System

17. Death at Sea

Six bodies had been laid out on the deck under sheets. Their presence seemed an obscenity against the polished wooden surface and a small crowd stood nearby unsure as to how they should respond.

Death was not something that people generally had to cope with. There were occasional accidents, it was true, but bodies could normally be renewed when they had reached the end of their useful shelf-life. Sometimes it was impossible to save the physical side of a person's identity but their mind could then be transferred permanently into the system so that their existence would continue in another form.

Death was final, wrong, unnatural - something that belonged properly to the past - and yet here it was, lying on the deck of the ship wrapped in their finest cotton sheets...

Emily Post-Redwood felt that she should say something, but she didn't have any words to say. Her mind was focussed on the lifeless body of Travis Petros, which still lay in his room. She couldn't help thinking that they would soon need to bring him out and place him beside the others.

It was Kaaren Rubijay who broke the silence. She stepped forward on her stocky legs and stood beside the bodies.

'I am older than most of you here,' she said solemnly. 'My grandson is standing over there...'

She pointed at Gordon Remick who acknowledged her with a brief nod.

'When I was younger, people died,' she said as she looked around at the gathered group. 'It wasn't always possible to save them. Things went wrong when they exchanged bodies, and they just stopped...'

Her head dropped for a moment and Emily suspected that a tear would have been running down her cheek - had it been possible for an astroform to cry...

'I lost my husband, when his heart finished beating,' she continued. 'And I died with him... but my body kept going and I couldn't... end... with him... I...'

Emily resisted the urge to step forward and comfort her friend.

'For a long time, I didn't know what to do, and then I took on this body...'

Rubijay gestured at the huge bulk of her alien form.

'I couldn't die so I just went away...'

The crowd were listening but they continued to stare at the six corpses which lay on the deck.

'I remember once,' the astroform continued. 'We were out in the belt, and one of us was caught in a rock fall. Sixteen tonnes of rock struck her but missed the rest of us... There wasn't anything we could do. We were too far from our ship to upload her mind and her injuries were too serious. We had to watch her die...'

Kaaren Rubijay raised her head and looked around at the group who had gathered on deck.

'Up there, you can feel how big the universe is,' she continued. 'You can see the distant stars - and you know - you know! - that there is more out there than we can possibly imagine. Life is... bigger that us... but we are also part of it all...'

She looked down at the six bodies.

'There is nothing that we can do for them now,' she said bluntly. 'Up in the belt, we picked our friend up and set her free. We watched her drift off into the universe - into mystery - and she is out there now - where she belongs...'

She looked around at her fellow passengers.

'We will set them free later, when we have the time to do it properly,' she said gently. 'We'll lay them to rest in the sea from which all life came... But first we have work to do. There are still people trapped and the ship is out of control. We are all in danger, so... let's go back inside and talk.'