Watson, Ian - Novel 10 (5 page)

 
          
Hauling
himself out of the floppy chair, Jim accepted the cassette and slipped it into
his breast pocket along with the room key. He shook his head.

 
          
“No,
I think I’ll see him raw. I’ll let
him
tell me who he is.” Resnick nodded affably.

 
          
As
Jim was opening the door to leave,
Alice
called, “Friday evening, right?
Barbecue time.
Let’s hope the weather holds.”

 
          
In
the scene-screen behind her, the weather held forever and forever.

 
          
Nathan Weinberger lay
on his bed,
looking at once wild and passive — as though he had been felled by a
tranquilliser dart and could only move his eyes now.

 
          
But
Jim doubted that the man had been sedated. Why would Resnick have insisted on
early meeting, if Weinberger was drugged?

 
          
No,
that wasn’t it. Weinberger looked like a paralysed wild animal because he was
caged. He alone in
all the
House was locked in. And
anything potentially lethal had been carefully removed from his cell. Jim noted
that a camera eye had been plugged in, up near the ceiling, to allow a duty
attendant to monitor the room. A small red light glowed by it.

 
          
Room
302 was deep within the body of the House, as was usual with rooms for clients
supposed to be in the final stages of withdrawal. So, of course, there was a
scene-screen: one wall held a deep vista of rolling forests. Yet the Weinberger
animal had no way of running off into those forests to hide himself and die
alone, unguided. He was penned.

 
          
“Hello,”
said Jim.

 
          
The
prisoner made no response.

 
          
Jim
picked up the phone by the bed.

 
          
“Guide Todhunter speaking.
I require privacy.”

 
          
A
voice grumbled at him briefly,
then
the red light near
the camera went out.

 
          
Jim
sat by the bed. This is a murderer,’ he thought.
A rare and
dangerous beast — a zoo specimen.
But the man did not look very
dangerous.

 
          
“Well, Mr Weinberger — Nathan, if I may — you’ve certainly made a
lot of waves here!
The ripples are really spreading out. I don’t suppose
you’re too bothered about who I am, but my name’s

 
          
Jim
Todhunter. I’m your new guide, fresh in from Gracchus — my first day here, in
fact. I don’t tell you that to gain sympathy votes; just to underline the fact
that my mind’s wide open to you. So far, all I know about you is that you were
once a guide yourself. . .”

 
          
Weinberger
did look at him now.

 
          
“Death
Hunter: that’s what your name is, fellow.
Tod
is German for death. Do you really know how to hunt for Death?” “As a guide, do
you mean?”

 
          
“You
don’t understand. How could you?” The man closed his wild eyes, as though to
blank Jim out from his attention.

 
          
“Try
me, Nathan.”

 
          
“This
is a sick society,” said Weinberger, almost to himself. “I know why it’s this
way. But nobody understands death.”

 
          
“Surely
it’s the first sane society in history, precisely because it takes full account
of death? Death is integrated, not locked out.” “Sure, from childhood onwards.
It’s like a mockery of ancient
Egypt
nowadays. Only, we don’t build pyramid
tombs or put golden dishes in them . . . Though I guess this House is a
passable imitation of a pyramid. I wonder if that was in the architect’s
basement of a
mind?
”

 
          
Jim
felt tolerably pleased at the way things were going.

 
          
“Who
would eat off those golden dishes?” he asked lightly.
“Only
the archeologists of the future.”

 
          
“Maybe
Death could eat off them.”

 
          
“But
death isn’t a person.”

 
          
“Oh,
isn’t it?”

 
          
“You
said ‘it*. Is a person neuter?”

 
          
“If it’s Death, fellow.”

 
          
“Is
that how you see death? As the Great Neuterer, equipped with gelding shears
instead of a scythe? Not as the Great Fulfiller?” “See?” echoed Weinberger.
“Nobody sees. Everybody’s blind.”

 
          
“Except
for you ...”

 
          
“Oh,
I haven’t seen what I
could
see! It’s
as though I’ve got another sense that I don’t know how to use. Another few
weeks, and it would have been a different story! But I got retired, by the
factory. The medical net caught me. Here lam.”

 
          
“Why
did you kill Norman Harper?”

 
          
“Maybe because he was a puffed-up bore.
Or
because he was the figurehead of lies.
Or maybe I did it to save him.”

 
          
“Save
him?
Whatever from?”

 
          
“From Death, of course.
Death gets everybody nowadays —
apart from those lucky few who get squashed by a truck when they’re looking the
wrong way. Or get electrocuted. The fast ones
who
get
taken by surprise. Even drowning’s probably a bit too slow.”

