A Thousand Deaths

by George Alec Effinger

  "You're not handling this very well, Courane," said Klára. "Why did you make it angry?"

  "I didn't say anything. Sometimes you can't get anywhere no matter what you do. I'll try again later."

  **COURANE, Sandor:

  That won't do you any good. TECT has a long memory, one that isn't subject to damage from tiny little bits of biological nothing**

  Klára looked at Courane accusingly. Courane closed his eyes wearily; when he opened them again, she was still there. This was a crisis that wouldn't go away.

  Courane tried again and again, day after day, all through Vitelli and Vespasi, but TECT would not budge. It had made its decision and it alone was happy with it. There was nowhere else to turn.

  The spring came and gradually lengthened into summer. In Tomuary, just as TECT had predicted, Molly died. The very next morning, during a heavy shower, there was a knock on the front door. The entire community was sitting around the dining table having breakfast. At the sound, all conversation stopped. Klára gasped. Courane swore softly. Rachel stood up slowly. "I'll go see," she said.

  Their voices came into the dining room. "Hello," said a young woman, "my name is Zsuzsi."

  "No, please God, no," murmured Klára.

  "Yes," said Rachel, "you must be Mrs. Hriniak s daughter. We're all having breakfast. Are you hungry?"

  "No, it was just after lunch when I left Earth." They came into the dining room. "Mother!"

  Klára rose from the table, her eyes wide and staring. Her daughter ran to her, but Klára backed away. Zsuzsi hesitated, bewildered. "Go back home, Zsuzsi," said Klara in a hoarse voice.

  Zsuzsi looked concerned. "But, Mother, I can't. You know I can't."

  Klára swallowed and tried to speak. She cut herself off instead, looked wildly around the table, and ran from the room.

  "Sit down, Zsuzsi," said Courane. "Your mother is very upset. I'll go look after her. Rachel, introduce Zsuzsi to everyone."

  Within the next two or three days, Klára's manner changed radically. Her abrasive scolding and her self-important pride disappeared. She spoke in a quieter voice. She listened to what the others had to say. But her broken spirit was terrible to witness; she moved about the house with her pain and dejection evident in her face. None of the others took any pleasure in her fall. They all felt compassion for this immodest and complacent woman who had orchestrated her own ruin.

  One afternoon, Courane found her at the tect console. "Do you want me to ask TECT something for you?" he said.

  "No, you've done quite enough," she said angrily. She turned back to the screen.

  Courane read what the tect had recorded. Klára was pleading again for Zsuzsi to be sent home.

  **HRINIAK, Klára:

  TECT is so sorry that all has not worked out to your satisfaction. Your happiness and well-being are of the utmost importance, even though you are currently in a condition of "excarceration." Never forget that you are a valuable resource to TECT. Your family and friends on Earth long for your company, and your community misses your personal, irreplaceable contributions. Therefore TECT will do everything possible to maintain your physical health and mental stability so that someday you may return to Earth and resume your place as a productive member of the community at large. TECT suggests that, in the future, you exercise more caution before making thoughtless requests**

  "If that's true," said Klára, "why do you let us get the disease? Why are we all going to die from D syndrome?"

  **HRINIAK, Klára:

  Please pay closer attention. TECT said that it will do everything possible to maintain your physical health. Allergies, bacterial infections, parasites, and similar problems can be taken care of quickly and safely by means of the medic box. There is nothing possible that can be done to prevent or cure the indigenous condition you mention. TECT is very sorry indeed**

  "You goddamn machine, I'll—"

  "Klára, let me," said Courane. He helped her up. She stood behind him, shivering in her rage.

  **COURANE, Sandor:

  Very wise of you, COURANE, Sandor. TECT was about to surprise HRINIAK, Klára, with the happy news that she would soon be joined on Planet D by her sister, TOTH, Katalin, and her brother-in-law and their three wonderful children**

  "Thanks for withholding the full fury of your benevolence."

  **COURANE, Sandor:

  You're very welcome, but don't let her do that again**

  "What's the significance of calling yourself 'TECT' these days? What happened to 'TECT in the name of the Representative'?"

