FOURTEEN

The following morning, while Seri was taking a shower, the counsellor arrived at the chalet. Almost at once it was as if my doubts were focused.

Her name was Lareen Dobey; she introduced herself, invited me to use her first name, and sat down in the chair behind the desk. I was on my guard from the moment she arrived, sensing the momentum of the Lotterie’s system behind her. She was here to counsel me, implying she was trained to persuade me.

She was middle-aged, married, and reminded me of a teacher I had had in my first year at senior school. This alone gave me the instinct to resist her influence, but on a more rational level it was clear she took it for granted that I would be going ahead to take the treatment. I now had an object for my doubts, and my thoughts clarified.

There was a brief, irrelevant conversation: Lareen asked me about my journey, what islands I had visited. I found myself taking a mental step back from her, secure in my new objectivity. Lareen was here to counsel me through the treatment, and I had at last reached my decision.

“Have you had breakfast yet, Peter?” she said.

“No.”

She reached behind a curtain beside the desk and pulled forward a telephone receiver I had not known was there.

“Two breakfasts for Chalet 24, please.”

“Would you make that three?” I said.

Lareen looked at me inquisitively, and I explained briefly about Seri. She changed the order, then hung up.

“Is she a close friend?” Lareen said.

“Fairly close. Why?”

“We sometimes find that the presence of someone else can be distressing. Most people come here alone.”

“Well, I haven’t decided—”

“On the other hand, from our point of view the rehabilitation process can be greatly assisted. How long have you known Seri?”

“A few weeks.”

“And do you expect the relationship to go on?”

Annoyed by the frankness of the question, I said nothing. Seri was within earshot, had she chosen to listen, and anyway I could not see what it had to do with this woman. She stared at me, until I looked away. In the shower cubicle I heard Seri turn off the water.

“All right, I understand,” Lareen said. “Maybe you find it difficult to trust me.”

“Are you trying to psychoanalyse me?”

“No. I’m trying to learn what I can about you, so I can help you later.”

I knew I was wasting this woman’s time. Whether or not I “trusted” her was not the issue; the confidence I lacked was in myself. I no longer wanted what her organization offered me. Just then, Seri came in from the shower cubicle. She had a towel wrapped around her body and another about her head. She glanced at Lareen, then went to the other end of the chalet and pulled the screen across.

Knowing that Seri could hear me, I said: “I might as well be honest with you, Lareen. I’ve decided not to accept the treatment.”

“Yes, I see. Are your reasons ethical or religious?”

“Neither… well, ethical I suppose.” The promptness of the question had again taken me by surprise.

“Did you have these feelings when you bought the ticket?”

Her tone was interested, not inquisitive.

“No, they came later.” Lareen was waiting, so I went on, noting subconsciously that she was expert at manipulating a response out of me. Now that I had stated my decision I felt a strong compulsion to explain myself. “I can’t really describe what it is, except that my being here feels wrong. I keep thinking of other people who need the treatment more urgently than I do, and that I don’t really deserve it. I don’t know what I’m going to do with athanasia. I’m just going to waste it, I think.” Still Lareen said nothing. “Then yesterday, when we arrived here. It’s like a hospital, and I’m not ill.”

“Yes, I know what you mean.”

“Don’t try to talk me into it, please. I’ve made up my mind.”

I could hear Seri moving around behind the screen, brushing her hair out.

“You know you are dying, Peter?”

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean anything to me. We’re all dying.”

“Some of us sooner than others.”

“That’s why it doesn’t seem to matter. I’ll die in the end, whether or not I take the treatment.”

Lareen had made a note on the pad of paper she carried. Somehow it indicated that she had not accepted my rejection of the treatment.

“Have you ever heard of a writer called Deloinne?” she said.

“Yes, of course. Renunciation.”

“Have you read the book recently?”

“When I was at school.”

“We’ve got copies here. Why don’t you borrow one?”

“I wouldn’t have thought that was approved reading here,” I said. “It doesn’t exactly agree with your treatment.”

“You said you didn’t want to be talked out of your decision. If you’re not going to change your mind, I want you to be sure you’ve not made a mistake.”

“All right,” I said. “Why did you mention it?”

“Because the central point of Deloinne’s argument is that the irony of life is its finite nature, and that the terror of death is caused by its infinitude. When death comes, there is no reversing it. A human being can therefore only achieve whatever it is he aspires to in a relatively brief time. Deloinne argues—mistakenly, in my personal opinion—that it is the temporary nature of life that makes it worth living. If life is prolonged, as we can prolong it here, then life’s achievements become attenuated. Deloinne also points out, correctly, that Lotterie-Collago has never made guarantees against eventual death. He therefore comes to the conclusion that a short, rich life is preferable to a long and impoverished one.”

