by C. L. Moore
"That's enough of that," he said. "I'm not your pet dog. What do you mean?"
She laughed. "If you weren't so young," she said insultingly.
He released her with such abruptness he unsteadied her on the divan beside him, and she laid a hand on his shoulder to catch herself. He was silent. Then in a remote voice he asked, "Just how old are you?"
"Two hundred and twenty years."
"And I bore you. I'm a child."
Her laughter was flattering. "Not a child, Sam—not a child! But our viewpoints are so different. No, you don't bore me. That's the trouble, or part of it. I wish you did. Then I could leave you tonight and forget all this had ever happened. But there's something about you, Sam—I don't know." Her voice grew reflective. Behind it in the darkness the music swelled to a screaming crescendo, but very softly, a muted death-note as one adversary or the other triumphed far up in the swamplands overhead.
"If you were the man you look," Kedre Walton was saying. "If you only were! You have a fine mind, Sam—it's a pity you must die too soon to use it. I wish you weren't one of the commons. I'd marry you—for awhile."
"How does it feel," Sam asked her savagely, "to be a god?"
"I'm sorry. That was patronizing, wasn't it? And you deserve better. How does it feel? Well, we are Immortals, of a sort. We can't help that. It feels—good, and frightening. It's a responsibility. We do much more than just play, you know. I spent my first hundred years maturing and studying, traveling, learning people and things. Then for a hundred years it was intrigue I liked. Learning how to pull strings to make the Council see things my way, for instance. A sort of jujitsu of the mind—touch a man's vanity and make his ego react in just the way I mean it to. I think you know those tricks well enough yourself—only you'll never live long enough to master the art as I know it. It's a pity. There's something about you that I ... I ... never mind."
"Don't say again you'd marry me. I wouldn't have you."
"Oh yes you would. And I might try it, at that, even if you are a common. I might—"
Sam leaned forward across her knees and groped for the light switch. The small, cushioned room sprang into illumination as the switch clicked, and Kedre blinked her beautiful ageless eyes and laughed half in protest and half in surprise.
"Sam! I'm blind. Don't do that." She reached to extinguish the light. Sam caught her hand, folding the fingers together over their heavy golden rings.
"No. Listen. I'm leaving you right now and I never want to see you again. Understand? You've got nothing I want." He rose abruptly.
There was something almost serpentine in the way she moved to her feet in one smooth, swift flow, light glinting on the overlapping golden sequins that sheathed her.
"Wait. No, wait! Forget about all this, Sam. I want to show you something. That was just talk, before. I needed to sound you out. Sam, I want you to come with me to Haven. I have a problem for you."
He looked at her coldly, his eyes steel splinters between the ruddy lashes, under the rough, ruddy brows. He named the sum his listening would cost her. She curled her lip at him and said she would pay it, the subtle Egyptian smile denting in the corners of her mouth.
He followed her out of the room.
-
Haven approximated man's half-forgotten birthplace. It was Earth, but an Earth glamourized and inaccurately remembered. It was a gigantic half-dome honeycombed with cells that made a shell arched over a great public room below. Each cell could be blocked off, or a rearrangement of penetrating rays could give you the illusion of being in the midst of an immense, crowded room. Or you could use the architect's original plan and enjoy the illusion of a terrestrial background.
True, palms and pines seemed to grow out of the same surrogate soil, grapes and roses and blossoming fruit trees shouldered one another; but since these were merely clever images they did not matter except to the purist. And only scholars really knew the difference. Seasons had become an exotic piece of history.
It was a strange and glamorous thought—the rhythmic equinoxes, earth's face changing from green and brown to glittering blue-white, and then the magic of pale green blades pushing up and green buds breaking from the trees, and all this naturally, inevitably, unlike the controlled growth of hydroponics.
Kedre Walton and Sam Reed came to Haven. From the stage where they entered they could look up at that immense, shining hemisphere, crowded with glittering cells like fragments of a bright, exploded dream, shifting and floating, rising and falling in the intricate light-currents. Down below, very far away, was the bar, a serpentine black shape where men and women made centipede-legs for its twisting body.
