Part 18 (1/2)
Ktollisp slapped him.
Corbell tried to block with his arms. ”Wait, wait. You're right, I must must have taken dikta immortality. I just don't know where. Maybe, maybe it's in something I ate. The dikta did a lot of gene engineering. They made the cat-tails and the wild wheat. Maybe they made something that grows dikta immortality, something that grows in Sarash-Zillish. Listen, I didn't know it was happening! I can't see my own hair!” have taken dikta immortality. I just don't know where. Maybe, maybe it's in something I ate. The dikta did a lot of gene engineering. They made the cat-tails and the wild wheat. Maybe they made something that grows dikta immortality, something that grows in Sarash-Zillish. Listen, I didn't know it was happening! I can't see my own hair!”
Skatholtz was gesturing the rest back. ”You could not feel your youth returning?”
”I thought I was... getting adapted to the rough life. I spent like a hundred and thirty years in a cold-sleep tank, ten years at a time my years, not yours. I couldn't know what it did to me. Listen, there's an old woman who's been searching every city in the world world for dikta immortality. If for dikta immortality. If she she doesn't know, how could I?” doesn't know, how could I?”
”We know nothing of this woman. All right, Corbell. Tell your story. Leave nothing out.”
He had been sleepy. Now he was scared boneless-and still bone-weary-and in that state Corbell told his life's story. Whenever he paused for breath Skatholtz spat complex phrases in Boyish, translating.
Telling savages about a black hole at the center of a galaxy was easier than he had expected. Telling Mirelly-Lyra's tale was wearing. They kept backing him up for points she hadn't mentioned, for points she hadn't even noticed in her thirst for dictator immortality. They found her lack of curiosity incomprehensible.
Questions. What had he eaten? Drunk? Breathed? Could immortality have been in the bath in One City? It was a mistake to mention the Fountain of Youth... but no, the dikta themselves used baths.
Dawn came and Corbell was still talking. ”It could have been any of the things I tried. The fruits, the nuts, the roots, the meat. The soup, even; I mean the combination of a lot of things plus the heat. h.e.l.l, it could even be the water in the fountain.”
Skatholtz stood and stretched. ”We can find out. When we return to Sarash-Zillish we will take a dikt. Shall we go?”
”Go?” Corbell saw that the other Boys were getting up, collecting gear. ”Oh, please! I'll fall over!”
”You are stronger than you think, Corbell. For too long were you a dikt sick with age.”
They marched.
The wheat-covered prairie went on forever. They camped early, after the afternoon rain. Corbell sprawled in the wet earth and slept like a dead man.
IV.
He woke early. A cat-tail had crawled along his ribs, liking the warmth, tickling him. It mewed in protest as he rolled away. There was more protest from his overused muscles.
The fire had died. Jupiter, white with a thin red crescent edge, made the night seem bright.
Well, I'm in trouble again, he thought. Imagine my amazement. Everyone in the world wants dictator immortality, and they all think I've got it, and they're all half right. Why do the Boys want it? Maybe they want to destroy it. It's the biggest difference between them and the dikta... Imagine my amazement. Everyone in the world wants dictator immortality, and they all think I've got it, and they're all half right. Why do the Boys want it? Maybe they want to destroy it. It's the biggest difference between them and the dikta...
He let his hand stroke the orange cat-tail. It draped itself over his knee and rumbled contentedly.
What is it? If it's edible it's in Sarash-Zillish. Everything I ate in Four City, Mirelly-Lyra ate too. One kind for women and one for men? and man's immortality doesn't affect women at all? I don't believe it.
So something in the park holds dictator immortality, in the sap or the juice or the blood, and I ate it. What did she eat when she searched Sarash-Zillish? The Boys eat almost no vegetables-and vegetarians eat no meat- but she fed me both, and fruit too. Insects? I I don't eat insects. don't eat insects.
If I could get her to Sarash-Zillish, I'd know. Watch her. See what she doesn't eat.
