by Chris Walley
“On a ship in the docks, funnily enough.”
“A pity. You should have stayed over on Rise Side.”
There it was again.
“Rise Side. Is it better?” he asked, peering at the smooth face and the brown eyes.
“We think so. Quieter. Of course, they make all the fuss about East Side being the real heart of Larrenport. But West is best.”
Reluctant to answer, Merral replied with what he hoped was seen as an equivocal nod.
A paneled door opened and an elegant, auburn-haired lady in her forties, wearing a white jacket with a Diagnostic Medical Unit poking out of a pocket, came over and introduced herself. She and Merral exchanged greetings, and then she led him down a covered walkway to a cluster of rooms.
Outside a doorway decorated with hand-painted creeping red roses, she stopped and beckoned Merral close to her.
“It’s an odd case,” she said, in a low, confiding tone. “Odd.”
“Is it?” he answered. “I thought she was just, well, old. One hundred and twenty-four. I presume all sorts of things start packing up at that age.”
“Hmm. Yes and no. Physically, she’s remarkable; you’ll be blessed if you have some of her genes. No, it’s just that Mrs. D’Avanos is suffering from an odd set of psychological symptoms. Very strange . . .”
“What sort of things?” Merral felt a shadow of unease fall across him again. But this, he told himself, must surely be something else. It has to be.
The doctor frowned and adjusted her jacket. “A sort of depression. Anxiety attacks. The pastor and I have a dossier. . . .” She hesitated. “No, I think it’s better you talk to her. Then—if you want—you can talk to me. But I just thought I ought to warn you.”
“I see.”
She looked at him carefully. “When you last saw her . . . was she fine?”
“Yes. I saw her last autumn. I was here for a conference.”
She paused and he was aware of her green eyes scrutinizing him. “May I ask,” she said gently, “how did she view her death?”
Merral felt himself staring back at her. “Well, we barely discussed it. But she had a perfectly normal view of it.” He was tempted to add of course, but somehow of course didn’t seem to apply as much as it used to.
“Great-Aunt Namia was,” he said, remembering what they had talked about, “looking forward to going Home, to going to be with Jesus. Which she expected to be in the spring. She was awaiting the Resurrection and the new heaven and the new earth. And a new body—she was particularly looking forward to that. She had been active well into her nineties, but that was a long time ago.”
She nodded sympathetically. “So we have heard. We had her in just after Easter and didn’t expect her to stay. Most people come here for the last few days or weeks of life. She was slipping away, as they do, but then something happened. Now she’s fighting it.” A look of troubled perplexity crossed her face.
“Look, I’ll leave you with her. But, if you get any insights, see me on the way out? Please?”
Then she turned and walked up the corridor, looking deep in thought.
Merral knocked and, hearing no answer, slipped into the room. His aunt lay propped up in bed, facing away from the door and apparently staring at a painting of a mountain landscape on a wall. Hesitating to disturb her, Merral looked around the room, noting the pastel blue walls, the discreetly hidden medical equipment, the readout panels high above the bed, and the framed family images on the chests. The windows stretching from floor to ceiling at the end of the room looked seaward and were open a fraction, so that the white gauze curtains swayed gently in the breeze.
“Great-Aunt?” Merral called out softly, and as he walked over to her, she turned slowly and stiffly and looked up at him.
He was immediately struck by how delicate and pale she had become. It was her paleness that struck him most, and it occurred to him that an artist could have painted her faithfully using only a palette of grays, whites, and blues.
Her wan lips twitched and tired bleached-blue eyes smiled at him.
“Merral, dear! How lovely. Come and kiss me.” The voice was slight and brittle.
Merral carefully put the lilies on the table where she could see them, pulled a chair up to the bed, bent over the fragile figure, and kissed a powder-dry cheek.
“Let me sit up more. Sit back a bit,” she whispered between bloodless lips. “Bed, more upright, please.”
There was a faint whine of motors and the top part of the bed tilted. “Bed, stop!” she called and the motion ended.
