"Perhaps." Hubbard rose to his feet also, trying to appear brisk and
alert and _young_. At least he could walk without aid, he thought,
staring pointedly at the stick leaning against the wall. "I would
rather you didn't tell Shortmire I had come to see you about him."
"Of course not, if you wish."
But Hubbard knew Dyall would not keep the stranger's visit from his
friend. Odd that Dyall and young Shortmire should be friends. Not so
odd either, though; young Shortmire had no reason to love his father.
Besides, although Jan Shortmire had hated Nicholas Dyall, that did not
mean Nicholas Dyall had hated Jan Shortmire, or even knew of the other
man's animosity.
* * * * *
As he was riding back to his hotel, Hubbard let his tired old body
indulge the aches and pains that were its rightful heritage. As his
body relaxed, his mind relaxed, and he began to think more clearly.
Perhaps Dyall would not listen to him--perhaps Dyall had some reason
for not listening--but the government might.
What young Shortmire might have done as a human, they would consider a
matter for local law--but the fact that human and Morethan had begotten
offspring would interest them. The fact that the Morethans might have
managed at last to get a spy on Earth would interest them. If Emrys
would not surrender his birth certificate, they could get another from
Clergal. Only, would the government's representative believe Hubbard
enough to get that birth certificate? Or would they, like Dyall,
dismiss him as a doddering old fool?
The private humiliation had been hard enough; he hated to risk a public
one. But it was his duty to tell officialdom of his suspicions, he knew
miserably. Never again could he think with pride of himself as a worthy
citizen if he didn't at least make the attempt. Never again could
he let himself feel a justifiable jealousy of those with endowments
superior to his, if he did not prove himself worthy of what he had.
Well, there was no hurry; he would sleep on it. He was mistaken. In
the morning, before he had even started to decide upon any course of
action, the front desk called to announce that a Mr. Shortmire wished
to see him.
"Very well," the old lawyer said wearily into the machine, _to_ the
machine, for it was the Dyall itself speaking. "Send him up."
A short while later, there was a rap on the door. "Come in," Hubbard
called.
The door slid open. A man entered, a tawny golden youth with eyes like
burnished metal. "Do you know who I am, Peter?"
"Of course," Hubbard said, faintly disgusted, since he considered
melodrama vulgar. "You're Emrys Shortmire."
"You're wrong," the man said. "I'm Jan Shortmire."
V
Emrys Shortmire had gone home the night Dyall had shown him the
portrait of his long-dead wife, and Emrys had dreamed, not of Megan
Dyall, but of Alissa Embel, Megan's great-great-grandmother, whom he
had wanted a hundred years before, and who had married Nicholas Dyall.
Consciously, he had forgotten her, but at the back of his mind, she
had, for over a century, walked hand in hand with his hatred.
That night he understood what he had not realized then. He had
completed the engines with which he had been tinkering for years
with a real vengeance. He had taken the first starship out into
space himself--when no one had faith in his engines, least of all
himself--merely "to show her" what a great man he was, even if he died
in the showing. In his spite, he had opened up the stars for mankind.
And when he returned, years later, he found that Dyall, too, had
stopped tinkering and had changed the pattern of his gadgets to one
more acceptable to the public taste. Before, they had operated quite
satisfyingly, but they had not been salable in the shape he had given
them, and no manufacturer had been interested in leasing the patents.
Now that he had yielded, manufacturers were falling all over themselves
to get the right to produce his machines.
Dyall's was not as soul-stirring a success as Shortmire's--he did not
inspire cheering crowds and parades--but a more enduringly popular
one. The Shortmire engines carried humanity to the stars, but it was
the Dyall machines that cooked humanity's dinners and kept its houses
clean. So humanity respected Jan Shortmire and took Nicholas Dyall to
its collective heart.
Emrys awakened, remembering all this and rigid with loathing for
Nicholas Dyall, and for the world which had allowed Nicholas Dyall to
take from him something he had wanted. Something which had, as soon as
he'd known for sure he'd lost it forever, become what he wanted most.
And also he hated the world which had given Alissa Embel to Dyall
and had then proceeded to heap on him in addition every honor Jan
Shortmire himself had won in an effort to make up for what he'd lost.
Jan Shortmire had risked his life in space; Nicholas Dyall had sat
comfortably in his chair--and both were equally honored.
