by Jack Dann
The girl glanced at the photographs on the desk, looked keenly into May's eyes.
"Mrs. Foster, how open-minded are you? No, strike that. I've yet to meet a bigot who didn't think of himself as Blind Justice, Incarnate. Let's try a more pragmatic test. Do you read science fiction?"
"Uh, some."
"Fantasy?"
"A little."
"Well, what do you think of it? I mean, do you enjoy it?" Her eyes bored.
"Well, uh, I guess I like some of it. Quite a bit of it leaves me cold." She hesitated. "My husband reads it mostly. And my father-in-law. He's a biochemist," she added lamely, as though that excused something.
Melissa shrugged her adult shrug, made up her mind.
"What would you say if I told you my father was a wizard?"
"Frankly, I'd say you've built up an elaborate delusional system about your unknown parents. Orphans often do, you know."
"Yeah, Anderson again. But thanks for being honest; it was the right answer for you. I suspect, however," she paused, fixed the woman with an unwavering sidelong glance, "you're willing to believe that I might be more than your average maladjusted foster child."
Under that stare, May could do nothing but nod. Once. Slowly.
"What would you say if I told you that I am over twenty-four hundred years old?"
May felt surprise, fear, elation, an emotion that had no name.
"I'd say that you ought to meet my husband."
The child sat at the dinner table with her hands folded neatly on her lap. The three adults toyed with their aperitifs and made small talk. Melissa responded to each effort to bring her into the conversation with a few polite words, just the right number of just the right words for a well-behaved child to speak when she is a first-time dinner guest among people who hardly know her. But she never volunteered any small talk of her own.
George Foster, Jr., sensed that the seemingly innocent child sitting across from him was waiting them out, but he couldn't be sure. One thing he was sure of was that if this child were indeed older than Christendom he didn't have much chance against her in intellectual games. That much decided, he was perfectly willing to play out the evening in a straightforward manner. But in his own good time.
"Would you start the salad around, Dad?" he prompted. "I hope you like endive, Melissa. Or is that also a taste acquired in adulthood, like alcohol?" The girl had refused a dry sherry, politely but firmly.
"I'm sure I'll enjoy the salad, thank you. The dressing smells delicious. It's a personal recipe, isn't it?"
"Yes, as a matter of fact it is," George said in mild surprise. He suddenly realized that he habitually classified all thin people as picky, indifferent eaters. A gastronome didn't have to be overweight.
"Being a history professor gives me more freedom to schedule my time than May has," he found himself explaining. "It is an easy step from cooking because you must, to cooking because you enjoy it. That mustard dressing is one of my earliest inventions. Would you like the recipe?"
"Yes, thank you. I don't cook often, but when I do I like to produce something better than average." She delivered the pretty compliment with a seeming lack of guile. She also avoided, George noted, responding to the veiled probe about her age. He was becoming more and more impressed.
They broke bread and munched greens.
How do I handle this? By the way, May tells me you're twenty-four hundred years old. He met his father's eye, caught the faintest of shrugs. Thanks for the help.
"By the way, May tells me you were in England for a while." Now why in hell did he say that?
"I didn't actually say so, but yes, I was. Actually, we discussed the Industrial Revolution, briefly."
Were you there?
"I'm a medievalist, actually, but I'm also a bit of an Anglophile." George caught himself before he could lapse into the clipped, pseudo-British accent that phrase always triggered in him. He felt particularly vulnerable to making an ass of himself under that innocent gaze.
"Do you know much about English royalty?" He was about as subtle as a tonsillectomy.
"We studied it in school some."
"I always wanted to be another Admiral Nelson. Damned shame the way he died. What was it the king said after his funeral, it was Edward, I think—"
Melissa put her fork down.
"It was King George, and you know it. Look, before I came here I lived in Berkeley for a while." She caught May's look. "I know what my records say. After all, I wrote them . . . as I was saying, I was in Berkeley a few years back. It was right in the middle of the worst of the student unrest and we lived not three blocks from campus. Every day I walked those streets and every night we'd watch the riots and the thrashing on TV. Yet not once did I ever see one of those events with my own eyes."
She looked at them each in turn.
"Something could be happening a block away, something that attracted network television coverage and carloads of police, and I wouldn't know about it until I got home and turned on Cronkite. I think I may have smelled tear gas, once."
She picked up her fork.
"You can quiz me all you want to, Dr. Foster, about admirals and kings and dates. I guess that's what history is all about. But don't expect me to tell you about anything I didn't learn in school. Or see on television."
She stabbed viciously at a last scrap of endive. They watched her as she ate.
"Kids don't get invited to the events that make history. Until very recently all they ever did was work. Worked until they grew old or worked until they starved or worked until they were killed by a passing war. That's as close as most kids get to history, outside the classroom. Dates don't mean much when every day looks like every other."
George was at a loss for something to say after that, so he got up and went to the sideboard where the main dishes were being kept warm. He made an elaborate exercise out of removing lids and collecting hot pads.
"Are you really twenty-four hundred years old?" asked George Foster, Sr. There, it was out in the open.