 
          
“I
drowned, Nathan.
When I was a boy.
I really did drown,
and they revived me. I experienced . . . bliss.”

 
          
“Like
a shot of heroin? If you remember what heroin
was.
Death gets everybody nowadays. The signals are all hot and strong. It hears
them all, it smells them all.”

 
          
“If
you think that death’s like an addictive drug, I might point out that everyone
has always died! What difference is there nowadays, except that we know how to
approach death in the best frame of mind?
And when to.”

 
          
“Death
didn’t get everyone, once. Death missed a whole lot of people. They weren’t in
the right frame of mind. They weren’t putting out the right signals. Their
minds were still fighting their bodies — still refusing them permission. Now
it’s too easy for Death — it’s plain sailing. Death grows strong. It grows
strong, fellow. It runs the whole damn world, or what’s left of it. It must
have been able to get inside our heads to fix things this way.” Weinberger was
certainly talkative enough now, but what he was saying seemed not so much
insane as inexplicable. This primitive personalising of death should have been
washed out of him long ago, especially since he had trained in a House of Death
himself. And left it, Jim reminded himself.
And torn up his
covenant.
Weinberger was obviously in a severe rejection phase — mixed
up with a desire to negotiate with ‘Death*, and even sacrifice to ‘him*, or
‘it*. (Yes, ‘it*: Death was a non-person for him.) All in all, it was a very
odd throwback to the old days.

 
          
“You’ve
got it all worked out,” said Jim neutrally.

 
          
“The
best defence against Death,” observed Weinberger quite suddenly, “is war and
murder and accidents. The very best defence of all would be a hydrogen bomb.”

 
          
“Oh,
I
see."

 
          
“No,
you don’t. I know perfectly well how you classify that sort of remark. ‘Wars
and riots indicate our decreasing ability to face death with acceptance and
dignity.’
Unquote.
But maybe there’s more than one
kind of death.”

 
          
‘‘Well,
of course there is —”

 
          
‘‘Death as per the Houses, and the unregulated, anarchic sort of
death?
No, it isn’t that simple.”

 
          
‘‘Tell
me then, Nathan.”

 
          
Weinberger
gazed into the phantom forests opening from his prison. He shook his head.

 
          
‘‘I
weary, Guide Todhunter. I despair. Go and hunt Death yourself, somewhere else.
And just hope that you don’t find it, till the big surprise comes along. Then
you’ll have led a rewarding, well-balanced, if moronic life — just as Norman
Harper did. I saved Harper from himself. One owes a duty to fools. Go on, now.
And get that spy-eye switched back on.”

 
          
‘‘The
camera’s perfectly understandable, isn’t it?” Jim picked up the phone and spoke
briefly. The red light blinked on again. ‘Don’t argue with the dying,’ he
thought. ‘I’ve accomplished enough for one visit. Weinberger sends me away now
— but only so that we can carry on when I return.’

 
          
‘‘I’ll
be back.
Tomorrow morning, if I may?”

 
          
‘‘Do
you know
,
I really ought to have shot myself, not him?
But that wouldn’t have worked out at all — unless I could have taken myself by
surprise! That camera’s quite unnecessary. You could fill this whole room with
knives and ropes and bottles of poison. I wouldn’t touch them.”

 
          
‘‘I
think we’ll stick with the camera, hmm? Now, what time should I call back in
the morning?”

 
          
‘‘Oh, the consolations of choice!
Okay, let’s play it by the
book! Make it ten-thirty.”

 
          
Once
he had left the room and locked it, Jim realized that he had forgotten to ask
Weinberger about the gun. Yet this hardly seemed important, compared with his
client’s incredibly distorted view of life and death which — somehow — Jim had
to get straightened out.

 
          
Promptly at ten-thirty
the next morning
Jim knocked on Weinberger’s door. He had found nothing on Weinberger’s cassette
to account for his behaviour, beyond his unexplained defection from the House
of Death some ten years earlier. He had checked, too, that his client had
already been fed and medicated and had his bed made up, just in case the staff
felt inclined to shun the murderer or give him short shrift. However, this had
not happened.

 
          
Silence
greeted his knock. But Jim still waited a moment, considerately, before
unlocking the door. He walked in to meet Weinberger’s expectant stare. The man
said nothing, though.

 
          
After
phoning for privacy, Jim sat down.

