by C. L. Moore
So, groping, he came at last to the one man who had stood in loco parentis to him many years before.
It was not surprising that the Slider still lived in the same dingy apartment in a corner of the Keep. What was surprising was the fact that the Slider still lived.
Sam hadn't expected that. He had expected it so little, unconsciously, that he hadn't put on his disguise again.
-
The Slider was in bed, a monstrously corpulent figure sagging the mattress, his dropsical face bluish. He sniffed painfully. His malevolent little eyes regarded Sam steadily.
"All right," he wheezed. "Come on in, kid."
The room was filthy. In the bed the old man puffed and blinked and tried to prop himself upright. He gave up the impossible task and sank back, staring at Sam.
"Give me a drink," he said, breathlessly.
Sam found a bottle on the table and uncapped it. The invalid drank greedily. A flush spread over the sagging cheeks.
"Woman never does anything I tell her," he mumbled. "What you want?"
Sam regarded him in distance and amazement. The monstrous creature seemed almost as immortal as the Immortals themselves, but a Tithonian sort of immortality that no sane man would covet. He must be close to a hundred years old now, Sam thought, marveling.
He stepped forward and took the bottle from the Slider's lax hand.
"Don't do that. Give it back. I need—"
"Answer some questions first"
"The bottle—let's have it."
"When you've told me what I want to know."
The Slider groped among his dirty bedding. His hand came out with a needle-pistol half engulfed by the flesh. The tiny muzzle held steady on Sam.
"Gimme the bottle, kid," the Slider said softly.
Sam shrugged and held it out, feeling reassured. The old man hadn't quite lost his touch, then. Perhaps he had come to the right place, after all.
"Slider," he said, "do you know how long since you saw me last?"
The shapeless lips mumbled a moment. "Long time, son. Long time. Thirty—no, close on to forty years, eh?"
"But—you knew me. I haven't changed. I haven't grown older. And you weren't even surprised. Slider, you must have known about me. Where have I been?"
A subterranean chuckle heaved the great wallowing bulk. The bed creaked.
"You think you're real?" the Slider demanded. "Don't be a fool. I'm dreaming you, ain't I?" He reached out and patted an opalescent globe the size of a man's fist. "This is the stuff, kid. You don't need to feel any pain no matter what ails you, long as you got Orange Devil around."
Sam stepped closer, looking down at the bright powder in the globe.
"Oh," he said.
The Slider peered up at him out of little shrewd eyes in their fat creases. The eyes cleared a bit as they stared. "You're real, ain't you?" he murmured. "Yes, I guess you are. All right, son, now I'm surprised."
Sam eyed the orange powder. He knew what it was, yes. A drug of sorts, weakening the perception between objective and subjective, so that a man's mental images and ideations became almost tangible to him. The hope that had roused for a moment sank back in his mind. No, he was not likely to learn from the Slider where he had spent that vanished forty years.
"What's happened to you, Sam?" the Slider wheezed. "You ought to be dead long ago."
"The last thing I remember is having dream-dust blown in my face. That was forty years ago. But I haven't changed!"
"Dream-dust—that don't keep you young."
"Is there anything that will? Any sort of preservation at all that could have kept me—like this?"
The bed heaved again with the enormous chuckling of the sick man.
"Sure," he said. "Sure! Get yourself born of the right stock—you live a thousand years."
"What do you mean?" Suddenly Sam found that he was shaking. Until now he had had no time to reason the thing out. He awoke, he was young when he should have been old—ergo, he was immortal. But how and why he had not yet considered. Out of some unconscious well of sureness, he had assumed that like the long-limbed Immortals, he, too, was the heir of a millennium of life. But all Immortals until now had been slender, tall, fine-boned ...
"You've always been bald?" the Slider asked obliquely. At Sam's mystified nod he went on. "Might of been sickness when you were a baby. Then it might not. When I first knew you, you had a few little scars here and there. They're mostly gone now, I see. But the Slider's smart, kid. I heard some talk a long time ago—didn't connect it with you till now. There was a woman, a medic, who did some work on a baby once and got herself a happy-cloak for pay."
