A Thousand Deaths (49 page)

Courane looked up at the beautiful woman and blinked. She had long, lank white hair, and she was wearing a bizarre, black one-piece outfit, with white gauntlets and a diamond-shaped emblem on her left breast. "Wait a minute," Courane murmured. "I thought I dreamed you last night."

The woman threw her long, pale hair over her shoulder and smiled.

"No, it wasn't a dream. I came in to visit you late last night."

"And no one else saw you or heard you."

"That's right," she said.

"And no one else can see you or hear you now?"

"That's right."

Courane frowned. "Then they must think I'm crazy, talking to myself."

The woman laughed. "Would you like some privacy?"

"Please," said Courane.

The woman stood up and drew the curtains around the bed. "How's that?" she asked.

"It's the best we can do. What if someone comes in?"

The woman shook her head. "The nurse's aide will come by in about sixteen minutes. We have plenty of time."

"You're sure I'm not dreaming now?" said Courane.

"You're not dreaming. How much do you remember of what I told you last night?"

"Not much," admitted Courane. "I was sure I was asleep or drugged, and I wasn't paying very close attention."

"All right, we'll start at the beginning. My name is Eldrēs. I'm from the future."

"Yes, I remember you saying that. I remember you showing me all kinds of strange things."

"Do you believe me?" said Eldrēs.

Courane shrugged. "This is the way it is, ma'am: if you're really, truly here, then you're probably telling me the truth. All those futuristic newspapers and books you showed me couldn't be just an elaborate practical joke. But if I ever find out that you're not really here, I'm going to stop believing you that instant."

"Fair enough," said Eldrēs. "Do you want to know why I've come so far into the past to talk with you?"

"It would be discourteous for me to say no, wouldn't it?"

"Even if you said no, I'd tell you anyway. The truth is, Mr. Courane, you don't have long to live."

Courane felt the blood drain from his face. "I don't want to know about that," he said quietly.

Eldrēs shook her head. "Well," she said, "it's why we have to get right to work. Your surgery was a success, all right, but there are more tumors in there, and not long from now one of them will rupture. You're going to die on your own bathroom floor, stark naked, in terrible pain."

"Thanks," said Courane. "Thanks a lot." He took a couple of deep breaths, but it didn't help the sudden feeling of dreamlike disorientation that had seized him. He felt a monstrous anxiety attack looming.

"I'm terribly sorry," said Eldrēs, "but you can't let it depress you. I mean, everybody dies, you know. Everybody has to face it."

"Yeah," said Courane angrily, "but everybody doesn't have to hear all the awful details in advance. How long do I have? A year?"

Eldrēs shook her head.

"Six months?"

She shook her head again.

"Don't tell me," said Courane. "I really don't want to know."

The woman from the future held up a hand. "Calm down, Mr. Courane. I'm here to help you."

"Help me do what? You've already made sure that however much time I've got left is going to be miserable. I'm going to wake up every morning from now on wondering if this is the day. What kind of a life is that?"

Eldrēs sighed. "Some people do that their whole lives, no matter how old they live to be. I'm telling you this for a reason. I'm giving you the chance to fill the great gap you left when you died in my time line."

"You've come back to change the past, is that it?" said Courane. "I've got it on good authority that such a thing is impossible."

Eldrēs found that amusing. "Whom are you going to believe," she said, "me or one of your science fiction writer friends?"

"Time travel is impossible," said Courane. "Changing the past is even more impossible."

"I can take your pain away," she said softly.

That caught Courane's attention. "How? By getting the nurse for me? I'm due for a shot of Demerol."

"My way is much better than Demerol," said Eldres.

"What do you mean? Morphine? That stuff makes me throw

"Forget drugs. I have futuristic techniques that from your point of view are indistinguishable from magic. I can help you."

Courane nodded. "But you want me to do something first," he said.

"Naturally. But you'll be glad to do what I ask. It's just what you'd be doing if you were healed and at home. I want you to write a book."

"Here?" asked Courane. "In the hospital? Hooked up to machines? I need peace and quiet even at home; I can't have any distractions. I can barely
read
here, let alone do any writing."

