"Yes, but I'm still not sure. I'd like to find out more about it."
"Your counsellor will visit you. It's quite usual for people to be nervous."
"It's not that I'm--" I was aware of Seri standing close behind me, listening to this. "I just want to ask a few questions."
"Your counsellor will tell you anything you wish to know."
I took the bracelet, feeling my antipathy harden. I could feel the momentum of my win, my travels, my arrival and induction here, taking me ineluctably on towards the treatment, my reservations cast aside. I still lacked the strength to back out, to reject this chance of living. I had an irrational fear of this counsellor, visiting me in the morning, uttering soothing platitudes and propelling me on towards the operating table and the knife, saving my life against my will.
Some of the other people were now returning, their admission forms clasped like passports.
"But if I decide against it," I said. "If I change my mind . . . is there any reason why I shouldn't?"
"You are committed to nothing, Mr Sinclair. Your being here does not imply consent. Until you sign the release form, you may leave at any time."
"All right," I said, conscious of the small group of elderly optimists assembling behind me. "But there's something else. I've got my girlfriend with me. I want her to stay with me in the chalet."
Her eyes turned briefly towards Seri. "Does she understand that the treatment is for you alone?"
Seri exhaled breath sharply. I said: "She's not a child."
"I'll wait outside, Peter," Seri said, and went out into the sunlight.
"We can't allow misunderstandings," the girl said. "She can stay tonight, but tomorrow she will have to find accommodation in the town. You will only be in the chalet for one or two nights."
"That suits me fine," I said, wondering if there was still a chance _Mulligayn_ was in the harbour. I turned my back on her and went outside to find Seri.
An hour later Seri had calmed me doxvn, and we were installed in Chalet 24. That evening, before going to bed, Seri and I walked in the darkness through the gardens. Lights were on in the main building, but most of the chalets were dark. We walked as far as the main gate, where we found that two men with dogs were on guard.
As we walked back, I said: "It's like a prison camp. They've overlooked the barbed wire and watchtowers. Perhaps someone should remind them."
"I had no idea it was like this," Seri said.
"I had to go into hospital when I was a child. What I didn't like about that, even then, was the way they treated me. It was as if I didn't exist, except as a body with symptoms. And this place is the same. I really resent that bracelet."
"Are you wearing it?"
"Not at the moment." We were following a path through the fiowerbeds, but the further we moved from the lights of the main building the more difficult it was to see, A patch of open ground was on our right, so we sat down, discovering that it was a lawn. "I'm going to leave. First thing in the morning. Will you understand if I do?"
Seri was silent for a while, then said: "I still think you should go through with it."
"In spite of all this?"
"It's just a sort of hospital. They've got the institutionalized mind, that's all."
"It's most of what's putting me off at the moment. I just feel I'm here for something I don't need. As if I volunteered for openheart surgery or something. I need someone to give me a good reason to go on with it."
Seri said nothing.
"Well, if it was you, would you take the treatment?"
"It doesn't apply. I haven't won the lottery."
"You're avoiding the question," I said. "I wish I'd never bought that damned ticket. Everything about this place is wrong. I can feel it, but I can't say why."
"I just think you've been given a chance to have something that very few people have, and that a lot would like. You shouldn't turn your back on it until you're sure. It will stop you dying, Peter. Doesn't that mean anything to you?"
"We all have to die in the end," I said defensively. "Even with the treatment. All it does is delay it a bit."
"No one's died yet."
"How can you be sure of that?"
"I can't be completely, of course. But in the office we got annual reports on all the people who have been treated. The records go back to the beginning, and the list always got longer. There were people on Muriseay. When they came in for their check-ups, they always said how well they felt."
I said: "What check-ups?"
In the darkness I could see Seri was facing me, but I could not make out her expression.
"There's an option. You can monitor your health afterwards."
"So they're not even sure the treatment works!"
"The Lotterie is, but sometimes the patients aren't sure. I suppose it's a form of psychological reassurance, that the Lotterie does not abandon them once they leave here."
"They cure everything except hypochondria," I said, remembering a friend of mine who had become a doctor. She used to say that at least half her patients came to the surgery for the company. Illness was a habit.
Seri had taken my hand. "It's got to he your decision, Peter. If I was in your position, perhaps I'd feel the same. But I wouldn't want to regret turning down the chance."
"It just doesn't feel real," I said. "I've never worried about death because I've never had to face it. Do other people feel that?"
"I don't know." Seri was looking away now, staring at the dark trees.
"Seri, I realize I'm going to die one day . . . but I don't _believe_
that, except cerebrally. Because I'm alive now I feel I always will he. It's as if there's a sort of life force in me, something strong enough to fend off death."
"The classic illusion."
"I know it's not logical," I said. "But it means something."
"Are your parents still alive?"
"My father is. My mother died several years ago. Why?"
"It's not important. Go on."
I said: "A couple of years ago I wrote my autobiography. I didn't really know why I was doing it at the time. I was going through something, a kind of identity crisis. Once I started writing I began to discover things about myself, and one of them was the fact that memory has continuity. It became one of the main reasons for writing. As long as I could _remember_ myself, then I existed. When I woke up in the mornings the first thing I'd do would be to think back to what I'd done just before going to bed. If the continuity was there, I still existed. And I think it works the other way . . . there's a space ahead that I can anticipate. It's like a balance. I discovered that memory was like a psychic force behind me, and therefore there must be some kind of life force spreading out in front. The human mind, consciousness, exists at the centre. I know that so long as there is one there will always be the other. While I can remember, I am defined."
Seri said: "But when you die in the end, because you will . . . when that happens your identity will cease. When you die you lose your memory with everything else."
"But that's unconsciousness. I'm not scared of that because I won't experience it."
"You assume you have no soul."
"I'm not trying to argue a theory. I'm trying to explain what I _feel_.
I know that one day I will die, but that's different from actually believing it. The athanasia treatment exists to cure me of something I don't believe I have. Mortality."
"You wouldn't say that if you suffered from cancer."
"So far as I know, I don't. I know it's possible I might contract it, but I don't really believe, deep down, that I will. It doesn't scare me."
"It does me."
"What do you mean?"
"I'm scared of death. I don't want to die."
Her voice had gone very quiet, and her head was bent.
"Is that why you're here with me? Because of that?"
"I just want to know if it's possible. I want to be with you when it happens, I want to see you live forever. I can't help that. You asked me what I would do if I won the prize . . . well, I'd take the treatment and not ask why. You say you have never faced death, but I know all about it."