"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 da
rk 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.
A cool breeze blew. Courane realized that his clothing was damp and acrid with perspiration. His mind worked slowly, taking in the details of his surroundings bit by bit, cataloguing his impressions, trying painfully to decide where he was and what had happened to him. His mother never let him sleep outside like this. He had asked her once, some time ago, to let him go camping with three other boys from school. They were just going to a state park about four miles from Greusching, but Courane's mother acted as if they were planning to sleep naked in the savage heart of Africa. Courane had had to make up an excuse for the other boys because he didn't want to tell them what his mother had really said. But now, evidently, he was sleeping out somewhere.
He wasn't alone. He saw another sleeping form near him, but he couldn't remember who it was. It was probably his best friend, Dieter, or one of the other boys from school. It was odd that Courane couldn't recall exactly where he was. It must be that he had been dreaming, and that he had roused suddenly and wasn't completely awake yet. When the last webs of sleep cleared from his mind, he would feel foolish about his forgetfulness.
Something bothered him about the stars. He looked first for Orion, but the constellation wasn't in the sky. It ought to be, at this time of year. The sky was very clear, so it wasn't that the stars were obscured by smoke or clouds. There was only one explanation, he thought, he must be in the southern hemisphere. But that was crazy. He was home in Europe, in some desert near Greusching. He had never even visited the southern hemisphere....
There was a warning stab of pain in his right arm. "Oh, boy," Courane murmured. He knew what he had to go through now. He always hated this. He massaged the arm and winced, forcing himself to work through the uncomfortable tingling. He opened and closed his hand until his fingers felt normal again. He shook the arm for a moment, then relaxed.
He thought about waking Dieter and asking where they were, but that would only embarrass him. He preferred to keep his dumbness a private matter. He let his friend sleep on. Then, when Courane sat up and looked around, he changed his mind. There was nothing to be seen anywhere around them. There were no trees or buildings nearby or far away, just empty landscape paved with rounded pebbles like the bottom of an aquarium. And the moon was unnaturally small and altogether the wrong color. He had no explanation for it, but he thought that Dieter might like to see. He reached over and shook the sleeper's shoulder. There was no response. Courane shook harder and there was still no groan of reply. Courane rolled the form over on its back, and he was shocked. It was a woman, a stranger Courane had never seen before, and she wouldn't wake up. He crept closer to her and saw the note pinned to her blouse. He looked at it for some time, but he had a disquieting shock: he couldn't make sense of the letters and words. They looked familiar individually, but he couldn't put them together to mean anything. He had forgotten how to read. A great and overwhelming fear arose deep in Courane's soul, and the terror reached up and paralyzed his mind until all he wanted to do was run. The desert, the loneliness, the feeling of being lost and abandoned, this dead woman beside him, all these things seemed like elements in the worst possible nightmare.
Courane was forced to admit that he was probably still dreaming. None of this made any logical sense; it wasn't even coherent. It couldn't be real life. He lifted his hand from the woman's shoulder, crawled back slowly to where he had rested, pillowed his head on his right arm, and went back to sleep.
Kenny was eleven years old. He was smart, good-natured, and just a little too active for some of the others to tolerate. He and Molly worked in the barn. They were the only two who enjoyed being with the strange livestock of Planet D.
"I haven't ever looked at one of these close up," said Courane. He was standing in the pasture watching a gigantic animal lying on its side, eating the red grass. The beast was the size of a large rhinoceros but nowhere so pretty. It was a dull gray-blue in color, with sagging folds of sweaty skin hanging from its neck to its long ropy tail. It looked like it was in desperate need of cleaning and pressing. The head was large and flat, with odd dainty lips and the worn broad teeth of an herbivore. Its eyes were small and yellow and set very far apart. Its face successfully hid any sign that a small intelligence might lurk behind.
"I like them. They're kind of funny," said Kenny. He sat down beside the animal and stroked its moist flank.
"And that's where we get the stuff we eat for breakfast? That sort of thick orange stuff?"
"Uh huh," said Kenny.
"Where does it come from?"
Kenny looked up at Courane and laughed. "You don't want to know," he said. "Get up real early tomorrow morning and I'll let you watch. But I let Carmine watch once and he never ate the stuff again as long as he lived."
"You're right, I'd rather not know. Did you name them?"
