Reminders of a body's frailties: ruptures and fractures and bruises. The weaknesses one knew about, tried not to think about, observed in other people, overheard in shop conversations. I was developing sensibilities about health I had never had before. Did the acquisition of immortality simply make one more aware of death?
I said to Lareen: "How long does this take?"
"Altogether, about two or three weeks. There'll he a short recovery period after the operation tomorrow. As soon as the consultant thinks you're ready, the enzyme injections will start."
"I can't stand injections," I said.
"They don't use hypodermic needles. It's a hit more sophisticated than that. Anyway, you won't he aware of the treatment."
"You mean I'll be anaesthetized?" A sudden dread.
"No, but once the first injections are made you'll become semiconscious.
It probably sounds frightening, but most patients have said they found it pleasant."
I valued my hold on consciousness. Once, when I was twelve, I was knocked off my bicycle by a bully, and suffered concussion and three days'
retrospective amnesia. The loss of those three days was the central mystery of my childhood. Although I was unconscious for less than half an hour, my return to awareness was accompanied by a sense of oblivion behind me. When I returned to school, sporting a black eye and a splendidly lurid bandage around my forehead, I was brought face to face with the fact that those three days had not only existed, but that _I_ had existed within them. There had been lessons and games and written exercises, and presumably conversations and arguments, yet I could remember none of them. During those days I must have been alert, conscious and self-aware, feeling the continuity of memory, sure of my identity and existence. An event that _followed_ them, though, eradicated them, just as one day death would erase all memory. It was my first experience of a kind of death, and since then, although unconsciousness itself was not to be feared, I saw memory as the key to sentience. I existed as long as I remembered.
"Lareen, are you an athanasian?"
"No, I'm not."
"Then you've never experienced the treatment."
"I've worked with patients for nearly twenty years. I can't claim any more than that."
"But you don't know what it feels like," I said.
"Not directly, no."
"The truth is, I'm scared of losing my memory."
"I understand that. My job here is to help you regain it afterwards. But it's inevitable that you must lose what you now have as your memory."
"Why is it inevitable?"
"It's a chemical process. To give you longevity we must stop the brain deteriorating. In the normal thanatic body brain cells never replicate, so your mental ability steadily declines. Every day you lose thousands of brain cells. What we do here is induce replication in the cells, so that however long you live your mental capacity is unimpaired. But when the replication begins, the new cellular activity brings almost total amnesia."
"That's precisely what frightens me," I said. A mind sliding away, life receding, continuity lost.
"You'll experience nothing that will scare you. You will enter the fugue state, which is like being in a continuous dream. In this, you'll see images from your life, remember journeys and meetings, people will seem to speak to you, you will feel able to touch, experience emotions. Your mind will be giving up what it contains. It's just your own life."
The hold released, sentience dying. Entry into fugue, where the only reality was dream.
"And when I come round I'll remember nothing about it."
"Why do you say that?"
"It's what surgeons always say, isn't it? They believe it comforts people."
"It's true. You'll wake up here in this chalet. I'll be here, and your friend, Seri."
I wanted to see Seri. I wanted Lareen to go away.
"But I'll have no memory," I said. "They'll destroy my memory."
"It can be replaced. That's my job."
In the fugue the dream dispensed, leaving a void. Life returned later, in the form of this calm-eyed, patient woman, returning my memories to me as if she were a hand writing words on blank paper.
I said: "Lareen, how can I know that afterwards I'll be the same?"
"Because nothing in you will be changed, except your capacity to live."
"But I am what I remember. If you take that away I cannot be the same person again."
"I'm trained to restore your memory, Peter. To do that, you've got to help me now."
She produced an attractively packaged folder, containing a thick wad of partially printed pages.
"There isn't as much time as we would normally have, but you should be able to manage this during the evening."
"Let me see it."
"You must be as frank and truthful as possible," Lareen said, passing the folder to me. "Use as much space as you like. There's spare paper in the desk."
The papers felt heavy, auguring hours of work. I glanced at the first page, where I could write my name and address. Later, the questions dealt with school. Later, with friendships, sex and love. There seemed no end to the questions, each phrased carefully so as to promote frankness in my answer. I found that I could not read them, that the words blurred as I flicked the pages across.
For the first time since sentence of death had been pronounced on me, I felt the stirrings of revolt. I had no intention of answering these questions.
"I don't need this," I said to Lareen. I tossed the questionnaire on to the desk. "I've already written my autobiography, and you'll have to use that."
I turned away from her, feeling angry.
"You heard what the doctor said, Peter. If you don't co-operate they'll make you leave the island tonight."
"I'm co-operating, but I'm not going to answer those questions. It's all written down already."
"Where is it? Can I see it?"
My manuscript was on my bed, where I had left it. I gave it to her. For some reason I was unable to look at her. As it was briefly in my hands the manuscript had transmitted a sense of reassurance, a link with what was soon to become my forgotten past.
I heard Lareen turn a few of the pages, and when I looked back at her she was reading quickly from the third on fourth page. She glanced at the last page, then set it aside.
"When did you write this?"
"Two years ago."
Lareen stared at the pages. "1 don't like working without the questionnaire. How do I know you've left nothing out?"
"Surely that's my risk?" I said. "Anyway, it's complete." I described the way I had written, how I had set myself the task of expressing wholeness and truth on paper.
She turned again to the last page. "It isn't finished. Do you realize that?"
"I was interrupted, but it doesn't matter. I was almost at the end, and although I did try to finish it later, it seemed better the way it is." Lareen said nothing, watching me and manipulating more from me. Resisting her, I said: "It's unfinished because my life is unfinished."
"If you wrote it two years ago, what's happened since?"
"That's the point, isn't it?" I was still feeling hostile to her, yet in spite of this her strategic silences continued to influence me. Another came, and I was unable to resist it. "When I wrote the manuscript I found that my life formed into patterns, and that everything I had done fitted into them.
Since I finished writing I've found that it's still true, that all I've done in the last two years has just added details to a shape."
"I'll have to take this away and read it," Lareen said.
"All right. But take care of it."
"Of course I'll he careful."
"I feel it's a part of me, something that can't be replaced."