Read Ebook: Never Come Midnight by Gold H L Horace Leonard Dillon Diane Illustrator Dillon Leo Illustrator

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Ebook has 250 lines and 14794 words, and 5 pages

For it had been a starship equipped, like all starships, with the Shortmire engines that had brought back the plague--a starship probing the distant corners of the Galaxy which were all that Man's insatiable curiosity had left undiscovered.

Far out, even beyond Morethis--outermost of the discovered planets--in the middle of the dead and dying stars that were all there was in this chill, cold sector of space, the ship had come upon three dead planets, dark and lifeless. But when it returned to Earth to report the end of Man's ambitions for further conquest, it turned out that one planet had not been quite as lifeless as they had fancied. And the ship had brought back its life--a virus against which terrestrial medicine was powerless.

Emrys could have fled the city; he could have fled the planet. But somehow, after three years on Earth, he had not wanted to. He had spent those years fulfilling the dreams that all young men dream in the murky part of their souls but seldom have the chance to gratify.

As soon as the inheritance was his, he had bought the most lavish mansion that was available at the instant of his desire, furnished it extravagantly, and prepared to enjoy himself. His pleasures were many and, some of them, strange. At first his mistresses were human, then non-human. Females of all the intelligent species, save the Morethan, were to be found on Earth, and although consorting with extraterrestrials was illegal, still a wealthy man had never been too much troubled by laws.

But women--females--represented only a fraction of his pleasures, as did the terrestrial vices. He indulged heavily in rrilla, zbokth, mburrje, and all the other outworld pursuits that had been imported from the planets where the native life had been intelligent enough for decadence.

However, though he pushed his body a thousand times beyond what should have been the limits of his endurance, the distress he had suffered during the first hours of his landing on Earth did not recur. He remained as clear of eye and trim of form as ever; each physical excess seemed only to improve his splendid health.

Oddly, he did not seem to enjoy these pleasures as much as he had anticipated. Something seemed lacking. It was always like this when you dreamed too long about something, he told himself; no result ever equaled its expectation. And he took another one of the sparkling pills from Morethis. They provided the only satisfaction he seemed able to get.

Emrys had been wrong about Uvrei's indifference. He apparently did consider Emrys his responsibility, over and above the material details of the bargain. The Morethans regarded all those of alien species as enemies, and all those outside the clan as unfriends. Therefore, Emrys began to realize the ceremonies of adoption he had gone through were more than merely honorific or ritual--they had been genuine. It was an uncomfortable conclusion.

"Well, son of my spirit," Uvrei would keep asking, "is this what you wanted?"

So he had waited ... one year, two years, three years. At the end of the fourth, the plague had struck. And he had stayed on Earth, because going to another planet somehow did not seem worthwhile. He was able to take care of his house alone, since the servants had been primarily for show, and the great Dyall machine--which was all the house, essentially, was--could run itself. Whenever a part of it broke down, he repaired it himself, glad of the opportunity to have something to do with his hands.

Finally he realized that he must be immune; hence a lifetime waited ahead of him. So he turned to learning, for the vast libraries of tapes and books remained changeless amid the disaster. He read and he learned a great deal, and if he could not derive pleasure from this, at least there was a deep intellectual appreciation that almost took its place.

The doctors on Ndrikull, the most advanced of the other planets, at last managed to find a serum that would kill the plague--that is, they maintained it was their serum that had killed it. Some suggested that the virus had died because Earth's environment had eventually proved hostile to it. But Earth did not die, even though most of its people had, because the great machines that took care of it--the Dyall machines--had kept functioning.

Gradually, most of the people who had fled to the other planets came back, and those who had survived in the country returned to the cities. Earth was restored to its former splendor as the social and political capital of the Galaxy, though Ndrikull now was the financial center and rivaled Earth for artistic honors. But still Emrys stuck to his books. Once in a while, he would sink himself for a week or a month in what would be, for other men, physical pleasure, just to see if his reactions had changed, but they had grown even more impersonal.

When Emrys Shortmire had been ten years on Earth, he eventually ran into Nicholas Dyall, at the opening of a scientific exposition. As soon as he saw Dyall in the crowd, he turned to go, but Dyall had seen him at the same time, and hurriedly limped across the room.

"You must be Emrys Shortmire," he declared, in a voice of surprising resonance for so old a man. "You look so much like Jan, I couldn't be mistaken." Grasping his stick with one hand for support, he extended the other to Emrys, who could not refuse it. "But you are so young...."

"I'm older than I look," Emrys said uncomfortably; then remembered to add, "You were a friend of my father's, sir?"

"A hundred years ago, yes. My name is Nicholas Dyall."

"I've heard of you; you're the man who--who invented all those machines," Emrys said, trying not to sound too ingenuous. "I've heard people say you revolutionized our technology as much as--"

"As much as your father revolutionized our civilization? Yes, both of us are responsible for a great deal. Luckily, your father is dead."

"Luckily?" Emrys echoed.

"Luckily for him, I mean." The old man sighed. "But you are too young to understand." Then his dark face relaxed into a smile. "I won't ask if you received the letter I sent when you first arrived on Earth. I can understand that a young man would wish the society of other--young people."

Emrys avoided Dyall's eye, and, so doing, met the gaze of the girl standing next to the old man, and stopped, transfixed. She was very young, less than forty, he judged, perhaps even less than thirty.

"This is my great-great-granddaughter Megan," Dyall introduced her. The girl nodded and smiled. After a moment, Emrys forced himself to do the same.