Kenny patted the animal's neck. "This one is Prancer and the one over there is Vixen."
"No, I mean did you call them 'blerds'? Blod means 'stupid' in old German."
Kenny got up and brushed off his pants. "They were called blerds when I got here. I wouldn't have called them that. I would have thought up something better. Something funny."
They walked back toward the barn. It looked like another storm was coming from across the river. "What would you have called them, Kenny?"
The boy thought for a few seconds. Then he looked up and his face lit up with a bright smile. "I would have called them pixies," he said.
"That's worse than blerds, Kenny," said Courane, "and it would have made people years from now wonder about us."
"That's the whole idea," said Kenny. They felt the wind quicken and then they saw the first warning blaze of lightning. Whenever a storm approached, the sky grew blacker, but the world seemed to glow with a pale green shimmer, an effect that always terrified Courane. He never got used to it. Ragged spears of lightning would link the muddy sky with the rust-red ground and thunder would split the air until the endless rolling blasts seemed to make it difficult to breathe. And then the hot, heavy rain would fall. It would rain all evening sometimes, never slowing until the storm came to its abrupt end and the fresh wind blew the clouds away and freed the hidden stars. It stormed like this once or twice a week during the spring and summer, and on those days Courane liked to hide himself away in the tect room, concentrating on an intricate game or puzzle. As he walked quickly across the open pasture, Courane wished he was already back in the house. He had a terrible fear of being struck by lightning.
"We better hurry or we'll get soaked," he said.
"That's okay," said Kenny, "I've been wet before."
"Sure. But have you ever been burned to a crisp before?"
Kenny held up a black hand before his face. "No," he said, "just a little scorched." Courane had to look to see if the boy was joking. Until Kenny made a face at him, Courane couldn't decide.
The day began in dim cloudy light. The sky was heavy and threatening. Courane sat against a black gnarled tree and waited. In the desert it was still hot, though summer had ended; on the farm the month of Gai meant bringing in the crops and beginning the preparations for the endless winter. He wished he were back there. He didn't want to be in the desert anymore. The hills didn't seem any nearer, for all the labored walking he had done. He was thirsty, but soon the clouds would open and he would have more than enough to drink. In fact, there was the chance that he was sitting in the middle of a dry rivercourse, that the autumn storm would start a flash flood to nourish the sparse life in the valley, to bring the desert to late bloom, and only incidentally to extinguish any spark or blush of life in its one lonely human occupant.
Courane dismissed the idea. He had enough troubles, he
thought, without inventing new ones for the future. He was middling lost, starving, and with an excellent chance of never returning to the house alive. Floods and earthquakes and plagues of locusts were rather unnecessary. He had managed to shuffle off his own mortal coil, not quite all the way but almost, all by himself. With a little assist from TECT, of course.
Lightning startled him. The first flash was so nearby that there was a loud snap when it struck. The clap of thunder that accompanied it was like an audible shadow. That, Courane told himself, was something he might legitimately be afraid of. A single heavy drop of rain hit his face with a flat smack. It dazed him like a quick jab to the jaw. Then the storm attacked him with its full overture.
Just after New Year's the colony received two new people, a European woman named Klára and an African girl about fourteen years old named Nneka. They were welcomed into the group with the customary, somewhat somber generosity. It was the same spirit that governs a crowd of strangers caught in a vice raid: there was a kind of fellowship and sympathy among them, but there was also the knowledge that none of them was there just for an innocent visit. They were all there because TECT had wanted to forget about them.
Klára was a hefty Magyar woman with green eyes and auburn hair that she wore in braids, coiled tightly on her temples as if to protect her head from the slightly grimy touch of the outside world. She was tall and stout and loud, and just a bit unlikable. On her first day, she walked about the house examining every room, listening to the explanations, frowning as though something that displeased her greatly had pursued her from Earth and was now following her from room to room in the big house. She said little that first day, but she compensated for that immediately on the second day. She began to give instructions forged in the great foundry of her ignorance, and attempted to restructure the running of the household, the farm, and, through the tect, Earth as well. Evidently she had had great experience ordering people about in her former life and she saw no reason not to continue, despite the fact that nothing she said or did had any relevance to her new environment. She instituted some changes, such as the way the covers were tucked on the beds in the infirmary, but for the most part everyone learned to ignore her within the first thirty-six hours.
A Thousand Deaths Page 5
