He looked like a boy of twenty. He was two thousand years old.
Some deep trouble touched him. Mons had lifted his arm, summoning, but Tyrell looked around confusedly and met the girl’s gray eyes.
“Nerina?” he murmured..
“Go in the pool,” she whispered. “Swim across it.”
He put out his hand and touched hers. She felt that wonderful current of gentleness that was his indomitable strength. She pressed his hand tightly, trying to reach through the clouds in his mind, trying to make him know that it would be all right again, that she would be waiting—as she had waited for his resurrection three times already now, in the last three hundred years.
She was much younger than Tyrell, but she was unmortal too.
For an instant the mists cleared from his blue eyes.
“Wait for me, Nerina,” he said. Then, with a return of his old skill, he went into the pool with a clean dive.
She watched him swim across, surely and steadily. There was nothing wrong with his body; there never was, no matter how old he grew. It was only his mind that stiffened, grooved deeper into the iron ruts of time, lost its friction with the present, so that his memory would fragment away little by little. But the oldest memories went last, and the automatic memories last of all.
She was conscious of her own body, young and strong and beautiful, as it would always be. Her mind...there was an answer to that too. She was watching the answer.
I am greatly blessed, she thought. Of all women on all the worlds, I am the Bride of Tyrell, and the only other immortal ever born.
Lovingly and with reverence she watched him swim. At her feet his discarded robe lay, stained with the memories of a hundred years.
It did not seem so long ago. She could remember it very clearly, the last time she had watched Tyrell swim across the pool. And there had been one time before that—and that had been the first. For her; not for Tyrell.
He came dripping out of the water and hesitated. She felt a strong pang at the change in him from strong sureness to bewildered questioning. But Mons was ready. He reached out and took Tyrell’s hand. He led the Messiah toward a door in the high monastery wall and through it. She thought that Tyrell looked back at her, with the tenderness that was always there in his deep, wonderful calm.
A priest picked up the stained robe from her feet and carried it away. It would be washed clean now and placed on the altar, the spherical tabernacle shaped like the mother world. Dazzling white again, its folds would hang softly about the earth.
It would be washed clean, as Tyrell’s mind would be washed clean too, rinsed of the clogging deposit of memories that a century had brought.
The priests were filing away. She glanced back, beyond the open gateway, to the sharply beautiful green of the mountain meadow, spring grass sensuously reaching to the sun after the winter’s snow. Immortal, she thought, lifting her arms high, feeling the eternal blood, ichor of gods, singing in deep rhythm through her body. Tyrell was the one who suffered. I have no price to pay for this—wonder.
Twenty centuries.
And the first century must have been utter horror.
Her mind turned from the hidden mists of history that was legend now, seeing only a glimpse of the calm White Christ moving through that chaos of roaring evil when the earth was blackened, when it ran scarlet with hate and anguish. Ragnarok, Armageddon, Hour of the Antichrist—two thousand years ago!
Scourged, steadfast, preaching his word of love and peace, the White Messiah had walked like light through earth’s descent into hell.
And he had lived, and the forces of evil had destroyed themselves, and the worlds had found peace now—had found peace so long ago that the Hour of the Antichrist was lost to memory; it was legend.
Lost, even to Tyrell’s memory. She was glad of that. It would have been terrible to remember. She turned chill at the thought of what martyrdom he must have endured.
But it was the Day of the Messiah now, and Nerina, the only other immortal ever born, looked with reverence and love at the empty doorway through which Tyrell had gone.
She glanced down at the blue pool. A cool wind ruffled its surface; a cloud moved lightly past the sun, shadowing all the bright day.
It would be seventy years before she would swim the pool again. And when she did, when she woke, she would find Tyrell’s blue eyes watching her, his hand closing lightly over hers, raising her to join him in the youth that was the springtime where they lived forever.
Her gray eyes watched him; her hand touched his as he lay on the couch. But still he did not waken.
She glanced up anxiously at Morn.
He nodded reassuringly.
She felt the slightest movement against her hand.
His eyelids trembled. Slowly they lifted. The calm, deep certainty was still there in the blue eyes that had seen so much, in the mind that had forgotten so much. Tyrell looked at her for a moment. Then he smiled.
Nerina said shakily, “Each time I’m afraid that you’ll forget me.”
Mons said, “We always give him back his memories of you, Blessed of God. We always will.” He leaned over Tyrell. “Immortal, have you truly wakened?”
“Yes,” Tyrell said, and thrust himself upright, swinging his legs over the edge of the couch, rising to his feet in a swift, sure motion. He glanced around, saw the new robe ready, pure white, and drew it on. Both Nerina and Mons saw, that there was no more hesitancy in his actions. Beyond the eternal body, the mind was young and sure and unclouded again.
Mons knelt, and Nerina knelt too. The priest said softly, “We thank God that a new Incarnation is permitted. May peace reign in this cycle, and in all the cycles beyond.”
Tyrell lifted Nerina to her feet. He reached down and drew Mons upright too.
‘Mons, Mons,” he said, almost chidingly. “Every century I’m treated less like a man and more like a god. If you’d been alive a few hundred years ago—well, they still prayed when I woke, but they didn’t kneel. I’m a man, Mons. Don’t forget that.”
Mons said, “You brought peace to the worlds.”
“Then may I have something to eat, in return?”
Mons bowed and went out. Tyrell turned quickly to Nerina. The strong gentleness of his arms drew her close.
“If I never woke, sometime—” he said. “You’d be the hardest thing of all to give up. I didn’t know how lonely I was till I found another immortal.”
“We have a week here in the monastery,” she said. “A week’s retreat, before we go home. I like being here with you best of all.”
“Wait a while,” he said. “A few more centuries and you’ll lose that attitude of reverence. I wish you would. Love’s better—and who else can I love this way?”
She thought of the centuries of loneliness be had had, and her whole body ached with love and compassion.
After the kiss, she drew back and looked at him thoughtfully.
“You’ve changed again,” she said. “It’s still you, but—”
“But what?”
“You’re gentler, somehow.”
Tyrell laughed.
“Each time, they wash out my mind and give me a new set of memories. Oh, most of the old ones, but the total’s a little different. It always is. Things are more peaceful now than they were a century ago. So my mind is tailored to fit the times. Otherwise I’d gradually become an anachronism.” He frowned slightly. “Who’s that?”
She glanced at the door.
“Mons? No. It’s no one.”
“Oh? Well . . . yes, we’ll have a week’s retreat. Time to think and integrate my retailored personality. And the past—” He hesitated again.