The Tithonian Factor

by Richard Cowper

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Space Opera

Synopsis

The Tithonian Factor takes us into the 22nd century and introduces the sempiterns, people who a hundred years or more earlier have taken a drug which confers a kind of immortality, but at an unexpected price.

Release date: September 18, 2012

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 150

Sample

In all my National Service the time I spent working with the ghosts was far and away the spookiest—if you’ll excuse the pun, or whatever it is.

What happened?

Nothing happened. Well, not in the way you mean it. It was just—well, spooky. I still get dreams from it sometimes.

What sort of dreams, Sarah?

Dreams of the old days. Strange dreams. Sad ones.

Tell me.

That’s just it. I can’t. I can never remember them properly.

Then how do you know they’re sad?

Because I wake up crying, stupid.

Really?

And then I find myself remembering—not the dream, but them—the ghosts, the Sempiterns. And I recognise the feeling I used to have when I’d been with them—a sort of awful helplessness, like—like watching someone drowning when you can’t swim.

Didn’t you talk to Control?

What about?

Well, ask for a transfer or something?

I didn’t want a transfer, Jo. I just wanted to help them some way—and I couldn’t. I couldn’t reach them.

How do you mean?

It’s hard to explain unless you’ve met them, and how many of us do that? Even if you did meet one you wouldn’t know what they were unless you’d been told. It’s only after you’ve been with them for a while that it begins to get to you.

What does?

The spookiness of it—of your situation—of their situation.

Their age, you mean?

Well, obviously that’s part of it, of course, but it’s not that exactly. After all, that’s something we all know about, something we’ve been told. What I’m talking about now is something different, something that’s in them, a sort of frozen sadness which lies deep, deep down in the backs of their eyes where no one can ever reach it.

They talked about it?

One of them did. Once.

What did he say?

It wasn’t a he.

Well, she then. Go on. Tell me about it, Sarah.

It happened on my birthday—my sixteenth—when I was stationed down at Marlow. There were six of us assigned to Waterside—that’s the Grace and Favour hospice—a huge old house beside the river. We were on attachment to the regular staff, which meant that we didn’t have any special duties in the running of the place but were just there on hand to help out wherever we were needed.

Sounds like a real old skive to me.

Well, yes and no. The Director of the place, Father Petrie, was a real sweetie, but we Nats were under Sister Philippa and she kept a pretty beady eye on us. Except for Andrew who was a Fourth we were all Third Graders, which meant Technique Exercises from eight to ten each morning and a full Response Cycle every third day. But for the rest of the time we just loafed around and chatted up the ghosts or helped out in the kitchens or the gardens. I went for the gardens mostly because, after a bit, being with the Sempiterns made me feel uncomfortable. I don’t know why—I didn’t know why then, I mean. Besides, the weather was glorious that May. I spent most of my time purring around the place on a mower—they had about a million acres of lawn—and after a week or two I was as brown as a biscuit.

Most of the time I was as near naked as makes no difference—shorts, sandals, and a floppy yellow sun-hat. Some of the Sempiterns used to peek at me through binoculars from the upstairs windows. I knew because I’d sometimes see the sun winking from the lenses. It was a bit of an eerie feeling—like being brushed with invisible cobwebs—but most of the time I don’t suppose I even noticed it.

On the afternoon of my birthday I was mowing a part of the grounds which was out of sight of the house. There was a backwater—a sort of artificial creek drawn off the main river—which led up to a boathouse. It was tucked away behind a lot of trees and shrubs—rhododendrons and suchlike—and nobody seemed to go there except the gardeners who had the job of keeping the place tidy. There wasn’t really much grass to mow—just a long, narrow strip winding along beside the water, and when I’d done that I switched off the machine and went to take a poke around. Just pure, idle curiosity.

