A Thousand Deaths Read Online Free PDF Page B

clothing. Courane accepted its authority without question. It didn't occur to him to ask if the note might belong to another time, another situation, another world perhaps, that there might be no river within the limit of his strength and perseverance. There were low gnarled trees scattered around the floor of the depression, and clouds in the distance gave hope of rain and an end to his thirst. He did suffer a growing fatigue, an exhaustion that almost overpowered him when he became conscious of it. When he remembered, it was with a clarity and a force that consumed him; he was aware of nothing else, nothing at all in his present condition. His past was denied to him, so far as voluntarily calling it up. But when it visited him unbidden, it blinded his senses and hungers to everything else.
    Courane shifted the corpse to the other shoulder, settled his burden more comfortably, and descended into the desert basin.
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    Two
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    Courane sat by the river with Rachel andwatched the dead autumn leaves shuffle in the brisk wind. He didn't know what to say to the young woman. She was pleasant enough, of course, as well as intelligent, but Courane was embarrassed by her attention. Everyone on the farm knew that he had paired off with the Pacifican girl, Alohilani. Courane hoped that Rachel understood the social conventions of their small community. He hoped that she wouldn't make any emotional demands of him. Under the best of conditions in the past, he had never been very good at handling that kind of thing.
    "How long have you been here now?" she asked.
    Courane picked up a stone and tossed it in a high arc into the coffee-brown river. "Not quite five months," he said. Questions like these were discouraged among the colonists. Rachel had been there for more than a month; she ought to have known better.
    The sky was clear, an unusual occurrence, and Courane lay back in the rough grass and closed his eyes. There was a tense silence between them.
    "I still haven't gotten used to it all," she said at last. "The colors of the sky and sun, I mean. And the stars at night being different."
    "You'll get used to it."
    "I'm glad I work in the house. I don't think I would want to workaround the farm. The animals are so strange. So are the crops in the fields."
    "You'll work on the farm soon. You won't stay in the house. They keep you there until you get adjusted. But we need you outside. There's never enough help."
    Rachel brushed her long dark hair with her hands and drew it over her shoulder, across her breast. Then she lay back beside Courane. "How sick is she?" she asked.
    "Alohilani?"
    "Of course."
    "She's very sick."
    "I'm sorry to hear that, Sandy. Really. She's a beautiful girl."
    "You should have known her before she became ill."
    Rachel sighed and rolled over in the grass. She plucked a long blade of the red weed, looked at it, and frowned. "Let's talk about something else, all right?" she said.
    "Sure. What do you want to talk about?"
    "Are you happy here?"
    Courane sat up and brushed damp soil from his shirt. He looked astonished. "Happy?" he said. "We're in prison. How can you be happy in prison?"
    Rachel gazed at him, her large brown eyes brilliant with unshed tears. "I'm happy," she said. "I'm happier here than I've ever been before. TECT was perfectly right, sending me here. I only wish it had happened sooner. I met you here."
    Courane raised a warning hand. "Rachel, please. I'm glad you're happy, but I hope it isn't just because of me. I can't be a part of it for you. I'm in love with someone else."
    "I know that."
    "You've only been here a little while—"
    "Why do you call it a prison?" she asked. Rachel sat up and looked toward the river. "Just because you aren't free to go back to Earth? I think this is my home. I think this place is beautiful, once you get used to the strange things. In its own way, it's much more beautiful than Earth. The open space and the clean air." She looked back into