As the days passed I went through a number of different states of mind about them. For a time I simply disliked them for the vulgarity of the way they displayed their luck. Then I began to pity them: two of the women were obese, and I tried to imagine what an eternity of waddling breathlessness would be like. Then I felt sorry for them all, seeing them as plain people to whom great fortune had come late in life, and celebrating it in the only way they knew how. Soon afterwards I underwent a period of self-dislike, knowing that I was patronizing them and that I was no better than them, just younger and healthier.
Because of the link between us, because I was just like them, I several times was tempted to approach them and find out what they thought about the prize. Perhaps they had the same doubts about it as I had; I only assumed they were hurrying to salvation, and did not know for sure. But the thought of being drawn into their card-playing, good-natured drinking circle deterred me. They would be, inevitably, as interested in me as I could not help being interested in them.
I tried to understand this stand-offishness and explain it to myself. Because I was unsure of my own intentions I did not wish to have to explain myself, either to them or to me. I frequently overheard snatches of their conversations: rambling and imprecise, they often spoke of what they were going to do “afterwards”. One of the men was convinced that great wealth and influence would be his after he left Collago. The other kept repeating that he would be “set up for life”, as if he only needed enough athanasia to see him through the rest of his retirement, a nice little nest egg to tell his grandchildren about.
I knew, though, that if someone asked me what use I should put my own long life to, my answer would be equally vague. I too would utter homilies about embarking on good works in the community, or returning to university, or joining the Peace Movement. Each of these would be untrue, but they were the only things I could think of as worthwhile, as sufficient moral excuse for accepting the treatment.
The best use to which I could put a long life would be the selfish one of living for a long time, of avoiding death, of being perpetually twenty-nine years old. My only ambition for “afterwards” was to travel around the islands with Seri.
As the voyage progressed I therefore slipped into a more introspective mood than ever before, feeling unaccountably sad about what I had become involved in. I concentrated on Seri, I watched the ever-changing islands. The names slipped by—Tumo, Lanna, Winho, Salay, Ia, Lillen-cay, Paneron, Junno—some of them names I had heard, some of them not. We were a long way south now, and for a time we could see the distant coast of the wild southern continent: here the Qataari Peninsula reached north wards into the islands, stacked high behind rocky cliffs, but be yond this the land receded southwards and the illusion of endless sea returned, more temperate in this latitude. After the barren appearance of some of the islands in the tropics, the scenery here was soothing to the eye: it was greener and more forested, with tidy towns rising up the hills from the sea, and domestic farm animals grazing, and cultivated crops and orchards. The cargoes we loaded and unloaded also revealed the gradual southwards progress; we carried bulk food and oils and machinery in the equatorial seas, later we carried grapes and pomegranates and beer, later still it was cheese and apples and books.
Once I said to Seri: “Let’s get off. I want to see this place.”
The island was Ia, a large, wooded island with sawmills and shipyards. Watching from the deck I liked the way Ia Town was laid out, and I admired the unhurried efficiency of the docks. Ia was an island I wanted to walk in, and sit on grass and smell the earth. From the look of the place you could visualize cold springs and wild flowers and whitewashed farmhouses.
Seri, suntanned from her long idle hours on deck, was beside me as I leaned on the rail.
“We’ll never get to Collago if we do.”
“No more ships?”
“No more resolution. We can always come back here.”
Seri had the will to get me to Collago. She remained something of a mystery to me, however much time we spent together. We never talked together very much, and so we argued rarely; by the same token, though, we reached a level of intimacy beyond which it seemed we would never proceed. The plans for island hopping were hers. I was included in them, and included to the extent that when once I revealed a hesitancy about them she was prepared to abandon them, but I felt I was incidental to them. Her interest in lovemaking was disconcertingly sporadic. Sometimes we would crawl into our tiny bunk in the cramped cabin, and she would say she was too tired or too hot, and that would be the end of it; at other times she would exhaust me with her passions. She was sometimes intensely caring and affectionate, and I liked that. When we talked she asked me all sorts of questions about myself and my past life, yet about herself she was uncommunicative.
Throughout the long voyage, as my doubts about the athanasia treatment remained, the relationship with Seri was dogged by a growing feeling of my own inadequacy. When I was apart from her—when she sunbathed alone, or I was in the bar or was speculating about my fellow would-be immortals—I could not help but wonder what she saw in me, I obviously fulfilled some need in her, but it seemed an unselective need. I sometimes had a suspicion that if someone else came along she would leave me for him. But no one else appeared, and in general I judged it better not to question what was in many ways an ideal, casual friendship.
Towards the end I unpacked my long-neglected manuscript, and took it to the bar, intending to read it through.
It was now two years since I had finished work on it, and it was strange to hold the loose pages again and remember the period I had been writing them. I wondered if I had left it too long, if I had grown away from the person who had tried to resolve a temporary crisis by committing himself to the permanence of the written word. As we grow we do not see ourselves changing—there is the apparent continuity of the mirror, the daily awareness of immediate past—and it takes the reminders of old photo graphs or old friends to point out the differences. Two years was a substantial period, yet for all that time I had been in a sort of stasis.
