss, young Stanley," he boomed in his surprisingly loud voice, automatically

scanning everything in sight for traces of a forbidden bottle of whiskey. (He never found any; Stan's father

had been clever about that.) "It is a terrible tragedy, but we may not question the ways of God. What are

your plans, may I ask?"

Stan was already serving him tea, as his father always did. "I don't exactly know yet, Mr. Ozden. I guess

I'll have to get a job."

"Yes, that is so," Mr. Ozden agreed. He nibbled at a crumb of the macaroon Stan had put on a saucer

for him, eyeing the boy. "Perhaps working at the consulate of the Americans, like your father?"

"Perhaps." Stan knew that wasn't going to happen, though. It had already been discussed. The

Americans weren't going to hire any translator under the age of twenty-one.

"That would be excellent," Mr. Ozden announced. "Especially if it were to happen quickly. As you

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know, the rent is due tomorrow, in addition to last week's, which has not been paid, as well as the

week's before. Would they pay you well at the consulate, do you think?"

"As God wills," Stan said, as piously as though he meant it. The old man nodded, studying Stan in a way

that made the boy uneasy.

"Or," he said, with a smile that revealed his expensive teeth, "I could speak to my cousin for you, if you

like."

Stan sat up straight; Mr. Ozden's cousin was also his brothel keeper. "You mean to work for him?

Doing what?"

"Doing what pays well," Mr. Ozden said severely. "You are young, and I believe in good health? You

could have the luck to earn a considerable sum, I think."

Something was churning, not pleasantly, in Stan's belly and groin. From time to time he had seen the

whores in Mr. Ozden's cousin's employ as they sunned themselves on the rooftop when business was

slow, often with one or two boys among them. The boys were generally even younger than himself,

mostly Kurds or hill-country Anatolians, when they weren't from Algeria or Morocco. The boys didn't

last long. Stan and his friend Tan had enjoyed calling insults at them from a distance. None of them had

seemed very lucky.

Before Stan could speak, Mr. Ozden was going on. "My cousin's clients are not only men, you know.

Often women come to him, sometimes wealthy widows, tourists from Europe or the East, who are very

grateful to a young man who can give them the pleasures their husbands can no longer supply. There are

frequently large tips, of which my cousin allows his people to keep nearly half—in addition to providing

his people with Term Medical as long as they are in his employ, as well as quite fine accommodations

and meals, at reasonable rates. Quite often the women clients are not unattractive, also. Of course," he

added, his voice speeding up and diminishing in volume, "naturally there would be men as well." He stood

up, most of his tea and macaroon untouched. "But perhaps the consulate will make you a better offer.

You should telephone them at once in any case, to let them know of your father's sad accident. It may

even be that he has some uncollected salary still to his account which you can apply to the rent. I will

come again in the morning."

When Stan called the consulate, Mr. Goodpastor wasn't in, but his elderly secretary was touched by the

news. "Oh, Stanley! This terrible Wrath thing! How awful for you! Your father was a, uh, a very nice

man." That part was only conditionally true, Stan knew. His father had been a sweet-natured, generous,

unreliable drunk, and the only reason the consulate had given him any work at all was that he was an

American who would work for the wages of a Turk. And when Stan asked diffidently if there was any

chance of uncollected salary she was all tact. "I'm afraid not, Stanley. I handle all the vouchers for Mr.

Goodpastor, you know. I'm sure there's nothing there. Actually," she added, sounding embarrassed, "I'm

afraid it's more likely to be a little bit the other way. You see, your father had received several salary

advances lately, so his account is somewhat overdrawn. But don't worry about that, dear. I'm sure no

one will press a claim."

The news was nothing Stan hadn't expected. All the same, it sharpened his problem. The Americans

might not demand money from him, but Mr. Ozden certainly would. Already had. And would soon be

doing his very best to collect. The last time someone had been evicted from one of his tenements Stan

had been watching from the roof and had seen Mr. Ozden seizing every stick of their possessions to sell

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for the rent owed.

Which made Stan look appraisingly around their tiny flat. The major furnishings didn't matter, since they

belonged to Mr. Ozden in the first place. Even the bed linens and the kitchenware were Ozden's. His

father's skimpy wardrobe would certainly be taken. Stan's decrepit music player and his stacks of ancient

American jazz recordings; his collection of space adventures, both animéand morphed; his school books;

the small amount of food on the shelves—put them all together and they would barely cover the rent. The

only other things of measurable value were the musical instruments, his battered trumpet and the drums.

