A Thousand Deaths (6 page)

Was this some kind of lesson, then? Was Sheldon trying to pass on the wisdom learned in the community's hundred and twenty- our years on Planet D? Courane expected some kind of initiation into the ways of the group, but starting right out, bango, with the last agonies of an old woman gave Courane a morbid feeling he did not enjoy. Surely there were more profitable ways to pass this day....

But this wasn't Earth, he told himself. That fact was being thrown at him at every turn. And these people had developed their own culture, and it was bound to be a bit odd, having been cut off from Earth for so long. But they could have the decency to introduce him slowly. They could have a little more respect for his unprepared feelings.

It was the morning following Courane's arrival before Zofia was ready to let go for the last time. Word came down from the infirmary and everyone dropped his chores to hurry to her bedside. It was a kind of binding social ritual and communion as well. Courane observed it rather than take any part in it. He found it just a bit distasteful, so he stood to one side and studied the eight watchers at the old woman's bedside. They whispered to each other with solemn faces. Sheldon stood with Alohilani and the older boy, Kenny. Molly talked with two men, one named Daan; Courane didn't recall the name of the other. He looked at each person there and tried to remember their names and what they had said to him. These were the people he would be living with now; these people were his family. He had better learn to like them or, failing that, to tolerate them for the benefit of the community. There was a short black man named Fletcher, who was arrogant and possibly quite mean. There was a skinny woman named Goldie, who had a hatchet face and a shrill voice; Courane knew nothing more about her.

It wasn't, all in all, the sort of crew he would want to get stuck with in a lifeboat. But in a way, that's exactly what had happened.

Alohilani left the group and came to Courane's side. "Sandy?" she said. "Do I have your name right?"

"Yes. And I'm not sure I have the pronunciation of yours down, either."

She laughed. It was a lovely sound. "Most people call me Lani. It's easier. You seem shy."

Courane looked down uncomfortably at the floor. "I am, a little. I haven't been here a full day and I don't really know anyone very well. I don't feel as though I belong here yet, and here I am at the bed of an old woman, waiting for her to die."

Alohilani put a graceful hand on Courane's arm. "You belong here," she said in a low voice. "You aren't here by mistake, are you?"

Courane gave an ironic laugh. "No," he said.

"None of us is. And here we can look at some natural events in a person's life more clearly than we did in our old lives. We see these things as if for the first time. They become more important. In a way, life here is more gracious. Zofia can die with dignity here. You know what it would be like for her in a nursing home back on Earth."

Courane nodded. What she meant was that their lives had been stripped of all conveniences, the necessary ones as well as those that merely cluttered up living. Some of those conveniences were for the benefit of the community, while others were for the individual. He couldn't help thinking that despite her attitude, they had all lost much more than they had gained in coming here. But he said none of this to her. At that moment, he knew that he never wanted to say or do anything to disturb her. He didn't want to do anything that would make her take her slender suntanned hand away.

Molly joined them. "Zofia has passed away," she said, curiously in the same whisper everyone used on the third floor. Courane glanced around; no one in the other occupied beds would understand their conversation, even if they could overhear it. "She always trusted God, she trusted that the Lord would give her the grace to endure her pain."

"I wish someone would do that for me," said Courane.

Molly looked astonished. "Don't worry," she said. "You'll learn to take up your burden. That's part of the purpose of our group, to help the newcomers accept the difficulties of life here. This is the challenge TECT has set you, and if you meet it you will be rewarded with growth and peace and the unshakable faith to overcome anything, including death. Zofia showed that."

To Courane's mind, Zofia had probably been so far gone she hadn't known who or where she was. But he didn't say anything to Molly. He could make an educated guess now at what had landed Molly on Planet D. On Earth she had likely held a civil service job as a paid minority member, probably a Christian. It was against the law to remain in character after working hours, but it seemed to Courane that Molly had done just that. It was an unusual effect of these jobs; some people were so weak and impressionable that after a while they began to believe they truly were what they had been hired to impersonate. Under the old Representatives, that had been a capital offense. These days, deluded people like Molly were merely excised from the community at large. Now Courane and the others on the farm would have to put up with her.