Kedre spoke into a microphone. One of the circling cells moved in its orbit and bumped gently against the landing stage. They stepped inside, and the swaying underfoot told Sam that they were afloat again.
Leaning among cushions by the low table were a man and a woman. Sam knew the man by sight. He was Zachariah Harker, oldest of one of the great Immortal families. He was a big man, long-boned, fine of line, his face a curious mixture of—not age—but experience, maturity, contrasting with the ageless youth that kept his features fresh and unlined. He had a smoothness that came from within, smooth assurance, smooth courtesy, smooth and quiet wisdom.
The woman—
"Sari, my dear," Kedre said, "I've brought you a guest. Sari is my granddaughter. Zachariah, this is ... I don't know his name. He wouldn't tell me."
Sari Walton had the delicate, disdainful face that was apparently a family characteristic. Her hair was an improbable green-gold, falling with careful disorder loose over her bare shoulders. She wore a tight garment of the very fine fur of a landside beast, plucked down to the undercoat which was as short and thick as velvet and patterned with shadowy stripes like a tiger. Thin and flexible as cloth, it sheathed her tightly to the knees and lay in broad folds about her ankles.
The two Immortals looked up, surprise showing briefly on their faces. Sam was aware of a quick surge of resentment that they should be surprised. He felt suddenly clumsy, conscious of his thick body and his utter unlikeness to these aristocrats. And he felt, too, his immaturity. As a child resents his elders, Sam resented the superior knowledge implicit upon these handsome, quiet features.
"Sit down." Kedre waved to the cushions. Stiffly Sam lowered himself, accepted a drink, sat watching the averted faces of his hosts with a hot resentment he did not try to hide. Why should he?
Kedre said, "I was thinking of the Free Companion when I brought him here. He ... what is your name? Or shall I give you one?"
-
Sullenly Sam told her. She lay back among the cushions, the gold rings gleaming softly on her hand as she raised her drink. She looked at ease, gracefully comfortable, but there was a subtle tension in her that Sam could sense. He wondered if the others could.
"I'd better explain to you first, Sam Reed," she said, "that for twenty years now I've been in contemplation."
He knew what that meant—a sort of intellectual nunnery, a high religion of the mind, wherein the acolyte retires from the world in an attempt to find—well, what is indescribable when found. Nirvana? No—stasis, perhaps, peace, balance.
He knew somewhat more of the Immortals than they probably suspected. He realized, as well as a short-lived mortal could, how complete the life that will span up to a thousand years must be. The character must be very finely integrated, so that their lives become a sort of close and delicate mosaic, an enormous one, but made up of tiles the same size as those composing an ordinary life. You may live a thousand years, but one second is still exactly one second long at a time. And periods of contemplation were needed to preserve balance.
"What about the Free Companion?" Sam demanded harshly. He knew. Robin Hale, last of the warriors, was very much in public interest just now. The deep discontent which was urging popular favor toward the primitive had caught up the Companion, draped him in synthetic glamour, and was eager to follow his project toward colonization of t
he landside.
Or they thought they were eager. So far most of the idea was still on paper. When it came to an actual struggle with the ravening fury that was continental Venus—well, realists suspected how different a matter that might turn out to be. But just now Robin Hale's crusade for colonization was enjoying a glowing, irrational boom.
"What about him?" Zachariah Harker asked. "It won't work. Do you think it could, Sam Reed?"
Sam gave him a red-browed scowl. He snorted and shook his head, deliberately not troubling to answer aloud. He was conscious of a rising desire to provoke discord among these smoothly civilized Immortals.
"When I came out of contemplation," Kedre said, "I found this Free Companion's project the most interesting thing that was happening. And one of the most dangerous. For many reasons, we feel that to attempt colonization now would be disastrous."
Sam grunted. "Why?"