"I won't press you to come visit us, Mr. Shortmire," Dyall said to Emrys as he and his descendant finally turned to leave, "but I hope that you will."

"We should be so glad to see you," the girl said, with a shy smile.

"Perhaps--perhaps I will come," he found himself saying. "One day." The two men shook hands, and Nicholas Dyall and his great-great-granddaughter moved away. Emrys stared after them for a minute; then, without paying any attention to the exhibits, he went back to his house and spent the rest of the evening staring at the falling flakes in his snowplace.

He waited a week, then went to the Dyall house--a mansion, less ostentatious than his, but probably more expensive. Dyall greeted him warmly. "I'm glad you decided to come. Your father and I were not close friends, but he was the only one left of my generation whom I knew. It was a shock to hear of his passing, even though I hadn't seen him for a century or so."

"You've lived for such a long time, Grandpa," Megan said in her high, sweet voice, "it's hard to imagine. But why doesn't everybody get the longevity treatment, so we can all live a long time?"

"Because it's difficult and expensive," her ancestor said, smiling over her golden head at Emrys. "Because the old must make way for the young. It is only given to those whose lives, the government feels, should be prolonged, either because of the contributions they can still make, or whose contributions have already been so great that this is the only fitting reward."

The girl stared at him with large blue eyes. "Does that mean you will live forever, Grandpa?"

"No," the old man told her. "All our science can give is an extra half century. I don't know how long my life span would have been, but I'm past the average and the extra half century, and so I'm living on borrowed time."

The blue eyes filled with tears. "I don't want you to die, Grandpa. I don't want to grow old and die, either."

Dyall looked down at her, and there was, Emrys thought, an odd perplexity in his gaze. Didn't he find it natural for a young girl not to like the idea of old age, of death?

"But I shall want to die when my time comes, Megan," Dyall said. "We all will." Gently, he touched her cheek. "Perhaps, by the time you make your contribution to society, scientists will know how to give youth as well as extra years. More years are not really much of a gift to the old."

"But I can't do anything, Grandpa," she sobbed. "I have nothing to contribute."

Old Dyall was saying, "Perhaps, Megan, by the time you are old enough, our government will be wise enough to realize that beauty, of itself, deserves the greatest reward Man can give." He turned to Emrys. "Forgive me for getting so sentimental, but Megan looks as uncannily like her great-great-grandmother--my wife--as ... you look like your father. I can't bear to think she must die, too. It's a pity there is no way she can stay young and beautiful for all time."

Emrys found his fists clenching. The fingers were cold.

"Alissa's portrait was painted just before I married her," the old man said. "She was just about Megan's age then. Come, I'd like you to see it."

They went into another room. Hanging over the mantelpiece was the painting of a girl in old-fashioned clothes. Anyone, not knowing, would have taken her to be Megan. But Emrys knew she was not, and suddenly he let himself remember what it was that Megan meant to him ... and why he hated Nicholas Dyall with such coruscating fury.

"You should have sent for me to come to you, Mr. Hubbard," Nicholas Dyall said, with a gentle pity that infuriated the old lawyer, who knew that he himself was young enough to be Dyall's grandson. Hubbard was jealous--he would not conceal it from himself--bitterly jealous. It had not been hard for him to rationalize Jan Shortmire's gift of years as a worthless one; that old man's bitterness and disillusionment had not inspired envy. But this hale and rosy old man seemed to be enjoying his years.

"I am perfectly able to get about, Mr. Dyall," he said in icy tones, "since I am in excellent health."

Which he was, the doctor had told him, adding, however, "for your age."

"What is more," Hubbard continued, "since I was on Ndrikull, it might have seemed rather presumptuous for me to send for you; whereas I had always been planning to return to Earth one day. I left at the time of the plague."

"You were wise. I merely retired to the country. I escaped the virus, but the rest of my family was less fortunate. I have but one remaining--my great-great-granddaughter."

"Yes," Hubbard said, "I know. It's because of her I've come to see you."

He had not really planned ever to return to Earth. Ndrikull had been comfortable and a man of his age did not risk a trip through space unless the need was urgent. The memory of Emrys Shortmire had disturbed him from time to time, but, he thought, probably the young man had died of the plague. Even if he had not, what good would it do for Peter Hubbard to be present on Earth? He could not counteract the presence of an evil force without knowing the quality of that evil.

Then, picking up the kind of journal he did not usually read, he had seen mentioned the fact that Jan Shortmire's son was "courting" Nicholas Dyall's great-great-granddaughter. And he had known the need was now urgent. He must go back to Earth and warn someone; it was his duty. A letter could not convey the hatred and fear with which the young man had inspired him. Obviously, old Dyall had been the person to warn. Yet he did not seem right.

"You've come because of Megan?" Dyall raised eyebrows that were still thick and black. "Have you met her? Do you know her?" His voice sharpened. "She has never spoken of you."

Hubbard had not thought of this before, and it shook him. Yet, if Iloa Tasqi was alive, then Emrys Shortmire must be considered to be, to all intents and purposes, Morethan entirely, working only for the interests of that planet. After all, his mother had been the only parent the boy had known. Even on Clergal, he must have been brought up under a strong Morethan influence. Now, if the female was still alive, then the influence would be alive, too. Since Morethans were not permitted on Earth, there would be an obvious advantage for them in having someone here.

Dyall was holding back a smile, not too well. "I didn't know a human and a Morethan could--ah--breed together."

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