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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78908 ***
+
+
+
+
+                           Forever Is So Long
+
+                             by John Jakes
+
+
+
+
+  _They walked the streets of the same city, but they were separated
+  by the ages. She feared the man she loved even as her arms clasped
+  him to her. For when science presented Frank Ridley with the gift of
+  neverending life it made him desperately unhappy, and placed him in a
+  world peopled by brief and flitting shadows...._
+
+
+[Illustration: Illustrator: Everett Raymond Kinstler]
+
+
+
+
+After a year in the hospital, they gave Frank Ridley a new suit of
+clothes and a topcoat and told him he could go. Dr. Lord said they
+would call him when they wanted him, so Ridley put on the topcoat and
+walked through the doors and down the wide steps into the windy, sunlit
+morning.
+
+He felt in the pocket of the topcoat, found cigarettes. His fingers
+caressed the material of the coat, as if it were entirely new to him.
+He broke open the pack and lit a cigarette. The smoke inside him was
+an almost new sensation, and he was pleasantly bewildered, like a
+small child. A year in the hospital, and he was a new man, but he had
+forgotten what life and the things of life were like.
+
+But he had not forgotten her. All through the long months, while the
+doctors bent over him, while he lay half-dreaming in the life fluid,
+while the needles filled his veins with a new and mighty blood, he had
+remembered her face and her mouth and her hair.
+
+Quickly, Frank Ridley began to walk. He looked at the buildings, at the
+towers, at the lake lying taut and blue in the sun. He saw the rockets
+burning up into the morning sky, bound for the Moon, Mars, Venus,
+carrying passengers and cargoes to the colonists. Gradually, he again
+became familiar with his native city of New Chicago.
+
+Two blocks from the hospital, he found a street phone booth. It was
+empty. Eagerly, he crowded his bulky body inside and closed the door.
+Dialing information, he felt his breath come heavily.
+
+The screen lit up and the face of the operator appeared.
+
+“Number, please,” she said, smiling.
+
+“I’d like to call Miss Virginia Halloran. I ... don’t remember the
+number. She used to live at ninety-fourteen Lake Drive.”
+
+“I will try that address,” the operator said.
+
+Ridley glanced at the new gleaming wrist chron they had given him.
+A quarter after nine. Normally, women did not go to work in the
+Department of Fuel Statistics at the Rocket Center until ten. She
+should be....
+
+The screen blurred.
+
+And he was looking at her.
+
+She was not a beautiful girl, with her slender face and slightly thin
+lips. But there was an intangible something in her eyes that Ridley
+had seen in few women. A promise, perhaps, of fire and affection. He
+swallowed stiffly.
+
+“Hello,” he said.
+
+She peered at him, not believing. “Frank ... Frank Ridley ... that’s
+right, isn’t it?”
+
+“Yes, Ginny. It’s me.”
+
+“It’s been a long time, Frank.”
+
+“Yes. A year.”
+
+“What happened, Frank? I thought you were dead, or had gone out on the
+rockets. That night ... my birthday ... you never came ...”
+
+“I know, I know. I’ll tell you about it. Could we eat breakfast?
+Couldn’t you skip work? I want to talk to you. I....”
+
+She nodded quickly. “Of course. Where?”
+
+He tried to remember, and could not. “I can’t think of any place we
+used to eat.” He was ashamed, because he had only remembered her face
+through the dark, painful year.
+
+“The Lake Front Cafe. Near Washington. Remember?”
+
+“I’ll find it. Half an hour?”
+
+“All right.” She hesitated. “Frank....”
+
+“Yes?”
+
+“What happened?” Her voice was soft, and her eyes in the screen were
+gentle and, somehow, full of loneliness.
+
+“I’ll explain when we eat. Ginny, tell me. Is there anyone else now?”
+
+“No, Frank.”
+
+He tried to grin. “Half an hour.”
+
+She nodded again and the screen went blank.
+
+He went out into the street, feeling the sunlight on his face and the
+wind pulling at his topcoat. Perhaps she still loved him. A year was a
+long time, but he could hope.
+
+As he lit another cigarette, he felt with a terrible certainty that she
+would cease to love him when she learned the secret that lodged in his
+body. The secret that would, eventually, roar like thunder around Earth
+and out to the stars where Earthmen rode their rockets.
+
+He turned and walked quickly down the street, and there was a sudden
+coldness in the morning sun.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She was waiting at a table on the terrace of the Lake Front Cafe.
