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"Please die!" she hissed.
Thurlow, his face dark with anger, started across the room. "What have you
done to her?"
he demanded.
"You will stand where you are," Kelexel said, raising a palm toward Thurlow.
"Andy! Stop!" Ruth said.
He obeyed. There was controlled terror in her voice.
Ruth touched her abdomen. "This is what he did," she rasped. "And he killed my
mother and my father and ruined you and ... "
"No violence, please," Kelexel said. "It's useless against me. I could
obliterate you both so easily ... "
"He could, Andy," Ruth whispered.
Kelexel focused on Ruth's bulging abdomen. Such an odd way to produce an
offspring.
"You don't wish me to obliterate your native friend?" he asked.
Mutely, she shook her head from side to side.
God! What was the crazy little monster up to? There was such a feeling of
terrible power in his eyes.
Thurlow studied Ruth. How weirdly exotic she appeared in that green robe and
those big jewels. And pregnant! By this ... this ...
"How odd it is," Kelexel said. "Fraffin believes you can be a control factor
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in our development, that we can aspire to a new level of being through
you-perhaps even to maturity. It may be that he is more right than he knows."
Kelexel looked up as Thurlow skirted him, went to Ruth.
She pushed Thurlow's arm aside as he tried to put it around her shoulders.
"What're you going to do, Kelexel?" she asked. Her voice held a thrumming
quality, over-controlled.
"A thing no other immortal Chem has ever done," Kelexel said, realizing at
last what had truly brought him here. And he wondered:
Have I the strength to do this?
He turned his back on Ruth, crossed to Thurlow's bed, hesitated, smoothed the
covers fastidiously. In that instant, the weight of all the Chem rested upon
his shoulders, an ominous burden loaded with everything his kind refused to
accept.
Seeing him at the bed, Ruth had the terrifying thought that Kelexel was about
to impose the manipulator upon her, force Andy to watch them.
Oh God! Please, no!
she thought.
Kelexel turned back to them, sat on the edge of the bed. His hands rested
lightly beside him. The bed felt soft, its covers warm and fuzzy. The bed gave
off a stink of native perspiration which he found oddly erotic.
"What're you going to do?" Ruth whispered.
Kelexel thought:
I must not answer that question!
If he answered such questions, he knew his resolve might slip. He would do
nothing important. He would accept the path of least resistance, the path
which had lured his kind into their present stagnation.
"You will both stay where you are," Kelexel said.
He focused inward then, searched out the drumming center of his own heartbeat,
thinking:
It should be possible. Rejuvenation teaches us every nerve and muscle, every
cell in our bodies. It should be possible.
Thus far, his actions had no name except it, and he merely tested the
possibilities. He concentrated on slowing his heartbeat.
At first, there was no reaction. But presently he sensed the beat slowing,
almost imperceptibly, then, as he learned control, the pace slackened with a
definite downward surge. He timed the rhythm to Ruth's breathing: inhale --one
beat; exhale --one beat
It skipped a beat!
Uncontrolled panic shot through Kelexel. He relaxed his grip on the heartbeat,
fought to restore normality.
No!
he thought
That isn't what I want!
But another force had him now.
Fear built on fear, terror on terror. Something gigantic and crushing gripped
his chest. He could see the dark abyss, imagined Thurlow's cliff with himself
upon its face clutching for any handhold, scrabbling to stay himself from that
awful plunge.
Somewhere out in the foggy haze that had become his surroundings. Ruth's voice
boomed at him: "Something's wrong with him!"
Kelexel realized he had fallen backward onto Thurlow's bed. The pain in his
chest was a molten agony now. He could feel his heart laboring within that
pain: beat --agony, beat --
agony; beat-agony ...
Slowly, he felt his hands relaxing their grip on the face of the cliff. The
abyss yawned. He felt that there was a real wind past his ears as he plunged
into the darkness, turning, twisting. Ruth's voice wailed after him to become
lost in emptiness: "My God! He's dying!"
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Nothingness echoed upon nothingness and he thought he heard Thurlow's words:
"Delusion of grandeur."
Thurlow rushed to the bed, felt for a pulse at Kelexel's temple. Nothing. The
skin felt dry, smooth as metal.
Perhaps, they're not exactly like us, he thought.
Maybe their pulse shows in another place.
He checked the right wrist. How limp and empty the hand felt! No pulse.
"Is he really dead?" Ruth whispered.
"I think he is." Thurlow dropped the flaccid hand, looked up at her. "You told
him to die and he did."
A feeling oddly like remorse shot through her then. She thought of the
Chem-immortal, all that seemingly endless living come to this.
Did I kill him?
she wondered. And aloud: "Did we kill him?" [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]