Sci Fiction Classics Volume 4 (56 page)

He fled into the kitchen and bumped into the blonde and she dropped a
plate of sandwiches on the floor and he almost skidded on them, then
blurted, "You're going to stay over, aren't you?" and she looked at him as
if she wasn't quite sure who he was and said, "Did you ask?" and ducked
under his arm into the living room.

He turned back to the party, trying to quiet his panic, and ran into the
kid who had been at the Poly Sci sit-in.
The goddamned toga,
he was
thinking furiously,
goddamned asshole toga.
He tried to start a
conversation, but the kid snickered and said, "Later, man," and wandered
over to the group that had gathered around the cowboy in black.

"
You can't trust the dogs,
" the cowboy was saying, "
they'll gut
the proles every time. On the other hand, the police are predictable.
"
There was a chorus of agreement; the crowd grew. Jeff didn't have the
faintest idea what they were talking about.

He reeled over to the open window and tried to suck in some fresh air and
stop the room from spinning. There was singing and shouting in the street
below and he leaned out to see what was happening. Some stoned students
were lurching down the street, singing a pop song—but he couldn't
place the tune,
he couldn't place the tune,
he couldn't remember
ever having heard it. Farther down the street, beneath a street lamp, a
small army of workmen was painting over storefronts and changing signs. He
squinted his eyes, but he couldn't find the familiar Me and Thee coffee
shop; the sign that swung out over the sidewalk was gone and in its place
was something called The Rookery. He didn't know the street anymore, he
realized suddenly; all the "in" spots,
his
spots, were gone, and he
had never heard the songs, and he couldn't keep his groups straight, and
he didn't know the people, and …
who was Leonard, anyway?

Every two years, Ann had said. And faster all the time. But you never
noticed the buds until the day they blossomed.

And then he was sinking down into the sofa by the window, still clutching
his paper cup, to sit next to Mr. Guitar Man and Sue and Jenkins and Ann.
He could sense the glaze creeping over his face and felt something very
light and feathery on his neck and shoulders.

It was, he imagined, the dust settling gently down.

The End

© 1969 by the HMH Publishing Company. Originally appeared in
Playboy
Magazine
, June, 1969.

Robert Silverberg

Gaius Titus Menenius sat thoughtfully in his oddly decorated apartment on
Park Avenue, staring at the envelope that had just arrived. He
contemplated it for a moment, noting with amusement that he was actually
somewhat perturbed over the possible nature of its contents.

After a moment he elbowed up from the red contour-chair and crossed the
room in three bounds. Still holding the envelope, he eased himself down on
the long green couch near the wall and, extending himself full-length,
slit the envelope open with a neat flick of his fingernail. The medical
report was within, as he had expected.

"Dear Mr. Riswell," it read. "I am herewith enclosing a copy of the
laboratory report concerning your examination last week. I am pleased to
report that our findings are positive—emphatically so. In view of
our conversation, I am sure this finding will be extremely pleasing to
you, and, of course, to your wife.

"Sincerely, F. D. Rowcliff, M.D."

Menenius read the letter through once again, examined the enclosed report,
and allowed his face to open in a wide grin. It was almost an anticlimax,
after all these centuries. He couldn't bring himself to become very
excited over it—not anymore.

He stood up and stretched happily. "Well, Mr. Riswell," he said to
himself, "I think this calls for a drink. In fact, a night on the town."

He chose a smart dinner jacket from his wardrobe and moved toward the
door. It swung open at his approach. He went out into the corridor,
whistling gaily, his mind full of new plans and new thoughts.

It was a fine feeling. After two thousand years of waiting, he had finally
achieved his maturity. He could have a son. At last!

"Good afternoon, Mr. Schuyler," said the barman. "Will it be the usual,
sir?"

"Martini, of course," said W. M. Schuyler IV, seating himself casually on
the padded stool in front of the bar.

Behind the projected personality of W. M. Schuyler IV, Gaius Titus smiled,
mentally. W. M. Schuyler
always
drank martinis. And they had pretty
well better be dry—very dry.

