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CHAPTER THREE

REUBIN

Reubin remembered it all and told little. He had first met Alexandra Sovereign on the planet Karg. Specifically, hastily leaving the planet Karg.

Reubin leaned into the wind. The airbarge he’d hi­jacked buckled from enemy fire. He slewed the ungainly machine so that it flew with the left front quarter panel facing forward. Thus the rear of the barge and its cargo acted as a buffer between him and the enemy fire.

An energy beam ignited a crate of Leninist Army man­uals on the edge of the barge. The wind whipped the flames into a trail behind them. The craft shuddered as a missile struck somewhere below.

Habu was awake fully now, figuratively leaning over Reubin’s shoulder, observing and biding his time. The serpent had lurked just under the surface, no longer som­nolent for the battles they’d just been through. Sometimes Reubin had called upon Habu and his abilities.

*I am here. Ready.*

-I know. Not yet. I might need your reflexes shortly, Reubin told the other.

*I am ready.*

Reubin didn’t want all of Habu. He never wanted all of that creature. But over the centuries they’d reached an accommodation. For survival. Of both. Because of Habu, Reubin, at the end of his lives, courted danger. Thus, in turn, he needed Habu. An unbreakable cycle which Reu­bin would gladly escape. Habu in full control frightened him. But Reubin respected Habu’s talents and abilities and, when necessary, used them.

Down deep, Reubin was worried. For the compulsion to court danger had been limited to the tail ends of his lives. However, during this life and part of the last, he found himself drawn to perilous situations.

He forced his attention back to flying the barge.

Reubin’s hands flew over the controls to compensate for the gaping hole in the bottom of the barge. The aerodynamics of the aircraft, never perfect to begin with, were almost obliterated.

Reubin’s sixth sense told him that they’d found his range and that more missiles were being programmed to follow the first one.

He hit the “PALLET RELEASE” button for positions one through twenty, wrapped his legs around the pilot seat, tested the seat restraint, and flipped the barge over ninety degrees. Twenty pallets full of Leninist supplies tumbled into the Karg skies, with the burning army man­uals making a nice trail of fire toward the ground below.

A series of explosions told Reubin that his timing had been good as the supplies intercepted energy beams and missiles which had preferred flaming army manuals to the scarred hull of an airbarge.

Reubin dumped 2K of altitude in a free fall before slid­ing the barge back onto straight and level. Perhaps the falling debris would mask his own descent.

The lights of the spaceport loomed in the distance.

Would he make it?

With the fall of the IPs, the rest of the off worlders in IP territory would have already been long gone. And, from what Reubin understood, the rest of Karg was into a boiling frenzy of warfare, at such a high pitch that not even Karg could sustain.

This time, he’d been careless. In his never-ending ef­fort to disappear and resurface in a different life, he’d chosen the wrong situation. The trouble is, he thought, just such chaos is tailor-made for my purposes. Not to mention his compulsion for courting danger, espe­cially toward the end of his lives. And Karg had provided more than enough chaos and danger to sate his desire.

It was almost time to change his life again. So, to bury his trail further, he traveled to Karg and enlisted as a mercenary. His intention was to spend some time in their internecine wars and come out with a different identity. That way, when he applied at the Long Life Institute on some world he’d arbitrarily choose, he’d already be one additional identity removed. The LLI computer would never figure it out—though, admittedly, one of these cen­turies it would start correlating people, files, and codes and come up with some interesting discoveries.

The people on Karg simply didn’t like each other. Re­ligious fundamentalists of several types: Christian deriv­atives, Moslem offshoots, Leninists, and even a smattering of Intellectual Philosophists. They fought all the time.

Reubin Flood enlisted in the IP Army under the name of Teale. This time he’d guessed wrong.

He wound up commanding the troop guarding the City of Death, being promoted to the rank of comajor mainly because the Leninists had killed off the higher echelon of the IP field grade officers.

The City of Death was appropriately named. It was a graveyard of epic proportions which illustrated, if noth­ing else, the dedication the inhabitants of Karg gave to their hate and resultant warfare. The City of Death lay at the center of IP territory. Wealthy Intellectual Philoso­phists (Reubin thought much of their nomenclature and terminology to be contradictory) buried each other in the City of Death. Periodically they visited the graves of the deceased. To do this in style, atop the gravesites, they had erected huts, shrines, cabins, all of which they used only when visiting.

Because of his past, Reubin felt a kinship with the City of Death.

Over the years a living city of poor and disenfranchised had grown up in and around the City of Death. It was a waste of covered space to leave the veritable homes atop graves unoccupied for most of the year. Inevitably, a sub­culture took hold and flourished.

Reubin Flood and his unit were to guard the graves of deceased IPs, not the live peasantry who parasitically survived atop the dead city.

Enjoying the fruits of an extra heavy birth cycle some twenty planetary years earlier, the Leninists over­whelmed the miserable IP force and flooded the land with young men trained to kill the enemy without quarter.

Reubin Flood fit their criteria of enemy.

The only thing Reubin had going for him was the fall of the IP. Any off planet visitors would be considered suppliers of the IP by the conquering Leninists, Thus, any starships in port would be leaving like the proverbial rats.