In that sense, my attempt to define myself had been a success. By describing my past I had intended to shape my future. If I believed that my true identity was contained in the pages, then I had never left them.
The manuscript was yellowing and the corners of the pages were curled. I slipped off the elastic band that held them all together, and started to read.
The first thing I noticed came as a surprise. In the first two or three lines I had written that I was twenty-nine years old, noting it as one of the few certainties in my life.
Yet this must have been a conceit, a falsification. I had written the manuscript two years ago.
At first this confused me, and I tried to remember what I had had in mind. Then I saw that it was perhaps a clue to understanding the rest of the text. In a sense, it helped account for the two years of stagnation that had followed: my writing had already taken itself into account, disallowing further progress.
I read on, trying to identify with the mind that had produced the manuscript and finding, against initial expectations, that I could do so with ease. After I had read only a few chapters, much of which dealt with my relationship with my sister, I felt I needed to read no more. The manuscript confirmed what I had known all along, that my attempt to reach a higher, better truth had been successful. The metaphors lived, and my identity was defined amongst them.
I was alone in the bar; Seri had gone early to our cabin. I sat by myself for another hour, thinking over my uncertainties and reflecting on the irony that the only thing in the world I knew for sure was a rather tattered stack of typewritten pages. Then, exhausted with myself and tired of my endless inner concerns, I went below to sleep.
The next morning, at last, we came to Collago.
13
When I first won the lottery, and realized that athanasia was mine for the taking, I had tried to imagine what the clinic on Collago would be like. I visualize
d a gleaming glass-and-steel skyscraper, filled with modern medical equipment, and doctors and nurses moving about the shining corridors and wards with purpose and expertise. Relaxing in the landscaped gardens would be the new immortals, perhaps reclining in bath chairs with blankets over their legs and cushions behind their heads, while orderlies wheeled them to admire the profusion of flowerbeds. Somewhere there would be a gymnasium, where rejuvenated muscles would be exercised; perhaps there would even be a university, where newly acquired wisdom could be disseminated.
The photographs I saw in the office in Muriseay made literal whatever imaginings I might have had. These I had reacted against: the smiling faces, the saturated colours, the blatant attempt to sell me something I had already unwittingly purchased. The clinic, as depicted in the brochure, looked as if it would be somewhere between a health farm and a ski-resort, with physical well-being, exercise and social intercourse predominating.
The ways of the Archipelago were always surprising me, though, for I found none of this. The brochure was a lie, but only in the way all brochures are lies. Everything in the pictures was there to be seen, although the faces were different and now there was no photographer to be smiling for, but when I saw the place for myself everything seemed subtly different. Brochures, by omission, encourage you to bring your own wishes to what you do not see. I had assumed, for instance, that the clinic was in open countryside, but this was the product of careful choice of photographic angle, because it was on the very edge of Collago Town itself. Then I had thought that the gardens and chalets and antiseptic corridors were all there was of the place, but the pictures had not shown the central administrative building. This, an incongruous, dark-brick mansion, loomed over the tastefully spaced wooden chalets. That the interior of the place had been gutted, modernized and equipped with advanced medical facilities I discovered later, but the first sight of the old house gave one an oddly sinister feeling; it had the quality of moor and wind to it, as if it had been transplanted from some romantic melodrama of the past.
We had been met from the ship by a modern minibus operated by the clinic. A driver had stacked our baggage in the back of the vehicle, while a young woman, wearing the Lotterie uniform, took a note of our names. As I guessed, my five fellow passengers had not realized I was one of them. While we drove up the hilly streets of Collago Town, there was an almost palpable sense that Seri and I were interlopers in a private party.
Then we came to the clinic grounds, and our first sight of the place. The incongruities registered themselves, but what I noticed most was how small it was.
“Is this all there is?” I said quietly to Seri.
“What do you want, a whole town?”
“But it seems so small. No wonder they can only treat a few people at a time.”
“The capacity’s nothing to do with size. It’s the manufacture of the drugs which is the problem.”
“Even so, where’s the computer, where do they keep all the files?”
“It’s all done here, as far as I know.”
“But the clerical work alone…”
It was a minor distraction, but my weeks of self-questioning had given me the habit of doubt. Unless there were more premises elsewhere, the Lotterie-Collago could not operate on its pan-national scale from this place. And the tickets would have to be printed somewhere; the Lotterie would hardly subcontract the work, with all the risk of fraud.
I wanted to ask Seri, but I suddenly felt I should be careful what I said. The bus we were in was tiny, the seats crammed close together. The uniformed young woman, standing at the front beside the driver, was not showing much interest in us but she would be in easy hearing of me if I spoke in normal tones.
The bus drove around to the far side of the house; on this side there were apparently no more outbuildings. The gardens stretched away for some distance, blending imperceptibly with wild ground beyond.
