“There may be something to that.” Giannotti shook his head. “But it can’t be the whole story. It doesn’t account for humans outliving mice by an order of magnitude, for instance. Or species that live indefinitely, like bristlecone pines.” Weariness dragged at his smile. “No, most likely life has adapted itself to the fact, made the best it could of the fact, that sooner or later, one way or another, entropy will ring down the curtain on its wonderful chemical juggling act. Whether your kind represents the next step in evolution, a set of mutations that created a fail-safe system, I can’t say.”
“But you don’t think so, do you?” Hanno asked. “We don’t breed true.”
“No, you don’t,” Giannotti said with a barely perceptible wince. “However, that may come. Evolution is cut-and-try. If I may anthropomorphize,” he added. “Often it’s hard not to.”
Hanno clicked his tongue. “You know, when you say things like that, I have trouble believing you’re a believing Catholic.”
“Separate spheres,” Giannotti answered. “Ask any competent theologian. And I wish you would, for your own sake, you poor lonely atheist.” Quickly: “The point is, the material world and the spirit world are not identical.”
“And we’ll, outlive the galaxies, you and I and everybody,” he had said once toward dawn, when the bottle was low. “You may spend ten thousand years, or a million or a billion, in the flesh, but it will hardly mean more, then, than the three days that a premature baby had. Maybe less; the baby died innocent… But this is a fascinating problem, and it does have unlimited potentialities for the whole world, if we can solve it. Your existence cannot be a mere stochastic accident.”
Hanno didn’t argue, though lie preferred their everyday banter, or straightforward talk about the work. He had found after years- of acquaintance that here was one of the rare people whom he could trust with his secret; and in this case it might, just possibly, bring an end to the need for secrecy. If Sam Giannotti could endure knowing of lives that went on for millennia, and keep silent about them even with his wife, because of a faith whose elements Hanno remembered as having been ancient in Hiram’s Tyre—so be it.
“But never mind,” the scientist went on. “What I wish more, right now and always, is the same as ever. That you’d release me from my promise and let me make known—or better, make known yourself—what you are.”
“Sorry,” Hanno said. “Must I repeat why not?”
“Cast off that suspiciousness, can’t you? I forget how many times I’ve told you, the Middle Ages are behind us. Nobody will burn you for a witch. Show the world the proofs you showed me.”
“I’ve learned to be leery of doing anything irrevocable.”
“Will I never make you understand? I’m shackled. I can’t so much as tell my staff the truth. We piddle around and— If you come out of the closet, Bob, discovering the immortality mechanism will become the human race’s top priority. Every resource will go to it. The knowledge that it is possible is half the battle, I swear. They might crack it inside of ten years. Meanwhile, can’t you see the dying down of war, arms races, terrorism, despotism, given such a prospect before everyone? How many needless deaths can you stand to have on your conscience?”
“And I’ve told you before, I doubt the outcome would be anything like that sweet,” Hanno snapped. “Three thousand years of experience, as close as makes no difference, say otherwise. An overnight revelation like that would upset too many applecarts.”
He had no cause to repeat how he controlled the veto. If and when necessary, he would dispose of the things he had used to convince Giannotti. John Wanderer, Tu Shan, and Asagao were accustomed to following his lead, he far and away their senior. Should one of them rebel and reveal, that person possessed no evidence of the kind that Hanno had assembled. After forty or fifty years of. observation, people might take the claim seriously; but why would an immortal spend so great a while in custody? Richelieu had been right, three and a half centuries ago. The risks were too large. If your body stayed youthful, you kept a young animal’s strong desire to live.