A Thousand Deaths (5 page)

"The tall man? Bald? From some place in North America? I met him briefly. He said he'd be around to take me upstairs. That was hours ago."

"Ah, well. This is a busy working farm. We'll try to fit you into the routine as quickly and smoothly as we can. We really need you. We have four people in the infirmary and we haven't had anyone sent in a long time."

"How often do you get new recruits?" asked Courane.

"Oh, I'd guess about every couple of months. Our months, not Earth months." The farm's year was divided into fifteen months, each with about thirty-five days. Courane would have to get used to the planet's seasons. The winter was harder, the summer was milder, and spring and fall didn't seem to last very long at all.

"Are all your new people like me?"

"Like you?" she asked, not understanding what he meant.

"Misfit types, eliminated by TECT."

Molly looked away. "One thing—what was your name?"

"Call me Sandy."

She smiled again. "All right, Sandy. The first thing you learn is that you never pry into anyone else's past. If someone wants to talk about it, fine, but you don't ask. Do you understand?"

Sure.

"Number two. We haven't been eliminated. The word we like to use is 'excarcerated.' We made it up, and it's a nice-sounding substitute for 'exiled' and we know it. But that's the word we use whenever we discuss our situation, which we don't do very often."

"I'll remember that. Why don't you tell me about the other people who live here?"

"No," said Molly, "I have to get back outside. The farm workers will be coming in soon, and you can meet them all then. Sheldon will be around to show you everything, and then there's your first supper in about, oh, an hour and a half. In the meantime, why don't you use the tect? It's in the den, down the corridor there, second door on the right."

"Good," said Courane.

"I'll see you at supper then. I hope you're hungry." Before Courane could answer, she turned and left the room.

Sheldon found him later, sitting at the tect, playing a game of cribbage against the computer. "Hello," said the bald man.

Courane looked up and recognized him. He cleared the screen of the console. "Hello," he said. "I was only—" He felt just a bit guilty about tying up the colony's only link to Earth with his game.

"Let's take a walk. I'll show you the grounds, the farm, the barn, and the animals. Then we'll go upstairs."

Courane was struck by the way he said the last words. "Both you and Molly speak about 'upstairs' in a kind of hushed voice. What do you have up there?"

The pained look on Sheldon's face made Courane realize he had made just the kind of social error he had been trying to avoid. "Let's look around the farm then, all right?" said Sheldon. Courane stood up wordlessly.

 

Dreams. Courane sat up in the cold dawn and tried to remember. His dreams had become much more vivid, more like waking memories, like the visions that possessed him during the day. Like those memories, they faded quickly, mocking his vain attempts to hold on to them, to preserve them for melancholy examination. He had dreamed of the house and the people, but now he couldn't recall who they were or what they looked like. The house—

The sun—he called it the sun, but it wasn't, of course; it was Epsilon Eridani—was peering over the hills that bordered the farther limits of this desert of stones. That was the way he had to go. The house was that way. The river was beyond the hills, he remembered. Many times in the months he had been on this world, he had wandered away from the farm into those hills, which now were gray with distance and dim with the mists of morning. He knew where he was, roughly speaking, and he felt good. It would take a couple of days more to cross the desert, another day among the hills themselves, and then he would find the river. How far upriver he was from the farm might determine if he'd live or die.

He was lucid for the first time in days. He looked around, startled by how far he had marched while his mind was numbed. He shivered and wished that he had a coat. It might have been that he began the journey with more protective clothing, but he could easily have discarded it all when he wasn't thinking clearly.

The day's labor called him. He stood and stretched and scratched his head. Then, when he could avoid it no longer, he turned to look at the corpse beside him.

 

"I knew it," Courane's mother said. "I knew it from the very start. I knew it, I knew it, I knew it. I always knew it." She sat at the dining table and wept. She didn't seem to notice that neither her husband nor her son were eating. Courane's father shrugged helplessly.

