（外文电子版资料）Frederik Pohl - Father Of The Stars.pdf

Father of the Stars I NORMAN MARCHAND sat in the wings of the ballroom’s small stage, on a leather hassock someone had found for him. There were 1,500 people outside in the ballroom, waiting to do him honor. Marchand remembered the ballroom very well. He had once owned it. Forty . . . no, it wasn’t forty. Not even fifty. Sixty years ago it had been, sixty and more years ago that he and Joyce had danced in that ballroom. Then the hotel was the newest on Earth, and he was the newly married son of the man who had built it, and the party was the reception for his wedding to Joyce. Of course, none of these people would know about that. But Marchand remembered Oh, Joyce, my very dear! But she had been dead a long time now. It was a noisy crowd. He peered out through the wings and could see the head table filling up. There was the Vice-President of the United States shaking hands with the Governor of Ontario as though, for the moment, they had forgotten they were of different parties. There was Linfox, from the Institute, obligingly helping a chimpanzee into the chair next to what, judging by the microphones ranked before it, would probably be Marchand’s own. Linfox seemed a little ill at ease with the chimp. The chimpanzee had no doubt been smithed, but the imposition of human intelligence did not lengthen its ape’s legs. Then Dan Fleury appeared, up the steps from the floor of the ballroom where the rest of the 1,500 diners were taking their places. Fleury didn’t look well at all, Marchand thought—not without a small touch of satisfaction, since Fleury was fifteen years younger than himself. Still, Marchand wasn’t jealous. Not even of the young bellhop who had brought him the hassock, twenty years old at the most and built like a fullback. One life was enough for a man to live. Especially when you had accomplished the dream you had set out to bring to fruition. Or almost. Of course, it had cost him everyt