A Thousand Deaths (16 page)

 

Admonitions of one's own death also bring denial.

Courane came into the house, furious with Shai and not certain of the reason. He went up to his room and met Fletcher on the stairway. "Hello, Sandy," he said.

"Hello, Fletcher."

"I'm going down to play a little card game on the tect. I'd rather play against you."

"Thanks, maybe later. Say, Fletcher, have you had any memory lapses yet?"

Fletcher's expression was suddenly grave. "No," he said, "have you?"

Courane knew from the man's voice and his averted eyes that he was lying. "No, no, of course not. I don't think everyone who comes here invariably gets the disease. Nothing is a hundred percent sure."

"Right, Cap."

"Shai was just telling me that he'd be happy to take over my chores when I have to go into the infirmary. How can he be so sure I'm going to be sick?"

"Just because every other person who ever came here has gotten sick? I can't understand how Shai could jump to conclusions like that."

"Well, look, Fletcher, you've been here a couple of months longer than I have. You should be having symptoms by now."

Fletcher grinned mirthlessly. "We niggers are better suited to the environment, Cap. Look how long Kenny went before he took sick."

Courane looked thoughtful. "Why do you think that is?" he asked.

"It don't make any difference, does it? Kenny's nearly dead, Iola's dead, I'm going to be dead, and you're going to be dead."

"No," said Courane, "I'm going to stop all this. I promised Lani before she died. I'm going to stop TECT if I have to walk back to Earth and tear the machine apart piece by piece."

Fletcher put his hand on Courane's shoulder. "You're fooling yourself," he said sadly. "You're blaming TECT. It isn't TECT, it's the bug, Cap, the bug. It's the termite of the soul."

"I promised Lani I'd beat it and I will." Courane looked madly determined.

"Sure, Cap," said Fletcher. He left Courane standing on the stairs. Courane remained where he was for a moment. Below him, in the parlor, he heard Fletcher give a single sardonic laugh.

 

Courane and Nneka were with Molly when TECT passed judgment on her. She lay in the medic box for ten minutes while the instruments relayed information to TECT. The diagnosis appeared on the screen almost immediately. "What does it say?" she asked.

Courane shrugged. "Molly," he said, "it says you have D fever. I'm sorry."

She sat up in the coffinlike box. "I've known that for months. I forgot my own father's name last fall. I know what's happening to me. But I've had these pains in my belly, too. Didn't TECT say anything about that? I didn't think belly pain went with D fever. What does TECT say about the pain?"

"It doesn't say anything about the pain, Molly," said Nneka.

Molly climbed out of the medic box and stood by the console. "This is Molly Stanek. I've had severe pains in my abdomen. Is there anything I can do for that?"

 

**STANEK, Molly: 
Sorry to hear about your pain, STANEK, Molly. Your condition has been diagnosed as intermediate D syndrome. Your physical state can be expected to worsen gradually over the next three or four months, so you should decide soon about entering the infirmary

 

"What about the pain? Can't you give me anything for the pain?"

 

**STANEK, Molly: 
Systemic pain is a normal adjunct to D syndrome. Fortunately, the disease itself is its own analgesic. You will be in a semiconscious state in which the pain will not make you suffer, or you will experience retrograde amnesia similar to the effect of a large intravenous dose of 7-chloro-l, 3-dihydro-l-methyl-5-phenyl-2H-l,4-benzodiazepin-2-one**

 

"But I'm not in that condition yet and I hurt. I hurt now."

 

**STANEK, Molly: 
You do not seem to grasp the point. It doesn't make any difference that you hurt now. You will not remember it later**

 

Molly looked at Courane and Nneka. Courane shrugged helplessly. "Does that mean you won't give me something for the pain?" asked Molly.

 

**STANEK, Molly: 
TECT in the name of the Representative has a firm belief in the conservation use of narcotic drugs. The too-liberal dependence on such things as painkillers and sleeping preparations is a dangerous trend that can only erode the integrity and vigor of our society. You are asking for a crutch, STANEK, Molly, and the reply of TECT in the name of the Representative is that an exercise of will and moral strength will serve you better.

