"No afterlife? You do not consider death a translation to a spiritual existence?"
The man snorted. He was slowly sinking in the tub, as loss of blood weakened him gradually, but his mind remained alert. "Death is a translation to intellectual nonexistence."
"Does that frighten you?"
"Why should it? It is the deaths of others I should fear, for they can cause me inconvenience and grief. When I myself pass, I shall be out of it, completely uncaring."
"You have not answered," Zane said.
The man grimaced. "Damn it, you are putting my toes to the fire! Yes, my own death does frighten me. But I know that is merely my instinct of self-preservation manifesting, my body's effort to survive. Subjectively, I do fear extinction, because instinct is irrational. Objectively, I do not. I have no terror of the nonexistence before I was conceived; why should I fear the nonexistence after I die? So I have overridden the foible of the flesh and am proceeding to my end."
"Wouldn't you be relieved to discover that life continues on the spiritual plane?"
"No! I do not want life to continue in any form! What uncertainties or tortures might I experience there? What tedium, existing for eternity with no reprieve in another person's sterile conception of Heaven? No, my life is the only game, and the game has soured, and I want nothing more than to be able to lay it aside when its convenience is over. Oblivion is the greatest gift I can look forward to, and Heaven itself would be Hell to me if that gift were denied."
"I hope you find it," Zane said, shaken by this unusual view. A man who actually insisted on oblivion!
"I hope so, too." Now the atheist was fading rapidly. The loss of blood was affecting his consciousness and soon he would faint.
"A man's death is the most private part of his life," Zane said. "You have the right to die as you wish."
"That's correct." The voice was slow and faint. "Nobody's business but mine."
"Yet shouldn't you be concerned about the meaning of your life, about your place in the greater scheme of things? Before you throw away your one chance to improve—"
"Why the hell should I care about improvement when I don't believe in Heaven or Hell?" the atheist demanded weakly.
"Yet you assume that your own relief is all that matters," Zane said. "What of those you love, who remain in life? Those who love you, and who will find your body here, a horror to them. They will still suffer. Don't you owe them anything?"
But the atheist was too far gone. He had lost consciousness and no longer cared who else might suffer, if he ever had cared. In due course he died.
Zane reached in and drew out his soul. It was a typical mottled thing, good and evil spotting it in a complex mosaic. He started to fold it—and the soul disintegrated, falling apart into nothingness.
The atheist had his wish. He really had not believed, and so the Afterlife had been unable to hold him. He was beyond the reach of God or Satan. That did seem best.
It was best—but was it right? The atheist had not seemed to care about anyone except himself—and in that uncaring, perhaps had rendered his own existence meaningless.
Zane rejoined Mortis. "I think that man was half-right," he said. "He is better off out of the game—but the game may not be better off without him. A man should not exist for himself alone. Life made an investment in him, and that investment was not paid off." But Zane wasn't sure.
His timer was going again. He oriented on the next client, wondering how he was going to account for the soul that disintegrated. The Purgatory News Center would have a ball with that one. He visualized the headline: THE FISH THAT GOT AWAY.
He arrived at a hospital. That was not unusual; the terminally sick tended to congregate there, and he had made a number of similar collections all over the world. But he still didn't like hospitals very well, because of his lingering guilt relating to his mother.
At the edge of the parking lot was an ad, for once not Satanic. SHEEPSHEAD HORN O' PLENTY—MORE FRUIT THAN BRANDS X, Y, AND Z HORNS. Just the thing to buy for a hospitalized person recovering from stomach surgery.
Zane felt worse when he saw his client. It was an old woman, and she was embedded in a mass of lines and burbling devices. Some sort of bellows forced her to breathe rhythmically, and monitors clicked and bleeped to signal her heartbeat, digestion, and state of consciousness. Her blood coursed through the tubes of a dialysis machine. A nurse checked the equipment regularly, going on to the others in the ward. There were five other patients here, all similarly equipped.
The client's hospital gown was draped awkwardly, as such things seemed to be designed to do, so that embarrassing portions other wasted anatomy showed. She was in pain, Zane could see, though half-zonked on therapeutic drugs. She was overdue to die; only the relentlessly life-sustaining things enclosing her frail body prevented her from doing so.
Deja vu! His mother, all over again,
Zane approached. She spied him, and her bloodshot eyes tracked him erratically. The tubes running into her nose prevented her from turning her head conveniently, and the machine set up a clangor of protest when she tried to shift her body.
"Be at ease, lady," Zane said. "I have come to take you away from this." She issued a weak hiss of a laugh. "Nothing can take me away," she gasped, spittle dribbling from her mouth. "They will not let me go. All my pleading is in vain. I may rot in this contraption, but I will still be alive."
"I am Death. I may not be denied."
She peered more closely at him. "Why, so you are! I thought you looked familiar. I would gladly go with you—but they won't give me the visa."
Zane smiled. "It is your right to make the transformation. That right can not be abridged." He reached into her body and caught her soul.
It didn't come. The woman keened weakly with new agony until he let the soul go. It snapped back into place, and she relaxed.
