"My head hurts, father of my soul." Emrys knew his voice was a petulant child's, yet he could not stop himself. "I was promised—"
"You have not taken care," the ancient one said.
How ancient he was, Emrys did not know. The priests of Morethis were, they said, immortal. And they did live for a long, long time, far longer than the common people, whom they resembled only vaguely. Terrestrial scholars said the ruling class was a variant of the Morethan race, inbred to preserve its identity, probably closer to the original world-shaking Morethans than their debased followers. The members of this group seemed young, as coin faces seem young, also old, like coins themselves.
"I warned you it takes time for the final adjustments to be made. Wait, my son; haste means nothing to you."
"But I've waited so long," Emrys complained.
"Wait a little longer, then. You have all the time in the world."
The fog swirled shut about him, and Emrys sank into his personal miasma of sleep. When he woke up, late that afternoon, he knew from the dank odor clinging to the bedclothes that it had not been a dream, that the priests, the "gods," the "immortals" of Morethis could, as they professed—and even he had not believed them in this—project their minds far through space ... though, fortunately, not their bodies, or they would not have needed him. He remembered then the vial of tiny golden pellets Uvrei had given him before he left Morethis, and took one. Perhaps that was what the ancient one had meant. At any rate, Emrys thought he felt better afterward.
He examined his body in the mirror to see if bruises had come, but the tawny, muscle-rippled flesh was unmarked. At length he put on his clothes and, leaving the hotel, went to a jeweler, where he bought a costly bracelet to be sent to the girl of the night before. Such a grandiose gesture relieved him—he had always felt—of all further obligation.
He did not wish to repeat his experience with the liquor, so he did not go to a bar. He had no friends on Earth—nor could he have acknowledged them if he had. He did not wish to repeat his disappointment of the previous night, so he did not seek female companionship—although it was obvious from the eyes of the women he passed that he would have no difficulty whenever he changed his mind. But what should he do? What did young men do with their leisure, he tried to remember, when they had nothing but leisure?