His last completed story, which he brought to the Sycamore Hill Writers Workshop, was a devastating look at a future South Africa. He had been drawn to explore the contradictory Boer culture in part because of his own Dutch ancestry; the story had the kind of agonizing involvement that comes when a writer feels he is telling about “us,” not “them,” The workshop participants were unanimous in the belief that even without revision it was a powerful work; with revision, it would deserve, perhaps even win, awards. But that story remained unrevised and unsubmitted through the long years of his self-imposed exile from science fiction.
The exile is over. Recently I had the pleasure of buying Keizer’s first new story in years, also set within a future Boer culture, for my Eutopia anthology. He still has the vision and the fire. If anything, his craft is better than ever, despite—or perhaps because of—the long hiatus.
However, I feel obliged, because of my personal standard of unrelenting honesty, to tell you one terrible secret about Gregg Keizer. When he plays Trivial Pursuit, and another person is struggling to think of an answer, Gregg has no mercy. With unrestrained glee he chirrups, “I know I know!”—a locution he no doubt picked up from some obnoxious seventh-grade intellectual he once taught. This would be tolerable if he had the good grace to lose, so we could taunt him in return. But he does not lose, and so it is not tolerable. I felt I had to tell you this, so you would not think too well of him.
I am the DeadMan.
I could feel the texture of the rope as it dug into the flesh around my neck. It was not the first time that I had died for lifers, but it was not the best time, either. It was to be a simple death, only a hanging. Nothing spectacular.
They think I do not feel the pain, but I do. The pain is always the same, like a white-hot needle through my lips. It was the same now, even though it had been over a year since I’d last died in front of them. For a year I had experienced the private deaths, dying only for myself, loathing the memories of their lifer touches. But something had driven me back to them again. I remembered now that it wasn’t the pain. Perhaps it was the way their eyes went wide when I walked into a room. Or maybe it was only their money.
For a moment, as I saw my feet arc in the air, seemingly reaching for the knotted rope, I forgot that I would be alive again. I tried to scream but couldn’t get anything past the hemp that clamped my throat.
Thankfully, blissfully, I blacked out.
I opened my eyes, and everything was blurred, as if I were drunk on alcohol and reeling around the room. I realized that I still twirled on the end of the rope. It was only uncomfortable now. Someone handed me a knife; I reached up and cut myself down. I landed on the thick carpet that seemed to live under everything here.
The twisting colors, red to green to rusted scrap in a browning field, swept through me, and I knew now why I couldn’t stop dying in front of them. I could feel. I could smell the sweat of my body. I touched my neck gently, slowly, marveling at the feelings as my fingertips brushed the skin. I was surprised I’d been able to stay away for a whole year and knew I’d never be able to again.
My mind seemed to freeze the scene around me in split-second frames. I felt warm and relaxed, as if I’d just had an excellent brandy or had finished making love. Every particle of my body sparkled inside, knowing that it was alive, unmarked, and whole. The sensations I had felt during my private deaths paled in my memory.
I even felt a pinch of kindness toward the lifers around me, another symptom of resurrection. I stroked my wrist, my thigh, knowing, without looking, where they were. I could now hear the whispers of the lifers. Before I had had to read their lips. I was alive, sensitive again. Except for my eyes, the disease overpowers all my sensory organs when I am between deaths. Only death restores my senses to me. It even enhances them.
I knew the satiated feeling in my belly would soon be replaced by nausea. I would want to vomit, but I would only be able to spit into my hand and wipe my hand on my tunic. Then I would not even feel the spittle. I would slip into the deprivation I felt between deaths. But that time was hours away, and I could feel again, more than I have ever felt when I’ve died alone, for myself. I inhaled deeply and looked up.
The lifers around me applauded softly as I took the rope from around my neck and threw it on the floor in front of me. The semicircle that pinned me in the corner was front-ranked with women, some of them daring to touch the edges of my clothing. One of them, sloppily made up and wearing clothes too cheap for this party, went so far as to stroke the skin of my neck. Still feeling confused from the resurrection, I said nothing to her. I only wondered how she had managed to get in. Like the rest of the lifers around me, she had the shiny-eyed look of a fingertoucher and whispered in that familiar hoarse croak that the drug creates. The hostess, her dress adorned with tiny jewels, pushed her way through the crowd and clutched my arm tightly.
“Wasn’t that the best?” she yelled above her guests’ voices. I looked at her. I felt her fingers knead my arm, and I almost pushed her away. But she had paid for it, all of it.
“I’ve heard of better deaths,” said a man who’d made his way over to me. He had his arms crossed over his chest, and I could see his eyes glittering from fingertouch. The lifers had become silent, waiting for me to respond. I turned my back on him and faced the hostess again.
“You invite critics?” I asked her.
“I apologize for him,” she said. “You can see he has pressed too much fingertouch.” She looked at me. “He’ll be asked to leave in a few minutes.” I could hear some of the lifers mutter in agreement.
Silently the lifers came to me, one by one, and kissed the hand I held out to them. Their lips rasped against my knuckles, and one woman’s tongue wetted a finger. Some of them do that, hoping it will increase the chance of infection. They all looked at me expectantly, with that lifer expression of mingled excitement and awe. But I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t say it. The woman standing next to me squeezed my arm, but I kept silent. She finally tired of waiting.