“Merral, now turn off that camera, please.” She gestured at a small wall-mounted lens. “I can’t order that.”
He rose and tapped the switch below it.
“Why, thank you, dear. I don’t like being watched all the time.”
He was suddenly aware of the sensor bands on her neck and wrist, of the way her white hair was tied back, of the soft embroidered white nightdress.
His great-aunt gave another thin, forced smile. “So tell me all the news. About everything and everybody.”
“Are you up to it?” he asked.
“Ah,” she said, with almost a snort of amusement. “Look at that book on my side table and tell me what you think of it.”
He picked up the white book, opened it, and was faced with pages of strange characters. “Let me guess,” he said. “Your Old-Mandarin Bible?”
“Indeed so. And I still read it daily. Keeps my mind going. You have to keep up your Historics. But—” a frown crossed the lined face—“it doesn’t help. . . .”
She grimaced as if struck by pain. “Later. Tell me about Ynysmant. And the Gate exploding. I can hardly believe that. The family, though, first . . .”
After spending twenty minutes recounting matters to do with his father and mother in Ynysmant, his sisters and their families elsewhere, and other news, Merral looked searchingly at his great-aunt. “But how are you?”
She gave a wheezy sigh. “Not good,” she whispered in a faint and pitiful voice.
Merral held her fragile, bony hand gently, watching as she screwed her old eyes up in misery. Suddenly the novel thought came to him that in his great-aunt, he saw a malignity in old age. At its best, he had always seen old age as a mellow autumnal ripening, and at its worst, as no more than a gentle fading out. It was the slow, soft draining of physical and mental powers; the yawning and dozing before the onset of that long sleep of the real person that extended until the Great Awakening. But now, as he looked at his great-aunt’s pained face with a fierce stab of pity, Merral could see aging as the ancients had seen it: as some cruel force that ripped and gnawed at the very essence of what you were.
Namia spoke slowly. “Merral, I need to be honest with you. Can I?”
“Of course.”
“I’m scared.” Her hand shook.
“Of what?” he asked.
“Of dying, Merral. Oh, I know it’s crazy, but I’m scared.”
He squeezed the almost fleshless hand gently. “But you know the truth. Jesus loves you and died for you. Dying is going home to heaven—to the Father’s house. He is waiting for you.”
Her eyes watered, and he reached for an embroidered handkerchief and dabbed her eyes. There was something contagious about her tears, and he felt like weeping himself.
“I know it in my head,” she said to him in a peculiar and distant tone. “But I can’t feel it. I have no confidence. Supposing it’s just dark forever? or that I just cease to exist?”
Merral stared at her. “It isn’t dark. And you go to be with the King of the worlds. But, Great-Aunt, you have trusted him in the past for well over a century.”
“Yes,” she said weakly.
“I’m puzzled. I’ve never come across anything like it. You’ve prayed about it?”
“Yes,” she sighed, but it was nearly a sob, “but I seem to get no answer.”
“I see,” Merral answered, feeling utterly inadequate. “When did it start?”
&nb
sp; “I had been here a few days. I was expecting to go. Waiting for him to lift me away. I remember rather looking forward to it. It was the first spring day. It’d been such a long winter. I was sitting down there, in that chair, just watching the ships. Always liked that. One boat attracted my attention. A little thing coming in past the island. That’s like me, I thought, nearly ready to get into port. But as I stared at it I felt there was a dark cloud over it. . . . And then the cloud came and hung over me. And I suddenly had a terrible fear that has never left me since. They gave me tablets for it.”
She gave what was almost a whimper, and on the console above the bed Merral saw that a red light was flickering. “The tablets hide it, but it’s still there. That’s why I’ve held on till now.” Her pale eyes seemed to widen, and her frail hand stiffened in his. “It’s worse at night. I sleep with the light on.”
There was a tap on the door and a male nurse glided in and came behind him.
“Sorry, Mr. D’Avanos,” he whispered in his ear, “metabolic monitors indicate her stress levels are very high. We’d prefer to let them drop a bit. A mild sedative—”
“Very well,” Merral answered, feeling suddenly angry with whatever it was that had so terribly afflicted this old woman at the end of her life, “but let me pray with her.”
