Penumbra

by Eric Brown

  ‘Joshua Bennett? I’m sorry to have called when you’re away. I’m Dr Samuels, consultant geriatrician at the Oasis Medical Centre in Mojave. Your father is under my care. I understand that you are returning on the twenty-second. If you could contact my secretary and arrange a meeting on that day, or whenever is convenient for you . . .’

  Dr Samuels paused, and Bennett wondered what was coming next.

  ‘Mr Bennett, your father has requested the option of voluntary euthanasia. As his doctor, my consent is mandatory, and I was wondering how you, as his only next of kin, felt about the issue. As I’ve said, if you could contact me as soon as possible I’d be grateful. Thank you, Mr Bennett.’

  Euthanasia . . . Bennett had never expected it to come to this. He wondered why he was so shocked: because of the imminence of his father’s extinction, or the fact that he had chosen this way to go? He had always expected to be informed of his father’s death in his absence, had reconciled himself to the fact and rehearsed what little grief he might feel. But euthanasia ... He realised he was shocked because his father’s option of euthanasia would include himself, Bennett, in the process of his going. He would have to face his father one last time, discuss with him his reasons, exhibit sympathy for someone he did not and never had loved.

  Not for the first time, he cursed his father for being so inconsiderate as to start a family at such an advanced age. Hell, there had been a certain affection between them, at times, he thought; and after all, he was - is - my father. Bennett knew what Julia might have to say about that affection.

  He pushed himself from the swivel chair and stepped out on to the veranda. Dawn was rushing in over the desert, turning the sky to the west a burnished, blue-tinged aluminium and washing the stars from the night overhead. He had slept on the shuttle, eaten just before touchdown. He could not sleep now, especially after the message from Dr Samuels.

  On impulse he took the steps from the veranda to the garden and climbed into his car. He drove away from the dome along a rough track, passing sentinel cacti like overgrown candelabra. Fifteen minutes later he made out the low-slung dome in the distance, to the right of the track. He pulled up beside the overgrown and neglected garden, the sight of the abandoned dome bringing back a slew of unwelcome memories.

  He climbed out and approached the dome along a lichen-carpeted path, batting aside encroaching fronds and palm leaves. The dome stood in the dawn light like some abandoned habitat on an alien world. Seeds had worked their way inside and filled the main cupola with riotous growth so that it resembled a steaming arboretum. The habitat had been empty a year now, ever since his father’s hospitalisation. Bennett had grown up here, with his stern and pious mother, his often absent father, and Ella.

  He moved around the dome and stepped into the enclosed garden at the rear, aware of the pounding of his heart.

  His relationship with Ella had been unlike the usual elder brother-little sister confrontation. Excluded from the affection of their elderly parents, they had sought companionship and succour in each other. She might have been four years his junior, but she was his equal in terms of intellect and understanding. Being the elder, and a boy, he had often incurred the brunt of his mother’s temper, and rather than gloat as little sisters were wont to do, Ella did her best to cheer him. She had been more like an elder sister in her apprehension of his pain.

  And then at the age of ten she had fallen ill. She had spent long periods in hospital, during which time Bennett was never told of the true seriousness of her illness. He had watched her waste away, never truly understanding what was taking place. Then, the day before Ella was due home for the very last time, his father took him to one side and explained, with a brutality that struck him at the time as cruel, but which later he came to understand was an inability to articulate his feelings, that Ella was dying. ‘I’m afraid she is very ill, Joshua. The medics have told me that there’s no hope.’

  He had always assumed she would get better. To be told that Ella would soon die had filled Bennett with a sense of disbelief and, later, anger.

  Two days later Ella had died, with Bennett and his parents at her bedside, and with her impossible death something within Bennett seemed to vacate him, leaving in its place a vast and terrible emptiness.

  A week after the funeral, his father had interrupted his com-screen lessons. He had done his best to avoid his parents since Ella’s death; he felt a residual resentment at being kept in the dark for so long, and had no desire to see his grief mirrored in theirs. Now his father said: ‘We’ve decided to establish a memorial to Ella, Joshua, in the garden where you played together.’ And he had told his son what it was.

  He had avoided going into the garden for a long time after Ella’s death. He did not want to be reminded of his loss. The memorial seemed to him a crass memento of someone once so vital and alive. Later he wondered why people with the Christian beliefs of his parents had erected such a tawdry icon, and came to understand that it was merely their way of coping with a grief just as real and painful as his own.

  Perhaps a year after her death, Josh realised that he could no longer hear Ella’s voice in his head. He had forgotten the sound of her confiding words, her excited chatter, and that terrified him. One afternoon, after ensuring that his parents were away from the dome, he had stepped with trepidation and curiosity into the enclosed garden.

  Now Bennett pushed open the rusty iron gate to the memorial garden. A riot of untended blooms, frangipani and rude bougainvillaea, crowded the paved enclosure like unwelcome guests at a party. He quickly crossed the garden, his throat tight and sore, swept away fallen leaves from the mock-timber bench and sat down. A high voice asked, ‘Hi, Josh, how’s things in space these days?’

