Clark's Law by Jim Mortimore

Author:Jim Mortimore [Mortimore, Jim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 10

The chapel was simple in construction: a cube-shaped annex to Medlab, three meters on a side. Its walls were draped with dark cloth. Rows of pews took up most of the room.

Brian Grond lay on a raised dais in front of the seats. He was covered from ankles to neck in a white shroud.

Jacintha Grond stood in the narrow space between the seats and the dais. She breathed deeply, shudderingly, feeling her nerves fray a little further. If Sheridan could have seen her now, she thought, he would be surprised. Surprised that the cold, aloof, faintly arrogant woman he had spoken with could stand here trembling, on the edge of tears, before the body of a man she did not love.

There were probably a lot of things about her that would surprise Sheridan. He was an officer, an administrator. A red-tape man. Oh, he came across as sympathetic enough, but what did he really know about it? He was probably married to some GROPO-groupie, some stay-at-home who was happy to bring up the kids and forget any chance of a life of her own.

Jacintha dismissed these self-indulgent thoughts by looking around the chapel. An odd name for a room containing nothing of any greater religious significance than a few old curtains. Then again, she supposed, if they had tried to place icons from even just the major religions in here there would be no room for visitors-or the deceased for that matter.

The deceased.

Brian.

Jacintha licked her lips and-finally-lowered her eyes to the shrouded body, the face. His face. Brian’s face.

He was not as she remembered him.

He was pale. The skin was bruised. There were contusions on the cheeks, a cut above the eyebrow. Brian was a big man. Well, wide, anyway. In life he had been given to sudden movements, dramatic if somewhat clumsy. Now he seemed somehow shrunken, as if death had robbed him of more than just his life, as if it had somehow managed to… to dull his presence even in her memories of him. As if it had taken the full color stereo image she had of him in her mind and reduced it to a flat, black and white copy, grainy and insubstantial.

Or had she done that by not loving him?

It didn’t matter. What did was the fact that Brian was gone. When he was buried her life would be her own again.

She sighed, settled wearily into one of the pews, sighed again as the ache in her legs and back subsided a little, then felt guilty at the sense of relief. Brian hadn’t had any relief. How had he felt? Had he known that he was going to die? Had he had time for a last thought? What had been his last sensations? Feelings.

How could she ever know? How could she ever even presume to try to understand?

Tears came then. She rested her head in her hands and surrendered to the feelings cascading through her, all sense of time and self washed away in

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