Part 23 (1/2)

”Gillies, Viktor.”

”-intelligent gillies for servants. I didn't know you could make just about anything you could imagine.”

She considered that for a moment. ”Oh, not anything,” she decided. ”Some things are physically impossible-or, anyway, I could make them, but they wouldn't survive. But this is the most interesting part of my work, Viktor. It's why anyone bothers to go to Newmanhome, really. There's a whole biota in those freezers on Newmanhome, you know. We don't know half of what's there. Even when there's a label we can't always be sure of what's inside, because they got pretty sloppy about keeping records for a while. So when I have a chance I match up sperm and ova-when I can-or find some related genetic material that I can tinker into being cross-fertile. Like this.”

”Do you sell them, like a pet store?”

”I don't know what a pet store is, and I certainly don't 'sell' them, any more than I sell the babies. If someone wants them I get credit for my time.” She sighed. ”It doesn't always work. Sometimes I can't find a match or even make one; a lot of the specimens are spoiled, and it's terribly hard to reconst.i.tute them. And then, even when we do get an interesting neonate, we can't always feed them. Especially the invertebrates; some of them are really specialized in diet, they just won't eat what we try to give them. So they die.” She grinned. ”Babies are a lot easier.”

That was probably true, Viktor reflected, since the real human fetuses never appeared in Nrina's laboratory as born babies. Gestation and birthing weren't her problems. What she produced was a neat little plastic box, thermally opaque so it didn't need either warming or cooling for forty-eight hours or so, containing a fertilized ovum and enough nutrient fluid to keep it alive until the proud parents could put it in their own incubator. ”Don't you ever want to see the real babies?” Viktor asked her curiously.

”What for?” Nrina asked, surprised at the question. ”Babies are very messy creatures, Viktor. Oh, I like to hear how they turn out and I'm always glad to get pictures of them-every artist wants to see how his work turns out. But the only ones I ever wanted to be around for more than a day were my own.” Then she was surprised again at the expression on his face. ”Didn't you know? I've had two children. One of them was just a favor to her father, so I didn't keep her very long. He wanted something to remember me by, you see. Her name's Oclane and, let's see, she must be fourteen or fifteen by now. She's on Moon Joseph, but she comes to visit me sometimes. She's a pretty little girl. Very bright, of course. I think she looks a lot like me.”

”I didn't know,” Viktor said, hastily revising his internal image of Nrina. He had thought of her as many things, but never as a mother-not even as one of those mothers of the present new-fangled variety, who picked out specifications for their offspring and never went through the uncouth bother of pregnancy. Then he remembered her words. ”You said you had two children. What about the other one?”

She laughed. ”But you know him very well, Viktor. Who did you think Dekkaduk was?”

The next time Viktor saw Dekkaduk he looked at the man with new interest. Dekkaduk did, Viktor decided, more or less resemble Nrina-but then, all these people resembled each other to his eyes, in the same way that all Westerners looked alike to most Chinese. What Dekkaduk didn't look like at all was anyone young enough to be a child of Nrina's.

There was an answer to that, too: Viktor realized he had no idea at all of Nrina's age. She could have been a youthful, good-looking forty-Newmanhome years, of course. She could equally well have been a very well preserved hundred or more. None of these people ever looked old. old.

In bed she was definitely ageless.

Viktor took much pleasure in that part of their intimacy. Still, there were times when he felt a kind of submerged resentment that his main reason for living was to provide a little s.e.xual excitement for a woman he hardly knew. There were even times when he remembered that he had once had a wife. Then, sometimes, a gloom descended over him that was like the suffocating withdrawal of all air, like all the light in the world going out at once.

But there were other times that were not gloomy at all. Nrina was a splendid aspirin for all those pa.s.sing aches of the soul.

Apart from all her other virtues, Nrina was deeply fascinated with Viktor's body. It wasn't just s.e.x she wanted from him. She wanted to prod and squeeze and feel his archaic flesh, though of course she often wanted s.e.x, too. She could be happy for half an hour at a time as they lay naked together, experiencing the flexing of his muscles. Not just his biceps, but his forearm, his thigh, his neck, all the muscles he could flex at all, while she held her hand on them to feel them swell. ”And they're natural, natural, Viktor, truly?” Viktor, truly?”

Grunting. ”Of course they're natural. Only please, Nrina, don't squeeze so hard on my sore leg.”