 
          
The
scene-screen showed the same rolling forests as on the previous day. Jim toyed
with the idea of asking Weinberger whether he would care for a change of scene.
It would be a weak gambit, he decided. Anyway, the last thing that a dying man
should crave was the stimulation of novelty. If Weinberger felt likewise,
surely this was one good sign.

 
          
Jim
opted for a strong gambit, instead.

 
          
“I’m
not
going to play this by the book,
Nathan.”

 
          
The book in question being
Good
Death: The Guidance of the Dying —
by now in its twelfth revised edition.
No doubt Weinberger would have some earlier edition practically by heart.

 
          
“I
want you to tell me exactly what you meant, yesterday: ‘Go and hunt death, and
just hope you don’t find it.’ But I shall tell you my own feelings first.
Frankly, I have my own reservations about what’s going on in the Houses these
days. For instance, I suspect there’ll be a crackdown on any kind of afterlife
studies for political reasons. It’s as though any proof of an afterlife would
throw society off course, so that we mustn’t even entertain the idea.

 
          
Myself,
I don’t think an afterlife is something that can ever be proved. It’s a grey
area, like the question of where the universe came from, or where it will go
after it collapses. But I really believe the afterlife option should be kept
open — whilst we still guide people to good deaths as the final end of life.”

 
          
“That
sounds like one almighty contradiction,” said Weinberger. Jim noted the
interest in his voice.

 
          
“Not
really. The least likely thing about any afterlife would be continuity of
personal
experience. Why?
Because it’s the
person
who
dies.
Just suppose that all the memories of everything you experienced
in life survived: in what context would they survive? As a sort of tape-loop
repeating itself endlessly with no fresh input?
A sort of
animated scene-screen of your life?
Hardly! On the other hand, if there
is
new experience, how long would it be
before you were totally swamped with this fresh input — which had
no connection
with this life of ours? So
there may be something after death, but it isn’t a continuation of all this.
And it isn’t a repetition. We have to accept the closure of the here and now.”

 
          
“You
saw the light of bliss when you drowned. And now that’s what you expect, isn’t
it?
A sort of eternal orgasm?”

 
          
“I’d
rather call it
an enlightenment
. But I’m glad you
mentioned eternity. Our time sense depends upon the metabolic rate of the body,
doesn’t it? So a child experiences an hour as a much larger span of time than
an adult does. Time shrinks as we grow older. The higher up the pyramid of life
we are, the narrower it becomes. Now, what if there’s a sudden reversal at the
moment of death? Or what if we reach a point of no-time, and all-time? What if
the instant of death is an
eternal
moment to the person experiencing it? What if it goes on and on forever, for
us, even though the ordinary world cremates us and moves on at its usual
average pace?”

 
          
“So
the afterlife would be the last fading second — but it just goes on and on?
What a mad idea! Listen, fellow, Death waits for us — but sometimes we get past
it. Sometimes we’re too fast for it.”

 
          
“Too fast?”

 
          
“Norman
Harper went too quickly — thanks to me. So he got through.”

 
          
Jim
shook his head in bewilderment.

 
          
“Through
whatV'

 
          
“Have
you ever heard of corpse-sweat, Mr Todhunter? Alias: the pheromone of death?”

 
          
“I
know what pheromones are,” said Jim. “They’re chemicals which living creatures
secrete to influence other living creatures. For instance, sexual attractor
pheromones: those attract males or females — and then they switch off the
opposition.”

 
          
Weinberger
sat up. “They’re the most powerful substances in nature. A single molecule five
miles downwind will bring a moth flying to the female that released it. Let me
tell you something, fellow. There’s a pheromone of death: a substance which
people release when they’re close to dying. It attracts Death to them. And
Death harvests them. Originally I guess it evolved as a warning signal. It
tells other members of the species, ‘Something’s dying here. Danger! Clear
off!’ It had survival value. And then carrion eaters learned how to home in on it.
How do you suppose that vultures know when to gather? No one ever explained
that to my satisfaction. The answer’s obvious, if there’s a pheromone of death.
And there is. That’s what corpse-sweat is: the stuff released by the dying
body, and the dying mind. Of course, you begin releasing it before you’re
actually a corpse. But we’re damn poor as a species at reading body signals, so
nobody has ever really noticed it. Not consciously.”

 
          
Weinberger’s
eyes were wild, obsessed.

 
          
“The
pheromone warns — but it attracts as well. It attracts Death to the dying.
Death is the soul-vulture, Jim.”

 
          
Jim
noted the use of his first name, but he was too stunned by Weinberger’s fantasy
to feel really thankful.

