Today is Forever

By ROGER DEE
Illustrated by EMSH
Boyle knew there was an angle behind the aliens' generosity ... but he had one of his own!
These Alcorians have been on Earth for only a month, David Locke said, but already they're driving a wedge between AL&O and the Social Body that can destroy the Weal overnight. Boyle, it's got to be stopped!
He put his elbows on Moira's antique conversation table and leaned toward the older man, his eyes hot and anxious.
There are only the two of them—Fermiirig and Santikh; you've probably seen stills of them on the visinews a hundred times—and AL&O has kept them so closely under cover that we of the Social Body never get more than occasional rumors about what they're really like. But I know from what I overheard that they're carbonstructure oxygen-breathers with a metabolism very much like our own. What affects them physically will affect us also. And the offer they've made Cornelison and Bissell and Dorand of Administrative Council is genuine. It amounts to a lot more than simple longevity, because the process can be repeated. In effect, it's—
Immortality , Boyle said, and forgot the younger man on the instant.
The shock of it as a reality blossomed in his mind with a slow explosion of triumph. It had come in his time, after all, and the fact that the secret belonged to the first interstellar visitors to reach Earth had no bearing whatever on his determination to possess it. Neither had the knowledge that the Alcorians had promised the process only to the highest of government bodies, Administrative Council. The whole of AL&O—Administration, Legislation and Order—could not keep it from him.
It isn't right , Locke said heatedly. It doesn't fit in with what we've been taught to believe, Boyle. We're still a modified democracy, and the Social Body is the Weal. We can't permit Cornelison and Bissell and Dorand to take what amounts to immortality for themselves and deny it to the populace. That's tyranny!