"What kind of work?" Sam asked tightly.
"Mostly glands. That give you any ideas?"
"Yes," Sam said. His voice was thick. His throat felt tight and the blood throbbed in his temples and his neck. He took two forward steps, picked up a plastic chair and broke it across his knee. The tough plastic broke hard, cutting his hands a little, bruising his knee. The final snap as the chair gave way was satisfying. Not enough, but satisfying. With a tremendous effort he choked back his useless rage, fettering it as Fenris Wolf was fettered, to bide its time. Carefully he set down the chair and faced the Slider.
"I'm an Immortal," he said. "That's what it means. I'd have grown up like them if ... if someone hadn't paid that medic. Who paid her?"
A vast seismographic shrug rippled the bedding. "I never heard." The Slider wallowed restlessly. "Give me another drink."
"You've got the bottle," Sam pointed out. "Slider—forget about this immortality. I'll take care of—everything. I came to you about something else. Slider, have you still got your contacts?"
"I'm still with it," the Slider said, tilting the bottle.
Sam showed him the box he had taken from Mallard's men. "This is korium. I want two thousand credits. Keep all you get above that. Make sure the transaction can't be traced."
"Hijacked?" the Slider demanded. "Better give me a name, so I can play it close."
"Doc Mallard."
The Slider chuckled. "Sure, kid. I'll fix it. Shove that visor over here."
"I'm in a hurry."
"Come back in an hour."
"Good. One thing more—you're the only one who knows I'm young." Sam pulled the ragged beard from his pocket and dangled it.
"I get it. Trust the Slider, kid. See you in an hour."
Sam went out
-
At the hospital he would have to give a name. Would they recognize him as the old-time Colony swindler? Someone might. His eye-pattern records were on file, so must his other identifying marks be recorded. The average man, seeing a baffling familiarity in Sam, would chalk it up to some accidental resemblance. But in the sanitarium he would be under much closer observation. Too close to maintain the octogenarian disguise—that was certain.
Suddenly it occurred to Sam that there was one man who could very logically resemble him and yet seem the age he looked now.
His own son.
He had none, it was true. But he might have had. And everyone knew that short physiques weren't Immortal, couldn't tap the fountain of youth. He could preserve his precious secret and get by with a minimal disguise as Sam Reed's son.
What name? Out of the depths of his omnivorous reading in those years which still seemed hardly an hour ago he dredged up the memory of the prophet Samuel, whose eldest son was Joel. Now the name of his firstborn was Joel.
As good a name as any. He was Joel Reed ...
-
Thirty-five minutes after that he stood before the hospital reception desk, shocked into immobility with surprise, able only to stare, while the circuits of his brain tried frantically to close their contacts again. But the disorientation was too abrupt and complete. All he could do was stand there, repeating stupidly, "What? What did you say?"
The competent young man behind the desk said patiently, "We discharged you as cured early this morning."
Sam opened his mouth and closed
it. No sound came out.
The young man regarded him thoughtfully. "Amnesia?" he suggested. "It hardly ever happens, but—do you want to see one of the doctors?"
Sam nodded.
-
"Six weeks ago," the man in the quiet office said, "you were brought here for the regulation cure. A man who gave the name of Evans delivered you and signed you in. He gave us no permanent address—said he was a transient at one of the hotels. You can try to trace him later if you like. The fee was paid anonymously, by special delivery, just before you arrived. You seemed in good physical condition on admission." The doctor referred again to the ledger page before him. "Apparently adequate care had been taken of you while you were dream-dusting. You were discharged this morning. You seemed quite normal. Another man called for you—not the same one, though he gave the name of Evans, too. That's all I can tell you, Mr. Reed."