“I have shown you,” she said, using the words I should have used. “Follow me.”
The lifers started whispering again, and the hostess relaxed, her hand curled loosely around my arm.
“That’s Crandel, of the department stores,” she whispered to me, pointing to a man walking toward us. “I was so lucky to get him to come tonight. Talk to him for me.” Then she left me, her body moving fluidly around the room, touching everyone with a press of fingertouch, saying good-bye.
“I enjoyed it very much. I have wanted to meet you for some time,” Crandel said, standing in front of me. I noticed that his blue eyes were not lit by fingertouch.
“Thank you,” I said, delighting in the sound of his voice, yet wanting to be left alone with my reborn senses. I looked up, but the hostess was busy chatting on the opposite side of the room.
“I got my license only yesterday,” he said. “I was lucky to get in tonight. What’s it like anyway?”
I remembered the colors, the freeze-framing, the touch of a finger on skin, and the warmth. “It’s like eating too many sweets.” I always give frivolous answers, but they never notice.
“I’ve done everything else, I guess. They say it feels delicious. Better than fingertouch.” He paused, his eyes looking at my hand. I knew he wanted to touch me again, but I could permit it only once. “You were captain on the ship,” he said.
They all think I was the captain. “No. Weapons officer,” I said, my words quick. He shrugged, as if it didn’t matter.
“What are my chances of infection?” he asked, trying to disguise his feelings.
“Same as everyone else’s,” I said, looking for the hostess again.
“Is there no way to increase the chance?” he began. They all come to that question before long. He looked hungrily at my face.
“No,” I said, my reborn senses allowing me to feel contempt. It tasted like tainted meat in my mouth.
I watched him press a pinch of fingertouc
h into the skin around his lips. His eyes—lifer eyes now—gleamed.
“Since the ice is broken, who wants to go first?” the hostess called from across the room, loudly enough so that even those in the back could hear.
“Excuse me,” Crandel said softly, pulling away. I thought someone had called to him, but he walked to the window. Glancing back, he bowed slightly, then opened the window wide.
“I wish you a good death,” he said. “Wish me the same.” I could have mouthed the words I’ve heard so many lifers speak.
He climbed onto the sill, shoving the curtains aside with one hand and using the other to grip the frame. Then he stepped over the edge and was gone. I thought I could hear a scream as he fell to the ground fifty floors below, but I wasn’t really sure.
I made my way to another corner, away from the lifers who were perfunctorily killing themselves. The hostess tried to touch me again, but I pulled away from her. I found a drink on a table and sipped its sourness while I watched them commit suicide one by one. They weren’t very creative; I’ve died so many times, in almost every way. They were lifers, registered suicides, approved by the government. They knew what they were doing. They lusted for immortality through their death and hoped they would acquire the disease that raged within me and made me a DeadMan. They wanted to die and resurrect, to be like me.
Suddenly a woman was by my elbow. She held a thin knife in her hand and looked at it intently.
“Are you going to do it here?” I asked. She nodded, still looking at the knife. “Why do it by me?”
“Why not?” she replied.
“Why do it anyway?” I watched her and sipped my drink.
She smiled and opened her mouth as if to answer me. Instead, she brought the knife to her throat and slit it. The blood spattered my tunic, and she thumped to the floor.
I turned from her and concentrated on my body’s putting itself together again. The scenes of violence in the room swept before me. I could still feel the sparkle of my resurrection, although not as strongly.
They call us deaders. DeadMen, undead, vampires, regeneratives, regens, and other names I like even less. My body cannot die. It displays the symptoms, but its cells regenerate almost as quickly as they are destroyed. I am, in effect, immortal. I can die and resurrect within minutes. I have died three hundred seventy-three times for them, including the hanging tonight. I have died thousands of times more for myself, but I do not tally those deaths.
The parasitic disease that I and my five shipmates brought back from that hell world mutated somehow when we came home and made us DeadMen. The parasite keeps its host alive, not letting us truly die. Only when it is busy regenerating cells does it release its grip on our senses. We found that out on the return trip, the first time one of us tried to kill himself. We can infect others, but only rarely and only immediately after death—our own temporary deaths and the lifers’ usually permanent ones. The meds have no cure. Lifers swarm around us, touching us, hoping to catch the disease and live forever. They know little of what they desire. They do not realize what they must relinquish if they do succeed in catching the disease and becoming immortal. Their sensations will wither, as mine did. They are so eager to discard them in exchange for immortality. Perhaps that is why they are so distasteful to me.
Barely one out of a hundred becomes immortal. And the immortals we create cannot infect others. The infection mutates again in its second generation. Only the crew of the Acheron, the six DeadMen, can bestow immortality.
And only through death can we feel and taste and smell. And only in front of lifers can we feel more than a semblance of the sensations we once had.
“Your death was exquisite,” a voice whispered beside me. “How do you do it?” I looked down. It was a girl, perhaps seventeen or so, with a bowl of fingertouch powder in her hands. Her eyes reflected every light in the room.