“That’s how I see it,” I said.

“So you prefer to live your normal span?”

“Until I won the prize, I’d never even thought about it.”

“What would you call a normal span? Thirty years? Forty?”

“More than that, of course,” I said. “Isn’t normal life expectancy somewhere around seventy-five years?”

“On average, yes. How old are you, Peter? Thirty-one, isn’t it?”

“No. Twenty-nine.”

“Your records say thirty-one. But it doesn’t matter.”

Seri came out from behind the screen, fully dressed but with her hair hanging loose and wet. She had a towel around her shoulders, and a comb in her hand. Lareen took no notice of her as she sat down in the other seat, but instead unclipped a large fold of computer print-out paper and examined the top sheet.

“Peter, I’m afraid I’ve got some rather hard news for you. Deloinne was a philosopher but you try to take him literally. Whatever you say, you believe instinctively that you will live forever. The facts are rather different.” She was moving her pencil over the sheet. “Here we are. Your life expectancy, at present, is put at just under four and a half years.”

I looked at Seri. “That’s nonsense!”

“I’m sorry, but it’s not. I know you find it difficult to believe, but I’m afraid it’s extremely likely.”

“But I’m not ill. I’ve never been ill in my life.”

“That’s not what your medical records say. You were hospitalized when you were eight, and you were under treatment for several weeks.”

“That was just a childhood illness. Kidney trouble, they said, but the doctors told my parents I was all right and I’ve never had any trouble since.” Again I looked at Seri, seeking reassurance, but she was staring at Lareen.

“When you were in your early twenties, you went to your G.P. several times. Headaches.”

“This is ridiculous! That was just a minor thing. The doctor said it was because I was working too hard. I was at university. Everybody gets headaches! Anyway, how do you know all this? Are you a doctor?”

“No, I’m just a counsellor. If it was as minor as you say, then perhaps our computer prognosis is wrong. You can be examined if you wish. At the moment, all we have to go on is your records.”

“Let me see that,” I said, pointing at the sheet of paper. Lareen hesitated, and for a moment I thought she was going to refuse. But then she passed it over.

I read through it quickly. It was in detail accurate, though selectively. It listed my birth date, parents, sister, addresses, schools, medical treatment. Further on were more unexpected details. There was a list (incomplete) of my friends, places I had often visited, and, disturbingly, details of how I had voted, the tithes I had paid, the political society I joined at university, my contacts with a fringe theatre group, my connections with people who were monitoring the Covenant. There was a section on what the computer called “imbalance indications”: that I drank frequently, had friends of dubious political affiliation, was fickle with women, was given to unreasonable rages when younger, was described as “moody and introverted” by one of my tutors, was described as “only 80 per cent reliable” by a former employer, had been granted deferment of the draft on “psychological” grounds, and that for a time I had been involved with a young woman descended from Glaundian immigrants.

“Where the hell does this stuff come from?” I said, brandishing the sheet.

“Isn’t it accurate?”

“Never mind that! It’s a complete distortion!”

“But is it factually accurate?”

“Yes… but it misses out a lot of things.”

“We didn’t ask for these details. This is just what came out of the computer.”

“Do they have files like this on everyone?”

“I’ve no idea,” Lareen said. “You must ask your own government that. All we’re concerned with is your life expectancy, although this extra information can have a bearing. Have you read the medical summary?

“Where is it?”

Lareen left her seat and stood beside me. She pointed with her pencil. “These figures are our codes. Don’t worry about them. This is where your life expectancy is printed.”

The computer had printed 35.46 years.

“I don’t believe it,” I said. “It must be a mistake.”

“We’re not often wrong.”

“What does the figure mean? Is that how long I have to live?”

“That’s the age at which the computer says you are most likely to die.”

“But what am I suffering from? I don’t feel ill!”

Beside me, Seri took my hand. “Listen to her, Peter.”

Lareen had returned to her seat behind the desk. “I can arrange for a medical examination, if you like.”

“Is there something wrong with my heart? Is it something like that?”

“The computer doesn’t say. But you can be cured here.”

I was hardly listening. All of a sudden my body felt as if it were a mass of previously unnoticed symptoms. I remembered the numerous aches and pains I had felt: indigestion, bruises, stiff legs, a sore back after working too long, the hangovers I sometimes suffered, the headaches at university, the coughing with head colds. All seemed innocuous and explicable at the time, but now I wondered. Did they hint at something worse? I imagined clotted arteries and neoplasms and gall-stones and ruptures, lurking within me, destroying me. Yet it still had a faintly ridiculous aspect: in spite of everything I continued to feel as healthy as ever.