"But"—Sam rubbed his forehead dazedly—"why have I forgotten? What does it mean? I—"
"There are a good many amnesic preparations on the underworld market, unfortunately," the doctor said. "You left here in a suit of good clothes, with a hundred credits in your pocket. Did you wake with them?"
"No. I—"
"You were probably robbed."
"Yes, I ... of course that was it." Sam's eyes went blank as he thought of the many ways in which a man might be rendered unconscious—a puff of dust in the face in some alleyway, a crack on the head. Robbers rarely bothered to stuff a stripped victim into their own discarded rags, but aside from that the story was plausible enough.
Except for that man who had been waiting when he woke.
He got up, still slightly dazed. "If I could have the address the Evans man gave you—"
-
It would lead nowhere, he knew, looking down on the scrawled slip as the moving Way glided slowly beneath him, carrying him away from the hospital. Whoever was responsible for the chain of mysteries which had led him here would have covered any tracks efficiently.
Someone had fed him dream-dust forty years ago. Zachariah Harker—that much he knew. Kedre Walton gave the signal, but Zachariah was the man behind her. The voice is Jacob's voice, but the hand is the hand of Esau.
Had Harker watched over him these forty years? Had Kedre? Someone did a careful job of it, according to the doctor. Someone paid to have him cured at last, and discharged—and robbed and stripped, so that when he woke he possessed materially as little as he had possessed when he came into the world.
Less—for then he came with a birthright. Well, of that they had not cheated him after all. And if there were a Joel Reed, Sam realized with a sudden gust of pride, he would stand head and shoulders above his father, on long, straight legs, slender and elegant as Zachariah himself—an Immortal in body as well as in heritage.
The stretching of his mind was almost painful as he surveyed the years before him. And when he thought now of the Slider he saw him through a new temporal perspective that was almost frightening. It was oddly similar to the attitude he might have toward a cat or a dog. There was always, and there must always be from now on, the knowledge that the life-span of an ordinary man was too short.
No wonder the Families had formed a tight clique. How could you feel deep friendship, or love untouched by pity, except for an equal? It was the old, old gulf between gods and men. Nothing—immortal—was alien.
That didn't solve his current problem. He was here on sufferance—by grace of somebody's indulgence. Whose? If only he had kept his grip on the collar of that man in the alley until his own wits returned to him! Someone had deliberately redeemed him from oblivion and set him free, penniless and in rags—why? To watch what he would do? It was a godlike concept. Zachariah? He looked around hopelessly at the uninterested crowds that moved with him along the Way. Did one of these faces mask an absorbed interest in his behavior? Or had his unknown guardian tired of the burden and set him on his own feet again, to go his own way?
Well, in time he would know. Or he would never know.
One excellent result of the past few hours was the money in his pocket, two thousand credits, free and clear. He had hurdled the next step without realizing it. Now there were a few old scores to settle, a few details to attend to, and then—Immortality!
He refused to think of it. His mind shrank from the infinite complexities, the fantastic personal applications of his new, extended life. Instead, he concentrated on the two men named Evans who had shepherded him to and from the hospital. The Slider would start investigations on those—he made a mental note. Rosathe. The Slider would be useful there, too. Other things he would attend to himself.
His throat was dry. He laughed to himself. Not the pseudo-thirst of dream-dust, after all. He had simply played a trick on himself. Water could have quenched his thirst at any time, had he allowed himself to believe it. He stepped off the Way at the nearest Public Aid station and drank cool water, freshly cold, ecstatically quenching, until he could drink no more.
He looked up at the brightness of the Way, the towering buildings beyond, twinkling with lights, and something within him began to expand, growing and growing until it seemed the Keep could not contain this strange new vastness. He stared up at the impervium dome and pierced the shallow seas above it, and the clouds and the twinkling void beyond which he had never seen. There was so much to do now. And no need to hurry. He had time. All the time in the world.
Time to kill.
-
His bones are full of the sin of his youth, which shall lie down with him in the dust. Though wickedness be sweet in his mouth ...
