A Thousand Deaths

by George Alec Effinger

  "Maybe if–"

  "Sandy, there's something I want to tell you. You know that in a little while I'll be upstairs. I want you to know—"

  "Lani, I love you. I don't even want to think about the other part."

  "You have to think about it, Sandy." She couldn't control her tears as well as his mother, and they raced in glistening streaks down her lovely face. "There's nothing either you or I can do about it."

  Courane's expression was bitter. "TECT," he said, his voice filled with grief. "It takes care of sick people all the time. It has cures for everything. Almost everything. But because it doesn't have a cure for D, it sends the patients here. It's afraid of its own ignorance. It doesn't want anyone to find out that it doesn't know everything. And those people it does cure, they don't even deserve it. Yet you, the most beautiful, kindest person I've ever known, you have to..." His voice trailed off.

  She put a hand on the side of his face and leaned forward to kiss him. "Shh," she whispered.

  "It's true."

  Alohilani curled against his body and he put one arm around her in a vain protective gesture. "You can't decide who deserves to be saved, Sandy," she said. "Everyone deserves to be saved. You can't divide your concern and your love that way. It's not a matter of who deserves to be loved, but who needs to be."

  "I need to be loved," he said.

  "You are loved, Sandy. I love you."

  He kissed her and held her, thinking about TECT's evil sense of humor. Could the machine have had any idea of creating just such personal tragedies when it sent people to Planet D? Or was Courane giving the computer more credit than it deserved? It didn't make any difference in the long run: eventually the result was the same. If TECT couldn't be blamed for causing the pain, it could be held accountable for not ending it.

  "Will you think of me after I'm gone?" said Alohilani. She wasn't grief-stricken about her own approaching death. She had passed into the stage of calm acceptance, and her dignity only magnified her beauty.

  "Of course I will," said Courane.

  "Then remember me and have compassion for everyone who needs it."

  Courane sighed. "You said it before, Lani—everyone needs it."

  "Then you must give it to them."

  It was time to walk with Rachel to the barn. They stood together in thoughtful silence for a long time. "Kenny used to love these animals," he said at last. He watched the osoi swinging their great horned heads in their stalls.

  "I like the blerds better," said Rachel. She had been given the barn job after Kenny died.

  "Kenny liked the blerds, too. He had another name for them. He told me once."

  Rachel looked into Courane s face. Another silence grew between them. "What was Kenny's name for them?"

  Courane shook his head. "I can't remember."

  "That's all right," said Rachel. "There, there."

  "A year ago, I was saying that to Lani." He stared down at the straw-covered floor and tried to get control of his feelings.

  "I wish I could do more for you, Sandy. I wish I could make everything all right."

  "Knowing that you care helps me, Rachel."

  "I wish I could relieve your pain or make you happy."

  Courane stared past her. "Pain is nothing, Rachel," he said. "Pain is one of the easiest things in the world to beat. But neither you nor anyone else can make me happy ever again."

  Now Rachel began to weep. "I could, Sandy, I know I could if you'd only let me."

  He held her face in his hands. His voice was very soft. "Rachel, I'm trying to save you from the kind of grief I've gone through. When Lani died, it was terrible. But much worse were the times when she didn't know who I was."

  "I would understand."

  "You would hurt, Rachel," he said. He turned away from her. At least the illness would release him from the agony of his memories.

  Five

  On Planet D the inmates of tect's ambiguous jailhouse spent a great deal of time trying to decide which of their inalienable rights had nevertheless been taken away, and which still remained in their grasp. The line dividing them from liberty was indistinct, yet they all feared to cross it and risk even greater punishment from TECT.

  "What more could it do to us?" asked Fletcher.

  "It could kill us," said Arthur.

  "It's doing that already," said Fletcher. "We're not going home. We'll all spend the rest of our lives here. TECT has no intention of pardoning us. We're here on indeterminate sentences. Did anyone tell you how long you had to serve?"