Then Emrys--as Emrys--caught hold of himself. It was true that
originally there had been injustice. But it had been righted and so
there was no more reason to hate Dyall. _I have a second chance, but he
will have none. I will live out another full lifetime, and I will have
Megan, too, and he'll die in a few years. And as for the world, I have
already revenged myself on it in advance._
He got up and pulled a spun-metal robe about him, amethyst and sable--a
gift from Morethis. There was always a costly gift on his birthday,
either out of kindness or cruelty, together with a vial of the golden
capsules.
What a pity, he thought, as he went downstairs, that Dyall and the
world both would never know the truth: that Jan Shortmire had no son,
that Emrys and Jan Shortmire were one.
* * * * *
The Morethans first came to Jan Shortmire when, approaching his natural
old age, he had traveled as a visitor to their planet--largely because
old men did not go to Morethis--and they had made him their offer. He
had laughed in their dark and exquisite faces.
"My own government will give me fifty years more of life," he said,
for he had heard, during the voyage out, that he would be on the next
honors list. "What need do I have of you?"
"We can give you far more than fifty years," they'd told him. "And
youth, besides."
At that, he had stopped laughing, but still he had not accepted their
offer, for many reasons ... doubt and fear, perhaps some shreds of
honor, and certainly, since he was a man of science, skepticism.
Then, when Shortmire was nearing the end of those fifty extra
years which had, indeed, been granted him by a grateful Earth
government--together with a plaque, suitably inscribed--he had
received a gift. It was one of those great crystalline prisms from
Morethis that were so fashionable on Earth as lighting fixtures, not
because they saved fuel--for one such prism would cost ten lifetimes
of fuel--but because they gave a light no Earthborn device could give,
making the old look young, the stupid wise, and, most important of all,
the ugly beautiful.
Shortmire looked into the lambent depths, wondering who had sent him so
costly and so useless a gift. Suddenly the flame vitrified into a face
that flashed up at him from the crystal--a face that was beautiful in
its horror, and horrible in its beauty. He closed his eyes, but when he
opened them, the iridescent eyes were still there, mocking him for his
cowardice.
"I am Uvrei," a deep voice of tingling sweetness said, "god among gods
and man among men. I bring you greetings from Morethis, Jan Shortmire."
Shortmire knew well enough what Uvrei must want, for the Morethans'
long-ago offer had risen of late to the top of his thoughts. They could
not do what they claimed, he had tried to reassure himself, whenever
the memory returned; it was a trick which he had been clever enough not
to fall for. But part of his mind did not believe this, and that part
was glad to see Uvrei.
"What do you want of me?" he demanded.
The Morethan smiled, and each glittering tooth was a fiery brilliant.
"The same as before, on the same terms," he said, offering no
enticements. The man who would accept such an offer would provide his
own.
* * * * *
If they were capable of doing this ... thing with the crystal, then
they might also have other powers. So Shortmire could no longer pretend
that what they offered him was impossible. On the other hand, what they
required of him in return was truly terrible. Could they really do what
they said?
_After all, my world has not done overmuch for me. Others, like
Nicholas Dyall, have wealth and power and...._ He would not let himself
think of Alissa Dyall, since she must long be dead, of old age, if
nothing else. The last he had heard of her was when she and Dyall had
announced their wedding date. Then he had taken the ship fitted out
with the engines everyone said would not work, and he had fled into
space. When he had come back, no one had spoken of her, and gradually,
in his new-found importance, he had to some degree forgotten her,
though he never forgot Dyall.
Pity to think of Alissa as having grown old. Even more of a pity to
think of himself as having grown old, for he could see that in every
mirror he passed.
"You're sure you can give me youth as well as life?" he asked.
"Not only youth, but perpetual youth," Uvrei assured him. "Youth such
as you did not know even when you were young."
But Shortmire was still suspicious. Even if the Morethans could do what
they said, how did he know they would? An alien concept of honor might
have no reference to the terrestrial one. "How do I know I can trust
your word?"
Uvrei's face grew black, literally black, and the crystal shivered
until, Emrys thought, it would split. And he shivered, too, knowing in
the fine nerves and little muscles of his body what would happen to him
at the final shivering. A fear filled him then that he had never known
before, not even when he faced space for the first time, and in the
midst of that fear came the thought that, if he truly hated Earth, this
was the most artistically nasty revenge he could take.