”Oh, of course.” And then a moment later, ”And this hair here? Did everyone have it in your time?” But Viktor had always been ticklish in the armpits, and of course that ticklishness led to tickling back, which led to other things. Or she would minutely inspect the brownish spots on the back of his hand, touching them gently in case they were painful. ”What are they, Viktor?” she asked, stretching behind her to reach for something he could not see.

”We call them freckles,” he grinned. ”Although-well, maybe those are a little more than just freckles. People get them when they get older. They're what we call 'age spots' then. They're perfectly natural-hey! Ouch!” But she had been too quick for him, jabbing the back of his hand with the sharp little metal probe she had pulled from nowhere.

”Don't make such a fuss,” she ordered, carefully putting her cell sample away. ”Here, let me kiss it.”

And then, after a little study in her laboratory, she told him they were simply degenerated collagen. ”I could clear those spots up for you if you wanted me to, Viktor,” she offered.

He reached out to touch her body, not naked this time, but with only the flimsy gauze and the cache-s.e.x to modify it. She turned comfortably beside him, taking her ease on a fluff of airy pillows beside him. Her skin was quite flawless. ”Do they offend you?” he asked.

”Of course not! Your body does not offend me!”

”Then why don't we just leave them alone?” And wryly Viktor reflected that this was a strange relations.h.i.+p, in which she was almost entirely absorbed in his body, while he was desperate for everything that was in her mind.

Her body she let him have almost any time he chose-usually she chose first, in fact. Her mind was another matter. Viktor didn't feel that Nrina closed him out, or went out of her way to keep information from him. It was simply that so many of the things he wanted to know bored her. ”Yes, yes, Viktor,” she would sigh, while he was thumping excitedly on the desk screen. ”I see what you are showing me. There used to be more stars.”

”Many more!” he would answer, scowling at the impoverished sky below him. But she would yawn, and perhaps put her hand in a place that made him pay attention to other things again. What was thrillingly, even frighteningly, strange to Viktor was only the natural order of things to Nrina. It was as if someone from Tahiti had seen snow for the first time: The Eskimos wouldn't have understood his feelings.

When Nrina came back from her lab and found Viktor absorbed over the desk she was tolerant about it, usually. She stripped off her robe and sat beside him. He could certainly feel bare body touching bare body, but it did not keep him from concentrating on the desk instead of the touch of flesh. ”It's nice that you have an interest,” Nrina observed philosophically.

He tried again. ”Nrina, I'm certain that some very strange things have happened. Don't you want to know about them? Don't you even wonder?” wonder?”

”It's not my line of work, Viktor,” she said, looking slightly ruffled.

He said in bafflement, ”The universe has died around us. We've been kidnapped. Time stopped for us-”

She was yawning. ”Yes, I know. The other savages-sorry, Viktor. The other people from the freezer talk about that sometimes, too. They call it 'G.o.d the Transporter' or some such thing. A silly superst.i.tion! As if there were some supernatural being who moved stars around just for fun!”

”Then what is the explanation?”

”It doesn't need need an explanation. It just an explanation. It just is.” is.” She shrugged. ”It just isn't a very interesting subject, Viktor. No one really cares except- Oh, wait a minute,” she said, suddenly sitting up and looking pleased. ”I almost forgot Frit!” She shrugged. ”It just isn't a very interesting subject, Viktor. No one really cares except- Oh, wait a minute,” she said, suddenly sitting up and looking pleased. ”I almost forgot Frit!”

Viktor blinked up at her. ”What's a frit?” he asked.

”Frit isn't a what, he's a who. Frit and Forta. I designed their son for them. They're old friends of mine. Matter of fact, it's Balit-that's their boy-who I made that kitten for; he'll be twenty soon, and it's time for his coming-of-age presents.” She thought for a moment, then nodded. ”Yes, I'm sure Frit knows all about that sort of thing. He'd be interested in you, probably. And he and Forta have been together nearly thirty years now, and we still keep in touch.”

Viktor sat up straight. He had the tingling, electrical feeling that all at once, without his having antic.i.p.ated it at all, a goal for his life had been given to him. ”How can I reach this Frit?” he demanded.

She looked doubtful. ”Well, he's very busy, but I suppose you could call him up,” she said, then suddenly brightened. ”I know!” she cried. ”Why don't we go to Balit's party?”

”Balit's party?”