—Job
He turned from his contemplation of the city and into the arms of the two men in uniform who had come up behind him on the Way platform. The uniforms had not changed—they were private government police and Sam knew before a word had been uttered that there was no point in trying to argue.
In a way he was rather more pleased than otherwise as the older of the two flashed an engraved plaque at him and said, "Come along." At least, someone else had finally made a tangible move. Perhaps now he would learn the answers to some of the questions that had been tantalizing him.
They took him along the high-speed Ways toward the center of the Keep. People glanced curiously at the three as the city flashed past around them. Sam held the railing to keep steady, aware of an unaccustomed flutter around his face as his red wig blew in the wind of their speed. He was watching with interest and anticipation the destination toward which they seemed headed.
The Immortals of every Keep lived in a group of high, colored towers built at the city's center and guarded by a ring of walled gardens. The police were taking Sam straight toward the tall, shining quarters of the Harker Family. Sam was not surprised. It seemed unlikely that Zachariah would have ordered his ruin forty years ago and then let him wander unguarded for the next forty. On the other hand, it seemed unlikely that Zachariah would have let him live at all. Sam shrugged. He should know the truth, soon.
They took him in through a small door at the back of the highest tower, down transparent plastic steps under which a stream of gray water flowed toward the gardens beyond. Red and gold fish went by with the stream, a long blue ribbon-eel, a strand of flowering seaweed.
At the foot of the steps a small gilded lift was waiting. The two policemen put Sam into it, closed the door without a word behind him. He had a glimpse through the glass of their impassive faces sliding down outside; then he was alone in the gently sighing cage as it rose toward the height of the Harker tower.
The lift's walls were mirrored. Sam considered himself in the role of Joel Reed, feeling rather foolish about it, wondering whether whoever it was that waited him above knew him already as Sam Reed. The disguise was good. He couldn't look exactly like his supposed father, but there was a naturally strong likeness. A red wig matched the heavy red brows, trimmed and smoothed a little now. A set of tooth caps altered the contour of his lower face. There were eye shells with bright blue irises instead of
gray. Nothing else.
The eye shells served the same psychological purpose as dark glasses—unconsciously Sam felt himself masked. He could look out, but nobody could look in. It is difficult to meet a straight stare, unprotected, when you have something to hide.
The pressure on Sam's soles decreased; the lift was slowing. It stopped, the door slid open and he stepped out into a long hall whose walls and ceiling were a constant rustle of green leaves. A glow of simulated daylight poured softly through them from luminous walls. The vines sprang from hydroponic tanks under the floor and met in a trellislike tunnel overhead. Flowers and fruit swayed among the leaves in a scented, continuing breeze that soughed down the arbor. To a Keep-bred man it was exotic beyond all imagining.
-
Sam went warily down the silent hall, shrinking a little from the leaves that brushed his face. Like all Venus-bred people he feared and mistrusted by instinct the dangerous products of the landside world.
From the other end of the hall came the pleasant tinkle and splash of falling water. Sam paused on the threshold of the room upon which the trellis opened, staring in amazement
This room was an arbor, too. Vines looped down festooned with clustering blossoms; the air was heavy with their fragrance. And the floor of the room was water. Blue water, a shallow lake of it perhaps a foot deep, filling the room from wall to wall. Flowers mirrored themselves in its surface, other flowers floated upon it. Tiny fish darted among their drifting leaves. A luminous jellyfish or two lay motionless on the blue water, dangling dangerous-looking jeweled webs.
There was a bridge of filigreed glass, insubstantial-looking as frost, that spanned the pool. One end lay at Sam's feet, the other at a low platform, cushion-covered, on the far side of the room. A woman lay face-down among the cushions, elbow on the edge of the pool, one arm submerged to the elbow as she splashed in the shining water. Her hair hid her face, its curled ends dipping in the ripples. The hair was a very pale green-gold, wholly unreal in its color and its water-smooth lustrousness.
