On a Pale Horse (7 page)

He turned north, then east, orienting as well as he could on the direction shown. The arrow remained true to its heading—but now the cat’s eye was changing, growing larger on its stone. That must mean he was getting closer. It was a perspective-stone, telling him when he got near his destination.

But the cat’s eye was expanding very slowly; if its rate was linear, he would never get to his appointment on time. Somehow it seemed very important that he do so. Was lateness as bad as an outright balk?

Zane turned another corner—and noticed that the green gridstone brightened as he did so. What did that mean?

He turned again—and saw that a button on the car’s dash glowed in concert with the flash of the green grid.

Experimentally, he turned again, ignoring the chorus of protests by other cars to his erratic behavior, and touched the button with his forefinger, just as it flashed.

The car wrenched. The outlines of the city blurred. Zane felt as if he were in a space shuttle, zooming at
supersonic velocity across the terrain of the world. Then, as abruptly as it had started, the blurring stopped.

Zane looked around, startled. He knew immediately that he was in a different city. He guessed it was one a significant distance northwest of Kilvarough—perhaps all the way across the continent. Maybe even the great port city of Anchorage.

But he had no time to be concerned about that. The cat’s eye had grown abruptly and significantly larger, the two dots on the gridstone had merged, and his watch was down to a single minute. He was very close to his object.

With this assurance, Zane proceeded with greater confidence. He was beginning to get the hang of the use of Death’s instruments. He now understood that the eye grew until it covered the stone, and that would be when he arrived. When the direction arrow started shifting, though he was driving in a straight line, Zane knew he was there. Just in time, too; his watch’s red hand showed only thirty seconds and counting.

The eye was maximal, and the arrow spun in a full circle. He had to be right at the scene—but there was nothing here. He was passing through an ordinary intersection. Was this a false alarm?

He slowed and drew to the side of the street, perplexed. He had thought he had it, and now it seemed he did not. The arrow steadied, pointing back the way he had come. Pointing at nothing.

The sweep hand on the Deathwatch closed on noon.

There was a crash in the intersection. A small truck had made a preemptive left turn into the right-of-way of a tiny Japanese subcompact, and the two had collided violently.

Zane turned off his motor and got out of the Deathmobile, not caring whether it was legally parked. He hurried to the scene of the accident.

The man in the truck was half-stunned. The woman in the little car had an enormous sliver of supposedly unbreakable glass through her neck. Blood was gushing out of her, flooding the dashboard, but she was not dead.

Zane hesitated, appalled. He saw no way to save the woman—but what was he to do? Cars were screeching
to halts, carpets were landing, and people were converging.

The woman’s glazing eyes clarified, momentarily. She saw Zane. Her pupils contracted to pinpoints. She tried to scream, but the blood cut off her breath, keeping her silent.

Someone nudged Zane’s elbow. He jumped. Fate stood beside him. “Don’t torture her, Death,” Fate said. “Finish it.”

“But she isn’t dead!”

“She
can’t
die—quite—until you take her soul. She must remain in terrible agony until you put an end to it. She and all the others who are trying to die during this hold period. Do your duty, Death.”

Zane stumbled toward the wreckage. The woman’s terrified eyes tracked his progress. She might see nothing else, but she saw him—and Zane knew from his own recent experience how horrible the oncoming specter of Death was. But he did not know how he was supposed to finish ending her life.

The victim’s dress was torn, showing how the glass had sliced all the way down across her right breast, leaving her front a mass of gore. There was absolutely nothing pretty or merciful about this demise. It had to be terminated quickly. Yet the woman tried to resist his approach. She wrenched her left hand up to fend him off, the hand hanging from a broken wrist. Zane had never before seen such physical and emotional pain, not even when his mother had—

He reached for her, still uncertain what to do. Her wrist blocked his hand, but his flesh passed through hers without resistance. His hooked fingers caught in something that felt like a cobweb, there inside her head. He wrenched his hand out—and it trailed a festoon of transient film, like the substance of a soap bubble. Disgusted, he tried to shake it off, but it clung like a string of spittle. He brought his other hand up, holding the jeweled bracelet, and tried to scrape the stuff away. The thin film tore, but clung to his other hand.