I resented utterly the fact that the Lotterie had thrust this on me. I stood up, looked out of the window, and across the lawns towards the sea. I was free, under no compulsion; Seri and I could leave immediately.

But then the realization: no matter what was wrong with me, there was a cure for it! If I took the athanasia treatment I should never again be ill, I should live forever. Illness thwarted.

It was an exhilarating feeling, one that seemed to give me great power and freedom. I suddenly realized how inhibiting was the prospect of illness: that one was cautious with food, or wary of too little exercise, or too much, aware of the signs of advancing age, shortage of wind, not getting enough sleep, or drinking or smoking too much. I would never need worry about such things again: I could abuse my body as I wished, or ignore it. I should never weaken, never decline.

Already, at the advanced age of twenty-nine, I had felt the first stirrings of envy of those younger than me. I saw the effortlessly agile bodies of younger men, the slender unsupported bodies of girls. They all looked so fit, as if good health were something to be taken for granted. Perhaps someone older than myself would find this amusing to contemplate, but from my point of view I had already noticed myself slowing up. After the athanasia treatment I would remain forever twenty-nine. In a few years’ time, those young adults I secretly envied would be my physical equals, yet I would have extra years of insight. And with every new generation I would acquire a greater mental stature.

Given the jolt, the news of my life expectancy, I began to recognize that the Lotterie’s treatment was subtly different from Deloinne’s interpretation. Because I read his book at an impressionable age, Deloinne had influenced me too much. I made his ideas my own, without questioning them. Deloinne saw athanasia as an abnegation of life, yet really it was an affirmation.

As Seri had pointed out, the coming of death brings the destruction of memory. But life is memory. As long as I am alive, as long as I wake every morning, I remember my life, and as the years pass my memory becomes enriched. Old men are wise, not by nature but by absorption and retention, and by the accumulation of sufficient memories to be able to select what is important.

Memory is continuity too, a sense of identity and place and consequence. I am what I am because I can remember how I became it.

Memory was the psychic force I had described to Seri: the momentum of life, driving from behind and anticipating what is to come.

With increased life span the quantity of memory would increase, but a mind can fine-tune this into quality.

As memory is enhanced, so is one’s perception of life.

This is the fear of death. Because it is unconsciousness, the obliteration of all physical and mental processes, the memory dies with the body. The human mind, at pivot of past and future, vanishes with its memories. Thus, from death there is no remembering.

The fear of dying is not just the terror of pain, the humiliation of the loss of faculties, the fall into the abyss… but the primeval fear that afterwards one might remember it.

The act of dying is the only experience of the dead. Those who are living cannot be alive if memory includes that of the state of death.

I was aware, beyond my new introspection, that Seri and Lareen were speaking to each other: polite exchanges and pleasantries, places for Seri to visit on the island, an hotel she might stay in. And I was also aware that a man had brought a large tray bearing breakfast, but I was not interested in food.

Lareen’s computer print-out lay on the desk, the prediction of my life expectancy visible on the face I could see. 35.46 years… a statistical probability, not really a prediction.

A young man in his early twenties would have an expectancy of half a century. Of course, he might only live another three weeks, but the statistics were against this.

My own expectation was said to be another six years. I could live to be ninety, but the statistics were against this too.

However, I had no way of knowing if the figures were reliable. I looked again at the print-out, stamped with all the implacable neatness of a computer, and read again through the sundry evidence against me. It was a biased picture, saying almost nothing about me that could be construed in my favour. I was said to drink a lot, was moody, had a certain political dubiety. This was supposed to influence my general health and well-being; from this the computer had estimated my life span.

Why had it not taken other facts into account? For instance, that I often went swimming in summer, that I enjoyed well-cooked fresh food and ate plenty of fruit, that I had given up smoking, had attended church until I was fourteen, was generous to charities, kind to animals and had blue eyes?

They all seemed just as relevant or irrelevant to me, yet each would presumably influence the computer, and some might predicate a few extra years for me.

I felt suspicious. These figures had been produced by an organization that sold a product. No secret was made of the fact that Lotterie-Collago was profit-making, that its principal source of revenue was the sales of its tickets, and that every healthy athanasian who emerged from the clinic was a walking advertisement for their business. It was in their interests that winners of the lottery accept the treatment, and therefore they would offer any inducement they could.

I reserved judgement on the treatment, but I resolved that I would make a decision only after an independent medical examination. I continued to feel healthy; I was suspicious of the computer; I found athanasia a challenge.

I turned back to the other two. They had started on the toast and cereals the man had brought. As I sat down, I saw Seri looking at me, and she knew I had changed my mind.