Penumbra (6 page)

‘Why do you mention him, Josh?’

There were times when the program was just too advanced, Bennett thought. Would Ella have asked him that?

‘His doctor contacted me yesterday. Dad wants to exercise his right to undergo euthanasia.’

Ella frowned. She was seated cross-legged on the ground now, her hands placed primly on her bare knees. ‘What’s eutha— whatever?’

‘It means he wants to die. He wants to take a drug that’ll end his life. I’ve got to go and see him today. Talk it over.’ He stared into her big, unblinking eyes. ‘You don’t understand, do you?’

She pursed her lips, then nodded. ‘I think I do, Josh. You feel guilty.’

The program running the simulated identity hologram had a learning facility. Over the years it had integrated everything Bennett had said to Ella, analysed and interpreted his pronouncements for meaning.

‘It’s just . . .’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t want to do this, Ella. I can’t face him about this. I don’t want him to see that I understand his life’s been a terrible failure.’ After so long being so distant from his father, he realised, the time was coming when they would have to share an unaccustomed emotional proximity. Perhaps it was just that he didn’t want his father to see that he really cared.

Ella was smiling at him. ‘You’ll do okay, Josh,’ she said. ‘You know what you always tell me?’

‘What?’

She pulled her pretty, thinking-cap face. ‘What is it - something like, reality is never as bad as you expect it to be.’

He laughed. ‘I’ll remember that, Ella. Thanks.’

They stared at each other for a long time.

At last she said, ‘Josh,’ and slowly, watching him, she reached out a slim brown arm, fingers outstretched towards him.

He reached too, staying his hand so that his finger-tips were millimetres from her own, so as not to spoil the illusion. Like this, he told himself, in the long silence there was some kind of contact happening that could not be quantified by logic.

He dropped his hand. ‘I must be going, Ella.’

Still seated, she gave a quick wave in the air. ‘Come back soon, okay, Josh?’

‘I’ll be back.’ He stood, and the image of his sister disappeared before his eyes.

* * * *

4

It was almost ten when Bennett reached Mojave Town.

Automobiles were not allowed within the city limits, so he parked in the small lot on the perimeter. Rather than take an electric bus, he walked the two kilometres to the town centre.

He shared the wide streets with citizens out jogging or strolling, cleaning-drones that seemed to have very little to clean, and children on scooters. The habitats on either side of the streets occupied spacious, abundant gardens, an eclectic collection of the latest domes, mock-timber A-frames and more conventional carbon-fibre houses. The high foliage of a thousand evergreens shaded the town, and power was provided by tall masts which pierced the canopy and opened petal-like energy panels to the burning desert sun.

The Oasis Medical Centre occupied extensive grounds in the centre of town, over two dozen polycarbon units linked by a warren of diaphanous passages set in rolling landscaped gardens. Bennett strolled across the avenue and into the hospital. He found reception and was directed down long corridors to the consultancy rooms of Dr Samuels.

The door opened automatically at his approach, forestalling his attempt to knock. He stepped inside.

‘Mr Bennett, I’m glad you could make it. If you’d care to take a seat.’

Samuels, as informal in person as he had appeared on the vis-link that morning, moved from his desk and sat on the window-seat overlooking the rolling greenery. Bennett took the offered swivel seat and turned to face the doctor.

‘Mr Bennett, I appreciate how you must be feeling—’

Bennett heard himself saying: ‘My father’s been ill for over a year now. I’ve had time to consider the inevitable.’

Samuels nodded. ‘I know it’s always a hard decision for loved ones to make. I don’t know how you stand, ethically, on the issue of euthanasia, but if you’d like me to run through the legal side of things . . .’

Bennett shook his head. ‘I followed the state rulings when the bill was passed,’ he said. He paused. ‘I’ve nothing against euthanasia. If it’s really what my father wants . . .’ He hoped he didn’t sound too perfunctory.

Samuels was nodding. ‘Your father is bed-ridden, unable to feed himself, and in occasional pain. We administer the most effective analgesics, but there is only so much we can do to relieve his discomfort. Your father is failing on many fronts; the side-effects of the drugs he is on are becoming as difficult to treat as the primary complaints. In my opinion he is sound of mind. He has stated daily for the past week that he wishes to die, and in my opinion his quality of life is so severely reduced that euthanasia would be a mercy.’

‘Can I talk it over with him?’

‘By all means. I’ll take you to his room immediately.’ Samuels hesitated. ‘Are you aware that your father spends much of his time in VR?’

Bennett nodded. ‘I see him every couple of months.’

Samuels rose from the window-seat and gestured to the door. ‘Please, this way.’

As they passed down a series of corridors, Bennett experiencing a mounting sense of apprehension. Samuels cleared his throat. ‘The actual apparatus of euthanasia is ready to utilise almost immediately,’ he said, ‘should you decide to sign the usual legal forms and waivers.’

Bennett nodded, finding it hard to accept that they were talking about the termination of a life. It was more like a business transaction. ‘How soon? I mean—’

‘That is entirely up to your father. As long as it takes him to compose himself.’

‘And I can be with him?’

