CHILLER

by Gregory Benford

  But the chilly, bone-deep anger still churned in her belly. Scientific research was often abstract, aloof—but this was a digital rape, and she felt age-old, burning rage. For long moments she sat shock-still, mouth a grim line, fists clenched, nails biting into her palms.

  Then decades of training took over. Resolutely, she unknotted her hands, stood, walked around, worked the stiffness out of her spine, yawned to stretch the rigidity from her face. Fight it, girl.

  With a great, cleansing exhale she got rid of it all—the speculations, anger, worry, and anxious dread. Only a thin, ominous cloud hung at the back of her mind.

  Physicians learned to drop segments of their lives into compartments, bang the doors shut, and come back later—if ever. She used that now. After getting control of her breathing and staring for a long moment into space, she was okay. She sat down, opened computer files, picked up her stylus, and began reviewing her work. Dive on in. Don’t let anything steal this from you, swindle away the simple pleasure of worthy labor.

  On the University of California campus at Irvine, she was the only faculty member working on cryopreservation—the techniques of freezing and storing tissues for later use. She was hot on a major advance now—Sparkle’s groggy but solid revival had proved that. She had done successful trials with lab mice, sure—but a dog was far harder. Alex had talked her into suspending Sparkle, using the classic argument—look, she’s going to die anyway—and practical, hard-nosed Susan had secretly expected to fail.

  The crucial factor was a new class of specially developed chemicals she had developed—transglycerols. They had enabled Sparkle’s cells to let their water escape as they were cooled, over a month ago. That had kept them from rupturing as Sparkle’s water froze, because the ice then formed outside the cells.

  In the cells lay the body’s true structure. Function and memory were intricately housed in the little building blocks of all living beings. “Freezer burn” was nothing more than the microscopic ripping apart of cells as water expanded, turning to ice, slicing across membranes. It was like blowing up a balloon inside a room, pushing through the walls of ordered cell, fracturing the order that sheltered the family within.

  Defeating that damage was the key. And she had done it.

  As she worked over the notes from Sparkle’s revival she felt a quickening, the old sensation that came seldom but was never forgotten: the moment when you discover something about the way the world is made, see it true and square. And you glimpse it before anyone else, like a high, distant valley unknown to humanity, its riches uncharted.

  She sat back, her stylus working quickly on her notebook screen, filling in details from Sparkle’s revival before they fled from memory. The most minor change in procedure could be crucial. She sometimes felt like Sherlock Holmes, obsessively noting what sometimes seemed like pointless trivia. Holmes had routinely counted the number of steps into a building, noted railroad timetables down to the exact minute, cataloged the colors and smells of countless muds and tobaccos, had been able to trace them from a few grains left by a villain.

  She counted drops of solutions, noted the settings on instruments, knew the subtle tints of tissues under stress. Well, maybe it wasn’t so odd. Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Holmes, had started out as a physician.

  “Ah,” she said aloud, “if only I had a Watson.”

  For some reason this made her mind veer into a familiar swamp of emotion. Roger.

  They had been married nearly twenty years, had gone from early zesty passion to settled, comfortable intimacy. And then death’s sharp scythe had cut him down with a heart attack. A quick death, the kind people called “merciful,” as if being jerked into oblivion were something to be wished for. He had been her Watson, in a way, an amusing, dear sidekick—as well as an ardent lover. Her special hero.

  There was a knock at her door. She was still half-immersed in her thoughts when she opened it to find Sidney Blevin, a colleague. Not a candidate for Watson, no, she thought.

  She had never gotten through Blevin’s cool, professional veneer to see what kind of human lurked beneath. He had a narrow face, hawkish nose, and sallow cheeks. Like many physicians, he kept rather poor care of himself. He sported a paunch ill-disguised by the baggy maroon sweater he wore beneath a lab coat, and his stringy arms spoke of little exercise. His hooded eyes studied her for an instant as though she were a specimen under a CT scan. As an oncologist, he read those three-dimensional hieroglyphics with ease.

