Fritz Leiber
THE MAN WHO NEVER GREW YOUNG
Maot is becoming restless. Often toward evening she trudges to where the black earth meets the yellow sand and stands looking across the desert until the wind starts.
But I sit with my back to the reed screen and watch the Nile.
It isn’t just that she’s growing young. She is wearying of the fields. She leaves their tilling to me and lavishes her attentions on the flock. Every day she takes the sheep and goats farther to pasture.
I have seen it coming for a long time. For generations the fields have been growing scantier and less diligently irrigated.
There seems to be more rain. The houses have become simpler—mere walled tents. And every year some family gathers its flocks and wanders off west.
Why should I cling so tenaciously to these poor relics of civilisation—I, who have seen king Cheops’ men take down the Great Pyramid block by block and return it to the hills?
I often wonder why I never grow young. It is still as much a mystery to me as to the brown farmers who kneel in awe when I walk past.
. . .
