Saygun elevated his glass. “From your viewpoint, you are about to take a risk,” he replied. “I understand. I promise.” He drank as if in pledge.
McCready stood up. “What would you say,” he asked softly, “if I told you I am not an American by birth—that I was born in these parts, nearly three thousand years ago?”
Saygun gazed into his drink a while. The city mumbled. A drape stirred ever so slightly to the first night breath off the plateau of Anatolia. When he raised his eyes, he had gone expressionless. “I would call that a most unusual statement.”
“No miracles, no magic,” McCready said. “Somehow it happens. Once in ten million births, a hundred million, a billion? The loneliness— Yes, I am a Phoenician, from Tyre when Tyre was new.” He began pacing, to and fro on the carpet. “I’ve spent most of all that time seeking for others, any others like me.”
“Have you found them?”
McCready’s tone harshened. “Three certain, and of them a single one is still alive to my knowledge, my partner whom I mentioned. He’s tracked down two possibilities himself. As for the other two, we don’t age, you know, but we can be killed the same as anybody else.” Savagely, he ground his cigar out in an ashtray. “Like that.”
“Then I suppose the two you have spoken with on this journey, they were disappointments?”
McCready nodded. He slammed fist into palm. “They’re what I am officially after, highly intelligent and thoughtful … young people. Maybe I can find a place for them, I do have my enterprises, but—“ He stopped on the floor, legs wide apart, and stared. “You’re taking this very calmly, aren’t you?”
“I admitted I am a dull person. Phlegmatic.”
“Which gives me reason to think you’re different from them. And my agent did make a quiet investigation. You could pass for a man in his twenties, but you’ve held your present job more than thirty years.”
“My friends remark on it. Not with much envy; I am no Adonis. Well, some individuals are slow to grow wrinkled and gray.”
“Friends— You’re neither sociable nor unsociable. Affable, but never intimate. Effective enough at your desk, promoted according to seniority, but unambitious; you do everything by the book. Unmarried. That’s uncommon in Turkey, but not unheard of, and nobody is interested enough in you to wonder seriously.”
“Your judgment is less than flattering.” Saygun didn’t sound offended. “Reasonably accurate, though. I have told you, I am content to be what I am.”
“An immortal?” McCready flung at him.
Saygun lifted a palm, cigar between fingers. “My dear sir, you leap to conclusions.”
“It fits, it fits. Listen, you can be honest with me! Or at least bear with me. I can show you evidence that’s convinced men more intelligent than either of us, if you’ll cooperate. And— How can you just sit there like that?”
Saygun shrugged.
“If nothing else, even if I’m wrong about you and you suppose I’m crazy, you ought to show some excitement,” McCready snapped. “A desire to escape, if nothing else. Or— But I think you are ageless yourself, you can join us and together we can— How old are you, anyway?”
Into the stillness that followed, Saygun said, a new steel in his tone: “Credit me with some brains, if you please. I have told you I read books. And I have had a year to consider what might lie behind that curious, evasive procedure of yours; and conceivably before then I have speculated about these matters. Would you mind taking your seat again? I prefer to talk in civilized wise.”
“My … apologies.” First McCready went to the sideboard. He mixed a stiff Scotch and soda. “Would you like this?”
“No, thank you. Another Drambuie, if I may. Do you know, it never came to my attention before tonight. But then, only recently has Turkey become a modern, secular state. Marvelous stuff. I must lay some in before the next war makes it unobtainable.”
McCready overcame interior tumult and returned to the table. “What do you want to say?” he asked.
Saygun barely smiled. “Well,” he replied, “things were growing hectic, weren’t they? To be expected, no doubt, when you made such extraordinary claims. Not that I deny them, kyrie. I am no scientist, to decide what is and is not possible. Nor am I so rude as to call my host deluded, let alone a liar. But we should calm down. May I tell you a story?”