Part 33 (1/2)

Still Fraffin stared.

Kelexel felt his rage rising. He glared at Fraffin.

”It's merely an idea,” Fraffin said, ”something to toy with. Ideas are our toys, too, aren't they?”

”An insane idea,” Kelexel growled.

He reminded himself then that he was here to remove the menace of this storys.h.i.+p's mad director. And the man had exposed his crime! It would bring severe censure and relocation at the very least. And if this were widespread -- ah, then! Kelexel sat studying Fraffin, savoring the coming moment of denunciation, the righteous anger, the threat of eternal ostracism from his own kind. Let Fraffin go into the outer blackness of eternal boredom! Let this madman discover what Forever really meant!

The thought lay there a moment in Kelexel's mind. He had never approached it from quite this point of view before. Forever. What does it really mean? he asked himself.

He tried to imagine himself isolated, thrown onto his own resources for time-without-end. His mind recoiled from the thought, and he felt a twinge of pity for what might happen to Fraffin.

”Now,” Fraffin said. ”Now is the moment.”

Can he be goading me to denounce him? Kelexel wondered. It isn't possible!

”It's my pleasant task to tell you,” Fraffin said, ”that you're going to have another offspring.”

Kelexel sat staring, stupefied by the words. He tried to speak, couldn't. Presently, he found his voice, rasped: ”But how can you . . .”

”Oh, not in the legally approved manner,” Fraffin said, ”There'll be no delicate little operation, no optimum selection of ovarian donor from the banks in the Primacy's creche. Nothing that simple.”

”What do you . . .”

”Your native pet,” Fraffin said. ”You've impregnated her. She's going to bear your child in the . . . ancient way, as we once did before the orderly organization of the Primacy.”

”That . . . that's impossible,” Kelexel whispered.

”Not at all,” Fraffin said. ”You see, what we have here is a planet full of wild Chem.”

Kelexel sat silently absorbing the evil beauty of Fraffin's revelation, seeing the breath behind the words, seeing things here as he was meant to see them. The crime was so simple. So simple! Once he overcame the mental block that occluded thinking about such matters, the whole structure fell into place. It was a crime fitting Fraffin's stature, a crime such as no other Chem had ever conceived. A perverse admiration for Fraffin seeped through Kelexel.

”You are thinking,” Fraffin said, ”that you have but to denounce me and the Primacy will set matters right. Attend the consequences. The creatures of this planet will be sterilized so as not to contaminate the Chem bloodlines. The planet will be shut down until we can put it to some proper use. Your new offspring, a half-breed, will go with the rest.”

Abruptly, Kelexel sensed forgotten instincts begin to war in him. The threat in Fraffin's words opened a h.o.a.rd of things Kelexel had thought locked away. He'd never suspected the potency or danger of these forces he'd supposed were chained -- forever. Odd thoughts buzzed in his mind like caged birds. Something free and wild rose in him and he thought:

Imagine having an unlimited number of offspring!

Then: So this is what happened to the other Investigators!

In this instant, Kelexel knew he had lost.

”Will you let them destroy your offspring?” Fraffin asked.

The question was redundant. Kelexel had already posed it and answered it. No Chem would hazard his own offspring -- so rare and precious a thing, that lonely link with the lost past. He sighed.

In the sigh, Fraffin saw victory and smiled.