"You or your medical colleagues," Brill went on brightly, "have done humanity yeoman service. Not only have you lengthened life and made living it less painful, but you have reduced the consumer-costs of life insurance to a level which makes premiums ridiculously low. Of course," he added complacently, "this has resulted in a great increase in the number of the insured and the size and scope of The Company."
"But if people are going to live forever, your company is going to have to discontinue the annuity system, is that it?" Dr. Farrar asked pointedly. "You'd leave the old folks cut off from jobs by custom and from any other income by expediency?"
Jeremy Brill was suddenly serious. "The problem of the support of paupers is hardly the immediate responsibility of Far-Western. Besides," he added hopefully, "by the time the thirty-year olders whose policies we would have to refuse to write now are old enough to worry about it, our society will no doubt have found some way for them to maintain their independence. I have the greatest faith in you social researchers, so great that my company can surely feel free to turn that problem over to you with utter confidence.
"And perhaps, as a matter of fact," he continued, "you can already tell me that there is little hope that man can pass his two-hundredth year without serious impairment of his faculties, and we shall only have to raise the age at which annuities begin to pay. The Company naturally prefers the gentle road of reform to the cataclysm of revolution." He relaxed after this burst of metaphor.
"I am not at all sure that there is any sanity data on those over 150 in statistical form. It would take me some time to be sure of any exact present correlation of mental erosion, as you call it, with age." Dr. Farrar reflected on the state of the file cases in the further corner. He wasn't at all sure, either, how much it was wise to tell this eager representative of The Company. (Mr. Brill always said it as if "The Company" were written entirely in capital letters.) There might be other angles. This increase in suicide, for instance.
"You see," he went on, "Block Nineteen does not have a very high complement of psychiatrists. If the subjects get too difficult to handle, we usually send them to Mayhew Mental Observing Hospital and close their files here. We do chiefly physiological research here, you know. The older subjects seem to mistrust young psychiatrists and the more practical men seem to prefer working in places like the Mayhew where the material is more interesting." Maybe he could get rid of the man by offering a better bait.
"The Company would be more than willing to offer the services of a couple of trained statistical analysts if you would like to put your unorganized material at our disposal for, shall we say, a week?"
So that was the angle—let The Company in on the files where they would uncover a number of other interesting things—the suicides too, as the other subjects reacted to them. Now he'd have to take time off, at work on the Hundred-and-Ten-Year-Old to dig about in the advanced data. One couldn't violate the privacy of the records, not at this moment, anyhow.
"That won't be necessary, thanks. I could have some word for you in a couple of weeks—as soon as certain other matters are taken care of. I'd be interested in the results myself, naturally." And he would. There might be some clue to poor Clarice LePays and Forsythe and the earlier ones. A promise of figures soon would put Brill off temporarily. Now change the subject and close the talk.