Chapter III

“I love you, Emrys,” the woman said, and died agonizedly in his arms. He looked down at the contorted, leaden face, ravaged by sickness, and thought: Even when she was beautiful, I could not love her. He could not even feel sorry for her, except in a remote, intellectual way. He could not even feel sorry for himself and his own inability to feel.

Since none of the servants was left in the house--those who were still alive had fled to the country, where there was less chance of contagion--he took her body to the crematorium himself. Other people were there, consigning their grisly burdens to the automatic fires--thin, sickly creatures they were, who would soon be carrion for the firebirds themselves. Whereas he--if he had an emotion left, it would be shame--shame for the radiant youth and health that he saw mirrored in their dully wondering eyes.

Outside, the street was clamorous with the taped importunities of the empty vehicles--so many machines, because there were so few people left. But he chose to walk.

The air was sweet and clean, because the Dyall machines came and took away the bodies of those who fell in the street, and then cleaned those streets as carefully and tenderly as they had done when the walks and gutters had abounded with the vibrant slovenliness of the living. Emrys could, of course, have thrown the woman’s body out into the gutter, and the machines would have carried her in their steel maws to the crematorium. But some remembered emotion had kept him from doing such a thing, and had made him give her to the flames with what small ceremony he could muster.

She had been the last mistress remaining to him, and probably, he thought, to any man in the city. Perhaps, out in the country, there might be women with life and lust in them still, but such women as were left here could no longer be considered women. This last one had not been even human for the past week; yet he had tended her--why, he could not say, except that he had nothing better to do. For one thing, she had been quieter when he was near her, and he could not bear her cries.

He was glad when she did die, because playing the good Samaritan had grown tedious as, in their turn, all other roles had palled. Even though he knew there would be no more women for him, he was glad. During the first few weeks of the plague, when everyone who had been alive had known that soon they would be dead, all the people on Earth had rushed to squander the life which suddenly seemed to fill them to bursting. Then a man could have had all the women he wanted, all of anything he wanted, for the asking, except the one thing he really wanted--the assurance of life.

Not everyone had plunged into an orgy of joyless pleasure. There were some who took refuge in prayer--addressed either to the traditional Deity or to the recent importations from the other planets. But, in the end, it was the same for all, prayerful and profligate alike. The only exceptions were the lucky few who seemed to be immune, like Emrys Shortmire, and those who escaped from the cities--to the country or, if they were rich, the other planets. So, even if Emrys had craved women before, he would have had enough of them by now.

As he passed through the streets, he heard a man who walked alone and talked to himself curse the name of Jan Shortmire. They would tear me to pieces if they knew I was his flesh and blood, Emrys thought, and smiled to think how once he had feared to be engulfed by Jan Shortmire’s reputation, and now he feared to be destroyed by it.

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?”

“This is what I wanted, father of my soul,” Emrys would agree. And it was what he had asked, what he had thought he wanted.

The ancient one would smile and say, “Then I am content,” and recombine into fog. And Emrys would wonder whether the Morethans had not known before they granted him his heart’s desire that it would turn to dust and ashes when he had it. Then he would dismiss the thought, telling himself maybe he’d been too impatient for pleasure. After all, how could he, sprung full-blown into a quasi-alien society, hope to become an integral part of it all at once?

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.