"What do you do about the letters?"
"You'll hate the answer."
"Go on."
"We send them a form letter, and a complimentary ticket for the next draw. And we only send a ticket if they write from a hospital for incurable diseases."
"That must bring them comfort," I said.
"I don't like it any more than you do. No one at the office likes it.
Eventually, I began to understand why it was necessary. Suppose we gave the treatment to anyone with cancer. Why is someone deserving of athanasia just because they're ill? Thieves and swindlers and rapists get cancer just like anyone else."
"But it would be humanitarian," I said, thinking that thieves and rapists can also win lotteries.
"It's unworkable, Peter. There's a booklet in the office. I'll let you read it if you want to. It's the Lotterie's argument against treating the sick. There are thousands, perhaps millions, of people suffering from cancer.
The clinic can't treat them all. The treatment's too expensive, and it's too slow. So they would have to he selective. They would have to go through case histories, look for people they consider deserving, narrow it down to a few hundred a year. And _who_ sits in judgement? Who can decide that one person deserves to live while another deserves to die? It might conceivably work for a short time . . . but then there would be someone denied the treatment, someone in power or someone in the media. Perhaps they'd be given the treatment to keep them quiet, and at once the system is corrupted."
I felt the skin on Seri's arm as she pressed a hand on mine. She was cold, like me, so we started walking back towards the house. The mountains loomed black around us; everything was silent.
"You've talked me out of going to the clinic," I said. "I don't want anything more to do with this."
"I think you should."
"But why?"
"I told you I was full of contradictions." She was shivering. "Let's go inside and I'll tell you."
In the house the upstairs room felt as if it had been heated, after the unexpected freshness of the night mountain air. I touched one of the overhead beams, and it was still warm from the day's sun.
We sat down on the edge of the bed, side by side, very chaste. Seri took my hand, teasing the palm with her fingers.
She said: "You've got to have the treatment because the lottery is run fairly, and the lottery is the only defence against corruption. Before I got the job I used to hear the stories. You know, the ones we've all heard, about people buying their way in. The first thing they tell you when you start the job is that this isn't true. They show you what they call the proof . . . the total amount of drugs they can synthesize in a year, the maximum capacity of the equipment. It tallies exactly with the number of prize-winners every year.
They're very defensive about it, to the point where you suspect they're covering something up."
"Are they?"
"They _must_ be, Peter. What about Mankinova?"
Yosep Mankinova was the former prime minister of Bagonne, a country in the north with supposed non-aligned status. Because of its strategic importance--oil reserves, plus a geographical location commanding crucial sea-lanes--Bagonne exercised political and economic influence out of all proportion to its size. Mankinova, an extreme right-wing politician, had governed Bagonne in the years leading up to the war, but about twenty-five years ago had been forced to resign when evidence was found that he had corruptly received the athanasia treatment. No final proof was established.
Lotterie-Collago had emphatically denied it, but shortly afterwards two of the investigating journalists died in mysterious circumstances. Events moved on, the scandal faded and Mankinova went into obscurity. But recently, a few months before I left Jethra, the story had been revived. A number of photographs appeared in newspapers, alleged to be of Mankinova. If this was so, they revealed that he looked no older than he had been at the time of his resignation. He was a man in his eighties who looked like a man in his fifties.
I said: "It would be naïve to think that that sort of thing doesn't happen."
"I'm not naïve. But the number of people they can treat is limited, and anyone who wins the prize and then turns it down simply makes it possible."
"Now you're supposing that I deserve to live, and someone else doesn't."
"No . . . that's already been decided by the computer. You're just a random winner. That's why you must go on."
I stared at the threadbare carpet, thinking that everything she said only deepened my doubts. I was of course tempted by the idea of living a long and healthy life, and the notion of refusing it was one which would require a strength I had never before possessed. I was not a Deloinne, highly principled, austerely moralistic. I was greedy for life, greedy even for living, as Deloinne had put it, and a part of me could never deny this. But it continued to feel wrong, in a way I understood only vaguely. It was not for me.
And I thought of Seri. So far we were casual lovers, two people who had recently met, who had already made love and who probably would again, yet who had no emotional commitment to each other. It was possible the relationship would develop, that we would continue to know each other, perhaps fall in love in the conventional sense. I tried to imagine what would happen if I took the treatment while she did not. She, or anyone I might become involved with, would grow steadily older and I would not. My friends, my family, would move on into biological future, while I would be fixed, or petrified.
Seri left the bed, stripped off her shirt and ran water for washing into the basin. I watched her curved back as she leaned down to wash her face and arms. She had a slim, ordinary body, very compact and supple. Bending down she looked at me around her shoulder, smiling invertedly.
"You're staring," she said.
"Why not?"
But I was only looking abstractedly. I was thinking about what decision, if any, I should make. I supposed that it was conflict between mind and heart.
If I followed my instincts, my selfish greed, I should abandon my doubts and travel to Collago and become an athanasian; if I listened to my thoughts, I should not.
When we were in bed we made love again, less urgently than the first time but with an affection that had not been there before. I was wide awake afterwards, and I lay back in the crumpled sheets staring at the ceiling. Seri lay curled in my arm, her head against my neck, a hand lying on my chest.
"Are you going to go to Collago?" she said.
"I don't know yet."
"If you do, I'll go with you."
"Why?"
"I want to be with you. I told you, I'm quitting my job."
"I'd like that," I said.
"I want to be sure--"
"That I'll go through with it?"
"No . . . that if you do, then afterwards you'll be all right. I can't say why." She moved suddenly, resting on an elbow and looking down at me.
"Peter, there's something about the treatment I don't like. It frightens me."
"Is it dangerous?"
"No, not dangerous. There's no risk. It's what happens afterwards. I'm not supposed to tell you."
"But you will," I said.
"Yes." She kissed me briefly. "When you get to the clinic there are a few preliminaries. One of them is a complete medical check-over. Another is, you have to answer a questionnaire. It's one of the conditions. In the office we call it the longest form in the world. It asks you everything about yourself."
"I have to write my autobiography."
"That's what it amounts to, yes."
"They told me this in Jethra," I said. "They didn't say it was a questionnaire, but that before the treatment I would have to write a complete account of myself."
"Did they tell you why?"
"No. I just assumed it was part of the treatment."
"It's nothing to do with the treatment itself. It's used in the rehabilitation afterwards. What they do to you, to make you athanasian, is clean out your system. They renew your body, but they wipe your mind. You'll be amnesiac afterwards."