Gording broke an embarrassed silence. "Will I go back to the dikta? Will I tell them that there is dikta immortality, but Corbell has lost it? We have to find it, Corbell."
"I don't believe it. The cat-tails weren't... I don't believe it! Damn it, Gording, there was no kind of injection except that cat-tail bite!"
"Something you ate or drank or inhaled. You may have felt odd afterward. Sick. Elated. Disoriented."
"Getting old is more complicated than that. There are... Do you know how people get old?"
Gording sprawled comfortably in his seat, facing Corbel. The old man showed no sense of urgency. "If I knew everything about aging I would make dikta immortality. I know genera! things. Substances build up in the body like... the ashes of a dying fire. Some the body can handle without help. It collects them into garbage places for storage and ejects them. Some harmful stuff can be removed from the walls of blood vessels and the tissues of the brain by the right medicines. Dust and smoke that collects in the lungs can be washed away. Without the hospital we would die much faster.
"But some... ashes collect in the smallest living parts of the body. No organ can remove them. I can imagine a chemical, a medicine, that would change these substances to other substances that dissolve more easily, without killing the-"
"Without killing the cell. You're just guessing, aren't you? We know there's dikta immortality, but we don't know how it does what it does. How does a Boy's body do it?"
Gording gestured negation: a brushing stroke with the hand. "That's the wrong line of thought. Dikta immortality came first. It must be more primitive, less indirect.-Corbell, relax. Nothing can happen until the tchiple stops. We should rest."
"I feel a strong urge to beat my head against something hard. When I think of how I pushed you into jumping me and then threw a cat-tail in your face, teeth first..." He didn't know Boyish for I'm sorry.
"How oddly you think. You know what you expected. Young and strong and black-haired Gording would throw his arms around your knees and cry wetly into your incredibly hairy chest and offer you his women...." Gording laughed. "Yes, I know you think that way. No, they are not my women. They are their own, and I am my own, as and when the Boys let us rule ourselves. Do you remember how the women acted when you spoke of one man to every woman?"
"Ah... vaguely."
"You must have lived strangely. Don't you know that there are times when a woman doesn't want a man? What does he do then? Borrow a woman whose contract is to another man?" Gording was thoroughly amused.
And his relaxation was contagious. Corbell settled himself lower in the recline chair. He said, "You'll find out, if we get our dikta immortality."
Gording looked startled. "I think you're right. We would have to free ourselves from the Boys. Raise our boy-children to immortal adults. Slowly the number of women to each man would drop toward one. But-" He smiled. "It would take centuries."
They could see the rain sweeping toward them across the wheat. It exploded against the front of the car. Against the thunder of the rain Corbell raised his voice: "Have you ever tried to escape?"
"We sent scouts. Many were dikta men in their second year, come recently from rejection by the Boys. They were too young to be wise, of course, but they could shave their groins and faces and pass as Boys. Some were brought back with their memories gone. I think the others would have returned if they could. Some women tried to scout for us during the long night. None of them came back."
The rain drummed out the hum of the motor. Corbell asked, "Did you ever think of escaping by sea?"
"Of course, but how could we hide a sea vessel from the Boys? Corbell, you've been across the sea. Is there land? Does life grow there, or is it too hot?"
"There's life, but it doesn't grow as thick as it does here, and it's different life. I know you can eat some of it, because Mirelly-Lyra fed me a fair variety. It was hot there, but not killing-hot. And, listen, I've seen sea vessels big enough to hold all of Dikta City. Whether they still float is something else."
"Where?"
"On what used to be the seabed, a short day's march from where the sea is now."
Gording mulled it over. "Three problems. Getting the sea vessel to the sea. The risk we take if the Boys catch us at it. Third and worst, what will we tell our men when they are grown? That we stole them from immortality? If we find the dikta immortality, Corbel, we can make the dikta flee across the sea."
"It itches at me. I had it all figured out. Brilliantly! Everything pointed to the cat-tails... Listen, are you willing to be bitten again? Maybe it's only the male cat-tails, or only the females, or only the gray striped. Whatever the Boys didn't take along to the Dikta Place."
"Flay me alive if you must. The stakes are high. You'd be dead long since if you didn't guess right sometimes."
Corbell settled further into the spongy material. The drumming rain was a comfortable, homey, safe sound. Presently he fell asleep.
In his dream he was running, running.
III
Something threw him violently forward. Something soft exploded in his face and threw him back. Now pressure pinned him fast while he spun violently head over heels. He tried to get up and found he couldn't so much as twitch a finger. He tried to scream and he couldn't breathe!
Nightmare! Running down the hospital corridors, can't get enough air-the booths in the vault... don't work! Out of the vault, searching for instant-elsewhere booths, turn a corner and-the Norn! Paralyzed even to his diaphragm and closed eyelids, his sense of balance gone crazy, he tries again to scream. The cane!
But his scream blew air through... through the stuff across his face. He gasped, and some air leaked through, slowly. Porous stuff across his face. Right, and the hospital was a long time ago.
The spinning stopped. He thought he was upside down.
Let's see, he'd been with Gording... in a car... The pressure was easing up. He thrust forward with his hands. The stuff gave like a balloon. He worked an arm sideways, found the door, then the handle. Wrestled it open. He squirmed against the porous balloon, edged sideways, and finally dropped out on his head.
The car was upside down in wet, scraggy wheat. It had torn a clear path in its rolling fall. Gording was around in back looking at a broken spear haft that had been jammed under the edge of a close-fitting hood.
"I knew there were safety devices," he said cheerfully.
Relief made Corbell babble. "Too many Great Escapes lately. I'm getting them mixed up. Lord, what a nightmare! For a time there I thought I was back running from Mirelly-Lyra."
Gording looked at him. "She really frightens you, the old dikt."
"She really does. Worse than the Boys. There were some very hairy moments. The city was full of prilatsil, see, and you never knew where she'd be, or where I'd be. The best I could do was find a prilatsil and dial at random, over and over, and even then some of them didn't work. And all the time she was tracking my pressure-suit helmet! She's probably still got it. At least... I hope she does."
"Why does it matter?"
"I'll tell you as we go." Corbell paused. "For a moment there..."
"Something?"
"Something connected in my primitive brain and instantly got lost again. Never mind, it'll come back." Corbell sighted along the line torn through the wheat, then extended the line. "Sarash-Zillish is that way. I wish I knew how far." There were nothing but rolling wheat fields to be seen. "When we come to forest, we're close."