"Near as I can tell," spooning chicken and dumplings onto her plate. "Like I said, dates don't mean much to a kid. It was two or three hundred years before I gave much thought to when everything started. By then, it was a little hard to reconstruct. I make it twenty-four hundred and thirty-three years, now. Give or take a decade."
Give or take a decade!
"And your father was a magician?" May pursued.
"Not a magician, a wizard." A little exasperated. "He didn't practice magic or cast spells; he was a wise man, a scholar. You could call him a scientist, except there wasn't too much science back then. Not that he didn't know a lot about some things—obviously he did—but he didn't work with an organized body of knowledge the way people do now."
Somehow she had contrived to fill her plate and make a noticeable dent in her chicken without interrupting her narrative. George marveled at the girl's varied social talents.
"Anyway, he was working on a method of restoring youth. Everybody was, in those days. Very stylish. There was actually quite a bit of progress being made. I remember one old geezer actually renewed his sex life for about thirty years."
"You mean, you know how to reverse aging?" George, Sr., asked intently. The candlelight couldn't erase all the lines in his face.
"Sorry, no, I didn't say that." She watched the elder Foster's expression closely, her tone earnestly entreating him to believe her. "I just said I know of one man who did that once. For a while. But he didn't tell anyone else how he did it, as far as I know. The knowledge died with him."
Melissa turned to the others, looking for supporting belief.
"Look, that's the way people were, up until the last few centuries. Secrecy was what kept science from blossoming for so long. I saw digitalis appear and disappear at least three times before it became common knowledge. . . . I really can't help you." Gently.
"I believe you, child." George, Sr., reached for the wine bottle.
"My father spent most
of his time trying to second-guess the competition. I suppose they were doing the same thing. His only real success story was me. He found a way to stop the aging process just before puberty, and it's worked for me all this time."
"He told you how he did it?" George, Sr., asked.
"I know what to do. I don't understand the mechanism, yet. I know it's of no use to adults."
"You've tried it?"
"Extensively." An iron door of finality clanged in that word.
"Could you describe the method?"
"I could. I won't. Perhaps I am just a product of my age, but secrecy seems to be the only safe haven in this matter. I've had a few painful experiences." They waited, but she did not elaborate.
George, Jr., got up to clear the table. He reached to pick up a plate and stopped.
"Why have you told us all this, Melissa?"
"Isn't it obvious?" She folded her hands on her lap in that posture of infinite patience. "No, I suppose it isn't unless you've lived as I have.
"After my father died, I hung around Athens for a while—did I mention, that's where we lived? But too many people knew me and began to wonder out loud about why I wasn't growing up. Some of the other wizards began to eye me speculatively, before I wised up and got out of town. I didn't want to die a prisoner before anyone figured out I had nothing useful to divulge.
"I soon found that I couldn't escape from my basic problem. There's always someone happy to take in a child, particularly a healthy one that's willing to do more than her share of the work. But after a few years, it would become obvious that I was not growing up like other children. Suspicion would lead to fear, and fear always leads to trouble. I've learned to judge to a nicety when it's time to move on."
George, Jr., placed a covered server on the table and unveiled a chocolate layer cake. Like all children throughout time, Melissa grinned in delight.
"It's a decided nuisance looking like a child—being a child—particularly now. You can't just go get a job and rent your own apartment. You can't apply for a driver's license. You have to belong to someone and be in school, or some government busybody will be causing trouble. And with modern record-keeping, you have to build a believable existence on paper too. That's getting harder all the time."
"It would seem to me," interposed George, Jr., "that your best bet would be to move to one of the less developed countries. In Africa, or South America. There'd be a lot less hassle."
Melissa made a face.
"No, thank you. I learned a long time ago to stick with the people who have the highest standard of living around. It's worth the trouble. . . . Nur wer in Wohlstand lebt, lebt angenehm. You know Brecht? Good."
The girl gave up all pretense of conversation long enough to demolish a wedge of cake.
"That was an excellent dinner. Thank you." She dabbed her lips daintily with her napkin. "I haven't answered your question completely.
"I'm telling you all about myself because it's time to move on again. I've overstayed my welcome with the Stuarts. My records are useless to me now—in fact they're an embarrassment. To keep on the way I've been, I'll have to manufacture a whole new set and insinuate them into someone's files, somewhere. I thought it might be easier this time to take the honest approach."
She looked at them expectantly.
"You mean, you want us to help you get into a new foster home?" George, Jr., strained to keep the incredulity out of his voice.
Melissa looked down at her empty dessert plate.
"George, you are an insensitive lout," May said with surprising fervor. "Don't you understand? She's asking us to take her in."
George was thunderstruck.
"Us? Well, ah. But we don't have any children for her to play with. I mean—" He shut his mouth before he started to gibber. Melissa would not look up. George looked at his wife, his father. It was clear that they had completely outpaced him and had already made up their minds.
"I suppose it's possible," he muttered lamely.
The girl looked up at last, tears lurking in the corners of her eyes.
