A Thousand Deaths (50 page)

"No qualms at all," said Eldrēs. "My field is minor twentieth- century genre writers, not ethics. You can go on suffering as much as you want, although I can't see why you'd make that choice. What I want isn't so terrible."

"You don't know how hard it is for me to write, even when I'm healthy and sitting at my desk, fully motivated."

"I'd think that what I'm offering you would be enough to motivate you."

Courane frowned. "I mean inspired. You're asking me to force a book into existence, something that I'm not at all ready to write. It won't turn out well; I can guarantee you that. It won't be writing; it'll be constructing, like putting together a model of a novel from your outline."

"That's all I want. The people in the future won't know the difference. And who's going to know? Besides me, I doubt if anyone else in my era has ever even realized your books exist."

Courane groaned. "First you tell me that I'm going to die a horrible death real soon now, and then you tell me that nothing I've done or written will be remembered. Why don't you leave me alone? Why don't you go bother somebody else? Gene Wolfe's a good writer. Go talk to him."

Eldrēs spread her hands. "I don't have to. Gene Wolfe is very popular in my time. He wrote some genuine classics."

"And
Space Spy–
"

"Let's say, to be charitable, that your best work has been somewhat neglected since your death."

"Neglected," said Courane glumly.

"Totally and unmercifully out of print since a month after you passed away. There was a small piece in
Locus
about your death, and then your name was never again mentioned by anybody until I came along."

"Why did you choose me then, if I'm such a nobody?"

Eldrēs smiled sadly. "There were only a handful of twentieth- century science fiction writers left to write about. Almost everybody else had been documented before my time."

"I was the bottom of the barrel then," said Courane.

"Does it help any if I say that I think you've been unfairly ignored? That your stories are more entertaining than those of many other writers whose reputations lasted much longer?"

"To be honest, it doesn't help. I think I'm psychologically crippled now, thanks to you."

Eldrēs stood up and smoothed the covers. "You wouldn't want me to lie to you, would you?"

"It's too late now, anyway."

"Let's talk about happier things. Let's talk about what I can do for you here, and what finishing
Time Spy
will mean. For one thing, it will lead to a resurrection of interest in your work."

"I don't suppose you could manage a resurrection of
me,
personally."

"We do supertechnology," said Eldrēs, "not miracles."

"All right, I'll go along with you. What do I do?"

"Great!" said Eldres. She beamed at him. "I have a skeleton of the first chapter of
Time Spy.
Look it over, read the character sketches, and when you feel ready, just start writing in your notebook. You'll notice that as soon as you start to work, the pain from your incision will disappear, as well as the other small discomforts. That will last only as long as you're actually working. As soon as you stop, the pain will come back."

"That's blackmail," said Courane angrily.

"That's incentive," corrected Eldrēs. "I've got to go now. They're bringing you breakfast in a couple of minutes."

"Oh boy."

"Aren't you hungry?"

'You haven't seen the food here," said Courane.

"I'll check back with you in a little while to see how you're doing. Maybe we could get a chapter a day. That will finish the book in three weeks, and the future will have a new minor masterpiece of science fiction to study. A lost classic of the Golden Age."

"I've never been able to write a chapter a day in my life. Even when I was rolling."

"We'll see," said Eldrēs confidently. "When you realize how much you hurt when you're not working, I think you'll find all sorts of new inspiration." She pulled back the curtain just as an orderly was coming toward Courane's bed with his breakfast tray. Eldrēs left; the orderly paid no attention to her as she walked by him on her way out.

"Mr. Courane," said the orderly. He put the tray on Courane's lap, nearly spilling its contents onto the bed.

"Thanks," said Courane. "About my shot—"

"The nurse knows. She'll get to you as soon as she can."

Right, thought Courane. He looked at the breakfast tray unhappily. The food in the charity hospital was the worst Courane had ever had, and he'd sampled institutional cooking at college, in the service, in jail, and in several other temples of healing. Breakfast, though, was the most reliable meal of the day. It was entirely recognizable, and therefore promised also to be edible.

