Never Come Midnight by H. L. Gold (libby ebook reader txt) 📖

Do you think you are strong enough to starve yourself to death over a period of two thousand years?"

Emrys knew he was not. In that first anguish, all he could think of to do was to humble himself before the Morethan. "I have served your purpose. Why not be merciful to me now?" he pleaded. "At least let me die."

"I could not, even if I would. So little of our old powers remain. We have kept the secret of perpetual life, but we have lost the secret of perpetual death."

"But that's the greater secret!"

"Of course it is!" For the first time, Emrys saw the Morethan high priest lose control. "Do you think I don't know what it is to crave death?"

After a silence, the voice, once more chillingly warm, said, "Come, my son, being one of us, you have nothing to fear from our arrival. You no longer have anything in common with these animals. You cannot even—what is your word?—love them. When you tried, you fixed upon a machine with the face of a memory."

"Would a human being have known she was a machine?"

"A human being would have known."

"Then ... I am a machine, too? A machine created by mental, rather than physical processes, but a machine nonetheless?"

"In a sense," the alien said thoughtfully, "you could be called that—though to compare you, as an artistic creation, with that trumpery piece of gimcrack...."

"Don't call her that!" Emrys shouted. "She's dead!"

Uvrei began to laugh quietly. After a little, Emrys began to laugh, too. "I'm being foolish," he said.

"Extremely foolish," Uvrei agreed. "Resign yourself, my son, and accept your fate. That is what we immortals have all had to do, one by one."

Of course he could do that, Emrys thought. After all, he wouldn't be as badly off as the other Earth people when the Morethans came; whatever else happened, he, at least, could not be turned into a component part of a little golden pill. Immortality was a dull future, but perhaps, after the Morethans arrived, it would become more interesting.

"Good-by, son of my spirit," Uvrei said. "We shall meet again corporeally in a few centuries." The fog thickened about him and disappeared, leaving its characteristic odor behind.

And still Emrys could not resign himself. Dyall could have had this, too, if he had wanted it. This was what he was offered and what he was strong enough to refuse. If I accept my fate, then I will always know that I have come off second best to him. And this prospect, more than immortality, more than the knowledge of what would happen to Earth and its people, was the one that Emrys found intolerable.

IX

Why doesn't he leave me alone? Peter Hubbard thought, as, wearily, he told the Dyall machine to let Emrys Shortmire up. I am a very old man and I will die soon. Can't he leave me alone in the little time left?

But he could not forget the obligations of courtesy. He was polite to Emrys Shortmire when the other man came in. Even if he hadn't been, he saw, Emrys wouldn't have noticed; he was too full of his own thoughts.

"Peter," he cried, almost before he was fully in the room, "did you know that, in dying, Nicholas Dyall won a final victory over me?"

The old man muffled a yawn. "You mean you can't die? Well, I was afraid of that. I am sorry for you, Jan, but you brought this upon yourself."

"I know," Emrys said, looking a little disappointed that the knowledge did not startle the lawyer. "I will be alive when they come," he went on, more subdued. "I will be waiting, or so they think."

"I imagine that's what they counted on," Hubbard said indifferently. "You not only giving them the secret of the engines but acting as a—an outpost. They didn't sell their wares cheap, did they?"

Emrys' eyes flashed copper fire. "But I will not be waiting to help them. I will be waiting to fight them."

"Brave words."

"You think I can't fight them?"

"Of course you can't. They have powers far beyond yours. And why should you want to fight them? I know you hadn't planned to be alive when they came, but it won't be bad for you. You're one of them now."

Emrys sat down on the couch. "Physically I am. That's why I can fight them. Look, Peter, I have centuries ahead of me. By giving me immortality, they have also given me time."

"Splendid. Time to do what?"

"I don't know," Emrys confessed. "But time is such a valuable commodity in itself. With it, I could learn how to turn their own powers against them."

"Easier said than done," Hubbard observed.

"Maybe I could—oh—invent a machine that will amplify my mind powers until it can overcome all of theirs...."

Hubbard said nothing.

"Well, then, the engines I gave them can't take them out of this galaxy any more than those same engines can take humanity out of it. But, given time, I can invent new engines, Peter—engines that can jump the gap from galaxy to galaxy. If I cannot give Man the weapons with which to fight, at least I can give him the means by which to flee! And, since I was the man who invented the one, I can be the man to invent the other!"

That was true, Hubbard thought, hope rising in him, despite all his efforts to hold it back. That was possible. But would Emrys do this? Right now, in the first flush of repentance, he might try to. But if the work grew tedious, might he not say to himself: Why bother? I'm bound to live forever, anyway. Why should I care what happens to the others of my kind?

"Who knows, Peter," Emrys cried, "I may be able to invent engines that can move the whole world—all our worlds—to another galaxy, where the Morethans will never be able to follow!"

"What's in it for you, Emrys?" Hubbard asked bluntly.

"I want to save humanity ... and, of course," Emrys added, his eyes lighting exultantly, "by doing that, I will do more than Dyall ever did. My name will go down in history, and his—"

"Do you hate him so much, Emrys, even though he's dead?" Hubbard asked wonderingly, unable to conceive of such a thing.

"Especially because he's dead," Emrys snarled. "Because now I'll never have the pleasure of mocking him." He looked anxiously at Hubbard. "Don't you think I'm doing the right thing, Peter?"

The right thing, but for the wrong reason. Only for the wrong reason, though, was Emrys sure to finish what he had set out to do. It was the one motive that would keep him working long after he grew bored with the work. It was humanity's only chance, and so it did not matter why Emrys was doing this.

"It's a splendid thing you're planning to do, Emrys," Hubbard said warmly. "A splendid thing!"

What if Emrys did go down in history? It would be thanks to him that history had continued at all.

Yes, he was a vicious man. And Dyall had been equally vicious. And Peter Hubbard was a good man—and it was he who had not been granted that fifty extra years of life. What was goodness? Was it inherently opposed to greatness? Did things get done only out of malevolent motives—anger and ruthlessness and spite? If, as it seemed, goodness was a passive force, and evil an active one, perhaps the world needed both. And if, as it seemed, evil could beget good, then evil could not be all bad.

So, Peter Hubbard thought, there is hope for the Morethans as well as for humanity.

End of Project Gutenberg's Never Come Midnight, by Christopher Grimm