 
          
“You’re
saying that there’s a parasite — a creature that feeds on our deaths?
A thing that eats souls?
And because we prepare everyone for
death in the Houses, no one is getting through its net?”

 
          
“The
victims of sudden accidents get through.
The victims of
murder.
Maybe I ought to be saying the ‘beneficiaries’ of murder and
accident.”

 
          
“That’s
a pretty wild assertion.”

 
          
“Oh,
I can prove it. Or rather, I was getting to the point of proving it. Then the
crab got me by the claw. Now there isn’t time.”

 
          
“Have
you told this to anyone else?”

 
          
Weinberger
laughed dismissively.

 
          
“People
are too banal. They’re too ordinary, to accept that their world’s really
upside-down and inside-out.”

 
          
“I’m
glad you feel you can confide in me.”

 
          
“Do
you know why I quit the House? To pursue my own research! They would never have
let me do it here. It’s the same with you. Where
have
your afterlife studies got to? And you aren’t even looking in the right ball
court.”

 
          
“Do
you suppose that Death — Mister D — is somehow censoring research into his
nature?”

 
          
“Not
‘his’ nature. I’m not that dumb. I don’t know the answer to that question —
except maybe. All I managed to do in this House was collect enough
corpse-sweat, secretly, to work with. Really small amounts, but I finally
managed to synthesize some.
Again, not very much.
I
have to keep it shielded, of course.”

           
“Of course.”

 
          
“In a vacuum flask dispenser.
A small electromagnetic cage
might be even safer. I’m not sure. This kind of research is like groping in the
dark ...”

 
          
The
interview had gone extremely well so far. Superficially, that is. On any other
level it had gone preposterously, and Jim hardly knew what to do. He was a
death-guide, not an abnormal psychiatrist — though he knew enough psychiatry to
realize that Weinberger was definitely paranoid. And no House book covered such
a case, for drugs, not guidance, helped the dying of the incurably insane.

 
          
Paranoid, yes.
Weinberger had set up a self-consistent
system based on the most outrageous of premises — a blend of persecution,
private knowledge of The Truth (which nobody else knew), and a supposedly
practical plan for proving the equivalent of day being night, or light being
darkness.
All because he was dying.

 
          
No,
that couldn’t be the reason. Weinberger had started on this mad course a whole
decade ago . . .

 
          
Mad.
And Jim had to guide him, notwithstanding, because the man in his madness had
murdered Norman Harper and now he was too important simply to be drugged
towards a peaceful death.

 
          
Somehow
Weinberger’s duties in the House of Death a decade ago must have unbalanced his
mind. His mind had flipped into a new and unique configuration of beliefs
utterly at odds with everything taught and known in this country.

 
          
“How
did you first discover all this? What set you on the trail?”

           
“I sat with a lot of my
clients
right through euthanasia. As they began to fade out
— as the EEG began to pick up the pre-death ‘thanatos’ rhythm — well, I began
to see something in the room. Only, I couldn’t ever quite see it. I couldn’t
get a direct look. It was as though it was out of the corner of my eye.”

 
          
‘Out
of the corner of your mind’s eye,’ thought Jim.

 
          
“No
one else saw it?”

 
          
“Oh
believe me, I was cautious about asking! I dropped a few hints — ‘Is there a
mosquito in the room?’ ‘Is there a moth in here?’—
but
I didn’t want
that
on my records.
Then I began seeing it all the time, while people were about to die.
Almost seeing it, but never quite.
It was there, though. It
needed bringing out — like computer enhancement of a photograph. Yeah, it
needed focusing. Then one day I happened to be present when there was an
accident on the Bead way. Somehow an empty pod got detached. It fell right down
and crushed one fellow and badly injured another. It nearly got me! And I wish
it had! The first fellow died immediately, and I didn’t see anything beside
him. But the other fellow lingered on for five or ten minutes. The ambulance
was delayed. And I saw this
thing
arrive — the same thing that I saw in the euthanasia room. I almost saw it.”

 
          
So
Weinberger had decided that he was the Galileo of Death . . . But where was his
telescope, to see the mountains of the Moon? There couldn’t be one.

 
          
“What
did you plan to do with this corpse-sweat, as you call it? What was the big
scheme, which the crab aborted?”

 
          
Oddly,
Weinberger seemed to appreciate the almost brutal thrust of Jim’s question. He
was not quite as protective of his fantasy as Jim had imagined.

 
          
“Oh,
how we hid ourselves from death in the old days! How we sheltered! What a
wealth of resources we poured into shelters, once! Nuke shelters, right?”

 
          
“They’re
still okay for growing mushrooms in.”