"You have no idea what I am, do you"? he asked with words muffled as he sucked playfully on her left nipple.

"You're like an investor or something?"

He shifted his weight and settled his ear against the soft young flesh above her breast bone as she rubbed her fingers lightly along his chin."

"You know," he said, in with a voice that was drowsy from wine and the late hour. "I could kill you as easily as love you, you know."

"Hmm?"

"No. I do not think I shall kill you tonight. Killing is a nasty, tiresome pastime, and it was never that much fun anyway."

"I know you won't kill me," she said playfully.

"And why is that, my sweet child?"

"Because I don't think you're through with me yet." She giggled and smiled coquettishly.

He sighed.

"You really don't believe me. That's all right. I'm usually too nice a guy to kill people without some kind of reason anyway. Kiss me," he commanded.

She lowered her head and placed her open mouth over his.

The moment drew on as they felt the rise and fall of the small boat upon the lonesome ocean waves.

He rolled away from her and took her hand.

"Come," he commanded. "Let us watch the stars."

She rose and followed him through the tiny closet of a stairway to the deck. The warm night air was blown cool by a whispering breeze beneath stars and a midnight sky which lit them with a faded blue.

"Stand by the rail. I want to look at you."

She stood, a pale statue under the gibbous moon, a shadowy ghost against the pitch black of lapping water. Long dark hair fell over her shoulders to her round hips, framing her breasts. Her legs wore the smooth satin of youth.

"How old are you, Velana?"

"Twenty four."

"You're beautiful. I never tire of beautiful women."

"What's wrong? You look sad."

He turned his face up and watched the stars, the same stars of his youth, unchanging, unlike the rest of the world that raged with white water fury.

"They always tire of me."

"So, who was the last person you killed?" she asked with a sudden, brash voice.

"His name was Cory Corman. He stole from me and decided that I wasn't worth arguing with. I broke his neck. It was a long time ago."

Velana seemed suddenly self conscious and darted her eyes suddenly.

"I ... I was just joking. I didn't think you were serious. You don't seem like that."

"At ease, child. It was long, long ago. I am neither proud nor ashamed."

"How long?"

He stood and walked to the railing next to her and peered out to the hidden horizon.

"What year is it now?"

The girl didn't answer.

"Twenty three twenty five, right? That would make it - oh gosh, around ninety, ninety-five years ago."

Another breeze blew across them, rousing her hair. She hugged her arms together and turned around to face it's approach across the undulating blackness.

"I think we should head back. It's getting late," she said.

He put his arm around her shoulder, pressed his warm flesh to her chilled softness.

"What's wrong? Don't I look that old? Haven't you ever met a vampire before?"

He put his mouth on her and began sucking to make a love bruise on her neck.

She recoiled away and stumbled into the bench at the other side of the boat with a look that confessed some genuine concern.

"No, sweet thing," said through a light chuckle. "There's no such thing as a vampire."

Suddenly he didn't feel like laughing anymore.

"But if there were such a thing, I would be it."

She sat looking at him, as if ready to laugh or cry or jump over the edge.

"I'm a mutant," he said simply. "I was born in twenty eighty-seven. There's a chain of a few critical proteins that my body never forgets to make. My body doesn't know how to grow old."

She stared at him, still wary.

He walked to her with careful, deliberate footsteps and stood for a moment looking down on her. He lowered himself to sit next to her with easy familiarity and said,"You don't want to believe me? Good. I get tired of explaining it to people."

He took her hand and said, "I'm sorry for telling you this way. I get maudlin and too talkative at times. I am sorry. If you want to go back now, I will understand."

Velana drew her feet up onto the bench and hugged her arms around her knees. When Robert put a cotton blanket over her shoulders, she asked, "Why do you talk of killing like that?"

"It's a silly thing. People don't believe me, as you did not. But there flows in me such a bitter stream of cynicism and frustration. Everyone I have ever loved or cared about is dead. It angered me in the past terribly, and I did kill, fiercely and often, but never unjustly. I convinced myself that those I took were better to have died sooner than later anyway. An early death seemed a trivial thing to me, knowing that I would far outlive the memory of them. But I haven't."