  The dark-haired little girl in a blue dress crouched before Bennett, tanned arms wrapped about tanned legs. Her blue eyes, so treacherously alive, stared at him with delight.

  He came almost every leave to the memorial garden, and every time the sight of Ella struck him a painful blow in the solar plexus.

  ‘Oh, fine . . . you know, it’s a job.’

  ‘Anything exciting happened?’

  She stood and moved to an overhanging branch, reached up, grasped it and swung back and forth. She was perhaps a metre from him, as visually substantial as the bench on which he sat. He stared at the brown straining muscles of her arms, her impishly pretty face and long black hair. He wanted suddenly to reach out, take her in his arms and crush her to him, and the desire brought tears to his eyes.

  ‘I was in a close shave yesterday, Ella,’ he said. He told her about the accident, enjoying her open-mouthed, wide-eyed reaction, her little girl exclamations.

  As they chatted, the pain abated. He enjoyed the company of this ersatz sister, this companion ghost of many years. She might only have been a fabulously intricate simulated identity hologram, a genie conjured by state-of-the-art logic circuits, and no more real or sentient than the com-screen back at his dome, but the illusion satisfied some deep need within him. She salved his pain, briefly; she fuelled his memories.

  ‘Ella, you know I told you that Daddy was ill last time?’

  She nodded, suddenly serious. ‘How is he?’

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I mean, not good. He’s just so old - over a hundred now.’

  Ninety years older than you were when you died, Ella. There was no justice in the world.

  ‘Does he still tell you off?’

  Bennett smiled. What a little girl thing to say! It was what he loved about his hologram sister. It was just what Ella would have said.

  ‘No, not any more, Ella. He’s still... I don’t know, censorious - I mean critical. Still finding fault in everything l do. I’d like to win his respect,’ he said, and hated himself for the admission. He shrugged. ‘He’s very old and frail now, but inside he’s still the same person he always was.’

  ‘Why do you mention him, Josh?’

  There were times when the program was just too advanced, Bennett t
hought. Would Ella have asked him that?

  ‘His doctor contacted me yesterday. Dad wants to exercise his right to undergo euthanasia.’

  Ella frowned. She was seated cross-legged on the ground now, her hands placed primly on her bare knees. ‘What’s eutha— whatever?’

  ‘It means he wants to die. He wants to take a drug that’ll end his life. I’ve got to go and see him today. Talk it over.’ He stared into her big, unblinking eyes. ‘You don’t understand, do you?’

  She pursed her lips, then nodded. ‘I think I do, Josh. You feel guilty.’

  The program running the simulated identity hologram had a learning facility. Over the years it had integrated everything Bennett had said to Ella, analysed and interpreted his pronouncements for meaning.

  ‘It’s just . . .’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t want to do this, Ella. I can’t face him about this. I don’t want him to see that I understand his life’s been a terrible failure.’ After so long being so distant from his father, he realised, the time was coming when they would have to share an unaccustomed emotional proximity. Perhaps it was just that he didn’t want his father to see that he really cared.

  Ella was smiling at him. ‘You’ll do okay, Josh,’ she said. ‘You know what you always tell me?’

  ‘What?’

  She pulled her pretty, thinking-cap face. ‘What is it - something like, reality is never as bad as you expect it to be.’

  He laughed. ‘I’ll remember that, Ella. Thanks.’

  They stared at each other for a long time.

  At last she said, ‘Josh,’ and slowly, watching him, she reached out a slim brown arm, fingers outstretched towards him.

  He reached too, staying his hand so that his finger-tips were millimetres from her own, so as not to spoil the illusion. Like this, he told himself, in the long silence there was some kind of contact happening that could not be quantified by logic.

  He dropped his hand. ‘I must be going, Ella.’

  Still seated, she gave a quick wave in the air. ‘Come back soon, okay, Josh?’

  ‘I’ll be back.’ He stood, and the image of his sister disappeared before his eyes.

  * * * *

  4

  It was almost ten when Bennett reached Mojave Town.

  Automobiles were not allowed within the city limits, so he parked in the small lot on the perimeter. Rather than take an electric bus, he walked the two kilometres to the town centre.

  He shared the wide streets with citizens out jogging or strolling, cleaning-drones that seemed to have very little to clean, and children on scooters. The habitats on either side of the streets occupied spacious, abundant gardens, an eclectic collection of the latest domes, mock-timber A-frames and more conventional carbon-fibre houses. The high foliage of a thousand evergreens shaded the town, and power was provided by tall masts which pierced the canopy and opened petal-like energy panels to the burning desert sun.

  The Oasis Medical Centre occupied extensive grounds in the centre of town, over two dozen polycarbon units linked by a warren of diaphanous passages set in rolling landscaped gardens. Bennett strolled across the avenue and into the hospital. He found reception and was directed down long corridors to the consultancy rooms of Dr Samuels.

  The door opened automatically at his approach, forestalling his attempt to knock. He stepped inside.

  ‘Mr Bennett, I’m glad you could make it. If you’d care to take a seat.’

