The Fountain of Age

  I need Daria, I don’t say aloud. “So tell me about Sequene. Its history and layout and so forth.” I’ve already memorized the building blueprints. Now I need current maps.

  “Certainly!” the screen says, brightening like a girl drinking in boyish attention. “The name ‘Sequene’ derives from a fascinating European and American legend. In 1513—nearly six hundred years ago, imagine that!—an explorer from Spain, one Ponce de León, traveled to what is now part of the United States. To Florida.”

  Views of white sand beaches, nothing like the sodden, overgrown, bio-infested swamp that is Florida now.

  “Of course, back then Florida was habitable, and so were various islands in the Caribbean Sea! They were inhabited by a tribe called the Arawak.”

  Images of Indians, looking noble.

  “These people told the Spanish that one of their great chiefs, Sequene, had heard about a Fountain of Youth in a land to the north, called ‘Biminy.’ Sequene took a group of warriors, sailed for Biminy, and found the Fountain of Youth. Supposedly he and his tribesmen lived there happily forever.

  “Of course, no one can actually live forever—”

  Daria?

  “—but here on Sequene we can guarantee you—yes, guarantee you!—twenty more years without aging a day older than you are now! Truly a miraculous ‘fountain.’ As you undergo this proven scientific procedure—”

  Pictures of deliriously happy people, drunk on science.

  “—we on Sequene want you to be as comfortable, amused, and satisfied as possible. To this end, Sequene contains luxurious accommodations, five-star dining room—”

  I said, “Map?”

  “Certainly!”

  For the next half-hour I study maps of Sequene. I can’t request too much, I have to look like just one more chump willing to gamble that twenty years of non-aging life is better than whatever I would have gotten otherwise. It’s clear the hotel, the hospital, the casino and mini-golf course and other foolishness don’t take up more than one-third of the orbital’s usable space. Even allowing for storage and maintenance, there’s still a hell of a lot going on up here that’s officially unaccounted for. Including, somewhere, Daria.

  But it’s not going to be easy to find her.

  I have dinner in my room, sleep with the help of yet another patch, and wake just as discouraged as last night. I can’t communicate with Stevan, not without equipment they didn’t let me bring upstairs. I can’t do anything that will get me kicked out. All I have is my money—never negligible, granted—and my wits. This morning neither seems enough.

  All I really have is an old man’s stupid dream.

  Eventually I slump into the dining room for breakfast. A waiter—human—rushes over to me. I barely glance at him. Across the room is Agent Joseph Alcozer. And sitting at a table by herself, drinking orange juice or something that’s supposed to be orange juice, is Rosie Adams.

  A year and a half after Peter Cleary died, D-treatments resumed. And there were plenty of takers.

  Does this make sense? Freeze yourself at one age for twenty years and then zap! you’re dead. All right, so maybe it made sense for the old who didn’t want more deterioration, the dying who weren’t in too much pain. Although you couldn’t be too far gone or you wouldn’t have strength enough to stand the surgery that would save you. But younger people took D-treatments, too. Men and women who wanted to stay beautiful and didn’t mind paying for that with their lives. Even some very young athletes who, I guess, couldn’t imagine life without slamming at a ball. Dancers. Holo stars. Crazy.

  LifeLong, Inc. reorganized financially, renamed itself Sequene, and moved out of London to a Greek island. The King of England died of his D-treatment, a famous actress died of hers, the sultan of Bahrain died. It made no difference. People kept coming to Sequene.

  Other people kept attacking Sequene. By that time, force fences had replaced or reinforced domes; there should have been no attacks on the island. But this is a mathematical Law of the Universe: As fast as new defenses multiply, counterweapons will multiply faster. Nothing is ever safe enough.

  So the Greek Island was blown up by devices that burrowed under the sea and into subterranean rock. Again Daria survived. Nine months later Sequene reopened on another island. Customers came.

  That was the same year Geoffrey and I finally reconciled. Sort of.

