CHILLER

by Gregory Benford

  “Where are they?”

  “Who?” she answered mildly.

  “Cowell, to start with.”

  “I believe he went home.”

  “You were with them, weren’t you?”

  “With who? I came straight here from the coroner’s.”

  Stern’s face reddened. “They took her—and you helped.”

  Kathryn was going to say Took who? but the man’s jutting chin warned her otherwise. Men who routinely stayed calm in the face of mayhem were doubly dangerous when something did manage to arouse them. “I don’t know anything about corporate business policy. I’m hired to handle this office, that’s all.”

  “They told you to say that.”

  He was quite right. She said blandly, “It’s only the simple truth.”

  “We’re going to search this place. An unfriendly search.”

  “You have a warrant?”

  “Damned right we do. For Susan Hagerty’s body and supporting evidence.”

  Stern held up a clipboard of papers. He came closer to her and stood taller. A typical cop mannerism, she thought. Probably unconscious.

  “Why are you involved? I presume these other gentlemen are deputies dispatched by the coroner’s office?”

  Most likely she was overplaying this, but she liked being precise and even amiable in the face of obvious, bullish hostility. Miss Manners had taught her well.

  Stern blinked and lost his brontosaurus body language. “I came along to see that strict rules of evidence are followed.” He spoke more conversationally, with less stiff-necked intimidation. Score one for civility, she thought. “We’ve got to be careful. This is a bizarre case.”

  “That I can agree with.”

  “And I nosed this was going to play strange.”

  “Nosed?”

  “Smelled. As in rat. From the way you two left the coroner’s. Now, where’s that Cowell?”

  “I thought he said he was going to play basketball.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “Detective, I don’t make it a hobby to keep track of—”

  “This guy Constantine tells us the Hagerty body isn’t here.”

  “I’m sure he is correct.”

  “Where is it?”

  “I only work here.” Better to evade than to lie.

  “So where did they take it?”

  “I don’t know the details of Susan Hagerty’s will.” Another evasion, but Stern didn’t seem to notice.

  Stern snorted in frustration. “They can run, but they can’t hide. Not with a frozen body.”

  Kathryn took some pleasure in reflecting that this was exactly what they had done. She suspected Stern already knew that. Until the three men were well away from the emergency storage vault, though, she had better stop Stern from thinking along those lines. He might order a search of the surroundings. Worse, he could call in a helicopter. It would see the truck.

  She said, “I would like to inspect your warrant.”

  “Sure.” He handed her the clipboard. “Our friends will be along in a minute or two.”

  “Friends?” Kathryn studied Stern’s sardonic smile, but he was giving nothing away. The search warrant was a barely readable carbon copy that seemed correct, though of course she had never seen one. It allowed removal not only of Susan’s “remaining remains” but also I2 patient care records (including “personal photos and patient diaries”), records of members, and “misc. records dealing with the described remains, procedures of treatment of the remains, equipment used, and attendant matter as so implied.”

  “Pretty inclusive,” Kathryn said.

  “We try to be,” Stern said grimly.

  “What’s this ‘equipment used’?”

  “Just what it says.”

  “That’s pretty broad.”

  “So are you,” Stern said with a thin smile. She wondered if this was a teenage-level pun: You’re a pretty broad. A last show of macho intimidation? She suppressed a sudden impulse to laugh.

  Kathryn went to photocopy the warrant in a side office. With the door closed she telephoned five more I2 members, following the crisis alert procedures outlined in a loose-leaf notebook she had helped type up herself.

  When she returned chaos had descended. Overlapping male voices came from throughout the building. Deputies swarmed everywhere. Three uniformed UCI police were poking through the equipment racks. To her disbelief, a dozen Orange County SWAT team members methodically searched the rooms, brandishing automatic rifles and covering each other as they flung open doors. They were mechanical, well-oiled. She would have laughed at the surrealism of it, but the men scowled and glared so ferociously, she became alarmed. She realized that they were pumped up for this, knowing nothing about I2 and expecting hardened grave robbers to bound out of any cranny. She had to keep moving out of the way of the hubbub, and it was some time before she could find Stern again.