He stopped, looked at his companion's dark eyes and said, "Do you have any idea what it means to me to be able to tell you these things, and not pretend, and not keep it hidden in me like a shameful secret?"

"No."

He smiled. "But I knew I would tell you. I knew the instant you gave me that flower and told me it was too fine a night for, what did you call it, faraway sadness. Such kindness to a stranger. I fell in love with you in that moment, I believe. Does it frighten you that I speak of this so simply? It's ironic, really. Those of you who have such little time, spend so much of it worrying and not doing what you know you want to do, while I have learned the pettiness of all that, but don't need the time it saves me. But I forget, you don't believe me, do you?"

She tilted her head, showing him a furrowed, pensive brow.

"No, don't answer."

Another breeze crossed between them, rumbling softly in their ears.

"I'm trying to seduce you tonight, you understand. I've been alone, drifting for the past forty years, to tired to learn another new trade, afraid to fall in love, weary of moving and lying rather than have others watch me fail to grow old with them. I need you, Velana, whether for a month of for the next seventy years. I see something in you - I saw it that first night - that I have not seen in a woman since I was this old for the very first time.

"I don't know what that is, or if it's more in me than in you, a fulfillment of a hopeless wish, or the spark of recognition of what I had given up hope to ever see again. I have only my time and my useless money."

"So just how rich are you?"

"The perfect question. Direct and sublimely relevant. My love, I am so goddam filthy rich I don't even know why I bother trying to manage it anymore. Do you have any idea how a portfolio of a mere million dollars compounds over a century? I've had nearly two and a half, and I started with quite a bit more than that after my first lifetime where I did such a silly thing as work hard, invent and save."

"How much?"

"Over four and a half billion dollars, which doesn't buy nearly as much as it would have two hundred years ago, but still will buy me pretty much any damn thing I want."

"And what do you want?"

"Can you guess?"

"Something fun to do?"

"Nothing's fun anymore, and I've done a little of everything."

"Love?"

"Love is for teenagers and new mothers."

She chuckled and said, "My, but you are cynical. What then?"

"Do you know what drives humans? They all know that if there's something they're going to do, they need to get to it, because they will die soon. They go to school, get jobs, plan their retirements and their children's college funds. It has such a simple, beautiful rhythm to it which they don't even see. They don't need to see it, because it's written into every piece of everything they do. Life is a finite and dull story, with moments of brief energy and clarity, yet because they will die, even the simplest of things, a cheek kissed, a poem written, a meal eaten, even a dump in the toilet has meaning because there will come a time when there will be no more cheeks, or songs, or meals, only dust and eternal nothing.

"What meaning is there for me? What do I care about some goddam chicken sandwich when I'll be eating still at the end of the world? Why do good? Why not kill? Why bother putting my sterile seed into yet another woman, another wife who will wrinkle and wither? What glory is there in yet another sunrise?

"I don't expect you to understand this, but I want to tell it to you, because you have a kindness within you and, just perhaps, you can help me forget for a while that my life is a meaningless drone."

"You must be weary," she said.

"Yes."

"Investing so much time and energy in such extreme crap. I'm cold, Robert," said Velana. "You talk too much and I'm tired. Why don't you come downstairs and make love to me while we fall asleep? If I promise to kill you in the morning, will you find meaning in my arms?"

* * *

The orange morning sun speckled the water with dancing diamond flashes as Velana sipped from the bottle of warm white wine and Robert snored softly from below. She stood and stretched and relished the warm air on her naked body. Her earrings and necklace were in her purse. She threaded the stems through her earlobes and put the necklace over her head then touched the pendant and said, "Call David."

The low orbit satellites routed her call to the office of Generations and fed the voice of her partner to her earring receivers.

"Where are you?"

"On his boat."

"What did you get?"

"Sperm, blood, hair. Good samples."

"Where are they?"

"In my makeup kit. Listen, I may be a little late coming back."

"Are you okay?"

"I don't want to just rush off. It would be suspicious. Besides, this man is the best lay a girl could ever dream of, and I don't think he wasn't even trying."

