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"How do you Lose me?" The Boy might mean only that dikta die sooner or later, like cat-tails.
No. Ktollisp said, "When we reach the dikta, we lose you."
Corbell hadn't counted on that. "How many days?"
"Four. Five if we stop for amusement somewhere. You will like the dikta, Corbel. There are men and women and the making of new Boys between them. They have a city and some country around, but they are not smart enough to make the machines go. In day we fix the things that go wrong at night."
"They're not smart enough? They are the same... kind you are. Their heads should be built the same."
"They have the brain, the stuff inside the heads, just like us. They do not have the time. We do not tell them how to fix machines. They do not live long enough to learn, and they might break the machines learning, and we punish them if they leave. So they stay in the dikta place. They need us. We know where to find them. We must know this because we must bring new boys to the tribes."
"What happens to the... small ones not boys?"
"The girls? They grow. Some boys grow too. We choose the best, the smartest and the strongest, one from each tribe for each year, and we send them back to the dikta. We do not do the thing to them that makes them stay the same forever."
Pla
Ktollisp gri
Anger tied his tongue. "You-you joke! I die of being too old soon! I can't make more Boys!"
Ktollisp had Corbell by the hair, his knife was drawn, before Corbell could do more than gasp. He slashed-slashed away a thick handful of Corbell's hair and held it before his eyes. "Your lies are for the newly born. We are offended," he said. "Can you lie as to this?" The thin white hair he held in firelight was dark brown for half an inch at the roots.
Corbell gaped.
The tribe surrounded him. They must have been listening all the time. Yes, they looked offended. Skatholtz said, "No dikt grows hair like that. You have found the dikta way to live long like Boys, that we know only in tales. We must know what and where it is."
Corbell had forgotten his Boyish, every word. In English he cried, "I haven't the remotest idea!"
Ktollisp slapped him.
Corbell tried to block with his arms. "Wait, wait. You're right, I 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!"
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 for dikta immortality. If she 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. Hell, 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...
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 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 hell am I complaining about?" he whispered. The cat-tail stopped purring to listen. "I'm young! If nothing else works I can outrun the bitch! 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 fu
It was too damn 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.