As the nurse retreated to the window, Merral prayed audibly over his great-aunt and was rewarded by a faint “Amen” from the pale lips.
“God bless you, Great-Aunt. Trust him.”
She squeezed his hand feebly.
He rose to his feet and gestured the nurse over. Then slowly he walked to the door. Just as he was opening it, a thought struck him. “Oh, Great-Aunt, one question: the boat you watched. What color was it?”
The nurse looked at him, his face full of bewilderment.
“What a strange thing to ask, Merral,” his great-aunt said slowly and faintly. “It was orange.”
At the reception desk the nurse with the blonde ponytail and the round, dark brown eyes looked up at him. “I hope it wasn’t too upsetting.”
For a moment, Merral felt lost for words. “Yes,” he answered. “I mean, it was alarming. I think I ought to talk to the doctor about what she said.”
She nodded. “Thought so. Follow me.”
As they walked along, Merral turned to her. “By the way, Nurse, I was struck by a comment you made earlier. That the Sunset Side believed it was the real heart of Larrenport. Since when have they been making a fuss about that?”
He caught an expression of mild embarrassment. “Six weeks, eight weeks maybe. It just seemed to start as the weather got warmer. But I was going to say to you that I’ve been wondering whether I should have said that.”
“That’s interesting. How so?”
“I was just thinking about it and it struck me that—well, if you let the business about one side of town being better or worse continue, then there was no telling where it would end.”
Instinctively, Merral patted her gently on the arm. “Nurse, that’s about the most sensible thing I’ve heard all day. You’re right. Don’t pass it on. Try and stop it. We have to fight it.”
She turned to him, pale eyebrows raised in something close to alarm. “What’s going on? Your great-aunt . . . ? The mood in the town . . . ? And now the Gate?”
“I don’t really know,” he answered. “But, hard as it may be to believe, the Lord still reigns.”
After a moment’s thought, she smiled slowly back at him. “I guess so. I never felt I needed reminding of that before.” She gestured to another room. “The doctor is in there.”
The doctor was reclining in an old armchair, drinking from a mug of coffee and staring into space.
“Ah, Forester D’Avanos. I thought I might see you. Do you want a drink? coffee, tea?”
“No, thanks. I’d better get over to the airport soon.”
She scanned his face. “You saw the problem?”
“Oh, indeed. She’s scared of dying. No,” Merral corrected himself, “not of dying, but of being dead. She’s scared of death.”
“Exactly. It’s very sad. Very disturbing.”
“Is she the only case?”
There was a long pause in which the doctor sipped her coffee and gazed ahead. Then she looked up at him with a frown. “No, there are others in the town. She was one of the first, but she was—is—an unusual woman. Very sensitive, perceptive, intuitive.”
She looked at Merral as if comparing him to his great-aunt. “Yes, you have something of that. But any ideas about treatment? I was intending to call Central Geriatric Care on Ancient Earth.” She shrugged. “Not a lot of hurry now. I can find nothing like this in our files. Nothing so deep or so permanent. It’s not death as we have known it.”
Merral shook his head. “Oh, you can find references to it,” he said, and he was aware of her look of surprise. “Go back before the Intervention. You’ll find it there. My guess is her symptoms were not atypical then. My memory suggests that there are hints of her mood in the Psalms.”
The doctor gave a little start, her face squinting in thought. “Yes . . . I suppose so. But that is very odd.”
“Yes. It is odd. My suggestion is to get the brightest spiritual advisor or counselor you can find here and let them dig some of the pre-2050 pastoral counseling material out of the Library.”
He suddenly realized that he had already told her too much. “Look, I’d better go. You have my details with the nurse. Keep in touch.”
She put her coffee down and rose slowly to her feet. “Yes, I think that’s a good idea. But, surely—” She looked perplexed. “Surely, that age of humanity is long over?”