“How do you come to life again?” she asked, a bit more loudly now. “My name is Lynx. What is yours?”
“DeadMan,” I answered, smiling at her. I shook my head when she lifted the bowl a little. I stay away from fingertouch. It’s a lifer drug. It’s not for DeadMen.
“No, no, no, I mean your real name, the one that your friends call you, the one—”
“I don’t give my name to lifers,” I said.
“How do you do it?” she asked again.
“It just works,” I said. I thought she would be satisfied with that.
“You don’t know how you—”
“You ask too many questions, lifer.”
She seemed confused and weaved slowly in place. I thought she was going to fall, but she steadied herself by putting a hand on my arm. Carefully I lifted it off and let it drop to her side. She hadn’t paid for me, and so I didn’t have to let her touch me.
“Are you going to kill yourself, too?” I asked.
She giggled, looking up at me with reflecting eyes. “I don’t think I can. I’ve got the papers and everything, but I don’t know whether I can go through with it.” She paused for a moment, dipped a finger into the powder, and pressed it against her forehead. I watched her rub the fingertouch deep into her pores. She reached out and stroked my arm and my wrist. I glanced at her hand, and she pulled it away. My skin was cold where she had touched it. “I mean, it’s pretty permanent, isn’t it?”
“For you it most probably is,” I said.
I picked up another drink, stepping over the bodies that patterned the floor. There was only a handful of lifers still alive in the room, but most were trying to kill themselves. The more zoned ones were having trouble holding the knives and blasters or finding the windows. I leaned against a wall, wondering whether any here would become infected and live forever.
A man stumbled and fell on an upturned blade held by a corpse. I smiled at myself. Stupid, one-death-is-all-you’ve-got lifers.
I was playing with my newest pinner in the game room when the call buzzed for me. I ignored it and finished the round before shutting off the machine. Its silvered surface darkened as the call buzzed again. Perhaps it was a client. I let it buzz anyway.
The pinner’s power cord was badly frayed, but I pulled hard on it, jerking it out of the socket. I plugged another game into it, switched it on, and ran up a good score. The buzzing didn’t stop.
I couldn’t concentrate on the game. So I went to my window and looked out over the city. I’d broken the railing long ago and had never replaced it. I grasped the window frame. Crandel’s eyes gleamed in my memory. I wanted to feel the dim sparkle of a private death, but I’d promised myself I’d have only one each day. The residue of the death I’d had two hours before lingered, but it was fading. I could hear, but I could not feel my fingers.
I must have been standing there for a long time before I heard the door open behind me. I had never had a lifer in my house before. I found out that they are not in the habit of knocking before entering.
“Bin?” she asked. It was the girl from the party—Lynx was her name.
I nodded, wondering who had told her my name. It couldn’t have been the hostess from the night before. She had drowned herself in the bath.
“Can I come in?” The open door was already a bright square of light behind her.
I stepped back as she closed the door, wondering whether she would leap for me and try to clasp her body around mine in order to increase her chance of contamination. Twice lifers had tried that, but I sidestepped them both. Her eyes weren’t shiny with fingertouch, yet I didn’t think she was perfectly straight, either.
“I’ve got a license to kill myself,” she declared, grinning.
“So?”
“I’d like you to help me. I can’t do it myself.” She touched the top button of her tunic, playing with it for a moment.
She stood still while I laughed. I turned my back on her and walked to the bar. I fixed a drink, not bothering to offer her one.
“Get out of here, lifer,” I hissed. “You haven’t got enough to pay me.”
“Yes, I do; yes, I do. Here. See?” She held a fistful of crumpled bills toward me. They were all hundred-credit notes.
“Not enough, lifer. I kill only myself. Get one of your friends to do it for you.” I began laughing at her again.
“Don’t do that,” she begged. I couldn’t stop. “I said, don’t do that,” she repeated, pulling a needle gun out of another pocket.
I glanced at the gun. “What are you going to do? Kill me? Even the quickest poison won’t work, lifer.”
She let the gun drop to her side. The credit notes fluttered to the floor, but she made no move to pick them up.
“Please help me, Mr. Bin. You’re the only one I know who can help me.” She licked her lips, and I thought I saw a tear in the corner of one eye, but, then, it could’ve been the start of a fingertouch zone.
I shook my head slowly, waiting for the one question that lifers always ask. Perhaps she truly could not kill herself, but I doubted it. She was only more brazen in her desire to increase the possibility of contamination, believing that the touch of my hands as I killed her would give her a greater chance of immortality. Idly I wondered whether killing a lifer would increase the chance of the disease’s leaping from me, but I let the thought fade. The image of putting my hands on lifer skin sickened me.
It has always amazed me how eager lifers are to die. “Get out, Lynx.”
She turned and went to the door, her arms limp and her walk almost a shuffle. She had one hand on the door handle when she looked back at me.
“I have always admired you, DeadMan. Ever since I can remember, I’ve worshiped you. How you come back after each death. How you die with such grace, such calm.”
“It won’t work, lifer,” I said. “You’ll have to do it yourself. You can’t pay me enough to make me help you die.”
Future on Fire Page 20