‘Of course. Here we are.’ Samuels paused before a white door and turned to Bennett. ‘Lately your father has refused to exit the VR site. He finds it. . . comforting. He will only see visitors in the net.’

Bennett stared at the doctor. ‘And you say he’s of sound mind?’

‘In my opinion, yes, Mr Bennett. His retreat to the VR site is his way of... of coping with his decision to die. As you will see for yourself.’

Bennett stepped into a sunlit room occupied by a narrow bed, banks of medical apparatus, a VR module and a chair.

His father lay on the bed. He had always been tall, somewhat martial, but near death, laid out as if in preparation for his exit, he seemed elongated, whittled down to a wasted minimum of flesh and bone, stripped of dignity. He wore a grey one-piece VR suit and wraparound glasses. So many leads issued from the suit that Bennett was unable to discern the VR links from the tubes pumping blood, plasma and drugs into the hundred-and-three-year-old body. His mouth was open and drooling. Occasionally his limbs twitched in reaction to some event in the make-believe VR world, giving lie to the notion that he had already died. Beside the bed a cardiogram bleeped with his feeble heartbeat.

Bennett sat down. ‘He’s so wasted . . .’ he began.

‘He’s been refusing food, so we’ve had to feed him intravenously.’ Samuels passed him a pair of VR glasses.

‘If you’d care to put these on, I’ll patch you into your father’s site.’

Bennett slipped the glasses over his eyes. The room went dark and the ear-pieces muffled all sound.

He waited, unsure whether to be grateful he was being spared a real-world confrontation with his father, or fearful of what was to follow.

He was jolted by a sudden flare of colour. His vision adjusted and he stared out across a vast expanse of rolling grassland, dotted here and there with sumptuous habitat domes. He was surprised by the clarity of the vision: the panorama of greensward and cloudless blue sky was as real as the latest holographic images. He felt as if he could reach out and actually touch the grass before him. His father had obviously gone to some expense to obtain the very best programming software.

‘Joshua! Is that you, boy?’

His father’s voice - recognisably his father’s voice, but changed, deeper of timbre, confident - sounded in the ear-piece of the glasses, coming from behind him. His heart set up a steady pounding.

He turned and stared, shocked, at the image of his father. He was no longer the skeletal old man on the bed - not that Bennett had expected him to be. But, also, he had not expected to see this apparition from the past. The image of his father was as he had been thirty years ago, in his seventies. Tall and balding, thin-faced and stern, he stood with his hands behind his back, staring at his son with unspoken censure.

‘Joshua, answer me for mercy’s sake!’

He found his voice at last. ‘Dad.’

His father peered at him. ‘It’s sometimes hard to tell who’s wearing those damned glasses. They’re supposed to scan a likeness of the user’s face direct to the site, but they’re none too accurate. The rest of the programming works like a dream, though.’ He gestured around him at the rolling greensward. ‘What do you think, Joshua?’

‘It’s great, really great.’ Seeing his father here like this, an apparition from his boyhood, Bennett felt like a six-year-old again, dominated by the presence of the man he had always secretly feared.

‘I’m pleased you decided to visit at last. Where the hell have you been, boy?’

‘I’ve been working, Dad. I work, remember?’ He stared at the face of his miraculously rejuvenated father, and the memories flooded back.

‘I suppose that smarmy creep Samuels has filled you in?’

Bennett nodded. ‘That’s why I’m here.’

His father gave him an intimidating glare. ‘And I take it you have no objections to granting your consent.’

Bennett swallowed. ‘No. No, of course not.’

His father sniffed. ‘Thought not,’ he said, and then, more to himself: ‘You always were amenable to reason.’ He gestured Bennett to follow him as he set off at a brisk pace across the grass.

Bennett recalled how to use the VR glasses and tipped his head forward. His vision seemed to float across the ground in the wake of his father.

‘I have something to show you, Joshua,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘Over here.’

They approached the nearest dome and paused before the semi-circular plinth of steps at its base. His father lodged a foot on the bottom step and regarded Bennett.

‘Do you know where we are, boy?’

Bennett stared at the dome. ‘I don’t recognise it . . .’ The dome was like hundreds of others he saw every day when on Earth.

‘I don’t mean the dome, you numbskull. This!’ He flung out a hand at the greensward. ‘This site. Do you know where we are?’

Bennett shook his head. ‘I give in,’ he said. ‘Tell me.’

His father gave a broad grin. ‘This is Heaven, boy. Take a good look round at Heaven.’

His mouth was suddenly dry. He could only stare at his father. He wondered why he should be so shocked that, this close to the end, his father had finally lost his reason.

‘What do you think, Joshua?’ he laughed. ‘Now just you wait until you see who I’ve got. . .’ And he turned and shouted into the dome. ‘Mother! Come out here - look who’s come visiting!’

As Bennett stared, the hatch opened and his mother - or rather a version of his mother in her fifties - stepped from the dome. She peered down at Bennett, her face scoured of pleasure by years of fundamentalist belief, and shook her head. ‘Josh? It doesn’t look like Josh to me.’

‘How did you do that, Dad?’ Bennett asked.