A Thousand Deaths (30 page)

"I'm glad to see that someone took me seriously," said Arthur. "But you were going to steal my idea, weren't you?"
 

"Arthur—"

"Never mind, I'm sorry. I know that sounded crazy. Sometimes when you're afraid of suffering, that becomes your real suffering. When you're so afraid of hurting that you hurt. Do you know what I mean?"

Courane chewed his lip for a moment. "When you're so afraid of failing that you fail?" he asked.

Arthur smiled gratefully. "Yes," he said.

Courane nodded. "Perseverance," he said. "That's what they always told me was the answer. But I don't think that works, either." They left the tect room together. Courane never gave the bridge another thought again.

 

There was a good evening ahead of them before they could justify saying good night and good-bye. In the morning, Courane would leave for the teletrans gate, but until then he and his parents would have to find things to say to each other.

"It isn't so bad, I suppose," said Courane's mother.

"My God, Marie," said her husband, "he's being shipped off to who knows where. When are we ever going to see him again?"

"Sandy," she said mournfully.

"You'll have each other," said Courane. "It won't be any different from when I was living in Pilessio or New York or Tokyo. You'll have each other for company. You'll take care of each other. I'll just be far away. You can pretend I'm in, oh, Tierra del Fuego or somewhere."

His father looked upset. "Sandy, the point is that if you were on Earth anywhere, no matter how far away, you could get home to see us whenever you wanted. But now—"

"It will be just like you died," said Mrs. Courane, sniffling. "What if something happens to you out there? We may never see you again."

"What if something happened to me in Tierra del Fuego?"

"Sandy," said his father sternly. "Marie, listen to your son."

Courane wasn't happy with the way things were going. "I'm sorry, Mom," he said. "Look at me. Don't cry. Just take care of Dad and I'll see you as soon as my sentence is up. It can't be long. I didn't kill anybody or rob anybody or anything. Dad, try to make her understand."

"I don't know if I understand myself, Sandy."

They looked at each other for a moment. "I'm tired," said Courane. "I think I'll go to bed."

"But you only just had dinner," said his mother.

Courane clenched his jaws. "You're forgetting the time difference again," he said. It was a happy inspiration.

 

The desert almost beat him. He stumbled on and on through the heat of the day, through the stinging cold of the night. He slept in short naps that blurred reality and dream even more. He saw few animals moving through the landscape: a lizard every now and then, a circling bird high overhead, but nothing cheerful. Nothing that indicated that life in the desert was more than a short-term accident. There were gnarled black trees here and there through the low basin, but little else to see. Few boulders disturbed the flat wasteland, no wind-carved stone spires, no dry riverbeds, no paths traced by years of thirsty animals.

When he first saw the body, it was a dot on the horizon, something that didn't belong in the vista. He walked toward it, partly out of curiosity and partly because he had no other goal. As he came nearer, his mind slipped in and out of full consciousness. For a moment he realized what he was looking at—the end of his search. He was overjoyed and then, suddenly, he forgot what he was doing and where he was. He walked closer. When he stood over the corpse, he stared down at it uncomprehendingly. Night fell slowly about him, but he did not move. The contorted figure on the stony ground had captured him. He waited for clarity.

Just at moonrise, he understood. "It's you," he said. His voice was a hoarse croak. "Rachel. You're dead." He had thought all along that he would find her this way, yet when he admitted the truth to himself, he hated it. He was sorry he had come looking for her. If he had stayed in the house, he could have believed forever that she was still alive somewhere, wandering farther and farther away. But now the fact was inescapable. He lay down beside her and slept until morning.

When he awoke, he didn't recall where he was. He looked around, startled to see desert, emptiness, desolation. The corpse confused him, too. "Look at your mother, boy," he said to himself. "This is what you've done to her. This is what you've made her suffer, because of your stupidity. Lying in the dirt, her fingers stiff and clutching and cold. Your own mother. Now what are you going to do?" He began to cry, softly and painfully. His tears washed away some of his grief, and his forgetfulness took care of the rest. After a few minutes, he stood up and looked down at her body. I have to get her back to the house, he thought. I owe it to her. I owe it, and I promised them. He took the map out of his pocket and studied it, sketching the desert and the place where he had discovered Rachel's body. Then he looked back across the desert, back the way he would have to travel. "I'd better make a note to myself," he said. With the pencil, he wrote on the back of the map:

 

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.

