Never Come Midnight by H. L. Gold (phonics reading books TXT) 📕

pleased. "Some people retain their faculties longer than others," he observed. "And Hubbard was my father's friend, as well as his lawyer, so he's the closest thing to a relative that I have on Earth. Except you, of course; you were my father's friend, too."

Dyall's lips tightened. "How does Hubbard know you're in this house right now? Do you think he's having you followed?"

It was possible, but Emrys didn't care. For almost a year now, his life had been blameless, and, strangely, it suited him to live that way. "I'm here in this house most of the time. It wouldn't be hard for him to figure out where he could find me."

The gong sounded again. Dyall looked undecided.

"If I can forgive him, sir," Emrys said gently, "surely you can."

"Show him in," Dyall rasped to the machine.

Megan rose to go, but Emrys kept hold of her small, cold hand. "I'd like you to meet Peter Hubbard, dear. He's really a nice old fellow when you get to know him. Just a bit too much of a do-gooder, that's all."

Dyall snorted.

"I shall be glad to know any friend of yours, Emrys," Megan said, sitting down again obediently.

After a moment, Peter Hubbard came into the room. "Peter, this is my fiancée, Megan Dyall." Smilingly, Emrys waited for the usual inane felicitations. He couldn't expect a man of Hubbard's age to be bowled over by this loveliness, but still surely no man, no matter how ancient, could be completely insensible to the girl's charm.

Hubbard stood still and stared at her. "Amazing...." he murmured. "Amazing...." Then he turned to Dyall. "You are to be congratulated, sir."

Emrys was annoyed. He knew Hubbard was too well-bred to make a remark like that unintentionally. However, he pretended to be amused and said, "You're supposed to congratulate me, Peter."

But Hubbard continued his inexplicable rudeness by paying no attention to Emrys and, instead, staring at Nicholas Dyall. And finally Dyall said, with a strangled laugh, "I think perhaps in this instance Mr. Hubbard is right."

He threw himself into an easy chair with an attempt at nonchalance, but it was embarrassingly apparent that his stick was not enough to support him any more. His old body was trembling. And Emrys found that he himself was trembling, too.

There was a painful silence. Everyone seemed to be waiting. Even Megan glanced from one to the other with her usual expression of bright-eyed interest.

"Unfortunately, Mr. Hubbard," Dyall said at last, "you've reached your conclusions too late to do anything except perhaps hasten an end that is, you'll concede, by now inevitable."

"Yes," Hubbard agreed, "you've won your game." He came a little further into the room, so that he was standing over the other old man. "I do believe that, of the two, you are the worse. He did what he did out of spite. You created that spite and kept it alive."

Dyall's dark face flushed and his hands tightened on his cane. "But I had a right to do what I did. And I hurt only one person. Two, if you include me. Give me credit, at least, for the smallness of my scope."

Hubbard glanced at Megan. And Dyall broke into the shrill cackle of an old man. "But you know, you know, and still you think of her! How sentimental can you get? Don't you realize—"

"How much does she?" Hubbard said. "How much do you?"

Emrys had become nearly frantic with frustration and bewilderment. He was the one who had secrets; nobody else. Nothing was to be kept hidden from him! "What are you two blabbering about?" he almost screamed. "It doesn't make sense—any of it!"

Hubbard turned toward him, his head and neck moving with the deliberate precision of a piece of clockwork. "It makes very good sense, Jan. I realized that I could find out nothing more from the stars, so I turned my researches back to Earth. I've been investigating Mr. Dyall."

"What did you find?" Emrys asked tensely. Why did Peter call him by his former name in front of his former enemy? Had the old fool forgotten his promise, or had he broken it on purpose? "What did you find out?" he repeated.

Hubbard's voice was filled with pity. "Just this: Nicholas Dyall never did marry Alissa Embel."

