Exceptions to Reality by Alan Dean Foster Read Free Book Online Page B

herself, she advanced to rest a hand on his shoulder. Beneath the synsilk lay very little flesh and much narrow bone. The feel of it made her want to pull her hand away, but she did not.
    “You are unloved here, sir. I realize you know that, and don’t care. I can’t change that. Not even you can change that.” Her words came a little faster. “But by turning for home now you can regain their respect! You can finish this in a way that will be remembered with pride instead of animosity.”
    He turned back toward her. Not by pivoting the chair this time, but by making an actual uncommon physical effort to rotate the upper portion of his remaining body. “And what about you, Anna Surat? Do
you
hate me for what I’ve done?”
    “No, Mr. Bastrop. I don’t hate you. I just want to go home. I have a husband, you know. At least, I hope I still have a husband.”
    “You are a starship navigator. He knew what he was getting into when he married you. Everyone knows. I’ve been married myself, so even if you think otherwise, I do understand. Outlived most of them.” He shook his head slowly. “They were all comely, in their own way. But they were not the Chauna.”
    Surat knew she was out of line in speaking this way to her admittedly generous if stubborn employer, but the time for overindulgence was past. “
Nothing
is the Chauna, Mr. Bastrop! They say that you were once the smartest man in the galaxy. What happened to that person? Did he—?”
    “Get senile?” Gibeon Bastrop chuckled. “I don’t think so—but then if I was, I wouldn’t know it, would I? I don’t think the pursuit of ultimate beauty stamps me as mad, Anna. I think it marks me as sane. Saner than most, I should say. Ultimately, what else is there but beauty? Beauty of discovery, beauty of thought, beauty of soul. It’s one thing I’ve never been able to buy, navigator. Now it is all I want. The last thing I want. No other human being has seen it. We will be the first.”
    “Many myths are highly attractive, Mr. Bastrop. Seductive, even. But in the end they’re only myths. Isn’t the loveliness of legend enough? Can’t you leave it at that?”
    “Maybe the Chauna is a world, Anna Surat. Have you thought of that?” Excitement danced in eyes that had been thrice replaced. “A world so wonderful even the Cosocagglia have no words for it. Can you imagine the reaction such a discovery would trigger? A world even more captivating than Earth, empty and waiting for us. Or maybe it’s a gas giant with multiple rings that glow like gold in the light of triple suns. But most likely it’s something we cannot imagine.”
    “Neither can the Cosocagglia,” she responded, “because it doesn’t exist. Anything of absolute beauty has to be imaginary, or it ceases to be exceptional and becomes just one more item in the always expanding stellar pantheon.”
    He started to reply, stopped, and began to wheeze softly. She ought to call somebody, she knew. She ought to summon help. Instead, loathing her deliberate inaction, she stood and watched, silent and hopeful. No such luck. The hospice motile did things with tubes and probes, and in less than a couple of minutes the Old Man was breathing normally again. Shallow, but normal.
    “That was unpleasant.” His eyes met hers. “You really think I’m being unreasonable, Anna Surat? To want, after more than a century and a half, this one last thing? To view beauty that no one else has seen?”
    Her attitude softened. He was working his wiles on her, she knew. A hundred years of practice gives a man certain skills. But she could only be manipulated to a limited degree.
    “No, Mr. Bastrop. It’s not unreasonable to want such a thing. But it is unreasonable to want to see that which does not exist. If you would only—”
    A voice entered the room via an unseen synthetic orifice. “Mr. Gibeon Bastrop. Mr. Gibeon Bastrop, sir!” She recognized Tyrone’s commanding tones. What was he doing awake? Sleeptime was