CHILLER

by Gregory Benford

  “You’ve got to admit, movie stars and cryonics somehow go together. Very California.”

  In a way she was right, he thought. The balmy climate erased the season’s sway, bringing a calm continuity that silently promised to go on forever. Maybe the cryonic effort to extend life through the veil of what society called death did indeed come unconsciously out of the California weather’s reassuring sameness. He found the thought disturbing, as if it robbed the ideas behind cryonics of their stature.

  He brushed the thoughts aside. “The real trick with the TV people was not giving away Susan Hagerty’s role.”

  “That’s got to come out, doesn’t it? The real science, not just the media trash.”

  “That’s for Susan to report. She’s working on a paper for one of the biomedical journals right now.”

  “Better than your big splash in National Enquirer.”

  “I thought you just glanced at them.”

  “Your name leaped out at me.”

  He laughed. “Yeah, I’m there in ‘Roy Rogers’ Horse Frozen For Future Life’ and ‘Elvis Joined Club of Immortals.’ Plastic fame. The best thing is that after a week the yellow press goes away. They have the attention span of a cockroach.”

  “Umm, I’ve noticed the resemblance. Not big on step-by-step progress.”

  “Or regress.” Alex frowned. “Sparkle gives us a chance to test things about memory that Susan couldn’t do with lab mice. She used her cryoprotectants on batches of mice, but Sparkle’s a big step. I had to talk Susan into making the leap to big animals—because I was desperate.”

  “I understand.” The momentary warmth of Kathryn’s hand on his arm was unexpectedly touching.

  “Thanks. I—I had to hang on to the old pooch. And as an experiment, it’s working pretty well.”

  “Not perfectly?”

  “Sparkle didn’t recognize John Flander yesterday.”

  “Should she?”

  “John puts in a lot of time here, helping out. He’s known Sparkle since she was a pup.”

  Sparkle sighted something in a thicket of manzanita and dived in after it. “Go get ‘em, girl!” Kathryn called out. “Fresh meat.”

  “You’re sure no vegetarian either,” Alex said dryly.

  She grinned saucily. “Hey, I agree with Sparkle. If you can die and come back later with your sense of fun intact, who cares about remembering some John?”

  Immortality Incorporated scavenged surplus medical equipment from labs and hospitals, which let older but perfectly serviceable gear go for a few cents on the dollar. Finding such bargains, though, demanded long hours on the dulling expanses of freeways; you had to cast a skeptical eye over used goods, not just bargain over the phone. In running these endless errands Alex had learned to keep himself alert by scanning nearby cars for interesting personalized license plates. Somehow he wasn’t surprised that Kathryn shared this minor hobby.

  Within a few miles headed north on I-5 they spotted KLOUD 9 on a silver cloud Rolls-Royce and B KLEEN on a beat-up cleaner’s van. Alex said, “Seems to me they give a weird kind of angle into people. We’re all sealed up in here, just a few feet away from each other, but no communication.”

  “Very Californian,” she said judicially.

  “Cultural chasm. In the East people brag about how little they had to bribe their condo plumber to actually do some repairs. In California we’re happy if we can figure out what country our landlord’s from—usually from what he had for lunch. The East has bitter, interesting cab drivers, California has these plates. Balances out.”

  “Look at that one. US GODS.”

  “Okay, so we overreach a little out here.”

  “That’s a polite word for it. See that one?”

  Alex peered ahead at a low-slung sports car with a rear plate reading TOOL MAN. “Maybe he’s a mechanic.”

  “Suuuuure. Catch that Corvette on the right.”

  JOE COOL. Alex craned to look. “Figures. The driver’s about thirty, with a duck’s-ass haircut.”

  “Needless to say, we do not have such creatures in the respectable states.”

  “South Dakota doesn’t have citizens like that guy over there?” The driver of WACKO wore long sideburns and had a copper ring in his car.

  “He’d need a passport to get into South Dakota. And a customs inspection.”

  They saw a new plate about every minute and began to look for deep metaphors. ALL GIRL wore a glittery sheath dress and had a three-day growth of beard. But HUNG UP was a guy in a porkpie hat, which seemed to fit in with the cosmic order. DSCNT IQ was a lean man with an intense, competitive glare. A healthy-looking woman with too much ruby lipstick on had HIHOPES. Coming into the center of L.A. they saw IHVNFUN and LZYDAZE.