"Don't look at it that way, Mom," said Courane. "I'm really excited about the whole thing. It will be a good experience for me. You know how I've always liked being in the country. You remember how much I liked going to camp when I was a kid."

"A good experience," she said. "Sandy, an experience is something you have and then you tell all your friends about. An experience is something you come home after. Sandy, this isn't an experience you're going to have. You're going away to some
planet,
for God's sake."

"Marie," said Courane's father, "the boy doesn't need this. Come on, stop crying. Be glad to see him."

She just looked at her husband with a strange, accusing expression. She said nothing more for a long time.

After the dinner, they sat in the living room. "I've missed you, and I've missed this town," said Courane sadly.

"Your girlfriend has been asking about you," said his mother. "Now what am I going to tell her?"

"Girl? What girl?"

"You know," said his father, "oh, what's her name? The girl who works for Dr. Klopst."

"Lilli? With the red hair?"

His mother nodded. "She hinted that you were going to ask her to marry you, before you went away to Pilessio. What am I going to tell her?"

"Maybe she'll wait for you," said Courane's father.

"Wait?"

"Until you come back," said his mother in a quiet voice.

"When I come back, it will probably be a long time from now. I have the feeling TECT is going to keep me there a long while. Until I prove myself."

"I knew it," said his mother again. Her eyes were dry now, but so sorrowful and so desolate that neither man could meet her gaze. "I knew it from the very beginning," she whispered.

 

On the first floor of the large house were the parlor, the community rooms, the spacious den, the kitchen and dining room, and smaller rooms given over to activities that were both practical and entertaining. On the second floor were sleeping quarters. On the third floor, under the sloping roof, poorly ventilated and dimly lit, was the infirmary. There were always occupied beds in the infirmary.

Before his first meal on the new world, Courane was led upstairs to the infirmary to watch an old woman die. "Her name is Zofia," said Sheldon in a low voice.

"I see," whispered Courane. He was intensely uncomfortable. He had not had a great deal of experience on Earth with watching strangers die. Perhaps here it was a custom, possibly a ritual of great significance, so he did his best to play whatever part was now his. He was agitated, though, because all the normal standards of his old life had been left behind when he passed through the gate, and there was a new set to learn immediately. He would have to learn them one by one, the way a child learns, and he would make more than one unpleasant and painful discovery along the way. He was hungry—he hadn't eaten since dinner with his parents the day before—but mentioning that fact to Sheldon couldn't possibly be good manners. Not in front of the old woman, who didn't look as though she had another half hour in her.

He could be wrong, of course. Complaining of hunger at someone else's deathbed might well be accepted behavior here. On Planet D.

"She was a nice lady," said Sheldon.

"Ah," said Courane. "I'm sorry for her, then."

"No need to be."

"Ah," said Courane. He decided to think about Sheldon's remark later. It made him feel strange.

In another bed beside the old woman's was a young man about Courane's age. His name was Carmine. He stared at Courane and Sheldon with a blank expression. He seemed to be resting comfortably. He was well-groomed and clean-shaven and his stiff gray gown was fresh and clean. He lay in the bed unmoving, his hands resting limply upon the coarse sheet. When Courane and Sheldon moved away, Carmine's eyes did not follow them.

"He looks drugged," said Courane. "Are any of you qualified to care for these people? He seems over-medicated."

"Well, he's not. We're advised about all our medical problems through our tect unit. We don't do anything that isn't prescribed by TECT."

"What's his condition, then?"

Sheldon's face clouded briefly. "He's dying."

"Do you mean today?" asked Courane. If both Zofia and Carmine were expecting the angel of death before dinner, then perhaps this tour was something more peculiar than Courane guessed. Maybe it was a favorite form of entertainment, and Courane was being given a rare privilege.

"No," said Sheldon, "only the old woman will die today. Carmine has about a month left. Neurological disorder." Sheldon turned away and went to the next bed. There was a heavy black woman sitting up with a puzzled look on her face. "Iola?" said Sheldon softly.