  Samuels, as informal in person as he had appeared on the vis-link that morning, moved from his desk and sat on the window-seat overlooking the rolling greenery. Bennett took the offered swivel seat and turned to face the doctor.

  ‘Mr Bennett, I appreciate how you must be feeling—’

  Bennett heard himself saying: ‘My father’s been ill for over a year now. I’ve had time to consider the inevitable.’

  Samuels nodded. ‘I know it’s always a hard decision for loved ones to make. I don’t know how you stand, ethically, on the issue of euthanasia, but if you’d like me to run through the legal side of things . . .’

  Bennett shook his head. ‘I followed the state rulings when the bill was passed,’ he said. He paused. ‘I’ve nothing against euthanasia. If it’s really what my father wants . . .’ He hoped he didn’t sound too perfunctory.

  Samuels was nodding. ‘Your father is bed-ridden, unable to feed himself, and in occasional pain. We administer the most effective analgesics, but there is only so much we can do to relieve his discomfort. Your father is failing on many fronts; the side-effects of the drugs he is on are becoming as difficult to treat as the primary complaints. In my opinion he is sound of mind. He has stated daily for the past week that he wishes to die, and in my opinion his quality of life is so severely reduced that euthanasia would be a mercy.’

  ‘Can I talk it over with him?’

  ‘By all means. I’ll take you to his room immediately.’ Samuels hesitated. ‘Are you aware that your father spends much of his time in VR?’

  Bennett nodded. ‘I see him every couple of months.’

  Samuels rose from the window-seat and gestured to the door. ‘Please, this way.’

  As they passed down a series of corridors, Bennett experiencing a mounting sense of apprehension. Samuels cleared his throat. ‘The actual apparatus of euthanasia is ready to utilise almost immediately,’ he said, ‘should you decide to sign the usual legal forms and waivers.’

  Bennett nodded, finding it hard to accept that they were talking about the termination of a life. It was more like a business transaction. ‘How soon? I mean—’

  ‘That is entirely up to your father. As long as it takes him to compose himself.’

  ‘And I can be with him?’

  ‘Of course. Here we are.’ Samuels paused before a white door and turned to Bennett. ‘Lately your father has refused to exit the VR site. He finds it. . . comforting. He will only see visitors in the net.’

  Bennett stared at the doctor. ‘And you say he’s of sound mind?’

  ‘In my opinion, yes, Mr Bennett. His retreat to the VR site is his way of... of coping with his decision to die. As you will see for yourself.’

  Bennett stepped into a sunlit room occupied by a narrow bed, banks of medical apparatus, a VR module and a chair.

  His father lay on the bed. He had always been tall, somewhat martial, but near death, laid out as if in preparation for his exit, he seemed elongated, whittled down to a wasted minimum of flesh and bone, stripped of dignity. He wore a grey one-piece VR suit and wraparound glasses. So many leads issued from the suit that Bennett was unable to discern the VR links from the tubes pumping blood, plasma and drugs into the hundred-and-three-year-old body. His mouth was open and drooling. Occasionally his limbs twitched in reaction to some event in the make-believe VR world, giving lie to the notion that he had already died. Beside the bed a cardiogram bleeped with his feeble heartbeat.

  Bennett sat down. ‘He’s so wasted . . .’ he began.

  ‘He’s been refusing food, so we’ve had to feed him intravenously.’ Samuels passed him a pair of VR glasses.

  ‘If you’d care to put these on, I’ll patch you into your father’s site.’

  Bennett slipped the glasses over his eyes. The room went dark and the ear-pieces muffled all sound.

  He waited, unsure whether to be grateful he was being spared a real-world confrontation with his father, or fearful of what was to follow.

  He was jolted by a sudden flare of colour. His vision adjusted and he stared out across a vast expanse of rolling grassland, dotted here and there with sumptuous habitat domes. He was surprised by the clarity of the vision: the panorama of greensward and cloudless blue sky was as real as the latest holographic images. He felt as if he could reach out and actually touch the grass before him. His father had obviously gone to some expense to obtain the very best programming software.

  ‘Joshua! Is that you, boy?’

  His father’s voice - recognisably his father’s voice, but changed, deeper of
timbre, confident - sounded in the ear-piece of the glasses, coming from behind him. His heart set up a steady pounding.

  He turned and stared, shocked, at the image of his father. He was no longer the skeletal old man on the bed - not that Bennett had expected him to be. But, also, he had not expected to see this apparition from the past. The image of his father was as he had been thirty years ago, in his seventies. Tall and balding, thin-faced and stern, he stood with his hands behind his back, staring at his son with unspoken censure.

  ‘Joshua, answer me for mercy’s sake!’

  He found his voice at last. ‘Dad.’

  His father peered at him. ‘It’s sometimes hard to tell who’s wearing those damned glasses. They’re supposed to scan a likeness of the user’s face direct to the site, but they’re none too accurate. The rest of the programming works like a dream, though.’ He gestured around him at the rolling greensward. ‘What do you think, Joshua?’