So Peter Hubbard was not surprised when, a few months later, he got
word that Jan Shortmire had died on Morethis. The surprising thing was
the extraordinarily prosaic manner of his death: he had simply fallen
into a river and drowned. No traveler on Morethis had been known to
die by undisputed accident before; as a result, the vidicasts devoted
more attention to the event than they might have otherwise. But the
news died down, as other news took its place. In so large a universe,
something was always happening; the dog days were forever gone from
journalism.
Going through the old man's papers in his capacity as executor, Hubbard
came across an old passport. He was startled to discover that this trip
had not been Shortmire's first to Morethis. Why had he lied about it?
But that was a question that no one alive could answer--or so Hubbard
thought.
Almost two years went by before the will was finally probated on all
the planets where Shortmire had owned property. Then the search for
Emrys Shortmire began. Messages were dispatched to all the civilized
planets, and Peter Hubbard settled back for a long wait.
* * * * *
Five years after Jan Shortmire's death, the intercom on Peter Hubbard's
desk buzzed and his secretary's voice--his was one of the few legal
offices wealthy enough to afford human help--said, "Mr. Emrys Shortmire
to see you, sir."
How could a man come from so many light-years' distance without
radioing on ahead, or at least tele-calling from his hotel? Dignity
demanded that Hubbard tell his secretary to inform Shortmire that he
never saw anyone without an appointment. Curiosity won. "Ask him to
come in," he said.
The door slid open. Hubbard started to rise, with the old-fashioned
courtesy of a family lawyer. But he never made it. He sat, frozen with
shock, staring at the man in the doorway. Because Emrys Shortmire
wasn't a man; he was a boy. He might have been a stripling of thirty,
except for his eyes. Copper-bright and copper-hard they were, too hard
for a boy's. Give him forty, even forty-five, that would still have
made Jan Shortmire a father when he was nearly a hundred and twenty.
The longevity treatment produced remarkable results, but none that
fantastic. Though health and strength could be restored, fertility,
like youth, once vanished was gone forever.
Yet the boy looked too sophisticated to have made a stupid mistake
like that, if he were an imposter. More important, he _looked_ like
Jan Shortmire--not the Shortmire whom Hubbard had known, but the
broad-shouldered youth of the early pictures, golden of hair and skin
and eyes, almost classical in feature and build. Plastic surgery could
have converted a fleeting resemblance to a precise one, yet, somehow,
Hubbard _felt_ that this was flesh and blood of the old man's.
"You're very like your father," he said, inaccurately: Emrys was less
like his father than he should have been, given that startling identity
of physique.
"Am I?" The boy smiled. "I never knew him. Of course, I know I look
like the pictures, but pictures never tell much, do they?"
He had many papers to give Peter Hubbard. Too many; no honest man
had his life so well in order. But then Emrys' honesty was not the
issue, only his identity. The birth certificate said he had been born
on Clergal fifty-five years before, so he was ten years older than
Hubbard's wildest estimate. A young man, but not a boy--a man of full
maturity, but still too young to be, normally, Jan Shortmire's son.
Then Hubbard opened Emrys Shortmire's passport and received another
shock.
He tried to sound calm. "I see you were on Morethis the same time your
father was!"