“Yes. And not for myself, or ourselves. I am afraid for the world.”
Wanderer nodded. Svoboda smiled at him, warmly though without mirth. “You don’t quite understand,” she said in his direction. “You think of nature destroyed, the environment. But I think of humankind. I have seen revolutions, wars, breakdowns, ruin, for a thousand years. We Russians have learned to fear anarchy above all else. We would rather have tyranny than it. Hanno, you do wrong to look on people’s republics, strong governments of every kind, as always evil. Freedom is perhaps better, but chaos is worse. If we let go our secret today, we let loose unforeseeable forces. Religion, politics, economics—yes, how shall a world of immortals order its economy?—a million contending dreams and dreads, for which men will war around the world. Can civilization itself endure that? Can the planet?”
“Muhammad came out of nowhere,” Aliyat whispered.
“And many another prophet, revolutionary, conqueror,” Svoboda said. “The intentions can be noble. But who foresaw that the idea of democracy hi France would bring the Reign of Terror, Napoleon, and a generation of war? Who foresaw that after Marx and Lenin would come Stalin and, yes, Hitler? The world volcano already smokes and shivers. Put this new thing in it that nobody ever thought of before, and I would hope for a tyranny that can prevent the final explosion; but I wonder if any such rule will be possible.”
“It won’t be for lack of trying,” Hanno said. He had turned entirely grim. “At the bare least, every corrupt politician and fat cat in the West, every totalitarian dictatorship abroad, every dirty little warlord who battens on backwardness, all will jump to screw down then- power forever. Yes, death robs us of our loves and finally of ourselves. But death is also good riddance to bad rubbish. Do we dare change that? My friends, being ageless does not make us gods, and most certainly does not make us God.”
16
NEARLY FULL, the moon frosted earth with light and dappled it with shadow. Air had gone still, but hour by hour a breath of autumn flowed down from the mountains. Somewhere an owl hooted, hunting. Windows glowed yellow in houses strewn across miles. They seemed almost as remote as the stars.
Hanno and Svoboda had driven from town, out onto the range, to walk alone. The wish was hers. “Tomorrow evening what was ours begins coming to an end,” she had said. “Can we steal a last few hours of peace? This country is very like the homeland I once had, wide and lonely.”
Their footfalls crunched on a dirt road. He broke a lengthy silence. “You spoke of peace,” he said. Voices were, small in the vastness. “We’ll have it again, dear. Yes, we’ve got a frantic time to go through first, and it’ll hurt, but afterward— I believe the whole seven of us will be glad of the place we’re going to.”
“I am sure it is lovely,” she replied, “and we will be safely away from the world for as long as we need to be.”
“Not forever, remember. In fact, that wouldn’t work. We’re only gaining another mortal lifetime, the same as so often before. Then we’ll have to start fresh under new masks.”
“I know. Until someday, perhaps soon, the scientists find immortality by themselves, and we may as well come forth.”
“Someday,” he said, more skeptically than enthusiastically.
“That is not what I think about, though,” Svoboda went on. “Now we must think about us. We seven. It will not be easy. We are so different. And … three men, four women.”
“We’ll work out our arrangements.”
“For the rest of time? Nothing to change, ever?”
“Well—“ She could hear the reluctance. “Of course none of us can bind the rest. We’ll each be free to leave, whenever we like. I do hope we’ll stay in touch and ready to give help. Isn’t freedom the whole of what we’re trying to keep?”
“No, I do not feel that is enough,” she told him gravely. “There must be more. I do not know what it is, not yet. But we must have something beyond survival to live for, or we shall not survive. The future will be too strange.”