Watson, Ian - Novel 10 by Deathhunter (v1.1) Page A

going to enter into it and become one with
it.
                 The
only snag was that the machine would do nothing. Nothing at
all. Merely purr, or hiss, or crackle, and render itself opaque, and drip minute amounts of something into the air within.
                 Yet
that, too, would be excellent. ‘Look, Nathan, it doesn’t hurt. There isn’t
anything. Death is nothing.’
                 “I
built little pilot models, you know,” confided Weinberger. ‘‘Prototype
death-traps, to catch whatever vectored in on the pheromone. But they didn’t
work. Death wasn’t fooled. Obviously there had to be an actual dying body
there. So I bought some rabbits —”
                 ‘‘You
should be ashamed of yourself. That was what was so sick about medicine in the old days: the slaughter, the mutilation,
the agony of so many poor creatures so that people could keep alive for five
minutes longer! It was just another symptom of our whole death sickness, which
would have burnt the planet bare.”
                 “Okay,
I know the spiel too. And I was disgusted, believe me. It seemed as if I was sacrificing to Death.”
                 It
began with rabbits. It ended up with Norman Harper. Weinberger spread his hands
placatingly.
                 ‘‘No
result. Then I got the idea that maybe the death of animals and the death of
people is different in essence ...”
                 ‘‘That’s
the old Catholic doctrine that animals have no souls. The
idea that animals are automatic objects. That was another part of the whole sickness — the disrespect.”
                 ‘‘Sure.
Now nothing has a soul, so everything is holy.”
                 To
which Jim said nothing. Afterlife studies necessarily implied that something
outlasted death, even if it wasn’t a bundle of memories and personality in the
old sense of a soul . . . And certainly the radiant unity that Jim had
experienced when he drowned must be classed as holy.
                 Weinberger
frowned.
                 “It
appears to be ready . . .” Jim said.
                 Like
a virgin actor who had forgotten his lines, Weinberger froze. He stalled.
                 “Could
we make a start tomorrow ?* * he asked apologetically.
“We’ve worked damn hard today.’’
                 Jim
smiled sympathetically.
                 “Would
you rather I lay down in it instead of you?’’
                 Abruptly,
Weinberger grinned back. “Then I release the nonexistent whiff of cyanide gas? To zap your death? Ah, there’s nothing like that in my machine! Maybe there ought to be.”
                 Jim
pressed home.
                 “Is
that why you had the gun? Was it to shoot Death with when it came into your
cage? But you’d only smash the glass, and let it out. What did you have in that
gun: silver bullets?”
                 “It
was an old . . . souvenir. The gun.’’
                 And
maybe that was why Weinberger had hung on to it. To shoot
Death. Death was the mugger who broke into your apartment. Death was the
rapist, who took you by force. At least, in the old way of
looking at it.
                 “You
can try it for size if you like,” Weinberger offered. He was in a ‘bargaining’
mode, thought Jim. “Go ahead — I’m not proprietorial. This’ll be a famous bed
soon. Far more famous than any of your beds where Good Queen
Bess or Abraham Lincoln slept.”
                 “Well,
thanks but no thanks.”
                 “If
I could equip it with cyanide gas ...
I really wonder whether I’d be killing Death in general, or just the personal
death of whoever was in the machine? ”
                 “A
whole lot of people die every hour, Nathan. They even die simultaneously. Even if this Death of yours