A Thousand Deaths (17 page)

Fletcher's smile faded. "Can't remember," he said.

 

Rachel had come into Courane's room with a few sheets of paper. She held them up so that all he could read was the large black masthead:
The Home Herald.
"Well, what do you think?"

"Wonderful," said Courane. "What is it?"

She sat down on the edge of his bed. "It's a newspaper, Sandy, what did you think it was?"

"I didn't have any idea. I didn't think 'newspaper' because we get all the news we need through the tect."

She gave him the pages. "This isn't going to be Earth news. I'm going to write up all the news from around the farm."

Courane looked up at her. "But we all know everything that's going on here already."

Rachel looked exasperated. "Are you trying to spoil everything for me? I could have walked into Daan's room or Fletcher's, but I picked yours."

"The newspaper might be a good idea. You could keep a permanent record of things for people who come later. Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why
did
you come into my bedroom?"

Rachel stood up and took back the pages. "I'm beginning to wonder about that myself," she said.

"Look, Rachel, Lani is upstairs in the infirmary. She's only been in there a little while. I wish you'd pick someone else to aim yourself at."

"Who?" she asked. "I don't think Daan cares about girls and I'm afraid of Fletcher."

"What about Arthur?"

Rachel looked at Courane with a mocking smile. "Arthur?" she said derisively. "Can you really see me with Arthur?"

"It would make great gossip for your newspaper."

Rachel started to get irritated but calmed herself. She managed another smile. "You're very tough, Sandy," she said, "but I can wait. You'll find out how serious I am. You don't believe me now, but someday you're going to learn how much you mean to me. And how much I mean to you."

"Good night, Rachel."

She just waved the pages at him as she disappeared through his door.

 

"Pain," said Courane. His lips were dry and split. His voice sounded to him like paper crackling in a fire.

He sat in the negligible shade of the gnarled tree. The sky was covered with clouds, high bright clouds, and the wind from the west blew particles of sand. His face stung and the grains in his eyes made tears flow, but he didn't think to turn around, to put his back to the wind and face the hills.

He talked to his father.

"It hurts, Dad," he murmured. "It hurts a lot."

"You told her that pain was the easiest thing in the world to beat."

"I know I did," whispered Courane. "I was lying."

"There are three ways of handling pain. I know two of them, your mother knows the third."

"What are they, Dad?"

"First, don't complain. If you don't complain, everyone will think you have courage. They'll think you're a hero. Physical endurance."

"But I'll still hurt."

"Second, don't desire anything. Get rid of everything inside you that craves comfort. If you desire nothing, you won't expect relief."

Courane shook his head. "But I'll still hurt."

"That's the best I can do, son. So listen to your mother."

"Mom?"

"Take the pain, Sandy. Pain is part of the natural process of growing. It's good for you. It's good for your soul. Don't sit there in self-pity."

"Sure, Mom," said Courane, "but I still hurt."

Courane raised a hand to protect his face from the wind. He sat motionless for a long time. The sun was leaning to the west when he stirred again. He took a few long, slow breaths and cleared his head. He stood up and stretched. That's when he noticed the young woman's body beside the tree. "Oh, my God," he said. She was obviously dead. From the appearance of her body, she had been dead for a few days. He knelt beside her. Even through the deformity of death she was very familiar. He saw a note pinned to her blouse:

 

Her name is Alohilani. You and she were very much in love. You must take her back to the house. Keep walking east until you get to the river. Follow the river downstream to the house. East is the direction of the rising sun. They will help you when you get there.

 

He read the note and then read it again. He couldn't understand it. Obviously he had written the note in a more lucid moment in order to explain things to himself in his bewildered state. He remembered the house. He remembered the river. He knew he had to head toward the hills, pass through them, and follow the river downstream. All that made perfect sense to him now. What he couldn't understand was why the note pinned to Rachel's blouse called her by another name.

 

"Request," said Courane.
 

 

**COURANE, Sandor: 
?**

 

"Please transmit the following message to my interstellar correspondent, Wisswede, Else, F828-74-934-54Maj, RepE Dis4 Sec27, Loc83-Jad-252." Courane didn't know how long it would take for Else Wisswede to answer his call. He had no idea what time it was in Jadwigadorf. He looked at the tect for a few seconds, then decided he'd play a game of chess against the computer while he waited. If Else hadn't responded by the time the game ended, he'd go back to his room. Someone would call him when the red light lit on the tect.

He had called up the chess game and made his first move as white: P-Q4. Even before TECT could make its reply, the game was interrupted by the answer from Else.

 

Hello?

 

Suddenly Courane was paralyzed with fear. What did he have to say to her? "This is Sandor Courane," he typed. "I'm calling from Planet D, a world in the Epsilon Eridani system. TECT chose you to be my pen pal. I hope I'm not disturbing you."

 

Not at all, Mr. Courane, this is really very exciting. I told my parents and all my friends here at home. I go to the University of Jakarta, but I'm home on vacation. All my friends were so jealous! No one here has even heard of anyone who's been to another planet, and here I am with my own pen pal from outer space.

 

"Please call me Sandy. What has TECT told you about my background? I come from Greusching, not very far from your town."

 

TECT said only that you were an unreformed criminal with a sociopathic personality, but I won't hold that against you. I know Greusching very well. The high school that I went to played against Greusching for the Quad-A Sector Championships. My school won (sorry!). But you're really there? On some place called Planet D, an alien world, for real?

 

"Yes. Our name for the planet is Home. It is pleasant, though very strange sometimes. Our plants and animals take some getting used to. There are several other people here in our farm community. They come from all over the world (Earth, I mean)."

 

Did you kill anybody here? Is that why you're on Planet D?

 

"No, I've never killed anyone."