  "No," said Goldie.

  "None of us is ever going back to Earth."

  "I don't believe that," said Courane. He didn't want to believe it. He had spent months telling himself that he'd just serve his time and be glad to go home. He'd work hard at whatever TECT assigned once he was back on Earth. He'd never fail again.

  "You come with me, Cap," said Fletcher. He led Courane to the tect room and identified himself to the machine. Behind them Arthur and Daan watched; Goldie had decided she didn't want to have any further part in the discussion. "Hey, TECT, how manypeople have been sent here to Planet D altogether since the beginning of this colony?"

  **BELL, Fletcher:

  As of 23 April, 7 YT, a total of one thousand, two hundred thirty-six**

  Fletcher looked at Courane. "And how many of those people were classified as prisoners?"

  **BELL, Fletcher:

  All of them**

  "Yes, and of that number, how many served out their terms and returned to Earth?"

  **BELL, Fletcher:

  One thousand, one hundred eighty-eight**

  "All but, uh, forty-eight," said Daan. "So—"

  "Be quiet for a minute," said Fletcher. "Eleven hundred and eighty-eight, huh? How many of them were alive when they got to Earth?"

  **BELL, Fletcher:

  0**

  "None of them," said Fletcher. 'You see? We don't leave here until we fall over dead. Then, zip-zam, it sends us back to Earth to make room for the next sucker."

  "Wait a minute, Fletcher," said Courane, "let me ask it something. Why weren't they alive when they got back to Earth?"

  **Who is this speaking, please?**

  "Sorry. This is Sandor Courane."

  **COURANE, Sandor:

  How very pleasant to speak at you again. How are you making out so far, COURANE, Sandor?**

  "Very well, thank you. Let me ask my question again. Why weren't they alive when they got back to Earth?"

  **COURANE, Sandor:

  Why weren't who alive?**

  "You have to know how to ask the questions," said Fletcher. "Why weren't the former prisoners here on Planet D, who served out their terms and were returned to Earth, alive when they got to Earth?"

  **COURANE, Sandor:

  Obviously because they were dead before they left Planet D. Please desist in asking further asinine questions. You are utilizing a highly sophisticated and electronically miraculous system of communications for your own amusement and the perpetration of jokes and pranks that can only be described as bubble-brained. Further use of your tect for these purposes will be considered Willful Contempt of TECTWish and will be dealt with in a manner too unpleasant even to be hinted at**

  Courane stared at the console for a moment before he spoke. He thought he should choose his words carefully. "Well, good night," he said. TECT didn't bother to reply.

  "You need a lot of practice, Cap," said Fletcher. "You have to learn how to manipulate the machine to give you the information you need."

  "How do I learn?"

  Fletcher shook his head. "I'm not sure that you ever will. You're a little thick, even for a European boy."

  Several weeks later, in the winter month of Vitelli, just before the death of Alohilani, the inmates had a similar discussion. Arthur had suggested that they have a community meeting one evening, something they did on an irregular basis. TECT, of course, ordered periodic meetings, which it attended through its extension in the tect room.
But it was rare that anything useful was accomplished in these meetings; Arthur wanted a real discussion out of earshot of TECT, where genuine issues might be raised without fear of being overheard or overruled.

  The meeting was held in the large, dark-paneled parlor. There were enough comfortable, well-stuffed chairs, and Nneka provided bowls of salted nugpeas. Daan brought out tall glasses of the beer he brewed from the native grain; it was sweet and warm, but it had a nice bite to it. Enough of the stuff did the job, and after a long day of harvesting the blerds or dressing icks, sometimes Courane needed a few pints of the beer. At those times he didn't mind the sweet taste at all.

  "Well," said Arthur, starting the informal meeting, "I thought I'd say a few things that have been on my mind lately, and if anyone else has anything to add we might end up making some little changes that would improve the quality of life for everybody. First of all, I think we suffer because we have no organized voice in which to talk to TECT. I think if we had someone with genuine authority to speak for the whole group, TECT might be more inclined to give us more."