Of course Mr. Ozden had no proper claim to the drums, since they weren't Stan's. They'd been brought

there and left by his friend Tan Kusmeroglu, when Tan's parents wouldn't let them do any more music

making in their house.

That Stan could do something about. When he phoned Tan's home it was Tan's mother who answered,

and she began weeping as soon as she heard the news. It was a while before Mrs. Kusmeroglu could

manage to tell Stan that Oltan wasn't home. He was at work, but she would get the sad message to him

at once, and if there was anything they could do....

When he gotoff the phono with Mrs. Kusmeroglu, Stan looked at the clock. He had plenty of time

before he had to get to the morgue, so he opened up the couch he slept on—he wasn't quite ready to

move into his father's bed—and lay down in case he needed to cry some more.

He didn't, though. He fell asleep instantly, which was even better for him. What woke him, hours later,

was Tan Kusmeroglu standing over him. Stan could hear the braying of the muezzin, calling the faithful to

prayer from the little mosque around the corner, almost drowned out by Tan's excited voice as he shook

Stan awake. "Come on, Stan, wake up! The old fart's at prayer now and I borrowed my boss's van.

You'll never have a better time to get your stuff out!"

That meant they had ten minutes at most. Stan didn't argue. It took less than that to load the drums, the

trumpet, the precious music disks and player and a handful of other things into the van. They were

already driving away before Stan remembered. "I have to go to the morgue," he said.

Tan took his eyes from the tour bus that was weaving from side to side before them and the delivery

truck that was trying to cut in from the side long enough to glance at Stan. His expression was

peculiar—almost un-Tanly sympathetic, a little bit flushed in the way he always looked when about to

propose some new escapade. "I have been thinking about that," he announced. "You don't want to go

there."

"But they want me to identify my father's body. I have to."

"No, you don't. What's going to happen if you do? They're going to want you to pay for a funeral, and

how are you going to do that? No. You stay out of sight."

Stan asked simply, "Where?"

"With us, stupid! You can share my room. Or," he added, grinning, "you can share my sister's if you'd

rather, only you would have to marry her first."

III

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Everybody in the Kusmeroglu family worked. Mr. Kusmeroglu was a junior accountant in a factory that

made Korean-brand cars for export. Tan delivered household appliances for a hardware store. His

sixteen-year-old sister, Naslan, worked in the patisserie of one of the big hotels along the Bosphorus.

Even Mrs. Kusmeroglu worked at home, assembling beads into bracelets that spelled out verses from the

Koran, for the tourist trade—when she wasn't cleaning or cooking or mending the family's clothes. Even

so, Stan knew without being told, they were barely making ends meet, with only the sketchiest of Basic

Medical and a constant fear of the future. Going back to complete his schooling was now as hopelessly

out of the question for Stan as it had been for Tan. So was sponging off the Kusmeroglus for any length

of time.

He had to find a way to make money.

That wasn't easy. Stan couldn't get a regular job, even if there was one to be got, because under Turkish

law he was now an unregistered nonperson. He wasn't the only one of that sort, of course. There were

millions like him in poverty-stricken Istanbul. It wasn't likely the authorities would bother trying to track

him down—unless he turned up on some official record.

The good part was that the season was nearly summer. The city's normal population of 25 million,

largely destitute, was being enriched each week by two or three million tourists, sometimes even more.

These people, by definition, had money and nothing better to spend it on than Istanbul's sights, meals,

curios and inhabitants. "You can become a guide," Mr. Kusmeroglu pronounced at dinner. "You speak

both Turkish and English without flaw, Stanley. You will do well."

"A guide," Stan repeated, looking, out of courtesy to his host, as though he thought it a good idea, but

very far from convinced.

"Of course a guide," Tan said reprovingly. "My father is right. You have learned all you need to know

about Istanbul already—you remember all those dull history classes when we were at school together.

Simply subtract the Ottoman period and concentrate on those crazy empresses in the Byzantine, which is

what tourists want to hear about anyway. Also we can get guide books from the library for you to study."