  “Here we are cruising through the power matrix of the goshwow Pacific Rim, and that’s the best they can do?” Kathryn asked with a curl of her lip. “Come on, L.A.!” As if in answer, NO1UNO zoomed by them, a black Ferrari with night-tinted windows. “Nice,” she allowed, “but out here, everybody thinks they’re ‘Number one, you know.’”

  “Not all of us. How do you know that guy’s not saying ‘No one you know’?”

  “Ummm. The symbolism’s flying thick and fast.” She looked at him skeptically. “Anyway, you say a lot more with your car.”

  He shot her a questioning glance but was scrupulous about watching traffic. “How you figure? I don’t have custom plates.”

  “You’re driving the cryonicists’ standard car, a Volvo.”

  “It’s the safest,” he said defensively.

  “So’s a tank. Not too racy, though.”

  Alex felt unaccountably irked. Okay, he thought, I drive a car so old the ‘fifty-five’ is highlighted in red, from the Carter days when that was the speed limit. And to get to sixty from a standing start takes a couple of weeks, maybe. Blue-collar guys don’t pull down a hundred thou for shuffling paper, so? Normally the matter wouldn’t faze him; he had gone to work for I2 knowing he’d never cash in a stock option or live at the beach or sniff the all-leather interior of his Beamer. Why should it all of a sudden make him uncomfortable now, with her?

  He decided to keep the conversation light, casual. Safer that way. “I saw a Cadillac once with California plates saying nobody.”

  “From the Bay Area,” she said definitively.

  Forest Lawn Memorial Park occupies one of the best hills in Glendale, commanding a striking view that, unfortunately, the residents cannot see. Neighboring hills were thick with large homes rich in stuccoed swank, but here all was green and silent. Alex drove slowly up the winding roads. They had stopped at the attendant’s booth, and Kathryn had surprised him by asking where the grave of Walt Disney was. The attendant peered at his records and then looked them over and announced that they were not allowed to give out “addresses.”

  “In your face, motha,” Kathryn said as they climbed back into his car. “I know where it is anyway.”

  “How come?”

  “Hobby of mine. Addresses of the dead.”

  Forest Lawn was genteel, circumspect. A map admonished them that no photo taken there could legally be published. Like a Disneyland of the Dead, it had theme sections: Garden of Ascension, Lullabyland, Eventide, Wee Kirk o’ the Heather. The lawns slumbered beneath the weight of sunlight that seemed to seep from a blank sky. Raked gravel walks enticed the car-borne into warrens of humus-fed plantings of exotic flora, where shrubs bore small tags, as though just named by Adam.

  “Good thing we didn’t bring Sparkle,” Kathryn said, reading the map. “Dogs have to stay in the car and maintain a respectful silence.”

  “How about dogs risen from the dead?”

  “Today’s special, zombie dogs get ten percent off in Poochland.”

  They went up Cathedral Drive and onto Arlington Drive. Walt Disney was in the Court of Freedom. A majestic marble Freedom Mausoleum dominated the little gardens. Statues dotted the small enclaves alongside rectangular paths: fallen warriors, mourning women wrap
ped in winding sheets. Alex stopped to study a concrete Indian on bare horseback, legs extended downward in rigid dignity, head bowed to the barrel chest in an expression of dazed sorrow. Alex had to admit the work was good, ushering him into a silent world of contemplation, detailed down to the fingernails. Death was so upscale here, so respectable.

  Kathryn strolled around inside the chilly, echoing Freedom Mausoleum as though she were picking out a book in a library. “Look—here’s Gummo Marx. Gracie Allen! Larry—one of the Three Stooges. Francis X. Bushman.”

  “Do you collect autographs, too?”

  Disney’s grave wasn’t in the mausoleum. She led him around to a tiny garden set snugly against a sedately gray brick wall. Alex had to admit the whole thing was done well, with lush green lawns, a low unlocked gate, shaded marble benches, carefully pruned holly and azaleas. A small statue of a girl watched over the cool preserve, her eyes studying some eternal principle just beyond view. Kathryn gestured, and he saw a metal plaque set in the wall. WALTER ELIAS DISNEY was the top name of the eight spaces provided.

