He got up and pulled a spun-metal robe about him, amethyst and sable—a gift from Morethis. There was always a costly gift on his birthday, either out of kindness or cruelty, together with a vial of the golden capsules.
What a pity, he thought, as he went downstairs, that Dyall and the world both would never know the truth: that Jan Shortmire had no son, that Emrys and Jan Shortmire were one.
The Morethans first came to Jan Shortmire when, approaching his natural old age, he had traveled as a visitor to their planet—largely because old men did not go to Morethis—and they had made him their offer. He had laughed in their dark and exquisite faces.
"My own government will give me fifty years more of life," he said, for he had heard, during the voyage out, that he would be on the next honors list. "What need do I have of you?"
"We can give you far more than fifty years," they'd told him. "And youth, besides."
At that, he had stopped laughing, but still he had not accepted their offer, for many reasons ... doubt and fear, perhaps some shreds of honor, and certainly, since he was a man of science, skepticism.
Then, when Shortmire was nearing the end of those fifty extra years which had, indeed, been granted him by a grateful Earth government—together with a plaque, suitably inscribed—he had received a gift. It was one of those great crystalline prisms from Morethis that were so fashionable on Earth as lighting fixtures, not because they saved fuel—for one such prism would cost ten lifetimes of fuel—but because they gave a light no Earthborn device could give, making the old look young, the stupid wise, and, most important of all, the ugly beautiful.
Shortmire looked into the lambent depths, wondering who had sent him so costly and so useless a gift. Suddenly the flame vitrified into a face that flashed up at him from the crystal—a face that was beautiful in its horror, and horrible in its beauty. He closed his eyes, but when he opened them, the iridescent eyes were still there, mocking him for his cowardice.
"I am Uvrei," a deep voice of tingling sweetness said, "god among gods and man among men. I bring you greetings from Morethis, Jan Shortmire."