"Heh! What are these stupid clothes supposed to mean?" He yelled angrily. "Am I in prison or what? When I arrived this morning I was wearing a suit made of the best English cloth-it cost twenty thousand drachmas-have I landed in a den of thieves? And what in the devil"s name is this stupid wheelchair doing here? I"m not ill! Although, I must admit I feel utterly miserable. Where are you, Apostoles? What kind of quacks are these? I came to have myself recorded. Where is Dr. Kaminas? I want to talk to Dr. Kaminas right away. I"m not going to let them get away with-!"
He stopped when the door of the medical room opened and he caught sight of us and the table laid out for a feast. A nurse and a doctor accompanied him.
I caught myself thinking that they had even got the mustache right.
"Who are these people?" he asked and grabbed the arm of the nurse who was pushing his wheelchair. "Is this a funeral?" Then he caught sight of Adreana, Eurydice"s daughter, and his face lit up.
"Eurydice!" He spread out his arms to greet her.
"Eurydice?" Alexandros said in an irritated voice. "That"s Adreana, Grandfather. You"re..."He fell silent when Kristos, Eurydice"s youngest child, began to cry.
"We"re all gathered here today..." Dimitrios began in a festive voice, "to celebrate your one hundredth birthday. Come and sit down with us! Here"s your place of honor!"
"Am I..." Father groaned. "Have I been dead?" He looked at us with a mixture of amazement and horror.
"We had you brought back to life," Nikos said. "It cost us a fortune, but nothing but the best for you, Father. Come and sit down. We"re now going to celebrate your one hundredth birthday."
Kristos groped for our faces with his eyes, just as a blind person would have with his hands. "My G.o.d! You"ve all grown so old!" he exclaimed. He looked at me and smiled.
"Apostoles, is that you, my son? You should stop eating and sitting around so much. You"ve gained so much weight. Do you still write those terrible stories for that magazine?"
"Hardly ever, nowadays," I replied. "Very few people can read anymore."
"It"s as if we"d been here together just the other day."
"For you, perhaps. For me, it was twenty years ago."
"Is that possible?" he asked. "I can"t believe it. When did... did I die?"
"Shortly after our visit here. In the fall. In October. A beautiful autumn day..." I couldn"t go on and had to fight back the tears.
"You"ve grown fat, too, Helena. And Nikos. Imagine, vain old Nikos growing bald! How often did I warn you, my boy, that all that thinking was not good for you. That"s what comes of it! You"re Eurydice, eh? You"re really beautiful. Then you must be Alexandros-lazy and fat just as you always were. I bet you"re a teacher like Nikos-right? Introduce me to your grandchildren, Dimitrios. How old are you now?"
"Seventy-four."
"You"ll soon be older than I ever was!"
"Excuse me. But you are one hundred years old today." He laughed but his eyes were filled with sorrow.
"Yes, I forgot."
"Can he eat and drink everything?" I quietly inquired of the doctor.
The young man looked at me half amused and half surprised.
"Of course," he replied with a smile. He was one of those sporty types whose whole purpose in life is to transform every inch of superfluous fat into superfluous muscle-consumed by a fanatical self-castigation of flesh that can only be compared with the religious flagellants of the Middle Ages. In order to keep his jaw muscles in form, he rolled a huge wad of chewing gum energetically between his teeth, and his breath had a sickly peppermint smell.
"Without wanting to dampen this festive mood, I would just like to point out that this..."-he casually pointed his thumb in Kristos" direction-"is not a sick person, but merely a copy, brought back to life for a short time only."
"Very kind of you," I a.s.sured him.
"The technicians had a lot of trouble last night because of the storm. Or, perhaps the recording was not perfect. At any rate..."-he pointed again with his thumb-"that"s a really lousy copy."
"Excuse me, but that"s my father."
The sportsman sized me up, obviously quite annoyed. "That"s exactly what I"ve been trying to tell you. He"s not your father. Your father"s dead. That"s a copy-electronically synthesized protoplasm modeled according to the recording of a person who once lived."
"I know. I..."
"You don"t know a thing. Compare it with the recording of a concert. Even with a hi-fi recording of exceptional quality, some of the overtones are always missing in playback."
