A Thousand Deaths (7 page)

A cool breeze blew. Courane realized that his clothing was damp and acrid with perspiration. His mind worked slowly, taking in the details of his surroundings bit by bit, cataloguing his impressions, trying painfully to decide where he was and what had happened to him. His mother never let him sleep outside like this. He had asked her once, some time ago, to let him go camping with three other boys from school. They were just going to a state park about four miles from Greusching, but Courane's mother acted as if they were planning to sleep naked in the savage heart of Africa. Courane had had to make up an excuse for the other boys because he didn't want to tell them what his mother had really said. But now, evidently, he was sleeping out somewhere.

He wasn't alone. He saw another sleeping form near him, but he couldn't remember who it was. It was probably his best friend, Dieter, or one of the other boys from school. It was odd that Courane couldn't recall exactly where he was. It must be that he had been dreaming, and that he had roused suddenly and wasn't completely awake yet. When the last webs of sleep cleared from his mind, he would feel foolish about his forgetfulness.

Something bothered him about the stars. He looked first for Orion, but the constellation wasn't in the sky. It ought to be, at this time of year. The sky was very clear, so it wasn't that the stars were obscured by smoke or clouds. There was only one explanation, he thought, he must be in the southern hemisphere. But that was crazy. He was home in Europe, in some desert near Greusching. He had never even visited the southern hemisphere....

There was a warning stab of pain in his right arm. "Oh, boy," Courane murmured. He knew what he had to go through now. He always hated this. He massaged the arm and winced, forcing himself to work through the uncomfortable tingling. He opened and closed his hand until his fingers felt normal again. He shook the arm for a moment, then relaxed.

He thought about waking Dieter and asking where they were, but that would only embarrass him. He preferred to keep his dumbness a private matter. He let his friend sleep on. Then, when Courane sat up and looked around, he changed his mind. There was nothing to be seen anywhere around them. There were no trees or buildings nearby or far away, just empty landscape paved with rounded pebbles like the bottom of an aquarium. And the moon was unnaturally small and altogether the wrong color. He had no explanation for it, but he thought that Dieter might like to see. He reached over and shook the sleeper's shoulder. There was no response. Courane shook harder and there was still no groan of reply. Courane rolled the form over on its back, and he was shocked. It was a woman, a stranger Courane had never seen before, and she wouldn't wake up. He crept closer to her and saw the note pinned to her blouse. He looked at it for some time, but he had a disquieting shock: he couldn't make sense of the letters and words. They looked familiar individually, but he couldn't put them together to mean anything. He had forgotten how to read. A great and overwhelming fear arose deep in Courane's soul, and the terror reached up and paralyzed his mind until all he wanted to do was run. The desert, the loneliness, the feeling of being lost and abandoned, this dead woman beside him, all these things seemed like elements in the worst possible nightmare.

Courane was forced to admit that he was probably still dreaming. None of this made any logical sense; it wasn't even coherent. It couldn't be real life. He lifted his hand from the woman's shoulder, crawled back slowly to where he had rested, pillowed his head on his right arm, and went back to sleep.

 

Kenny was eleven years old. He was smart, good-natured, and just a little too active for some of the others to tolerate. He and Molly worked in the barn. They were the only two who enjoyed being with the strange livestock of Planet D.

"I haven't ever looked at one of these close up," said Courane. He was standing in the pasture watching a gigantic animal lying on its side, eating the red grass. The beast was the size of a large rhinoceros but nowhere so pretty. It was a dull gray-blue in color, with sagging folds of sweaty skin hanging from its neck to its long ropy tail. It looked like it was in desperate need of cleaning and pressing. The head was large and flat, with odd dainty lips and the worn broad teeth of an herbivore. Its eyes were small and yellow and set very far apart. Its face successfully hid any sign that a small intelligence might lurk behind.

"I like them. They're kind of funny," said Kenny. He sat down beside the animal and stroked its moist flank.

"And that's where we get the stuff we eat for breakfast? That sort of thick orange stuff?"

