Bollinger said quietly, “Shall I arrange for you to go home, then, Henry?”
“No. No. Get me Dr. James. And notify my family that my Farewell ceremony will be held a week from today. It’s time for me to Go.”
“But if you still want to live—”
“What better time to Go?” Staunt asked.
Twenty-Eight
They were all here, close around him. Paul had come, and Crystal, too, back from the moon and looking feeble, and all the grandchildren and the great-grandchildren, and the friends, the conductors and the younger composers and some critics, more than a hundred people in all coming to see him off. Staunt, undrugged but already beginning to ascend, had moved coolly among them, thanking them for attending his Leavetaking party, welcoming them to his Farewell ceremony. He was amazed at how calm he was. Seated now in the throne of honor, he listened to the final orations and endured without objection a scrambled medley of his most famous compositions, obviously assembled hastily by someone inexpert in such matters. Martin Bollinger, giving the main eulogy, quoted heavily from Hallam: “Too often we delude ourselves into thinking we are truly ready, when actually we have not reached readiness at all, and choose Going out of unworthy or shallow motives. How tragic it is to arrive at the actual moment of Leavetaking and to realize that one has deceived oneself, that one’s motivations are false, that one is, in fact, not in the least ready to Go!”
How true, Staunt told himself. And yet how false. For here I am ready to Go and yet not in the least ready, and in my unreadiness lies my readiness.
Bollinger finished what he had to say, and one of the Departing Ones, a man named Bradford who had come to Omega Prime in August, began to fumble through the usual final speech. He stammered and coughed and lost the thread of his words, for he was one hundred forty years old and due for Going himself next week, but somehow he made it to the end. Staunt, paying little attention, beamed at his son and his daughter, his horde of descendants, his admirers, his doctors. He understood now why Departing Ones generally seemed detached from their own Farewell ceremonies: the dreary drone of the speeches launched them early into the shores of paradise.
And then they were serving the refreshments, and now they were about to wheel him into the innermost room. And Staunt said, “May I speak also?”
They looked at him, appalled, frightened, obviously fearing he would wreck the harmony of the occasion with this unconventional, ill-timed intrusion. But they could not refuse. He had delivered so many eulogies for others—now he would speak for himself.
Softly Staunt said, making them strain their ears to hear it, “I accept the concept of the turning wheel, and I gladly yield my place to those who are to come. But let me tell you that this is not an ordinary Going. You know, when I came here I thought I was weary of the world and ready to Go, but yet I stayed, I held back from the brink, I delayed, I pretended. I even—Martin knows this—began another opera. I was told I could go home, and I refused. Hallam forgive me, but I refused. For his way is not the only way of Going. Because life still seems sweet, I give it up today. And so I take my final pleasure: that of relinquishing the only thing left to me worth keeping.”
They were whispering. They were staring.
I have said all the wrong things, he thought. I have spoiled the day for them. But whose Going is it? Why should I care about them?
Martin Bollinger, bending low, murmured, “It’s still not too late, Henry. We can stop everything right now.”
“The final temptation,” Staunt said. “And I withstand it. Bring down the curtain. I’m ready to Go.”
They wheeled him to the innermost chamber. When they offered him the cup, he seized it, winked at Martin Bollinger, and drained it in a single gulp.