+He walked up to her, almost shyly, and sat down. She smiled. A few
+feet beyond the table, the waters of the lake shimmered and made soft
+noises. A great rocket lifted across the skyline, trailing fire and
+smoke into the blueness.
+
+They ordered coffee and Ridley gave her a cigarette. He was trying to
+make many small motions, trying to take up time, because he was afraid
+of what was coming.
+
+She took a sip of the coffee and looked at him. “I still love you,
+Frank.”
+
+He glanced away. That was like her--the strange sense of honesty and
+naturalness that had impressed him at their first meeting. The feeling
+that their love was inherently right.
+
+“I’ve been gone a long time,” he said.
+
+“Where?”
+
+“In the Rocket Hospital.”
+
+She set down the cup, surprised. “Here in New Chicago?”
+
+“Yes, all the time. I couldn’t call you.”
+
+“Were you sick? Frank, I don’t understand this. A whole year out of a
+man’s life, and not a word....”
+
+He reached out and took hold of her hand, squeezing it, because he was
+afraid that he would inevitably lose her, and he did not want that. He
+wanted to keep her, and the sunlight and the bright morning.
+
+“I’m going to tell you what happened to me,” he said softly. “I have
+Dr. Lord’s permission. It’ll be out soon enough. You mustn’t tell
+anyone.”
+
+She frowned. “I won’t.”
+
+“Do you know who Dr. Lord is?”
+
+“The longevity man. Educated at the University of Marsport.”
+
+“That’s right. My father was one of his best friends. They saw the
+asteroids together in their student days, working on an ore jumper.
+I’ve known Dr. Lord for a long time. Last year, when I came in from the
+Venus run and took my two months’ leave ... when I met you ... Dr. Lord
+called me.
+
+“He needed help, with an experiment. An experiment, he felt, that
+couldn’t fail. He knew I was a jetman, and strong, and he knew me
+personally. He asked me if I would help him. I thought it would mean
+so much to people that I ... I said I would help him. He said it would
+have to be done secretly. That’s why I never called you, or wrote.”
+
+“You’ve been a subject for an experiment for a whole year?”
+
+“That’s right. The experiment was completed a week ago.”
+
+“Success?”
+
+He nodded slowly and fumbled for a cigarette. He knew what her next
+question would be. He lit the cigarette and waited, watching the smoke
+whip away toward the lake.
+
+“What kind of an experiment was it?”
+
+“I don’t know the details. They replaced my normal blood with some kind
+of fluid Dr. Lord had developed.”
+
+She waited, her lips slightly parted, her face bearing a faint trace of
+fear. The feather on top of her hat bobbed as she leaned forward.
+
+He swallowed hard.
+
+“Ginny ... with this fluid inside of me ... I’ll ... I’m going to live
+to be three hundred years old.”
+
+She released his hand quickly, striking the coffee cup. It spilled and
+the brown liquid dripped across the table and fell on the stone terrace
+in a dark shining pool.
+
+“Are ... are they sure?”
+
+“Yes, as sure as they can be. That’s why I had to talk to you.”
+
+She got up and walked over to the railing, stood staring at the water.
+Ridley followed and put his arm around her.
+
+“That’s it,” he murmured. “That’s why I had to talk to you. I’m going
+to be a kind of immortal, and I want that. I want that because I think,
+eventually, people can all be almost immortal, and can use the extra
+years for good things.”
+
+“But I can’t love you, Frank. I can’t love you if I’m old and dying at
+eighty or so and you’re still young. We can’t go on.”
+
+He put his hands on her shoulders, turned her around so that she faced
+him.
+
+“Can’t we?” he said.
+
+She buried her head in his shoulder, crying. He saw people on the
+terrace watching them and didn’t care.
+
+“We can talk,” he whispered. “I’ll have some time to myself now ... a
+month or two. We can do a lot of talking and decide. I can’t lose you,
+Ginny.”
+
+She lifted her face and he bent down and kissed her, feeling her mouth
+warm and soft with the sun.
+
+“We’ll try, Frank,” she said a moment later. “Perhaps we can do
+something ... I don’t know what. You’re cut off from me. You’re cut off
+from the rest of the human race now.”
+
+He choked at her words. Cut off from the human race. Yes, he was.
+
+To help them, he had isolated himself from them. And from her.
