He sprang erect.
"Take it off!" he roared.
"When I have your knowledge of Venus," his tormentor said carelessly.
"Take it off, or—"
"Or what?" Her smile was guileless, sweet, innocent.
"This!" he blazed, and covered the space between them in a bound, his right hand clutching the delicate curve of her throat, his left pressing her shoulders fiercely down against the cushions.
"Take it off," he bellowed.
Suddenly there was a sound behind him, the grating of doors, and he was torn away, held by four grim–faced guards. Of course! The operator of the Messenger could hear his words. He should have remembered that.
The Black Flame pushed herself to a sitting position, and her face was no angel's but the face of a lovely demon. Green hell glittered in her eyes, but she only reached shakily for the vision switch.
"Tell Control to release," she choked huskily, and faced Tom Connor.
The Messenger tingled and vanished. The Princess rose unsteadily, but her glorious eyes burned cold as she snatched a weapon from the nearest guard.
"Get out, all of you!" she snapped.
The men backed away. Connor faced her.
"I should have killed you!" he muttered. "For humanity's sake."
"Yes, you should have, Thomas Connor." Her tones were bitterly cold. "For, then you would have died quickly and mercifully for murder, but now—now you die in the way I choose, and it will be neither quick nor merciful. I cannot"—her voice shook—"bear the touch of violence!" Her free hand rubbed her throat. "For this—you suffer!"
He shrugged. "It was worth it. I know your character now! I no longer have to guess."
Mockery gleamed.
"Do you?" Her face changed suddenly, and again it was soft and pure and wistful. "Do you?" she repeated, in tones that were sad, but held that bell– like quality he so well remembered. "You don't. Do you think the Black Flame is the true Margaret of Urbs? Do you realize what immortality means?" Her exquisite face was unutterably mournful as she thrust the weapon into her belt. "You think it's a blessing, don't you? You wonder, don't you, why Joaquin has withheld it from everybody?"
"Yes, I do. I think it's tyranny. It's selfish."
"Selfish! Oh, God!" Her voice shook. "Why, he withheld it from his own mother! Blessing? It's a curse! I bear it out of my duty to Joaquin, else I'd have killed myself centuries ago. I still may, do you hear. I still may!" Her voice rose.
Appalled, he stared at her.
"Why?" he cried.
"You ask why! Seven hundred years. Seven—hundred—years! Denied love! How do I dare love a man who ages day by day, until his teeth yellow and his hair falls out, and he's decrepit, senile, old? Denied children! Immortals can't have children. Don't you think I'd trade immortality for motherhood? Don't you?"
Connor was speechless. Her voice rose to a tense pitch.
"Do you know what seven hundred years mean? I do! It means seven centuries of friendlessness. Do you wonder that I run away to the woods sometimes, seeking the companionship, the friendship, the love, that everywhere else is denied me? How can I make friends among people who vanish like ghosts? Who among the dry scientists of the Immortals is alone—and I'm bored—bored—bored!" Her green eyes were tearbright, but when he opened his lips to speak, she stopped him with an imperious gesture. "I'm sick to death of immortality! I want someone who loves me. Someone I'd love to grow old with, and children to grow up beside me. I want—I want—a friend!"
She was sobbing. Impulsively he moved toward her, taking her hand.
"My God!" he choked. "I'm sorry. I didn't understand." "And you—will help me?" Her exquisite features were pleading, tear–streaked.
"The best I can," he promised.
Her perfect lips were two rosy temptations as she drew him toward her. He bent to kiss her gently—and sprang back as if his own lips had in truth touched a flame.
Laughter! He looked into mocking eyes whose only tears were those of sardonic mirth!
"So!" she said, her red lips taunting. "There is the first taste, Thomas Connor, but there will be more before I kill you. You may go."
The Destiny of Man
"You devil!" Connor choked, and then whirled at a soft click behind him. A white envelope lay in a wire basket by the elevator.
"Hand it to me," said the Flame coolly.
He snatched it and thrust it at her, in a turmoil of emotion as he watched her read it.
"Indeed!" she murmured. "My esteemed brother orders me to keep well away from you—which I shall not do—and commands you to his quarters at once." She yawned. "Take the elevator to any floor below the Tower and ask a guard. That's all."
Yet, as the cage dropped, Connor could not forget that there had been something wistful about the Princess, at his last glimpse of her. Somehow, try as he would, he couldn't hate her quite whole–heartedly, and he frowned as he found his way to the West Chambers. A guard admitted him to an inner room, and then retired quietly, leaving him facing the Master, who sat behind a paper–littered desk.
"Well, what do you think of me?" the Master greeted him abruptly.
Connor was taken aback, unprepared for the question.
"Why," he stammered, "what would I naturally think of you? You dragged me back here by torture. You nearly killed Evanie. Do you think I can easily forget or forgive such things?"
"After all, Thomas Connor, you participated in a revolt against me," the Master said suavely. "You wounded eleven of my men. Did the governments of your day deal so leniently with treason?"
"I've wondered why you are so easy on the rebels," he admitted. "Frankly, in my time, there'd have been a good many of us lined up against a wall and shot."
The Master shook his head. "Why should I do that? The Weeds are the finest of my people. I made the only mistake—that of giving leisure to a race not ready for it. Leisure is what has bred all these minor revolutions. But does a father kill his favorite children?"
"Does a son kill his mother?" retorted Connor. The Master smiled bleakly.
"I see my sister has been talking to you. Yes, I refused immortality to my mother. She was an old woman —ill, infirm. Should I have condemned her to added centuries of misery? Immortality does not restore youth."
The point was incontrovertible.
"Yet you withhold it from those who have youth," Connor protested. "You keep it selfishly as a reward, to bind to yourself all men of ability. You've emasculated the rest of humanity."
"You feel that immortality is a highly desirable reward, don't you?"
"I do! In spite of what your sister says."
"You don't understand," said the Master patiently. "We'll pass the question of its desirability; it doesn't matter. But suppose I were to open it to the race, to instruct all the doctors in its secrets. Wouldn't it immediately halt all development? How can evolution function if no one dies and no children are born?"
That was a puzzler.
"You could permit it after the birth of children," Connor said.
"I could. But at the present birthrate, the land areas would provide bare standing room in just a century and a half. I could then kill off nine–tenths of the population, presumably, but