“This does not become you, Death,” Fate said reprovingly. “This is her soul you are brutalizing.”

Her soul! Zane’s eyes tried to glaze like those of his victim. He stepped back—and the tattered soul moved with him, stretching out from her destroyed body as if reluctant to separate from it.

Then the silken strand snapped free and contracted. He held it dangling limply, like the discarded skin of a molting snake.

The woman in the car was dead at last, the horror and anguish frozen on her face. Death had taken her soul and ended her suffering.

Or had he? “What happens now?” he asked Fate. His body was shaking, and he felt unpleasantly faint.

“You fold the soul, pack it in your pouch, and go on to the next client,” she answered. “When you have a break in the schedule, you will analyze the soul, to determine to which sphere it should be relegated.”

“Which sphere?” His mind refused to focus, as if his very thoughts were blinded by the client’s blood.

“Heaven or Hell.”

“But I’m no judge of souls!” he protested.

“Yes, you are—now. Try not to make too many mistakes.” Fate turned and walked away.

Zane stared at the dangling shreds of the soul. People passed him, but no one noticed him. He might as well have been alone.

Awkwardly, he brought his hands together, folding the gossamer material like a sheet. It bent in the wrong places and creased horizontally, and the torn edges flopped out of place, but he muscled it together stage by stage. Finally he had a very small, light package; the soul had hardly any physical mass. He fished in his pockets again and found a cloth bag; he stuffed the wadded soul into this. Then he tried to retch, but his empty stomach lacked the wherewithal to complete the job. What a mess he had made of his first case!

The police had arrived, and an ambulance, and people were extracting the mangled remains of the victim from the wreckage of her car. Witnesses were being interviewed, but no one thought to question Zane. He was coming to understand how this operated; he was not invisible, but he was unnoticeable. Except when it counted.

He had collected his first soul. No one needed to tell him that he had pretty well bungled it. He had frightened the woman unnecessarily, extended her torment while he dallied, and ripped her soul forth most unkindly. This certainly was not an auspicious commencement of his new duties!

His watch was flashing again. The sweep hand was moving. He had seven minutes to make his next appointment.

“I’d rather die myself!” he muttered. But he wasn’t quite sure of that. Life could be ugly, and his present office was also ugly, but dying was worse yet. What a torment the human condition could be!

What alternative did he have? Zane hurried to the Deathmobile. He did not know what the normal frequency of clients was, but supposed a backlog had accumulated during the transition, if such a thing were possible. Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe Fate had timed the changeover to occur during a lapse in other clients.

He oriented on the next case and drove toward it. As the green grid flashed, he touched the button on the dash panel—and launched toward the location on hyperdrive. This one was far south, probably well below the equator. But as the car stabilized in the new city, the guide-gems functioned normally, and no one seemed to notice his sudden appearance on the street.

Zane was not at all sure he liked this business of collecting souls, but still was hesitant about balking. How long would the woman in the wrecked car have suffered if he, Death, had not been there to relieve her of her soul? He didn’t care to think about that.

The car ran smoothly, maneuvering through traffic expertly. It was a real pleasure to drive. He followed the arrow and eye and closed quickly on his destination.

Where was he? Maybe in Brazilia, in the bosom of the southern continent. But no—now he saw the Phoenix General Hospital. This was the Arizona of the country. He had not hyped south of the equator at all; he had severely misjudged his progress. Well, he would learn with experience.

He parked in the visitors’ lot, drew his cloak about
him, and proceeded to the appropriate ward, feeling nervous. He had never liked hospitals, especially since his mother had been confined to one. Yet he realized that Death would have a number of calls at hospitals, since many terminally ill people would expire in them.

No one challenged him, though he had not arrived during visiting hours. Evidently they took him for a doctor or hospital functionary. Perhaps he was; his function was the most basic of them all.