Stan went right to the heart of the matter. "But I can't get a guide's license! The polis—"

"Will not bother you," Tan's mother said firmly. "You simply linger around Topkapi, perhaps, or the

Grand Bazaar. When you see some Americans who are not with a tour group you merely offer

information to them in a friendly way. Tell them you are an American student here—that is almost true,

isn't it? And if any polis should ask you any questions, speak to them only in English, tell them you are

looking for your parents who have your papers. Fair-haired, with those blue eyes, you will not be

doubted."

"He doesn't have any American clothes, though," Naslan put in.

Her mother pursed her lips for a moment, then smiled. "That can be dealt with. You and I will make him

some, Naslan. It is time you learned more about sewing anyway."

The endless resources of the Lost & found at Naslan's hotel provided the raw material, the Kusmeroglu

women made it all lit. Stan became a model American college student on tour: flared slacks that looked

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like designer pants, but weren't, spring-soled running shoes, a Dallas Dodgers baseball cap and a T-shirt

that said, "Gateway or Bust," on the front, and on the back, "I busted." The crowds of tourists were as

milkable as imagined. No, more so. The Americans on whom he concentrated all seemed to have more

money than they knew what to do with. Like the elderly couple from Riverdale, New York, so confused

by the hyperinflated Turkish currency that they pressed a billion New Lira banknote on Stan as a tip for

helping them find clean toilets when a million or two would have been generous. And then, when he

pointed out the error, insisted that he keep the billion as a reward for his honesty. So in his first week

Stan brought back more than Tan earned at his job and almost as much as Naslan. He tried to give it all

to Mrs. Kusmeroglu, but she would take only half. "Save for the future, Stanley," she instructed him

kindly. "A little capital is a good thing for a young man to have."

And her daughter added, "After all, some day soon you may want to get married."

Of course, Stan had no such plans, although Naslan certainly was pretty enough in the perky pillbox hat

and miniskirt that was her uniform in the patisserie. She smelled good, too. That was by courtesy of the

nearly empty leftover bits of perfume and cosmetics the women guests of the hotel discarded in the ladies'

room, which it was part of her duties to keep spotless. It had its effect on Stan. Sometimes, when she sat

close to him as the family watched TV together in the evenings, he hoped no one was noticing the

embarrassing swelling in his groin. He was, after all, male, and seventeen.

But he was also thoroughly taken up by his new status as an earner of significant income. He memorized

whole pages from the guidebooks, and supplemented them by lurking about to listen in on the

professional guides as they lectured to their tour groups. The best places for that were in sights like the

Grand Mosque or Hagia Sofia. There all the little clusters of a dozen or a score tourists were crowded

together, with their six or eight competing guides all talking at once, in half a dozen languages. The guide

gossip was usually more interesting than anything in the books, and always a lot more scurrilous.

Eavesdropping on them carried a risk, though. In the narrow alleyway outside the great kitchens that had

once served Topkapi Palace he saw a couple of the licensed guides looking at him in a way he didn't like

as they waited for their tour groups to trickle out of the displays. When both of them began talking on

their carry phones, still looking at him, he quickly left the scene.

Actually, he was less afraid of the guides, or of the polis, than he was of Mr. Ozden finding him. What

the old man could do if that happened Stan didn't know. In a pinch, he supposed he could actually pay

off the overdue rent out of the wads of lira that were accumulating under his side of the mattress he

shared with Tan. But who knew what law he had broken by his furtive departure? Mr. Ozden would, all

right, and so Stan stayed far away from his old tenement.

It wasn't all work for Stan. If he got home in time he helped Mrs. Kusmeroglu with the dinner—she

affected to be amazed by his cooking skills, which were actually pretty rudimentary. Then usually they

would all watch the family's old thousand-channel TV together. Mrs. Kusmeroglu liked the weighty talk

shows, pundits discussing the meaning of such bizarre events as that inexplicable Wrath of God that

visited them from time to time, or what to do about the Cyprus question. Mr. Kusmeroglu preferred

music—not the kind the boys played, though. Both Tan and Stan voted for programs about space or

sports. But then it seldom came to a vote, because what Naslan liked was American sitcoms—on the

English-language channels, so she could practice her English—happy groups of wealthy, handsome

people enjoying life in Las Vegas or Malibu or the Tappan Sea, and Naslan talked faster than anyone

else. It didn't matter. They shared things as a real family. And that was in some ways the best part of all

for Stan, who had only the sketchiest memories of what living in a family was like.

Although the Kusmeroglus were all unfailingly kind to Stan, their tolerance did not extend to allowing the

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