"You'll do just fine, once you get used to the routine," said Eldrēs. "You've got your notebook and a pencil on your bedstand. What else do you need?"

Courane looked at her glumly. "I need an idea," he said.

Eldrēs waved a hand, dismissing his objection. "You have plenty of unwritten ideas in your notebook, you know. I want you to complete the manuscript of the sequel to
Space Spy."

"Time Spy?"
Courane looked startled. "How do you even know about it?"

"In my time, I'm sort of a literary historian. I'm doing my thesis on you and your books. I've read everything you ever wrote, including your unpublished work, your notebooks, and your letters. I know more about you than does anyone else in my era. It's very exciting for me to meet you in person. I feel as if I've known you for years."

"I'm flattered, but I don't think I can help you. I have worked out a vague plot outline for
Time Spy,
but it's nowhere near ready to work on. That's why I haven't written it already. I need to do a lot more thinking. I don't know who the characters are, or where it takes place. I don't even have subplots, just the main idea."

"I told you not to worry," said the woman from the future. "I've seen a finished manuscript of
Time Spy.
I can give you a detailed synopsis."

Courane just stared for a moment. "You've seen the finished book? How?"

Eldrēs sighed. "It would take too long to explain. It involves what seems to be a temporal paradox. Let's just say that I will, in fact, persuade you to write the book, and so I will have access to it in the future."

"Then why do you have to put me through all this now, when I'm feeling so terrible?"

"Because unless you actually do write it here and now, the manuscript in the future will cease to exist."

Courane felt he was missing something. "Then why not bring me the manuscript, and save me all the mental anguish of trying to create it the hard way."

"I would if I could," she said. "But it can't be done. The continuum won't permit it."

"The continuum won't permit it," murmured Courane. "The continuum is going to see to it that I die a horrible death pretty damn soon. The hell with the continuum!"

Eldrēs put a hand on Courane's arm and looked at him sympathetically. "This must be hard on you," she said. "I have to go now. Think about what I said. I'll be back about 7:30."

Not long after Eldrēs left, a nurse's aide came by to take Courane's temperature and blood pressure. He let her wrap the sphygmomanometer around his free right arm. She pushed the thermometer between his lips. At least none of this hurt. She noted his blood pressure and his temperature on his chart and started to move off toward the next bed.

"Miss?" said Courane.

The nurse's aide gave him an impatient look. "Yes?"

"Would you tell the nurse that I'd like my shot now, please?" There was no room in the hospital's operating budget for luxuries like call buttons at every bedside.

She nodded. "I'll tell her when I see her," she said. Courane had to take every opportunity to get the message to the ward's head nurse. It usually took three or four requests before she actually arrived with the medication.

The ward was not a pleasant place to recuperate. There were twelve beds, six on each side of the aisle. Prisoners from Central Lockup filled four of them, handcuffed to their beds' side rails. Even the patients who weren't chained down were suspicious. Before his operation, Courane had had a small radio beside his bed. He liked to listen to the ball games in the afternoon. The radio had been stolen soon after he'd been taken down to surgery. On another occasion, when Courane had been wheeled downstairs for X-rays, he came back to find his hairbrush and his shoes missing. Now the only personal possessions he kept were some paperbacks, a spiral notebook, and a pencil. He had learned that books were perfectly safe. No one here would have any use for a book.

Although it was only six o'clock, all the televisions had been turned on for the day. Eight of the patients had their own portable sets beside their beds, brought from home or on loan from relatives. It didn't seem to matter to the patients what was on. They watched anything, rarely changing the channel. News programs, game shows, soap operas, kids' shows—Courane heard them all; he couldn't escape the cacophony. The televisions wouldn't be turned off until after midnight.

Suddenly Courane felt a sneeze coming on. He had a long incision in his chest and belly, pulled closed with metal staples rather than stitches. It ran from the tip of his sternum all the way to his pubes. A sneeze, a cough, even a hiccup caused him agony. He pressed on his bandages with both hands and surrendered to the sneeze. The pain brought tears to his eyes. He held himself and moaned, wishing that the nurse would hurry with the Demerol.

