CHILLER

by Gregory Benford

  Ray chuckled. “She did it for you, y’know.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  The two men looked at each other for a long moment, and Alex felt the wordless companionship he valued so much with Ray. The man just knew, and that was worth far more than the endless shallow gab that passed for communication these days.

  Alex put his hand on Ray’s shoulder for a moment and then was all business again, crisp and sure. He got his backpack ready and looped his tool holster into his belt. The fittings on the regulator needed some looking after. He grunted as he hoisted the nitrogen dewar onto his back. “Say, could you call Kath in maybe fifteen minutes, tell her I’ll be back by the time she gets here? Uh—and that Chinese stuff, what did you order?”

  “Garlic chicken, spare ribs, spicy Mongolian beef.”

  “Why have your body saved when you’re doing all that damage to it? That stuff will burn right through your stomach lining.”

  Ray snorted derisively. “What’s the point of living if you eat like a rabbit?”

  This was their usual exchange, and Alex knew he would dig into the chow anyway, even if he did think that garlic was the ketchup of the intellectuals. He clapped Ray on the back and set out through the loading dock.

  The night was moonless, the dry arroyo cloaked in ink. He waited for his eyes to adjust, thinking of Kathryn. Her signing up was a stunner. It touched him in a way he could not have expected. She was saying to him, yes, I’ll share your dream.

  She would be sleepy when they got back to her apartment. He longed to slide into her bed’s warm sanctuary and snuggle up to her, spoon fashion, for a swift descent into blessed sleep. They clung to each other now, were inseparable outside work.

  She even gave him his distance when he wanted it, too—one of the reasons his marriage had failed—and with a wry, tolerant smile, to boot. She hadn’t bugged him about how downright dumb the cockroach caper had been. The gut-twisting story of the collapsed marriage she let him tell in bits and pieces, over time, and cut him plenty of slack about details. She endured his regular little lectures about signing up for cryonics. She had invented a new term for the dead—the “metabolically disadvantaged”—that had become their private joke with earnest cryonicists.

  Distracted, Alex wondered what it was like to be Kathryn—to toss that marvelous buoyant hair, to live behind the deep, swamp-rich eyes, to feel the lift of breast and thigh. To take short steps on hard wood in high heels. To feel the swoop and plunge of a body that tapered from one wonder to the next. What was it like for her to take a bath (women liked them so much—why?), to know the simple mysteries of the toilet? He was immersed in the swarming implications of delicious difference.

  He still brooded about Susan, though, and with the blossoming love with Kathryn came a further revelation. As his life wore on, his mind had returned again and again to that moment in the Tokyo airport. He had met death there, seen its rictus grin. His boyhood had made a shattering collision with that most brutal finality humans can know. It had driven him forward into a life that circled ceaselessly around a desperate gamble, an escape hatch from the foe that others simply mutely accepted.

  And now the landscape had shifted for him. His dread of death was evolving, transfigured into something strange and yet mysteriously hopeful. His own end seemed a minor issue now. Towering over that weathered fear there loomed the far worse possibility of losing Kathryn. Sweet, enigmatic, deftly amusing Kathryn. The fresh fulcrum of his world. Without her, he would be devastated. She was the sole reason he had been able to get through this last month.

  And it dawned upon him that this must be how it was for many people. We fear the deaths of loved ones more than our own.

  He had to smile wryly at his own thoughts. So this is what it’s like to grow up. Or at least to start.

  19

  GEORGE

  The fretful night teemed about him. Streamers forked and furled like the heat lightning of distant boyhood summers. Yet he knew the night was darkly sullen, moonless, and that not even the light-enhancing goggles he wore explained the fretted filaments of incandescent excitement that arced about him.

  George moved silently through the head-high brush. He had left his car on a dirt byway off Santiago Canyon Road and hiked in over the ridge line. He navigated by the emerald glow of pools where chaparral and manzanita helped hold the day’s heat, giving forth a wan radiance.

  He had come at least two miles, and his body burst with anxious forces. He was a man transformed, a man propelled forward again by erupting energies.

  He could remember little of what had occurred this night—only that it was after midnight now and that something glorious had happened earlier, something that had exploded through him and filled his mind with rapturous joy.

  Fragments flew through his mind, shadowy birds winging through slumbering murk.

  Something about a dog. Cold fear, savage victory.