* * * * *
The crystal trembled to stillness as Uvrei's face paled to composure.
"If you were not an Earthman, Jan Shortmire," he said, "we would not
have needed you, nor you us. And an Earthman could not be expected
to know that the words you have just spoken are the insult that, on
Morethis, is deadlier than death; for the word of an immortal--no
matter to whom or what he gives it--is as sacred and enduring as he
himself."
"I apologize," Shortmire said quickly, "for my ignorance."
"And I forgive you," Uvrei declared, as grandly as if he _were_ a god,
"because of that ignorance. Moreover, since you cannot help your racial
deficiencies, I will make this bargain with you. Come to Morethis.
There we will give you the life and youth we promised. Then, when you
are satisfied that we have given you what you desire, you will give us
what we desire."
Not having been too honorable a man in his own hundred and fifty-five
years, Jan Shortmire still could not believe that the Morethans would
act in all honor. However, even the remote possibility that they would
play fair was strong temptation for an ardent man pushing death. So
he had agreed. He had wound up his affairs and made his will in favor
of "his son." Then he had left Earth to go to Morethis, to die as Jan
Shortmire and he resurrected as Emrys Shortmire.
The Morethans had kept their word, though there were times when he
wished they had not. For no phoenix casting itself into the fire to
burn alive in agony, so that it might rise again, young and strong and
purified, from the ashes of its own dead self, could have suffered the
excruciating torment of both mind and body that he suffered as, little
by little, he was made young again.
Uvrei had warned him that this would happen. "To become one of us, you
must be capable of all-endurance." So, for three years, he had lived
on the miasmic planet, suffering unending, unbearable pain--not only
his, but of the others whose lives went to make his new life. Slowly,
agonizingly, these were stirred into the shrieking cauldrons of his
body, until they blended and melted and coalesced to become his new
shape.
Then Uvrei had led him ceremoniously to a reflecting glass and shown
him Emrys Shortmire--a boy far more handsome than the boy Jan Shortmire
had been, though, at the same time, his twin. The only thing not quite
human about Emrys Shortmire was his eyes, and how could they be human
after what they had seen? But he would forget all that once he was back
on Earth, forget the payment that had been exacted--and prepare to live
his new life to the full.
* * * * *
All this Emrys Shortmire told Peter Hubbard in the quiet of the
expensive hotel room. It was pleasant to be able to unburden himself at
last. For the past eleven years, there had been a secret side of him
that must always walk apart, even from Megan. Now there was someone who
could know the whole of him, and he was grateful to Hubbard for having
come back to Earth.
But Hubbard sat there staring with so fixed a gaze that, for a moment,
Emrys thought he was dead. Then he realized that it was only shock; all
this had been too much for so old a man. Selfishly, he had heaped his
burden upon another, without asking whether that other was willing, or
able, to share it.
"Peter," he began, "I'm sorry...." not quite sure for what he was
apologizing. He could not have trusted the old man at the beginning,
just as he _had_ to trust him now. But of course he was apologizing to
Peter Hubbard, as the representative of humanity, for what he himself
had done to Earth.
He began to give unasked-for explanations. "I deliberately made you
suspect I killed my father, because if you suspected one of us had done
away with the other, why, then, you'd automatically have assumed there
were two." He looked down at the floor. "And I wanted you to hate me.
We couldn't be friends; otherwise, knowing me better than anyone else
alive, you might have guessed...."
"I doubt it," Hubbard said wearily. "Almost anything else would have
seemed more likely." Presently he asked, "Weren't you afraid I might
investigate?"
Emrys smiled. "What could you find out? After all, I _hadn't_ killed
Jan Shortmire."
The smile became a little fixed. "I wouldn't have cared even if you had
told someone your suspicions then," Emrys went on doggedly, "because I
knew no one would believe you. But now--" he colored--"well, I don't
want you to tell Megan Dyall anything ... bad about me. You see, I ...
love her."
"I gathered that impression," Hubbard said.
_But why does he sound so unhappy about it?_ Emrys thought angrily.
_What's wrong with me?_ Because he was in love, he could not appreciate
the irony of that thought.