Звезда Пандоры

“Sure.” Her smile was guileless. Paula found herself smiling back.

“Isn’t she lovely?” Leonard asked when the girl had left. He was as shy and eager as a teenager who’d unexpectedly found himself dating the prom queen. “I’m going to ask her to marry me. I think. There’s nothing I want more, but… I’m a little bit older than her. Not that she’s ever said anything about that.”

“Don’t wait too long,” Paula said. “There’ll be another hundred men wanting to ask the same question if you don’t. And she’s where she wants to be. That ought to tell you something.”

“Yes, oh yes, you’re quite right.” He caught himself and sighed. “I’m sorry. I’m not supposed to be asking you for advice.”

“It’s okay. I’ve had a lot more experience with these kinds of things. And I’m used to seeing age differences over a century or more. Love normally wins out.”

“Yes, yes of course. I must say this is something of a shock having you come to me. That’s why I’m not handling this well. Your letters to my great-grandfather are around here somewhere.” He waved a hand at the library’s piles. “I read them when I took over from my father. You had just qualified to be some kind of detective in the Commonwealth government.”

Paula had forgotten the letters she’d written. At first they’d been a welcome contact with the one person in the galaxy who seemed to understand her; then when her insecurities had slowly abated she wrote out of politeness. Eventually of course, her job took up so much of her time… It was a very tired excuse. She should have realized Alexis would have kept the letters, it had been a very intense affair during the short time it lasted. “Yes, I qualified as an Investigator. I’ve been successful, too. No false modesty.”

He smiled in that proud way that stirred up a few too many old memories. “Of course you succeeded. You’d be the best they ever had. Not that they’d ever admit that.”

“I have your great-grandfather to thank. He was the one who told me to go. He knew that I wouldn’t be happy here, not after being exposed to so much of the Commonwealth.”

“I’d dispute that; but I’m not him, and you’ve obviously flourished. I have to ask, and I’m sorry if this is intrusive, but do you ever have any doubts about rejuvenation, you’ve obviously been through the process several times. I think you were a teenager when you left Huxley’s Haven.”

“No, no doubts. Not ever. There is so much crime out there.”

“And nobody else can do the job.”

She pulled a face. He was very similar to Alexis. “A few might manage,” she admitted.

“I’m asking because rejuvenation is the one thing that is debated endlessly by my caste. We simply cannot decide if we should adopt it here.”

“I’d say it was contrary to your whole ethos. This society was formed so people could live their lives and be content. A great deal of that contentment comes from a natural cycle which lies undisturbed, and was never sequenced in by the Foundation. They just gave you the ability to enjoy what was available within a relatively simple framework—at least compared to majority Commonwealth culture. There will always be a job for you whoever you are, a job, or purpose that you will enjoy, and you will be rewarded financially by it no more or no less than anyone else. If you introduce rejuvenation you will start to expand beyond the rate sustainable by your current economy. And your current technoeconomy is the only one suitable for fixed trait castes. The best the Foundation could sequence in was behavior suitable for a particular profession, along with a few extras like dexterity for doctors. But you simply can’t produce dedicated fusion techs or microbiologists, those kinds of professions have too many requirements, there’s no single recognizable aptitude. To support a more modern economy you’d have to despecialize the traits to the point where they’d effectively be dissolved. You’d wind up with normal humans living in an economy that was ideologically driven rather than needs related. There’d be nothing to stop them going and getting a better-paid job on another planet, especially after a couple of centuries of going in to work in the same office.”

“Goodness me, and I thought freethinkers such as myself were the only ones who could put together solid logical arguments.”

Matilda returned with a tray carrying mugs of tea. “Don’t let him distract you,” she said as she gave Paula her mug. “He’s a very bad freethinker. He always asks questions, he never answers them.”

“To think about things, I have to know about them first.”

Matilda gave Paula a told-you-so shrug as she gave Leonard his mug.

“What do you do?” Paula asked.

“I’m a nurse. I work at the maternity ward of the local hospital. I like children.” She gave Leonard a meaningful glance. He blushed.