It was that sort of hour in the early afternoon when the sun seems to need winding up again and the loudest sound is the buzzing of the bees. Even the birds had nodded off and the smell of the grass I’d cut hung over everything like a sort of warm sleepy oil. I wandered up to the boathouse and had my hand on the door latch when I heard a noise from inside. …

Well? Go on. What sort of a noise?

Eh? Oh, someone talking.

So?

I know I shouldn’t have listened but I couldn’t help myself. I’m not just saying that, Jo, I really mean it. It was as though I’d become part of a happening which needed me to be there in order for it to work—but a happening which I didn’t know anything about, so I couldn’t shape it.

You mean you think you were being chosen?

You tell me! Perhaps I just happened to be lying around handy and got drawn into it somehow. Anyway, that’s what Father Petrie thought.

Father Petrie! You talked to him about it?

That was later.

Well, what happened?

To start with I thought it was two people talking—two women—one answering the other. But then I wasn’t so sure—the voices sounded too much alike for one thing. They were very quiet—I couldn’t really make out anything they were saying—and I’d just about decided to sneak away when I heard one of them call out: ‘Who’s that? Who’s there?’

‘It’s me,’ I said. ‘Sarah Jackson. I’m sorry. I didn’t know there was anyone in there.’

There was a scuffling noise and then a sound of footsteps on duckboards and a moment later the door was pushed open from inside and there we were staring at each other. I recognised her as one of the ghosts—a Mrs Cassel—and I guess she recognised me too because I saw her glance down at my bare tits and give a funny twitchy sort of a smile. ‘Do you want a boat?’ she asked me.

I shook my head. ‘I was just curious about the place,’ I said. ‘I didn’t think there’d be anyone here. I’m really sorry if I’ve disturbed you.’

She gave me a long thoughtful look and then shook her head and smiled again. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘After all, it’s not my private property. Come along in.’

She stepped back inside and I ducked my head and followed her. For a second or two I was bat-blind after the bright sunshine but there was quite a lot of light coming in through the half-open water-doors and I could soon see well enough. I glanced round for the other person and of course there was no one else. I wasn’t really surprised at all.

There were a couple of row-boats tied up and a punt. Lying in the bottom of the punt were some faded cushions and an open book. Somehow I guessed that Mrs Cassel was the only person who ever came near the place—it had that sort of feel about it.

What was she like?

To look at, you mean? About my height, with wide, dark blue eyes and fine, silky blonde hair which she wore down to her shoulders. If I hadn’t known she was a Sempitern I’d have said she was in her early thirties. But she was really lovely, Jo, beautiful in that timeless, eternal sort of way—I mean she’d have been beautiful anywhere, any time. Everything about her was right, balanced, all of a piece—her hands, her mouth, her nose, her neck, the shape of her face, her figure. It made you feel clumsy and lumpish just to look at her. All the Sempiterns tend to be pale—it’s something to do with their metabolism, I think—and with some of them it really is pretty ghastly. But not with her. Mrs Cassel’s skin was right that way—sort of translucent—with faint, dusky blue shadows under her eyes.

But spooky with it?

Not then. Not that afternoon. I think there must have been a sort of link between us that we both sensed. Perhaps it was because we’d both opted out a bit, gone our own private ways, and then we’d met up by chance on common ground in that dead hour of the day. Or maybe it was something else. But after that first moment when she’d opened the door I didn’t feel the least bit awkward with her. I just sort of looked around and said, ‘Yes, it really is nice in here. Really peaceful.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘That’s why I come here.’

I could see it was time for me to get back to my mowing and leave her to enjoy it and I said as much.

She stretched out her arm and touched my shoulder with her fingertips. ‘Don’t go yet,’ she said. ‘Stay a while and talk to me.’

I dithered a bit but I couldn’t think of any convincing reason for backing out so in the end I said, ‘O.K. Why not?’ and I stepped down into the punt and plonked myself on one of the cushions.

She climbed in after me and there we were sitting and smiling at one another in a shy sort of way while the punt rocked up and down and the ripples went tock-tock-tock against the row-boats. Her book was lying open between us and I glanced down at it. The page was upside down but from the way it was printed I could see it was poetry. ‘Do you like poems?’ I asked her.