"If you let the Lord show you the way, He will help you in your troubles. All you have to do is welcome your cross and follow in His way. It will all be made easy for you."

Courane was embarrassed for her. "It was always the day-to-day things that caused me the most worry," he said. "I don't want to think about dying for a long time yet." He smiled at Molly apologetically.

"I'll pray for you," she said. She left them and went downstairs with the others.

"We ought to go, too," said Alohilani. She noticed that her hand still rested on Courane's arm, and she self-consciously dropped it to her side.

"What about Zofia now? Will there be a graveside service?"

She led him downstairs. "Arthur will take care of all that," she said.

Arthur. That was the name of the other man. Eleven people, three of them confined to the infirmary, and himself. And all of them just a little unsavory in one way or another. On the second best of all possible worlds.

 

In the month of Nero, after a wearying autumn, when the calendar said there was still twenty-five weeks until spring, when the snow piled against the house promised that winter would be hard and long, when the fireplaces in the house failed to warm anyone sufficiently, when the stored food of the summer grew tiresome in its lack of variety, when the confinement in the house became worse than the prison Courane had expected, at last he was driven to learn what he could do for himself and the other prisoners. He went to Daan.

"You're wrong," said the older man. "This isn't a prison. We're not being punished. We're here to serve these people."

Courane sat in a chair beside the tect. Daan was searching through the vast library of medical information available through TECT. "I don't understand," said Courane.

"It's simple. Everyone around us is seriously ill. That's why they're here. Our job is to take care of them now. That's why
we're
here." Daan didn't look away from the tect's console.
 

"Then is this a prison or a hospital?"

Daan turned around to face the young man. "Haven't you ever realized that they're both the same thing?"

Courane waved the remark away; it had been too facile, too empty of practical meaning. "I've been here for more than five months, and I've watched Zofia, Carmine, and Iola die. And upstairs right now there are three more people in the infirmary waiting for their turn to die, too. One of them is the woman I love. Why do they keep sending these poor people to us? What do they expect us to do for them here?"

Daan shook his head. "They expect us to stay out of Earth's way. It's a very efficient system, from TECT's point of view." He typed in a question to the great machine. "It's no accident that everyone dies of the same symptoms. I want to find out everything TECT knows about the disease and the colony's history."
 

"What are we? Some kind of leper colony?"
 

Daan held up a hand for Courane to be quiet. "TECT calls it 'D syndrome.' That doesn't tell us much. Let's see what else it knows." He motioned that Courane should take a look at the screen.

 

**KOENRAAD, Daan: 
The first mention is recorded in a note dated 22 September, 114 BT, three years after the founding of the colony on Planet D. Many further discussions of D fever or D syndrome have been added in the one hundred twenty-two years since. Common symptoms involve the typical histopathologic appearance of the brain (i.e., subacute spongiform encephalopathy) in association with a rapidly progressive organic dementia. Also noted were rapid deterioration of pyramidal tracts, anterior horn cells, and the extrapyramidal system. EEG is characterized by periodic sharp waves, spikes, and suppression bursts. Vision is found to be unimpaired in most documented cases. There is often marked attendant fever elevation. Evidence supports antigen involvement. Often noted were akinetic mutism and myoclonic jerks in the middle to final stages, increasing in severity and frequency up to the point of death. Such obvious characteristics as anxiety, restlessness, confusion, lack of concentration, impairment of both long- and short-term memory may be seen separately or in combination, at any stage in the progression of the disease, and may disappear entirely only to reappear at some later stage. Patient's condition deteriorates rapidly after the middle stage, leading to such common conditions as incontinence and general helplessness. In the last stage, the patient is completely bedridden and falls into an irreversible vegetative state until death follows, either from the effects of D syndrome itself or other simultaneous conditions or diseases**

 

There was silence in the tect room for a moment. Daan looked at Courane, who was thoughtfully chewing his lip. "Does any of that make any sense to you?" asked Daan.