"Oh, please. I'm good at housework and I don't make any noise. And I've been thinking—maybe I don't know much history, but I do know a lot about how people lived in a lot of different times and places. And I can read all sorts of languages. Maybe I could help you with your medieval studies." The words tumbled over each other.
"And I remember some of the things my father tried," she said to George, Sr. "Maybe your training in biochemistry will let you see where he went wrong. I know he had some success." The girl was very close to begging, George knew. He couldn't bear that.
"Dad?" he asked, mustering what aplomb he could.
"I think it would work out," George, Sr., said slowly. "Yes. I think it would work out quite well."
"May?"
"You know my answer, George."
"Well, then." Still half bewildered. "I guess it's settled. When can you move in, Melissa?"
The answer, if there was one, was lost amidst scraping of chairs and happy bawling noises from May and the girl. May always wanted a child, George rationalized, perhaps this will be good for her. He exchanged a tentative smile with his father.
May was still hugging Melissa enthusiastically. Over his wife's shoulder, George could see the child's tear-streaked face. For just one brief moment, he thought he detected an abstracted expression there, as though the child was already calculating how long this particular episode would last. But then the look was drowned in another flood of happy tears and George found himself smiling at his new daughter.
The child sat under the tree with her hands folded neatly on her lap. She looked up as George, Sr., approached. His gait had grown noticeably less confident in the last year; the stiffness and teetery uncertainty of age could no longer be ignored. George, Sr., was a proud man, but he was no fool. He lowered himself carefully onto a tree stump.
"Hello, Grandpa," Melissa said with just a hint of warmth. She sensed his mood, George, Sr., realized, and was being carefully disarming.
"Mortimer died," was all he said.
"I was afraid he might. He'd lived a long time, for a white rat. Did you learn anything from the last blood sample?"
"No." Wearily. "Usual decay products. He died of old age. I could put it fancier, but that's what it amounts to. And I don't know why he suddenly started losing ground, after all these months. So I don't know where to go from here."
They sat in silence, Melissa patient as ever.
"You could give me some of your potion."
"No."
"I know you have some to spare—you're cautious. That's why you spend so much time back in the woods, isn't it? You're making the stuff your father told you about."
"I told you it wouldn't help you any and you promised not to ask." There was no accusation in her voice, it was a simple statement.
"Wouldn't you like to grow up, sometime?" he asked at length.
"Would you choose to be Emperor of the World if you knew you would be assassinated in two weeks? No, thank you. I'll stick with what I've got."
"If we studied the makeup of your potion, we might figure out a way to let you grow up and still remain immortal."
"I'm not all that immortal. Which is why I don't want too many people to know about me or my methods. Some jealous fool might decide to put a bullet through my head out of spite. . . . I can endure diseases. I even regrew a finger once—took forty years. But I couldn't survive massive trauma." She drew her knees up and hugged them protectively.
"You have to realize that most of my defenses are prophylactic. I've learned to anticipate damage and avoid it as much as possible. But my body's defenses are just extensions of a child's basic resource, growth. It's a tricky business to grow out of an injury without growing up in the process. Once certain glands take over, there's no stopping them.
"Take teeth, for instance. They were designed for a finite lifetime, maybe half a century of gnawing on bones. When mine wear down, all I can do is pull them
and wait what seems like forever for replacements to grow in. Painful, too. So I brush after meals and avoid abrasives. I stay well clear of dentists and their drills. That way I only have to suffer every couple of hundred years."
George, Sr., felt dizzy at the thought of planning centuries the way one might lay out semesters. Such incongruous words from the mouth of a little girl sitting under a tree hugging her knees. He began to understand why she almost never spoke of her age or her past unless directly asked.
"I know a lot of biochemistry, too," she went on. "You must have recognized that by now." He nodded, reluctantly. "Well, I've studied what you call my 'potion' and I don't think we know enough biology or chemistry yet to understand it. Certainly not enough to make changes.
"I know how to hold onto childhood. That's not the same problem as restoring youth."
"But don't you want badly to be able to grow up? You said yourself what a nuisance it is being a child in the twentieth century."
"Sure, it's a nuisance. But it's what I've got and I don't want to risk it." She leaned forward, chin resting on kneecaps.
"Look, I've recruited other kids in the past. Ones I liked, ones I thought I could spend a long time with. But sooner or later, every one of them snatched at the bait you're dangling. They all decided to grow up 'just a little bit.' Well, they did. And now they're dead. I'll stick with my children's games, if it please you."
"You don't mind wasting all that time in school? Learning the same things over and over again? Surrounded by nothing but children? Real children?" He put a twist of malice in the emphasis.
"What waste? Time? Got lots of that. How much of your life have you spent actually doing research, compared to the time spent writing reports and driving to work? How much time does Mrs. Foster get to spend talking to troubled kids? She's lucky if she averages five minutes a day. We all spend most of our time doing routine chores. It would be unusual if any of us did not.
"And I don't mind being around kids. I like them."
"I never have understood that," George, Sr., said half abstractedly. "How well you can mix with children so much younger than you. How you can act like them."
