He leaned forward, elbows on table. “In short,” he finished, “if we want to stay concealed, we’ll have to do a total job of it. Abandon everything as fast as possible, permanently. Including this ranch. Tomek brought Shan and Asagao over and installed them here. Somebody will come around to ask some questions. He’ll probably hear gossip about those visitors you had, so soon after the suspicious events. Once he gets descriptions of them, that’s all she wrote.”
Aliyat’s voice trembled a little. She could walk by now, within limits, and color was back in her face, but it would be a few weeks yet before her full recovery, in body or spirit. “Then we can’t go. We have to give up. Or else … be poor again—homeless—no,”
Hanno smiled. “Have you forgotten what I’ve told you, or don’t you believe me?” he answered. “I’ve squirreled money and other reserves away, around a large part of the world, for close to a hundred years. I have places to live, excellent cover stories, all details taken care of. Yes, periodically checked and updated. We can disperse or we can go live together, as we individually choose, but we’ll be comfortable for at least the next fifty years, if this civilization lasts that long, and well prepared if it doesn’t. Meanwhile we can be laying the foundations of fresh careers.”
“Are you sure?”
“I know considerable about this myself,” Wanderer said.
“I am sure. If you’re afraid, Aliyat, why did you let us boost you out of that bed?”
Her eyes flickered. “I was dazed, didn’t know what to think, hardly could think. I had an idea of buying time.”
“That was my notion too,” Wanderer told the group. “I kept my mouth shut, like her, but today we must be honest.”
Despite their comradeship, Hanno was jolted. “Huh?” he exclaimed. “You mean we should turn ourselves in? Why?”
The response was grave: “If nothing else, I’ve heard Sam Giannotti on the subject. Once the world knows immortality is possible, they should be able to give it to everybody inside of—ten years? Twenty? Molecular biology’s already far along. Have we the right to sit on the knowledge? How many millions or billions would we condemn to unnecessary death?”
Hanno sensed the undertone and pounced. “You don’t sound too convinced.”
Wanderer grimaced like a man in pain. “I’m “not. I had to spell the issue out, but— Could Earth survive?” He waved at the living land around them. “How long before this would be under concrete, or polluted into an open sewer? Humans are already swamping in their own numbers. I wonder if it’s possible to escape the big dieback, or the extinction. We could hasten that day a lot.”
“They’d practice birth control, when they didn’t need children to carry on for them,” Macandal said.
“How many would?” Svoboda challenged. “Nor could the, the serum reach everybody at once. I foresee riots, revolutions, terror.”
“Must it be that bad?” Tu Shan asked. “People will know what to expect before it happens. They can prepare. I do not want to lose what we have here.”
“Nor forsake our children,” Asagao added.
“And what would become of the Unity?” Macandal put in. She turned to Aliyat. “You know what it means to you. Think of the whole membership, your brothers and sisters.”
The Syrian woman bit her lip before responding, “We’ve lost the Unity anyway, Corinne. If we came out in public, we couldn’t be the same to its people. We wouldn’t have time for them, either. And the whole world watching— No, the only way for the Unity to keep going, anything like what it was, is for us to disappear. If it’s as strong as we hope, it’ll find new leadership. If not, well, then it wasn’t that great after all.”
“So you want to hide, now you know you’ll be safe?”
“I didn’t say that. Uh, I don’t expect we’d have much in the way of legal problems. Even Hanno can probably pay fines, and make twice as much off lectures and a book and movie rights and endorsements and … everything the biggest celebrities the world’ll ever see, short of the Second Coming, everything we’ll be offered.”