Wrinkles acknowledged only one master, the bio-knife of the facial surgeons. But the bio-knife could not thrust deep enough to excise the stiffness in a joint; was not clever enough to remold the outlines of a figure where they were beginning to blur and—sag.
No one else could see it—yet. But Ninon could!
Again the frown almost came, and again she scourged it fiercely into the back of her mind. Time was her enemy. But she had had other enemies, and destroyed them, one way or another, cleverly or ruthlessly as circumstances demanded. Time, too, could be destroyed. Or enslaved. Ninon sorted through her meagre store of remembered reading. Some old philosopher had said, "If you can't whip 'em, join 'em!" Crude, but apt.
Ninon wanted to smile. But smiles made wrinkles, too. She was content to feel that sureness of power in her grasp—the certain knowledge that she, first of all people, would turn Time on itself and destroy it. She would be youthful again. She would thread through the ages to come, like a silver needle drawing a golden filament through the layer on layer of the cloth of years that would engarment her eternal youth. Ninon knew how.
Her shining, gray-green eyes strayed to the one door in her apartment through which no man had ever gone. There the exercising machines; the lotions; the unguents; the diets; the radioactive drugs; the records of endocrine transplantations, of blood transfusions. She dismissed them contemptuously. Toys! The mirages of a pseudo-youth. She would leave them here for someone else to use in masking the downhill years.
There, on the floor beside her, was the answer she had sought so long. A book. "Time in Relation to Time." The name of the author, his academic record in theoretical physics, the cautious, scientific wording of his postulates, meant nothing to her. The one thing that had meaning for her was that Time could be manipulated. And she would manipulate it. For Ninon!
The door chimes tinkled intimately. Ninon glanced at her watch—Robert was on time. She arose from the couch, made sure that the light was behind her at just the right angle so he could see the outlines of her figure through the sheerness of her gown, then went to the door and opened it.
A young man stood there. Young, handsome, strong, his eyes aglow with the desire he felt, Ninon knew, when he saw her. He took one quick step forward to clasp her in his strong young arms.
"Ninon, my darling," he whispered huskily.
Ninon did not have to make her voice throaty any more, and that annoyed her too. Once she had had to do it deliberately. But now, through the years, it had deepened.