He held his gla.s.ses to the sunlight in order to clean them. I noted that his gla.s.ses were very strong. The sportsman not only had the delicacy of feeling of a mole, but the eyesight of one as well.
"Medically speaking," he went on relentlessly, "this means that a series of hormones and enzymes have not been reproduced exactly, and this could set off disastrous reactions in the body."
He began to clean his gla.s.ses vigorously. "For a while, we can help with medication, but our facilities are limited. In view of this, life expectancy -scientifically speaking the word "life" used in this context is nonsensical -is extremely..." He stopped to put his gla.s.ses back in place and saw the expression on my face. "Well, as I said, I really don"t want to spoil your party."
"What about this catheter?" I asked. "Couldn"t you have done without it?"
He shook his head decisively. "We need direct access. Intravenous access. Should any toxic symptoms occur, we have to act quickly. You don"t want to have spent your money for nothing." He let out a short, bleating laugh. "His condition is monitored at all times by our computers. Nurse Polixeni will remain here with him and look after him. Should any difficulties arise, she will call me. I"m ready to intervene." He patted me on the arm. "Don"t worry. After all, you"re in the hands of Nekyomanteion Inc.-a company with tradition behind it." He looked at his watch. "Dr. Kaminas, the person your father wanted to see, is no longer with us-suicide after an overdose of phencyclidine. But first, he destroyed his own recording." He shrugged his shoulders and left.
Nurse Polixeni turned out to be a straightforward, optimistic young woman. With charm and a certain amount of routine efficiency, she knew just how to dispel any embarra.s.sment and set a happy tone. She even tolerated Father"s attempt to grab one of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and flirted with him. The table was laden with food for the feast, and there was a lot to drink. Celebrating his birthday, Kristos enjoyed his favorite dishes. He played every naughty trick possible and enjoyed fighting with his daughter just as he had in the old days. However, after a few hours, his "overtones" showed the first signs of trouble. He was overcome by a fit of choking, but Nurse Polixeni succeeded in managing the crisis with much aplomb by inconspicuously giving him an injection.
From then on, things went from bad to worse. However, as is usually the case at such parties, the person whose one hundredth birthday was being celebrated gradually ceased to be the center of attention. Distant relatives began to exchange gossip, male cousins became interested in their female cousins and withdrew un.o.btrusively. The loudspeakers blared loudly, the children even louder. A hard core formed around the bar, their speech slurred, struggling to articulate.
Late in the afternoon, Kristos" condition must have deteriorated considerably, because the doctor appeared and spoke quietly with the nurse. Together, they pushed his wheelchair into the medical room.
"We"ll just freshen him up a bit," Polixeni explained in a gay voice. I noticed that Kristos had wet himself right through and that he was staring straight ahead with gla.s.sy eyes. Most of the party didn"t even realize that he had left. Only Eurydice was crying furtively.
Half an hour later, they brought him back. They had changed his clothes and put another suit on him, and he seemed a little livelier than before. Nevertheless, he was obviously under heavy medication. He could hardly speak. He repeated again and again how lucky he was to have been allowed to see this day. Tears ran down his cheeks.
"Nothing but the best for you," Dimitrios a.s.sured him in a drunken voice, his arm around Father"s shoulders. Cheek to cheek, they looked like twins with their Charlie Chaplin mustaches, which hung over their upper lips as if they had been glued on. It was a grotesque sight that filled me with horror. I stared spellbound at this hideous farce and was therefore the first to notice that blood was gushing out of Father"s nose.
I ordered the nurse to do something and pulled Dimitrios away from him. Dimitrios mumbled something in protest, sat down on another chair and let his head fall onto the table.
The nurse gave Father another injection. I could tell by her abrupt movements that she was very nervous. Eurydice stood by and watched the proceedings, her eyes filled with terror.
"Take the children away! Say good-bye while it"s possible. It would be best if you"d drive home," I said.
The doctor finally came. "A lousy copy," he mumbled as he examined Kristos. "You should complain to the management. Ask for a reduction in price. Nekyomanteion is very obliging in that respect."