  **COURANE, Sandor:

  What Representative?**

  "Okay, all right. I suppose Klara asked you to send Zsuzsi home."

  **COURANE, Sandor:

  Actually, she never got around to that. But because things are a little slow today, TECT may consider granting her that particular request. If TECT relents in this one instance, it should not be regarded as a sign of weakness. An increase in absurd or unnecessary petitions will be considered Contempt of TECTWish.

  **COURANE, Sandor:

  Understanding of the above to be indicated.

  **COURANE, Sandor:

  Affirm?**

  "Yes," said Courane, marveling a little at what TECT was doing. "Under what conditions will Mrs. Hriniak's daughter be permitted to return to Earth?"

  **COURANE, Sandor:

  The important factor is the containment of the D syndrome viroids. It is impossible to permit them to be transported to Earth in a living body. Has HRINIAK, Zsuzsi, had anything to eat since her arrival on Planet D?**

  Courane turned around to look at Kl3ra. He was glad to see that she was leaning against the wall, her face buried in her hands. She had not seen this latest malicious trick of TECT's. She didn't need to know of the cruelty. "She's been here for six days," Courane typed at the console. "Of course she's eaten here."

  **COURANE, Sandor:

  Oh, how sad. QUEL DOMMAGE. If she had refrained from eating, she might have been returned to Earth, none the worse for the experience. But TECT is sure that you realize Zsuzsi, like her mother, is already infected. It is too late. The irony of the situation is almost too painful to consider**

  Courane had no further reply. He turned off the machine and stood up. He tried to comfort Klara, but she was a person who did not accept consolation easily. Instead, he led her to her room and left her there alone. He heard her sobs through the heavy wooden door as he walked away toward his own room. Later that evening when he told the story to the others, Arthur shook his head. "TECT has a fondness for fairy tales and myths," he said. "It's always been obvious."

  "What do you mean?" asked Fletcher.

  "Persephone," was all that Arthur said. When Courane discovered what Arthur meant, it gave him a clue that would lead to his ultimate inspiration. TECT had always wanted someone to make a dramatic sacrifice, that was terribly evident now, but no one in the one hundred and twenty-five years of the colony on Planet D had understood it. The idea was still hazy in Courane's mind, but he would have more than six months to perfect it.

  Arthur always seemed smaller than he really was to Courane. Perhaps because Arthur knew this fact better than anyone, he tried to create an impression of intelligence and competence. Sometimes he had a tendency to get carried away. After he planned the first bridge, across a ravine on the far side of the river, a gap in the new road only twelve feet across and eight deep, he conceived the notion to attempt a span across the river itself. "The principles are the same," he told anyone who would listen. "It won't be any more difficult to design."

  "No," said Fletcher, " 'cause you'll be sitting in your room, drawing pictures of bridges. That won't be too damn tough at all. What's going to be tough, Cap, is standing out there in the middle of the river, piling up stones. You know how deep that river gets in the middle?"

  Arthur gave a little nervous cough. "No, I don't."

  "I don't either, said Fletcher. "Don't nobody know. That river might be a hundred feet deep out the
re. How are you going to build a bridge to the other side? That is a fast-moving river, too. And you don't even know how far it is across."

  "That's the first thing," agreed Arthur. "We have to lay it out, get it all down on paper so we can visualize the problem. Then it will be easier to pick an appropriate solution."

  "An appropriate solution is another boat," said Shai.

  "A bridge would make boats unnecessary," said Arthur.

  "And if we get rid of the river altogether," said Courane, "it would make a bridge unnecessary. Be realistic."

  "I think I am," said Arthur, just a little hurt by their lack of enthusiasm. "I'll figure it all out and then you'll see."

  "You do that, Arthur," said Fletcher dubiously. The others left Arthur and Courane to begin the project.

  "First, we'll find out how far it is across the river," said Arthur. Spring rains had swollen the river and it rushed along, high in its banks. The water was dark muddy brown, and limbs and branches sailed past Courane as he stared across at the western side.