  “Susan,” he said abruptly, “I’ve got the scoop here on your patient Lowenthal.”

  “Oh, good.” She waved him to a chair.

  She had called in Blevin to consult on the detailed CT scan of a woman Susan had admitted yesterday. Marie Lowenthal was a mother of three, married, forty-three—only a year younger than Susan. She had a persistent fever and vague abdominal symptoms. Marie had ignored her illness until it became obvious to her husband that she wasn’t just having a bout with the flu.

  “Here’s the goods,” Blevin said, advancing to her work table and calling up pictures from the hospital’s top-of-the-line diagnostics. On her large, high-resolution wall screen the details were razor sharp.

  “As you can see—” Blevin started to take her through the details, but she silently held up a hand.

  The moment of first seeing fresh data was precious to her. Raw numbers spoke a subtle, supple language all their own. Graphs, charts, lab indices, a whirling blizzard of detail—she always sensed these as voices, some shouting, others whispering softly. It was easy to simply listen to the shouts.

  Usually, the loud, obvious answer was also the right one. But not always. So Susan cherished this moment when she could turn her ear to the data by herself, listen for the quiet, telling murmurs.

  The most common known cause of fever was infection, and the most common unknown cause of fever was infection. Many infections were hard to find. But fever could also arise from a hyperactive thyroid, from drug use, from a brain hemorrhage, from deep malignancy. An infection could hide in some cranny of the body for a long time, then reach the bloodstream, sending a shower of bacteria raging through the patient, shooting her temperature up. Then the body’s defenses responded, white cells devouring the offending infection. By the time the patient came in, the bacteria that had caused the fever were gone, making diagnosis difficult.

  So Susan had asked for an intricate inspection of Marie Lowenthal, bringing to bear the full resources of UCI’s technology. And it had found what she most feared. This time the data shouted at her, and today, especially, it was not a truth she wished to hear.

  “Big one,” Blevin said casually. “Sitting right in the tail of the pancreas, tight and snug.”

  “Yes,” Susan said, her face stony.

  “Want to see it in 3D?”

  She sighed. “No.”

  “Some interesting features,” he prodded.

  “Not necessary.”

  “She complain about any pain?”

  “No… no.”

  “Funny. This far along, this big, they usually hurt.”

  Susan bit her lip. “She’s a busy mother. Three children—she had to bring them with her on her office visit. A husband who works long hours. She probably suppressed it.”

  “Ummm.” Blevin’s hawk nose nearly touched the slick CT sheets as his finger traced the hints left by the malignancy.

  It is like Sherlock Holmes, in a way, she thought. We’re hunting down the murderer. Not that swollen tumor. That’s merely the weapon that will pull down a bustling, loving mother and wife. The true crime is committed by nature itself.

  “Pretty far along, I’d say.” Blevin blinked owlishly. “Look at the detail these new computer programs give us! Aren’t they great?”

  “Yes. Great.”

  “Sure you don’t want to see the 3D?”

  Susan looked at Blevin’s pale, oily nose as if it were a sickly fish from a deep, dark sea. Patients often complained that doctors weren’t interested in the
m, only in their diseases. For a hovering, slow moment she felt for Blevin a sour metallic dislike, pooling in her mouth like the taste of aluminum foil caught in her teeth.

  “I said no.”

  “Surprised it took this long to give her a fever.”

  “I imagine she’s been ignoring the symptoms for some time,” Susan said stiffly.

  “Well, she’s a goner.”

  Susan bit her lip, said nothing.

  “You looked at the stats on this type?”

  “Yes.”

  “Two months I’d give her, tops.”

  “Chemo?”

  “This type, no percentage in it. Just make her throw up every five minutes for the rest of her life—which will be short. You going to be straight with her about that?”

  “Probably.”

  “Dead meat, I’d say.”

  Susan’s lips compressed into a thin, bloodless line. “Get out.”

  Blevin looked up from his sheets, eyes startled. “What?”

  “I said get out. Now.”

  “Hey, there’s no call for you to—”

  “I don’t refer to my patients that way. Ever.”

