This Immortal

"Well, get well," I said, "if you need to. I didn't make Ceylon. I was in the Mediterranean most of the time."

There was applause within. I was glad I was without. The players had just finished Graber's Masque of Demeter, which he had written in pentameter and honor of our Vegan guest; and the thing had been two hours long, and bad. Phil was all educated and sparsehaired, and he looked the part all right, but we had been pretty hard up for a laureate on the day we'd picked him. He was given to fits of Rabindranath Tagore and Chris Isherwood, the writing of fearfully long metaphysical epics, talking a lot about Enlightenment, and performing his daily breathing exercises on the beach. Otherwise, he was a fairly decent human being.

The applause died down, and I heard the glassy tinkle of thelinstra music and the sound of resuming voices.

Ellen leaned back on the railing.

"I hear you're somewhat married these days."

"True," I agreed; "also somewhat harried. Why did they call me back?"

"Ask your boss."

"I did. He said I'm going to be a guide. What I want to know, though, is why?-The real reason. I've been thinking about it and it's grown more puzzling."

"So how should I know?"

"You know everything."

"You overestimate me, dear. What's she like?"

I shrugged.

"A mermaid, maybe. Why?"

She shrugged.

"Just curious. What do you tell people I'm like?"

"I don't tell people you're like anything."

"I'm insulted. I must be like something, unless I'm unique."

"That's it, you're unique."

"Then why didn't you take me away with you last year?"

"Because you're a People person and you require a city around you. You could only be happy here at the Port."

"But I'm not happy here at the Port."

"You are less unhappy here at the Port than you'd be anywhere else on this planet."

"We could have tried," she said, and she turned her back on me to look down the slope toward the lights of the harbor section.

"You know," she said after a time, "you're so damned ugly you're attractive. That must be it."

I stopped in mid-reach, a couple inches from her shoulder.

"You know," she continued, her voice flat, emptied of emotion, "you're a nightmare that walks like a man."

I dropped my hand, chuckled inside a tight chest.

"I know," I said. "Pleasant dreams."

I started to turn away and she caught my sleeve.

"Wait!"

I looked down at her hand, up at her eyes, then back down at her hand. She let go.

"You know I never tell the truth," she said. Then she laughed her little brittle laugh.

"… And I have thought of something you ought to know about this trip. Donald Dos Santos is here, and I think he's going along."

"Dos Santos? That's ridiculous."

"He's up in the library now, with George and some big Arab."

I looked past her and down into the harbor section, watching the shadows, like my thoughts, move along dim streets, dark and slow.

"Big Arab?" I said, after a time. "Scarred hands? Yellow eyes?-Name of Hasan?"

"Yes, that's right. Have you met him?"

"He's done some work for me in the past," I acknowledged.

So I smiled, even though my blood was refrigerating, because I don't like people to know what I'm thinking.

"You're smiling," she said. "What are you thinking?"

She's like that.

"I'm thinking you take things more seriously than I thought you took things."

"Nonsense. I've often told you I'm a fearful liar. Just a second ago, in fact-and I was only referring to a minor encounter in a great war. And you're right about my being less unhappy here than anywhere else on Earth. So maybe you could talk to George-get him to take a job on Taler, or Bakab. Maybe? Huh?"

"Yeah," I said. "Sure. You bet. Just like that. After you've tried it for ten years.-How is his bug collection these days?"

She sort of smiled.

"Growing," she replied, "by leaps and bounds. Buzzes and crawls too-and some of those crawlies are radioactive. I say to him, 'George, why don't you run around with other women instead of spending all your time with those bugs?' But he just shakes his head and looks dedicated. Then I say, 'George, one day one of those uglies is going to bite you and make you impotent. What'll you do then?' Then he explains that that can't happen, and he lectures me on insect toxins. Maybe he's really a big bug himself, in disguise. I think he gets some kind of sexual pleasure out of watching them swarm around in those tanks. I don't know what else-"

I turned away and looked inside the hall then, because her face was no longer her face. When I heard her laugh a moment later I turned back and squeezed her shoulder.

"Okay, I know more than I knew before. Thanks. I'll see you sometime soon."

"Should I wait?"

"No. Good night."

"Good night, Conrad."

And I was away.

Crossing a room can be a ticklish and time-consuming business: if it's full of people, if the people all know you, if the people are all holding glasses, if you have even a slight tendency to limp.

It was, they did and they were, and I do. So…

Thinking inconspicuous thoughts, I edged my way along the wall just at the periphery of humanity for about twenty feet, until I reached the enclave of young ladies the old celibate always has hovering about him. He was chinless, nearly lipless, and going hairless; and the expression that had once lived in that flesh covering his skull had long ago retreated into the darkness of his eyes, and the eyes had it as they caught me-the smile of imminent outrage.

"Phil," said I, nodding, "not everybody can write a masque like that. I've heard it said that it's a dying art, but now I know better."

"You're still alive," he said, in a voice seventy years younger than the rest of him, "and late again, as usual."

"I abase myself in my contrition," I told him, "but I was detained at a birthday party for a lady aged seven, at the home of an old friend." (Which was true, but it has nothing to do with this story.)

"All your friends are old friends, aren't they?" he asked, and that was hitting below the belt, just because I had once known his barely-remembered parents, and had taken them around to the south side of the Erechtheum in order to show them the Porch of the Maidens and point out what Lord Elgin had done with the rest, all the while carrying their bright-eyed youngster on my shoulders and telling him tales that were old when the place was built.

"… And I need your help," I added, ignoring the jibe and gently pushing my way through the soft, pungent circle of femininity. "It'll take me all night to cross this hall to where Sands is holding court with the Vegan-pardon me, Miss-and I don't have all night.-Excuse me, ma'am.-So I want you to run interference for me."

"You're Nomikos!" breathed one little lovely, staring at my cheek. "I've always wanted to-"

I seized her hand, pressed it to my lips, noted that her Camille-ring was glowing pink, said, "-And negative Kismet, eh?" and dropped it.

"So how about it?" I asked Graber. "Get me from here to there in a minimum of time in your typical courtier-like fashion, with a ru

He nodded brusquely.

"Excuse me, ladies. I'll be back."

We started across the room, negotiating alleys of people. High overhead, the chandeliers drifted and turned like faceted satellites of ice. The thelinstra was an intelligent Aeolian harp, tossing its shards of song into the air-pieces of colored glass. The people buzzed and drifted like certain of George Emmet's insects, and we avoided their swarms by putting one foot in front of another without pause and making noises of our own. We didn't step on anybody who squashed.

The night was warm. Most of the men wore the featherweight, black dress-uniform which protocol dictates the Staff suffer at these functions. Those who didn't weren't Staff.