Part 14 (2/2)
”h.e.l.lo, Corbell. If you try to steal my drugs again you will kill yourself. I've placed traps.”
”Then I won't.”
”Then we will be searching in separate places. I give you a year to find the dictator immortality. I wish I could give more, but you know my condition. If you will find the drug, I will become your woman. Otherwise I will kill you.”
He laughed. ”A difficult choice.”
”You have not seen me when I was beautiful. I am the only woman for you, Corbell. There are no others left.”
”Don't count on too much. Peerssa says I'm low on s.e.x urge.” That upset her. ”Have you never desired women, Corbell?”
”I was married for twenty-two years.”
”What is married?”
”Mated. Under contract.”
”Was there s.e.x? Did you enjoy it?”
Suddenly Corbell missed Mirabelle terribly. He mourned her, not because she was dead, but because she was gone. And her other half went on and on, through a world grown more and more hallucinatory.... If only he could have talked it over with Mirabelle!
”In s.e.x and in all ways, our life was purest ecstasy, as is usual in marriage,” Corbell said with a flippancy he did not feel. ”I'm sorry I brought it up.”
”I had to know.”
Just to stick a pin in her, he said, ”Has it ever occurred to you that I might not want the dictator immortality? Maybe I'm content to grow old gracefully.”
”You tried to steal my drugs.”
”You've got me there.”
”There is no grace to growing old. One year, Corbell.”
”Hey, don't hang up. Have you any idea where I'm headed? I don't even know where we were.”
”There is a continent that covers the South Pole. You are aimed there. As for where we were, there is a continent whose long tip points at the southernmost continent. We were nearly at the tip. I suspect your target to be the city of-” And for a moment her own voice broke through, before his resumed: ”Sarash-Zillish, the capital of Earth's last civilization.”
Departing Cape Horn for Antarctica, he thought. here in Antarctica? here in Antarctica?
”What destination did you type?”
He risked telling her. ”I was trying to get to the police station. What with the way my muscles were jumping around, I really don't know what I hit.”
”Could you have struck the key more than four times? Five would send you to World Police Headquarters in Sarash-Zillish.”
”Maybe.” He laughed. ”Well, it got me away from you.”
”One year, Corbell.”
In a year he could be dead, though in fact he felt pretty good. The aches, the exhaustion, the twitchies were going away. But the hunger had attained a fine cutting edge. ”In an hour I'll be dead of starvation. Is there any food in this car?”
”What do I eat?”
”When you reach Sarash-Zilhish, go to the park.” She gave him an address for the keyboard of his taxi. ”The park is untended now, but any fruits you find are edible, and most of the animals can be eaten if you can catch them.”
”Okay.”
”You will not find dictator immortality there. There were never adults in Sarash-Zillish.”
”Hey, Mirelly-Lyra. How long have you been looking?”
”Perhaps ten years of my life.”
He was startled. ”I got the impression you'd been at it for a century or so.”
”I was unlucky. When the Children revived me from zero-time, they told me they would search out the dictator immortality for me. I had no choice but to believe them, but they lied.”
”There was a vault in the hospital-”
She laughed. ”There is a vault in every hospital in every city that remains on Earth. I have searched them all. What vaults haven't been rifled contain nothing but poisons. The medicines have decayed with time and wet heat.”
”Tell me more. What did you learn about this dictator immortality after you landed, before they locked you up?”
”Almost nothing. Only that it was there.”
”Tell me. Tell me all the wrong answers so I don't have to waste my time on them.”
IV.
The Children had been waiting when Mirelly-Lyra descended from her s.p.a.cecraft. Her first guess was that they must be the result of a State breeding program. Dignified, self-possessed, articulate, they displayed an adult wisdom she took for supernormal intelligence. Later she realized that it was the result of lifetimes of experience.
She had never seen their like.
They had never seen hers.
There were adults in the world, but they were a separate breed. She never met any, but she gathered that there were no more than a few thousand of them-all dictator cla.s.s by courtesy, all using the dictator immortality. They kept themselves apart from the billions of children.
Children. Boys and Girls together, integrated. She thought nothing of it then. Later she remembered.
The Children tried her by her own law, for treason. She gained the impression that the proceedings were a farce for their amus.e.m.e.nt. Perhaps that was paranoia. They were punctilious; they did not mock her; they did not deviate from laws seventy thousand years old. For her part, Mirelly-Lyra kept her dignity at all times, as she was at pains to inform Corbell.
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