patients here, all similarly equipped.
The client's hospital gown was draped awkwardly, as such things seemed to be designed to do, so that embarrassing portions other wasted anatomy showed. She was in pain, Zane could see, though half-zonked on therapeutic drugs. She was overdue to die; only the relentlessly life-sustaining things enclosing her frail body prevented her from doing so.
Deja vu! His mother, all over again, Zane approached. She spied him, and her bloodshot eyes tracked him erratically. The tubes running into her nose prevented her from turning her head conveniently, and the machine set up a clangor of protest when she tried to shift her body.
'Be at ease, lady,' Zane said. 'I have come to take you away from this.' She issued a weak hiss of a laugh. 'Nothing can take me away,' she gasped, spittle dribbling from her mouth. 'They will not let me go. All my pleading is in vain. I may rot in this contraption, but I will still be alive.'
'I am Death. I may not be denied.'
She peered more closely at him. 'Why, so you are! I thought you looked familiar. I would gladly go with you — but they won't give me the visa.'
Zane smiled. 'It is your right to make the transformation. That right can not be abridged.' He reached into her body and caught her soul.
It didn't come. The woman keened weakly with new agony until he let the soul go. It snapped back into place, and she relaxed.
'You see!' she whispered. 'They have anchored me in life, though it isn't worth it. You can't take me, Death!'
Zane looked at his watch. It was fifteen seconds past time. The woman really was being held beyond her destiny.
'Let me consider,' Zane said, disgruntled. He walked down the ward, glancing at the other patients. He saw now that the details of their apparatus differed, but all were caught beyond their natural spans and all were similarly resigned to their fate. They might have no joy in life, but they would not be released from it one second before the machines gave out. This was one efficient hospital; there were no slip-ups.
'I see you. Death,' someone murmured nearby.
Zane looked. It was a male patient in the adjacent rig. Unlike some of the others, this one was fully alert.
'I can't take her soul while that equipment functions,' Zane said, wondering why he was bothering to explain to a nonclient.
The old man shook his head, causing his own apparatus to protest. 'Never thought I'd see the day when Death was denied. That leaves taxes as the only certainty.' He essayed a feeble laugh that made his dials quiver and alarmed the nurse on duty, who thought he was suffering a seizure.
She seemed unaware of Zane.
After a moment, the man spoke again. 'If it was me, Death, know what I'd do?'
'That old woman, my client,' Zane said. 'She reminds me of my mother.' And what a mass of guilt lay there, tying into his conscience like the lines of the hospital machines.
'She's somebody's mother,' the man agreed. 'It's her son who pays for all this foolery. Thinks he's doing her a favor, making her live beyond her time or will. If he really loved her, he'd let her go.'
'Doesn't he love her?' Zane had killed his own mother because he loved her, but then had doubted.
'Maybe he thinks so. But he's really just getting even. He's a mean man, and she brought him into this world, and I guess he just never forgave her for that. So he won't let her leave.'
Something snapped. 'Death shall not be denied!' Zane said. He marched back to his client's section. He found switches on the equipment and clicked them off.
'Oops!' The nurse was on it immediately, as the machinery bleeped alarm. She turned the switches on again.
Zane ripped out wires and tubes. Fluid spurted.
Now the nurse became aware of him. 'You did it!' she cried, horrified. 'You must stop!'
Zane caught her in his arms and kissed her on the lips. She felt the skeletal embrace and fainted. He set her down carefully on the floor.
He saw that automatic failsafes were stopping the leaks in the torn tubes. The bleep-bleep alarm was more strident; soon other nurses would hear and come. He could not be sure the job was done.
Zane picked up a chair and smashed it into the stand supporting the bottles of life-preserving fluids. Glass shattered, and colored liquids coursed across the floor. He put his foot against a console and shoved it over, indulging in an orgy of destruction that was the overt expression of his long-suppressed emotion.
At last he stood over the old woman, chair raised to bash in her skull if need be — but he saw that now the job had been done.
He set down the chair and lifted out her soul, gently. There was a smattering of applause from the other patients as he put away the soul and walked out through the ward. All these people were on artificially extended time, so were able to perceive him for what he was.
'But I am a murderer — again,' Zane protested weakly, now suffering reaction. Never before had he actually killed — in his role of Death. There had been grim satisfaction in the act — but surely he had added an awful burden of sin to his soul.
'I wish it was me you come for,' one of the others muttered.
'You can't murder yur kind,' the old-man said. 'Any more'n you can rape a willing gal.'
Zane paused. 'How many of you feel that way?' he asked. 'How many really want to die now?'
A murmur traveled along the ward, like a ripple of water. 'We all do,' the old man said, and the others agreed.
Zane pondered briefly. He heard the running footsteps of others in the bowels of the hospital, becoming aware that something was wrong. Time was limited.
He had done his assigned job; he had collected the old woman's soul and in his fashion had redeemed his murder of his mother. He had now done openly what he had done covertly before. He had shown that even Death himself would have made the same decision Zane had, long ago. But had he done his human job? These people were being denied their most fundamental right: the right to let life go.
'You know it would be mass murder,' he said.
'It would be mercy,' the old man said. 'My grandchild is going broke paying for me, because the doctor says she must — and for what? For this? For eternity in a hospital ward, too sick to move, let alone enjoy life? Hell can't be worse than this — and if it is, I'll take it anyway! At least there maybe I'll have a chance to fight back. Cut me loose, Death! There's more'n just us patients suffering here; it's our families, too. They'll cry a while, but soon they'll heal — and maybe they'll still have a little something left to live on.'
Zane decided. He was already doomed to Hell for his violations of the standards of his office. What did he have to lose? He wanted to do what was right, regardless of the consequence. These were his clients, too.
He went to the service area of the ward. There was the main circuit box. He yanked down all the handles.
Power died in the ward. Darkness closed in. The machinery stopped running.
There was an immediate outcry. Hospital personnel rushed in. Someone groped her way to the circuit box, but Zane stood before it. The nurse felt a skeletal Hand close on hers, pushing her away from the box. She screamed in sheerest terror.
'That is the horror you have been visiting on these patients,' Zane told her. 'Death-in-life.'
No one could reverse what he had done, this time.
Chapter 7
CARNIVAL OF GHOSTS
A few days later, once more caught up on his schedule, Zane paid Luna another call. This time she smiled when she saw him. 'Come in, Zane; I'll be ready in a minute.'