Two preprogrammed drones with night view eyes buzzed the barge and hovered overhead.

Reubin hit “EMERGENCY JETTISON ALL.” Ex­plosives sheared bolts and retaining straps. Compressed air fired the remaining thirty pallets of cargo straight up in the air. Reubin tilted the barge on its side again and flew sideways out of range of the falling cargo.

He saw no more drones.

His panel showed him to be nearing the spaceport.

“IDENTIFY” lit up on his screen. He punched in his code as major sector commander and the screen blanked.

A worried face popped up on the screen. “Comajor Teale? State your purpose.”

“Who are you?” Reubin demanded.

“Flight control—”

“Patch me through to your sector command, this equipment isn’t doing the job,” Reubin snapped. Time to write your own invitation to the party, he told himself.

Eyes flickered. “The unit has moved west—”

“Who’s the senior officer present?” Reubin put steel into his voice. He touched the power control bar to insure it was at max.

“I am Colonel Burak...sir.”

“You confirm my code, Burak.”

“The computer does.”

Reubin took a deep breath. “I am assuming command. I will land at the base of the tower and join you shortly.”

“Sir, I remind you that Flight Control is not under the Ministry of Warfare and therefore not subject to your command except through specifically authorized circum­stances.”

“We’ll get it straight when I arrive,” Reubin told the IP colonel. His face was the IP sickly white and Reubin knew instinctively that Colonel Burak had tabbed him as an off-worlder. It would be difficult to cajole him into turning over his command. “Is it safe for me to land? I don’t want to get in any starship takeoff wash on my inbound.”

“The Starline cruise ship Ai Latalia is ready to launch.”

A cruise ship? Reubin couldn’t imagine anybody vis­iting Karg for mere vacation purposes, though he did remember something about the City of Death being a tourist attraction. And the City of Garbage, too, he re­called.

“Well,” Reubin said, thinking furiously. He needed to board that starship. “I don’t see his sequence lights yet. I think I can be under cover before he launches.”

“It’s your funeral,” Burak said.

“Your mouth, Colonel, is overreaching your rank,” Reubin snapped. “You’d best call up your evacuation programs and start memorizing.” Keep the colonel guessing. He might take offense to Reubin’s last minute changes. What he intended came under the category of desertion in military regulations. He flipped the monitor off.

No ground traffic at all below him. The lights of the spaceport sprawled ahead of him. A solitary space liner sat forlornly on one of the central launching pads. Warn­ing lights began the five minute countdown.

Reubin snapped on the comm link. “Burak. Hold that ship until I’m clear.”

Burak came on and grinned wickedly. “Sorry, sir. The captain of the vessel is anxious to leave. I have no con­trol.”

Just what Reubin wanted. “Gimme his freek.”

Burak reached out and touched a keypad. “Info is in your comm link. You’ll never talk her out of it.”

Reubin killed the link and called up the space liner Al Latalia.

“Unidentified barge, clear the area,” said the voice and the picture leaped onto his screen. The face was fe­male and angry.

“Space liner, hold your takeoff,” Reubin said.

“Hah.”

“Are you the captain?”

“That’s a fact, barge. In about three minutes you’re gonna be fried like the rest of this forpin’ planet.”

Reubin fumbled the casing off the ammo belt which crisscrossed his chest. “My credentials, madam.” He leaned closer to the pickup and increased the lighting momentarily.

“I’m Captain Kent, at your service, sir. Of course you realize that if those gemstones are not real, I’ll have you scrubbing the hull while we’re in transpace—from the outside.”

“They’re real.”

The woman nodded. “They look it. Passage one hun­dred thousand fedcreds, and one thousand fedcred bonus to each member of the crew.”

Steep. “Done.”

Her eyes narrowed and glanced aside. “There appears to be a war following you. Our east entry port will be open for two minutes, no more.” The comm link died.

With fifteen seconds to spare, he sidled up to the east entry port. He set the barge controls to fly north with a two second delay. He climbed out onto the stabilizing cradle and into the entry port as his barge surged away.

Habu faded back into the darkness.

A crewman stood waiting. Reubin walked wearily ahead through the airlock into a corridor. The outer door did not close. What was this?

Reubin turned to ask the crewman and a one person aircar settled into the cradle he’d just vacated. A woman with silver hair stepped out. She turned and pushed the aircar away with a shapely leg no jumpsuit could dis­guise,

The crewman bowed quickly and escorted her inside. The outer door snapped closed.

As the two passed Reubin and the airlock closed be­hind them, Reubin thought that Captain Kent had snook­ered him: she was waiting for another passenger anyway.

Without a word, Reubin followed the pair. The crew­man showed them into a nearby lounge cabin. “Use the cushion seats, please, in case of inordinate accelera­tion.” He disappeared.

The woman looked at Reubin. “Inordinate accelera­tion?”

“Perhaps he’s government trained,” Reubin said.

“Lift off,” a voice from an overhead said. A small buzzing repeated three times.

Reubin looked at the woman. She was dressed in a silver jumpsuit and her silver hair was long and wind­blown. She was staring at him.

