Dead or Alive

the fingers unflexing of their own accord…

His body was no longer his own…? What was this? What was this? He moved his legs, and they moved under the command of his brain, just a little, but they moved as they should, as they had since before his childhood memory had begun, following the commands of his brain, as the body always did. Command your arm, an infidel philosopher had written, and it moves-command your mind, and it resists. But his mind was working, and his body was not. What was this? He turned his head to look around the room. His head did not move, despite his commands-neither would his eyes. He could see the white drop-ceiling panels. He tried to focus his eyes more closely on them, but his eyes were not working as they should. His body was like the body of another man; he could feel it, but he could not command it. He told his legs to move, and they barely fluttered, then froze limply in place. Limp like a corpse.

What was this? Am I dying? Is this death? But it wasn’t death. Somehow he knew that and-

For the first time the Emir felt the beginnings of fear. He didn’t understand what was happening. He only knew it would be very bad.

To Clark it looked as though the man was going to sleep. His body had stopped moving. There had been a few jerks and some little spasms, like a man settling to go to sleep in bed, but they’d stopped with surprising rapidity. The face became vacant, not focused, not proclaiming strength and power and lack of fear. Now he had the face of a mannequin. The face of a corpse. He’d seen that often enough in his life. He’d never thought what it was like for the mind behind the face. When death happened, the problem with that body was over for all time, allowing him to move on to the next problem, leaving this one behind for all time to come. It had never been necessary for Clark to destroy the body. When it died, the body was finished, right? Part of Clark wanted to approach the doc and ask him what was happening, but he didn’t, unwilling to disturb the man in charge of the current operation quite yet…

He could feel all of his body. It was all a matter of crystal clarity to Saif. He couldn’t move any of it, but he could feel it all. He could feel the blood pumping through his arteries. But he couldn’t move his fingers. What was this? They’d stolen his body from him. It was no longer his. He could feel it but not command it. He was a prisoner in a cell, and the cell was… himself…? What was this? Were they poisoning him? Was this the onset of death? If so, shouldn’t he welcome it? Was the face of God just moments away? If so, he told his mind to smile. If his body couldn’t move, then his soul could, and Allah could see his soul as clearly as a large stone in the midst of the sea. If this were death, then he would welcome it as the culmination of his life, as a gift he’d given to so many men and women, the opportunity to see Allah’s face, as he would soon do… yes… He felt the air entering his lungs, giving him the last few seconds of life as these infidels stole his life from him. But the Lord Allah would make them pay for this. Of that he was sure. Completely sure.

Pasternak checked his watch again. Coming up on two minutes, coming up on the last part. He turned and looked at the resuscitator. The green pilot light was on. The same was true of the ventilator. He’d have them when and if he needed them. He could restore this bastard’s life. He wondered what Mike would think of that, but that thought was far too distant for him to latch on to it right now. What happened after death was unknown to living men. Everyone found out eventually, but none could return and relate it to the living. The great mystery of life, the subject of philosophy and religion, believed, perhaps, but not known. Well, this Emir guy was getting a look, of sorts. What would he see? What would he learn?

“Just a moment now,” Pasternak told those around him.

The Emir heard that and understood the words. Just a moment until he saw God’s face. Just a moment before Paradise. Well, he’d not gone all the way he’d hoped to go. He’d not become the world leader of the Faithful. He’d tried. He’d tried his best, and his best was very, very good. Just not good enough. That was a pity-a great pity. So much he could have done. Someone else would have to do it now? Ahmed, perhaps? A good man, Ahmed, faithful and learned, good of heart and strong of faith. Perhaps he’d be good enough… The Emir felt the air going in and out of his lungs. He felt it so clearly. It was a beautiful feeling, the very feeling of life itself. How was it that he’d never appreciated it, the beauty of it, the wonder of it?

Then something else happened-

His lungs were stopping. His diaphragm wasn’t-wasn’t moving. The air wasn’t coming into his lungs now. He’d been breathing since the moment of his birth. That was the first sign of life, when a newborn screamed its life to the world-but his lungs weren’t filling with air. There was no air in his lungs now… This was death coming. Well, he’d faced death for the last thirty years. At the hands of the Russians, the hands of the Americans, the hands of Afghans who’d not accepted his vision of Islam and the world. He’d faced death many, many times-enough that it held no terrors for him. Paradise awaited. He tried to close his eyes to accept his destiny, but his eyes wouldn’t close. He still saw the panels of the drop ceiling over his head, just off-white rectangles that looked down at him without eyes. This was death? Was this what men feared? How strange a thing, his mind observed, waiting, not with patience but confusion, for the final blackness to overcome him. His heart continued to beat. He could feel it, thumping away, pumping blood through his body, and thus bringing life, bringing consciousness, soon to end, of course, but still present. When would Paradise come to him? the Emir wondered. When would he see Allah’s face?

“Respiration stopped at three minutes, sixteen seconds,” Pasternak reported. Chavez wrote that down, too. The doctor reached for the ventilator mask, checking again to be sure the system was turned on. He hit the button on the mask and was rewarded by the mechanical sound of rushing air in the rubber mask. Then he took the paddles off the resuscitator and pressed them to the man’s chest, turning his eye to the EKG readout on the small computer screen. Normal sinus rhythm, he saw.

That wouldn’t last long.

The Emir heard odd sounds around him, and he felt strange things but was unable even to make his eyes go look for the source of the sounds, locked as they were on the white ceiling panels. His heart was beating. So, he thought rapidly, this is what death is like. Was it like this for Tariq, shot in the chest? He’d failed his master, probably not because he’d been sloppy, just because the enemy in this case had been overly skillful and clever. That could happen to any man, and doubtless Tariq had died shamed at his failure to fulfill his mission in life. But Tariq was now in Paradise, the Emir was sure, perhaps enjoying his virgins, if that was really what happened there. Probably not, the Emir knew. The Koran didn’t say that, not really. Enjoying the favor of Allah. That was sure enough, as he, the Emir, was about to discover. That would be sufficient.

It started to hurt some, right there in the center of his chest. He didn’t know that when his breathing had stopped, so had stopped the infusion of oxygen into his system. His heart, a powerful muscle, needed oxygen to function, and when the oxygen stopped, then the heart tissues went into distress… and would soon start to die; the heart was full of nerves, and they reported the lack of oxygen as pain to his still-functioning brain. Great pain, the greatest pain a man could know.

Not quite yet, but going that way…

His face showed nothing at all, of course. The peripheral motor nerves were all dead, or effectively so, Pasternak knew. But the feelings would be there. Maybe they could measure that on an electroencephalograph, but that would just show traces of black ink on white fan-fold paper, not the searing agony that the tracings represented.

“Okay,” he said quietly. “It’s starting now. We’ll give him a minute, maybe a little more.”

Trapped within his nonfunctioning body, Saif felt the onset of pain. It started distantly, but it increased steadily… and quickly. His heart was being wrenched from his chest, as though a man had reached inside with his hand and was pulling it out, ripping the blood vessels as he did so, tearing it loose like wet paper from a destroyed book. But it wasn’t paper. It was his heart, the very center of his body, the organ that provided life to the rest of him. It seemed to be on fire now, burning like kindling wood on open ground surrounded by rocks,