Free Architects of Emortality by Brian Stableford Page B

educated to believe that I too am a Natural of sorts.” Magnus heard the entire speech as an echo of his own voice. The young woman had never tried to contradict him and always seemed to be genuinely inspired by his vision. Although she would presumably be one of the last-born members of the Old Human Race, her youth allowed her to feel completely at ease with herself and completely at ease with the world. That easefulness was far more precious than her silken hair, her luminous flesh, or her lithe limbs.

    Although he was not ungrateful to be old, and not afraid to die, Magnus was still capable of loving youth. He was still capable of loving her, even though she really should not have left her own bubble dome to visit him in his. He had to forgive her the breach of protocol. He had forgiven her before, and he did so now.

    It was a fine irony, Magnus thought, that the cycle of fashion had come full circle yet again, so that the young people of her generation were once again inclined to favor sexual intercourse with actual human beings over the infinitely more various seductions of intimate technology. The truly young had, of course, always been inclined to such experiments, but the newest generation seemed more fervent than its predecessors in challenging the inherited opinion of their elders that only virtual reality could offer ideal partners.

    Magnus was old enough and wise enough to have known all along that real partners were better than virtual ones. He had always had faith in the sanctity of true flesh. His love of wilderness and his love of authentic youth were, he supposed, merely different aspects of his faith in the sanctity of flesh. Flesh itself might be seen as a kind of wilderness, and wilderness as a kind of youth.

    When the soul of the world was young, Magnus thought as he prepared to lie down upon his bed for a second time, naked and unashamed, and man’s ancestors were hairy apes on the point of venturing forth from the forests to the great African plain, everything was wilderness. There was wasteland even then—the slopes of active volcanoes; the polar ice fields; the true deserts—but the latter-day wastelands which men have made by deforestation and civilization and biotech wars had not yet offended the all-embracing empire of flesh and youth. Nothing then had been made by ignorance and stupidity and greed, and we still have the opportunity to recall and recreate that lovely innocence. This too is a sacrament offered to Gaea. This too is worship, and labor in the cause of life.

    No man or woman has been born from a human womb for nearly two centuries—longer than that if the official records are believable—but the womb is still a temple of life, and its rites of approach are Gaea’s rites. This is not merely love but worshipful love, the antithesis of ignorance, stupidity, and greed.

    Magnus hated ignorance, stupidity, and greed. All wise men, he supposed, must hate ignorance, stupidity, and greed. Wisdom was love of knowledge, intelligence, and moderation. Wisdom was thinking in terms of embraces, and not in terms of conquests. He did not think of the wondrous woman as a conquest, and he was certain that she did not think of herself as having been conquered.

    When he kissed her before lowering her onto the narrow bed, Magnus thought for a fleeting instant that he might have known the young woman before—that somewhen in the mists of time which had clouded his memory over the years, he had caught a glimpse of a supremely beautiful face almost exactly like hers—but he dismissed the thought. She was far too young, and her face had clearly been somatically modified to bring the features into line with one of the so-called seven archetypes of female beauty. He had long grown used to the silly tricks which memory sometimes played, and was too wise to let them bother him unduly.

    The kiss was delicious, the taste of it far from merely utilitarian.

    Before the sun rose again, Magnus Teidemann