A Thousand Deaths (14 page)

"I don't think they care," said Fletcher.

Arthur nodded. He cleared his throat, then opened one of the ballots. "A vote for Sandy," he said. Courane closed his eyes. Arthur read another ballot. "One for Fletcher. One for Sandy. One for Fletcher. One for Klára. One for Sandy. One for Fletcher." Arthur paused a moment before glancing at the final ballot. He looked from Courane to Fletcher; both men had three votes. "One for Sandy," he said. He handed the ballots to Nneka to check.

"All right, Sandy," said Fletcher.

"Well, this isn't like a major political election," said Courane. He was unhappy about the weight of responsibility that had settled on him instantly.

"Yes, it is," said Kenny. "You're the Representative of Planet D."

"There's no such thing," said Courane.

"Now there is," said Kenny. "Do you know what kind of racer we need?"

Goldie leaned forward to whisper in Courane's ear. "I voted for you, Sandy," she said. "I wouldn't vote for that woman, and I couldn't vote for Fletcher. We needed a good white boy."

"I'll do my best," said Courane. "I promise."

"We'll have another meeting soon," said Arthur. "We have to organize our requests so Sandy can convey them to TECT."

"If you need any help," said Fletcher, "I'll be glad to."

Klára just sat in her chair and sulked. She suspected that there had been a conspiracy to deprive her of her authority. She was absolutely right.

Courane's response to the situation was that now, after all the months on Home, he had been presented with an opportunity for failure. The chief fault with being lifted to a towering height was the inevitability of coming down again sooner or later. If sooner, then the trip would be a sudden shrieking plunge to total destruction. He had thought himself immune to such a possibility and that had let him be happy, even through the sorrow of Alohilani's passing and the sure knowledge of his own approaching end. He sat in the den and listened to the others, praying that the worst he would get from TECT was mere humiliation.

 

When his troubled mind returned to the present, he was sitting on the sun-baked mud, his hands still tucked beneath his arms. He was shivering, although it wasn't cold. He was hungry, hungrier than he had ever been. He knew that his brain often failed to communicate his hunger, his thirst, his pain. That was a benefit to him now; if he experienced the true extent of his privations, he would never return to the house alive. He felt pain now and he waited for it to pass, as it always had. The pain was in his joints and through his limbs, and there was a massive headache which attacked him more frequently as the days passed. Each time the headache began, he fell to his knees and convulsed with nausea. The pain in his skull grew worse at each episode and lasted longer. Soon the headaches would go away, Courane knew, and then he would have only a short time longer to live.

Something was wrong; something about the desert bothered him. He looked around. Far away were twisted black trees. Not so far, in the opposite direction, were the low rounded hills that were his immediate goal. They were gray-blue, not with distance now but with the stiff, sharp-bladed growth that covered them. The sky was dark gray, the color of a storm approaching or one dying in the distance. All these things were as they should be. What disturbed him, then?

He was missing something. He had left something behind and he had forgotten what it was.

He didn't have the woman's body with him. He had left it behind, when his hands started trembling. He closed his eyes, feeling the pain in his body and the helpless sadness in his mind. He had failed again, and the only way to make it better was to go back. He had to go back, to retrace his steps until he found the body. It would cost him at least two days, and that was if he stayed clear enough to remember where he was going and why. Without the body and the note on the blouse, he might wander in the desert until he died; that was a fear that haunted him whenever he was lucid enough to remember it.

He would have to go back. He might as well start right now. He turned his back to the hills, to the river beyond, to the house, and walked slowly and painfully back across the dry, cracked ground.

 

Thirteen months after his arrival, in the late spring, Courane and Shai were working in the groon field. A light rain was falling and the sun was low on the horizon. The two men were hacking the stalks away to let the edible bulbs below the ground swell and sweeten. They had labored for a long time without saying anything, and Courane was getting tired. He stood up straight and wiped his brow. "I never thought I'd end up working on a farm," he said.

"I didn't either," said Shai. "I was going to be an automotive engineer."

"It didn't work out?"

"Would I be here if it had? What did you want to be?"

Courane rested on the long handle of his chopping blade. He thought back to his high school days. "I don't know," he said. He tried to get a clear picture of what he had been like then; it hadn't been that long ago.

"Did you apply for college?" asked Shai.

"I guess so," said Courane. He wiped his forehead with a grimy hand. He couldn't seem to remember what his ambitions had been.

"It isn't important."

Courane felt a gentle touch of doubt. "What's the date?" he asked.

"I'm not sure. About the twelfth of Tomuary."

That made Courane feel better. He wasn't due to notice the first symptoms for another month. It couldn't be happening already. "I wish we'd get some more recruits from Earth," he said. "There's going to be a lot of work this summer, and there's only you and me and Fletcher to handle the heavy stuff."

"And Fletcher will be going upstairs soon."

"Yes," said Courane. They were both quiet for a while.

"Have you shown any signs yet?" asked Shai.

The question flustered Courane. "No, no, of course not. I have plenty of time."

"There isn't any fast rule about it, Sandy. Kenny lasted longer than normal, and Rachel said she's already had a few lapses."

"I'm fine," said Courane. "I'm sure when the time comes, I'll know."

"Yes," said Shai. "I just wanted to say that since we're all stuck here together against our will, when the time comes, I'll help you out all I can. Don't worry about having to work around the farm if you're too sick. Rachel and Nneka and I can take care of it. Klára wouldn't think of leaving the house to work out here, of course, but when you have to go upstairs, you won't need to worry that we'll starve. And I'm sure TECT will send us some more help."

Courane stared angrily at Shai. He didn't like the discussion at all. "What are you trying to do?" he cried.

"Take it easy, Sandy. I'm just trying to make it less painful for you. I'm trying to take a little of the burden off your shoulders. Your time is coming, too, and you know it. You have to face the facts."

