'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.