Emrys' fear exploded into a scarlet rage. "Then Megan is—" He advanced on Dyall, his fists clenched. "If you took Alissa and then didn't—"

Hubbard caught his arm in a frail grip. "Don't be so hasty, Emrys. Dyall did no wrong to Alissa Embel, whatever wrong he may have done to you."

"Thank you," Dyall murmured, "for granting me that I gave her all I had, but it wasn't what she wanted. She wanted—" his old eyes were filled with hate as he looked at Emrys—"you."

"Alissa Embel killed herself on the day before the wedding," Hubbard told Emrys. "She, as we attorneys say, died without issue."

Emrys was glad that, since he could not have had Alissa, Dyall had not, either. At the same time, he felt an overwhelmingly poignant sense of sorrow, that he should have had three full lifetimes, and the woman he had loved—insofar as Jan Shortmire had been capable of love—not even one.

He raised dull eyes to the two old men. "Then who is Megan?"

Hubbard hesitated. But what worse could there be to tell? And then the lawyer asked a ridiculous question, "Jan, do you know why Dyall's machines didn't meet popular favor until he changed them?"

Emrys plunged back once again into the well of his memories. "Nobody wanted to buy machines that looked too much like people; it made them ... uncomfortable. So Dyall stopped designing robots and made machines adapted to their separate functions and—" His voice became a cry of anguish. "Megan!"

She turned her bland, smiling doll face toward him. "I'm sorry, Emrys," the sweet voice said.

Dyall's eyes were squeezed shut and something glistened on the edge of them—something that Emrys would not admit were tears, because he himself could never cry.

"When Alissa died," Dyall said, "I knew I couldn't love another woman. So I made a mechanical doll in her image. I made her the woman every man dreams of—lovely and sympathetic and undemanding. And I told myself she would be better than the original Alissa because she would be perfect, and Alissa wasn't; she would stay young forever, while the real Alissa would have grown old ... if she had lived. But it wasn't the same for me."

Why was she the same for me, then? Emrys wondered bitterly. Was it because I didn't know? Is that all love is—self-deception?

"Perhaps," Dyall went on, "Man cannot appreciate true perfection; perhaps he's not good enough himself. Still, she was company of a sort and so I kept her by me. And then, when I read of Emrys Shortmire's arrival on Earth, I sent him a note, but he didn't answer; however, I contrived to get a look at him anyway. Then I knew for sure that he was Jan Shortmire himself; and then I knew what Megan's destiny was...."

"How could you know he—I was Jan Shortmire?" Emrys demanded angrily. It was insupportable that old Dyall should have known all along; it spoiled the joke. "Where would you have—have gotten the concept?"

The old man smiled, opening his eyes. "Because the Morethans made me the same offer they did you! Did you think you were the only one?" And, throwing back his head, he derisively began to laugh aloud.

More than ever, Emrys hated the Morethans, not for what they would do to Earth's pride, but for what they had done to his. Because now there was nothing that he had been offered that Dyall had not been offered also. And Dyall had not accepted the Morethans' offer, thereby proving himself the better man. And Dyall had tricked him, thereby proving himself the cleverer man. And Dyall had hated him even more than he had hated Dyall, thereby proving himself the more constant man. So there Emrys Shortmire, Jan Shortmire, was left ... with nothing but a youthfulness of which, he had to admit to himself, he had grown rather tired.

"I'm sorry, Emrys," Megan said. "I'm terribly sorry."

Dyall sprang from his chair. "I'm sick of that piping doll's voice of yours! I've stood it for a century, and that's long enough!" Raising his stick high in the air, he crashed it down upon the golden head, the pretty pink and white face. And, frozen in horror, Emrys could not move until it was too late. He had not conceived old Dyall capable of committing outright murder so wantonly. Probably he wasn't; to him, Megan was and had been always a doll.

And now she was a heap of broken wheels and gears on the thick rug. Still, out of the heap of twisted machinery, a tiny, tinny voice kept repeating "I'm sorry, Emrys. I'm terribly sorry."