A Thousand Deaths by George Alec Effinger

Author:George Alec Effinger [Effinger, George Alec]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Anthology, Science Fiction
ISBN: 9781930846470
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2007-01-01T07:00:00+00:00

The sky was almost clear of clouds, and the sun was bright and warm. A bird's sharp cry broke through Courane's thoughts, and he realized with a moment of panic that he would have to drop his burden or fall. He was stumbling down a grassy hill, and he was afraid that he was about to have a crippling accident. He dropped the woman's body, but fell anyway. He rolled painfully to the bottom and lay where he came to rest, breathing heavily and trying to understand what had happened to him. He lifted a hand and touched his face; he didn't find blood. His knees and arms were scraped bloody and throbbing. He had hit his head on a rock, and his skull seemed to vibrate with concentric rings of pain. He waited with his eyes closed until everything seemed to be settled and at peace again.

When he opened his eyes he saw, in a nearby patch of delicate white flowers, a small rust-colored animal watching him. It was about the size of a squirrel, with a thin whip of a tail that lashed frantically as it stared fearfully at Courane. It squeaked and made Courane smile. After a moment, it turned and dashed through the flowers, disappearing in an instant. Courane sat up and rubbed his head. The young woman's body was not far away. He would stand soon, walk over and pick up the corpse again, continue the journey. Not just yet.

The sun seemed to draw up his pain and weariness, just as it pulled the dew and the morning mist into the sky. Despite his new wounds, Courane felt better than he had in many days. He tried to think back, to recall how D fever had tortured him as the illness progressed. The unbearable headaches, the agony in his arms and legs, the great hunger and the desperate thirst, the fever and the chills, his body's occasional refusal merely to work correctly: These things had obstructed him on his self-appointed mission, but nothing had defeated him. He had won out over his own body's sabotage, as well as the unearthly desert. Now, though—

Courane's eyes opened wider. Now, though, he had passed through the hills. His tumble had brought him to the bottom of the last low barrier. Before him stretched a flat plain covered with purplish-red grass. Not far away, invisible to him now, were the road, the river, and beyond it, the house. He might make it, after all.

The corpse bore little resemblance to the beautiful young woman it had been. Courane sat down beside it. "I can give up Earth," he thought. "I can give up success and happiness, wealth and fame, and all of that. It's easy because I've never had them. I can give up the house here, the work, the life on the farm. But giving up friends is hard." He remembered when he was a boy, his parents had had such hope for him, such plans. He had suffered their gradual realization that he was not in any way special.

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