Part 4

* * * * *

Hubbard didn't believe it. He couldn't. There is no man who has not some love for his own kind, be it ever so little, merely because they look like him.

"You won't tell anybody who I really am?" Emrys asked childishly. "You're still my friend, aren't you?"

Hubbard sighed. Was he still this creature's friend? He didn't know. "Who would believe me?" he finally asked. "And even if they did, what's the use? Nothing can be done. The only thing that's ever protected us from the Morethans is distance. When they reach Earth, they will have already conquered us. Mental powers are always stronger than physical powers at close range."

"That's right." Emrys seemed to be relieved at the idea that the question was out of his hands. "Too late now to do anything about it."

Hubbard nodded. There was no way out that he could see.

"But you _do_ promise not to tell old Dyall that I'm my father instead of me?" Emrys asked anxiously.

"Even if he believed me, he wouldn't care. All he wants is a good match for that great-great-granddaughter of his."

But was that all? As far as money went, Nicholas Dyall was reputed to be the richest man alive. And if he was truly fond of the girl, would he not at least have investigated the young man?

"You're _hard_!" Emrys complained, but without rancor.

"I have a suspicious nature," Hubbard said thoughtfully. "Perhaps it's the legal mind. At any rate, I don't care for Nicholas Dyall."

"Well, I don't either, but I don't really give a hang what kind of a great-great-grandfather-in-law I'm getting. All I care about is Megan. Do you think it's wrong for me to ask her to marry me?"

"Can't you understand that, at this stage, the girl doesn't matter?"

"No," Emrys said simply. "I cannot imagine her not mattering."

After he had gone, Hubbard still found himself thinking about Nicholas Dyall. In his whole lifetime, the old lawyer had personally known only two men whom society had deemed worthy of its highest honor, the longevity treatment. And these were more than most men had met, for the longevity treatment was given to very few. Both of the two, Dyall and Shortmire, had some defect in their personalities that warped them--all but completely, in Shortmire's case--away from the human virtues.

Was that defect a part of the creative talent that had earned the individual his right to the treatment? Or did it arise as an effect of the treatment itself? Because, if that was the case, then Earth's longevity treatment might be nothing more than a primitive form of the Morethan "process."

Since only straws remained to be grasped at, no one thing Hubbard did would be more futile than any other. And since he had nothing better to do, he might just as well investigate this new avenue. Jan Shortmire had hated Nicholas Dyall. Had Nicholas Dyall hated Jan Shortmire with equal venom? And, if so, had he done anything about it?

VII

A Gong sounded and a mechanical voice announced, "Mr. Peter Hubbard to see Mr. Dyall and Mr. Shortmire."

"Do you mean to say he has the _gall_ to come see us, after the accusations he made against you, Emrys?" Dyall demanded incredulously. "I still can't understand why you sent him an invitation to the wedding, but that he should make a casual social call...!"

"We've come to terms." Emrys smiled. "After all, at his age, he can't be held accountable for everything he says."

"I'm at least fifty years older than he is!" the old engineer almost spat. "And you--do you mean that I am not responsible for what I say?"

Knowing that he was the other man's senior by some twenty years himself, Emrys was malevolently pleased. "Some people retain their faculties longer than others," he observed. "And Hubbard was my father's friend, as well as his lawyer, so he's the closest thing to a relative that I have on Earth. Except you, of course; you were my father's friend, too."

Dyall's lips tightened. "How does Hubbard know you're in this house right now? Do you think he's having you followed?"

It was possible, but Emrys didn't care. For almost a year now, his life had been blameless, and, strangely, it suited him to live that way. "I'm here in this house most of the time. It wouldn't be hard for him to figure out where he could find me."

The gong sounded again. Dyall looked undecided.

"If _I_ can forgive him, sir," Emrys said gently, "surely _you_ can."

"Show him in," Dyall rasped to the machine.

Megan rose to go, but Emrys kept hold of her small, cold hand. "I'd like you to meet Peter Hubbard, dear. He's really a nice old fellow when you get to know him. Just a bit too much of a do-gooder, that's all."

Dyall snorted.

"I shall be glad to know any friend of yours, Emrys," Megan said, sitting down again obediently.

After a moment, Peter Hubbard came into the room. "Peter, this is my fiancée, Megan Dyall." Smilingly, Emrys waited for the usual inane felicitations. He couldn't expect a man of Hubbard's age to be bowled over by this loveliness, but still surely no man, no matter how ancient, could be completely insensible to the girl's charm.

Hubbard stood still and stared at her. "Amazing...." he murmured. "Amazing...." Then he turned to Dyall. "You are to be congratulated, sir."

Emrys was annoyed. He knew Hubbard was too well-bred to make a remark like that unintentionally. However, he pretended to be amused and said, "You're supposed to congratulate _me_, Peter."