Courane threw his blade to the ground. "But you don't have to rush me into the infirmary before it's time. You sound like you want to get rid of me. The hell with you." He turned and strode back toward the house. He didn't pay attention to Shai's anguished denial.

 

Months before, Courane had responded to what had been, in effect, a sentence of slow execution by working even more tirelessly at the tect, fishing for some clue that might lead to a miracle cure. TECT gave every indication that it knew what Courane was doing. It seemed to get a kind of peculiar enjoyment from mocking him.

 

**COURANE, Sandor: 
Do you think if you work hard enough, you'll prevent your own death?**

 

"I've got to try," he said.

 

**COURANE, Sandor: 
Haven't you understood anything? The viroids are in you already. They're sitting in your nerve cells, lodged in your brain, busily making new viroids. Already your body is attacking the cells they've altered, and your nervous system is beginning to resemble a rusted-out automobile. Whole neural pathways will be destroyed or damaged, synapses will begin to fire in a hit-or-miss, unpredictable way, areas of your brain will be ruined or isolated. You will fall apart like a tower of cards in slow motion. You will die, staring and stupid, the way Zofia, Carmine, Iola, and Markie died. There's nothing you can do about it**

 

"There has to be something I can do to beat you."

 

**COURANE, Sandor: 
You speak as if we were in some kind of competition. How dull. You cannot even win at cribbage**

 

"There has to be something that will stop the viroids. Something that will prevent them from getting into the nerve cells, or prevent them from changing the cell membranes, or from replicating. Medicine can take care of regular viruses, can't it? Why not these viroids?"

 

**COURANE, Sandor: 
Because there's nothing to attack. They have no protein coat**

 

"Then we can chop up the DNA strands."

 

**COURANE, Sandor: 
And decimate your nerve cells at the same time**

 

"But I haven't even shown a single sign of D syndrome. Maybe I won't catch it. Maybe I'm immune."

 

**COURANE, Sandor: 
They are called "slow viruses" because their effects do not show up for months or years after the initial infection. You have been on Planet D only six months. You will begin to show signs of the disease toward the middle of next March, and you will die sometime around a year from this October**

 

Courane stared at the words for a long time. "What would that be according to our calendar?" he asked at last.

 

**COURANE, Sandor: 
First symptoms—Early Chuckuary 125. Estimated date of death—15 Claudy 125. Make your preparations now. Otherwise you will be a burden and a gross inconvenience to your friends**

 

"There has to be a way out," he said.

 

**COURANE, Sandor: 
Don't waste your time. More to the point, don't waste the time of TECT in the name of the Representative. To do so will be considered Contempt

 

Courane switched off the console. The tect's red ADVISE light lit, but he ignored it. That was exactly what he felt for the machine: contempt. It was just another way of not admitting his own mortality.

 

 

 

Six

 

 

Courane was sitting on the plank fence that enclosed the pasture. The sun had set and the cool night had deepened until he could see nothing but black shapes and bright stars. The blerds lay in the grass motionless, making no sound. Were they aware of him? Did the difference between night and day mean anything to them, or were they too stupid even to notice?

"You didn't eat any supper."

Courane turned around. A man was standing next to him. He, too, stared out across the pasture. Courane didn't reply.

"Are you hungry?" asked the man.

"No," said Courane.

"Did you eat lunch this afternoon?"

"I don't remember."

"I don't think you did. I brought you a sandwich. Here."

Courane looked into the man's face. "Thank you," he said. He took the sandwich and held it. He forgot about it almost immediately.

"Do you hurt?" asked the man.

"No."

"That's good. Why don't you come inside? It's getting chilly out here."

"Come inside?"

"Yes. Come back to the house. We'll play a game of chess."
 

Courane looked back at the huge stupid animals. "What do you suppose they think about all day?" he said.

"I don't know. What do you think about all day?"
 

Courane shook his head. "Who are you" he asked.
 

"Shai."
 

"Sheldon?"

"I never met Sheldon. He died before I came here."
 

"Sheldon died?"
 

"Yes, Sandy."
 

"Daan?"

"Daan died last month."
 

"Then who are you?"

"My name is Shai. Is there anything I can get you?"
 

Courane jumped down from the fence. "No," he said. "I think I'll go home now. I'm getting tired."
 

"Okay. We'll go back to the house."
 

"Does my mother know I'm here?" asked Courane.
 

Shai took a deep breath, but couldn't find an answer.

 

The pale green glow of the tect's screen lit Courane's face, and the shadows made a grotesque mask of his features. "I don't think I can get the hang of this, Daan," he said.

"Sure you will, Sandy. I didn't know any more about biology when I started than you do."

TECT searched its memory and answered their question. They had followed another blind alley. Not a single bacterium or microbe on Earth caused any condition similar to D syndrome.
 

"What else could it be?" asked Courane.
 

"I don't know," said Daan.

Courane typed in a question to the machine: If no bacterium or microbe is responsible, what does that leave?

 

**COURANE, Sandor: 
Many possibilities, including chronic dietary deficiency in some essential nutritional component. Virus infection. Congenital disorder. Poisoning by chemicals or radiation**

 

"All those will be more difficult to check out," said Courane.
 

"Even though I turned this over to you, I have a few more months before I'm entirely useless. I'll help you as much as I can."

Courane looked at his friend. "You know all the shortcuts, and it's taking me forever to learn my way."

"I'm glad to help. I have my own selfish reasons. If we can put an end to this colony by finding the answer to D syndrome, then my life will have meant something. It will help me go out with a sense of my own worth. By helping you, I'm putting a stamp of approval on myself."

"Don't worry, Daan, we'll beat it."

"You'll beat it. From now on, I'm just here to give you encouragement."