The baroque strains of a Vivaldi violin concerto sang softly in the
background. Schuyler watched the TV accompaniment—a dancing swirl of
colors that moved with the music.

"Good afternoon, Miss Vanderpool," he heard the barman say. "An
old-fashioned?"

Schuyler took another sip of his martini and looked up. The girl had
appeared suddenly and had taken the seat next to him, looking her usual
cool self.

"Sharon!" he said, putting just the right amount of exclamation point
after it.

She turned to look at him and smiled, disclosing a brilliantly white array
of perfect teeth. "Bill! I didn't notice you! How long have you been
here?"

"Just arrived," Schuyler told her. "Just about a minute ago."

The barman put her drink down in front of her. She took a long sip without
removing her eyes from him. Schuyler met her glance, and behind his eyes
Gaius Titus was coldly appraising her in a new light.

He had met her in Kavanaugh's a month before, and he had readily enough
added her to the string. Why not? She was young, pretty, intelligent, and
made a pleasant companion. There had been others like her—a thousand
others, two thousand, five thousand. One gets to meet quite a few in two
millennia.

Only now Gaius Titus was finally mature, and had different needs. The
string of girls to which Sharon belonged was going to be cut.

He wanted a wife.

"How's the lackey of Wall Street?" Sharon asked. "Still coining money
faster than you know how to spend it?"

"I'll leave that for you to decide," he said. He signaled for two more
drinks. "Care to take in a concert tonight, perchance? The Bach Group's
giving a benefit this evening, you know, and I'm told there still are a
few hundred-dollar seats left—"

There,
Gaius Titus thought. The bait has been cast. She ought to
respond.

She whistled, a long, low, sophisticated whistle. "I'd venture that
business is fairly good, then," she said. Her eyes fell. "But I don't want
to let you go to all that expense on my account, Bill."

"It's nothing," Schuyler insisted, while Gaius Titus continued to weigh
her in the balance. "They're doing the Fourth Brandenburg, and Renoli's
playing the Goldberg Variations. How about?"

She met his gaze evenly. "Sorry, Bill. I have something else on for the
evening." Her tone left no doubt in Schuyler's mind that there was little
point pressing the discussion any further. Gaius Titus felt a sharp pang
of disappointment.

Schuyler lifted his hand, palm forward. "Say no more! I should have known
you'd be booked up for tonight already." He paused. "What about tomorrow?"
he asked, after a moment. "There's a reading of Webster's
Duchess of
Malfi
down at the Dramatist's League. It's been one of my favorite
plays for a long time."

Silently smiling, he waited for her reply. The Webster was, indeed, a
long-time favorite. Gaius Titus recalled having attended one of its first
performances, during his short employ in the court of James I. During the
next three and a half centuries, he had formed a sentimental attachment
for the creaky old melodrama.

"Not tomorrow either," Sharon said. "Some other night, Bill."

"All right," he said. "Some other night."

He reached out a hand and put it over hers, and they fell silent,
listening to the Vivaldi in the background. He contemplated her high,
sharp cheekbones in the purple half-light, wondering if she could be the
one to bear the child he had waited for for so long.

She had parried all his thrusts in a fashion that surprised him. She was
not at all impressed by his display of wealth and culture. Titus reflected
sadly that, perhaps, his Schuyler facet had been inadequate for her.

No,
he thought, rejecting the idea. The haunting slow movement of
the Vivaldi faded to its end and a lively allegro took its place. No; he
had had too much experience in calculating personality-facets to fit the
individual to have erred. He was certain that W. M Schuyler IV was capable
of handling Sharon.

For the first few hundred years of his unexpectedly long life, Gaius Titus
had been forced to adopt the practice of turning on and off different
personalities as a matter of mere survival. Things had been easy for a
while after the fall of Rome, but with the coming of the Middle Ages he
had needed all his skill to keep from running afoul of the superstitious.
He had carefully built up a series of masks, of false fronts, as a
survival mechanism.