  "Give us more what?" asked Kenny.

  "Give us more respect and maybe things we want from Earth," said Arthur.

  "It will never happen," said Klára. "I know. I've tried. I've asked for lots of things and I haven't gotten a single one yet."

  "That's just what I mean," said Arthur. "We're all taking our own shots at TECT, one by one, everyone asking for his own particular special things. TECT just ignores us, bats our requests away like annoying mosquitoes."

  "So what if we all petition through one person," said Rachel. "TECT would bat the requests away just the same. There's no way any of us can hold any leverage against TECT."

  "There might be," said Fletcher. "If we went about it the right way."

  "How's that?" asked Arthur. "That's just what I wanted to get at."

  "Well, look," said Fletcher, standing up and facing the rest of his fellow colonists, "we have to get TECT to make a concession or two first–"

  "Yes, well, there's the problem," said Courane. "You can't do that. TECT won't allow it. It's easy enough to say you'll get TECT to make a concession. Has anyone ever managed to do it?"

  "I have, Cap," said Fletcher quietly. "When I was in high school, I asked TECT if anyone owned the planets in some distant galaxy. I don't even remember which galaxy. One of those with a number, very far from ours. TECT patiently explained that the galaxy was so far away we couldn't even see individual stars. There's no direct proof there are any planets in that galaxy, though it's very likely of course, and that, no, no one owns whatever planets there might be. No one is ever likely to, because this galaxy was hundreds or thousands or millions of light-years away. So I asked TECT if I could have those undiscovered planets, and it said sure. So now I own them all."

  Courane and Daan laughed; Rachel didn't understand. "So what, Fletcher? What does that prove?"

  Fletcher shrugged. "It proves that TECT will grant you things if you make it think it isn't giving away anything real."

  Rachel smiled. "Ah," she said.

  They were very close. That is, most of them were very close most of the time. Some of the inmates chose not to join the community: Klára, for instance, was always aloof, separated from the others by her solid sense of superiority. Molly liked everyone and was well-liked in return, except when her excessive spiritual zeal drove her listeners away in furious boredom. Late in the summer of 125, when Courane had been on Home for a bit more than fifteen months, two new men arrived to replace Sheldon, who died in Titus, and Kenny, who died in Tectember. Courane was never very certain about the identities of these two men because about this time he was growing rather vague about things in general. One man was an Asian named Kee and the other was a South American whose name Courane never got straight. Courane knew that he didn't like one of the men at all—no one did, really—but whether it was Kee or the other he didn't remember, either. That was just the way it was.

  But those men came to Planet D more than a year after Courane. Long before then, he had formed close friendships with several of his fellow prisoners. His first real friend was Sheldon, but Daan and Shai were also more like brothers than anyone he had known on Earth. Courane didn't make friends among the women; not easily, in any event. This was a reflection of the shyness and anxiety that had always paralyzed him as a teenager. Molly, Rachel, and Nneka were good and pleasant people, but Courane did not seek out their company. He felt more at ease with the other men.

  Everyone in the farm community formed his own circle of friends, but everyone who came to Home at one time or another found the need of help from the others, and likewise everyone supplied that assistance to whoever asked for it. No one, not even Klára, dared deny such a request, because the fact of their mutual dependence hung over each head like a patient calamity. While one or two people might have responded more out of selfish interests, most helped out because of genuine love and friendship. This was a novel attitude for a few of the inmates, a concept that had not motivated them on Earth. In this sense, then, TECT had wrought a beneficial change in them. Friendship and cooperation existed where before had been only suspicion and meanness.