  For three years we’d lived in the same house, separate. I admit it—I was a terrible father. What kind of man ignores his sixteen-year-old son? His seventeen-, eighteen-, nineteen-year-old son? But this was mostly Geoff’s choice. He wouldn’t talk to me, wouldn’t answer me, and what could I do? Shoot him? He went to school, had his meals in his room, studied hard. The school sent me his reports, all good. My office, the legitimate Feder Group, paid his bills. For a kid with a large amount of credit behind him, he didn’t spend much. When he left high school and started college, I signed the papers. That was all. No discussion. Yes, I tried once or twice, but not very hard. I was busy.

  My business had gotten bigger, more complicated, riskier. One thing led me to another, and then another. Stevan Adams and I made a good team. But I took all the risks, since the Rom would rather lose deals than end up in jail. Maybe I took too many risks—at least Moshe said so. He never liked Stevan. “Dirty gypsy keeps his hands clean,” he said. Not a master of clear language, my Moshe. But the profits increased, and that he didn’t complain about.

  Federal surveillance increased as well.

  Then one October night when the air smelled of apples, a rare night I was home early and watching some stupid holo about Luna City, Geoffrey came into the room. “Max?”

  He was calling me “Max” now? I didn’t protest—at least he was talking. “Geoff! Come in, sit down, you want a beer?”

  “No. I don’t drink. I want to tell you something, because you have a right to know.”

  “So tell me.” My heart suddenly trembled. What has he done? He stood there leaning forward a little on the balls of his feet, like a fighter, which he is not. Thin, not tall, light brown hair falling over his eyes. Miriam’s eyes, I saw with a sudden pain I never expected. Geoff didn’t dress in the strange things that kids do. He looked, standing there, like an underage actor trying to play a New England accountant.

  “I want to tell you that I’m getting married.”

  “Married?” He was nineteen, just starting his second year of college! This would be expensive, some little tart to be paid off, how did he even meet her . . .

  “I’m marrying Gwendolyn Jameson. Next week.”

  I was speechless. Gwendolyn—the accountant Moshe had made me hire, the “brilliant” weird one that had first noticed Stevan’s penetration of the Feder Group. Her cult dress and hat were gone, but she was still a mousy, skinny nothing, the kind of person you forget is even in the room. How did—

  “I’m not asking your blessing or anything like that,” Geoff said. “But if you want to come to the ceremony, you’re welcome.”

  “When . . . where . . .”

  “Tuesday evening at seven o’clock at Gwendolyn’s mother’s house on—”

  “I mean, where did you meet her? When?”

  He actually blushed. “At your office, of course. I went up with the papers for my college tuition. She was there, and I took one look at her and I knew.”

  He knew. One look. All at once I was back in a taverna on Cyprus, twenty again myself, and I take one look at Daria standing by the bar and that’s it for me. But Gwendolyn? And this had been going on a whole year, over a year. A wedding next week.

  Somehow I said, “I wouldn’t miss it, Geoff.” It was the only decent thing I’d ever done for my son.

  “That’s great,” he said, suddenly looking much younger. “We thought that on the—”

  A huge noise from the front of the house. Security alarms, the robo-butler, doors yanked open, shouting. The feds burst in with weapons drawn and warrants on handhelds. Even as I put my hands on top of my head, even as
the house system automatically linked to my lawyer, I knew I wasn’t going to make Geoff’s wedding.

  And I didn’t. Held without bail: a flight risk. A plea bargain got me six-to-ten, which ended up as five after time off for good behavior. It wasn’t too bad. My lawyers did what lawyers do and I got the new prison, Themis International Cooperative Justice Center, a floating island in the middle of Lake Ontario. American and Canadian prisoners and absolutely no chance of unassisted escape unless you could swim forty-two kilometers.

  But islands aren’t necessarily impregnable. While I was in prison, Sequene was attacked again. Its Greek island was force-fielded top, bottom, and sides, but you have to have air. The terrorists—the Sons of Godly Righteousness, this time—sent in bio-engineered pathogens on the west wind. Twenty-six people died. Daria wasn’t one of them.