"Uh huh," said Kenny.

"Where does it come from?"

Kenny looked up at Courane and laughed. "You don't want to know," he said. "Get up real early tomorrow morning and I'll let you watch. But I let Carmine watch once and he never ate the stuff again as long as he lived."

"You're right, I'd rather not know. Did you name them?"

Kenny patted the animal's neck. "This one is Prancer and the one over there is Vixen."

"No, I mean did you call them 'blerds'?
Blod
means 'stupid' in old German."

Kenny got up and brushed off his pants. "They were called blerds when I got here. I wouldn't have called them that. I would have thought up something better. Something funny."

They walked back toward the barn. It looked like another storm was coming from across the river. "What would you have called them, Kenny?"

The boy thought for a few seconds. Then he looked up and his face lit up with a bright smile. "I would have called them pixies," he said.

"That's worse than blerds, Kenny," said Courane, "and it would have made people years from now wonder about us."

"That's the whole idea," said Kenny. They felt the wind quicken and then they saw the first warning blaze of lightning. Whenever a storm approached, the sky grew blacker, but the world seemed to glow with a pale green shimmer, an effect that always terrified Courane. He never got used to it. Ragged spears of lightning would link the muddy sky with the rust-red ground and thunder would split the air until the endless rolling blasts seemed to make it difficult to breathe. And then the hot, heavy rain would fall. It would rain all evening sometimes, never slowing until the storm came to its abrupt end and the fresh wind blew the clouds away and freed the hidden stars. It stormed like this once or twice a week during the spring and summer, and on those days Courane liked to hide himself away in the tect room, concentrating on an intricate game or puzzle. As he walked quickly across the open pasture, Courane wished he was already back in the house. He had a terrible fear of being struck by lightning.

"We better hurry or we'll get soaked," he said.

"That's okay," said Kenny, "I've been wet before."

"Sure. But have you ever been burned to a crisp before?"

Kenny held up a black hand before his face. "No," he said, "just a little scorched." Courane had to look to see if the boy was joking. Until Kenny made a face at him, Courane couldn't decide.

 

The day began in dim cloudy light. The sky was heavy and threatening. Courane sat against a black gnarled tree and waited. In the desert it was still hot, though summer had ended; on the farm the month of Gai meant bringing in the crops and beginning the preparations for the endless winter. He wished he were back there. He didn't want to be in the desert anymore. The hills didn't seem any nearer, for all the labored walking he had done. He was thirsty, but soon the clouds would open and he would have more than enough to drink. In fact, there was the chance that he was sitting in the middle of a dry rivercourse, that the autumn storm would start a flash flood to nourish the sparse life in the valley, to bring the desert to late bloom, and only incidentally to extinguish any spark or blush of life in its one lonely human occupant.

Courane dismissed the idea. He had enough troubles, he thought, without inventing new ones for the future. He was middling lost, starving, and with an excellent chance of never returning to the house alive. Floods and earthquakes and plagues of locusts were rather unnecessary. He had managed to shuffle off his own mortal coil, not quite all the way but almost, all by himself. With a little assist from TECT, of course.

Lightning startled him. The first flash was so nearby that there was a loud snap when it struck. The clap of thunder that accompanied it was like an audible shadow. That, Courane told himself, was something he might legitimately be afraid of. A single heavy drop of rain hit his face with a flat smack. It dazed him like a quick jab to the jaw. Then the storm attacked him with its full overture.

 

Just after New Year's the colony received two new people, a European woman named Klára and an African girl about fourteen years old named Nneka. They were welcomed into the group with the customary, somewhat somber generosity. It was the same spirit that governs a crowd of strangers caught in a vice raid: there was a kind of fellowship and sympathy among them, but there was also the knowledge that none of them was there just for an innocent visit. They were all there because TECT had wanted to forget about them.