How many times had he heard someone tell him, in jest, "You ought to be on
the stage?" It struck home. He
was
on the stage. He was a man of
many roles. Somewhere, beneath it all, was the unalterable personality of
Gaius Titus Menenius,
civis Romanus,
casting the shadows that were
his many masks. But Gaius Titus was far below the surface—the
surface which, at the moment, was W. M. Schuyler IV; which had been
Preston Riswell the week before, when he had visited the doctor for that
fateful examination; which could be Leslie MacGregor or Sam Spielman or
Phil Carlson tomorrow, depending on where Gaius Titus was, in what
circumstances, and talking to whom. There was only one person he did not
dare to be, and that was himself.

He wasn't immortal; he knew that. But he was
relatively
immortal.
His life span was tremendously decelerated, and it had taken him two
thousand years to become, physically, a fertile adult. His span was
roughly a hundred times that of a normal man's. And, according to what he
had learned in the last century, his longevity should be transmittable
genetically. All he needed now was someone to transmit it to.

Was it dominant? That he didn't know. That was the gamble he'd be making.
He wondered what it would be like to watch his children and his children's
children shrivel with age. Not pleasant, he thought.

The conversation with Sharon lagged; it was obvious that something was
wrong with his Schuyler facet, at least so far as she was concerned,
though he was unable to see where the trouble lay. After a few more
minutes of disjointed chatter, she excused herself and left the bar. He
watched her go. She had eluded him neatly. Where to next?

He thought he knew.

The East End Bar was far downtown and not very reputable. Gaius Titus
pushed through the revolving door and headed for the counter.

"Hi, Sam. Howsa boy?" the bartender said.

"Let's have a beer, Jerry." The bartender shoved a beer out toward the
short, swarthy man in the leather jacket.

"Things all right?"

"Can't complain, Jerry. How's business?" Sam Spielman asked, as he lifted
the beer to his mouth.

"It's lousy."

"It figures," Sam said. "Why don't you put in automatics? They're getting
all the business now."

"Sure, Sam, sure. And where do I get the dough? That's twenty." He took
the coins Sam dropped on the bar and grinned. "At least you can afford
beer."

"You know me, Jerry," Sam said. "My credit's good."

Jerry nodded. "Good enough." He punched the coins into the register.
"Ginger was looking for you, by the way. What you got against the gal?"

"Against her? Nothin'. What do y'mean?" Sam pushed out his beer shell for
a refill.

"She's got a hooker out for you—you know that, don't you?" Jerry was
grinning.

Gaius Titus thought:
She's not very bright, but she might very well
serve my purpose. She has other characteristics worth transmitting.

"Hi, Sammy."

He turned to look at her. "Hi, Ginger," he said. "How's the gal?"

"Not bad, honey." But she didn't look it. She looked as though she'd been
dragged through the mill. Her blonde hair was disarranged, her blouse was
wrinkled, and, as usual, her teeth were discolored by the lipstick that
had rubbed off on them.

"I love you, Sammy," she said softly.

"I love you, too," Sam said. He meant it.

Gaius Titus thought sourly:
But how many of her characteristics would I
want to transmit. Still, she'll do, I guess. She's a solid girl.

"Sam," she said, interrupting the flow of his thoughts, "why don't you
come around more often? I miss you."

"Look, Ginger baby," Sam said. "Remember, I've got a long haul to pull. If
I marry you, you gotta understand that I don't get home often. I gotta
drive a truck. You might not see me more than once or twice a week."

Titus rubbed his forehead. He wasn't quite sure, after all, that the girl
was worthwhile. She had spunk, all right, but was she worthy of fostering
a race of immortals?

He didn't get a chance to find out. "Married?" The blonde's voice sounded
incredulous. "Who the devil wants to get married? You've got me on the
wrong track, Sam. I don't want to get myself tied down."

"Sure, honey, sure," he said. "But I thought—"

Ginger stood up. "You think anything you please, Sam. Anything you please.
But not marriage."

She stared at him hard for a moment, and walked off. Sam looked after her
morosely.

Gaius Titus grinned behind the Sam Spielman mask. She wasn't the girl
either. Two thousand years of life had taught him that women were
unpredictable, and he wasn't altogether surprised at her reaction to his
proposal.