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Perhaps some part of him did not want to face even the bare fact that she now
needed a home aide.
"My nurse, the new one. I was getting cabin fever.
Imagine what I'll be like when I'm in a little box, eh?"
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She presented him with "a parting gift"  an hourglass.
"I& don't& "
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"
Sic transit
. Time passes."
"It looks like the magnetic funnels of the Eater."
"That, too. Call it a visual pun."
"I think& "
She kissed him slowly, breathing in long drawn sighs, as though laboring.
"Don't think. The whole rest of my goddamned existence, I'm going to be
nothing but a thinking thing."
They went back into their bedroom then, hearts thudding.
"A little personal therapy, Harriet," Channing called.
He managed to trip over their rattan furniture on the way, carrying her 
so frightening, her lightness
 and then it was enveloping, the air liquid and their skins like the silent
slide of silk.
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Dying was more interesting than she had feared. You got mail about it, even.
The public only knew that she had volunteered to be uploaded, nothing about
the true mission. They presumed that, like the others already transmitted by
microwave as 0's and 1's, she would shortly become a digital commodity for the
Eater to relish.
Even such momentary renown combusted with her faded astronaut glory to make
her a momentary celeb. Being slightly world famous and sheltered by armed
guards up and down the street gave dying a certain, well, zest. The postman
still delivered, apocalypse coming or not, and so she got bags of letters.
It was impossible to take this unasked correspondence at face value. These
people were probably doomed, too, if the Eater grew irritated, and they knew
it. Still&
To their credit, men did not decorate their notes with scented, colored
stationery, dotting fs with circles or even hearts. With big ridiculous loops
to
5
281
their p's and g's, women's letters were a topographical pain, even when
writing premature condolence notes with a smiley face at the end.
We shall pray for you
, many of them concluded.
Prayers were fine, but as she had weakened she had become an aficionado of bed
linen. Pique't matelasse't Porthault, Egyptian cotton . English vs linen,
dotted Swiss, chenille. Gourmet sleeping, though they couldn't contend with
the sheer contentment of snuggling against Benjamin. But when she rested
through the day, lying alone in luxury, the 280-threads-per-inch seemed to
matter
.
Harriet reluctantly took her out, usually in the mornings when she was most
energetic. Benjamin was at home as much as possible, but shooing him off to
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the Center did them both good. The U Agency had added to Dr. Mendenham a corps
of specialists and the "sustaining terminal" class of drugs, introduced first
in the 2010s, had been doing a stun-
ning job of keeping her aloft, despite the steady growth of tumors and other
blights distributed throughout her body. They hurt some, and then a lot.
In astronaut training, they had taught her to displace herself from the pain
and still function, a talent that came in handy. She got fond of morphine in
the bad times, and liked Mozart particularly that way.
Go, Wolfgang
!
On a sunny Tuesday, she voyaged out with
Harriet, listening to a wrist-radio talk show that
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hashed over the visibility of the Eater. She had seen it the night before, a
pinprick of blue light from the decelerating jet, pointed straight at Earth.
Predictably, this excited everyone, as though until they could see it with
their own eyes the whole thing was a mere theory.
A brilliant, tropical day, enough to persuade her that the Problem of Evil was
just a rumor. It was so windy she saw a dog sticking its head out of a parked
car. In the market, at a display of I love you only Valentine cards, she
bought one to leave behind for Benjamin, especially since there was the added
inducement, now available in multipacks! She did not realize that she was
laughing so hard until it turned to sobbing and Harriet led her out.
On a lark, she went to one of the new casinos on the island, Harriet in tow. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]