Zachariah Harker leaned across the table to set down his drink. "We aren't ready yet," he said smoothly. "It will take careful planning, psychologically and technologically. And we're a declining race, Sam Reed. We can't afford to fail. This Free Companion project will fail. It must not be given the chance." He lifted his brows and regarded Sam thoughtfully.
Sam squirmed. He had an uncomfortable feeling that the deep, quiet gaze could read more upon his face than he wanted anyone to read. You couldn't tell about these people. They had lived too long. Perhaps they knew too much.
He said bluntly, "You want me to kill him?"
There was silence in the little room for a moment. Sam had an instant's impression that until he spoke they had not thought the thing through quite so far. He felt a swift rearrangement of ideas going on all about him, as if the Immortals were communicating with one another silently. People who have known each other for so many centuries would surely develop a mild ability at thought-reading, if only through the nuances of racial expression. Silently, then, the three Immortals seemed to exchange confidences above Sam's head.
Then Kedre said, "Yes. Yes, kill him if you can."
"It would be the best solution," Zachariah added slowly. "To do it now—today. Not later than forty-eight hours from now. The thing's growing too fast to wait. If we can stop him now, there's no one ready to step into his place as figurehead. Tomorrow, someone might. Can you handle it, Sam Reed?"
Sam scowled at them. "Are you all fools?" he demanded. "Or do you know more about me than I think?"
Kedre laughed. "We know. It's been three days, my dear. Do you think I let myself get this involved without knowing the man I was with? I had your name before evening of the first day. I knew your record by the next morning. It's quite safe to intrust a job like this to you. You can handle it and for a price you'll keep quiet."
Sam flushed. He hated her consciously for the first time then. No man cares to be told he has been made a fool of.
"That," he said, "will cost you twice what it would cost anyone else in the Keep." He named a very high price.
Zachariah said, "No. We can get—"
"Please, Zachariah." Kedre lifted her hand. "I'll pay it. I have a reason."
He looked at her carefully. The reason was plain on her face, and for an instant Zachariah winced. He had hoped the free-marriage she had stepped out of when she went into contemplation might be resumed very soon now. Seeing her eyes upon Sam, he recognized that it would not be soon.
Sari leaned forward and put her pale, narrow hand on his arm.
"Zachariah," she said, warning and possessiveness in her voice. "Let her have her way, my dear. There's time enough for everything."
Grandmother and granddaughter, almost mirror-images, exchanged a look in which Sam, who had missed nothing, thought he saw both rivalry and understanding.
Zachariah said, "Look over there." He moved his hand and the cell wall glowed into transparence. Floating a little distance off among the crowding cells was an inclosure in which a man sat alone. "He's been here for two hours now," Zachariah went on.
The cell drifted nearer. The man in it was thin, dark, frowning. He wore a dull brown costume.
"I know him by sight," Sam said, and stood up. The floor rocked slightly at the motion. "Drop me at the landing stage. I'll take care of him for you."
-
At the long bar he found a vacant seat and ordered a drink. The bartender looked at him sharply. This was a rendezvous for the Immortals and the upper classes; it was not often that a man as squatly plebeian as Sam Reed appeared at the bar. But there was something about Sam's scowl and the imperiousness of his order that after a moment made the bartender mutter, "Yes, sir," rather sullenly and bring him his drink.
Sam sat there a long while. He ordered twice more and made the drinks last, while the great shell hummed and spun above him and the crowd filled the dome with music and a vast amorphous murmuring. He watched the floating cell with the brown figure inside drift aimlessly around the vast circle. He was waiting for the Immortal to descend, and he was thinking very fast.
Sam was frightened. It was dangerous to mix in the affairs of the Immortals even politically. To get emotionally involved was sheer suicide and Sam had no illusion about his chances for survival as soon as his usefulness was over. He had seen the look of mild speculation that Zachariah Harker turned on him.
When the Free Companion's cell drifted finally toward the landing stage, Sam Reed was there to meet it. He wasted no words.