But Hubbard continued his inexplicable rudeness by paying no attention to Emrys and, instead, staring at Nicholas Dyall. And finally Dyall said, with a strangled laugh, "I think perhaps in this instance Mr. Hubbard is right."

He threw himself into an easy chair with an attempt at nonchalance, but it was embarrassingly apparent that his stick was not enough to support him any more. His old body was trembling. And Emrys found that he himself was trembling, too.

* * * * *

There was a painful silence. Everyone seemed to be waiting. Even Megan glanced from one to the other with her usual expression of bright-eyed interest.

"Unfortunately, Mr. Hubbard," Dyall said at last, "you've reached your conclusions too late to do anything except perhaps hasten an end that is, you'll concede, by now inevitable."

"Yes," Hubbard agreed, "you've won _your_ game." He came a little further into the room, so that he was standing over the other old man. "I do believe that, of the two, you are the worse. He did what he did out of spite. You created that spite and kept it alive."

Dyall's dark face flushed and his hands tightened on his cane. "But I had a right to do what I did. And I hurt only one person. Two, if you include me. Give me credit, at least, for the smallness of my scope."

Hubbard glanced at Megan. And Dyall broke into the shrill cackle of an old man. "But you know, you _know_, and still you think of her! How sentimental can you get? Don't you realize--"

"How much does she?" Hubbard said. "How much do you?"

Emrys had become nearly frantic with frustration and bewilderment. He was the one who had secrets; nobody else. Nothing was to be kept hidden from _him_! "What are you two blabbering about?" he almost screamed. "It doesn't make sense--any of it!"

Hubbard turned toward him, his head and neck moving with the deliberate precision of a piece of clockwork. "It makes very good sense, Jan. I realized that I could find out nothing more from the stars, so I turned my researches back to Earth. I've been investigating Mr. Dyall."

"What did you find?" Emrys asked tensely. Why did Peter call him by his former name in front of his former enemy? Had the old fool forgotten his promise, or had he broken it on purpose? "_What did you find out?_" he repeated.

Hubbard's voice was filled with pity. "Just this: Nicholas Dyall never did marry Alissa Embel."

Emrys' fear exploded into a scarlet rage. "Then Megan is--" He advanced on Dyall, his fists clenched. "If you took Alissa and then didn't--"

Hubbard caught his arm in a frail grip. "Don't be so hasty, Emrys. Dyall did no wrong to Alissa Embel, whatever wrong he may have done to you."

"Thank you," Dyall murmured, "for granting me that I gave her all I had, but it wasn't what she wanted. She wanted--" his old eyes were filled with hate as he looked at Emrys--"you."

"Alissa Embel killed herself on the day before the wedding," Hubbard told Emrys. "She, as we attorneys say, died without issue."

* * * * *

Emrys was glad that, since he could not have had Alissa, Dyall had not, either. At the same time, he felt an overwhelmingly poignant sense of sorrow, that he should have had three full lifetimes, and the woman he had loved--insofar as Jan Shortmire had been capable of love--not even one.

He raised dull eyes to the two old men. "Then who is Megan?"

Hubbard hesitated. But what worse could there be to tell? And then the lawyer asked a ridiculous question, "Jan, do you know why Dyall's machines didn't meet popular favor until he changed them?"

Emrys plunged back once again into the well of his memories. "Nobody wanted to buy machines that looked too much like people; it made them ... uncomfortable. So Dyall stopped designing robots and made machines adapted to their separate functions and--" His voice became a cry of anguish. "_Megan!_"

She turned her bland, smiling doll face toward him. "I'm sorry, Emrys," the sweet voice said.

Dyall's eyes were squeezed shut and something glistened on the edge of them--something that Emrys would not admit were tears, because he himself could never cry.

"When Alissa died," Dyall said, "I knew I couldn't love another woman. So I made a mechanical doll in her image. I made her the woman every man dreams of--lovely and sympathetic and undemanding. And I told myself she would be better than the original Alissa because she would be perfect, and Alissa wasn't; she would stay young forever, while the real Alissa would have grown old ... if she had lived. But it wasn't the same for me."

_Why was she the same for me, then?_ Emrys wondered bitterly. _Was it because I didn't know? Is that all love is--self-deception?_

"Perhaps," Dyall went on, "Man cannot appreciate true perfection; perhaps he's not good enough himself. Still, she was company of a sort and so I kept her by me. And then, when I read of Emrys Shortmire's arrival on Earth, I sent him a note, but he didn't answer; however, I contrived to get a look at him anyway. Then I knew for sure that he was Jan Shortmire himself; and then I knew what Megan's destiny was...."

"How _could_ you know he--I was Jan Shortmire?" Emrys demanded angrily. It was insupportable that old Dyall should have known all along; it spoiled the joke. "Where would you have--have gotten the concept?"