  Something about a house. Big, Spanish. A high wall.

  About a wise man, wanting to know—

  Blank.

  He had set out to discover something, find out some information, yes—but that was long ago, receding through a swamp of time, a detail swallowed in the jubilation that now poured hot energy into his legs, his arms, his strumming senses.

  Cowell. Cowell, giving the finger to God.

  The precise topographic map that the satellite locator provided—all through unsuspecting agencies, dummy telephone numbers, blind accounts—said he was out here. Working, walking, it didn’t matter. Alone, probably.

  He had planned this weeks ago. An attack in the open, as before. Now he seethed with a deep passion for it, an act of completion, the Lord’s wrath plunged into the heart of the living foulness that crawled upon the earth.

  Up ahead. A metallic clank. Movement.

  George crouched, duck-walked forward, dry soil crunching under his shoes. He stroked the crystal cross that hung about his neck, letting its smoothness calm him. The diffuse blush of lime-green light showed a narrow arroyo angling up. He was not far from I2, maybe half a mile. Cowell’s telltale signal had come from here. George had sped through the engulfing night to get here, hoping that Cowell would still be there.

  He was. Again, a metallic ring. The steaming green night jittered with flecks of blue shadow, fleeting shards of light.

  He moved up the arroyo, turning his head slowly to scan every detail. And there it was, up ahead.

  A rectangular shadow. An open door.

  Whoever was inside worked with little light, for there was no flood of brilliance that would come from an ordinary bulb. Only a wan radiance spilled from the open doorway.

  George stilled his lurching lungs. Why hadn’t he guessed? This must be where the Hagerty woman was hidden.

  Thank you, Lord. By following the proven path, he had come to this fulcrum moment. Cowell and the Hagerty corpse together. In one stroke he could avenge and correct the perverse course of the past.

  He crouched and moved forward, running shoes silent on the sand.

  A rattle from the doorway.

  A long, sliding moment. George held his breath.

  A clank.

  Cowell’s head appeared at the doorway, silhouetted in the dim gleam from within. He stepped out, pebbles scattering, a shiny dewar strapped to his back. A holster of tools dangled from his belt. The heavy door clunked as Cowell tugged it.

  George leaped forward, a terrible swift angel from the forest of the night.

  20

  ALEX

  His only warning was a flitting shadow. The inky moving bulk hit Alex and slammed him hard against the rock face of the arroyo.

  The impact nearly knocked the wind out of him. The empty dewar was light but large, and it took some of the brunt of the collision.

  Alex spun away from the rock wall, trying to get away from the mass that hit him hard in the stomach and then tried to get its hands around, grab, find a grip. Elbows jabbed, a fist caught him in the left shoulder. It was like b
eing mauled by a line backer in high school football, a moving appetite for violence.

  Alex punched at the shadow. He connected with surprising softness. A strangled gasp. Got him in the neck, Alex thought with a spurt of pleasure. He backpedaled two steps, tried to get his bearings.

  The figure threw a left jab, missed. The right grabbed, got only air.

  Strong, but a tad slow. Got to get this dewar off. Alex stepped back again, got his right hand under the shoulder strap.

  A fist caught him in the chest. The shadow muttered angrily.

  Alex swung the dewar free. Dim light raked across the scene as the door swung lazily open. The big man shifted left, eclipsing the rectangular glow. His silhouette swung heavily with his right fist, and Alex spun opposite to it, bringing the dewar around over his left shoulder. The fist clunked into the dewar.

  A meaty crack.

  “Ah! Oh! Lord!”

  The figure lurched back, clutching his right hand. Alex swung the dewar around and got a firm hold on its straps with both hands. The silhouette backed away. “Ah!”

  Alex stepped forward carefully. If the man had a weapon, the dewar wasn’t going to be of much use. He tried to see. Could this be a cop? Detweiler was this big. But why rush him in the dark?

  His eyes were adjusting now, and he was startled to see that the man’s head was distended, bug-eyed. Deformed? The hairs on the back of Alex’s neck stood at attention. Crazy-wacko-psycho?

  The man was staggering, confused. Hunched over. Clutching his hurt hand. The bug-eyes veered skyward, as if the man looked for something. Help from above?

  Try to spook him. “Run, you little shit, or I’ll bust you open.”

  Wrong move. The figure straightened. The backbone returned.