He knew what she saw. An exhausted man carrying an energy rifle on his back, a laser on his hip, a projectile weapon in an underarm holster, not to mention the han­dles of several other weapons and knives protruding from his clothing and paraphernalia. The bandoliers crossing his chest and around his back were full of charge packs, explosives, and ammunition that wouldn’t fit into or onto his combat vest. The gemstones were concealed again.

The woman’s eyes flashed as her teeth showed in a tight grin. “You didn’t stop to shave?”

“Hello, Silver Girl,” Reubin said against his will. He didn’t want to get familiar with this woman, but he couldn’t help it. “Traveling light?”

“The skycap will be along with my luggage directly.”

The ship jerked upward. “We could share my tooth­brush,” Reubin said.

She ran her eyes along his body again. “No, thanks. Doubtless it’d turn out to be lethal.” She turned and strode to a seat and sank into it thankfully. Reubin couldn’t miss the sigh of weariness.

“Me, too,” he said and lowered himself into the adjoining lounge. “My name is Reubin Flood.” Which it wasn’t. He’d appeared on Karg using the name Erdenhaer and enlisted under the name of Teale. Reubin Flood was the identity he planned to use for the purpose of changing life. He was due. The pressure within his mind was growing.

“I’m Alexandra Sovereign.” She regarded him for a moment. “They vectored me in from a different direc­tion; but I watched the trail of fire behind you. Indeed, Reubin Flood, you are a lucky man.”

“I am now, Silver Girl.” Habu wouldn’t like that.

She smiled in acknowledgment.

Acceleration increased. The ship’s own field would kick in soon with a single standard gee.

“You’re from Snister?” he asked.

She nodded, forking more spinach onto her plate.

“Nobody’s from Snister.”

“I am.”

It was hours later and they were sharing a midnight meal. The dining room was empty. Reubin was consid­erably poorer, his load of gems lightened.

Alexandra Sovereign eyed the platter. “I wonder if that’s real or mock liver?”

“The onions are real. If you don’t want to know the answer, don’t ask the question.”

“What’d you do with all your weapons?” Alexandra asked.

“Captain Kent quoted some arcane rules, laws, regu­lations, and took them away.”

Alexandra regarded him. “You don’t look the man to bow to authority.”

“Rules are rules,” he said, and was glad they hadn’t x-rayed or scoped him. Not to mention a couple of weap­ons he’d concealed in the room they’d occupied during takeoff.

Alexandra’s silver jumpsuit had been cleaned and glis­tened in the dim light. Reubin wore slacks and a tunic from the ship’s stores.

* * * * * * *

Later, in a lounge, they had an after dinner drink to­gether. While they weren’t in synch with shipboard time, Reubin felt his body and internal clock becoming accus­tomed to the change.

“Now let me get this straight,” he told Alexandra. “You’re a coffin salesperson from Snister.”

“Casket,” she corrected automatically. “And I am no salesperson, though, in essence, that was my business upon Karg. My title is Minister of Wormwood, principle export of Snister. Death is a way of life on Karg. It was my intention to pitch the benefits of interment in worm­wood caskets.”

“The corpses care?”

“Loved ones,” she corrected. “Yes. Wormwood is highly sought after in this sector of the Fed. It lasts longer than other wood. It is of much higher quality.” She sipped her drink and Reubin wondered if the liquor was synthetic. He could never tell.

“And the worms?” he prompted.

“The wood is harvested at a specific time in the growth process. The worms are the natural symbiote. The worms’ activities while the trees are growing insure that the wood will last longer after it is harvested. They eat their way through the wood so very slowly—their metab­olism is geared to two speeds: slow and stop. Their, um, processing of the wood leaves a faint sweet, pleasant smell which is why the wood is so popular,”

“I don’t think I’ll ask about the worms and the de­ceased.” But his mind was serious. He knew about sym­biosis. Day after day, year after year, century after century. Would he never get any respite?

She smiled and leaned back. They sat in silence for a while.

And it took awhile, but finally the thought occurred to him that he was growing an affinity for this woman. Something he hadn’t felt so deeply for a century or two. Maybe longer. The feeling was more of a comfortable empathy than a physical attraction.

He had volunteered nothing about himself other than his name. Nor had she pushed him about his background, his past. As it was, he felt that he’d talked more than he had in the last year.

Her eyes on him and a slight smile, she said, “You are much used to silence, no?”

“If I don’t have anything to say, I don’t say it.”

“Cryptic,” she said. “A man accustomed to living alone.”

“I am about due for a trip to the Long Life Institute.”

“Oh.” She studied him for a moment. “Me, too. Is it bad yet?”

He shrugged. “It builds. You get used to it.”

“I know.”

Eight hours of sleep and now they faced each other in the splatter ball room.

Gravity could be adjusted from zero up. They wore thin coveralls of some paper material. When the balls of colored water struck and burst open, the paper changed color from white to whatever color the water was. The first one to completely change color was the loser. Reubin was throwing blue and Alex was throwing red. The longer the game lasted, the more the paper coveralls dis­integrated.

They touched hands in the traditional beginning of the game.

Alexandra hurried back to the dispenser on her side of the court. She punched the start button and snatched wa­ter balls from the dispenser tube.

