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.
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.
A Thousand Deaths Page 4
