Penumbra (16 page)

They had driven to the grave garden in Mojave, and followed the procession as Ella’s coffin was carried on an electric bier to the crematorium. At the sight of the building, pumping out the smoke of the previous cremation, something had snapped within him and he had vomited down his suit. He had complained of stomach pains and doubled over for effect, anything to be spared the trial of experiencing the funeral, the scattering of his sister’s ashes in the pit where a tree would be planted in her name. It had worked: a family friend had rushed him to her nearby house, where he had washed himself and changed into clothes too big for him, and said that he needed to lie down. From the settee in the lounge of the stranger’s house he had watched the smoke rise above the tree-tops.

He looked up, suddenly aware of a presence. Ten Lee was standing in the open doorway, staring at him. He wondered how long she had been there, how much she had seen.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I was passing . . .’

‘It’s okay.’

With her diminutive stature and scarlet flight-suit, she was a strange mirror image of Ella in her bright red pyjamas.

Ten Lee was staring at the image of Ella, frozen mid-leap. ‘Who is this?’

Bennett stared at Ten Lee, challenging. ‘She was my sister, Ella.’

Ten Lee nodded, the composure of her features suggesting neither censure nor comprehension. ‘Was?’

‘She died a long time ago, when she was ten.’

He reached out to the touch-pad. Ella completed her leap and landed on the floor before him. She saw Ten Lee and smiled. ‘Hi there. Who are you?’

Ten Lee regarded Ella, considering her response. She looked past the image at Bennett. ‘Joshua, please turn it off.’

‘Ella,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you later, okay?’ He reached out and touched the pad and the image of his sister winked out of existence.

‘What?’ he said to Ten Lee, his aggression anticipating her criticism.

She gestured at the SIH unit. ‘Why, Joshua?’

‘It helps,’ he told her. ‘We were close when we were kids. Ella was a good friend. When she died . . .’ He paused, gathering his thoughts. ‘I know she isn’t really Ella, but she’s the next best thing. Over the years we’ve developed a relationship that I value.’

‘Even now?’

Bennett nodded. ‘Even now. She reminds me of the times we had together.’

‘Joshua, we all live in the shadow of the fact of death. It is the purpose of one’s life to come to some acceptance of its inevitability, so that the idea of it does not destroy us. We must come to some accommodation of the fact of our own mortality.’ She paused, her tipped eyes regarding him. ‘Joshua, you can’t accept the idea of your own death if you fail to accept the death of loved ones, if you cling to this . . . this fantasy.’

‘It’s all I have,’ he whispered, staring at her.

‘It is all you have because you have never given it up.’

Seconds elapsed, and when next Bennett looked up he saw that Ten Lee had slipped from the room, leaving him to contemplate the meaning of her words, as a disciple tries to unravel the conundrum of a
koan.
In the past he would have wished for sleep to claim him, the refuge from contemplation of his failings and weakness. Aboard the Cobra there was a means of oblivion far more effective than mere sleep.

He quickly left the room and moved to the chamber containing the suspension units. At his touch the lid slipped open and he lay down inside. His flesh crept to the touch of the sub-dermals. He might have felt apprehension had he given himself time to contemplate the fact of this, his first time in suspension, but all he sought was peace from his thoughts, and in seconds he was unconscious.

Later he thought that he had dreamed, but in suspension dreams were impossible. The workings of the mind were effectively stopped, metabolic processes halted. What he did recall were the memories and images that flooded his mind once the unit returned him to semiconsciousness; the dreams that filled the hours as he slowly became aware of himself, some two months later.

In this waking period he experienced a series of fractured images: his father, bizarrely dressed in the grey VR suit, walking through the grave garden behind Ella’s coffin; then Ella herself, in pyjamas, running into the desert and frantically scrabbling through the hot sand in search of her buried diary. The pain of this final image tore a scream from his throat. He sat up quickly, shrugging the massage pads from his arms. He swung his legs free of their soothing ministrations and sat on the edge of the unit, holding his head in his hands and breathing deeply.

Two months had elapsed, he knew, but it seemed no more than minutes since he had left his room and given himself to the suspension unit. He felt an ache in his bones and he was overcome with a terrible weariness.

He stood, reaching for the wall to support himself. His vision swam and his head pounded with a severe, persistent throbbing, like migraine. He staggered from the room and crossed the corridor to the shower units.

Hot needles of water restored sensation to his body. He stretched, easing the pain from his muscles. He became aware that he was hungry and thirsty. After standing below the drier, he dressed in a fresh flight-suit and fetched a self-heating tray of food from storage He ate in his room, wanting the reassuring company of Ella, but telling himself that he would appreciate her more if he waited until he had run through the checks with Ten Lee.

After eating, feeling better for the shower and the meal, he made his way to the flight-deck. Ten Lee was seated in the lotus position before the viewscreen, staring out at the streaming stars.

He tried to detect any change in the void surrounding the ship; he wondered if perhaps the elongated lights of the stars were less tightly packed here, the multi-colours fainter. It was hard to tell. The almost inaudible bass note still filled the ship, noticeable more in his solar plexus as a constant low vibration.

