The irony was lost on Lucy. "It was! It was the first time I ever felt what love was. Or at least it was good until he woke up, and saw me with him. He then became very angry, and called me several rude names, and said I should not have done what I did. I asked him why not, because I thought it had been what he had wanted, and I wanted to make him happy.
"He calmed down then, and said that I had made him happy, but that I shouldn't have because I was so much younger than him. So I told him that that was not a problem, because I was millions of years old."
"What did he do then?" Reggie asked.
"Well, for about a half hour he didn't do anything. Then he came and asked me the same thing you did earlier: 'What in God's name are you.' I told him my nature, as I told you, and he became very upset. He said he wanted to see what we were. So I showed him."
"What did you show him?"
"As much as I could. I took the head off one of the constructs and showed him the sphere inside. Then I showed him what this world was, and what Or'b was. He could not see it with his eyes, but I showed him in his mind. It was something I should not have done. His mind could not handle the experience. I had no way of knowing that. I did not know what madness was. "When he went to sleep that night, his dreams were full of confusing images from his former career as an undertaker, and from things I had shown him about the nature of myself and Or'b. When we saw his thoughts, we thought they were something that he wanted. We thought that he had forgiven us for making him angry and wished to cross over to our side of the death barrier so that he could be as much like us as we could. So we took the images from his mind and created them on his flesh."
"You made him the Tall Man" Reggie wondered how it was possible for him to be so cold in the heat of this alien red desert. "We made him an abomination!
"At the time, we did not realize what we had done. When he woke, he found what we had done to him. He was embalmed. rotting, and being devoured by scavengers from the inside while he was still alive. For several hours he did nothing but scream. When he finally spoke, he demanded that we return him to his former state. However, we were unable to do so. It is an unfortunate effect of the our nature that once we have done something, we are not able to undo it. He then demanded that we kill him, but because we had unbound him from his death, we were not able to do that, either."
"So why is he making these damn dwarves and flying ornaments? Not to mention killing off whole towns?"
"He is a desperate man. Desperate men do desperate things."
"Desperate for what?"
"To die."
"Wait a minute." Reggie scratched his head. "Didn't you just say he couldn't die?"
"Perhaps I was unclear. He cannot die his own death, but he can die someone else's. For nearly 150 years he has been trying to find someone who will agree to become as he is, and let him finally have an end. So far, once the nature of the choice has been made known to them, no-one has been willing to do so."
"That must be what he wants with Mike! But why do they have to agree? He certainly doesn't ask their permission about anything else."
"He can only be given another's death with Or'b's help. And after the mistake Or'b made with Jebediah, it will only take the death from someone with their informed consent. Although the reason behind that consent does not matter. So for 150 years the Tall Man has been trying different ways to get people to agree. He has tried fear, pity and anything else he can think of. It has always failed."
"Will he succeed with Mike?"
"I don't know." Lucy stood up and brushed sand of her black slacks. "If my mathematics are correct, then we won't be given the chance to find out."
"Oh, yeah. Your big plan. What's that all about?" Reggie looked back at the row a chalkboards he had nearly forgotten about during the course of their conversation. "And if it's such a great plan, why haven't you done it already?"
"I've been waiting for you."