She turned her face toward Courane and opened her mouth. She said nothing, but her mouth stayed open. A bright line of saliva spilled down her chin.

"Iola, how are you today?" asked Sheldon. "Are you hungry?"

Slowly she turned her head from Courane to Sheldon. She said nothing.

"Do you hurt anywhere, Iola?"

The two men waited a moment, but there was no response. "What is she suffering from?" asked Courane.

Sheldon gave a quick, wry smile. "TECT calls it 'D syndrome.' That doesn't tell us much. There's no treatment for it, unfortunately."

"Then she's dying, too?"
 

"Yes."

Courane began to realize that there was a complete lack of compassion in TECT, if the machine could not be made to relent even in the case of imminent death. These three people may not have been curable, even with the facilities on Earth, but their families would have had the consolation of being with them at the end, and the patients would have been given the courtesy of dying at home. That sort of kindness and consideration was what had been lost when the last human Representative abdicated in favor of the electronic thinking system.

"And that boy?" Courane indicated a fourth patient.

"Markie," said the boy.

"Markie's nine years old," said Sheldon. "His birthday was just last week. Do you remember, Markie?"

"Markie," said the boy.

Courane looked at Sheldon.

"Markie." This time the boy's voice sounded just a bit hesitant.

"Let's go back downstairs. You'll want to rest before dinner. If Zofia starts to slip, someone on duty here will call us in time."

Courane didn't know what to say. "Oh, good," he said. He felt terrible.

 

"I can do it," murmured Courane as he trudged across the stones. The woman's body was heavy, but he never thought of abandoning it. He would make it back to the house with her corpse, or they would both spend eternity in the desert, lost forever beneath the alien stars. "I can do it." In his mind, Courane faced the tect unit—a tect unit, an unspecified tect unit. Perhaps it was the tect in his parents' home, the tect at the factory in Tokyo, the tect at the University of Pilessio, the tect in the farmhouse beside the river on Planet D. All these voices of TECT had commanded him, and Courane had always accepted TECT's directions in the same spirit. He was willing to accept TECT's judgments because he himself had forced them. Courane had made TECT's orders inevitable with his failures. Whatever happened to him was only in keeping with the justice of TECT's brutal reasoning.

Movement startled Courane. He stopped and put the corpse down on the stones. It wasn't his habit to take frequent rest stops during the day's march, but he was disturbed in the midst of his reverie. A shadow flickered across the ground, and Courane looked up into the hazy sky. He saw a bird circling not very high above him. He couldn't tell what kind of bird it was. On Earth he might have thought of a buzzard, but as far as he knew there weren't any carrion birds of that type in the desert. There was too little for them to eat. But then, Courane admitted, he could hardly be called an expert on this world's wildlife. He had lived on the planet for little more than twenty months, a year and a third by the colony's reckoning. No one had done much study in the local natural history; only the plants and animals immediately essential to the colonists had been closely examined. Perhaps there were large scavengers living near the desert, alien buzzards waiting for Courane to die before swooping down. Courane laughed with cracked lips. Those buzzards would be surprised when they lighted by the man's body. He wondered how the birds would find the meal. Courane watched the black shape making circles overhead, like ghostly haloes traced by a ravenous angel. "I can do it, Mom, don't be sad," he murmured. "It's my decision and I'm happy." He sat down beside the corpse because he had already forgotten what his undertaking meant.

 

Death is difficult. Countless generations of people before us have passed along this message. Dying is not particularly tough, but death itself is an aggravation.

Dying is easy. The expiring person has little to do; it's almost as though the hard part is done for him. The really tedious details are left to the survivors and the attendant hangers-on. Scenes at the deathbed are often grotesque and cruel, but only because the survivors make it that way. How peaceful and untroubled a dying man seems, as soothing death draws the final veil over his eyes. The mourning is usually already in progress at this point, and will continue as long as anyone can derive the least satisfaction from it. But before the moment of death the mourners are put through a difficult time, a passage of fear and lying and ugliness that will remain in the memory long after the loved one himself has begun to fade.