**STANEK, Molly: 
Understanding of the above to be indicated.

**STANEK, Molly: 
Affirm?**

 

"Yes," said Molly. She turned off the tect. "Hell," she said, "TECT doesn't have to go to bed at night with a knife in its belly."

"I wish there was something we could do for you, Molly," said Nneka.

"There is." Molly switched the tect unit on again. "I just remembered this. I want you to read it to me when I'm dying. I don't know if I'll be aware of it, but do it anyway. Do it for me." She typed in a command to the computer.

"Sure," said Courane. He waited to read what Molly had chosen:

 

My spirit is broken, my days are shortened, and only the grave remaineth for me. I have not sinned, and my eye abideth in bitterness. Deliver me, O Lord, and set me beside thee, and let any man's hand fight against me. My days are passed, my thoughts are dissipated, tormenting my heart. They make night into day. "The light," they say, "is near to the darkness." If I look for Hell as my house, if I spread my couch in darkness, if I say to the pit, "You are my father," and to the worm, "My mother," or, "My sister," where then is my hope? Who will see my hope? Will it go down to the bars of Hell? Shall we descend together into the dust?

 

Nneka shivered. "What is that, Molly?"

"From
The Book of Job."
Nneka still looked puzzled. "The Bible, dear. Mythology. There are parts of the New Testament I'd like you to read, too."

Courane let out his breath. "I thought that stuff was supposed to comfort you," he said.

"You can't get something for nothing, Sandy," said Molly. "It speaks to me and it promises me something valuable. But the coin I give is faith."

"I don't understand what you mean, Molly," said Courane.

She smiled. "It's the lasting memory of a man's suffering, preserved forever in these words. Come read to me once or twice before I pass away. Maybe you'll understand better then. The other parts of the book might speak to you more clearly."

Courane didn't say anything. Some of the thoughts from
Job
had spoken to him. He still heard the echoes.

 

 

 

Seven

 

 

The vivid memories, the visions, the dreams, the nightmares, and the delusions came to him more frequently. They merged and blended, shifting from the old days in Greusching to things that had happened only a few days before in the house by the river. The memories were shorter but they were more intense. He cried out in the desert as he recalled the pain he had caused others and the fatal immensity of his mistakes. He wondered how one man could have embodied so many faults. He didn't understand how providence could have let such a man live among good people, or how TECT could have waited so long to remove him. Courane's crimes were many and grave. He could never pay for them all; he could only make a symbolic sacrifice.

If Courane had lived in an earlier time or if he had been given to superstitious beliefs, he would have considered the visions in the desert to be temptations of a subtle demon. Time and again he came near to complete emotional exhaustion, as his failing mind reviewed the full range of his humiliations. "Stop" he cried, trying to extinguish the memories, but his mind wouldn't stop. If he tried to concentrate on happier thoughts, they evaded him; he could not summon them at will. Instead he examined his life, torturing himself until he confessed in anguish.

The body lay where he had forgotten it, beside a black tree on the pebbled desert floor. Courane was relieved when he found it; the corpse represented many things to him. This body had been a woman, a friend, someone who had loved him, and now she signified salvation of a strange kind. She had died for him and her body would release him from his agony and his failures.

He would take her back to the house, but first he had to rest. He was very tired, the day was warm, and once again he realized how thirsty he was.

 

It was Alohilani's turn to care for the body after Iola died. She asked Courane to help bring the corpse down from the infirmary to the tect room on the first floor. "Let's get someone else, too," he said. "Daan and I will carry the stretcher."

"It's my responsibility," she said.

"Let me get Daan." They found him in his room, drawing in a small notebook. The two men brought Iola's body downstairs and laid her in the tect's medic box. Alohilani watched with a solemn face.

"Thank you, Daan," she said.

"It's all right," he said. "She was a good friend." He went back upstairs to his room.

"Let's go outside now," said Courane. "I thought we could name some stars and constellations like we did last week."

