Ian waited patiently, hoping that the layers of memory would be stirred, but nothing came, just a slight shaking of the head and then a half-bemused smile of sadness.
"It is so long ago that I have not thought of it in a hundred, maybe two hundred years. I am old, Ian, my comrades and I. Old as if we were like Adam, bent under the weight of endless centuries since the loss of Paradise."
Ian leaned forward and touched Joshua on the hand. He felt a sense of awe that he was touching something alive from the distant age he had dreamed about since childhood. He realized, as well, that underneath this "specimen" that he wished to probe and record, there was a man like himself. "How does it feel?" Ian whispered. "I somehow can't imagine it-how does it feel to have lived so long?"
Joshua smiled, as if he had waited and prepared for that question. "I can remember when I was a child. There was a thing called movies, do you have them still?"
Ian nodded.
"I can remember a day when I wanted to go to a movie and my mother said she would take me that afternoon into the city. How I wanted to see it, how I had waited for weeks for that film to arrive. It was early in the morn ing, and so I settled down to wait for my mother to take me. And the seconds dragged by as if each fragment was a frozen entity slowly melting, to be replaced by yet another slow melting fragment. I waited for an eternity…" His voice trailed off for a moment, so that Ian thought he had fallen asleep, but suddenly he stirred.
"Do you remember the eternity of time when you were a child? That morning will be forever frozen in my mind. I believe that only a child can truly see time in its passage. As we grow older time slips through our fingers without our ever grasping it. And now you ask what my eternity is like.
"I will tell you, Ian Lacklin, that the centuries of this endless journey have seemed like but a moment to me, when compared to that morning of a millennium ago. For all of time is an illusion. I drift now through eternity and no longer feel its passage. There is no awe, there is nothing to excite, there is only eternity."
He knew the question was foolish but he had to ask.
"What was the, ahh, movie, I think you called it?"
Joshua smiled again, as if he knew that this question would be asked, as well. "I can't recall now, it was some thing about the future and our distant past. It was about space and a man who traveled far, but I can't recall. All I remember is that in the end, we didn't go. My mother forgot her promise to me and left with some friends, and so I didn't go. And across the centuries all I can now remember is the pain."
"How have you managed this?" Ian asked. "How have you lived so long?"
" Ahh, how have I kept the spirit trapped in this vessel? I believe you are the historian, Ian, you must know of our grand design?"
"All I have are the few records that survived the Ho locaust."
"So that is what you call it now. I remember we used that word for something else, as well. But I guess that it is fitting, a burnt offering, yes, that is fitting.
"But you wish to know how, rather than simply to hear the ramblings of an old man."
"They're not ramblings," Ian said softly. "If need be I'll stay here as long as you will allow me, for I am far more interested than you can imagine. Joshua, you are my dream, you lived then, while I can only dream of that time. You saw it with those eyes, and through you I want to see it, as well."
"These eyes, you say." Joshua chuckled softly. "Yes, these eyes. But let me return to your original question as to how."
Ian pointed to his wrist to ask if he could record the conversation. It took Joshua several seconds to realize the nature of the small device on lan's wrist, but he nod ded his approval even as he started to talk.
"I was a genetic engineer, a researcher on the edge of our bold new frontier. And through our research, and in many other realms as well, we felt at last that we could even stare death in the face and turn him back. Our strat egies were many, just as a general will employ many dif ferent weapons, each appropriate to its task, to win his war. For this indeed was war-we were fighting the great est tyrant of all.
"Some followed the paths of mechanical engineering, so that it became possible to replace many of the organs that had once been the cause of so much anguish and pain. Soon we had the heart, the liver, the kidney, hormone producers, and even the eyes," and as he said that he gently pointed to his right eye, "which you in error said had witnessed such distant times. But the engineers' victories were merely successful counterattacks; it was we, the bioengineers, the genetic scientists, who turned the tide of victory. We learned cells would only reproduce for so many generations before losing their vitality; we learned to halt that decline in individual cells; we learned, as well, to supply antibodies tailored to the needs of each individual, growing outside his body a reserve specially designed and ready for instant application. We also mastered the rebuilding of major organs by genetic manipu lation of individual cells.
"We learned these things, and the world hated us. For our wonders were expensive beyond all imagining. Only the wealthy, only those who had made their fortunes could afford our treatments. And as billions starved, hundreds who had everything learned to extend life, to stare death in the face and cheat him of his prey. So at last the hatred of the world turned against us, and we were banished to space.
"But we already knew that space was the only place we could go to if we truly wished to cheat the final adversary. For on Earth there was too much that killed. Gravity kills as inexorably as any disease. It taxes the body, it exacts payment from its victims. Here there would be no accidents to our bodies that we could not repair, here our environment could be controlled, everything softened, everything designed, everything…"
His words drifted off for a moment.
"We've cheated him," Joshua whispered, " we've cheated him. I can live yet another thousand years and if need be, I can be saved."
"Saved?"
"Yes, many choose that in the end. If something goes wrong that we cannot stop-forms of senility, damage to memory, certain rare cancers that we have yet to learn how to control-we simply save the person. He is placed in suspended animation- ahh, I think the word is hiber nation."
"You've mastered that?"
"Yes, in the year that we fled from Earth, before the war, our researchers found the answers and learned to synthesize the necessary hormones that would trigger that most ancient of protections."
"That is fantastic!" Ian replied. "Richard has to hear about this! It could revolutionize space travel. It could open up the entire universe!"
"Yes, I would have thought your people knew about this; we shared the knowledge with another colony as payment for their leaving us alone. This was just before we left Earth. I would have thought they would have spread the information."
"What colony was that?" Ian asked casually.
"I remember meeting with their leader, he was a stu dent of mine. Funny-he was a reasonable sort of man, but driven. I gave him a small supply of the hormone, and to my surprise, he honored his word and left us. I had thought there for a moment that we would have died after all."
"Who was he?"
"His name was Smith."
Ian wanted to push for more on that, but his thoughts were becoming disoriented, as if he had suddenly been turned round and round. So what if Franklin Smith had been here? More than a millennium had passed, and with it a journey across trillions of miles. But he still felt the haunting image of the poet, floating-his words, a portent of warning.
"Would you like to see the rest?" Joshua whispered.
"What?" He was suddenly pulled back from his thoughts.
"The rest, my old friends, my fellow travelers."
"How many are like you?" Ian asked. "How many were born before the Holocaust?"