“What is it?” Nicole asked, sitting up in bed.
“It’s embarrassing,” Richard said. “That’s why I haven’t mentioned it earlier. … It started right after Bounty Day. I thought it would go away, but this last week the pain has become unbearable.”
“Come on, Richard,” Nicole said, a little irritated at having her sleep disturbed, “get to the point. What pain are you talking about?”
“Every time I urinate, I have this burning sensation. . . .”
Nicole tried to stifle a yawn while she was thinking. “And have you been urinating more frequently?” she asked.
“Yes . . . how did you know?”
“Achilles should have been held by his prostate when he was dipped in the River Styx,” she said. “It is certainly the weakest structure in the male anatomy. Roll over on your stomach and let me examine you.”
“Now?” said Richard.
“If you can wake me from a deep sleep because of your pain,” Nicole said with a laugh, “then the least you can do is grit your teeth while I try to verify my instant diagnosis.”
Dr. Blue and Nicole were sitting together in the octospi-der’s house. On one of the wails four quadroid frames were projected. ‘The image on the far left,” Dr. Blue said, “shows the growth as it looked that first morning, ten days ago, when you asked me to confirm your diagnosis. The second frame is a much magnified picture of a pair of cells taken from the tumor. The cell abnormalities—what you call cancer—are marked with the blue stain.”
Nicole smiled wanly. “I’m having a little difficulty reorienting my thinking,” she said. “You never use the colors for ‘disease’ when you describe Richard’s problem—
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only the word which in your language I define as ‘abnormality.'”
‘To us,” Dr. Blue responded, “a disease is a malfunction caused by an outside agent, such as a bacterium or a hostile virus. An irregularity in the cell chemistry leading to the manufacture of improper cells is a completely different kind of problem. In our medicine the treatment regimens are completely different for the two cases. This cancer in your husband is more closely related to aging, generically, than it is to a disease like your pneumonia or gastroenteritis.”
Dr. Blue extended a tentacle toward the third picture. “This image,” she said, “shows the tumor three days ago, after the special chemicals carried by our microbiological agents had been carefully dispersed at the site of the abnormality. The growth has already begun to shrink because the production of the malignant cells has stopped. In the final image, taken this morning, Richard’s prostate again looks normal. By this time all the original cancer cells have died, and no new ones have been produced.”
“So will he be all right now?” Nicole asked.
“Probably,” Dr. Blue answered. “We can’t be absolutely certain because we still do not have as much data as we would like on the life cycle of your cells. There are a few unique characteristics about your cells—as there always are in species who have undergone an evolution distinct from any of our previously examined beings—that might permit a recurrence of the abnormality. However, based on our experience with many other living creatures, I would have to say that the development of another prostate tumor is unlikely.”
Nicole thanked her octospider colleague. “This has been incredible,” she said. “How wonderful it would be if your medical knowledge could somehow be transported back to Earth.”
The images vanished from the wall. ‘There would be many social problems created as well,” Dr. Blue said, “assuming that I have properly understood our discussions of your home planet. If individual members of your species did not die from diseases or cell abnormalities, life expec-
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tancy would increase markedly. Our species went through a similar upheaval after our Golden Age of Biology, when octospider life spans doubled in just a few generations. It wasn’t until optimization became firmly implanted as our governing structure that any kind of societal equilibrium was reached. We have plenty of evidence that without sound termination and replenishment policies, a colony of nearly immortal beings undergoes chaos in a relatively short period of time.”
Nicole’s interest was piqued. “I can appreciate what you’re saying, at least intellectually,” she said. “If everyone lives forever, or nearly so, and the resources are finite, the population will soon overwhelm the available food and living space. But I must admit, especially as an old person, that even the idea of a ‘termination policy’ frightens me.”
“In our early history,” Dr. Blue said, “our society was structured much like yours, with almost all of the decision-making power resting with the older members of the species. It was easier to restrict replenishment, therefore, after life expectancy dramatically increased, than it was to deal with the difficult issue of planned terminations. After a comparatively brief period of time, however, die aging society began to stagnate. As Archie or any good optimizer would explain, the ‘ossification’ coefficient of our colonies became so large that eventually all new ideas were rejected. These geriatric colonies collapsed, basically because they were not able to deal with the changing conditions of the universe around them.”
“So that’s where optimization comes in?”
“Yes,” said Dr. Blue. “If every individual embraces the precept that the welfare of the overall colony should be awarded the highest weight in the master objective function, then it quickly becomes clear that planned terminations are a critical element of the optimal solution. Archie would be able to show you quantitatively how disastrous it is, from the point of view of the colony as a whole, to spend huge amounts of collective resource on those citizens whose integrated remaining contribution is comparatively low. The colony benefits most by investing in those members who
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have a long, healthy lifetime still available and therefore a high probability of repaying the investment.”
Nicole repeated back to Dr. Blue some of the octospi-der’s key sentences, just to make certain that she had understood properly. Then she was silent for two or three nillets. “I suppose,” Nicole said eventually, “that even though your aging is delayed both by postponing sexual maturity and by your amazing medical capability, at some point preserving the life of an old octospider becomes prohibitively expensive, by some measure.”
“Exactly,” Dr. Blue replied. “We can extend the life of an individual almost forever. However, there are three major factors that make extra life extension decidedly nonoptimal for the colony. First, as you mentioned, the cost of the effort to extend life increases dramatically as each biological subsystem, or organ, begins to operate at less than peak efficiency. Second, as an individual octospider’s time becomes more and more consumed with the process of simply staying alive, the amount of energy that he or she might have to contribute to the colony’s welfare lessens considerably. Third, and the sociological optimizers proved this controversial point many years ago—although for some number of years after mental quickness and learning ability start to drop, accumulated wisdom more than compensates—in terms of value to the colony, for the diminished brainpower, there comes a time in the life of every octospider when the sheer weight of his or her past experience makes any additional learning extremely difficult. Even in a healthy octospider this phase of life, called the Onset of Limited Flexibility by our optimizers, signals a reduced ability to contribute to the colony.”
“So the optimizers determine when it is termination time?”
“Yes,” said Dr. Blue, “but I don’t know exactly how they do it. There is a probationary period first, during which time the individual octospider is entered on the termination list and given time to improve his or her net balance* This balance, if I have understood Archie’s explanation, is calculated for each octospider by comparing its contribu-
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tions made with the resources necessary to sustain that particular individual. If the balance does not improve, then termination is scheduled.”
“And how do those selected for termination react?” Nicole asked, involuntarily shuddering as she remembered facing her own execution.
“In different ways,” Dr. Blue replied. “Some, especially those who have been unhealthy, accept that they are not going to be able to redress the unsatisfactory balance and plan for their deaths in an organized fashion. Others ask for optimizer counseling and request new assignments that have a higher probability of allowing them to meet their contribution quotas. . . . That’s what Hercules did just before your arrival.”
Nicole was momentarily speechless. A chill ran down her back. “Are you going to tell me what happened to Hercules?” she said, finally summoning her courage.
“He was severely reprimanded for not providing proper protection for Nikki on Bounty Day,” Dr. Blue said. “Hercules was then reassigned and informed by the Termination Optimizer that there was virtually no way he could recover from the high negative assessment of his recent work. Hercules requested early and immediate termination.”