TIME and the WOMAN
By Dewey, G. Gordon
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Orbit volume 1 number2, 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Ninon stretched. And purred, almost. There was something lazily catlikein her flexing; languid, yet ferally alert. The silken softness of hercouch yielded to her body as she rubbed against it in sensual delight.There was almost the litheness of youth in her movements.
It was true that some of her joints seemed to have a hint of stiffnessin them, but only she knew it. And if some of the muscles beneath herpolished skin did not respond with quite the resilience of the youththey once had, only she knew that, too. But they would again, shetold herself fiercely.
She caught herself. She had let down her guard for an instant, and afrown had started. She banished it imperiously. Frowns—just onefrown—could start a wrinkle! And nothing was as stubborn as a wrinkle.One soft, round, white, long-nailed finger touched here, and here, andthere—the corners of her eyes, the corners of her mouth, smoothingthem.
Wrinkles acknowledged only one master, the bio-knife of the facialsurgeons. But the bio-knife could not thrust deep enough to excise thestiffness in a joint; was not clever enough to remold the outlines of afigure where they were beginning to blur and—sag.
No one else could see it—yet. But Ninon could!
Again the frown almost came, and again she scourged it fiercely into theback of her mind. Time was her enemy. But she had had other enemies, anddestroyed them, one way or another, cleverly or ruthlessly ascircumstances demanded. Time, too, could be destroyed. Or enslaved.Ninon sorted through her meagre store of remembered reading. Some oldphilosopher had said, "If you can't whip 'em, join 'em!" Crude, but apt.
Ninon wanted to smile. But smiles made wrinkles, too. She was content tofeel that sureness of power in her grasp—the certain knowledge thatshe, first of all people, would turn Time on itself and destroy it. Shewould be youthful again. She would thread through the ages to come, likea silver needle drawing a golden filament through the layer on layer ofthe cloth of years that would engarment her eternal youth. Ninon knewhow.
Her shining, gray-green eyes strayed to the one door in her apartmentthrough which no man had ever gone. There the exercising machines; thelotions; the unguents; the diets; the radioactive drugs; the records ofendocrine transplantations, of blood transfusions. She dismissed themcontemptuously. Toys! The mirages of a pseudo-youth. She would leavethem here for someone else to use in masking the downhill years.
There, on the floor beside her, was the answer she had sought so long. Abook. "Time in Relation to Time." The name of the author, his academicrecord in theoretical physics, the cautious, scientific wording of hispostulates, meant nothing to her. The one thing that had meaning for herwas that Time could be manipulated. And she would manipulate it. ForNinon!
The door chimes tinkled intimately. Ninon glanced at her watch—Robertwas on time. She arose from the couch, made sure that the light wasbehi