Robert Silverberg - Going

“You want that opera out of me, don’t you?”

“I want you to be happy,” said Bollinger. “I want your Going to be right. The bit of music here is just a clue to your inner state.”

“There won’t be any opera, Martin. And I don’t plan to leave Omega Prime alive. To have put my family through this ordeal, and then to come home, to tell them it’s all been just a holiday lark out here—no. No.”

“As you wish,” Bollinger said. He smiled and turned away, leaving an unspoken question hanging like a sword between them: If you want to Go, Henry, why don’t you Go?

Staunt realized that he had taken on the status of a permanent Departing One, a kind of curator emeritus of the House of Fulfillment. Here he was, enjoying this life of ease and dignity, accepting the soft-voiced attentions of those who meant to slide him gently from the world, playing his role of patriarch among the shattered hulks that were the other Departing Ones here. Each week new ones came; he greeted them solemnly, helped them blend with those already in residence, and, in time, presided over their Goings. And he stayed on. Why? Why? Surely not out of fear of dying. Why, then, was he making a career out of his Going?

So that he might have the prestige of being a hero of his time, possibly—an exponent of noble renunciation, a practitioner of joyful departure. Making much glib talk of turning the wheel and creating a place for those to come—a twenty-first-century Sydney Carton, standing by the guillotine and praising the far, far better thing that he will do, only he finds himself enjoying the part so much that he forgets to kneel and present his neck to the blade.

Or maybe he is only interrupting the boredom of a too-bland life with a feigned fling at dying. The glamour of becoming a Departing One injecting interesting complexities into a static existence. But diversion and not death his real object. Yes? If that’s it, Henry, go home and write your opera; the holiday should have ended by now.

He came close to summoning Bollinger and asking to be sent home. But he fought the impulse down. To leave Omega Prime now would be the true cowardice. He owed the world a death. He had occupied this body long enough. His place was needed; soon he would Go. Soon. Soon. Soon.

At the beginning of September there were four days in a row of rain, an almost unknown occurrence in that part of Arizona. Miss Elliot said that the Hopi, doing their annual snake dances on their mesas far to the north, had overdone things this year and sent rain clouds all through the state. Staunt, to the horror of the staff, went out each day to stand in the rain, letting the cool drops soak his thin gown, watching the water sink swiftly into the parched red soil. “You’ll catch your death of cold,” Mr. Falkenbridge told him sternly. Staunt laughed.

He requested another wide-spaced print-out of The New Inn and tried to set the opening scene. Nothing came. He could not find the right vocal line, nor could he recapture the strange color of the earlier aria. The tones and textures of Ben Jonson were gone from his head. He gave the project up without regret.

There were three Farewell ceremonies in eight days. Staunt attended them all, and spoke at two of them.

Arbitrarily, he chose September 19 as the day of his own Going. But he told no one about his decision, and September 19 came and went with Staunt unchanged.

At the end of the month he told Martin Bollinger, “I’m a fraud. I haven’t gotten an inch closer to Going in all the time I’ve been here. I never wanted to Go at all. I still want to live, to see and do things, to experience things. I came here out of desperation, because I was stale, I was bored, I needed novelty. To toy with death, to live a little scenario of dying—that was all I was after. Excitement. An event in an eventless life: Henry Staunt Prepares to Die. I’ve been using all you people as players in a cynical charade.”

Bollinger said quietly, “Shall I arrange for you to go home, then, Henry?”

“No. No. Get me Dr. James. And notify my family that my Farewell ceremony will be held a week from today. It’s time for me to Go.”

“But if you still want to live—”

“What better time to Go?” Staunt asked.

They were all here, close around him. Paul had come, and Crystal, too, back from the moon and looking feeble, and all the grandchildren and the great-grandchildren, and the friends, the conductors and the younger composers and some critics, more than a hundred people in all coming to see him off. Staunt, undrugged but already beginning to ascend, had moved coolly among them, thanking them for attending his Leavetaking party, welcoming them to his Farewell ceremony. He was amazed at how calm he was. Seated now in the throne of honor, he listened to the final orations and endured without objection a scrambled medley of his most famous compositions, obviously assembled hastily by someone inexpert in such matters. Martin Bollinger, giving the main eulogy, quoted heavily from Hallam: “Too often we delude ourselves into thinking we are truly ready, when actually we have not reached readiness at all, and choose Going out of unworthy or shallow motives. How tragic it is to arrive at the actual moment of Leavetaking and to realize that one has deceived oneself, that one’s motivations are false, that one is, in fact, not in the least ready to Go!”

How true, Staunt told himself. And yet how false. For here I am ready to Go and yet not in the least ready, and in my unreadiness lies my readiness.

Bollinger finished what he had to say, and one of the Departing Ones, a man named Bradford who had come to Omega Prime in August, began to fumble through the usual final speech. He stammered and coughed and lost the thread of his words, for he was one hundred forty years old and due for Going himself next week, but somehow he made it to the end. Staunt, paying little attention, beamed at his son and his daughter, his horde of descendants, his admirers, his doctors. He understood now why Departing Ones generally seemed detached from their own Farewell ceremonies: the dreary drone of the speeches launched them early into the shores of paradise.

And then they were serving the refreshments, and now they were about to wheel him into the innermost room. And Staunt said, “May I speak also?”

They looked at him, appalled, frightened, obviously fearing he would wreck the harmony of the occasion with this unconventional, ill-timed intrusion. But they could not refuse. He had delivered so many eulogies for others—now he would speak for himself.

Softly Staunt said, making them strain their ears to hear it, “I accept the concept of the turning wheel, and I gladly yield my place to those who are to come. But let me tell you that this is not an ordinary Going. You know, when I came here I thought I was weary of the world and ready to Go, but yet I stayed, I held back from the brink, I delayed, I pretended. I even—Martin knows this—began another opera. I was told I could go home, and I refused. Hallam forgive me, but I refused. For his way is not the only way of Going. Because life still seems sweet, I give it up today. And so I take my final pleasure: that of relinquishing the only thing left to me worth keeping.”

They were whispering. They were staring.

I have said all the wrong things, he thought. I have spoiled the day for them. But whose Going is it? Why should I care about them?

Martin Bollinger, bending low, murmured, “It’s still not too late, Henry. We can stop everything right now.”

“The final temptation,” Staunt said. “And I withstand it. Bring down the curtain. I’m ready to Go.”