 

Fletcher had trouble believing what Courane told him. "You're saying that my pen pal isn't real," said Fletcher. "That Dawna isn't real?"

"That's right. Why do you have such a problem with that? You've seen the other things TECT has done."

"Yes, but–"

Courane raised a hand. "I did just what you said; you were there. I asked for a pen pal, and TECT gave me Else Wisswede. I talked with Else a few times and everything seemed very nice. But then somehow Else knew things that only someone here would know, or TECT itself. There's only one explanation."

"Damn it," said Fletcher. "And I trusted Dawna. She was about the only thing that kept me in control up here. Now that I know she's just another voice of the computer, I don't know what I'll do."

"We don't know that your Dawna is as phony as Else was."

Fletcher scratched behind his ear. "She must be," he said sourly.

"You'll have to prove that some way. But if it is true, then we're really isolated. More so than we thought. We used to believe that we had a few thin links to Earth. We're really cut off, Fletcher. We're way the hell and gone, across space and everything, and there's nobody to talk to except TECT. We can't talk to our folks, they can't talk to us, and everything we hear has to come through that machine."

"So how are we supposed to know the truth when we hear it?"

Courane shrugged.

"I wish I could get out of this show," said Fletcher. "I wish I could go to TECT and say, Put me in solitary in the smelliest hole in the world, but just let me back on Earth.' I don't know if I can stand it here anymore. I'm getting really scared."

"That hit me, too. Some kind of phobia. But try to hang on, Fletcher. We need you."

"Don't you want to sell out somehow?" Fletcher looked amazed.

Courane raised an eyebrow. "No," he said, "I think I can beat TECT at its own game. I have to stay here to do that."

Fletcher frowned and shook his head. "You ain't going to beat nothing, Cap. Not here and not on Earth. Nowhere. You're going to die in a few months, just like I'm going to die. That's going to be the end of it."

Courane looked down at the ground. "For us, sure," he said mildly. "But we ought to do something for the people who come—"

"The people who come after us. I know that bit by heart, Cap. No, we don't owe them a damn thing. And I used to be the biggest revolutionary organizer in North America, Sandy. But a year in this place and I'm ready to sell my mama to get back to my little Crawford County dungheap."

Courane rubbed his eyes. He was suddenly very tired. "Then there's no sense working to make our lives better, or fighting TECT, or trying to put an end to this colony in the future. My God, then why is TECT leaving us here to die all by ourselves? We have to find the answer to that, and we have to tell the people on Earth. You're killing your hope and leaving nothing but the suffering."

"Uh uh," said Fletcher, shaking his head and looking solemn, "I'm not doing that at all.
You're
doing that, Mr. Courane, by coming around and breaking up my dreams. I really wanted to believe in Dawna, you know. I didn't need you to tell me the truth."

"Then I'm going to have to do all this without you?"

"Goddamn right, Cap. You have a history of starting off on a lot of projects and not finishing them. I don't want to get caught on the short end of another one with you. TECT won't like it at all."

Courane smiled. "Okay, Fletcher," he said. "I'm sorry."

Fletcher shut his eyes as if in pain. "Not a tiny bit as sorry as I am," he said.

 

 

 

Twelve

 

 

The only reason Courane kept going was that he forgot to give up.

"Oh, Lani, my feet are cut and bleeding. It feels like I'm walking on rock. It's just the ground, but the ground's so hard. In the hills it was nice, the ground was softer, it was cool and damp, the grass was good to walk through. Now I'm not walking on anything but hard dirt. Over there the grass is high, it's as high as my head and I'm glad I'm not walking through it. I couldn't stand that. But I'm walking through the midst of it, as if it parted for me in a straight line all the way to the river. Just like Moses and the Red Sea. I'm on the road. That's where I wanted to be, all right, and that's where I am. Finally. That's good.