Ten Lee saw his reflection in the viewscreen and without turning said, ‘Joshua.’

It seemed just two minutes since they had spoken in his room; he wondered if she would mention his reliance on the holographic Ella. Then he reminded himself that for Ten Lee two months had elapsed. She would have had much more to occupy her mind during that time.

‘I checked on Mack from time to time, Joshua.’

‘How is he?’

She smiled. ‘Sleeping peacefully.’

She unfolded her knotted legs, stood and climbed into the co-pilot’s couch. ‘We’re over halfway to the Rim, Joshua.’

‘How’s it been?’

‘Peaceful. I have learnt much. I think the practice of meditating in the void can be recommended. I seemed to attain a greater appreciation of sunyata.’

‘I’m pleased for you,’ Bennett muttered. ‘Shall we get this over with?’

For the next hour they cycled through the series of checks, calling off figures and read-outs to each other. Everything was going according to plan: they were on course, ahead of schedule, and the Schulmann-Dearing propulsion unit was performing at optimum. They were due to phase into the G5/13 star system in a little under six weeks.

The checks over, Bennett pushed the wraparound console away and stretched. ‘Sure you’re okay here on your own, Ten?’

She blinked at him. ‘Why shouldn’t I be?’

‘I don’t know. Don’t you get lonely?’

She shook her head. ‘I never get lonely, Joshua. Loneliness is just another one of your strange Western concepts.’

‘You don’t need anyone?’

‘I am trying to go beyond need.’

Bennett thought of the times in the past when loneliness had suffocated him with a feeling of inescapability like claustrophobia. He recalled the years after Ella’s death, when there had been no one out there who understood or sympathised. He wondered how he had survived without going mad.

He stared at Ten Lee. ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ he said. ‘See you in six weeks.’

She made no response. Her gaze was fixed on the void.

He moved down the corridor to his room. He sat on his bunk, staring at the touch-pad. He would talk to Ella for a while, then catch some regular sleep for a few hours before returning to the suspension unit.

He reached out and pressed the touch-pad.

Ella appeared in the middle of the floor, lying on her back and staring up at the ceiling. She was wearing a pale green gown, which Bennett was slow to recognise. A hospital gown, he realised with bewilderment.

‘Joshua,’ she said in a small voice.

‘Ella?’

‘I don’t feel well.’

He stared at her. She was no longer the impossibly pretty, elfin-faced creature the hologram usually projected. Her face was pale and elongated, her eyes large, staring.

‘Joshua . . .’ she said, a note of appeal in her voice.

‘Ella, get up. Stop playing games.’

His mind was racing. The module had never done this before. Always Ella had been radiantly healthy, full of energy and optimism. Then he noticed her hair. It was thin, straggling. Her pale scalp showed through the threadbare tresses.

Bennett slipped off the bunk and sat on the floor beside her. More than anything he wanted to reach out, take her hand and comfort her. Emotion blocked his throat, hot and raw.

‘I know what’s happening, Joshua. We can’t live for ever, can we?’

‘Ella . ..’

‘I’ve enjoyed our times together. We’ve had some good fun, haven’t we? All those talks. Your stories of space. And coming here, for my birthday. That was really good.’

‘Ella. You’ll be fine, really. You’ll get better.’

She gave a weak smile. ‘Not this time, Joshua,’ she said, staring at him. ‘You see we all must accept death, our own, those of the people we love.’

Only then did he begin to understand. He stared at her, tried to protest.

‘You’ll soon be on your own, Josh. You must accept what is happening to me. Let go and lead your own life.’

She smiled and reached out, and Bennett lifted his own hand and reached for her, and their finger-tips met and meshed, and Bennett felt nothing.

As he watched, Ella’s narrow rib-cage ceased its steady rise and fall, and her mouth opened with a final sigh, and her head slipped to one side.

Bennett wanted to cry out, in anger and grief.

He stared. Something was appearing around the still, silent image of Ella. He made out the steady upward growth of plush pink padding, of polished rosewood. The hologram of the coffin soon enclosed the body of his sister, pale now in death.

As he watched, the coffin and the body burst into bright flame, which grew and flared and then died, and soon exhausted itself, guttering out to leave nothing.

He closed his eyes, too drained even to weep. He experienced a surge of anger, directed at the young boy he had been, the coward who had missed his sister’s funeral.

At last he stood, wondering how he might face Ten Lee, what he might say to her. He left his room and made his way down the corridor.

She sat on the floor of the flight-deck in the lotus position, the soiled soles of her feet upturned, thumbs and index fingers forming perfect circles. Her eyes were open, watching him.

He leaned against the wall, slid down and sat on his haunches. He felt unutterably weary, drained of all emotion. He tried to detect in Ten Lee’s pacific visage some trace of censure or compassion.

‘What now, Ten?’ he asked.

She lifted her shoulders in an expressive shrug, maintained her posture. ‘You have a choice, Joshua. We always have choices. It is the choices we make that determine how we regard ourselves.’