+
+“I’d better go to work now,” she told him. “Call me tonight. You can
+come over. We’ll talk, as you say. Perhaps in a month or two....”
+
+He said, “I hope so.”
+
+He paid the check and they walked out of the cafe, holding hands. He
+took her to a copter station and stood watching the machine rise into
+the sky, blades making a silver whirl.
+
+He had a cigarette in his hands, but his fingers tightened on it and
+crushed it. He felt the tobacco slip through his fingers as he watched
+the copter in the sky.
+
+In the window, he had seen her crying.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He went back to the hospital because he had no other place to go. There
+was a message for him at the main desk. Dr. Lord wanted to see him.
+
+Ridley found the tall, gray-haired scientist in his office, gazing
+out of the window and smoking a brown cigar. When Ridley came in, the
+doctor turned, anxiety on his darkly tanned old face.
+
+“I got your message at the desk,” Ridley said awkwardly.
+
+“Yes, uh, Frank, sit down.”
+
+Lord seated himself in a large red leather swivel chair behind the
+desk. He rolled the cigar in his fingers nervously.
+
+“Something important?” Ridley asked.
+
+“I’m afraid so. I hate to tell you this, Frank.”
+
+Ridley frowned. “What is it?”
+
+“You’ve been under a strain for a whole year,” Lord went on, “and I
+promised you time to rest, but now....”
+
+“Doctor,” Ridley said quietly, “tell me.”
+
+“Well, Frank, you know that I told you about experiments similar to
+mine that are being conducted on Mars.”
+
+Ridley remembered that. “University of Marsopolis, wasn’t it?”
+
+“Yes. Dr. Thag. A brilliant man, brilliant. But he’s run into trouble.
+I received a beam message from him just about an hour ago. His plasma
+replacement technique was faulty, somehow. His subject went insane and
+had to be shot.”
+
+Ridley tightened a hand on the chair arm.
+
+“That sort of thing can’t be allowed to go on,” Lord told him
+earnestly. “We scientists have the right to experiment, but not at the
+risk of damaging human life. That’s why we’ve always had such a hell of
+a hard time. I was almost ninety-nine per cent sure the technique was
+correct when I started the experiment on you.”
+
+“Get to the point,” Ridley said irritably.
+
+“Frank, I’m taking the rocket to Marsopolis tonight. I want to help Dr.
+Thag. I want to set up a demonstration replacement, perhaps lasting
+only a few moments, just enough for him to check and find his mistake.
+I need you for a subject.”
+
+“For God’s sake,” Ridley said suddenly, “haven’t I had enough? Twelve
+months in this goddamned hospital and now....”
+
+“I know, I know,” Lord interrupted. “And I’m sorry. But it’s got to be
+done, if we want to see man’s dream of long life come true. I thought
+you were interested in that dream when I chose you. You said you were.”
+
+Ridley remembered his father, an educator at a great university, who
+had told him of the cruelty in man, the greed, the grasping hunger. His
+father had made him learn the great lesson: that man was in too much of
+a hurry. That he needed more time, to develop his skill in living with
+other men. That a normal span of years only gave occasional glimmerings
+of the peace between men that could be achieved. With time could come
+education ... education of the spirit. That was the dream.
+
+Ridley shook his head wearily. “I still want what you want.”
+
+“Then you’ll come? The rocket jets off at ten tonight, Waukegan Port.”
+
+Desperately, Ridley thought of Ginny and the months they were to have
+spent. They, too, needed time, to work out the problem that lay between
+them. For a long minute, Ridley thought about her.
+
+And then his brain became suddenly alert.
+
+Perhaps ... perhaps....
+
+“Dr. Lord, I want something in return, if I go with you. It’s selfish,
+I know it’s selfish, but it’s something I need.”
+
+Lord put the cigar between his lips, drew in and blew out a cloud of
+smoke. He rolled the cigar around in his fingers once more.
+
+“Go ahead.”
+
+With hope churning crazily in him, Ridley leaned forward and began to
+speak....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ridley was waiting for Ginny that afternoon when she came home from her
+job at the Department of Fuel Statistics. He stood in the lobby of the
+apartment building, smoking. When he saw her coming toward the door, he
+crushed out his cigarette under his foot.
+
+She let the door close slowly when she saw him. In his face she could
+see trouble and anxiety. Without a word, she went to the lift and
+pressed the button.
+
+They rode up to the twelfth floor in silence. Not until they were in
+her small apartment did she speak.