"Shut up!" I screamed. He shrugged his shoulders. I stared at the deathly pale face of my father. It seemed to be disintegrating. Blood ran out of his mouth and nose. His gray eyes were clouded over from the strong medication. I laid my hand on his cheek. It was cold. He didn"t feel my touch. I went to the toilet, locked myself in and cried. In the next toilet, someone was vomiting. "Oh G.o.d!" I heard Nikos sobbing. "Oh G.o.d!"
That you, of all people, should utter those words, Nikolakis! But I kept the thought to myself.
I washed my face and returned to the gathering. The doctor was still trying to revive Father. Tubes emerged from his nostrils. His mouth was covered with an oxygen mask. His body jerked convulsively with the pumping of the machine.
The hour before darkness.
I was glad that the women and children had gone, because what followed then was even worse. The frailty of flesh! The struggle to salvage the pitiful remains. His first death had been so peaceful-so dignified!
I remained with him to the bitter end.
A feeling of unreality came over me. The darker it became around me, the brighter it was inside me. "Father," I prayed. "Father," and I prayed for his soul-this poor creature"s soul pressed into the electronically copied protoplasm with Kristos" features. This weak, defenseless flesh, gradually dying before my horrified eyes.
Then they took him away.
A smell of peppermint breath came my way. "I need your signature for the cremation," the doctor said. "The copy is your property, though until payment has been completed, it belongs to Nekyomanteion Inc.-legally speaking."
He blinked at me, his mole"s eyes showing their complete naivete. He just didn"t know any better. His bright green OR jacket was covered with tiny spots of blood. Did he, as executioner, deal the final blow?
"Name?" an employee at the reception desk asked. "Kristos Katsuranis."
"Kat-sur-an-is, Kris-tos," he repeated for the computer. The name appeared on the screen, and COPY IN ZERO.
flashed in the bottom left-hand corner of the screen.
Then the words changed.
COPY DESTROYED.
RECORDING READY FOR PLAYBACK.
The attendant pressed a b.u.t.ton. The blinking stopped.
Bastos had waited for me.
My mouth felt stale and dry.
"Do we have anything left to drink?" I asked.
"There must be another bottle of ouzo in the trunk." He handed it to me.
The sharp, sweet taste was like a razor hitting my palate. The birthday presents, lovingly wrapped, were still in the trunk of the car. Kristos had not had time to open them.
"Do you know the story of the old Nekyomanteion?" I asked Bastos.
"No."
"Let me tell it to you."
"I heard it was a swindle."
"Yes, but those deceived were the living. The dead were left to rest in peace."
Later, I must have nodded off to the low, whispering noise of the electric motor.
"Where are we going?" I asked, waking up with a start.
"Straight on," Bastos replied emphatically.
Like the pa.s.sage of time.
"That"s good," I said. "Good."
The night air was mild, spiced with the aroma of burning olive wood. On the right, edged in white, lay the ocean. On the left, the rice fields glistened in the starlight, where Lake Acherousia had once stretched, the black waters of Hades, the realm of the dead.
The moon rose slowly over the mountains.
Sarakiniko, June, 1984.
Rokuro.
POUL ANDERSON.
PERSONS A priest (waki).
An engineer (kyogen).
A robot (mae-jite).
The ghost of Rokuro"s young manhood (nochi-jite) PLACE Comet Hikaru TIME Great Spring, the third year An attendant brings a table to center stage. Upon it are a prop representing a s.p.a.cesuit, and a thin metallic slab.
[The Priest enters and goes to the waki position, where he stands]
PRIEST As a fire seen afar, As a fire seen afar Beckons the traveler through night, So do the lights in the sky.
[He turns to the front of the stage]
I am a priest from Kyoto, on pilgrimage. My wish is to follow the course of holy Rokuro, who more than a hundred years ago went among the planets in search of enlightenment. On a world where the sun is dwindled to the brightest of the stars he attained Nirvana. Early in his quest he came to Comet Hikaru and sojourned for a span. Now I too have landed here.
[The Engineer enters]
ENGINEER Welcome to our base, reverend sir. I fear you arrive at a most unpropitious time, and my duties are many, but if I can possibly serve you I shall be honored.
PRIEST Thank you. I understand you are preparing to abandon this body.
ENGINEER Sadly, we must. For two centuries have men and machines mined its ice.