Reubin had walked back to his dispenser slowly, ob­serving Alex to try to figure out her tactics.

Her arm snapped and he stepped aside—but she’d thrown a second quick one, guessing he’d step to his right.

He’d automatically stepped to his left.

He smiled a challenge and dodged her volley for a mo­ment. Perhaps she’d tire soon. But he did not underesti­mate her craftiness. It occurred to him that she was showing him less than full power and shot accuracy. Which probably meant that she was waiting for him to approach his dispenser.

She stopped as if winded.

He moved toward his dispenser and reached out.

She threw several water balls quickly and accurately. He dodged, but water splattered off the back wall and he felt wet on his back.

“Wallflower,” she taunted.

He stuck his tongue out at her.

He braved the distance to his dispenser and collected half a dozen water balls, taking only one hit on his shoul­der. The paper began to disintegrate.

A bell toned.

“My gee,” he said and grinned wickedly. He went to the control and punched in zero.

“Oh, no. No fair,” she said.

He floated, pushed off, and threw underhanded. It was a direct hit on her thigh. Blue splotches appeared all over the front of her suit. The paper began to deteriorate.

The force of the throw twisted him up and sideways.

Then he was busy contorting, dodging in midair zero gee, a veritable hail of red water balls. Alex had thought ahead of him, guessing that was what he’d do. As the gravity had disappeared, she’d anchored her legs around her dispenser and began pelting him as fast as she could.

The entire left side of his paper suit was gone and he was drenched in red. Not only that, but the globules of water hung in the gravityless room, adding additional ob­stacles.

Reubin dispensed half a dozen, as many as he could hold, and pushed off toward the gravity control. He punched in two gees and Alex fell off her dispenser tube. He nailed her on the way down.

“Hey! Not fair,” she said and rolled along the floor toward him, firing her last salvo.

He dodged aside.

“You move quicker than a snake,” she said as the tone sounded.

He froze. He watched her but could read nothing as she went to the gravity control. She switched it back to point seven and they continued. Surely she couldn’t have guessed his identity. Were her words on purpose or merely a common metaphor?

Reubin decided her comment held no deeper meaning. He admired the flesh which was appearing through her costume in great gaping blue bits. He planned his next shots, deciding to make the game last as long as possible. No more zero or two gees.

* * * * * * *

“Pizza and beer?” Alex said.

“I bribed the cook,” Reubin said.

It was mid-afternoon and they’d managed to cleanse the stains—supposedly no more involved than using soap and water, but Reubin always found that some re­mained. Under the fingernails. In the crook of the el­bow or knee.

“Big spender,” she accused, wrapping a string of cheese around the slice in her hand. “I can pay my own way.”

He shrugged. She was saying that he was a mercenary on the run, bailing out of the mess on Karg with only the clothes on his back. And that she was a high government official with a commensurate salary and/or other holdings with which she could adequately afford to pay her own way.

“I’m taking the Change anyway,” he said.

“Haven’t you heard? You can take it with you.”

“I heard.”

She looked at him over the mug of beer. “You are a study of contradictions, Reubin Flood.”

He drank his own beer,

“A real man of mystery,” she continued.

He shrugged again and felt self-conscious as if that was all he’d been doing,

“If you’re taking the Change, I guess the past is no longer important.”

“It’s gone,” he agreed. “Not worth going over any­way,”

“Sure.”

He was uncomfortable. He didn’t want to talk about his past. Nor admit to the dormant killer serpent deep within him. He was going to take the Change and the past would no longer matter again. On the other hand, her interest was certainly promising. He knew himself to be a cold man, one who usually didn’t respond to a woman without long exposure to one. Alex was different. Why now? Now that he’d severed his ties and was going to take the Change? Could he postpone the Change? No. Madness and death would follow.

“I’ve been up front with you,” Alex said with more than a little zing in her voice.

“You have,” he said. “Actually, I’m wanted in every sector of the Federation.”

“For mass murder, no doubt,” she said. Before he could respond, she went on. “I saw you come on board. You can and have killed. But I don’t believe you would do so unless it was absolutely necessary to your survival. Or perhaps with some higher purpose,”

“Tell me about your daughter,” he said. He cursed himself for a bumbling fool. That awkward line about being wanted was amateurish. And he’d long since rec­onciled the deaths and, though some considered it mass murder, he did not.

“Here. I’ve got a holo-chip in my wristcomp.” She punched tiny keys on her wristcomp and a holo appeared alongside the pitcher of beer. “Tique,” Alex said. The holo showed a woman with auburn hair. She had the sen­suous body of her mother. The tiny head swiveled to the right and an eye winked. Then the holo recycled and began again. After the next wink, Alex snapped it off. “Short for Tequilla. Tequilla Sovereign.”

“She is truly attractive. She takes after her mother,” Reubin said.

“Why thank you, Reubin.”

“Her father?”

“Her father took the Change twenty years ago, so she’s just out of the first stage.” Alexandra’s face softened “It’s been eighty years, but I still remember her baby-softness. I’d never borne a daughter before—only sons, so the experience was unique. We grew quite close over the years.”

“You didn’t take the Change with him?”

