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"True, and for once a good thing too. But still, the writing’s on the wall." 

I nodded. "Well, my son came to see me today." Briefly, I told her what had passed, not quite knowing why I was doing it, just feeling a need to talk it through. "It’s his wife pushing him, of course," I finished. "Apparently I’m harming her social status, or something."

She regarded me curiously. "I’m surprised myself that you’re a refusenik," she said dryly. "I’d have thought that you’d be one of the other side, being a co-inventor of the process and all."

"I didn’t necessarily play all that big a part in it," I said. "There were several teams at work on it, in many countries. And it was a long time ago."

"Yes, wasn’t it. Well, what are you planning to do, agree to the transfer? It does seem tempting, doesn’t it?" She cackled, an old woman’s laugh. "Do you know I wrote some of the copy advertising the process when it was first invented? ‘Imagine the years turning back, suns following moons back across the sky, withered age turning to green youth, like autumn leaves grown fresh on the branch, with all the tenderness of spring. Imagine the bitter bile of the years turned back to the fresh, the new, sparkling like the crystal water of mountain springs. All at a touch, death turning back to life, despair to hope, and the life eternal, as promised, but not in the hereafter; life eternal, here, and now.’ Of course I was young myself then, and I couldn’t really imagine becoming old."

I laughed. "Well, and why are you a refusenik, as you put it? Religion?"

She shrugged. "I’m not one of the religious lot, as you know damned well. Call it laziness. I simply can’t bear the thought of going through another cycle, and another, and another. Just the thought of chilblains in winter is enough. Bah!"

"I saw a group of them on the way here," I said. "Teenagers, they looked like, very handsome and beautiful, but I’m pretty sure they were simply Cyclers." I didn’t have to tell her how I knew; Cyclers move and act differently, not like normal people their apparent age. Of course, a few more decades and everyone will be Cyclers, and the ‘normal’ people of today will be abnormal then.  "I’m told the new bodies are really very good. The designer gene labs are doing excellent business."

"Uh huh. And they’re also making excellent money. I couldn’t begin to afford their top-line products, even assuming I wanted to." She cackled again. "The price of immortality! Do you think philosophers who talked about it meant the word price so literally?"

"Some might say cheating death’s worth any price."

"I’d say dying’s a privilege," she retorted. "Imagine the accumulating memories of forty or fifty lifetimes. And when the process breaks down..." She looked at me keenly. "You do know the process will break down, of course?"

"Eventually? Certainly it will. And everyone knows it, deep down, even if they don’t talk about it."

"Well then," she said triumphantly, "Imagine the prospect of death then, when you’ve become completely used to the idea of immortality. Am I a bad woman because I think they’ll have deserved it, all that shock and horror? Am I evil?"

I laughed. "They’ll say it’s being vindictive. As it happens I agree with you. Also, eternal life will fossilise the race quite thoroughly, don’t you agree? Weed out all innovation, fresh thinking and that sort of thing? When the collapse comes, it’s going to be pretty well total and absolute."

She gave me a startled look. "Oh...so that’s it? That’s why you won’t take the offer, hm?"

"Of course," I said. "And anyone who bothers to think it through should come to the same conclusion as us. But as you said, the offer’s tempting. Youth and health, over and over again, for as far into the future as they can see. Too tempting, for just about everyone."

"Except us," she said, looking around at the shambling gaggle of old men and women in the clubhouse. "The few of us here, like refugees hiding from the world outside."

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