  He sneered. “You get too involved with them, I’d say.”

  “I care, of course.” She struggled with conflicting emotions. The desire to be professional and distant. Her memory of Patricia Olin. Of Marie Lowenthal’s children and their naked, hollow-eyed fear.

  “Remember to keep your professional distance, doctor. Taking everything personally, it impairs your judgment.”

  “Go. Just go.”

  Blevin gave her an odd look, slipped his pages into a folder, and left. Numbly she watched him go, knowing that she had committed a stupid, rude, unprofessional mistake. But her mouth refused to open and apologize, to say anything at all. She was already thinking of what she would have to say to Marie Lowenthal, and somehow it was simply too much to bear.

  Life was like a long march, an endless column of forlorn souls moving forward through surrounding dark. Nobody knows where you’re going, but there is plenty of talk and the fools pretend to understand more than they’re saying. There is merry laughter, too, and somebody is always passing a bottle around. But now and then somebody stumbles, doesn’t catch himself right, and falls back a ways. Or just lurches aside and is gone, left behind. The dead. For them the march stops at that moment. Maybe they have a while longer, lying back there on the hard ground, already wreathed in fog—time to watch the parade dwindle away, carrying its lights and music and raucous jokes.

  For us the dropouts are back there somewhere, she thought, fixed in a murky landscape we’re already forgetting.

  They fell farther behind every day. She could recall others who had stayed behind, years ago. With a little sigh or a grunt of agony or just a flickering of fevered eyelids, they left the march. And now they didn’t know the latest jokes, or the savor of a fresh bottle of wine, or even what the hottest rumors were about. The march saddens as you go on. You remember them back there, wish you could tell them what’s up nowadays, share a laugh or a lie.

  And you knew that someday you will catch an ankle and go down and the murk will swallow you, too. Maybe it would be better if you didn’t have that puzzled, startled moment of staring at the retreating heads, the faces already turning away from you. Maybe it was best if you couldn’t hear that last parting round of hollow laughter from a joke you would never know, the golden lantern light already shining on them and not on you.

  And it will happen to everyone you have known or ever will, Susan thought. Somehow she never got used to that.

  And now she had to go up to see Marie Lowenthal.

  4

  KATHRYN

  Immortality Incorporated was a two-story modular industrial prefab, like thousands of others in Orange County. Kathryn recognized the standard off-white paneling bolstered by a gray cinderblock facade, all enclosing the usual boring industrial square footage on a concrete slab. Behind these rectangular certainties, native scrub and spindly eucalyptus seemed to swarm down from a high ridge line like a fluid, following channels carved by runoff. At the base of the hill the thick vegetation parted, as though to keep a respectful distance from the building. She caught the crisp odor of citronella. A gust brought a thin flavoring of distant orchards. This Southern California semidesert had an ageless, eternal quality, the dry feel of centuries sliding by unnoticed.

  Appropriate, Kathryn thought. Immortality took a long time.

  The building stood alone at the flaring mouth of what she would have called a gully or dry wash but out here had to be termed an arroyo. Behind it she could see a backup electrical generator and chemical storage racks, all enclosed behind heavy chain fencing.

  The only interesting touch was a band of mirror glass across the front at ground level. As she crossed the narrow parking lot she saw herself, hips swaying a bit more than she liked. Sexy Sadie—not the best image for her first day on the job, no. Remember to watch that.

  She had long ago admitted that her relationship to mirrors was like that of politicians to opinion polls, so she allowed herself the luxury of a full, long look. Overall, a solid B, maybe B plus. The yellowish sunlight set off her auburn hair nicely, and her Navaho bracelet picked up the turquoise splashes in her patterned blouse. The off-white wrap skirt did not call attention to her B minus legs, which she had not yet had time to tan to the Southern California norm. She lifted her arms and did a turn, checking how the blouse tucked in the back. A minus, maybe. The ensemble struck a sleek contrast with the rugged hills and Santiago Canyon Road, which wriggled like a black snake into the distance. The overall effect reminded her of the stark black-and-white ads in Vogue—vaguely hostile women displaying themselves, with bare-chested guys in mirrorshades lounging around looking tough. She stopped before the silvered wall and combed her glinting hair with long fingers, twisted her mouth to see if her cherry-pink lipstick was right—great, a clear A—and then realized that anyone behind this one-way glass could be laughing at her. Feeling suddenly self-conscious, she pressed the doorbell.