"You see!" she whispered. "They have anchored me in life, though it isn't worth it. You can't take me, Death!"
Zane looked at his watch. It was fifteen seconds past time. The woman really was being held beyond her destiny.
"Let me consider," Zane said, disgruntled. He walked down the ward, glancing at the other patients. He saw now that the details of their apparatus differed, but all were caught beyond their natural spans and all were similarly resigned to their fate. They might have no joy in life, but they would not be released from it one second before the machines gave out. This was one efficient hospital; there were no slip-ups.
"I see you, Death," someone murmured nearby,
Zane looked. It was a male patient in the adjacent rig. Unlike some of the others, this one was fully alert.
"I can't take her soul while that equipment functions," Zane said, wondering why he was bothering to explain to a nonclient.
The old man shook his head, causing his own apparatus to protest. "Never thought I'd see the day when Death was denied. That leaves taxes as the only certainty." He essayed a feeble laugh that made his dials quiver and alarmed the nurse on duty, who thought he was suffering a seizure. She seemed unaware of Zane.
After a moment, the man spoke again. "If it was me, Death, know what I'd do?"
"That old woman, my client," Zane said. "She reminds me of my mother." And what a mass of guilt lay there, tying into his conscience like the lines of the hospital machines.
"She's somebody's mother," the man agreed. "It's her son who pays for all this foolery. Thinks he's doing her a favor, making her live beyond her time or will. If he really loved her, he'd let her go."
"Doesn't he love her?" Zane had killed his own mother because he loved her, but then had doubted.
"Maybe he thinks so. But he's really just getting even. He's a mean man, and she brought him into this world, and I guess he just never forgave her for that. So he won't let her leave."
Something snapped. "Death shall not be denied!" Zane said. He marched back to his client's section. He found switches on the equipment and clicked them off.
"Oops!"
The nurse was on it immediately, as the machinery bleeped alarm. She turned the switches on again.
Zane ripped out wires and tubes. Fluid spurted.
Now the nurse became aware of him. "You did it!" she cried, horrified. "You must stop!"
Zane caught her in his arms and kissed her on the lips. She felt the skeletal embrace and fainted. He set her down carefully on the floor.
He saw that automatic failsafes were stopping the leaks in the torn tubes. The bleep-bleep alarm was more strident; soon other nurses would hear and come. He could not be sure the job was done.
Zane picked up a chair and smashed it into the stand supporting the bottles of life-preserving fluids. Glass shattered, and colored liquids coursed across the floor. He put his foot against a console and shoved it over, indulging in an orgy of destruction that was the overt expression of his long-suppressed emotion.
At last he stood over the old woman, chair raised to bash in her skull if need be—but he saw that now the job had been done.
He set down the chair and lifted out her soul, gently. There was a smattering of applause from the other patients as he put away the soul and walked out through the ward. All these people were on artificially extended time, so were able to perceive him for what he was.
"But I am a murderer—again," Zane protested weakly, now suffering reaction. Never before had he actually killed in his role of Death. There had been grim satisfaction in the act—but surely he had added an awful burden of sin to his soul.
"I wish it was me you come for," one of the others muttered.
"You can't murder our kind," the old man said. "Any more'n you can rape a willing gal."
Zane paused. "How many of you feel that way?" he asked. "How many really want to die now?"
A murmur traveled along the ward, like a ripple of water. "We all do," the old man said, and the others agreed.
Zane pondered briefly. He heard the running footsteps of others in the bowels of the hospital, becoming aware that something was wrong. Time was limited.
He had done his assigned job; he had collected the old woman's soul and in his fashion had redeemed his murder of his mother. He had now done openly what he had done covertly before. He had shown that even Death himself would have made the same decision Zane had, long ago. But had he done his human job? These people were being denied their most fundamental right: the right to let life go.
"You know it would be mass murder," he said.
"It would be mercy," the old man said. "My grandchild is going broke paying for me, because the doctor says she must—and for what? For this? For eternity in a hospital ward, too sick to move, let alone enjoy life? Hell can't be worse than this—and if it is, I'll take it anyway! At least there maybe I'll have a chance to fight back. Cut me loose, Death! There's more'n just us patients suffering here; it's our families, too. They'll cry a while, but soon they'll heal—and maybe they'll still have a little something left to live on."
Zane decided. He was already doomed to Hell for his violations of the standards of his office. What did he have to lose? He wanted to do what was right, regardless of the consequence. These were his clients, too.
He went to the service area of the ward. There was the main circuit box. He yanked down all the handles.
Power died in the ward. Darkness closed in. The machinery stopped running.
There was an immediate outcry. Hospital personnel rushed in. Someone groped her way to the circuit box, but Zane stood before it. The nurse felt a skeletal Hand close on hers, pushing her away from the box. She screamed in sheerest terror.
"That is the horror you have been visiting on these patients," Zane told her. "Death-in-life."
No one could reverse what he had done, this time.
Chapter 7 - CARNIVAL OF GHOSTS
A few days later, once more caught up on his schedule, Zane paid Luna another call. This time she smiled when she saw him. "Come in, Zane; I'll be ready in a minute."