  "How do we do that?" asked Courane.

  "Trigonometry." Arthur's voice was confident. He sat down in the yard, took a twig, and began drawing in the dust. "Look, Sandy." He sketched a figure:

  "Call the point where we are now A," said Arthur. "That place over there, just below the start of the new road, call that B. We want to find the distance AB. Now we raise a perpendicular to AB right here. Call the line AC. We have a right triangle ABC. So the length of AB, which is the distance we're after, is equal to the length of AC divided by the tangent of angle a."

  "Good," said Courane, "I remember that. Then what is angle a equal to?"

  Arthur looked up and squinted a little. "Well, to tell you the truth," he said slowly, "we won't be able to tell. Angle a is on the other side of the river, and the perpendicular AC would have to be very, very long, in order for us to measure the angle with any kind of accuracy. A tiny error in the measurement of the angle will give us a huge error in the width of the river."

  "Oh."

  "Let's draw it another way, then." He rubbed out his triangle and drew another figure. "If we build a high tower over there and another one over here, both the same height, then we can call the tops of the towers A and B, and the bottoms C and D. We have a rectangle then, ABCD. See? Then the diagonal from the top over there to the bottom over here is the hypotenuse of two right triangles, and we can measure this angle here and compute the width of the river."

  "You want us to build two big stone towers?"

  "Well–"

  "Why don't I just swim across the river with a string in my mouth, and you hold the other end on the bank, and we measure the string?"

  Arthur's face clouded, but he said nothing.

  "I'm sorry, Arthur," said Courane. "How accurate would the rectangle method be?" He had little hope.

  "Very accurate, depending on how accurately we measure the angle again, of course."

  "Right. Arthur, what are you going to measure these angles with?"

  Arthur looked up into the sky and scratched his chin. "A protractor, I guess. It wouldn't be too hard to make one. I'm sure it wouldn't. Anybody could make one. You construct a right angle, and divide it in half, and divide it again... Goldie could make one, for God's sake."

  "Goldie's pretty sick, Arthur."

  Arthur stared at Courane for a long, silent, sad moment. A tear broke from Arthur's eye and spilled down his cheek. "Can't you leave me alone, Sandy?" he said in a forlorn voice. "Can't you just pretend? Can't you just let me have my way? Just for once? I'm not hurting anybody, am I?" He stood up, looking down at his triangles in the dirt. He dropped the twig. "Sandy, you know I'm going to die soon. What the hell difference does it make? If I want to draw bridges, why can't you just leave me the hell alone?"

  "Arthur, I–"

  The small man gave a wordless cry and jumped at Courane. Both men fell to the ground. Courane was astonished, but not afraid. Arthur flailed at him without effect, hammering mild blows at Courane's chest and shoulders. Courane did not move. He closed his eyes, knowing that Arthur could not hurt him, and listened like Archimedes beside his circles for the approach of death.

  When he reached the other bank, Courane realized that both boats were now on the western side, and the people in the house were stranded without means of crossing the river. They'd have to build a third boat, or swim across, or have Arthur design his—

  Arthur was dead now. Courane shipped the oars and pulled the boat up alongside the other. Maybe he should row back again, towing the second boat, leave it on the colony's side of the river, get back in the first boat and cross the water westward again. He sat thinking about the problem for a few minutes until he forgot the problem. Then he just sat, thinking. He gazed across the coffee-colored river at the far side. He hadn't been across the river since he stopped work on the road; he had become a kind of liability to the work crew. He would drop his tools often and stare off into space, or wander away and create unnecessary worry for the others. When Ramon and Kee arrived from Earth, Shai told Courane that he could retire from the road work. Courane was glad.

  Now, sitting here under the low cloudy sky in the autumn coolness, he realized how unfamiliar the riverbank looked, the east bank near the house. He had never really examined it before from this viewpoint. He could see the roof of the house through the red- leaved trees. He wondered what everyone else was up to.

  After an hour, he wondered what he was up to as well.