  Courane's generosity and concern led him to attempt things his own body and mind were unprepared to carry out. In Gai—his second Gai on Home, nineteen months after his arrival on the world and a full Planet D year after the arrival of Rachel—he learned that she had disappeared from the house. No one had seen her for a day and a half; she had finished her work two days before but had not participated in any of the night's activities. She had not been at breakfast the previous morning, had not been at her duties the whole day long, had taken no meals in the house, had not been seen that afternoon, evening, and night. Now, the following day, she was still absent and some of the others were very worried. Courane wasn't worried because his mental state was not so acute. It took him several minutes to comprehend everyone's distress.

  "She's gone?" he asked.

  Kee was at the table, eating a breakfast of blerd stuff and fishfruit juice. "Uh huh," he said. He grimaced as he swallowed a mouthful of juice.

  "Where did she go?"

  "We don't know," said Shai. "If we knew, we wouldn't be worried. We don't even know where to look."

  "You spent a lot of time with her," said Kee with a disapproving expression. "Where do you think she'd go?"

  "She wanted to go home," said Courane.

  Kee shook his head. "We all want to go home."

  "Molly doesn't want to go home."

  "Molly's dead, Sandy," said Shai.

  Courane just stared. "Oh," he said at last.

  "Rachel said she loved you," said Nneka. "Right after supper, the day before yesterday."

  That reminded Courane. "She said she loved you." Goldie had been with Alohilani when the Pacifican girl died. Courane had been fetching water. The best estimate was that Alohilani wouldn't pass away for at least another week, but the estimate had been wrong. It was the eighteenth of Vitelli, at the lowest point of Home's winter, and Courane had come into the house after chopping through the ice and sledding water back from the frozen river. Goldie met him downstairs, her eyes red from crying. "She said she loved you."

  Courane hadn't known what she meant for a moment. He didn't want to understand.

  "Just before she died, she looked up at me. She was as sharp and conscious as if she never took sick. She said, Tell Sandy I love him.' She tried to say something else, but then she just..."

  "It's all right, Goldie," Courane said. He didn't believe her. He didn't think Alohilani could have spoken a clear sentence before she died. It was nice of Goldie to make up the lie, though. He appreciated her thoughtfulness.

  "It's your turn to take care of her now," she said. "Isn't that awful?"

  "My turn?"

  "Never mind about that, Sandy," said Fletcher. "I'll do it."

  Courane was surprised. "Thank you, Fletcher," he said. He felt as if he were dreaming; the sadness
and the grief were still far away. There was time for all that later.

  They had never shared a spring day together. Courane arrived late in summer and Alohilani died that winter. She knew she was dying before she ever met him, and their relationship was colored with sadness. She said nothing about it to him for several weeks, until he learned the nature of their colony and until he fearfully asked her the truth.

  They had brought a basket of food to a pleasant grassy place beside the river. She loved the river and Courane was growing to like it, too. They sat on a red-carpeted hill about twenty feet above the fast-moving water. "The river is low now," she said.

  "How can you tell?"

  "See across there? That shelf of rock that hangs out over the water? There's usually only a couple of feet between it and the level of the river. It looks like the river is down four or five feet."

  Courane looked up at the gray sky. It was almost white, without a hint of threatening storm. When the cloud cover was so light, it was like a clear blue sky on Earth. It lifted his spirits. "We could build a boat and see where the river goes," he said softly. He touched her arm with a long ragged blade of red grass.

  "Someone tried that last year," she said. "There was a young man here when I first came. I can't remember his name. He built a big raft to explore the river. He went down about a quarter of a mile and then came back. There are tremendous rapids down there, completely impassable. The river drops a hundred feet in about an eighth of a mile. And upriver a little farther, maybe half a mile, there is another set of falls. We're hemmed in here between them, and we can't travel on the river."

  Courane thought for a moment. "We could build small boats and carry them around the rapids."

  "They go on for a great distance. Have you heard of Livingstone Falls on the Congo? More than two hundred miles of cataracts. You can't portage around them. That boy tried and he never came back."