‘Some,’ she said. ‘Poems of the old days. Do you?’

I told her I used to like them a lot when I was young.

‘And how old are you, Sarah?’

‘Sixteen,’ I said. ‘Today’s my birthday as a matter of fact.’

‘Really?’ she said. ‘Congratulations on scaling the dizzy peak of sixteen!’

‘And how old are you, Mrs Cassel?’ Honestly, Jo, it was out before I could stop myself. I could’ve died, I swear I could!

‘Well, older than that, certainly,’ she said and gave a kind of little snort of a laugh.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I said—my face must’ve been a real sight—‘I really am, Mrs Cassel. Please forget I ever said it.’

‘But why should I? And why should you apologise? Is that what you’ve been taught?’

I nodded and felt as if my ears were steaming.

‘They told you it would distress us?’

I mumbled some sort of apology. Oi, was I embarrassed!

‘And what else did they tell you?’

I just shrugged. I really didn’t want to discuss all that, and certainly not then and with her.

‘Take great care not to disturb the even tenor of their days and ways?’ She was imitating the way Sister Philippa used to talk and I couldn’t help grinning.

‘So tell me how old you think I am, Sarah. I promise I won’t be distressed.’

I raised my head and looked at her and I knew that she really did want to hear my answer. ‘A hundred and forty?’ I guessed.

She gave a sort of lop-sided smile and shook her head. ‘I was born in two thousand and five,’ she said, ‘and I took the plunge when I was twenty-six. I shall be exactly a hundred and twenty-seven years old on the eighteenth of July.’

‘You became a Sempitern in thirty-one?’

She nodded.

‘But I thought it was all made illegal long before that.’

‘Officially, yes. But in those days there were still ways if you had the means. The last one I know took it in two thousand and forty.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘March, two thousand and forty. After that there wouldn’t have been any point, would there?’

I shook my head. ‘Do you mind if I ask you something, Mrs Cassel?’

‘Go ahead. Only I do wish you’d stop calling me Mrs Cassel. I never think of myself that way. To me I’m Margaret.’

‘Why did you do it, Margaret? What made you decide to become a Sempitern?’

She didn’t answer straight away and then she said, ‘Well, I can tell you, but I’m sure you won’t understand. You can’t understand. You and I don’t just belong to different generations, Sarah, we belong to different species. When I was your age, life, this life we’re living here and now—that’s all there was. Anything else was dreams, fairy tales, delusions. You were begotten by your parents, you were born, you lived, and then you ceased to live—you died. That was what we knew. For us death was the end of everything. So when Sempiterna was discovered we saw it as offering us the ancient Gift of the Gods—immortality. And, even better, the promise of eternal youth. In the hundred years since I became a Sempitern this body of mine has aged physically no more than ten.’

As she said that she lifted up her bare left arm and touched it lightly with her fingertips and there was an expression on her face as though she was looking at something which only she could see—the ghost of her real arm maybe.

‘And that was all it was?’ I said. ‘Just wanting to stay young for ever?’

She smiled at that. ‘There you are,’ she said. ‘I knew you wouldn’t understand. None of you do. You’re a true Gaian, Sarah. But in those days, when I was a child, it was different. It really was. Let me try to explain. When I was ten years old my grandmother—my mother’s mother—came to live with us. She was very ancient, well into her seventies. We had a little house in Golders Green—that was a part of London—and I had to give up my own room to Gran and move in with my sister. My mother and father were very apologetic about it but they explained that it probably wouldn’t be for very long because Gran was pretty feeble and doddery and wouldn’t be with us for much longer—a few months at the most. Well, she stayed with us for nine years, and for most of them I prayed every night that she wouldn’t wake up next morning. But she just went on and on and on getting more and more senile and in the end my mother had a nervous collapse. It was as if I was watching my family falling a. . .