Part 44 (1/2)

Ruth stood watching as though nailed to the floor. The female was Ynvic, and Ruth remembered the sharp encounter with the s.h.i.+psurgeon. The male Chem, though, was another matter, a person she'd seen only on the room screens as Kelexel talked to him -- Fraffin the Director. Even Kelexel's tone had changed when speaking of Fraffin. Ruth knew she could never forget that haughty face. Here stood the embodiment of Chem power, the one who'd killed her parents to provide a brief amus.e.m.e.nt for his people. He'd killed countless humans for no better reason. His acts transcended brutality to a point where they no longer could be called brutal. They were acts of casual expediency, less direct even than stepping on an ant.

Presently, Ynvic straightened, spoke in s.h.i.+ptongue: ”He has done it. He has certainly done it.” There was a blank emptiness in her voice.

The sound was gibberish to Thurlow, but he sensed the horror.

To Ruth, a product of storys.h.i.+p education imprinters, the words were as clear as English, but there were overtones of meaning which escaped her.

Ynvic turned to stare at Fraffin. The look that pa.s.sed between them was filled with the poignancy of defeat. They both knew what had really happened here.

Fraffin sighed, shuddered. The blurred-off moment of Kelexel's death had come to him through Tiggywaugh's web, the Chem oneness momentarily shattered by that impossible demarcation. Feeling that death, sensing its direction, Fraffin had known the ident.i.ty with terrifying sureness. Every Chem in the universe had felt it, of course, and turned in this direction, no doubt, but Fraffin knew that few had shared his certain knowledge of ident.i.ty. It was as though he'd antic.i.p.ated the event.

Dying, Kelexel had defeated him. Fraffin had known this even as he dashed with Ynvic for a flitter and homed on this point in s.p.a.ce. The sky up there was full of craft from the storys.h.i.+p, all of the crewmen afraid to come closer. Most of them had guessed who'd died here, Fraffin realized. They knew the Primacy wouldn't rest until it identified the dead one. No Chem out there would rest until the mystery was solved.

Here was the first immortal Chem to die, the first in all that crazy endless Time. This planet would soon be aswarm with the Primacy's minions, all the storys.h.i.+p's secrets exposed.

Wild Chem! It'd be an emotional blast through the Chem universe. There was no telling what might be done with these creatures.

”What . . . killed him?” Ruth ventured, speaking s.h.i.+ptongue.

Ynvic turned a gla.s.sy stare on her. The poor stupid female! What could she know of Chem ways? ”He killed himself,” Ynvic said, her voice soft. ”It's the only way a Chem can die.”

”What're they saying?” Thurlow asked. He heard his voice come out overloud. ”He killed himself,” Ruth said. ”That's the only way a Chem can die . . .”

Ruth heard herself translating as though it were another person revealing this to some part of her which had been sleeping. The only way a Chem can die . . .

Fraffin, hearing the exchange, felt the need to speak lest he fall into an abyss which lay within his own skull. He spoke in English to Thurlow: ”It has never happened before. A Chem has never died before.”

Thurlow absorbed this and thought: You're mistaken. You have to be mistaken. There would've been other Chem deaths . . . long ago. Otherwise these Chem could not be what they obviously were -- fugitives. They were fugitives from death. Thurlow almost spoke this thought, but he saw that Fraffin had fallen into a reverie approaching trance. The female Chem had finished examining the body on the bed and was staring at her companion.

Presently, Ynvic spoke in s.h.i.+ptongue: ”It was the only way he could defeat us.”

Fraffin nodded, hearing Ynvic as though from a distance. What a price to pay for victory. What a story it would've made for the empatheaters of the Chem universe! For a Chem to kill himself . . . Fraffin looked at Ruth, beautiful, exotic creature. He felt an abrupt communication with her and with all the others like her. They have no past except the past I gave them. The thought was filled with despairing pride. He knew he had lost his world. Kelexel . . . the Primacy had won. And not one among that Primacy could really know what they had won.

His nostrils were suddenly filled with the same smell of bitter salt he'd inhaled once in the sistral winds of Carthage. He felt his own life identified with Carthage.

The Primacy would exile him to lonely, Chemless foreverness, he knew. It was the only punishment they could inflict on a fellow Chem, no matter what the crime.

How long will I be able to withstand it before I take Kelexel's way out? he wondered.

Again, he inhaled the dusty, salt smell -- Carthage, leafless, contaminated, stripped in the blaze-light of Cato's gloating, its survivors crouching, terrified.

”I told you it'd end this way,” Ynvic said.

Fraffin closed his eyes against the sight of her. In his self-imposed darkness, he could see his own future: the eagle's eyrie come to shame, hidden in a dooryard. He could see it by the dark of the blood that fed the ravenous oracle within him. They'd fit him with every machine and device for comfort and foreverness -- everything except a fellow Chem or any other living creature.

He imagined an automatic toaster erupting and himself begging life into it. His thoughts were like a skipped rock touching the surface of a lake. His memories of this planet would not let him alone. He was the skipped rock, condensing eons: A tree, a face . . . the glimpse of a face, and his memory shaped out Kallima-Sin's daughter given in marriage (at a Chem's direction) to Amenophis in three thousand five hundred puny year-beats ago.