  “This is stupid,” she began. “You won’t find anything—”

  “Come back here.” Stern’s tone was again clipped, nearly threatening. He led her into the main bay. Deputies were reading the ID plates on the tall stainless steel cylinders. “How do I know these are marked right?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Maybe Susan Hagerty is in one of these.”

  “No! Our other patients are in there. You—”

  “Yeah? How do I know?”

  “Every suspension vessel is sealed and dated. Your muscle men have probably dumped the files for all the documents into your vans by now.”

  “Maybe we’ll just open a few of these for a look.”

  Kathryn could not imagine how anyone could be this stupid. “Go on, stick a hand in.”

  “Oh, we’ll drain the bubbly stuff first.”

  “Empty the liquid nitrogen and you’ll endanger the patients.”

  Stern chuckled. “Patients, huh? These are dead people.”

  “Their attorneys will sue you for more damages than you can earn in a lifetime. And so will ours.”

  “You’re going to be busy looking at felony counts yourself,” Stern said.

  “For what?”

  “Interfering with a police investigation. Destroying evidence.”

  “What evidence?”

  “The body.”

  “The last thing a cryonics firm would do is destroy a patient. Go to a mortuary for that, mister. They burn their clients, or else turn them into worm food.”

  Stern put his hands on his hips and smiled. “My my, I finally get to see some temper.”

  Remember Miss Manners. “You’ll see a fat lawsuit if you open those vessels.”

  “To nail you guys, we don’t need to do that. There’s a little count of grand larceny, too.”

  Events were moving with blinding speed for Kathryn, but this stopped her. “Stealing?”

  “I noticed all that gear with UCI stickers on it.”

  “That’s why the UCI police?”

  Stern nodded. “We alerted them. They’re here to check it out.”

  “I’ve been over the inventory lists. That’s part of my job. Every piece here we bought from UCI Surplus and Excess Property.”

  “We’ll just look into that.”

  “This is harassment!”

  “Only doing my job, lady.” Stern looked at her with piercing eyes. “Now, if you’ll just tell us where the Hagerty body is, we can drop all this other stuff.”

  “Good grief! Even TV cop shows are subtler that this.”

  “I guess they have to be. Difference here is, we mean it.”

  “Mean what? That you’ll prosecute me on moronic charges unless I tell you where Susan is?”

  “Lady, you’re implicated in a lot of felonies here.”

  The deputies around them nodded sagely and studied her with cagy alertness. She swallowed hard and thought, All this for a part-time job? What’s happening, girl? After all, Susan was dead. Bringing her back was a long shot at best. Did she believe in cryonics, really? More to the point, did
she believe in anything enough to risk doing major time in the slammer over a frozen corpse?

  Kathryn had thought through the cryonics arguments, pro and con, with indecisive fascination. Now the issue was framed in a way she had never anticipated. Part of her screamed, This isn’t your fight! and another answered, in a severe, almost prissy drone, You owe it to Alex.

  The first voice was steely and probably more intelligent. The second was less articulate, moody, dutiful. But then a third chimed in. You love Alex, dope. You might scamper out from under all this, but he can’t. Stand with him, or you’ll all go down together.

  Maybe, she thought desperately, the one thing I never understood about cryonics was just that—love. Devoting yourself to an off-the-wall cause like this came out of a kind of love she had never known before. Alex had it. Was that the element in him she found so mysterious, so pulse-quickening? Beneath that endearing, focused man lurked an expansive spirit. Yes—the thought was startling—that was part of why she loved him. A different brand of love, sure, eros rampant—but the real thing. And street-savvy she might be, but love was worth pain. Through all the blizzard of arguments about cryonics, at least she now knew that.