”Balit's Frit's son. They live on Moon Mary. No, wait a minute,” she corrected herself. ”They do live on Mary, but I think they told me they're having the party on Frit's family's habitat.” She nodded to herself as the details of her inspiration were coming clear to her. ”Dekkaduk can handle things here for a couple of days. It would be a nice trip for you, and I ought to take Pelly's gillies there anyway-that's where his s.h.i.+p is. And I'm sure they'd be glad to have us, and then you can talk to Frit all you want.” She gave Viktor's thigh a decisive pat, pleased with her idea. ”We'll do it! And don't ask me any more questions now, Viktor. Just believe me, it'll be fun!”

CHAPTER 23.

.Reminiscing is a recreation for the elderly. It is what people do when they have outlived all their other occupations-people like Wan-To.

Elderly human beings at least have bodily functions to use up some hours. They have to eat, use the toilet, maybe even hoist themselves into their wheelchairs and complain to those around them. Wan-To didn't have even those ways of pa.s.sing the time. Wan-To didn't just have very little else to do, he had nothing nothing else to do. In the exhausted, depleted, moribund universe that Wan-To lived in he not only didn't need to do anything to keep on living, he had nothing much in the way of limbs, powers, or effectors to do anything with. His mind still worked-quite clearly, in fact, though at a depressingly slow speed. But everything stayed within his mind. He didn't have any useful appendages anymore to convert any of his mind's impulses into action. else to do. In the exhausted, depleted, moribund universe that Wan-To lived in he not only didn't need to do anything to keep on living, he had nothing much in the way of limbs, powers, or effectors to do anything with. His mind still worked-quite clearly, in fact, though at a depressingly slow speed. But everything stayed within his mind. He didn't have any useful appendages anymore to convert any of his mind's impulses into action.

All that being so, Wan-To was lucky he had so much to reminisce about.

He certainly did have a lot of memories. If there had been a contest to see which single being, among all the universe's inhabitants in all the endless eons of its existence, had the most in the way of stored-up memories to take out and chew over, Wan-To would have been the incontestable winner. If your mind remains clear, and Wan-To's had, you can remember a lot out of a lifetime of ten-to-the-fortieth years.

Ten to the fortieth power years . . . and maybe much more still to come. That was one of the things Wan-To had to think about, for there still was at least one decision he sooner or later would have to make.

That was going to be a very hard decision. Because it was so very hard he preferred not to think about it. (There was, after all, positively no hurry at all.) What Wan-To liked to think about-the only thing that could be described as a pleasure that he still had left-was the days when he had had all the power any being could ever have desired.

Ah, those long-gone days! Days when he carelessly deployed the energies of stars on the whim of a moment-without a care for the future, without penalty for his spendthrift ways! When he cruised at will from star to star, from galaxy to galaxy (wistfully he remembered how wonderful it was to enter a virgin galaxy, bright with billions upon billions of unoccupied stars, and all his!) When he lived off copies of himself for companions.h.i.+p and battled joyfully against them for survival when they turned against him! (Even the frights and worries of those days were tenderly recalled now.) Wan-To remembered lolling on the surface of a star, taking his ease in the cool luxury of its six or seven thousand degrees (and he'd thought that cool!) cool!) . . . and swimming through the star's unimaginably dense core . . . and frolicking in the corona, temperature now up to a couple million degrees, soaked with X rays, das.h.i.+ng out as far as ten million miles from the star's surface to the corona's fringe and then happily plunging back. . . . and swimming through the star's unimaginably dense core . . . and frolicking in the corona, temperature now up to a couple million degrees, soaked with X rays, das.h.i.+ng out as far as ten million miles from the star's surface to the corona's fringe and then happily plunging back.

He remembered the fun (and challenges-oh, he relished remembering the challenges!) when he had created those little copies of himself, Haigh-tik and Mromm and poor, silly Wan-Wan-Wan-and Kind and Happy and all the others he had made; he even remembered, though not very well, the terribly stupid matter-copies he had made, like Five. (He didn't actually remember Five as an individual, to be sure. Five had not been important to him-just then.) What he remembered was living. living. And though it gave him a sort of melancholy joy to remember, the knowledge that he would never have such times again made him almost despair. And though it gave him a sort of melancholy joy to remember, the knowledge that he would never have such times again made him almost despair.

It was only when he was close to despair that he could force himself to think about that other thing, the one about which he would sooner or later have to make a decision. It concerned the only things in the universe that had ever really frightened Wan-To-because there was so much about them that even he had never been able to understand: Black holes.