We alighted with the other people and went in through a doorway. We passed through a bare hall and went into a large reception area at the side. Unlike the other people I was carrying my luggage: the holdall, which I slung over my shoulder. My five fellow passengers were now subdued, for the first time since I had noticed them, apparently overawed by the fact that they had finally entered the very building where they would be made to live forever. Seri and I hung back from the rest, near the door.
The young woman who had met us at the harbour went behind a desk placed to one side.
“I need to verify your identities,” she said. “Your local Lotterie office has given you a coded admission form, and if you would now give this to me I will assign you your chalets. Your personal counsellor will meet you there.”
A minor upheaval followed, as the other passengers had left their forms in their baggage, and had to retrieve them. I wondered why the girl had not said anything on the bus; and I noticed the bored, sour expression she wore.
I took the opportunity to go forward first and identify myself. My admission form was in one of the pouches on the side of my bag, and I laid it on the desk in front of her.
“I’m Peter Sinclair,” I said.
She said nothing, but ticked my name off the list she had com piled on the bus, then punched the code number on my form into a keyboard in front of her. Silently, and invisibly to me, a readout must have appeared on the screen facing her. There were some thin metal bracelets on the desk, and she passed one of them through a recessed channel in the surface of the desk, presumably encoding it magnetically, then held it towards me.
“Attach this to your right wrist, Mr Sinclair. You will be in Chalet 24, and one of the attendants will show you how to find it. Your treatment will commence tomorrow morning.”
I said: “I haven’t finally decided yet. Whether or not to take the treatment, I mean.”
She glanced up at me then, but her expression remained cold.
“Have you read the information in our brochure?”
“Yes, but I’m still not sure. I’d like to find out more about it.”
“Your counsellor will visit you. It’s quite usual for people to be nervous.”
“It’s not that I’m—” I was aware of Seri standing close behind me, listening to this. “I just want to ask a few questions.”
“Your counsellor will tell you anything you wish to know.”
I took the bracelet, feeling my antipathy harden. I could feel the momentum of my win, my travels, my arrival and induction here, taking me ineluctably on towards the treatment, my reservations cast aside. I still lacked the strength to back out, to reject this chance of living. I had an irrational fear of this counsellor, visiting me in the morning, uttering soothing platitudes and propelling me on towards the operating table and the knife, saving my life against my will.
Some of the other people were now returning, their admission forms clasped like passports.
“But if I decide against it,” I said. “If I change my mind…is there any reason why I shouldn’t?”
“You are committed to nothing, Mr Sinclair. Your being here does not imply consent. Until you sign the release form, you may leave at any time.”
“All right,” I said, conscious of the small group of elderly optimists assembling behind me. “But there’s something else. I’ve got my girlfriend with me, I want her to stay with me in the chalet.”
Her eyes turned briefly towards Seri. “Does she understand that the treatment is for you alone?”
Seri exhaled breath sharply. I said: “She’s not a child.”
“I’ll wait outside, Peter,” Seri said, and went out into the sunlight.
“We can’t allow misunderstandings,” the girl said. “She can stay tonight, but tomorrow she will have to find accommodation in the town. You will only be in the chalet for one or two nights.”
“That suits me fine,” I said, wondering if there was still a chance Mulligayn was in the harbour. I turned my back on her and went outside to find Seri.
An hour later Seri had calmed me down, and we
were installed in Chalet 24. That evening, before going to bed, Seri and I walked in the darkness through the gardens. Lights were on in the main building, but most of the chalets were dark. We walked as far as the main gate, where we found that two men with dogs were on guard.
As we walked back, I said: “It’s like a prison camp. They’ve overlooked the barbed wire and watchtowers. Perhaps someone should remind them.”
“I had no idea it was like this,” Seri said.
“I had to go into hospital when I was a child. What I didn’t like about that, even then, was the way they treated me. It was as if I didn’t exist, except as a body with symptoms. And this place is the same. I really resent that bracelet.”
“Are you wearing it?”
“Not at the moment.” We were following a path through the flowerbeds, but the further we moved from the lights of the main building the more difficult it was to see. A patch of open ground was on our right, so we sat down, discovering that it was a lawn. “I’m going to leave. First thing in the morning. Will you understand if do?”
Seri was silent for a while, then said; “I still think you should go through with it.”
“In spite of all this?”
“It’s just a sort of hospital. They’ve got the institutionalized mind, that’s all.”
“It’s most of what’s putting me off at the moment. I just feel I’m here for something I don’t need. As if I volunteered for open-heart surgery or something. I need someone to give me a good reason to go on with it.”
Seri said nothing.
“Well, if it was you, would you take the treatment?”
“It doesn’t apply. I haven’t won the lottery.”
“You’re avoiding the question,” I said. “I wish I’d never bought that damned ticket. Everything about this place is wrong. I can feel it, but I can’t say why.”
“I just think you’ve been given a chance to have something that very few people have, and that a lot would like. You shouldn’t turn your back on it until you’re sure. It will stop you dying, Peter. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
The Affirmation Page 13
