Fraffin felt himself stretched for a moment on the rack of his own vision, remembering days when he'd lived among the natives -- manipulating, maneuvering, eavesdropping, learning, listening to sn.i.g.g.e.ring Roman boys talks of things their elders had forgotten even to whisper. In his mind, Fraffin saw his own villa with sunglow on a brick walk, gra.s.s, a tree, a planting of petulant forsythia. That's what she'd called them -- "petulant forsythia." How clearly he could see in his mind the young pear tree beside the walk.

"They die so easily," he whispered.

Kelexel put a finger to his cheek, said: "I think you're just a touch morbid -- all this emphasis on violence and death."

It wasn't in the plan, but Fraffin couldn't help himself. He glared at Kelexel, said: "You think you hate such things, eh? No, you don't! You say you're attracted by such things as this pretty native of yours. I hear you fancy the native clothing." He touched a sleeve of his jacket, a curious caressing gesture. "How little you know yourself, Kelexel."

Kelexel's face went dark with anger. This was too much! Fraffin exceeded all bounds of propriety!

"We Chem have locked the door on death and violence," he muttered. "Viewing it as a dalliance, no more."

"Morbid, you say?" Fraffin asked. "We've locked the door on death? No longer for us, is it?" He chuckled. "Yet, there it stands, our eternal temptation. What do I do here that attracts you so -- attracts you so much that in the very voice of admission you inquire about that which repels? I'll tell you what I do here: I play with temptations that my fellow Chem may watch."

Fraffin's hands moved as he talked -- chopping, cutting gestures that exposed the ever-young flesh, active, vibrant -- small hairs curling on the back of the fingers, nails blunt, flat.

Kelexel stared at the man, caught in the spell of Fraffin's words. Death-temptation? Surely not! Yet, there was a cold certainty in the idea.

Watching Fraffin's hands, Kelexel thought: The hand must not overthrow the mind.

"You laugh," Kelexel said. "You think me amusing."

"Not just you," Fraffin said. "All is amus.e.m.e.nt -- the poor creatures of my caged world and every last blessed one of us who cannot hear the warnings of our own eternal lives. All warnings have one exception, eh? Yourself! That's what I see and that's what amuses me. You laugh at them in my productions, but you don't know why you laugh. Ahh, Kelexel, here's where we hide the awareness of our own mortality."

Kelexel spoke in shocked outrage: "We're not mortal!"

"Kelexel, Kelexel -- we're mortal. Any of us can end it, cease the rejuvenation, and that's mortal. That's mortal."

Kelexel sat silently staring. The Director was insane!

For Fraffin, the everlasting awareness which his own words had aroused foamed across his mind and, receding, exposed his rage.

I'm angry and remorseful, he thought. I've accepted a morality no other Chem would entertain for a moment. I'm sorry for Kelexel and for all the creatures I've moved and removed without their knowing. They sprout fifty heads within me for every one I cut off. Gossip? A Collector of gossip? I'm a person of sensitive ears who can still hear a knife sc.r.a.ping toast in a villa that no longer exists.

He remembered the woman then -- the dark, exotic chatelaine of his Roman home. She'd been no taller than himself, stunted by native standards, but lovely in his sight -- the best of them all. She'd borne him eight mortal children, their mixed blood concealed in the genetic melt. She'd grown old and dull of face -- and he remembered that too. Remembering her blunted look, he saw the black throng, the mixed-up disasters of their mingled genes. She'd given him something no other could: a share in mortality that he could accept for his own.

What the Primacy wouldn't give to know about that little interlude, he thought.

"You talk like a madman," Kelexel whispered.

We contend openly now, eh? Fraffin thought. Perhaps I move too slowly with this dolt. Perhaps I should tell him now how he's caught in our trap. But Fraffin felt himself swept up in the flow of his own anger. He couldn't help himself.