“Hmm,” Merral said, moving toward the door. “That’s what I used to think too.”
He got to the airport earlier than he had expected and easily found himself a spare place on an early afternoon ferry flight to Ynysmant. Then, while the freighter was loading and being refueled, he found a quiet corner, took out some sheets of paper, and began writing his letter to Representative Corradon. Merral had never been one for using pen and paper, but now he felt it was time to get used to it.
He began by outlining, as precisely as he could, Captain Sterknem’s account and suggested that Anya be informed of the relevant biological details. Then he recounted the curious divisions appearing in Larrenport and mentioned the problem he had heard of with the machines at the dock. Finally, he summarized his visit to Great-Aunt Namia and her frame of mind. Then, after a long time thinking and choosing his words, he wrote the final sentences:
All these phenomena worry me in different ways. If they are interlinked—and the timing suggests that they are—then the implications are extremely disturbing.
Yours, in the Service of the Assembly,
Forester Merral Stefan D’Avanos
Then he sealed his letter in an envelope, addressed it to Representative Corradon at Isterrane, marked it “private and personal,” and handed it in at the airport office with a request for it to be urgently sent by courier.
Merral arrived back at Ynysmant in the late afternoon and, deciding it was too late to go into the Planning Institute, walked into town along the causeway. Hearing the energetic chop-chop of the waters against the walls and feeling the wind and sun on his cheeks, Merral stopped to look at his hometown rising on its steep, dark mound out of the lake. Seeing its curving lines of red roofs, spires, and towers bathed in the spring sunshine, he was seized with a sudden, intense affection for Ynysmant. It’s very good to be back. It seemed quite extraordinary that less than two weeks ago he had left there with Vero for Herrandown. His life before then already seemed to be distant and dreamlike.
He walked on, and as he approached Ynysmant, the long, steep-pitched roof of the hospital caught his eye and an idea came to him. Instead of going straight home, he turned up the street that led to the hospital, and walking in through a side entrance, he made his way to Administrative Affairs. There, in his office dominated by potted plants, he found Tomos Da
ynem, the junior administrator.
Tomos, lean and muscular, seemed to bounce up from his seat when he saw Merral at his doorway.
“Hi, Merral! Come in. Heard you were out of town.” He shook hands. “Welcome back. Take a seat.”
Merral sat down, stared at his friend, and gestured to the image on the wall of the winning side at last year’s Ynysmant Team-Ball championship.
“How have we done lately?” he asked, knowing that particular image well. On it, Tomos, as captain of the Blue Lakers, one of the three best teams in town, was holding the cup high while Merral, who had merely played as a winger in a semifinal match, stood at the back.
Tomos gave a theatrical groan. “Oooh, don’t ask. We lost against the Western Lake College First Team. Those boys are good. And we need to improve our passing. You ought to play more.”
“I ought to. I just don’t seem to be in the right place at the right time. Any repercussions from the loss of the Gate?”
He shook his head. “None I’ve thought of. I mean, it’s hardly as if we had inter-system championships, is it? It’s all we can do to get a northeastern Menaya tournament organized every three years.”
Merral felt a sense of relief that something at least seemed to be unchanged. In fact, it was hardly surprising; Assembly sports were informal, localized, and frequently haphazard.
Tomos leaned back in his chair. “But you didn’t come to talk Team-Ball, I presume.”
“No,” answered Merral, choosing his words, “I have an odd question. I was in Isterrane recently, and there was some discussion about some regional medical anomalies. Then, this morning, I visited a rather aged great-aunt in Larrenport, and I found that she and some others were having problems at the end of their lives. They were fighting it, afraid of death. Anxiety. All very disturbing. It had just started within the last two months. So, I thought I’d ask you if there were any oddities you had heard of concerning the terminally ill.”
Tomos’s mouth made an expression of surprise. “Odd. I’ve heard of nothing. Not here. And I meet with all the medical sections regularly, so I’d know. In the last two months?” He shook his head. “No. Same as usual. A couple of heart attacks when the Gate went, but that’s not the same thing.”
