frowned thoughtfully. “Is it against nature? Maybe. The way curing
cancer is against nature. Emerson, remember, told us that old age is
‘the only disease.””
His eyes gleamed. Ben listened in stunned silence.
In college, Ben had always addressed him as Professor Godwin, but now he
chose not to address him by name at all. He said simply, “Why?”
“Why? On a personal level? Do you have to ask? I’ve been given
another lifetime. Perhaps even another two lifetimes.”
“Will you gentlemen excuse me?” Lenz interrupted. “The first
helicopter is about to leave, and I must say good-bye.” He bustled,
almost sprinted, out of the room.
“Ben, when you get to be my age, you don’t buy green bananas,” Godwin
resumed. “You don’t take on book projects you don’t think you’ll live
to complete. But think of how much I can do now. Until Dr. Lenz
called, I’d felt as if I’d struggled and worked and learned for decades
to get where I am, to learn what I know, to gain the understanding I
have–yet at any moment everything might be snatched away: “If youth but
knew, if old age but could,” right?”
“Even if all this is true–”
“You have eyes. You can see what’s in front of you. Look at me, for
God’s sake! I used not to be able to climb the stairs at Firestone
Library, and now I can run.” Godwin, Ben realized, was not just a
successful experiment, he was one of them—a conspirator with Lenz.
Didn’t he know about the cruelty, the murders?
“But have you seen what’s going on here–the child refugees on the lawn?
Thousands of abducted children? That doesn’t bother you?”
Godwin looked visibly uncomfortable. “I’ll admit there are aspects of
all this that I prefer not to know about, and I’ve always made that
clear.”
“We’re talking about the ongoing murder of thousands of children!” Ben
said. “The treatment requires it. Lenz calls it ‘harvesting,” a pretty
word for systematic slaughter.”
“It’s…” Godwin faltered. “Well, it’s morally complex. “Honesta
turpitudo est pro causa bona.” ”
” “For a good cause, wrongdoing is virtuous,” ” Ben translated. “Pub
lilius Syrus. You taught me that.”
Godwin, too. He’d gone over; he’d joined Lenz. “What’s important is
that the cause has genuine merit.” He ambled over to a leather sofa.
Ben sat facing him on the adjacent sofa.
“And were you involved in Sigma’s cause in the old days as well?”
“Yes, for decades. And I feel so privileged to be around for this whole
new phase. Under Lenz’s leadership, things are going to be very
different.”
“I gather not all your colleagues agreed.”
“Oh yes. The angeli re belli Lenz calls them. Rebel angels. There
were a handful of people who wanted to put up a fight. Out of vanity or
shortsightedness. Either they never trusted Lenz, or they felt demoted
by the fact that new leadership had emerged. I guess a few of them had
qualms about the… sacrifices that had to be made. Any time there’s a
shift in power, you’ve got to expect some forms of resistance. But a
few years ago, when Lenz allowed that his project would soon be ready
for actual trials, he made it clear the collective would have to
recognize his leadership. He didn’t do it out of any sense of
self-interest, either. It’s just that some difficult decisions would
have to be made about who was going to be well, admitted into the
program. Inducted into the permanent elite. The risk of factionalism
was too great. Lenz was the leader we needed. Most of us recognized
that. A few didn’t.”
“Tell me, does your plan ultimately call for making this treatment
available to everyone, to the masses? Or just what he calls ‘the great
ones’?”
“Well, you raise a serious point. I was flattered that Jurgen selected
me to be a kind of recruiter, as it were, for this august group of
world… luminaries, I suppose. The Wiedergeborenen, as Dr. Lenz calls
us the Reborn. We’re reaching out far beyond the Sigma rump group. I
brought Walter in, you know, and my old friend Miriam Bateman Justice
Miriam Bateman. I’ve been charged with helping choose those who seem
deserving of it. From around the world China, Russia, Europe, Africa
everywhere, without prejudice. Except for a prejudice in favor of
greatness.”