  After a long wait a tall, muscular man opened the door and peered out with a distracted look.

  “Mr. Cowell? I’ve come to visit the facility? And I—”

  “Oh, yes,” Alex Cowell said vaguely. He had a square nose and lean good looks. His hair was fluffed up in the back, a cowlick barely suppressed, and his moustache was just long enough to suggest a man who cared little for his appearance and did his laundry when he ran out of socks.

  “Oh, yes, right.” Distracted, he glanced toward the rear of the building, from which came the faint cycle of pumps.

  A bit nerdy, she thought. Rimless plastic lenses perched on his broad nose, giving him a curiously professorial look despite his cutoff jeans, torn blue T-shirt, and old air-heeled Nikes worn without socks.

  As he stood aside she stepped by, getting a pleasant smell of musky maleness from him. She stood in the cool, still air of an unremarkable anteroom crowded by a Midway desk and gray steel chairs, but the walls caught her attention. Photographs filled one entire wall, mostly middle-aged men and women beaming at the camera, some in military uniforms, others caught fishing or playing sports.

  Somehow, until these photographs, the reality of it had not hit her. And they’re all here, in a way, she thought. Or at least some hope still rests here.

  When she had applied for this job, straight from the classifieds, and first realized what Immortality Incorporated did, part of her had lurched back in horror. They really do freeze people. It’s not a joke. But times were tough, and to save money to continue her college, she needed another part-time job to stack alongside her twenty hours a week at Fashion Circus. That was the hassle—nobody hired full-time these days if they could help it, to avoid paying all the benefits.

  She had always believed her high school teachers—you could find out just about anything using the library. After reading up on the company and some cryonics history, and checking out their financial stru
cture, her initial reaction—what a bunch of creeps!—had ebbed away.

  She glanced back at Cowell. Kathryn believed in instinctive attractions, and this man definitely had the right stuff. Sure, this was a job, but life was short; she decided to have some fun with him. Cowell’s name had come up in her library search on I2 and cryonics. He was legendary among cryonicists, Cowell the controversial, known for his remorseless dedication. Well, girl, she thought, let’s keep the legend off balance.

  She broke this line of thought and turned to him. “Nice shirt.”

  She almost laughed at his disconcerted reaction. “Huh?”

  “Ah, one of those men who never notices what he wears.”

  A guarded look. “I wouldn’t say that.”

  “Much less what a woman wears.”

  “Like that dress?” he counterattacked.

  “Ha! This isn’t a dress, it’s a skirt and blouse.”

  “Well…” He was a man who lived by technical distinctions, she could see that, and he was looking for a way out of this one. “Who cares?”

  Ah, the so-what argument. “Who cares? You’re trying to impress the public, sell them an idea that sounds like an outtake from Night of the Living Dead, and you say who cares?”

  “We want people who don’t go by appearances,” he said stiffly.

  “But everybody goes by appearances.” She smiled and sat on the corner of the green steel desk, feeling herself get into the swing. “You’ve got a look, whether you know it or not.”

  “So what’s my ‘look’ say?”

  She pretended to study him, starting at the face and moving down. Nice strong thighs, actually, she thought, allowing herself a little fun by extending her assessing gaze just a fraction too long. Sure enough, he reddened. “That outfit? Bleached-out jean cutoffs, tough-guy shirt, jogging shoes, scruffy moustache, shady eyes? You’re saying, ‘Yo, I’m a drug dealer.’”

  A wry smile. “If only I made a drug dealer’s income.”

  “You want to appear rich but unassuming, go for the army surplus look.”