"I've just been hired to kill you, Hale," he said.
They were leaving Haven together an hour later when the Sheffield gang caught up with Sam.
Sam Reed would never have come this far in his career if he hadn't been a glib and convincing talker when he had to be. Robin Hale had certainly been a target for glib promotioners often enough since his colonizing crusade began to know how to brush them off. But here again the Harker blood spoke silently to its kindred Immortality in Hale, and though Sam credited his own glibness, it was the air of quiet conviction carried by his subsurface heritage which convinced the Free Companion.
Sam talked very fast—in a leisurely way. He knew that his life and Hale's were bound together just now by a short rope—a rope perhaps forty-eight hours long. Within those limits both were safe. Beyond them, both would die unless something very, very clever occurred to them. Sam's voice as he explained this carried sincere conviction.
This was the point at which the Sheffield boys picked him up. The two came out of the Haven portal and stepped onto the slow-speed ribbon of a moving Way. Then a deliberate press of the crowd separated them a bit and Sam, turning to fight his way back, saw too late the black bulb in the hand that rose toward his face and smelled the sickening fragrance of an invisible dust too late to hold his breath.
Everything about him slowed and stopped.
A hand slipped through his arm. He was being urged along the Way. Globes and lanterns made patches of color along the street until it curved; there they coalesced into a blob of hypnotic color. The Way slid smoothly along and shining, perfumed mists curled in fog-banks above it. But he saw it all in stopped motion. Dimly he knew that this was his own fault. He had let Kedre distract him; he had allowed himself to take on a new job before he finished an old one that required all his attention. He would pay now.
Then something like a whirlwind in slow motion struck across the moving belts of the Way. Sam was aware only of jostling and shouts and the thud of fists on flesh. He couldn't sort out the faces, though he saw the Free Companion's floating before him time and again in a sort of palimpsest superimposed upon other faces, dimly familiar, all of them shouting.
With a dreamlike smoothness he saw the other faces receding backward along the slower ramp while the lights slipped rapidly away at the edges of the highspeed Way and Robin Hale's hand gripped his arm.
He let the firmness of the hand guide him. He was moving, but not moving. His brain had ceased almost entirely to function. He knew only vaguely that they were mounting the ramp to one of the hydroponic rooms, that Hale was
clinking coins into an attendant's hand, that now they had paused before a tank where a heavy, gray-green foliage clustered.
From far off Hale's voice murmured, "It usually grows on this stuff. Hope they haven't sprayed it too well, but it's hardy. It gets in everywhere. Here!" A sound of scraping fingernails, a glimpse of bluish lichen crushed between Hale's palms and dusted in Sam's face.
Then everything speeded up into sudden accelerated motion timed to Sam's violent sneezes. A stinging pain began in his sinuses and spread through his brain. It exploded there, rose to a crescendo, faded.
Sweating and shaking, he found he could talk again. Time and motion came back to normal and he blinked streaming eyes at Hale.
"All right?" the Free Companion asked.
"I—guess so." Sam wiped his eyes.
"What brought that on?" Hale inquired with interest.
"My own fault," Sam told him shortly. "Personal matter. I'll settle it later—if I live."
Hale laughed. "We'll go up to my place. I want to talk to you."
-
"They don't understand what they'll be facing," the Free Companion said grimly. "I can't seem to convince anyone of that. They've got a romantic vision of a crusade and not one in a thousand has ever even set foot on dry land."
"Convince me," Sam said.
"I saw the Logician," Hale began. "The crusade was his idea. I needed—something. This is it, and I'm afraid of it now. It's got out of hand. These people are emotional dead-beats. They're pawing me like so many dogs begging for romance. All I can offer them is personal hardship beyond anything they can even dream, and no hope of success for this generation or the next. That sort of spirit seems to have bred out of the race since we've lived in Keeps. Maybe the underwater horizons are too narrow. They can't see beyond them, or their own noses." He grinned. "I offer not peace but a sword," he said. "And nobody will believe it."