"For God's sake, Velana, tell me you're kidding."

"He could probably even make your toes curl."

"Just get back as soon as you can so we can start the mapping. Every minute is costing us a fortune while your bloody Chinese team sits around the pool drinking Yoohoos and Cokes."

"Keep them happy, David Darling. You know that price is not an issue."

The snoring downstairs stopped and she heard her host clear his throat.

"Just sit tight. We're almost there. I gotta do."

She tapped her pendant again and then took off her jewelry and went down the stairs.

"Good morning, sleepy."

He smiled as she lowered herself onto the bed and snuggled next to him. "How about we jump overboard and you show me how to do it while treading water."

"The dolphin quickie? I was just pulling your leg, sweet pea."

"I wonder about that. I think you're just too tired to satisfy me right now. What do you want for breakfast? We have wine, some stale bread, or salt water."

"I want you to marry me, Velana. I want to watch you grow old."

The first words that appeared in Velana's mind were: four and a half billion. She had expected to gain his trust, but this was unexpected. She tried to appear cool and sincere.

"Will you give me three seconds to think about it?"

"Will it take you that long to decide?"

"No. Well then, how about a quick consummation of the engagement?"

"How about putting your pants on and flash-waving a couple of scrambled egg packs?"

With the boat autopiloting itself back to the Hawaiian shore, Robert Shale and Velana Parks recorded their marriage with the Swiss Registry, making them legally married worldwide and on all of the stations and off world colonies. When the mountains of the Free Hawaiian Nation appeared as tiny buds on the horizon ahead, Velana turned to her husband and said, "I don't think it's death that you envy. It's not the specter of the end that gives meaning to our lives, but what we leave behind us. You can leave legacies all around the world if you want. Meaning? What meaning do any of us have? Why should anyone else care what I leave to the world? It's for me to do, and it's for me that I do it. It's not happiness, you see, but power. The power to change the world. Promise that you'll help me change the world."

"Into what?"

"That doesn't matter. The meaning is not in the destination, but in the journey. That's all any of us have."

"You may yet breath life into my stagnant soul."

"Don't be so mawkish."

"Do you love me, Velana, my wife?"

"Not the way you love me, but yes. More than I would have thought possible. Not because of anything you said, or confessed to me last night, but because of the way I think and feel when I'm with you."

"And what is that?"

Rich, she thought.

"I feel happy. What are you smiling at? You think of me as just a child."

"You are. By the way, you should know that I purchased your genetic engineering company last night. If you do discover the secret of my preternatural youth, I will own it. Not you. You're wasting time on that Chinaman. The Yoohoo gave it away. That would have to be Chan Tsu Lao. He's as much a fraud as he is a geneticist. What you should do is request an unpublished paper from the archives of JAMA from the last century titled An Analysis of Ablative Mitosis, written by Dakota Simpson and myself. That was the closest I've seen anyone come to understanding how my maternal grandmother's genetic therapy for hypertension made me what I am. I understand you're a pretty good chromographer yourself."

She said nothing.

"You're beautiful when you pout."

"Why did you play along?"

"I wanted the marriage registry. That way even if you manage to buy back your company, I'll still have a chance at a legal claim. And I'd like to buy you pretty things. I do love you, you know, and you are remarkably beautiful and wonderful. Brilliant, and we think alike.We'll make a good team."

"The money?"

"Yes, I am that rich. More than that actually. Oh, I will change the world. I already have in ways that I can't wait to tell you about. I did lie about one thing. Death is not what gives us meaning. But that's a lie I tell to myself as often as to others. And it's not power, or a legacy. Do you want to know what it is? It's very simple. Nothing. Nothing gives life meaning unless we invent it, and then it can be whatever you want: power, sex, money, love, war."

"And what is it for you?"

"Right now, I'm an artist, and this planet is my canvas. I figure that since everyone else is on borrowed time, it belongs to me. That's why if you find the secret - and I hope you do - it will die with you, and live in me. No, I don't want to share the world with anyone. Not until I'm done with it."

"Not even with me?"

"Come on, Velana. I wasn't born yesterday."

:^D