Alohilani looked sad. "I'd love to, Sandy, but I can't. Tomorrow night we'll do it. I promised Iola that I'd stay with her tonight."

Courane was astonished. "What? You can't do that. TECT's orders say that we have to leave the body alone in the tect room for a whole day."

"I know that," she said, "but I made a promise to Iola. She wanted me to watch over her body the night she died. She was very frightened of what would happen to her. She was almost hysterical, Sandy, so to calm her I promised I'd sit with her."
 

"But TECT–"

She raised a hand. "I have an obligation to Iola. You never knew her, Sandy, but she was a wonderful woman. She was gentle and kind and everyone loved her. It was horrible to see the fear in her when she realized she was dying. I think she would have died peacefully on Earth. She had a strong personality and she would have accepted death easily enough in familiar surroundings. But here, when she knew her body would vanish, when she didn't know what to expect, she was terrified. I made her a promise, and that promise is more important to me than anything TECT has to say about the matter."

Courane tried to persuade her. "We're just people," he said, "weak people, people who don't understand what TECT's reasons are."

"Sandy, I know all that. If you think it will cause some kind of trouble, then you should leave. But I'll sit here with Iola, and if I get into trouble, I'll know it's because I kept my word to someone I loved. My crime will be that of respect and reverence, and TECT surely couldn't object to that."

"You haven't dealt with TECT very much, have you?"

"No," she said.

"I think I'd better stay here with you."

 

"Fletcher, do you remember the first day I was here?"

"No. Why, should I?"

"You were really hard on me."

They were preparing a new field for cultivation. They had cleared the field of bushes and trees, rolled out the boulders and built a fence with the smaller stones, hacked up the sod, turned the soil, and plowed furrows. The work had taken six weeks and at last they were ready to plant the seeds. They were putting in another field of deadrye, a native cereal that looked awful but could be made into a nutritious, nutty-flavored flour.

"Why shouldn't I have been hard on you, Cap? That's what's supposed to happen to new fish. It's part of the initiation. It helps you adjust. It was for your own benefit, you know."

Courane stopped to stretch his aching back muscles. "I can't figure it," he said.

Fletcher took a breather, too. "The idea is to fit the new prisoner into the social pattern as fast as possible. Otherwise the new guy is left defenseless. He's liable to go into shock before he can adjust."

"I knew when I came here that I was going to have to learn new things. You didn't have to be so cruel about it."

Fletcher grinned, showing his teeth. "You need to be stripped of your old ideas, Cap, and fast. If that doesn't happen, well, look at Klára. You have to fit in here. You have to belong or your life will be worse than you ever imagined. You know what happened to Klára. The same thing could have happened to you."

"I would have adjusted sooner or later."

Fletcher shook his head. "Sooner or later don't make it, Cap. It has to be right now. There is a thing called 'the welcome.' They used to give it to the new fish here on the farm, but it was stopped right before I came here. TECT used to allow you to come here with anything you wanted, all your clothes and possessions and money and what-all. Some people used to buy status here, if you can believe that."

"I don't see how," said Courane. He looked at the rest of the field they had to plant and decided that he'd rather hear Fletcher's story.

"Some people think money never loses its goodness. And almost everybody wants to believe they're going back to Earth real soon. So they tried to accumulate stuff while they were here, to take back with them. But during 'the welcome,' the new people were separated from their possessions. All that stuff was divvied up among the old hands, according to seniority. The fish were given rough work clothes and told they'd get their property back later. Like hell, Cap. They made it rough on the fish, lots of degradation, you can imagine the rest. Then when the new folks were broken down all the way, they could be built back up in the form that would be best for the colony."

"TECT stopped all that?" Courane was a little surprised that TECT would bother about such distant disturbances.

"Not a chance, Cap. One of these new fish didn't like the idea at all and murdered all ten of the other colonists. He was here by himself for two months, all alone. And when new people started coming from Earth, he rebuilt the whole colony the way it is now. He was still alive when I got here."

"What was his name?"