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 storyship"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.
Kelexel"s thoughts turned inward. The Primacy had lost another round with Fraffin. The precise and formal way he had partic.i.p.ated in that loss grew clearer to Kelexel by the minute. There was the blind (was it really blind?) way he"d walked into the trap. He"d been as easy for Fraffin to manipulate as any of the wild creatures on this wonderful world.
The realization that he must accept defeat, that he had no choice, brought an odd feeling of happiness to Kelexel. It wasn"t joy, but a backward sorrow as poignant and profound as grief.
I will have an unlimited supply of female pets, he thought. And they will give me offspring.
A cloud pa.s.sed across his mind then and he spoke to Fraffin as a fellow conspirator: "What if the Primacy sends a female Investigator?"
"Make our task easier," Fraffin said. "Chem females, deprived of the ability to breed, but not deprived of the instinct, find great joy here. They dabble in the pleasures of the flesh, of course. Native males have a wonderful lack of inhibitions. But the magnetic attraction for our females is a very simple thing. One exposure and they"re addicted to watching at the births! They get some vicarious pleasure out of it that I don"t understand, but Ynvic a.s.sures me it"s profound."
Kelexel nodded. It must be true. The females in this conspiracy must be held by some strong tie. But Kelexel was still the Investigator in his training. He noted the way Fraffin"s mouth moved, the creasing of lines at the eyes: little betrayals. There was an element here that Fraffin was refusing to recognize. The battle would be lost some day. Forever was too long for the Primacy to lose every exchange. Suspicions would mount to certainty and then any means would be employed to unveil this secret.
Seeing this, Kelexel felt a pang of grief. It was as though the inevitable already had happened. Here was an outpost of the Chem mortality and it, too, would go -- in time. Here was a part of all Chem that rebelled against Forever. Here was the proof that somewhere in every Chem, the fact of immortality hadn"t been accepted. But the evidence would be erased.
"We"ll find you a planet of your own," Fraffin said.
The instant he"d spoken, Fraffin wondered if he"d been too precipitate. Kelexel might need time to digest things. He"d appeared to stiffen there, but now he was rising, the polite Chem taking his leave, accepting defeat -- no doubt going to be rejuvenated. He"d see the need for that at once, of course.
16.
Kelexel lay face up on the bed, his hands behind his head, watching Ruth pace the floor. Back and forth, back and forth she went, her green robe hissing against her legs. She did this almost every time he came here now -- unless he set the manipulator at a disgustingly high pressure.
His eyes moved to follow the pacing. Her robe was belted at the waist with emeralds chained in silver that glittered under the room"s yellow light. Her body gave definite visible hints of her pregnancy -- a mounding of the abdomen, a rich glow to her skin. She knew her condition, of course, but aside from one outburst of hysterics (which the manipulator controlled quickly) she made no mention of it.
Only ten rest periods had pa.s.sed since his interview with Fraffin, yet Kelexel felt the past which had terminated in the director"s salon had receded into dimness. The "amusing little story" centered on Ruth"s parent had been recorded and terminated. (Kelexel found it less amusing every time he viewed it.) All that remained was to find a suitable outpost planet for his own uses.
Back and forth Ruth paced. She"d be at the pantovive in a moment, he knew. She hadn"t used it yet in his presence, but he could see her glancing at it. He could sense the machine drawing her into its...o...b..t.
Kelexel glanced up at the manipulator controlling her emotions. The strength of its setting frightened him. She"d be immune to it one day; no doubt of that. The manipulator was a great metal insect spread over the ceiling.
Kelexel sighed.
Now that he knew Ruth was a wild Chem, her ancestry heavily infused with storyship bloodlines, he found his feelings about her disturbed. She had become more than a creature, almost a person.
Was it right to manipulate a person? Wrong? Right? Conscience? The att.i.tudes of this world"s exotics infused strange doubts into him. Ruth wasn"t full Chem -- never could be. She hadn"t been taken in infancy, transformed and stunted by immortality. She was marked down at no position in Tiggywaugh"s web.
What would the Primacy do when they found out? Was Fraffin correct? Would they blot this world? They were capable of it. But the natives were so attractive it didn"t seem possible they"d be obliterated. They were Chem -- wild Chem. But no matter the Primacy"s attentions, this place would be overwhelmed. No one presently partaking of its pleasures would have a part in the new order.
Arguments went back and forth in his mind in a pattern much like Ruth"s pacing.
Her movement began to anger him. She did this to annoy him, deliberately testing the limits of her power. Kelexel reached beneath his cloak, adjusted the manipulator.
Ruth stopped as though drawn up against a wall. She turned, faced him. "Again?" she asked, her voice flat.
"Take off your robe," he said.
She stood unmoving.