She looked at Reubin. She understood that he knew she hadn’t taken the Change, else she wouldn’t be here. “It had about run its course. It was the best way to part.” She hesitated, and Reubin could tell she was fighting some inner battle. “My daughter and I didn’t want to part. And at the time my job was new and important to me.” The Change, taken without your spouse, was automatic di­vorce.

“I can tell Tequilla was your choice of names.” Reu­bin smiled.

“It was that or get a tattoo.”

“Oh,” he said, remembering the last tatters of blue-stained paper clinging to her body earlier. “Would have seen a shame to cover such natural beauty.”

Her look matched his boldness. “You have a way with words.”

Again he felt uncomfortable. Other people were com­ing into the dining room now, looking jealously at the pizza and beer.

He looked into her eyes and saw it. “Well, Silver Girl. I no longer feel awkward. Thank you, madam.” She knew what she was doing.

“No charge.”

His hand went to her head, threaded through gossamer silver hair, and scraped a smudge of blue from behind her earlobe.

They sat in the viewing lounge. Since the bubble which capsuled the Al Latalia was opaque for transpace, there was nothing to see. Thus the lounge was empty.

Alex was silent, looking into the murk between the space liner and its bubble. Reubin appreciated the fact that she didn’t need conversation; sharing silence mirrored his own feelings of the moment.

He wondered what was so different about Alexandra. Something undefinable attracted him to her; not specifically the comfortable silence, not their compatibility, not her good looks. Something.

*Beware.*

That was it. On his elementary level, Habu sensed something, maybe something instinctive which threatened the serpent. Was Habu jealous? No. Habu usually exhibited only basic emotions, and those were most geared to his survival mechanism. Yet Reubin sensed Habu’s disapproval. The fact highlighted Reubin’s awareness of that difference in Alex.

You’ll never know the answer unless you ask the question, he told himself. “Alex?”

She turned toward him, a faraway look in her eyes.

Concerned about being blunt and too forward, he stumbled for words. “Um. Look. There’s something extraordinary about you. I can sense it. What is it about you?” He felt as awkward as a kid on his first date.

She leaned back, raised a knee and rested her foot on the seat cushion. She circled her knee with locking arms. Her face was framed with silver hair. “Me, too. It’s like being a freak at a side show—”

Reubin knew immediately. “Are you really?”

They were called “Original Earthers” or “Olde Earthers.” So few remained that they didn’t advertise the fact. People thought Original Earthers rather clannish—which they weren’t because they seldom gathered. And when they did, they were careful to avoid arousing resentments. Reubin remembered bitterly the pogroms on Tsuruga. He ripped his attention away from the past and back to the present.

“I am.” She was nodding enthusiastically. “I should have figured you out sooner, Reubin, but your mercenary trappings hid it from me. People can just look at you and know you’re different, far out of the ordinary.”

Again they fell silent.

Reubin thought about what she’d said. He knew he was different. Sometimes he couldn’t help physically reaction to something Habu had said or done. Another mask: being an Original Earther helped mask Habu.

Most of the Original Earthers were now dead. The had selected death over continuation of life through the Change and the Long Life Institute and its processes.

Centuries wore them down. They suicided. Most just lost interest in living. But not Reubin. Not with Habu deep inside him, Habu and his survival compulsion. Reubin didn’t know whether he’d be alive today without Habu’s internal drive preventing him from taking any activity such as suicide in order to die. He did know, without wondering, that he would be long dead, killed in action or captured by those who wanted Habu dead—there were individuals as well as governments who wanted Habu dead—without Habu’s survival instinct and his killing persona.

Being an Original Earther made Alex Sovereign all the more special. She must have some personal drive, a strength over and above that of a normal human, to keep her going so long. She could be like Reubin himself, one who took to the Long Life treatments well.

“How long?” she asked the ritual question.

Reubin smiled and refused to give the traditional an­swer, “Damn near forever.” Instead, he said, “I don’t really know. I’ve done so much traveling through transpace, I lost count of the math a long time ago. My rough guess would be something in the neighborhood of twelve hundred Fed standard years. But it could be as high as two thousand. At any rate, I’ve undergone the Change maybe twelve times.”

She was nodding, her chin bouncing off her knee. “I’ll never understand the mechanics. Surely, I’ve stayed on planets I’ve helped pioneer or grow into self-sufficiency longer than you have. I was fortunate in the worlds they sent me to. Generally, I stayed past the mandatory re­quirement I owed the Long Life Institute.” She paused. “Just like Snister now. Eighty-five years. My time lines are straighter, easier to figure. Ten changes.”

The natural attraction he’d felt for her was growing, and growing quickly. It’s been so long, he thought.

“How many years has it been since you encountered another one of us?” she asked.

“Too long. Since the beginning of the Change before this one.”

She whistled. “A dwindling few, no?”

“Yes.” It was like an exclusive club, being an Original Earther. Of course, by definition, that club would be spread out over the entire Federation, and heading farther as the frontier expanded on all sides. “Where were you from?”

“Part of the North American Federation,” she said. “Canada.”

“I know it.” Though he’d been born well before they ever had a North American Federation. “I’m from Vir­ginia.” He still remembered foggy mornings and vari­colored leaves and mountains and crisp, clean air.