 

Oh. Well, whatever you did, it must have been pretty serious. You don't have to tell me about it unless you want to.

 

"I think I'll wait until we get to know each other better."

 

That sounds mysterious. Is life hard there?

 

"Sometimes. It is very lonely."

 

I know what you mean about loneliness. My best friend, Anna, went away to school the year before I did. While she was gone, her boyfriend, Hans (not his real name), asked me if I'd go to a dance with him. I remember hearing Anna and Hans talking about dating after she went away to school. They agreed that they should see other people to test if they really loved each other or not. So I knew it was okay to go out with Hans. We went to the dance and afterward we had a soda. He drove me home and I thanked him for a nice evening. He asked if it was all right if he called me and I said I thought so. The next weekend he took me to a movie, slaves of blood (not its real title), and even though the movie was terrible, we had a good time. We had another soda,
but this time afterward Hans wanted to do a little necking. I told him that I didn't think it was right, especially seeing as how Anna (her real name) was my best friend and she and Hans were almost engaged before she went away, and also because my mother gave me a kind of rule about that. He wasn't mad like most boys are and that surprised me. I knew right then that Hans was special and I guess that's when I fell in love with him. I knew I was in for it when Anna came home, but I knew that if Hans and I told her the truth about how we tried to be good friends but love was just too strong for us, she would have to understand and if she was really a good friend, she would wish us all the best. I said all this to Hans so he wouldn't be worried about the same thing and he laughed. He said he wasn't worried. He said I was the most important thing in the world to him and that he didn't care what anybody else thought. That made me feel wonderful. He wanted to neck again right then and there and I said I guess so, seeing as how we felt almost engaged even though we'd had only the two dates. But Hans wanted more than just necking, if you know what I mean. That's when I found out that he was just like all the other boys. I was brokenhearted, but that was nothing compared to the way I felt when Anna came home for vacation and her mother told her all about Hans and me. Now Hans is gone to the Sahara and Anna won't have anything at all to do with me. It all looked so beautiful for those joyful few days but now I have nothing at all. I am so lonely.

I hope you don't mind me telling you my troubles. It was just to show you that you're not the only one with a true problem in life. You can talk to me because I have truly suffered, too, as you have, I guess.

 

"Else, you really do have a problem. I wish there was something I could do to help."

 

Thank you, Sandy. Just knowing you're there gives me the strength to face it. Well, I got to run. I have to straighten up my room. Happy trails!

 

TECT's first move was N-KB3. That was something Courane knew he could deal with. Else Wisswede was something else.

 

Courane took a glass of fishfruit juice and sat on the front porch. The sky was dark although the sun had risen more than an hour before. It looked like rain, heavy rain. Courane watched the tops of the red grass waving in the brisk wind. Rachel had gone. She had run away, but there was nowhere for her to go. There were no other settlements on Planet D, no other people. She couldn't be thinking of making a life for herself alone in the forests or plains of an alien world.

Where would she go? The house was situated beside the river. Rachel loved to sit by the river. With a sharp pang, Courane recalled how Alohilani, too, had enjoyed being down by the water. Rachel might have gone down the river in one of the boats Shai and Fletcher had built. Or she might have started eastward toward the distant hills, across the flat expanse of grass. Those hills were more than three days' walk away, probably four days for her. And there was nothing for her there when she got to them.

He threw the rest of the juice into the yard, put the glass on a railing, and walked around the house. He cut across the groon field and went down to the riverbank. He had come here with Lani or Rachel many times. He tried not to think about that. He shaded his eyes with one hand and looked across the river. There was a narrow road on the opposite side, cleared during the spring; it led toward more hills that formed the western confine of the river valley.

Courane had forgotten why he had come to the river. He sat down, frowning, until it came back to him. Birds cried in the trees above his head and the muddy brown river flowed endlessly by. Alohilani had wondered how the river got so muddy. She thought it must come from far away to the north. Rachel didn't think so because it was far too narrow to be a great river. She thought that another river—

Rachel: that's why he had come here. Courane looked across the water again. There was the road and, hazy in the distance, there were the western hills. On the farther bank of the river, a boat was drawn up; Rachel had gone that way. Courane went back to the house. If he was going after her, he'd have to make careful preparations. His periods of clarity were occurring less and less regularly. He wasn't making sense very often, not even to himself. A few days before, Rachel had gently suggested that he should go into the infirmary and he had reacted angrily. She had been right, of course. He wasn't even coherent anymore. It was frightening. It meant his life was over and he had to surrender his freedom, to enter a bed-shaped prison from which he'd never be released alive. Before he did that, however, he had one last task to perform. If he sat by the river long enough, he'd remember what it was.

 

There was a flicker of light behind Alohilani's shoulder. It caught Courane's attention and he turned toward it, startled. The air shimmered with pale rainbow hues, shifting like the colors of oil on water. Then there was something in the shimmer—Courane thought he saw the form of a man, a tall man in green. The figure vanished and the vibrating aura evaporated. It all happened in a second, two seconds. He didn't even have time enough to call Alohilani's attention to it. After it was all over, he wondered what he had seen.

"A man?" she asked.

Courane frowned. "Now I'm not sure. I saw colors and movement, and the form might just have been my imagination working. My mind might have been trying to make sense out of meaningless impressions."

"How do you feel now?"
 

"Fine."

"Are you dizzy or lightheaded? Maybe you should go up to your room and rest."

Courane felt perfectly well. "I really saw—"
 

TECT interrupted them.

 

**What are you doing in the tect room? You must leave the room immediately and not return for one day**

 

"I made a promise to the woman who is now dead." Alohilani typed her explanation at the tect's keyboard. "I promised her I'd sit with her body tonight."