Charles Romb heard, quite distinctly, somewhere in the universe, an escape-proof steel trap spring shut with a deadly clang.
“You see, Charles, everyone needs love. I’m sure you know that better than most people. Some need more love than others; Sandra, for one example. Others need hardly any; you, for another example. I need quite a lot. I’m a very demanding woman, Charles. I have to be. Not only is it my nature, but one finds as one grows older, much older, very much older, that attractive lovers seem to want equally attractive lovers. Life can be very lonely for the old and the ugly.”
He was about to say, But you’re neither, you shouldn’t have any problem finding thousands who would pay to make love to you, but before he could speak he saw her eyes. They did not seem to belong in that exquisite face. They belonged in the face of a creature awesomely ancient and withered.
“I’d like you to meet Philip,” Dr. D’arqueAngel said, still smiling. She pressed a button in the desk drawer and a door Romb had never noticed before slid smoothly into the wall and something barely human crutched its way into the room. In the half-light Charles Romb could barely make out the definition of body and features, but it was obviously the popular novelist, grown hideously old and wretched. He dragged himself through the doorway and took only two steps before his rotted lower limbs failed to support him. He fell, and began to crawl toward the woman.
When he reached her, he laid his head in her lap and she stroked his head as one would a faithful lapdog.
“The treatments must be continued, Charles. Otherwise I’m afraid the remissive process begins in something under a year. Deterioration accelerates and is impressively rapid and total.”
Romb could not speak. The sight of the novelist groveling for a caress was loathsome–and fascinating.
“I practice preventative medicine, Charles. On my own behalf. The distillate of death has to come from somewhere. And from my own point of view even more important, the antitoxin. The merest fractionate of the essence that has the most salutary effects on preserving one’s youth.” She made a negligible gesture as if what she was about to say didn’t really mean much: “Since I have no call for it, I use it myself.”
Hoarsely, Romb asked, “How many of us are there?”
She named a captain of industry, a prominent actress, the owner of a successful chain of parking lots, a television newscaster with his own late-night talk show, that year’s leading presidential candidate from the party out of office, a husband and wife team of diplomats assigned to the United Nations, a famous criminal lawyer given to courtroom theatrics, and a leading nightclub comedian. “My patients form a small but sturdy community of donors. Each supplies the others. Very carefully calibrated amounts of life, to stave off death, Charles. Not too much, not too little, each time; the balance is so delicate. Periodically I have to find a few more strong sources of supply, such as yourself. But when one of my, er, friends grows recalcitrant, threatens to tip the balance, well, I’m afraid in the interests of the common good I have to exercise a degree of corporal punishment. I withhold treatments.”
She stroked the novelist’s head meaningfully.
“After that, I’m afraid the patient can be maintained only at the level of deterioration that obtains when the treatments are resumed.”
There was not, Romb realized, nearly enough smoothness or prettiness in the possible world.
“Give up this idea of Bermuda, Charles. I think you would find the climate most disagreeable…very quickly. And give up the idea of dispensing your love elsewhere; we need all you can give, you see. Stay here in the city with all of us. We’ll treat you well, and with only the slightest inconvenience, a daily office call for your donation and your injection, you’ll live to be, oh, I’d say two or three hundred years old.”
The novelist whimpered in pain.
“I need love, Charles. Quite a lot of love. Love, as I’m sure you’ve heard said, keeps you young and happy.”
In the semidarkness Charles Romb sat frozen in his chair considering two or three hundred years with a small death on each day of that time. He sat staring across at the ancient eyes of Dr. D’arqueAngel, dreading the moment when her secret flesh would touch his. Unparalleled love was to be his future. For a very long time. And the only sounds in the room were the husky, sensuous breathing of the shadowed woman, and the whimpers of the creature at her feet.
From the burning core of his molten hell Charles Romb screamed. Sandra! he screamed, in the silence of his soul. But from the terrible darkness of that place there was no answer, no answer at all.
Harlan Ellison, Strange Wine
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