  Kathryn stared at it for a long moment, her eyelids fluttering slightly, breaths coming in short little gulps. Her lips parted, shaping first a delicate downward turn, as if into disappointment. But then her complexion flushed and her lips drew back, whitening slightly into a severe, assessing expression that contrasted with the sensuality of their fragile fullness. He could see warring emotions in the way she clenched and rubbed her fingers together while holding her arms straight down at her sides, in the tensed lines of her body in the sun-dappled silence.

  “Mickey sends his best,” Alex said, beginning to get a little jumpy. As soon as the words were out, he knew that he was letting his nerves do his thinking, but to his relief Kathryn’s rapt gaze did not alter; maybe she hadn’t heard. Still, why in the world would she bring him here? Was Disney a relative? You met some odd birds in cryonics, sure, but—

  “I wonder what’s behind this?” she asked with fresh purpose.

  “Bones.”

  “I mean behind this wall.”

  “Say, what’s—”

  “Come on.” She marched off energetically.

  He followed, consoling himself with the view of her nicely fitted blue skirt. Places like this always turned his thoughts in that direction, for fairly obvious reasons.

  He knew that immediately after experiencing danger people often got quite randy. Reminders of mortality had the same effect. Still, cemeteries weren’t considered sexy places—except, he recalled, one time in high school when he and his girlfriend hadn’t been able to find any other place. Around midnight you were pretty damned sure of being uninterrupted, and the grass was nice and soft. Trudging along behind Kathryn through the spring heat, he remembered all the weight of prohibition and anxiety that he, like every adolescent, had carried around. Sex was the source of our very existence—yet how many could envision their own parents Doing It? Alex tried for a moment, grimaced, failed, and trudged on. Maybe the fact that we all came from a moment of unthinking passion was too close, too uncomfortable, he thought. It meant conjuring up a time before we existed. And it was just around the corner from the idea that the time would come when we weren’t here anymore.

  They had circled around the Freedom Mausoleum in the hush of early afternoon. A couple stood on Benediction Slope nearby, looking down at a spot in the great swath of grass, their images rippled slightly by heat waves. Headstones here were tastefully recessed in the lawn, so that from any vantage point this place did indeed seem to be a sunny park awaiting picnickers. Soil from a freshly dug grave was covered with Astroturf, he saw, lest it remind anybody that the dead were going into plain old dirt.

  Kathryn marched nearly to the Dawn of Tomorrow section, with its rows of narrow boxes like the tenements of the next world, before doubling back. “Ah!” she cried. “Here.”

  “Where?” All Alex saw was a mass of bushes beside the road.

  “See, you can tell by the geometry that this”—she pushed aside the bushes, revealing a footpath—“leads into the area behind the Disney family’s small garden.”

  “Uh, right.”

  “Well—come on.” She plunged into the bushes, limbs scraping her. Alex followed. The path led to a stucco wall and then along it until they found a wooden door. She tried the knob. “Locked. Damn.”

  “Let’s look.” He didn’t know what was going on here, but he could seldom pass up a chance to indulge a hobby he had learned in high school. He fished out his big key chain, which had as its sinker weight an ornate-looking steel tool. He clicked it open, deploying a narrow shaft, notched and furrowed.

  “You can pick locks?”

  “No, I talk them into opening. This just gets their attention.”

  He could have done this one with a credit card down the door frame. It popped open within ten seconds of fiddling. They stepped into a cool, dank blackness. Daylight from the open door cast shadows among stacks of gardening supplies, rakes and hoes and fertilizer. Alex smelled bare earth. Kathryn nearly tripped over a wound-up hose. “Here, wait.” He flicked on the other end of the lock-picker, a pencil-beam flashlight.

  They shuffled forward as their eyes adjusted. Kathryn followed a rough concrete wall, counting paces, eyeing angles, and at last pronounced, “It’s here. The Disney family garden is right on the other side of this wall.”

  “So what?” All he could see was a paper towel dispenser of cracked green plastic.

