Eric Brown: Penumbra

He regarded the pix of Julia, short dark hair parenthesising a calm, oval ballerina’s face. She was attractive and intelligent, and he never ceased to be amazed that their relationship had lasted so long—coming up to a year, now. They had met when he’d hired her to redesign his garden, began talking and never stopped. He’d been attracted to her sophistication—an attribute rarely found among the women on Redwood Station—and he assumed that she had found appealing the fact that he was a pilot and well off.

Their first rift, a couple of months later, had come about because Bennett had been fool enough to tell her this. She had been hectoring him for some declaration of commitment, a vow of his love for her. “Why?” he had responded. “You don’t love me. I’m just a rich high-orbit pilot to show off to your friends.” She had just stared at him, shocked. “You bastard, Josh. If that’s what you think I see in you…” and, unable to go on, she had hurried from the dome. A day later she had downloaded a vis-link to his com-screen. She had cried and told him that she loved him despite the fact that he was a privileged, arrogant bastard and a pilot.

Shame, mixed with something akin to fear that she might be telling the truth, had stopped him contacting her for a few days. Then he had left a message to say that he was sorry, he knew what a shallow fool he was, and could they meet for dinner somewhere?

From then on things had never been the same. It seemed that his admission of blame gave Julia carte blanche to snipe away at his faults, psychologically reduce him to nothing more than a textbook example of adverse childhood conditioning. He wondered if it was the thought of being without her companionship that made him endure her hostility. Having someone, even someone who seemed to dislike him so much of the time, was preferable to being alone.

He brushed the back of his hand against Julia’s face, and instantly the smile unfroze. “Josh. I’m calling Sunday—you’re due back Tuesday, aren’t you?”

She moved away from the screen, touching her throat in the gesture he knew meant she was considering what to say next. She paused in the middle of her lounge, surrounded by baskets of hanging flowers. From there she looked back at the screen, as if to distance herself from what she had to say next.

“Josh… I’ve been giving things serious consideration lately. I’ve been considering my life, where I am…” This was typical of Julia, her tortured verbal circumlocutions and pained analysis. “I’ve been thinking about us, Josh. I wonder… when you get back Tuesday, could we meet for lunch? Say around one, at Nova Luna? Call if you can’t make it, okay?” She gave a final, sad smile. “Bye, Josh.”

The image froze, dissolved. Josh sat staring at the emptied quarter of the screen, sipping his beer and trying to work out his reaction to what Julia had said.

It was over, at last, just as for months he had known it would be. He had never expected Julia to be the one to end it, and he had declined to do so because during the short periods he had spent on Earth he had enjoyed her company, had felt a genuine affection for her. But… what was it that Julia had called a man’s declaration of genuine affection? “Nothing more than a euphemism for ‘You’ll do until I find something better.”

He finished his beer. He would meet her at the restaurant later today, chat over old times, agree that they were going nowhere, and part on civil terms. He just prayed that she wouldn’t create a scene, accuse him of being a cold emotionless bastard, as she had done publicly more than once in the past.

He touched the second quarter of the screen, activating the face of the well-dressed stranger. The man sat sidesaddle on the edge of a desk, like an executive giving an informal pep-talk to a team of salesmen.

“Joshua Bennett? I’m sorry to have called when you’re away. I’m Dr Samuels, consultant geriatrician at the Oasis Medical Centre in Mojave. Your father is under my care. I understand that you are returning on the twenty-second. If you could contact my secretary and arrange a meeting on that day, or whenever is convenient for you…”

Dr Samuels paused, and Bennett wondered what was coming next.

“Mr Bennett, your father has requested the option of voluntary euthanasia. As his doctor, my consent is mandatory, and I was wondering how you, as his only next of kin, felt about the issue. As I’ve said, if you could contact me as soon as possible I’d be grateful. Thank you, Mr Bennett.”

Euthanasia… Bennett had never expected it to come to this. He wondered why he was so shocked: because of the imminence of his father’s extinction, or the fact that he had chosen this way to go? He had always expected to be informed of his father’s death in his absence, had reconciled himself to the fact and rehearsed what little grief he might feel. But euthanasia… He realised he was shocked because his father’s option of euthanasia would include himself, Bennett, in the process of his going. He would have to face his father one last time, discuss with him his reasons, exhibit sympathy for someone he did not and never had loved.

Not for the first time, he cursed his father for being so inconsiderate as to start a family at such an advanced age. Hell, there had been a certain affection between them, at times, he thought; and after all, he was—is—my father. Bennett knew what Julia might have to say about that affection.

He pushed himself from the swivel chair and stepped out on to the veranda. Dawn was rushing in over the desert, turning the sky to the west a burnished, blue-tinged aluminium and washing the stars from the night overhead. He had slept on the shuttle, eaten just before touchdown. He could not sleep now, especially after the message from Dr Samuels.

On impulse he took the steps from the veranda to the garden and climbed into his car. He drove away from the dome along a rough track, passing sentinel cacti like overgrown candelabra. Fifteen minutes later he made out the low-slung dome in the distance, to the right of the track. He pulled up beside the overgrown and neglected garden, the sight of the abandoned dome bringing back a slew of unwelcome memories.

He climbed out and approached the dome along a lichen-carpeted path, batting aside encroaching fronds and palm leaves. The dome stood in the dawn light like some abandoned habitat on an alien world. Seeds had worked their way inside and filled the main cupola with riotous growth so that it resembled a steaming arboretum. The habitat had been empty a year now, ever since his father’s hospitalisation. Bennett had grown up here, with his stern and pious mother, his often absent father, and Ella.

He moved around the dome and stepped into the enclosed garden at the rear, aware of the pounding of his heart.

His relationship with Ella had been unlike the usual elder brother-little sister confrontation. Excluded from the affection of their elderly parents, they had sought companionship and succour in each other. She might have been four years his junior, but she was his equal in terms of intellect and understanding. Being the elder, and a boy, he had often incurred the brunt of his mother’s temper, and rather than gloat as little sisters were wont to do, Ella did her best to cheer him. She had been more like an elder sister in her apprehension of his pain.

And then at the age of ten she had fallen ill. She had spent long periods in hospital, during which time Bennett was never told of the true seriousness of her illness. He had watched her waste away, never truly understanding what was taking place. Then, the day before Ella was due home for the very last time, his father took him to one side and explained, with a brutality that struck him at the time as cruel, but which later he came to understand was an inability to articulate his feelings, that Ella was dying. “I’m afraid she is very ill, Joshua. The medics have told me that there’s no hope.”