+
+“Something’s wrong, isn’t it, Frank?”
+
+The words stuck in his throat. He couldn’t tell her. All he could say
+was, “Yes.”
+
+She walked to the window and pressed a button. The inlaid panels folded
+away, exposing a great expanse of glassite. Twilight lay on the lake
+beyond. Down Lake Drive, in either direction, lights began to come on
+in the towers. They were warm yellow lights, but to Ridley they were
+lonely and beyond reach. They were the lights of normal human homes.
+Ginny smoked quietly, watching the lake, waiting for him to speak. When
+he did say something, it was clumsy and halting, and he knew it the
+moment it was out of his mouth.
+
+“Ginny ... I’m ... going.”
+
+She turned. “Where?”
+
+“To Mars.”
+
+“At least you’re telling me this time.”
+
+“Ginny, I’ve got to go....” He moved close to her, speaking rapidly,
+feeling the drive inside of him. He explained the situation, and went
+on, spilling out the dream that he had held for years ... of no more
+war ... no more hatred ... and long golden days chat could be filled
+with learning and real enjoyment of the beauty of the world they lived
+in.
+
+“It’s all very nice,” she said harshly, “but it doesn’t help us. We
+have no time to talk this thing out.”
+
+“Ginny, that’s bitter talk. You’ve waited a long time, and I’m sorry,
+but now you’re bitter because there’s something else I have to do.”
+
+“One or the other, Frank. That’s the way it’s got to be. Somewhere,
+everybody has to make a choice.”
+
+“We don’t have to.”
+
+She slipped her cigarette into a wall dispenser and it vanished with a
+ghostly whisper of air.
+
+“What do you mean?”
+
+“I talked to Dr. Lord for a long time this afternoon, I argued with him
+... told him about you ... us ... and I finally persuaded him.”
+
+She did not ask another question, but waited.
+
+After a moment, Ridley took a deep breath and said, “Dr. Lord will give
+you the new blood, if you want it. You can live to be as old as I am.”
+
+“Oh, Frank....”
+
+She held on to him tightly, and he grew cold when he heard her whisper,
+“I can’t. I can’t, I can’t.”
+
+He said softly, “Why?”
+
+She broke away, pointing out the window at the tower and the lights
+along the lake.
+
+“Look at the lights, Frank. Those belong to people who are in love
+like we are. They have homes, and children, and normal lives. I want
+that, Frank. I want to belong to the human race.” Her voice was full of
+sorrow.
+
+“And my loving you ... that isn’t enough?”
+
+“I don’t know, Frank. I honestly don’t know.”
+
+“It’s late, Ginny.” His arms went around her again. “We’re late. Out
+of all the people in this crazy mixed-up world, we have to be the ones
+with only hours to decide. I guess I’ve got the dream to work for. I
+guess you can’t have everything.”
+
+He pushed her away gently. “I’ve got to go. I’ve got to be at Waukegan
+Port by ten.”
+
+Picking up his coat from the couch, he walked quietly to the door.
+There, he turned and took one final look at her, wanting to remember
+the way she was standing, looking at the yellow lights in the towers
+that meant so much to her.
+
+All the way down in the lift, he felt a terrible sense of loneliness,
+of emptiness, as if a chunk of his being had been somehow cut out of
+him. Now all that remained was his long, long life. It would have to be
+filled with work. He would have to lose himself in that work, trying
+to help people. He would have to make time for more people to live.
+Perhaps he could forget her.
+
+Out in the street, he headed for a mobile station. A rocket burned
+across the sky, like a star falling away and becoming lost in the dark.
+
+Ridley hurried on. Rain began to spatter lightly on his face. It was
+cold rain.
+
+A man and a woman hurried by him, laughing, holding hands. He hunted
+for a cigarette, but could not get it lit. The man and woman were gone
+down the street.
+
+And Frank Ridley knew that no matter how he worked, no matter how far
+he traveled to the worlds lying far out in the rocket lanes, that the
+years without her would be as cold and as dark as the rain through
+which he walked....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lord was not at the hospital. One of the nurses gave Ridley a suitcase
+full of new clothes. He ate dinner in the dining-room with the doctors
+and nurses. One young student-nurse stared at him as he was eating,
+tremendous curiosity on her young face. Someone in the hospital must
+have told her about him.
+
+He bent down over his food. That would be the way of it. Wherever he
+went, stares. People looking at him, envying him.
