At last he was dry. He sat and looked at the window and wondered why he had said the things he had said. What good would it do? Men didn't have it in them to stop trying. We are not bred for despair.
And yet we learn it, for even in our efforts to repair the damage done by premature aging, we are as blind as lemmings, struggling to go down the same old road to a continent that a million years before had sunk under the sea — yet the road could not be changed. The age of forty had its tasks; therefore we must strive to live to forty, however far away it might be now.
The meeting ended. He heard voices in the hall. The words could not be deciphered, but through them all was the tone of boisterous good cheer, good luck my friend and I'll see you soon, here's to the future.
The door to Todd's private (except for the guards) room opened. Anne Hal-lam and Ryan came in, stepping quietly.
"I'm not asleep," Todd said. "Nor am I emotionally discommoded at the moment. So you needn't tiptoe. "
Anne smiled then. "Todd, I'm sorry. About the embarrassment to you. It happens to all of us now and then. "
Todd smiled back (thank God for a little warmth — how had she kept it?) And then shook his head. "Not then. Just now. Well, what did the meeting find out?
Have the Chinese found a magic cure and only now are radioing the formula To Honolulu?"
Ryan laughed. "As if there were any Chinese anymore. "
Anne said, "We decided two things. First, we haven't found the cure yet. "
"Astute," Todd aid, raising an imaginary glass to clink with hers.
"And second, we decided that there is a cure, and we will find it. "
"And while you were at it," Todd asked, "did you decide that faster-than-light travel was possible, and declare that it would be discovered next week by two youngsters in France who by chance were walking in the field one day and plunged into hyperspace?"
"Not only that," Anne said, "but one of the children immediately will follow a rabbit down a hole and find herself in Wonderland. "
"Blunderland," Todd added, and Anne and Todd laughed together with understanding and mutual compassion. Ryan looked at them, puzzlement in his eyes. Todd noticed it. The younger generation still knows only life: Ah, youthful Caesar, we who are about to die salute you, though we have no hope of actually communicating with you.
"But there is a cause," Anne insisted, "and therefore it can be found. "
"Your faith is touching," Todd said.
"There's a cause for everything, we don't change overnight with no reason, or else nothing that any human being has ever called ‘true' can be counted on at all. Will gravity fail?"
"Tomorrow afternoon at three," Todd said.
"Only if there's a cause. But sometimes — right now, with PAP — the cause eludes us, that's all. Why did the dinosaurs die out? Why did the apes drop from the trees and start talking and lighting fires? We can guess, perhaps, but we don't know; and yet there was a cause or there's no reason in the world. "
"I rest my case," Todd said. "My basket case, to be precise. "
Ryan's face twisted, and Todd laughed at him. "Ryan, the nearly dead are free to joke about death. It's only the living to whom death is tabu. "
"Maybe," Anne Hallam said, leaning back in a chair (and the guards' eyes followed her, because they watched everybody, guarded everybody), "maybe there's some system, some balance, some ecosystem we haven't discovered until now, a system that demands that, when one species or group gets out of hand, that species changes, not for survival of the fittest, but for survival of the whole. Perhaps the dinosaurs were destroying the earth, and so they — stopped. Perhaps man was — no, we know man was destroying the earth. And we know we were stopped. Any talk of nuclear war now? Any chance of too much industry raping the earth utterly beyond of hope of survival?"
"And in a moment," Ryan said, his mouth curled with distaste, "you'll be mentioning the thought that God is punishing us for our sins. I, personally, find the idea ridiculous, and seeing two of our finest minds seriously discussing it is pathetic. "
Ryan got up and left. Anne smiled again (warmly!) at Todd, patted his hand, and left. After a few minutes, Todd followed.
A plane ride east.
Midnight at the airport. Nevertheless, a crowd bustling through. At one end of the terminal, a ragged old man was shouting to an oblivious crowd.
Todd and the others tried to pass him without paying attention, but he called to them. "You! You with the briefcases, you in the suits!" Ryan stopped and turned, and so they all had to. Todd was irritated. He was tired. He wanted to get home to Sandy.
"You're scientists, aren't you!" the man shouted. They didn't answer. He took that for agreement. "It's your fault! the earth couldn't bear so many men, so many machines!"
"Let's get out of here," Todd said, and the others agreed.
The old man kept calling after them. "Rape, that's all it was! Rape of a planet, rape of each other, rape of life, you bastards!" People stared at them all the way out of the terminal.
"There was a day," Ryan said, "when people expected science to work miracles, and cursed us when we failed. Now they curse us for the miracles we did give them. "
Todd hunched his shoulders. Scientists hell. Who were scientists? People with blue security cards.
The old man's voice echoed even out in the parking lot. "the earth gets even! the violated virgins will have their revenge!"
Todd got in his car and drove home alone. Shaking.
When he got home he found all as he had left it. The student from the university had come in and fed Sandy — there were dishes in the sink that the boy apparently hadn't thought of cleaning up.
Sandy was where Todd had left her. Lying on the bed. Breathing. Her eyes were closed.
Todd lay on the bed beside her. He had carried despair with him to the meeting, and carried it as a burden multiplied many times over when he came back. With a gentle finger he traced the wrinkles that radiated from Sandy's eyes, followed the folds of skin down her neck, twisted the brown hair now showing gray roots, pressed his lips against her closed eyes. He could remember when the skin was smooth, not cracked and hard as parchment, not thin and vein-lined.
"I'm sorry," he said again and again, unsure who he was apologizing to or what for. "I'm so sorry. "
And then he told his wife's unhearing ears about the conference. They had found nothing. And finding nothing, they could find no cure. You're going to die, he said softly into her ear. "You're going to die, I'd stop it if I could, but I can't, you're going to die. "
He got up and sat at his desk. He wrote by hand on the blank envelope sitting there, because he felt too tired to type, too tired to reach up to the shelf above the desk and pick up the sheets of paper. the ink scrawled:
"Our senility is not just age. In the books it is possible to age gracefully. Let us age with grace and strength, please, not madly and with terror and in the darkness and clinging to our pillows and our blankets calling names of parents we never knew, names of soft friends who never answered us. "
He stopped writing for as little reason as he had begun. He wondered who he had been writing to. He leaned back and touched the mattress. It was soft. He buried his hand in the blanket. It was soft.
On his knees by the bed, he clung to the blanket saying quietly, "Dappa," and then, "Coopie. Dappa, you're back. "
Lying naked on the bed, curled up with a pillow tucked under his arm, he knew somewhere back in his mind that he was not quite what he should be, not quite thinking and acting as he ought. But it was too good to have Dappa and Coopie back.
He fell asleep with tears of comfort and relief spotting the sheets.