  Sequene moved upstairs to one of the new orbitals. No wind. Two years later, they were back in business.

  My third year in prison, Gwendolyn died. She was one of the victims, the many victims, of the Mesopotamian bio-virus. I couldn’t comfort Geoff, and who says I would have even tried, or that he would have accepted comfort? An alien, my son. But there must have been something of me in him, because he didn’t marry again for twenty-five years. Gwendolyn, that skinny bizarre prig, had imprinted herself on his Feder heart.

  When the government got me, they got Moshe, too. Moshe fought and screamed and hollered, but what good did it do him? He also got six-to-ten. Me, I don’t bear a grudge. I do my work and the feds do theirs, the schmucks.

  They couldn’t get close to Stevan. Never even got his name—any of his names. If they had, Stevan would have been gone anyway: different identity, different face. For all I know, different DNA. More likely, Stevan’s DNA was never on file in the first place. The Rom give birth at home, don’t register birth or death certificates, don’t claim their children on whatever fraudulent taxes they might file, don’t send them to school. Romani don’t go on the dole, don’t turn up on any records they can possibly avoid, move often and by night. As much as humanly possible in this century, they don’t actually exist. And Rom women are even more invisible than the men.

  Which was probably part of the reason that, forty years later, Rosie Adams could be sitting in the dining room of Sequene orbital, pretending she didn’t know me, while I totter to a table and wonder what the hell she’s doing here.

  Alcozer ambles over, no sweat or haste, where can I go? Uninvited, he sits at my table. “Good morning, Max.”

  “Shalom, Agent Alcozer.” For the feds I always lay it on especially thick.

  “We were surprised to see you here.”

  The royal “we.” Everybody in the fucking federal government thinks they’re czars. I say, “Why is that? An old man, I shouldn’t want to live longer?”

  “It was our impression that you thought you were barely living at all.”

  How closely did they observe me in the Silver Star Home? I was there ten years, watching holos, playing cards, practically next door to drooling in a wheelchair. The government can spare money for all that surveillance?

  “Have some orange juice,” I say, pushing my untouched glass at him. Too bad it isn’t cut with cyanide. Alcozer is the last thing I need. Over his shoulder I glance at Rosie, who frowns at the tablecloth, scratching at it with the nails of both hands.

  She doesn’t look good. At the kumpania less than a week ago, she looked old but still vital, despite the gray hair and wrinkles. Then her cheeks were rosy, her lips red with paint, her eyes bright under the colorful headscarf. Now she sits slumped, scratching away—and what is that all about?—as pale and pasty as a very large maggot. No headscarf, no jewelry. Her gray hair has been cut and waved into some horrible old-lady shape, and she wears loose pants and tunic in dull brown. From women’s fashions I don’t know, but these clothes look expensive and boring.

  Alcozer leans in very close to me and says, “Max, I’m going to be honest with you.”

  That’ll be the day.

  “We know you’ve been off the streets for ten years, and we know your son has taken the Feder Group legitimate. We have no reason to touch him, so your mind can be easy about that. But somebody’s still running at least a few of your old operations, and we don’t know who.”

  Not Moshe. He died a week after his release from prison. Heart attack.

  “Also, there are still old investigations on you that we could re-open. I don’t want to do that, of course, but I could. I know and you know that the leads are pretty cold, and on most the statute of limitations is close to running out. But there could be . . . repercussions. Up here, I mean.” He leans back away from me and looks solemn.

  I say politely, “I’m sorry but I’m not following.”

  He says, “Durbin-Nacarro,” and then I don’t need him to chart me a flight path.

  The Durbin-Nacarro Act severely limits the elective surgery available to convicted felons. This is supposed to deter criminals and terrorists from changing their looks, finger prints, retinal patterns, voice scans, and anything else that “hinders identification.” Did they think that someone who, say, blows up a spaceport in San Francisco or Dubai would then go to a registered hospital in any signatory country to request a new face? Ah, lawmakers.