"Sure," said Courane. "D syndrome isn't any more lethal than your average firing squad. Can't you make that machine talk in plain language?"

"I don't think it knows any. You have to know how to ask the right questions. Anything you want to ask?"

Courane thought for a few seconds. "Yes," he said, "there's one thing that worries me. They're sending us all of these people with D syndrome to take care of, and I want to know if the disease is contagious."

Daan looked at Courane and nodded solemnly. "If it is, we might be on the right track." Daan typed in the question.

 

**KOENRAAD, Daan: 
No, D syndrome is not contagious**

 

"Well, that's a relief," said Courane.
 

"That's a relief," said Daan.

"None of the rest of that medical jargon means anything to me. Are we going to have to go through it word by word?"

"I don't know," said Daan. "I don't think I can face that. I've been trying to puzzle this business out for weeks, and I'm tired of it. That's all TECT knows about D syndrome; no suggestion as to cause or cure, no suggested treatments, no hints about prevention. In one hundred and twenty-five years, all we have is a description of the symptoms."

"Lani's upstairs right now, having spasms and—what did it call them? 'Myoclonic jerks.' And she's going to die unless I can find some way of helping her."

Daan let out a deep breath. "Then I turn it all over to you. If anything at all is done for the poor suckers who come after us, it will have to be up to you. I give up." He stood and stared at the unwinking green glow of the console.

There was silence in the room for a moment. The two men looked at the impassive machine. There was the thump of snow falling from the roof. It was very cold and lonely in the house.

 

Two months after Courane's arrival, on the sixteenth of Tiber, Sheldon and Courane were harvesting vegetables. They were working in a patch of native beans. The work was hard and tiring, and the sun scorched them as they bent to pluck the ripe beans from the scruffy bushes. "I used to hate beans," said Sheldon. "Back home. Back on Earth. I wouldn't come near beans for anything."

"I didn't like vegetables either," said Courane. "But I liked beans all right."

"My wife used to eat vegetables all the time. She was one of these people who think you have to eat a ton of vegetables every week or you end up in the poorhouse."

Courane stood up, leaning backward to stretch his aching back muscles. "What do vegetables have to do with having money?"

Sheldon looked up at him and smiled. "She was never clear about that," he said. He took a long bean and cracked it in half. "You have to boil the hell out of these things to make them edible. And then, even after that, they aren't any fun. They taste like wads of wet paper."

Courane shrugged. 'You don't have a photograph of your wife, do you? I mean, I've never seen one."

"No, I forgot it. Can you believe that? I was in a state of shock when they told me I had twelve hours before they were sending me here. And I don't think I really believed it. I know I thought it was some kind of mistake, that I'd be home in a day or two. My wife never found out the whole story. Maybe she still doesn't know. She was so beautiful. I hope TECT is taking care of her, or else she's living with my parents now. She had the most beautiful brown eyes you ever saw. And her hair was..."

Sheldon paused, and after a few seconds Courane became concerned. He saw the frightened look on his friend's face, and he understood the meaning of the simple memory lapse. It was the first symptom.

"Sandy," said Sheldon, his voice trembling.

"It's all right, Sheldon," said Courane softly.

Sheldon stood up and grabbed Courane's shoulders. "Her hair." Sheldon's voice was barely a whisper, but his eyes were wide and staring. "Her hair," he murmured. And then he began to cry like a child.

 

 

 

Three

 

 

It was still dark when Courane awoke. He was lying on his face on the smooth pebbles of the desert floor. His right hand and arm were caught under his body and felt numb. He rolled over on his left side, but he still couldn't get any feeling in the arm. He turned on his back and raised the right arm with his left hand. He put it gently on his stomach. Then he stared up into the sky.