Reubin felt rejuvenated. Thus it wasn’t difficult to force an unhappy and disapproving Habu farther back. He had more success controlling Habu than he could wish for; that success made him feel closer to Alex.

But, like him, she had a reserved attitude. They be­came closer, but did not discuss the past.

Maybe Reubin wanted her companionship too much. Maybe it was his overactive imagination. Maybe it was his chilling thought as they left the lounge. He realized that Alex bore a certain resemblance to his massacred wife. She’d been from Olde Earthe and had died on Tsuruga. Her high forehead, a turn of her shoulder, her quick smile.

The realization was so intense, the image so vivid, that it triggered Habu.

Habu shot to the surface poised, ready to kill.

It stopped Reubin physically as he stepped into the cor­ridor.

Alex continued on for a few meters until she realized he wasn’t with her. She turned. She saw his face. “Reu­bin? What’s wrong?” She came back to him.

Habu was clouding his consciousness.

-Goddamn it, leave me alone! Reubin breathed deeply.

Habu peered about, questing for control, looking for the enemy, an enemy, any enemy. Reubin felt adrena­line gallop through his body. He would pay later for any movement now. His body could move superfast, faster even than the human body was designed to go. Such speed and extra strength was difficult to handle unless Habu was in total control. His human persona could handle it, but cautiously, by moving in an exag­gerated slow motion. He froze himself as Alex stopped next to him.

*Where is the enemy?*

-There is none. Go back. Do not interfere.

*No.*

-We are on a starship. In transpace. You know that. Take no action, for you will kill us all. Reubin fought for control. He ran a biofeedback operation to cleanse him­self of the adrenaline. The concentration helped him to shut Habu out. He was winning the battle. Habu re­treated, still emanating disapproval of the woman.

“Reubin? Tell me. What’s wrong? Are you all right?” Alex was looking with concern into his eyes.

She touched his arm and he had to restrain himself from jerking away and hurting them both. A few more moments, just a few more.

She watched the struggle going on within him and gri­maced in sympathy. “It passes.” Her voice was reassur­ing.

She’d mistaken his symptoms. She thought he was going through the mind-bending mental torture which occurs when you haven’t had a Change in too long. When you were overdue for the Change, the pressure built and built and ripped your brain apart with excruciating pain. It was why people suicided.

“Sss—okay,” he managed to get out.

“I’ll comm a medic for a painkiller,” she said and moved to a wall comm unit.

“No, pleasse. I’ll be all right in a minute.” He moved slowly to dissipate some of the accumulated energy.

Ironically, he realized that pressure, in fact, was build­ing within his mind, reinforcing the point that he was overdue for the Change. But it wasn’t bad. Yet.

When he recovered, he went to the recreation deck and ran for two hours on the treadmill. He set the machine on the maximum resistance and at a forty-five degree angle. It was the equivalent of running uphill with twice your own body weight.

As he ran, Alex sat and watched him.

Occasionally, people would come over and observe, marveling at the almost impossible physical feat. Reubin ignored them. The more he ran, the more energy he burned. Sweat rained from his body and with each drop he was more and more free of Habu. He was purging himself of adrenaline inspired energy and at the same time of Habu.

Alex got tired of watching him and worked out on weight training machines while he finished up.

“I need a beer,” he said when he was done.

“You need to replace fluids,” she told him.

“Make it protein beer, hold the alcohol, then.” While emotionally and physically drained, he felt like his old self.

“I’ve read of therapeutic effects of inordinate physical exertion,” Alex said, “but that’s more than I can handle. Did it really work to relieve the pressure?”

“Yess,” he said.

The romance progressed.

Being Original Earthers brought Reubin and Alex closer together. Reubin overheard the purser calling them “very conspirational.”

Reubin decided that Alex Sovereign was hiding some­thing. Or didn’t want to address something. No matter how much she discussed the past, it was her current life to which she referred. Nothing about her previous lives, if any, prior to her last Change and other Changes before that. It was common courtesy and protocol not to inquire too deeply into previous lives.

Also, there were little things. Alex was highly intelli­gent. Reubin detected a hint of dissatisfaction with her work; he thought that some problems had occurred lately in her job. But he didn’t ascribe too much importance to these thoughts because she was a government minister, and in any government—especially in a high position—there is bureaucratic infighting, political pressure, cliques, cronyism. Reubin always thought that governments should be run as businesses under the free enter­prise system.

On the other hand, he liked and respected her. Her values were similar to his, her judgment faultless. Reubin respected her privacy. After all, he was hiding some­thing and did not wish her to pry into his past—and she hadn’t.

All of which made Reubin sad—for once—that he was changing lives again. Another giant step from his past. While there were ways you could trick the Long Life Institute, when they gave you the Change, they ar­ranged your passage to new or even soon-to-be pio­neered planets. This was their basic charter, and one of the reasons governments seldom tried to interfere in LLI business.

But no matter what he did or where he went, he could never, ever lose Habu.

Reubin had no answers. He had arranged passage to the sector capital, Webster’s, where the liner was head­ing. He had business (mostly financial arrangements) to take care of before he took the Change. Alex would transship back to Snister.

