An old tradition. The coins were to be used by the recently deceased to pay the ferryman's toll. The assumption was that Charon, the boatman who plied the river Styx, did not give freebies.
So I thought about that for a while.
The traditional view of the ferry was the one derived from the Gustav Dore illustrations for Dante's Inferno; a hooded, cloaked figure standing dourly in the stern of a grim-looking gondola, poling his way across the dank, fetid Styx with dispassionate gloom.
That was the traditional view.
But I expected something more modern.
With the traffic crossing the Styx these days, a Hovercraft would be far more appropriate, or maybe one of the superferries that ran between Calais and Dover. For that matter, why not just put in a toll bridge and be done with the whole tawdry business of ferries and boatmen and pennies on a dead man's eyes?
But there would probably be an interminable wait in the customs line.
I wondered if there would be duty-free shopping.
What kind of souvenirs would you find in hell anyway?
I wondered if anyone would be waiting for me. Dad? Shorty? Duke? Or, maybe . . .
Never mind. I'd find out soon enough.
Foreman had stepped off the platform. He was conferring quietly with the Course Manager. She nodded and returned to the back of the room. Foreman climbed back up the steps and looked at me. "You don't believe this yet, do you?"
I blinked back to the present.
I was still sitting in the canvas chair. I was still on the platform. I was still in The Survival Process.
"I-I'm sorry. I was thinking."
"Yes, that's right," Foreman agreed. "You were performing an activity or a learned behavior which you have connected to survival."
Foreman turned to face the room. "Here's what's going to happen, I'm going to explain some things about how the mind works. Then we're going to talk about them. And we're going to a:vlk about this process. Talking about this process is the main part of the process. It will demonstrate just how firmly connected to survival all of you really are."
My mind was wandering again. I was trying to visualize Hell. What kind of tortures could I expect? What kind of tortures did I deserve?
My dad had once defined hell in a game, but nobody took it too seriously. It was just a game. But once, in an interview, he admitted that his vision of hell was "to be trapped forever in the Small World ride at Disneyland."
Foreman was saying, "One of the first things that happens when the mind is confronted with information that it doesn't want to hear, or doesn't want to believe, is that the mind retreats. It goes unconscious. We saw that rather dramatically demonstrated when McCarthy here passed out.
"But there are other kinds of unconsciousness too. Daydreaming. for example. Here's the joke. You want to notice when you go unconscious-if you can-because that thing that your mind is trying to block out is very likely the one thing you most need to hear. McCarthy, are you paying attention? Remember, this process continues until you are dead."
I snapped to attention. There was a little laughter from the room. Had I been daydreaming again? Yes.
"Good. McCarthy is a textbook case. But don't feel superior. It doesn't matter who we put up here on the stage: any one of you would be a textbook case. The point is, you need to stay conscious today. This may be the single most important day in your training. It's certainly the most important day for McCarthy. Right, James?"
I was beginning to hate him. How could he talk so calmly about my death?
"Remember when we were in Africa?" asked Foreman. "Living in trees, scratching for fleas? Remember all those millions of years of evolution that are hard-wired into your cerebral cortex? No? Well, no matter-it's there anyway. The problem is, you think because you're not conscious of it that it's not there, that somehow you can be a human being independent of your evolutionary history. I say that's bullshit. You can no more be free of your evolutionary history than a fish can be free of water. You swim in your history-and it's as transparent and invisible to you as the water is to the fish."
Foreman grinned abruptly, as if remembering a joke. "The only difference between you and the fish is that the fish doesn't spend half his life making explanations for the other half. That's right, laugh. Laughter is another way of avoiding the issue. Reality evasion. Pretend that this doesn't have to be taken seriously. Yes-remember how we used to joke about Chtorrans and the people who claimed to have seen them?"
"This is different!" shouted somebody.
Foreman didn't even look up. "Raise your hand if you have something to say." He looked and pointed. "Yes? Rodman?"
A man near the front stood up. He had long, shoulder-length hair. He looked like a Navajo Indian. Maybe he was. "This is a stunt," he said. "A very carefully prepared stunt, I'll admit. It's very convincing. But you're not really going to kill McCarthy, it'd be a waste of a good officer."
"Those are assumptions on your part: one, that we're not going to kill McCarthy, and two, that he's a good officer. Frankly, I've heard he's a terrible officer."
"He's still a human being!" A woman stood up without waiting to be recognized. "You can't just kill a human being."
"I can, I have, and I will," said Foreman. "Let me demonstrate something. Every single person in this room who has ever taken a human life, regardless of the circumstances, please stand up." At least a hundred people stood up.
Foreman nodded. "All right, remain standing. Now, if you have ever been present when a human being was violently killed, please stand up."
At least another hundred and fifty people stood.
"You're talking about combat situations--that's different!" The woman protested.
"That's an assumption," Foreman replied quietly. "We don't know that those deaths occurred in a combat circumstance. It's a probable assumption because most of you think this course is filled with military officers, but it's just as possible that most of the people in this course are murderers, granted conditional reprieves from Death Row. Don't make assumptions." He waved the people back down into their seats.
"You're horrible!" said the woman.
"Yes, I am. So, what?"
"You shouldn't be making jokes about it! This isn't funny!"
"I agree with you. This isn't funny at all. There's a human life at stake. It was never meant to be funny. I apologize if it came off that way. The point is that violent death is not an uncommon or unusual occurrence to most of the people in this room; so the notion that there is something uncommon or unusual in what we're doing is invalid."
"We're talking about a human life!"
"I know that," said Foreman calmly.
"You can't just kill him!"
"I can. And I will-if that's what it takes to convince you that I'm serious about this process."
"It's illegal!"
"No, it's not." Foreman pointed to the screen where the president's order was displayed.
"Well, it's still wrong."
"Ahh! It's wrong. Yes: Life is right. Death is wrong. Therefore, killing is wrong. That's your survival mode speaking. If the truth be told, you personally don't give a shit whether Jim lives or dies-you're just terrified that if we establish the precedent of taking lives without apparent reason, you might find yourself in front of the gun next. Right?"
The woman didn't answer immediately. After a bitter pause, she snarled, "You're awfully glib. What if it was you in front of the gun?"
"It's not me in front of the gun. The question is irrelevant. This process isn't about my survival. It's about yours. And McCarthy's." Abruptly, Foreman noticed that Rodman was still standing and waiting patiently. "Actually, Rodman had the floor-you're interrupting; sit down. Rodman, do you have anything else to say?"