"A madman?" he asked, his voice sneering. "You say we're immortal, we Chem. How're we immortal? We rejuvenate and rejuvenate. We achieve a balance point, frozen short of final destruction. At what stage in our development, Chem Kelexel, are we frozen?"

"Stage?" Kelexel stared at him. Fraffin's words were firebrands.

"Yes, stage! Are we frozen in maturity? I think, not. To mature one must flower. We don't flower, Kelexel."

"I don't . . ."

"We don't produce something of beauty and loveliness, something which is the essence of ourselves! We don't flower."

"I've had offspring!"

Fraffin couldn't contain his laughter. When it subsided, he faced a now openly angry Kelexel, said: "The unflowering seed, the perpetual immaturity producing the perpetual immaturity -- and you brag about it! How mean and empty and frightened you are, Kelexel."

"What've I to fear?" Kelexel demanded. "Death can't touch me. You can't touch me!"

"Except from within," Fraffin said. "Death can't touch a Chem except from within. We're sovereign individuals, immortal citadels of selfdom that no force can storm . . . except from within. In each of us there's that seed out of our past, the seed which whispers: Remember? Remember when we could die?'"

Kelexel pushed himself upright, stood glaring down at Fraffin. "You're insane!"

"Sit down, visitor," Fraffin said. And he wondered at himself. Why do I goad him? To justify myself in what I must do? If that's so, then I should give him something he can use against me. I should make this a more equal contest.

Kelexel sank back into his seat. He reminded himself that the Chem were mostly immune to the more bizarre forms of madness, but one never knew what stresses might be imposed by outpost living, by contact with an alien race. The boredom psychosis threatened all of them -- perhaps Fraffin had succ.u.mbed to something in that syndrome.

"Let us see if you have a conscience," Fraffin said.

It was such an unexpected statement that Kelexel could only goggle at him. There came a sense of furtive emptying within himself, though, and Kelexel recognized peril in Fraffin's words.

"What harm could there be in that?" Fraffin asked. He turned. Earlier one of the crew had brought a vase of roses and put them on the cabinet behind his desk. Fraffin looked at the roses. They were full blown, dripping blood-colored petals like the garlands on Diana's altar. There's no more joking in Sumeria, he thought. No more do we jest, inserting foolishness into Minerva's wisdom.

"What are you talking about?" Kelexel asked.

For answer, Fraffin moved a control stud beneath his desk. His pantovive reproducer whirred into action, slid across the room like a giant beast and positioned itself at Fraffin's right where they would share the view of its focusing stage.

Kelexel stared at it, suddenly dry-mouthed. The frivolous entertainment machine was a sudden monster that he feared was capable of striking him unaware.

"It was thoughtful of you to provide one of these for your pet," Fraffin said. "Shall we see what she's watching?"

"How can that concern us?" Kelexel demanded. He heard anger and uncertainty in his own voice, knew Fraffin was aware of this reaction.

"Let us see," Fraffin said. He swung the bank of control studs within easy reach, moved them lovingly. The stage became a native room up there on the planet surface -- a long, narrow room with beige plaster walls, a washed brown ceiling. The view looked directly along a burn-scarred plank table that jutted from a steam radiator which hissed beneath the red and white curtains of a barred window.

Two men sat facing each other across the table.

"Ahh," Fraffin said. "On the left we have your pet's father, and on the right we have the man she'd have mated with had we not stepped in and given her to you."

"Stupid, useless natives," Kelexel sneered.

"But she's watching them right now," Fraffin said. "This is what's going into her pantovive . . . which you so kindly provided."

"She's quite happy here; I'm sure of it," Kelexel said.

"Then why don't you release her from the manipulator?" Fraffin asked.

"When she's fully conditioned," Kelexel said. "She'll be more than content to serve a Chem when she understands what we can provide her."

"Of course," Fraffin said. He studied Andy Thurlow's profile. The lips moved, but Fraffin kept the sound bar turned off. "That's why she watches this scene from my current production."