The passion of their affair surprised Reubin. He was happier than he’d been in centuries. Not only was Alex Sovereign compatible with him sexually, but they shared an intellectual niche which made him comfortable and frightened him at the same time.

Frightened him because he didn’t want to lose her. And he was due to take the Change.

He was busily scheming how to outwit the LLI again when Alex surprised him as he’d never been surprised before.

One shipboard day, they were floating in his cabin at zero gravity shooting rubber bands at a reading disk floating in the middle of the room.

“And they say the ancients were the best writers,” Alex said.

Reubin’s next shot scored and the disk spun aside.

“The Last of the Mohicans. Too bad that didn’t occur one generation earlier.”

“Don’t blame the Mohicans, Rube—”

“Reubin.”

“—it’s the writer.” Alex floated around collecting rubber bands.

“How in hell could such trash last so many centuries and remain acclaimed literature?” Reubin scratched his head. “Trumped up plot, illogical choreography, major characters with the brains of dinosaurs. And I still don’t understand that business about the fog and the bodies and the lake and—”

Alex came back toward him, grasping his knee to steady herself in midair. All that happened was that they both began a slow spin. “The whole thing’s a matter of theme of national definition. See Hawkeye as a messiah, or a legendary mythical persona, such as Audie Murphy, Captain Danjou, Habu.”

He winced and grunted.

Habu mythical? Not when he was alive in this very room. It was always disquieting when people talked about Habu in front of him.

But her next words made him forget. “Reubin?”

He wrapped a rubber band around the base of his thumb and snapped the end on the tip of his pointy fin­ger. “Umm?”

“If I take the Change with you, would you marry me honest and true and could we go out to the frontier to­gether and pioneer and explore and live happily ever after together?”

After a moment of looking into her eyes, he said, “You’d do that?”

“In a Manhattan minute.”

“No questions asked?” he said, face burning.

“I already know what I need to know,” she said con­tentedly.

“Your daughter? Tique?”

“She’s been taking care of herself for sixty odd years now. It’s the relationship I’d miss.” She paused. “We’ve some friction now. She thinks I’m a corporate mogul who rapes the land. I think she’s an eco-freak. But re­gardless....”

He let out the breath he realized he’d been holding. He grasped her hand and steadied them by a handhold of the ceiling. “I haven’t felt like this in two or three hundred years.” The more Changes some went through, the more precipitate their decisions. The more they were wont to do offbeat things. Reubin hoped this romance wasn’t a result of too many Changes. He wanted it to be real.

“Me neither. You gonna answer my question?”

“I love you, Silver Girl.” His words surprised even himself.

“Me, too, Mystery Man. I want to spend a lifetime or two with you.”

“I suspect it’ll be an adventure,” he said.

In the big lounge with a hundred wealthy tourists from the sector capital looking on, Reubin Flood and Alex­andra Sovereign were married.

Captain Kent, in full uniform, said, “Do you, Reubin Flood, take this woman to be your lawful wedded wife, in this life, through a Change or two, unless necessary?”

“Yes, I do,” said Reubin.

Captain Kent turned to Alex. “You don’t have to do this, my dear.”

“I want to.”

“Do you, Alexandra Felicity Partmandahl Sovereign, of your own free will, take this man to be your lawful husband, in this life, and through a Change or two if you don’t get divorced?”

“I do.”

“By the power vested in me by the Federation and its laws, I now pronounce you matrimonially linked. Stew­ard? Champagne, if you will.”

Habu observed the ceremony unhappily. Reubin was able to force him back into hibernation.

Alex was to return to Snister, wind up her affairs, bid her daughter good-bye, and join Reubin on Webster’s, where they would go to the LLI together.

Reubin had some business of his own to tend to on Webster’s. While he’d been essentially a nomad for the last twenty years or so, there were still things he had to do: consolidate bank accounts, prepare false identities in case of emergencies, and illegally access the LLI com­puters. The latter was for him to use programs he’d in­stalled secretly when helping to build the system. He was able to add his new fake identities and their histories to the LLI database, and play games with the DNA tags, thus effectively covering his trail. For a few centuries, his Habu instinct had warned him when the Fed authorities occasionally were closing in on him. He didn’t know if the infamous Habu would be reason enough for the Fed to prevail upon the LLI to help them find him legally or illegally; if so, his preemptive raid into the LLI database would preclude that and his trail would dead-end. Another reason for sneaking into the LLI system was that he could preselect his destination afterward—if he wanted to.

While the LLI process could be accomplished any­where, it was done on sector capitals so that mandatory one-way transport to the various frontiers could be ar­ranged. Occasionally, for those who could afford the LLI treatment and could not afford the expense of the trip to the sector capitals throughout the Federation, the LLI maintained roving ships that made planetfall all over the galaxy at random intervals. Or a local or planetary government could request one of the ships by paying costs. Sometimes this was accomplished to re­duce population.

Two vastly different things contributed to people living many centuries.

The first, and the easiest for Reubin to understand, was that because of star travel, people zapping back and forth throughout the explored portion of the galaxy, people aged differently. Added to that, medicine and preventa­tive aging (PA) contributed to long life.