  Sequene is, of course, registered in a Durbin-Nacarro country, but nobody has ever applied D-treatment to Durbin-Nacarro. The treatment doesn’t change anything that could be criminally misleading. In fact, the feds like it because it updates all their biological records on everybody who passes through Sequene. Plenty of criminals have had D-treatment: Carmine Lucente, Raul Lopez-Reyes, Surya Hasimo. But if Alcozer really wants to, he can find some federal judge somewhere to issue a dogshit injunction and stop my D-treatment.

  Of course, I have no intention of actually getting a D-treatment, but he doesn’t know that. I put on panic.

  “Agent . . . I’m an old man . . . and without this . . .”

  “Just think about it, Max. We’ll talk again.” He puts his hand on mine—such a fucking putz—and squeezes it briefly. I look pathetic. Alcozer walks jauntily out.

  Rosie is still scratching at the tablecloth. Now she starts to tear her bread into little pieces and fling them around. A young woman in the light blue Sequene uniform rushes over to Rosie’s table and says in a strong British accent, “Is everything all right then, Mrs. Kowalski?”

  Rosie looks up dimly and says nothing.

  “I’ll just help you to your room, dear.” Gently the attendant guides her out. I catch her eye and look meaningfully upset, and in five minutes the girl is back at my table. “Are you all right then, Mr. Feder?”

  Now I’m querulous and demanding, a very rich temperamental geezer. “No, I’m not all right, I’m upset. For what I pay here, that’s not the sight I expect with my breakfast.”

  “Of course not. It won’t happen again.”

  “What’s her problem?”

  The girl hesitates, then decides that my tip will justify a minor invasion of Rosie’s privacy.

  “Mrs. Kowalski has a bit of mental decay. Naturally she wants to get it sorted out before it can progress anymore, so she came to us. Now, would you like anything more to eat?”

  “No, I’m done. I’ll just maybe take a little walk before my first doctor’s appointment.”

  She beams as if I’ve just declared that I’ll just maybe bring peace to northern China. I nod and start a deliberately slow progress around Sequene. This yields me nothing, which I should have known. I can’t get into restricted areas because I couldn’t carry even the simplest jammer through shuttle security, and even if I could, it would only call attention to myself, and that I don’t need. There are jammers and weapons here somewhere, and from my study of the blueprints I can make a good guess where. I can even guess where Daria might be. But I can’t get at them, or her, and it comes to me that the only way I am going to see Daria is to ask for her.

  Which I’m afraid to do. When your entire life has narrowed
to one insane desire, you live with fear: you breathe it, eat it, lie down with it, feel it slide along your skin like a woman’s lost caress.

  I was terrified that Daria would say no. And then I would have nothing left to desire. When that happens, you’re already dead.

  In the afternoon the doctors take blood, they take tissue, they put me in machines, they take me out again. Everyone is exquisitely polite. I talk to someone I suspect is a psychiatrist, although I’m told he’s not. I sign a lot of papers. Everything is recorded.

  Agent Alcozer waits for me outside my suite. “Max. Can I come in?”

  “Why not?”

  In my sitting room he ostentatiously takes a small green box from his pocket, presses a series of buttons, and sets the thing on the floor. A jammer. We are now encased in a Faraday cage: no electromagnetic wavelengths in and none out. An invisible privacy cloak.

  Of course—Alcozer has jammers, has weapons, has anything I might need to get to Daria. Agent Alcozer.

  Angel Alcozer.

  He says, “Have you thought about my offer?”

  “I don’t remember an offer. An offer has numbers attached, like flies on fly paper. Flies I don’t remember, Joe.” I have never used his first name before. He’s too good to look startled.

  “Here are some flies, Max. You name three important things about the San Cristobel fraud of ’89. The hacker’s name, the Swiss account number, and the organization you worked with. Then we let you stay up here on Sequene without interference. Sound good?”

  “San Cristobel, San Cristobel,” I mutter. “Do I remember from San Cristobel?”

  “I think you do.”

  “Maybe I do.”

  His eyes sharpen. They are no color at all, nondescript. Government-issue eyes. But eager.

  “But I need something else, too,” I say.