The old man smiled, opening his eyes. "Because the Morethans made me the same offer they did you! Did you think you were the only one?" And, throwing back his head, he derisively began to laugh aloud.

* * * * *

More than ever, Emrys hated the Morethans, not for what they would do to Earth's pride, but for what they had done to his. Because now there was nothing that he had been offered that Dyall had not been offered also. And Dyall had not accepted the Morethans' offer, thereby proving himself the better man. And Dyall had tricked him, thereby proving himself the cleverer man. And Dyall had hated him even more than he had hated Dyall, thereby proving himself the more constant man. So there Emrys Shortmire, Jan Shortmire, was left ... with nothing but a youthfulness of which, he had to admit to himself, he had grown rather tired.

"I'm sorry, Emrys," Megan said. "I'm terribly sorry."

Dyall sprang from his chair. "I'm sick of that piping doll's voice of yours! I've stood it for a century, and that's long enough!" Raising his stick high in the air, he crashed it down upon the golden head, the pretty pink and white face. And, frozen in horror, Emrys could not move until it was too late. He had not conceived old Dyall capable of committing outright murder so wantonly. Probably he wasn't; to him, Megan was and had been always a doll.

And now she was a heap of broken wheels and gears on the thick rug. Still, out of the heap of twisted machinery, a tiny, tinny voice kept repeating "I'm sorry, Emrys. I'm terribly sorry."

Exhausted by his effort, Dyall sank back into his chair. And he laughed as Emrys, wanting desperately to weep, unable to, bent over the pieces, trying to fit them together again.

"You'll never do it, Jan," he croaked maliciously. "Even a good engineer would never be able to repair it now. If I know how to create, I also know how to destroy!" And he went into another paroxysm of gleefully triumphant laughter.

Emrys saw that Megan was indeed far beyond his powers, and probably old Dyall's, to repair. Filled with fury--the one emotion, he saw now, that he had not given up--he turned to smash Nicholas Dyall as Dyall had smashed his doll. But the old, old man sat perfectly still in his chair. There was a broad grin on his face.

He made a very cheerful corpse.

VIII

Emrys Shortmire found that he did not want life any more. He went back to his mansion and he tried to hang himself. But the rope would not cut off his breath. He pointed a ray gun at his head, and although the heat became intolerable, it did not burn him. He swallowed poison and waited. Nothing happened. He threw himself off the roof and landed unhurt upon the pavement below. He went back inside and slashed his wrist and saw the cuts close before his eyes. And as he stared at the unmarked skin, thick fog filled the room, and he heard Uvrei's voice--and it was the greatest ignominy of all that the Morethan's voice should _dare_ to hold compassion.

"Don't you know, Emrys, that an immortal cannot die?"

When Emrys forced himself to look at the ancient one, he saw that the beautiful eyes were filled with an unhallowed pity. "You are an immortal god, son of my spirit. You can destroy anything except one of us--and you are one of us now."

"I'm not one of you. I'm not a god, nor are you. I'm not...." Emrys looked down at his wrists, then back at Uvrei. "But I may be immortal," he acknowledged. "It wasn't just a figure of speech?"

"You will never die, Emrys. You will exist forever, like us, a handful of changelessness in a changing universe."

"Then I _won't_ be dead when you come to Earth?" He had fancied himself out of it, but what exquisite punishment that not until he had tired of life had he found out he was cursed with unwanted life forever. He had not been a good man, but was any man evil enough to deserve this?

"When we come to Earth, you will be waiting for us. But you will look forward to our coming." And Uvrei said once again, "You are one of us, Emrys."

"I'm not! I'm _not_!"

"Of course you are. Like us, you do not breathe air--"

"I do...." And then Emrys remembered that the rope had not cut off his breath, and it might well have been because he had not been breathing.

"Like us, you do not eat food."

"But I do!" And here Emrys was genuinely perplexed.

"We left you your digestive system, because part of the pleasure you craved comes through that. But you could completely deny yourself the food that you thought sustained you and feel no ill effects--at least no physical ones. It's the pills that feed you, Emrys."

"Well," Emrys said slowly, "they're food, then."

"Of a sort. But not the kind you mean. You cannot exist without us and our skills, Emrys. Each vial of pills consists of the mitogenetic force of ten tons of life."

"What kind of life?" Emrys asked.

"Does it really matter?"

"You said I cannot exist without you," Emrys pointed out shrewdly, "that I need the pills. So I could stop taking them, couldn't I, and starve myself to death?"

* * * * *

Uvrei smiled. "Yes, you could do that. Only it would take, say, about fifteen hundred terrestrial years--perhaps, since we have given you a strong, young body, as much as two thousand. 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