Klára was a hefty Magyar woman with green eyes and auburn hair that she wore in braids, coiled tightly on her temples as if to protect her head from the slightly grimy touch of the outside world. She was tall and stout and loud, and just a bit unlikable. On her first day, she walked about the house examining every room, listening to the explanations, frowning as though something that displeased her greatly had pursued her from Earth and was now following her from room to room in the big house. She said little that first day, but she compensated for that immediately on the second day. She began to give instructions forged in the great foundry of her ignorance, and attempted to restructure the running of the household, the farm, and, through the tect, Earth as well. Evidently she had had great experience ordering people about in her former life and she saw no reason not to continue, despite the fact that nothing she said or did had any relevance to her new environment. She instituted some changes, such as the way the covers were tucked on the beds in the infirmary, but for the most part everyone learned to ignore her within the first thirty-six hours.

"Do you know what that woman said to me this morning?" asked Arthur one winter day. Arthur was of average height but exceptionally slender of frame. He wore eyeglasses, which on Earth was such a rarity that it might have been an eccentric affectation or part of his professional persona. He spoke in a small voice, high and thin, and consequently he had spent his life always getting the worst assignments and the least desirable portion of whatever was available. It was no different on Planet D.

Courane was playing chess with him. TECT made a better opponent, as far as challenge went, but Courane had no use for challenges. He preferred to see his adversary's face, to watch as the other player realized how cleverly Courane had laid his trap. "I can't guess," said Courane. He moved a knight to the side of the board where seemingly it was of little value and posed no immediate threat.

"She wanted to know why we didn't have all kinds of beautiful flowers around the house. She thought it would make our stay here more pleasant." He moved a bishop up to a more aggressive position.

Courane studied the chess board for only a few seconds before he confidently bit off an unprotected pawn with his queen. "How did you answer her?" he asked.

Arthur held his own queen above the board, suspended in air between Heaven and Earth like a martyred saint with doubts about her own ascension. "I told her one of the reasons we didn't have any flowers was that there is four feet of snow out there. Another reason is that plants pollinate differently here, so there aren't many pretty flowers. The ones that do have some color give off a fragrance like a hydrocarbon cracking tower." Arthur found the move he wanted and set his queen down, precisely in the center of the chosen square. "Mate," he said in an apologetic voice.

"Damn it," said Courane. His well-laid trap lay unsprung.

"What now?" asked Arthur.

"What do you mean? Another game? No, thanks. I think I'll stick with two-handed canasta against TECT from now on."

"Do you want to go for a walk?"

Courane looked at Arthur as if the little man had stripped a rather essential gear. "Outside? In the snow? Where would we go?"

"I don't know," said Arthur. "Didn't you ever go for walks back on Earth?"

Courane thought for a moment. No, even on Earth he didn't often feel the need to walk any great distance. Certainly not for the sole purpose of experiencing inclement weather. But then he saw that the real reason he didn't want to go outside was because he didn't like it outside. He was afraid of it. It wasn't home, it wasn't natural. It wasn't Earth; it was Planet D, and every bit of it was wild and threatening. The only safe place was in the house, and he never wanted to leave it. He felt unsafe even walking from the back porch to the barn. "Arthur, what would we do out there?"

Klára and Kenny came into the parlor and sat on a davenport across from the game table. "You could build snowblerds," said the boy.

"I want to call my husband," said Klára.

"Snowblerds," said Courane, sighing.

"I want my husband to arrange to come here," said the arrogant woman. Both men looked at her in silence. "What are you staring at?" she asked.

"This isn't a vacation weekend in St. Tropez," said Courane. "You just can't call Earth and order whatever you want."

"And why not? I've been dragged here to take care of a lot of drooling, filthy patients upstairs, completely against my will I might add, and I don't see why I shouldn't organize the work the way I know is best. Some of those people in the infirmary are little better than idiots and imbeciles, and I can't say much more for the rest of you. I've seen potato dumplings that had better sense."

"Klára–" said Arthur.

"You call me Mrs. Hriniak. My late mother and father called me Klára, but even Mr. Hriniak is afraid to do that."