  “Well, I—” She stopped, biting her lip, and he saw that she had reached the end of some interior odyssey. She gave him a wobbly smile and slapped the wall. “I wanted to check, I…”

  “Oh.” At last he got it. “The old frozen Disney story?”

  She looked sheepish. “I heard about it when I was in junior high. My best friend swore it was true, she’d heard it from somebody who lived in Hollywood.” She twisted her lips into a derisive grimace. “There were others, too. About how he was frozen in a special chamber under the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland. Or that there was a special apartment in a spire of the Cinderella Castle at the Orlando Disneyworld, and he’s there. Those stories got me interested in cryonics, in fact. I promised myself that when I got to L.A. I’d check into it.”

  “So when you saw the Disney marker out there—”

  “I didn’t want to let go of the story. Not zip, just like that.”

  “So we’re looking for the secret cobwebbed lair where Walt swims in his liquid nitrogen, tended by loyal dwarf retainers, guarded by slavering attack dogs and corporate lawyers?”

  She giggled, an odd, lilting release in the gloom. “Something like that.”

  “Well, what say we beat it before the dogs come back and have us for lunch. Or the lawyers.”

  “I think I’d prefer the dogs.”

  “Me, too.”

  He breathed more easily when they were out among the slumbering lawns. A sweetness of distant flowerbeds perfumed the air. As they strolled back to his car, Kathryn told him about her recent research on the old story that Disney had been frozen at death. “I even saw a copy of the death certificate. December 15, 1966. Cause of death: ‘acute circulatory collapse.’”

  “His heart stopped.”

  “Right—isn’t jargon wonderful? Actually, they were operating on him for lung cancer when it happened. No media coverage of a funeral, no info on disposition of the body.”

  “So? The family probably wanted privacy.”

  “Yes, but Disney was a man deeply troubled by death. He made a gruesome seven-minute Mickey Mouse cartoon once, with a mad scientist who tried to cut off Pluto’s head and stick it on a chicken.”

  Alex blinked. “Really? I never saw—”

  “I do my research, Buster. He withdrew it years later. Disney was a big technology freak. Monorails, Space Mountain, Tomorrowland, EPCOT. Once he found that he had lung cancer, why not try a high-tech dodge?”

  “Reasonable—only he didn’t.”

  She stopped be
side a flowering azalea and looked at him forlornly, shrugging. “I guess not.”

  Her grown-up veneer had miraculously evaporated. He saw in small details—a lock of hair tumbled down, a smudge on her left cheek like a sort of inverted eyebrow, her wry, tilted mouth—the girl she had been. A spirit open to a world of wonder, only to find it shadowed by the grim edge of circumstance. Her mother had died when Kathryn was six, he remembered from the offhand here’s-my-life summary she had offered—oddly, even before the fried mozzarella appetizers had arrived at the Italian restaurant. Her father had filled in as many of the gaps as he could, but at seventeen a traffic accident had taken that solace away. Kathryn had finished high school living with her grandmother.

  He reached out and ruffled her hair, then patted it into place. She looked at him with wide, luminous eyes, as though some part of her were silently pleading with him for understanding. Without thinking things through, which was his usual policy, he said warmly, “Look. You were a little girl, you loved Disney characters, and along comes a story that says he’s still around somewhere, only frozen. It’s a comforting thing to believe in.”

  She reached up and pressed his hand to her temple, a quiet, intimate gesture. Something changed in her face, the openness melting into a smile that brought her back from a great empty distance. “My—my favorite was Pluto.”

  Alex stared at her incredulously. “Pluto? Now, Mickey, I could see that, a little too sugary for me—but Pluto?”

  “Okay, who was yours?”

  He said primly, “Donald Duck. Angst, anger, plenty of character there. All Pluto ever said was woof.”

  “Nobody could ever understand what that duck said. An obvious psychotic.”

  “Ummm,” he said judiciously. “Sociopath is more precise.”

  Her face clouded again. “Actually, I wanted to come here to, to, say good-bye to him, I suppose. I was such a fan, I checked the media coverage of his death.”

  “Ah, your love of libraries.”

  “Well, you’d be amazed how much you can find out that way. That’s how I scoped out I2 and you, before I even interviewed for my job.”