“But Arnold Carr’s not much older than I am …”
“In fact, he’s really at the perfect age to begin these treatments. He
can stay forty-two for the rest of his very, very long life, if he
chooses. Or become the biological equivalent of thirty-two again.” The
historian widened his eyes in wonderment. “There are forty of us by
now.”
“I understand,” Ben interrupted, “but ”
“Listen to me, Ben! Good Lord, the other Supreme Court Justice we’ve
chosen, a great jurist who’s also black, he’s a sharecropper’s son who’s
lived through segregation and desegregation both. The wisdom he’s
accumulated in his lifetime! Who could ever replace him? A painter
whose work is already transforming the art world how many more
spectacular canvases might be in him? Imagine, Ben, if history’s
greatest composers and writers and artists take Shakespeare, take
Mozart, take ”
Ben leaned forward. “This is insanity!” he thundered, “The rich and
powerful get to live twice as long as the poor and powerless! It’s a
god damned conspiracy of the elite!”
“And what if it is?” Godwin shot back. “Plato wrote of the philosopher
king of the rule of the wise. He understood that our civilization
advances and retreats, advances and retreats. We learn lessons only to
forget them. History’s tragedies repeat themselves the Holocaust, and
then the genocides that followed, as if we’d all forgotten. World wars.
Dictatorships. False messiahs. Oppression of minorities. We don’t
seem to evolve. But now, for the first time, we can change all that. We
can transform the human species!”
“How? Your numbers are tiny.” Ben folded his arms on his chest.
“That’s another problem with elites.”
Godwin stared at Ben for a moment, then chuckled. ” “We few, we happy
few, we band of brothers’ yes, it all sounds hopelessly inadequate to
the grand tasks, right? But humanity doesn’t progress through some
process of collective enlightenment. We progress because an individual
or small team somewhere makes a breakthrough, and everyone else
benefits. Three centuries ago, in a region with a very high rate of
illiteracy, one man discovers calculus, or two men do and the course of
our species is changed forever. A century ago, one man discovers
relativity, and nothing is ever the same. Tell me, Ben, do you know
exactly how an internal combustion engine works could you assemble one
even if I gave you the parts? Do you know how to vulcanize rubber? Of
course not, but you benefit from the existence of the automobile all the
same. That’s how it works. In the primitive world I know we’re not
supposed to use those words anymore but indulge me there’s no great
chasm between what one tribesman knows and another. Not so in the
Western world. The division of labor is the very mark of civilization:
the higher the degree of division of labor, the more advanced the
society. And the most important division of labor is the intellectual
division of labor. A minuscule number of people worked on the Manhattan
Project and yet the planet was changed by it forever. In the past
decade, you had a few small teams decoding the human genome. Never mind
that most of humanity can’t remember the difference between Nyquil and
niacin they’ll benefit all the same. People everywhere are using
personal computers people who couldn’t understand a scrap of computer
code, don’t know the first thing about integrated circuitry. The mastery
belongs to the happy few, and yet the multitudes benefit. The way our
species advances isn’t through vast, collective exertions the Jews
building the Pyramids. It’s through individuals, through very small
elites, who discover fire, the wheel, or the central processing unit,
and thereby change the very landscape of our lives. And what’s true in
science and technology can be true of politics, as well. Except the
learning curve here takes place over a far longer period of time. Which
means that by the time we’ve learned from our errors, we’ve been
replaced by younger upstarts who make those errors all over again. We
don’t learn enough, because we’re not around long enough. The people
who founded Sigma recognized this as an inherent limitation, one that
our species would eventually have to overcome if we were to survive. Are
you starting to see, Ben?”
“Keep going,” Ben said, like a hesitant student.
“The efforts of Sigma our attempt to moderate the politics of the
postwar era were only the beginning. Now we can change the face of the
planet! Ensure universal peace, prosperity, and security, through the
wise management and marketing of the planet’s resources. If that’s what
you call a conspiracy of the elite well, is it really such a bad thing?