He found his client. It was an old man in a ward of four. All of them had tubes and apparatus connected to their bodies in awkward ways and all seemed to be terminally ill. Oh, he hated this! He wanted to flee, but could not.

Zane was concerned that his appearance would terrify the client, as it had before, but there was no way to sneak up on him anonymously. In addition, Death was early; two minutes remained on the countdown.

He decided to be forthright. After all, that couldn’t be any worse than the previous case. He marched up to the bed. “Hello.” His spoken word sounded strange; there seemed to be an echo from his pocket.

None of the four patients reacted at first. This gave Zane a moment to ferret out the mystery. He reached in the pocket and found the earring he had taken from Death. Had the echo come from it? Why?

“Hello,” he repeated—and this time was sure the sound reacted with the garnet.

The client’s eyes turned slowly on him. The sagging mouth formed words. “About time you got here, Death!”

The client was speaking in a foreign language—but Zane understood him, because a translation emanated from the gem he held. He realized that this was a magic translation device, another enchanted stone. Naturally Death had duties all over the world and had to be able to handle any language. He jammed the gem into his left ear; later he would get it attached in a more normal fashion.

The novelty of the language and the stone had distracted him from the business at hand; the client was looking at him expectantly. Zane was taken aback. “You were expecting me? You’re not afraid?”

“Expecting you? I’ve been seeking you for six months! Afraid? I thought I’d never get out of this prison!”

“This hospital? It seems nice enough.”

“This body.”

Oh. And it seemed the translation worked both ways, for the man understood Zane’s words, though there was no noise in his ear. “You
want
to—?”

The client squinted at him. “You’re new at this job, aren’t you?”

Zane choked. “How did you know?”

The man smiled. “I had a close encounter with Death once before. He was older than you. More wrinkles in his skull. The sight of him so fazed me that I surged right back into life. I had been dying on the operating table, but the operation became a success. That time.”

“I know how that is,” Zane agreed, thinking once more of his mother.

“Then I had a reserve will to live that manifested when challenged. But my condition is farther gone now. Neither science nor magic can abate the pain any more. Not without dulling my intellect, and I don’t want that. In any event, I suspect that death is merely a translation to a similar existence without the burden of the body. Some people don’t even realize when they’re dead. I don’t mind if I realize, just as long as the pain abates. So my will has eased, and I’m ready to lay life down. I hope you are competent.”

Zane looked at the Deathwatch. He was a minute overdue! “I hope so, too,” he said. “I talked with you too long.”

The man smiled again. “It was a pleasure, Death. It provided me a brief respite. If you ever discover a person truly being kept alive beyond his will, you must use force if necessary to ease him. I think you will do that.”

Again Zane thought of his mother. “I have done that,” he agreed in a whisper. “A person has a right to die in his turn. I believe that. But some would call it murder.”

“Some would,” the client agreed. “But some are fools.” Then his face tightened with a spasm of intense pain. “Ah, it is time!” he gasped. “Do it now, Death!”

Zane reached for the man’s soul. His fingers passed
through the client’s body and caught the web of the soul. He drew it carefully out, not tearing it. The man’s eyes glazed; he was dead and satisfied to be so.

The three other patients in the room paid no attention. They did not realize the nature of the visitor, or know that their companion had died.

Zane folded the soul and put it in his bag with the other. He was getting better at this, fortunately. He felt better about it, too, for he knew he had done right by this particular client, sparing him further futile pain. Perhaps this office was not as dreadful as he had thought.

He looked at his watch. The countdown was running again, but showed almost half an hour. The cat’s eye was large; the location was close. For once he wouldn’t have to hurry.

He drove to a park area beyond Phoenix and pulled off the street. He opened his bag of souls, put in his hand, and drew one out. He unfolded it carefully, spreading it out as well as he could against the inside of the windshield. It was a whole soul, untorn, so he knew it was the most recent one he had collected.

The soul, silhouetted against the glare of oncoming headlights, showed patterns of translucency and opacity, like a convoluted Rorschach blob. It was fascinating in its intricate detail, but he had no way to judge its overall nature. Should this one be relegated to Heaven or Hell?