Chapter VIII

Emrys Shortmire found that he did not want life any more. He went back to his mansion and he tried to hang himself. But the rope would not cut off his breath. He pointed a ray gun at his head, and although the heat became intolerable, it did not burn him. He swallowed poison and waited. Nothing happened. He threw himself off the roof and landed unhurt upon the pavement below. He went back inside and slashed his wrist and saw the cuts close before his eyes. And as he stared at the unmarked skin, thick fog filled the room, and he heard Uvrei's voice--and it was the greatest ignominy of all that the Morethan's voice should _dare_ to hold compassion.

"Don't you know, Emrys, that an immortal cannot die?"

When Emrys forced himself to look at the ancient one, he saw that the beautiful eyes were filled with an unhallowed pity. "You are an immortal god, son of my spirit. You can destroy anything except one of us--and you are one of us now."

"I'm not one of you. I'm not a god, nor are you. I'm not...." Emrys looked down at his wrists, then back at Uvrei. "But I may be immortal," he acknowledged. "It wasn't just a figure of speech?"

"You will never die, Emrys. You will exist forever, like us, a handful of changelessness in a changing universe."

"Then I _won't_ be dead when you come to Earth?" He had fancied himself out of it, but what exquisite punishment that not until he had tired of life had he found out he was cursed with unwanted life forever. He had not been a good man, but was any man evil enough to deserve this?

"When we come to Earth, you will be waiting for us. But you will look forward to our coming." And Uvrei said once again, "You are one of us, Emrys."

"I'm not! I'm _not_!"

"Of course you are. Like us, you do not breathe air--"

"I do...." And then Emrys remembered that the rope had not cut off his breath, and it might well have been because he had not been breathing.

"Like us, you do not eat food."

"But I do!" And here Emrys was genuinely perplexed.

"We left you your digestive system, because part of the pleasure you craved comes through that. But you could completely deny yourself the food that you thought sustained you and feel no ill effects--at least no physical ones. It's the pills that feed you, Emrys."

"Well," Emrys said slowly, "they're food, then."

"Of a sort. But not the kind you mean. You cannot exist without us and our skills, Emrys. Each vial of pills consists of the mitogenetic force of ten tons of life."

"What kind of life?" Emrys asked.

"Does it really matter?"

"You said I cannot exist without you," Emrys pointed out shrewdly, "that I need the pills. So I could stop taking them, couldn't I, and starve myself to death?"

* * * * *

Uvrei smiled. "Yes, you could do that. Only it would take, say, about fifteen hundred terrestrial years--perhaps, since we have given you a strong, young body, as much as two thousand. Do you think you are strong enough to starve yourself to death over a period of two thousand years?"

Emrys knew he was not. In that first anguish, all he could think of to do was to humble himself before the Morethan. "I have served your purpose. Why not be merciful to me now?" he pleaded. "At least let me die."

"I could not, even if I would. So little of our old powers remain. We have kept the secret of perpetual life, but we have lost the secret of perpetual death."

"But that's the greater secret!"

"Of course it is!" For the first time, Emrys saw the Morethan high priest lose control. "Do you think I don't know what it is to crave death?"

After a silence, the voice, once more chillingly warm, said, "Come, my son, being one of us, you have nothing to fear from our arrival. You no longer have anything in common with these animals. You cannot even--what is your word?--love them. When you tried, you fixed upon a machine with the face of a memory."

"Would a human being have known she was a machine?"

"A human being would have known."

"Then ... I am a machine, too? A machine created by mental, rather than physical processes, but a machine nonetheless?"

"In a sense," the alien said thoughtfully, "you could be called that--though to compare you, as an artistic creation, with that trumpery piece of gimcrack...."

"Don't call her that!" Emrys shouted. "She's dead!"

Uvrei began to laugh quietly. After a little, Emrys began to laugh, too. "I'm being foolish," he said.

"Extremely foolish," Uvrei agreed. "Resign yourself, my son, and accept your fate. That is what we immortals have all had to do, one by one."

Of course he could do that, Emrys thought. After all, he wouldn't be as badly off as the other Earth people when the Morethans came; whatever else happened, he, at least, could not be turned into a component part of a little golden pill. Immortality was a dull future, but perhaps, after the Morethans arrived, it would become more interesting.

"Good-by, son of my spirit," Uvrei said. "We shall meet again corporeally in a few centuries." The fog thickened about him and disappeared, leaving its characteristic odor behind.

And still Emrys could not resign himself. _Dyall could have had this, too, if he had wanted it. This was what he was offered and what he was strong enough to refuse. If I accept my fate, then I will always know that I have come off second best to him._ And this prospect, more than immortality, more than the knowledge of what would happen to Earth and its people, was the one that Emrys found intolerable.