Whatever Immerman's name was now, it was that of a very high official, Ohm thought. Probably he was a world councilbr. Only a man of that rank and influence could have a personal apartment-such a large one, too-that he rarely used. And only a very high official could break day when he pleased. Ohm wondered what his coverup story was. Not that that mattered. What did matter was why Immerman was here.
"Grandfather," Ohm said. He paused. "May I call you Grandfather?"
"I'd like that," Immerman said. "No one has ever done that. I had to deny myself the pleasure of my grandchildren's corn- pany. But, of course, I also did not have to be involved in the sometimes painful and distressing troubles thaf come with the joys of grandchildren. Yes, you may call me Grandfather."
He stopped, smiled.
"But what do I call you?"
Ohm said, "What ... ? Oh! I see. Today's Saturday. Call me Charlie, please."
Immerman shook his head slightly, then made a gesture. Mudge appeared by Ohm's side and said, "Yes, sir."
"Would you get us some tea. Our guest may be hungry, also. Would you like some food, Charlie?"
"Some protein cookies would be nice," Ohm said. "I had a very light breakfast."
"I would imagine you would," Immerman said. "The way of life you lead ... today, that is. You are amazing, Charlie. Not quite unique in being a daybreaker sanctioned as such by the immer council. But unique in your roles. And in the intensity with which you have adopted these roles ... personae, rather. I believe that you actually become a new man each day. Admirable, in some respects. In others, dangerous."
Here it comes, Ohm thought. Now we're getting to the reason I'm here. This is not meant to be a family reunion.
"May I walk around a little while we're waiting for the tea and cookies?" Charlie said. "I didn't get my accustomed exercise. I'm tight and sluggish. I can think better with the muscles loose and the blood flowing."
"Be my guest."
Feeling somewhat self-conscious, Charlie got up and strode up and down the room. He stopped at the entrance, turned, and went as far as a few feet from Immerman before turning again. The old man-old man, he did not look more than five years older than his grandson!-sat with folded hands and watched. He was smiling very faintly. While Charlie paced back and forth, he saw a huge seal-point Siamese cat enter from a doorway. It paused, looked intently with enormous blue eyes at Ohm, then trotted to Immerman and leaped upon his lap. It curled down there while Immerman gently stroked it.
"Ming is my first and only pet," Immerman said softly. "Ming the Merciless. I doubt you know the reference. He's almost as old as I am. In obyears, that is. From time to time, I stone him."
Charlie took his gaze away from the wall strips, though he had seen something in one that had startled him. He said, "Even so, Ming must have been given the elixir for him to live so long. Right?"
"Right," Immerman said. "Only ... it's not an elixir. It's a biological form, a genuine life form, though artificial in origin. It cleanses the plaque from the arteries, does many things. It also partially suppresses the inherent aging agent in our cells. I don't know how it does it, though I've been trying to find out for a long time."
Ohm was not pleased by the confidences. They could imply that his grandfather did not care what his grandson learned. Charlie Ohm was not going to be able to pass on the information. But could a man be so objective, so hard-hearted, that he would rid himself-and the family-of his own flesh and blood? The answer was, of course, that he could. The immer family had survived this long because its leaders had been objective and logical. It might grieve Immerman to dispose of his own grandson, but he would do it if he had to. The family came first; its individuals, a long second place behind.
"I've wondered about that," Charlie said. A little hole in the blackness inside his brain seemed to open. A little light shone briefly through it. Wyatt Repp? Repp seemed to be telling him something. Then he knew, and he spoke it aloud before the knowledge vanished back into the darkness.
"Ming the Merciless," he said. "He was a character, the chief villain, in an ancient comic book and movie series. Flash Gordon. That was the name of the hero of the series."
Immerman looked mildly surprised, then smiled. "That originated in the twentieth century A.D. I didn't know that anybody but a few scholars knew of that. I've underestimated you, grandson."
"I'm not just Charlie Ohm, a bartender, a weedie, and a drunk."
"I know that."
"I think you know everything about me," Charlie said. "I hope that you know me well enough, understand me well enough, that is, to know that I am not a danger to you ... to the immers."
Immerman smiled as if he were genuinely pleased.
"Then you realize fully why I have summoned you here. Good."
Maybe not so good for me, Ohm thought.
He had been about to say something, but one face in a wall-strip display seemed to zoom out, to expand, and to crowd his mind. He trembled. That face could not be there. He looked away and then his head was turned as if it were clamped in a machine. Yes. It was.
The screen showed a large recess near the top of the tower, the third from the final. It contained figures from the past, EXTINCT TYPES OF HOMO SAPIENS. The face that had snagged him in his swift survey, caught him as a stump in shallow water caught the bottom of a boat (and threatened to rip out his guts), belonged to a figure in a seventeenth-century group. This, he thought, represented The King and The Queen and their Court. It could be, judging from the dress, the period of the Three Musketeers. The King would be Louis XIII; the Queen, Anne of Austria. The figure with a foxlike face and dressed in the red robes of a cardinal must be Richelieu.
Ohm struggled to quit shaking. He used one of the techniques that had been successful many times. He visualized the king and queen and the court and the face that had alarmed him as just one of many. He shrank the scene, rolled it into a ball, and pitched it out of his mind through the top of his head. It did not work. He could not keep from looking sideways at the face.
Trying to smile as if he were thinking of something pleasant, he returned to the chair and sat down. The scene was at his back. He could not see it unless he turned his neck far to the right, and he would not do that. Immerman would know that he had seen the face.
Chapter 25
"That's interesting," he said in a steady voice. "I mean ... it's puzzling. Why doesn't the age-slowing life form show up on blood tests?"
He did not, at that moment, care about the subject. But he had to make conversation and then steer it to the subject that just thinking about made his heart hammer.
"It hibernates," Immerman said. "A single organism sleeps, as it were, in a blood vessel, attached to the wall. Then, at a programed interval, it fissions, and the resultant millions of cells do their work. Then all die but one until the time comes for fissioning again. The statistical chances of a blood test being taken when the life form is populous are very small. But the form has been detected four times. It's been recorded in medical tapes as a puzzling and seemingly nonpathogenic phenomenon."
Mudge came with the tea and cookies. After Mudge had returned to the table on which was Ohm's bag, Immerman sipped his tea.
"Very good," he said. "Though I suppose you would rather have liquor?"
"Usually I would," Ohm said coolly. "But I am not quite myself just now. The shock ..