"But I tell you she's getting heavy. She was always heavy. I mean, not heavy or overweight or anything when she was alive, but as soon as I bent down to pick her up in the desert, I realized what a job it was going to be to carry her all the way back. She couldn't weigh more than a hundred ten, maybe a hundred twenty pounds, but after a little while, you know, out under the sun, after a mile or five miles or twenty miles, it gets to be a burden. And you just can't set her down and say, 'Why don't you walk for a little while and let me rest?' because when you're resting you're not getting any closer to home and the longer you take to get home the less chance there is that you'll have the strength to carry yourself, let alone the two of you up to the front door. And that in the end is the point of the whole thing, isn't it? I should say so. So I guess I should rest more often and conserve my strength. Either that, or not rest at all and get home quick and—

"God, am I thirsty." He stopped where he was in the middle of the road, overcome by the sudden revelation of his thirst. It had been days since he'd had any water, not even the morning moisture of the plants and stones. His brain had known he was thirsty, dangerously dehydrated, but it had not communicated that fact to his senses. He had not suffered. Now, like a bullet slamming into his chest, the truth of his deprivation made him stagger. He dropped Rachel's body and fell to his hands and knees. His throat felt swollen and he choked for breath. His head swam; he fought to remain conscious.

"I'm not far from the house, I know I'm not. I couldn't be because I've been keeping track, or I've tried to anyway, and I realize I'm not very accurate because the fever keeps taking my memory away but I'm absolutely certain now that I've been on this road for two days at least. There was all day today and yesterday. I remember yesterday because it was just like today. I've covered a lot of the road, so I can't be more than a full day away from the river, depending on how long I walked today and how long yesterday and if the day before yesterday I was in the hills or on the plain looking for the road or maybe even on the road leading into yesterday. I can't remember.

"I can make myself finish this. Even in this condition, I can force myself to stick it out, to do it on nerve and discipline. I've come too far now to let it end here on this goddamn road, kneeling and gagging and talking to myself. I'm glad there isn't anybody here to watch; I must look like an idiot. On my hands and knees, with a dead body over there as if I never go anywhere without a dead body. 'Are you ready to go, honey? The show starts in twenty minutes. Oh, wait a minute. I forgot my dead body.'

"I'll just wait for my strength to come back. I'll bet Sheldon said the same thing before he died. I'll bet Daan said the same thing. I'll bet we all do, here and on Earth, now and for the last million years. 'Just give me a minute and I'll be all right, really, I'm just...
aarrghh.'
" Courane smiled with cracked lips. "As long as I keep my sense of humor, I won't die. Sure. That's what they all say." It was late evening before he picked up the body again. He could walk at night now, following the road. He listened to the wind whipping the tall grass as he stumbled on beneath the bright pitiless stars. "One step. Two steps. Three. Look at me go. Four. Five. Six. I could keep this up forever. Seven. Eight. Oh, my God. Nine. Oh, Mom. Ten. That's it." Panting, exhausted, he stopped. "I have to put her down again. I wonder if I'll ever be able to pick her—"

A sound made him fall silent. A familiar sound, a small noise: the gentle sibilant rush of water ahead of him in the darkness. "The river!" he cried hoarsely. He softly laid Rachel's body down and ran forward three steps, where he fell and rolled and tumbled down the bank to the water's edge. "I am so thirsty...." he whispered, unaware of the bruises and lacerations he had just taken. He bent his head to the water. The quiet pool where he chose to drink was stagnant and foul, green and thick, but he didn't notice at first. He gulped it greedily, not tasting it immediately. It was as though he had chosen an unmarked bottle of vinegar in the dark, thinking it clear water. In a moment, however, he knew what he had done; before he could utter a sound he was sick, and vomited it all back into the river.

 

One of the colonists' fundamental errors was their belief that when Courane assumed leadership, he had made an important step toward solving their dilemma. They gladly turned the power over to him, and in return they expected that soon he would present them with a clever but simple manipulation of TECT that would mean they weren't, after all, virtually deceased. No one had a clear idea of what this solution might be, of course; it wasn't determined if they would all be returned healthy to Earth, or if TECT might relent and send them a secret serum that would render them all strong and fit and attractive again. Whatever it was, it very definitely was Courane's problem now. They were glad of it; they didn't want to have to face it anymore themselves.