  She gave him her best arched-eyebrow gaze of disdain. “Detective, I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”

  Stern’s mouth drew tight and bloodless. From the bitter twist of it she knew he was going to deliver some stinging sarcasm, but he stopped, eyes focusing across the bay. She turned and there were Alex, Gary Flint, and Skinner, ambling easily in from the loading dock. “Hey, what’s happening?” Alex called.

  Stern’s mouth broadened into a smile. Now he can stop beating up on this brassy broad and get into something more interesting, Kathryn thought. Fresh meat. Despite knowing this, her heart leaped at seeing Alex. She started toward him. He grinned back, something passing between them in his look that caught her breath. He opened his arms and hugged her, lifting her heels from the floor.

  “Handcuff them,” she heard Stern say grimly. “Not her, though—she’s just a flunky. I’ll Miranda them myself.”

  9

  GEORGE

  The Reverend finished his benediction. The vast bass notes of the Marble Cathedral organ swelled up, pealing forth great resonant chords of glory and majesty, almost drowning out the powerful choir. George suppressed his impulse to applaud until the red lights of the TV cameras winked off. Then he clapped his hands heavily, grinning at Karen Bocelin, as the music rose still more, reverberating in the stately recesses of the cathedral, becoming a weighty presence itself in the immense volume overhead.

  The stage lights faded, the organ stopped abruptly, and the broadcast was over. The Reverend accepted congratulations from several in the choir, from parishioners, from the producer of the show. Smiles, tanned faces, sleek grooming, a heady electricity. Then he came over to where George and Karen sat in the first pew.

  “That was profound,” Karen said. “Truly.”

  “I loved it, the way you brought the show together at the end,” George said.

  The Reverend shook George’s hand and patted Karen on the shoulder. “I owe a great deal of that to you, brother. It was you who pointed out the passage from Ezekiel, you’ll recall.”

  George beamed. “I didn’t know how to relate it, to use those words.”

  “And the jokes you made about chillers,” Karen said. “So funny! But horrifying, too.”

  The Reverend dipped his head with winning humility. “Friends tell me those jokes. They’re not mine.”

  “But the way you used them together with the news. About their stealing that poor woman’s body, leaving her God knows where.” Karen’s voice held deep indignation. “Denying her proper burial! Why—”

  “That’s what was so beautiful about the words of Ezekiel,” George blurted. “The way you wove them in, it—it made me weep.”

  The Reverend’s expressive face beamed with solicitude and gravity. “I only hope we can reach the great viewership with that message, George. With your message.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you have,” Karen said. “It was stunning.”

  “Let me say that I was especially happy to see you two sitting there together during the service and sermon.”

  “We have you to thank for introducing us,” Karen said, squeezing George’s hand.

  “Y’know, I have tickets to a film here.” Reverend Montana fished them out and handed them to George. “I surely do not have time to use them, and they say this new Disney film is a true inspiration. Why don’t you two see it together?”

  George had planned to work tonight on the endless detail of tracking the I2 personnel, but he saw in the Reverend’s face a clear command. He reached for the tickets. Karen beamed.

  George felt a sudden spurt of strange, tilted joy. This was the world of solidity and purpose, the sanctified path. He had pressed himself against the window of life for so long, peering into the warm, well-lit interior. Now the window cocked open, letting out a thin slit of that yellow glow. A soft aroma like perfume wafted out into the cold rain that fell upon him, frigid in the night that had swallowed him for years. He could wine and dine this woman. She would appreciate Burrell’s, the country restaurant where he liked to belly up to a three-egg breakfast with grits, stewed cinnamon apples, cornbread, and link sausage. He’d treat her to barbecue that would melt in her mouth.

  The tickets loomed in his vision, emblems of the ordained path, and the great cathedral whirled around him, the air warping with fractured colors, splintered sounds that came to him as if from a vast, hollow distance. He closed his hand upon the tickets.

  “Oh, thank you so much,” Karen said.

  George could scarcely breathe. He held the tickets aloft, like a holy scepter, and found that he had crushed them.

