Inherit the Earth - Brian Stableford [29]
Assuming that it requires even more technical expertise and even more hospital time, it’s likely to be available only to the very rich, at least in the first instance, even if all the research data is in the public domain. If so, the megacorps will still have effective control over its application. Isn’t that so?”
“In the first instance is the vital phrase, Mr. Hart,” she informed him, still carefully maintaining the stiffness of her manner. “The early recipients of such a treatment would be those who could most easily afford it, but it would eventually filter through the entire population. The rich are always first in every queue—but that only means that the poor have to be patient, and in the New Utopia even the poor have time enough. Provided that your hypothetical technology of authentic rejuvenation were to take the form of a treatment that a person need only undergo once—or even if it needed to be repeated at long intervals—there’d be plenty of time to work through the queue. No one has any interest in delaying our work, Mr. Hart—and that includes the lonely and resentful individuals who have nothing better to do with their time than denounce the follies and failures of their fellow men and urge maniacs to attempt murder.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Damon said, although he wasn’t sure that the matter was as simple as she made it out to be. “As I said, I’ve read your constitution. It’s a fine and noble commitment, even if it was written by a man who made his fortune by turning a minor storm in the troubled waters of the world’s financial markets into a full-scale hurricane. But lonely and resentful individuals often nurse paranoid fantasies. Operator one-oh-one might have got it into his head that you’ve already developed a method of authentic rejuvenation, but that you’re keeping it very quiet. Perhaps he thinks that you’re the real Eliminators, standing by while the people you consider to be undesirables peacefully pass away, and saving your immortality serum for the deserving few.”
“That’s absolutely untrue,” said Rachel Trehaine, her bright blue eyes as fathomless as the California sky.
“A paranoid fantasy,” Damon agreed readily. “But I did happen to notice, while inwardly digesting your constitution, that although it commits you to releasing the results of the research you fund, it doesn’t actually specify when you have to do it. You’re not the only player in the field, of course—I dare say there’s not a single megacorp which doesn’t have a few fingers thrust deep into this particular pie—but you’ve been going for a long time and you have a good deal of expertise. If I were a bookmaker, I’d make you third favorite, after PicoCon and OmicronA, to come up with the next link in the chain that will eventually draw us into the wonderland of true emortality. Some day, someone like you is going to have to decide exactly how and when to let the good news out. Whoever makes that decision runs the risk of making enemies, don’t you think?”
The remark about Ahasuerus being third favorite after the biggest players of all was pure flattery, but it didn’t bring a smile to Rachel Trehaine’s face. “I can assure you,” the red-haired woman said, “that the Ahasuerus Foundation has no secrets of the kind you’re suggesting. You’ve already admitted that this mysterious Operator is deliberately teasing you, trying to draw you into reckless action. If that’s so, you ought to think very carefully about what you say, and to whom. If Operator one-oh-one has paranoid fantasies to indulge and lies to spread, it might be wise to let him be the one to do it.”
Damon would have assured her that he agreed with her wholeheartedly,