The stars were bright tonight. A few unwinking stars had a pinkish tinge: small Jovian moons. The Boys were sprawled far from where the fire had been. A Boy on guard looked around as Corbell sat up. It was Krayhayft, the only Boy with white in his hair.
Heady smells reached Corbell. Wet earth and growing things, traces of young supermen who hadn't washed recently, a ghost of broiled meat that Corbell hadn't shared: suddenly he was hungry. And suddenly he was elated.
”What the h.e.l.l am I complaining about?” he whispered. The cat-tail stopped purring to listen. ”I'm young! If nothing else works I can outrun the b.i.t.c.h! I should be dancing in the streets, if I could find a street.”
Young again! That made twice. If he could find out how he did it, he could stay young for the rest of his life. Everybody's dream. And even if he couldn't- the grin died on his face. Now he had fifty years to protect, half a century of lifespan that the Norn would rip from him if he couldn't show her the Tree of Life in Sarash-Zillish.
Something that tasted funny? Everything tasted funny. Different soil. Three million years of change.
It was too d.a.m.n simple anyway. Immortality? and you drink it like fruit juice? An injection might have been more plausible, if he had received any kind of injection. Or... had he inhaled it like marijuana, in the smoke from the wood of a carefully gene-tailored tree?
”Corbell. Do you enjoy the morning?”
Corbell jumped violently. The sentry's approach had been perfectly silent. He settled beside Corbell. By Jupiter light the pale threads gleamed in his hair. Corbell had wondered at the grace with which he moved: Krayhayft who carried the fire starter, Krayhayft the storyteller.
”How old are you?”
”Twenty-one,” said Krayhayft.
”That's old,” said Corbell. Jupiter years. Jupiter years. ”I wonder why you aren't the leader.” ”I wonder why you aren't the leader.”
”The old ones learn to avoid that ch.o.r.e... and to avoid the fighting that goes with it. Skatholtz can beat me. Skill in fighting has an upper limit. One is born with one's greatest possible strength.”
”Corbel, I think I have found your s.p.a.cecraft.”
”What?”
”There.” The Boy was pointing low on the northern horizon, where a few stars glowed in the gray-black of coming dawn. One showed pink among blue-tinged stars. ”The one that might be a moon except that it does not move. Is that your s.p.a.cecraft?”
”No. I don't know where my s.h.i.+p went. Don Juan Don Juan wasn't ball-like. It would look more like a thick spear.” wasn't ball-like. It would look more like a thick spear.”
Krayhayft was more puzzled than disappointed. ”Then what is it? I have seen it twinkle oddly. It does not move, but it grows more bright every night.”
”The whole system of worlds is messed up. I can't explain it. I think that's the next world out from Jupiter.”
”I wish it had been your s.p.a.cecraft,” said Krayhayft. He fell to studying the steady point of light. Entranced.
The cat-tail slithered from Corbell's knee and disappeared into the grain. Corbell saw two more low shadows slipping after it.
A cat screamed. Simultaneously something much bigger vented a much lower, coughing roar. Krayhayft shouted, ”Alert!”
It bounded out of the grain and leapt at Corbell's throat: something as big as the biggest of dogs. Corbell threw himself to the side. He saw a spear plant itself solidly in the open mouth, and then the Boys were on it. It was a dwarf lion, male, magnificently maned. It died fast. Even the first spear might have killed it.
Corbell got up, shaken. ”The female could be out there.”
Skatholtz said, ”Yes,” and joined the others who were fanning out into the grain. Corbell, spearless and superfluous, stayed where he was.
Presently he noticed something small in the path the lion's charge had left through grain. He found a small b.u.t.terscotch-sundae corpse. The other cat-tails had returned to the fire. They seemed unusually subdued.
At dawn he helped two Boys build a fire. He saw the reason later, when four more trekked in with ostrich eggs. They set the eggs on the coals, carefully cut the tops off and stirred the contents with spear hafts.
Scrambled eggs! Still no coffee.