  Karen lived just off Brookhurst in a residence court of small, attached bungalows. Twenty of them formed a hollow square. He drove in beneath an ornamented arch done in rococo Spanish style. A sign announced VISTA VILLAS in heavily looped script, though there was no view at all. The courtyard sported dead rosebushes around an empty concrete fountain. In the dim nightlights he saw tiny dry yards behind low iron fences.

  “Isn’t this drought terrible?” Karen asked as he parked in front of her pale tan stucco bungalow, number nineteen. “It just makes my skin jump.”

  “Yeah, zephyrs of the night.” This was a quotation, but George could not remember from where. The Bible? Except for technical stuff, that was just about all he read. Overhead sea breezes churned a line of eucalyptus, clattering the branches.

  Automatically he noted the cars parked beneath dim night lights nearby. A beat-up Nissan pickup, one tire nearly flat. Probably day workers, illegals, a dozen crammed into a sweaty one-bedroom. Two recent sedans, a Pontiac Grand Am, all clean, chrome polished. Symbols of pride and upward mobility. An aged, battered VW van with a mural spray-painted on the side, lurid and without a trace of creativity. Warmed-over hippies, probably, drug-stupefied, barely getting along. A fairly typical crowd for middle Orange County, some on the way up, some drifting down. He wondered which Karen was. Scholarship student. You had to respect that. This seemed like the wrong place for her.

  There were few windows in the small rooms of number nineteen, and he guessed they would be depressingly dark by daylight. Karen conducted a bright-voiced tour of the living room and kitchen. The furniture was mostly Sears Modern with flowered slipcovers. Tall floor lamps had elaborate imitation Victorian shades. Karen effervesced, chattering with delight over the Disney film and then over the Reverend’s broadcast. This let George relax into the ambience of the small living room as Karen served coffee and fluttered about, straightening knickknack items on a sideboard, arranging cushions, and then finally coming to rest next to him on the sofa. She began to ask him about the work he did for the Reverend, not being pushy or anything, and he gave a little ground without revealing much. To deflect this he asked, “You got the scholarship through the cathedral?”r />
  “Oh no, through the Reverend himself,” she said brightly.

  “You must be smart. Chapman’s a good school.”

  “I was never any big brain.” Her eyelashes flickered low, a pretty embarrassment. “Just C pluses, really.”

  “But your coming from a foster home…”

  “That helped, sure it did. I got a job with Vitality the week after the scholarship, too.”

  “That was fast.”

  “Not many girls are lucky enough to get a real job right out of high school.”

  “Know anything about computers?”

  “Oh no, do you? I can’t seem to think that way.”

  “So what do you do for Vitality?”

  “Oh, I’m sort of a personal secretary to Dr. Lomax. Just part time, though.”

  “Dr. Lomax?”

  “He’s the president of the whole thing. A very intelligent, distinguished man. I met him through the Reverend.”

  “So you work in their office?”

  “Oh no, that’s in Huntington Beach. I don’t go there much. They’ve got it all fixed up so that I can do most of my work right here.”

  “Personal secretary? How can you work here?”

  She dimpled. “I guess I kind of exaggerated a teensy bit. I really just keep track of Mr. Lomax’s accounts and billings. Part of the energy conservation thing, you know? Work at home with computers and faxes and modems.”

  “Sounds like an important job.”

  “I like it.” She leaned toward him, her voice a sliding whisper, her scent again steaming up into his nostrils with pungent sweetness. “I get a look at how really wealthy people live.”

  For a moment he wondered at this abrupt shift from the demure, religious girl he had expected. Then, as she went on about Dr. Lomax’s accounts and how much he spent for clothes and cars, all under the Vitality Corporation expense blanket, he saw that she had the simple, awed respect that so many did for the sheer accumulation of wealth. Mammon rampant. And in Southern California money inevitably connected with fame. Lomax knew some show business personalities, too.