But the major contributor to long life was Silas Com­fort Swallow. Silas Swallow invented FTL—or his Project I did. Swallow controlled it. Being the first to come up with FTL, he was the first to explore the galaxy near Olde Earthe. He also sold FTL to most of the rest of the Earthe. For cash and a percentage. He became the wealthiest man ever known at any time in the history of man. Every off-Earthe enterprise paid into Swallow’s ac­counts. He also owned all the nearby planets which could be settled by humans. More money.

He could afford the research. He spawned Project II, allegedly based on the mythical man who never aged, or aged in reverse, Pembroke Wyndham,

Reubin knew a few more of the particulars of Project II than most citizens because of his minor consultant role in setting up the resultant Long Life Institute after Proj­ect II had developed the formulae for insuring that long life.

Hormones give chemical orders to the body. At that time, there were only forty-five known hormones. En­docrinologists were able to locate either four new hor­mones or four synthetic hormones within the system of Pembroke Wyndham. Additionally, they found that Wyndham possessed no free-rads. Free radicals, Reu­bin understood, were an atom or a group of atoms as parts of molecules, which contained one or more un­paired electrons. Free-rads disrupted molecular activ­ity which the body needed to function properly. The example Reubin remembered was that free-rads dam­aged DNA, which raised probability of out-of-control mutations or cellular divisions—cancer. They caused wrinkles in skin. Cataracts. Impeded the body’s im­mune system.

Something about Wyndham’s system. The researchers allegedly synthesized hormones from his pituitary, thy­mus, gonads.

Reubin wondered if Wyndham was still alive after all that testing.

At any rate, Reubin knew that the bigger and most important secret in the known human history was the recipe of the synthetic hormones. The secret of long life was locked within the Long Life Institute.

With as many people as possible receiving the Long Life treatment, the Change, life itself had altered. Ages were no longer important. You were “Young,” born, growing up, starting a new life. The next stage was called “Intermediate,” something a scientist would think up, nothing creative to match the new realities. Just about everybody was Intermediate. Reubin, Alex, even Tique. In this stage bodies were reparable and women were still able to bear children.

The third and last stage of life was known as “In­determinate,” when someone had been around and through so many Changes that signs of aging showed, and weren’t reversible. This happened to people at dif­ferent times in their lives. The body began failing here and there, no longer receptive even to transplants of cloned parts. Women no long could bear children. At the end, people suicided, an easy-go proposition these days.

People aged differently. Some lived twice as long as others. It was a matter of personal genetics and how well the treatments took. Reubin thought he was probably an extreme example of this. He didn’t want to consider what Habu’s contribution to his long life was.

However, at anywhere from eighty to one hundred and twenty plus Fed-standard years, most people’s brains could not function sanely with the accumulation of knowledge, experience, and memories. The LLI treated these symptoms and people were able to renew their lives. It was part of the deal with LLI. Nobody knew whether the treatment was separate or a part of the original hor­monal treatment. Another LLI secret. So, to live longer than your brain could stand and before it went insane, you had to have LLI treatments.

The treatments allowed the mind to store all the excess information, experience, knowledge, memories. Some theorized the treatments merely opened more access to the unused but available space in the mind. Unfortu­nately, the process rejuvenated him physiologically. It never altered his fragmented persona. Personality re­mained unchanged. Reubin often wondered if the process didn’t open enough extra room in his mind to fit Habu. He also thought that if Habu was a mental defect in his mind, then it well could be that the process reinforced that defect.

Silas Swallow was a visionary. He built the LLI charter around this fact. You had to donate all your worldly goods to LLI (thus enhancing the LLI position), and LLI would send you off to the frontier, expanding man’s universe. You’d stay for a predetermined length of time, dictated by the situation and conditions. After a while, you got your money back from LLI as shares in the Institute. So if the LLI failed, the entire structure of the Federation would crumble. Everything was designed to further the LLI.

In actuality, most people taking the LLI treatment were ready to begin new lives. If not, they went mad, or sui­cided, or died.

But Silas Swallow had insured the survival of humanity by forcing its expansion to new worlds.

Expansion, almost by definition, brought on techno­logical progress, keeping humanity technologically equipped to further its reach to the stars. Sounds poetic, Reubin thought, then remembered Karg and wondered if humanity hadn’t had a few too many failures along the way.

Reubin would take the Change and thus be good for another hundred years or so. And be able to remember his past lives. Alex would take the Change with him and they would begin a new life together, just as Silas Swal­low had foreseen would become the custom.

Reubin and Alex. Reubin wondered where they would be sent. It made life seem worth all he’d gone through before.

Reubin and Alexandra together. He’d really looked for­ward to it.

Yeah, sure.

Webster’s Departure Central was full of people going everywhere in the known galaxy.

As a planetary minister, Alex was accorded VIP treat­ment. From VIP processing, a single aircar was to deliver her to her ship.

Reubin and Alex had said their good-byes earlier. Reubin gave her a perfunctory kiss on the cheek. “See you soon, Silver Girl.”

“High mountains and raging seas and bleak space could not keep me away, Mystery Man.” She searched his eyes one last time. “Until then.”

Yeah, sure.

The raging beast within him grew again upon the re­membrance. The killer serpent threatened to burst through and take control.