Today, Courane had a plate of tepid grits, a hard-boiled egg, two slices of bacon, a pat of margarine and a cold piece of toast, and a carton of milk. He was hungry because he hadn't eaten much of his dinner the previous night. It had been fried liver of an impenetrable toughness. With so many prisoners on the ward, knives were out of the question, and he could make no headway on the liver with the plastic spoon and fork he'd been given. He'd finally folded it into a slice of bread and made a sandwich, but he'd had as much trouble sectioning the meat with his teeth as he'd had with the plastic implements. When he'd finally succeeded, he quickly learned that it wasn't worth the trouble. He saw that most of the other patients on the ward had also passed on the fried liver.

This morning he ate the bacon first, then the egg. As he was opening the carton of milk, one of the orderlies passed his bed. "Is that an extra tray?" asked Courane.

"Yeah," said the orderly.

"Can I have it?"

"You want seconds?"

"Sure," said Courane. Better to fill up with genuine food now, in case both lunch and dinner proved to be culinary disasters.

The orderly gave Courane the second tray, an unusual kindness. Of course, to remind him who was in charge on the ward, the orderly never returned to take the empty trays away. It took some painful maneuvering for Courane to slide the trays out of his way, toward the foot of the bed.

"You want me to move those for you?" asked Eldrēs.

"Would you?" said Courane.

She touched the emblem on her black outfit and the trays disappeared. "Have you got any of the first chapter finished?" she asked.

Courane was astonished. "How did you make that stuff go away?"

Eldrēs smiled. "Wonders of the future," she said. "The same way I can make your pain go away. Have you done any work yet?"

"No," admitted Courane. "I was going to start right after breakfast. Well, actually, they're going to come by in a few minutes and change my linen, and that causes me a lot of pain. They have to move me into a chair, and it's like torture. Then I'll get a shot of Demerol soon, and by then I'll really need it."

"It won't do you any good," said Eldrēs. She was examining her long, scarlet fingernails.

"What do you mean?"

She gave him an innocent look. "I think it will make my bargain with you so much more attractive if I neutralize the effects of the medication. You can take all the Demerol you want, but it won't ease the pain. If you want to stop hurting, you're just going to have to write this book. Writing is what you do, isn't it? You
enjoy
writing, don't you?"

"Sometimes I enjoy it," said Courane. "The rest of the time I'd almost rather go out and change the piston rings on the Toyota. Once I start writing, it's wonderful though. It's just that sometimes I know I can't do it anymore, that's all. It's like I forgot how, or all the creativity just leaked away somewhere. That's how I feel right now. As if whatever used to enable me to write was cut out of me with the tumor."

"That's nonsense," said Eldrēs.

"I know it sounds like nonsense, but it's how I
feel.
It's always been this way. When I finish a book or a story, I can't understand how I accomplished it. I can't imagine how I could ever do it again."

"You're making too much of an intellectual hurdle for yourself. Don't try to analyze it, just do it. Just relax and let your subconscious mind work on Chapter One. Get some of it down on paper. I won't be able to help you feel better until I see something. Until then, I'm afraid you're going to have to suffer."

"It's pure cruelty having the ability to relieve my pain and withholding it like that."

Eldrēs nodded. "Yes, that's what it is, all right. Cruelty can be fun, you know."

Courane felt a rush of anger. "You don't have to enjoy my misery," he cried.

"Why shouldn't I, if I get a little pleasure out of it?" she asked lightly.

"Then I'll be damned if I do anything for you!"

"As you wish," said Eldrēs. "But you'll see my way of thinking soon enough. It would be terrific if you could have ten pages done by lunchtime. Then I'd let you rest all afternoon. Take a long, deep sleep and wake up with no pain. Doesn't that sound more profitable than being obstinate with me?"

"I hate being manipulated," said Courane passionately.

"Too bad. I'm very good at it." Before he could say anything further, she was gone.

