The trouble was, he didn’t believe them. He couldn’t say them with any conviction. They didn’t make him feel any better about dying, and, if he couldn’t even convince himself, he stood no chance of putting fire into the bellies of his troops.
When he thought about it like that, Blenner felt the fear inside him grow. It made him want to throw back another pill or two, but he had exhausted his supply. There was the contraband he’d confiscated untouched in his desk, but Curth had warned him off that. His hands trembled.
‘Heads up,’ said Hark. A wall hatch had rumbled open and Rawne’s Suicide Kings had entered, escorting the prisoner. Mabbon had been brought to observe and advise the operational drills. He was in shackles, and his face was without expression. Everybody in the hold space gazed at him.
They knew what he was. They knew the price the regiment had already paid simply having him there. They knew what kind of price they were going to pay if he was playing games with them.
Blenner felt an overwhelming urge to find a latrine. Space Marines were bad enough, but the pheguth was worse.
He got into the corridor outside, and found that his urge to crap his pants had diminished. His desire for pharmaceutical support had increased. If drugs could help Trooper Merrt improve his performance, then they would for Vaynom Blenner too.
That was how he came to be sitting with Dorden when he died.
‘I’m worried that I might be taking too many,’ said Blenner awkwardly. ‘I’ve got through the ones you gave me rather quickly.’
‘Don’t worry, commissar,’ said Dorden. ‘You’re a grown-up. I trust you not to abuse them. You’re only taking them when your nerves demand it, aren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good,’ said Dorden. ‘In fact, to make things simple, I’ll sort you out a larger supply. To keep you going.’
The medicae office was very quiet. Blenner had passed Kolding and Curth on his way in. He breathed out.
‘Can I ask you a question, doctor?’ he asked.
‘Of course,’ said Dorden. He had got up to fetch a box of pills from a shelf. He was measuring loose pills out, a dozen at a time, into a small set of brass scales.
‘Why aren’t you afraid?’
‘Afraid?’
‘Yes,’ said Blenner. He cleared his throat, nervously. ‘Of… I’m sorry, of dying.’
Dorden smiled, still counting out pills.
‘Death is nothing to be afraid of,’ he said. ‘It happens to everyone. It’s ridiculous to think that the one thing everyone has in common, the one thing that unites us, is an object of fear. I am quite looking forward to it, actually. Duty ends. We are welcomed to the Emperor’s side in some great place of triumph and glory. I imagine… I hope very much… that I will see my son again.’
‘I wish,’ said Blenner. ‘I wish I wasn’t afraid.’
‘You’re not afraid,’ said Dorden. ‘Not of death. You’re afraid of living.’
‘I’m sorry, what?’
‘You’re afraid of the things you’ll have to do before death takes you. Pain, injury, fleeting things like that. You’re afraid of life and the effort that life takes.’
‘I’m pretty sure that death’s the thing really bothering me,’ said Blenner.
Dorden shook his head.
‘You don’t want to be found wanting,’ he said. ‘You don’t want to die knowing those around you despise you or think you’ve let them down. You don’t want to face the Emperor with question marks on the account of your life. You’re not afraid of death, Vaynom. You’re afraid of the things you’re expected to do before you die. Courage. Fortitude. Sacrifice. Endurance. Those are the difficult things.’
Blenner sat back and wiped his hand across his mouth.
‘If that’s the way you see it,’ he said. He stared at the deck. ‘Those are sugar pills, aren’t they? Sugar pills or salt tablets? It’s a placebo.’
‘You’re quite mistaken,’ said Dorden, measuring a last scoop.
‘You would say that,’ replied Blenner. ‘That’s the way they work. But you’re handing them out like sweets. And you’re not even remotely worried that I might end up with a dependency.’
Dorden turned around and looked at Blenner.
‘Don’t bother denying it,’ he said. ‘I can see it in your eyes. That expression. I’m good at telling when people are lying, doctor. It’s my job. I know you don’t want to spoil the effectiveness of the placebo, but just the way you’re looking at me right now, I can… doctor?’
Dorden fell. His left elbow caught the rim of the brass pan on the little set of scales and flipped it, sending the white pills up into the air like chaff. They rained down across the deck like hailstones. Dorden had already slithered down the cabinet, pulling open two drawers, and subsided onto his back. His eyes were like glass. He seemed to be staring at something behind Blenner. Something parsecs behind Blenner.
‘Doctor Curth!’ Blenner screamed, leaping out of his chair so hard it fell over.
Curth ran in, followed by Kolding and Lesp. They crowded around Dorden’s untidily folded form. Blenner didn’t know what to do.
In the face of death, he was speechless.
Curth’s head was bowed. Her skin was pale, as though shock had sucked the blood out of her. She adjusted an intravenous drip.
Blenner stood at her shoulder and stared down at Dorden. The old man’s eyes were closed. Fifteen minutes of furious activity had ended with Dorden on his back on the cart, Kolding and Curth working on him. Blenner had been able to do nothing except watch. He had been fascinated by the way Curth had wept through the entire process without making a sound or halting her work.
‘He was dead for four minutes,’ she said. ‘We restarted his heart.’
‘Is the machine keeping him alive?’ asked Blenner.
‘No,’ she replied. ‘It’s just a precaution. He actually started sustaining himself once we got meds into him and resuscitated.’
‘Clinically dead for four minutes,’ said Blenner. ‘What about brain damage?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘But the machine’s not keeping him alive?’
‘No,’ she said. She turned to look at him. ‘You are, actually.’
‘What?’
‘If you hadn’t been with him,’ she said, ‘we might not have known he’d gone down. Not for minutes. It would have been too late to bring him back. We were lucky you were in there, badgering him for more of those wretched pills.’
‘Hooray for me, then,’ said Blenner. He paused. He felt like she could see the same faraway thing Dorden had been watching when he fell over. ‘To be fair, I think they’re placebos.’
‘Of course they’re placebos,’ said Curth. ‘Are you an idiot?’
‘Steady on.’
‘He’s not going to prescribe something you scoff like candied fruit, is he?’
She stopped and composed herself.
‘I’m sorry. I’ve just ruined their effect and all his hard work.’
‘I should stop taking them, then.’
She looked him in the eye.
‘I could be lying,’ she said.
‘You could. With you, Doctor Curth, it’s much harder to tell. You could, of course, just be covering because you let it slip.’
‘You’ll never know.’
‘Let’s stop worrying about me, shall we,’ he said, as brightly as he could manage. ‘What about you? Do you need a moment? This is very trying. Can I offer you a shoulder to cry on? A warm embrace?’