+
+He sat up straight. His fork rattled against his plate. They might
+begrudge him the extra years. For a long, long time, they might ...
+hate him.
+
+After dinner he took a mobile out to the Waukegan Port. He chainsmoked,
+and his throat was not used to it. He was coughing hoarsely by the time
+he reached the field.
+
+The rocket lay in its launching rack. Passengers were already boarding.
+The great expanse of concrete was lit by search-beams that shone
+brightly behind the rain.
+
+For Ridley, it was goodbye to Earth for a while. Goodbye to the Earth
+he had known only for one day. He would come to know it again, but it
+would be remote and alien then.
+
+He walked through the gate in the wire fence after showing his
+credentials. He walked straight across the field, the bag leaden in his
+hand. The rain fell and ran down all over his face and soaked his hair
+and his coat. He kept walking. He kept thinking about her.
+
+All at once he stopped, shook his head and straightened up. He
+quickened his step and went briskly up the ramp into the great hull.
+
+He found his cabin, hung up the wet coat and deposited his bag. Then,
+he proceeded to the lounge where he ordered a drink. Whisky tasted
+good, warm and mellow, after being cut off from life for so long.
+
+Lord stood by the observation window, watching the bustle of activity
+on the field. Huge crates of machinery were being loaded into a lower
+hold. Ridley touched Lord’s arm lightly to let him know that he had
+arrived.
+
+The doctor’s face was worried.
+
+“What did she say?” he asked.
+
+“No,” Frank replied evenly. He took a sip of the whisky. “She said no.”
+
+“Um. I beamed Dr. Thag. He’ll meet us at the port in Marsopolis.
+I expect we’ll be there for a month or so. He wants to study the
+technique thoroughly, talk to you and all that. There’ll be other
+doctors there, from all over Mars....”
+
+“If you don’t mind,” Ridley said, “I wish you wouldn’t talk to me about
+that tonight.”
+
+“Oh,” said Lord, “sorry.”
+
+The warning siren screamed through the ship. Ridley glanced at his
+wrist chron. “Five minutes till jet off,” he said.
+
+He turned back, watching the field.
+
+A figure was running across the wet concrete toward the ship. Ridley
+smiled at that. It would be ironical. Missing a trip to Mars by a
+matter of minutes.
+
+Suddenly, he put the palm of one hand against the window, pressing,
+straining to see.
+
+The figure came on, through the rain, hurrying ... hurrying....
+
+Ridley breathed, “Ginny....”
+
+He was waiting for her on the ramp. She was calling to him. The lights
+and the rain made a crazy blur. Ridley felt his suit cling to his body.
+She came up the ramp and slipped. He caught her and pulled her to him.
+
+“I’m going,” she said, “I’m going with you....”
+
+Frank Ridley, with the blood of near-immortality in him, was crying,
+because the years ahead had looked so dark and lonely, and because no
+one could tell he was crying as they stood together in the rain.
+
+Finally, the purser signaled for the ramp to be rolled up. They hurried
+inside.
+
+“I had to come,” she told him. “I love you, Frank. It’s enough for us,
+love. I thought about you being alone, and I knew I wanted to be with
+you....”
+
+He kissed her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After changing his suit, he joined her in the lounge. The lights had
+been turned out, so that the passengers could observe the spectacle of
+take-off. Ginny stood beside Dr. Lord, talking and smoking. The jets
+made thunder.
+
+They were well beyond the atmosphere of Earth when Ridley put his arm
+around her. She leaned close and kissed his cheek.
+
+“Dr. Lord and I have been talking,” she said. “He’s told me about the
+experiments. If you can stay with me in the hospital....”
+
+Ridley nodded.
+
+They watched Earth falling away. The rain had been left far behind.
+Every minute or so, Frank would turn and look at her. The cigarette
+illuminated her face with a warm orange glow, and in her eyes he saw
+love for many lifetimes.
+
+He held her tightly, and together they watched Earth grow smaller, no
+longer cold, but now full of greenness and warmth and the dream they
+would some day come to share.
+
+Dr. Lord smiled as he sat and watched the first two immortals....
+
+
+
+
+  Transcriber’s note:
+
+
+  This etext was produced from Avon Science Fiction and Fantasy Reader,
+  April 1953 (Vol. 1, no. 2).
+
+  Obvious errors have been silently corrected in this version, but
+  minor inconsistencies have been retained as printed.
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78908 ***