Just as he had predicted, a nurse's aide came by a few minutes later. She helped him to get slowly from the bed to a chair, where he sat carefully on the edge of the seat, panting in terrible pain, holding his wounded chest tightly with both hands. She stripped the bed quickly and put on clean sheets, then guided him back beneath the covers. His face was covered with sweat, and he felt faint. "Please," he murmured hoarsely, "tell the nurse. My shot."

"All right, Mr. Courane," said the nurse's aide, "but you can't keep bothering her like this. She has other patients she has to take care of."

"I know, damn it, but I haven't even seen her today. I haven't had a shot since two o'clock in the morning. It's almost two hours late. And my IV bag—"

"She knows about that, too. She'll get to it as soon as she can." The nurse's aide gave him a disgusted look, as if all of this were somehow his fault, and moved on to the next bed.

Courane lay in the bed, holding himself tightly and rocking slowly back and forth in time to the throbbing of his pain. He didn't know how much time passed, but after a while he heard a voice address him impatiently. "Mr. Courane?" it said. The tone was cold and disapproving.

"Nurse," he said. He kept his eyes closed.

"Your IV bag is empty. The blood vessel is blown. We're going to have to reset it."

"I know. I told someone about it a long time ago—"

"Let me have your wrist, Mr. Courane." The nurse worked quickly and efficiently, ripping off the adhesive bandage and pulling the needle free. She discarded the whole IV setup, pushing a new plastic tube into a cold bag of electrolyte solution, and connecting the tube's other end to a fresh needle. "Your other arm, please." Courane raised his right arm, and the nurse began searching for a likely vein. It took some time, and a few searching stabs, before she seated the needle in a blood vessel. She taped the needle down to the back of his hand, and taped his hand and wrist to the plastic board. It was going to make it difficult to work, because he was going to have to write left-handed now.

"I have your pain shot, Mr. Courane. Which side?"

"Left," he said, and rolled over to present his naked hip. She swabbed his skin and gave him the injection. "Thank you," he murmured.

"You're welcome," said the nurse distractedly. When Courane opened his eyes, she was gone.

It usually took a few minutes before the Demerol hit. When it did, it was like the sun coming out from behind a mass of rain clouds, and Courane basked in the warmth and pleasant lassitude of the drug. He waited longingly for the first hint that the opiate was coming on. He felt nothing but the unending pain. He looked at his watch and realized that too much time was passing, that he ought to be feeling the effects of the injection by now. With a growing realization of horror, he knew that what Eldrēs had promised—had threatened—was true: the Demerol would be no good to him any longer. He could only wait in the piercing agony for relief that would never come. Not unless Eldrēs also spoke the truth about the other thing. And slowly, bitterly, he reached out for the notebook and the pencil.

The outline Eldrēs had given him for the first chapter said:
Introduce protagonist, sketch setting, establish problem.
That wasn't much to go on, thought Courane. After all, Eldrēs said she already had the complete novel in the future; surely she could provide him with a little more help in the present. When he'd scribbled the general idea for
Time Spy
in his notebook—a year ago? two years?—he'd done only the barest framework of story, with none of the important details, no subplots, no minor characters, not even a clever scene or an interesting chunk of dialogue. Eldrēs was asking a lot, expecting him to fill in all of that while he felt absolutely terrible, when he had no motivation at all to work on the book.

A sudden flash of pain reminded him that, after all, he did have motivation. In clumsy handwriting, he put a heading at the top of the first page of the notebook:
Chapter One.
Even when he was healthy, this was the most discouraging part of the book. There was so much more work to do before the pages began to take on the shape of a novel, before the characters resembled real human beings and the conflicts had meaning for the people in the story, and for the reader, too. All that existed now was a thick pile of blank pages that had to be filled up with words. Unhappily, Courane's mind felt as blank as the paper, empty of all inspiration.

Well, then, he'd write without waiting for inspiration. One of the first things he'd learned early in his career was that if he wanted to pay his rent and eat now and then, he surely couldn't afford to sit around until the Muses showed up to mop his brow. The next thing he'd learned was that if he just started describing a place or a person, very often he'd have the beginnings of a genuine story going within a few paragraphs, and all he had to do from that point was listen to the characters talk about what they needed and wanted.