"Ready?"
"You're taking me out on a date, remember? Somewhere interesting, so we won't be bored with each other."
Zane had really had more talking in mind, for their last dialogue had affected him profoundly, but he didn't care to say that. True, aspects of their talk had been uncomfortably candid, and the notion of her paying off the demon still bothered him. But a portion of his self-doubt and disgust had eased significantly after their last meeting, and he hoped for similar positive impact in future. After all, how could he object to anything about her, after what he had done at the hospital? That had made ugly headlines on Earth as well as in Purgatory!
He looked at Luna's paintings as he waited for her. They were beautiful. She was much more of an artist than he had been. The colors were clear and true, and the auras realistic. It was hard to believe that a person whose soul was presently slated for damnation in Hell could do such excellent work. He was getting to like Luna better—and that realization caused him to wonder again why the Magician had wanted the two of them to know each other. Surely it was not merely because they were compatible or had a common interest in auras.
Luna reappeared—and this time she was stunning. Before, clothes had converted her most of the way from neutral to attractive; this time they had completed the transition. Bright blue topaz glinted from a band placed in her hair, and green emerald was set in her slippers; the rest of her between these two made the beauty of the gems pale.
"How do you like me now?" she inquired archly. He was cautious. "I thought you didn't really care for me. Why are you making yourself so lovely?"
She grimaced prettily. "I told you my deepest sins, and you didn't reject me. That's worth something."
"Because I'm no better!" he replied. "How can I condemn you? You were helping your father, while I—"
"Was helping your mother," she finished, completing the rehearsal of their excuse for being together, which somehow seemed necessary for each of them.
"We're both well tainted. Anyway, until we know what my father had in mind, there's no sense in letting it go. I confess you're not the man I would have chosen on my own—"
"And you aren't the woman I was slated for—"
"Do you think Fate had her fickle finger in this?"
"I know she did. She put me in the office of Death by arranging the thread of my life to terminate right when my predecessor was getting careless. I suppose Fate even steered me past Molly Malone, where I got the gun I used. Whether Fate would have done this without the behest of your father, I don't know."
"Never trust a woman," Luna said seriously. "Fate least of all."
Zane smiled. "I'm a fool. I do trust Fate. She helped me get started as Death. The truth is, my life was hardly worth it before. Of course, I know I'm nothing special as Deaths go."
"I would hate to encounter something special in Deaths, then," she murmured. "That episode at the hospital—and I think I recognize your touch in that Miami riot, too."
Zane smiled. "It was no riot. But it illustrated the point. I let too many clients go free, when I can, and I take some I'm not supposed to, and I waste time talking to others, trying to make it easier for them. The Purgatory News Center is having a field day with my exploits. I don't know what Purgatory did for humor in the news before I came along."
"You're too well-meaning, and too trusting."
Zane looked at her, and was daunted again by her sheer beauty. "Surely I can trust you, though!"
"No."
"No? I don't understand."
"Put on your Death cape," Luna said abruptly.
Zane glanced at her again, startled. "I don't know. This is personal, and I don't like to mix—"
"I want a date with Death," she insisted. She turned her face to him and looked him in the eyes and smiled, and her eyes seemed lambent. He could not deny her, though he knew it was deliberate artifice.
"My suit is in the car," he said. "But—do you really want to be seen with Death?"
"No such worry. People don't see Death unless they are cli
ents."
Not entirely true, but close enough. Zane proffered her his arm, and they walked out to the Death mobile.
The night was dark, with a drizzle threatening. He fetched his cape and gloves and shoes from the car and donned them.
"Now you are truly elegant," Luna said. "I never realized before how handsome a well-dressed skeleton could be. Kiss me, Death."
"But my face is not—"
She leaned into him and kissed his lips. "Oh. you're right!" she exclaimed after a moment. "A bare skull! Alas, poor Yorick, I kissed him. An infinite jest!" She brushed off her mouth with one hand as if removing sand.
"Death is no pleasant date to most people," Zane said, disturbed by her attitude. What was motivating her? "You should see the mail I get."
She smiled as if this were a pleasant invitation. "Yes, let's see your mail. Do you actually answer it?"
"Yes," he said, embarrassed. "It seems only right. No one seeks out Death, in any manner, without good reason."
"That's touching. You are a decent man. Show me a letter."
Zane reached into the dash compartment and brought out a letter, turning on the interior light of the car so they could read it. It was written in a rather neat juvenile script; it normally took many years for a person to reduce his script to adult illegibility. Children tended to write letters more than adults—at least they did to his office—for what reason he couldn't quite fathom. Maybe it was because their beliefs were more literal.
Dear Death, Every night Mommy makes me say my prayers, and that’s okay I guess, but they scare me. I hafta say If I Should Die Before I Wake I Pray The Lord My Soul To Take. Now I’m afraid to go to sleep. I lie awake most of the night and then I daze out in school and I’m flunking something and please Death I don’t want to die right now. Is it okay if I sleep a little at night without having to die? Love Ginny.
"Suddenly I see what you mean," Luna said. "That's awful. That poor little girl—she thinks—"