All Courane had to look forward to was another day of boredom, loneliness, and desperation. He looked at his wristwatch: it was only 6:20. Time moved with the sluggishness one would expect in prison, or Hell. He was thinking just that thought when a priest bent over his bed.

"How are you today, my son?" said the priest.

All the visiting clergy were so goddamn kindly, thought Courane. "Fine," he said. The priests didn't take it well when you complained to them.

"I'm glad," said the priest. "Is there anything I can do for you?"

"Well, actually, there is. On your way out, I'd be grateful if you'd ask the nurse if I can have my shot."

"You know, when you get out of the hospital, you won't be able to get those shots. You shouldn't start relying too heavily on drugs. You'll do better to look for the inner strength God has given you."

"Yes, Father. Would you ask the nurse though?"

The kindly priest nodded. "Of course."

Courane looked at the priest's compassionate face, his own expression blank. Let me slash you up the middle, he thought, and we'll see what
your
inner strength is like. "Thank you, Father," he said.

"You know, you should get up and walk. It's the best thing for you. If you lie in bed too long, it will just make it harder for you later on."

"Yes, Father."

"I'll include you in my prayers, my son."

"Thank you, Father." The priest went on to the next patient. Courane checked his watch; it wasn't even 6:30 yet.

At seven o'clock a new patient was brought into the ward and put in the empty bed next to Courane's. "This is really disgusting," said one of the orderlies, as he helped lift the unconscious man into the bed.

"You haven't worked here very long, if you think this is bad," said a second orderly.

"I've never smelled anything this bad in my life. Jeez, I'm glad I'm not going to have to bathe this sucker."

One of the men across the aisle complained. "That stinks," he said. "We don't want him here."

"Gangrene," said the second orderly. "The cops found this guy sleeping in a doorway. His leg will have to come off."

"I don't give a damn
what
his problem is," said the man across the aisle. "Get him out of here. Put him out in the hall or something."

The first orderly gave the patient a malicious grin. "If he wakes up, you can make friends. Sometimes you got to overlook something like a rotting leg. You can't hold that against him. I'm sure he wouldn't talk that way about your bullet wound."

"The bullet wound is my business," said the angry man. "I don't go pushing it on other people. That bum is inflicting his smell on everybody on this ward."

The two orderlies shrugged and headed toward the door.

"Orderly," called Courane. The stench of the man's gangrenous leg was almost suffocating, and Courane could barely breath without gagging.

"You want to complain, too, mister?" said the first orderly.

"My IV bag's running out," said Courane.

The orderly came over and examined the bag on the pole. "I'll tell the nurse," he said. He followed the other orderly out.

Courane grimaced; he should have asked the orderly to remind the nurse about the Demerol shot, too. In the meantime he turned his head and buried his nose in the pillow. It didn't provide much relief from the nauseating smell. He thought about how often the odor of gangrene had been described in other people's books as "sickeningly sweet." Those writers couldn't have had the opportunity to experience it like this. Courane knew now that no neat phrase could do it justice.

A little while later, Eldrēs returned and drew the curtains again. "How are we doing?" she asked.

"You sound like one of the residents," said Courane. "Can you do something about that awful smell?"

"Let's talk about that," she said. She perched on the very edge of his bed. "I can take your pain away, and neutralize anything else that's annoying you."

"Superdrugs from the future?"

She combed her white hair back and shook her head. "Just some creative past-altering. I can doctor details of this quasi-reality."

"Quasi-reality?" asked Courane. "What's quasi about it?"

Eldrēs shrugged. "I can shift you from one reality to another, nearly identical, one. One in which, for example, there's no putrid gangrene smell in the air. Or one in which you're recuperating exactly the same, only you don't hurt. Do you follow me?"

"You have this magical power, but you're going to use it only if I go along with what you want me to do. That means you're perfectly content to let me go on suffering if I don't cooperate. You don't have any qualms about withholding comfort from me."