This Immortal Read Free

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 pen-tameter 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 Isher-wood, the writing of fearfully long metaphysical epics, talking a lot about Enlightenment, and per-forming 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."
    THIS IMMORTAL 13
    "I did. He said I'm going to be a guide. What I want to know, though, is why? -The real reason.
    Pve 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\ 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,"

14 ROGER ZELAZNY
    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 ofHasan?"
    "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 refrig-erating, 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?"
    THIS IMMORTAL 15
    "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 spend-ing all your time with those bugs?* But he just