  The day passed, and Courane was pleasantly entertained by the great river and the occasional broken things that sailed by toward an unknown destination. Once Courane saw a large white bird flapping helplessly in the middle of the channel, unable to swim, unable to fly, its long yellow beak opening and closing as if pleading for rescue. Not long after it passed out of sight around a bend, Courane had forgotten it.

  As evening approached, he stood up and stretched his aching muscles. It was getting even cooler. He put his hands in his pockets and walked toward the boats. He found a piece of paper and took it out. It was his map. "Oh, yes," he said, remembering it all now. He left the boats and climbed the slope to the road.

  He stood looking out across the plain for a while, toward the west where the sun was dropping closer to the hills. That was where Rachel had gone, he thought, although he had no real proof that after she crossed the river she had followed the road. It just seemed very likely and, in his less than rigorous frame of mind, that was sufficient reason to ignore any other idea. He could not see her, of course, but it was probable that she was on the road somewhere between where he was standing now and the distant hills. She couldn't have reached them yet. He started after her, enjoying the walk and the weather and the illusory feeling of freedom and self-sufficiency. He still gave no thought to how hungry he was going to be in the morning.

  It was another time when Courane couldn't tell if he was asleep or living in the past, dreaming or remembering. Markie was very near death. Alohilani was in the final stages of the disease, and Sheldon was beginning to slip rapidly. At intervals, Courane would look up thoughtfully and catch Rachel gazing at him. That embarrassed him; he hurried to glance back at Lani sleeping fitfully in the bed beside him.

  The colonists kept a silent watch, hoping for nothing, waiting for nothing, just filling out the portion of time left to their friends. They felt that they ought to sit beside them. They felt it was their duty, made necessary by their love. They knew their friends would not agree with that, but they couldn't abandon their vigil. They sat and waited and thought... and sometimes even prayed.

  Courane prayed, something he had done but two or three times as a child. On the previous occasions, he prayed to Santa Claus a couple of times and, once at the age of thirteen, to Aphrodite. Aphrodite had been a complete washout, but Santa Claus had come through at least once. Now, though, he was praying to God. He had never addressed God before in anything other than surprise or exasperation. "God," he murmured, "please let her get
well."

  "God can't do that," whispered someone.

  Courane was startled that anyone had heard him. In his dream or in his reverie, in the dim evening light he saw Molly sitting beside Markie. "God won't do things like that," she said.

  "Oh," he said.

  "God isn't a department store. You can't let God take care of fixing things up for you. You can't let a situation get worse and worse and then throw it in God's lap."

  "I guess not."

  "No," said Molly. She looked very tired. She had been showing signs of D fever herself for several weeks.

  "I just want her to get well," said Courane.

  Molly's expression grew softer. "I know, Sandy, we all do. But she won't."

  "I know."

  There was a long silence. Courane heard the thump of snow as it slid heavily from the roof. "You have to be strong now," said Molly. She shrugged. It was the best sentiment she had to offer.

  "I will," said Courane hopelessly. "I'll be strong enough. I'm praying to God for the strength. When God answers, then I'll be strong."

  "Who do you think God is, Sandy? The Easter bunny?"

  For a moment, Courane only stared. That was pretty much how he thought of God. "No, of course not," he said. "I was only saying that I've recognized my failings and I'm desperate to do something about them. I admit my weakness. Now it's all up to God."

  "And what are you going to do until then?"

  He shrugged. "I told you. I can't do anything." He smiled with a great deal of embarrassment; his own words sounded pitiful to him.

  Molly's expression indicated that her thoughts were suddenly in some other place and time. "My father used to tell me about the two men," she said in a soft, hoarse voice. "They go into space, you see, in little tiny rocketships. One man in his ship isn't sure that there's enough fuel to get him home safely, so he decides to toss out everything that might be robbing fuel away from his safe landing. 'Better safe than sorry,' he says, and out it all goes, food, on-board computer, pressure suit, everything, floating into space. The second man says to himself, 'Better safe than sorry, but I don't know what I'm going to need and what I can afford to throw away. I shouldn't just get rid of things I might need later. I will rely on God to let me know what to do.' "