  The shadow wore a dark jogging outfit and tennis shoes. He shook his head as if to clear it. Then he reached up and snatched at his face and pulled away the bug-eyes. A strong, lean face, big nose.

  Goggles? What kind of a guy wears—

  Night-vision goggles. A systematic guy. Careful. Determined. Not going to run away.

  “You broke my hand.” A gravel voice. Not Detweiler. Strain lacing through it.

  “I’ll break your head if you don’t—”

  “Damned chiller rich from Hawaii think you own the world defying God’s word bastard.”

  “Huh?” Hawaii? Following them, then. Planned this.

  “Wanna bring back the dead from Gawd you bastard unholy rich sinner, walking dead you want to keep them from their holy appointments when Gawd wants white bones released redeemed when he says rise again not when you do, chiller bastards insane with your dirty science spitting on Gawd.”

  Crazy. Worse, crazy-smart. Organized. Big.

  Fast. Without warning the man rushed him. Alex brought the dewar around to club at him, but he ducked sideways and slammed into Alex’s shoulder. Alex reeled away. Hands snatched at him. Yanked at the dewar straps. Got it away, hurled it into the blackness. It struck with a clunk. Heavy breathing.

  Alex drove his fist straight into the face that loomed up in inky silhouette. Smacked home. The man took it, staggered. “Uh.” Came back.

  Alex scrambled away. The figure spread his hands, blocking flight down the arroyo.

  He’ll corner me. Big and crazy-fast. Need to even things up. A weapon.

  He glanced around. In the dim glow he couldn’t see a rock big enough. No sticks, nothing.

  The man took a step forward. Another. Alex felt the tool belt hooked to his belt. He yanked out a flat-headed screwdriver, plastic handle cool to the touch.

  Do I have to kill this guy? It suddenly struck him that this strange figure had killed Susan. In an instant he knew it as a fact, some corner of his mind putting together the threads. Yeah. I have to kill him.

  Alex held the screwdriver out in front, low. Standard six inches long, a pathetic substitute for a knife. Maybe the man would mistake it for one in the dark.

  The figure came at him carefully. For one long moment Alex studied the contorted face, trying to read the expression. But there was none. The wide slit-mouth showed no emotion. The eyes peered out from some far, empty space. They stared right through Alex. Toward infinity. Fixed eyes in a rigid face. Vacant.

  The man reached into his pocket and pulled out a gun.

  Alex tensed. He would have to move fast, not let the guy get a smooth shot at a running figure, dodge as much as he could in the damned narrow arroyo, dodge while running uphill— Wait. Something funny.

  The pistol caught a gleam from the open doorway. Yellow. The pistol was yellow. Alex had never heard of a gun colored that way, and an idea leaped into his mind. Plastic. It’s not a real gun.

  Before he could react there was a liquid squirting noise, and something lightly touched his chest. He looked down, saw nothing, and a heavy vapor swarmed up into his sinuses. My God! Gas!

  He breathed out. Coughed. Rasped out the last of his air. Don’t breathe in. An acrid taste stung his mouth, invaded his throat. Bitter. Almonds.

  He lurched away, legs wobbly. Uphill. Away. His eyes stung, and he ran for ten seconds before his lungs convulsed and he sucked in sweet dry night air.

  Pebbles scrabbled away under his feet. He fought the racking pain that shot through his head, spiked through his throat. His lungs would not work right. They felt as though a rope were wrapped around them, twisting. Spasms shook him.

  He looked back and could see nothing. Just blackness. Blue dots danced in the hot dark.

  A crunch of steps. Feet coming up behind him.

  He gasped and scrabbled at the crumbling dirt and soft sandstone. Years ago he climbed up this way when the idea of the emergency storage site was just a half-formed notion. There were caves up here, but they were too obvious, too easy to spot from a distance because of their height—visible from the air, too. Maybe he could hide in one of them.

  His hands clawed upward, closed over a smooth lip of worn rock. He still had the screwdriver. He jabbed down with it, got some purchase. Pulled himself up. Rolled onto a flat area.

  This must be the plateau. Alex scrambled forward. Got to his feet. Pink fireflies danced in his vision. He shook his head to clear it. The fireflies buzzed and whirled, mad darting insect luminosities. He looked out and saw sheets of yellow glow brimming on the horizon. Orange County, burrowed deep into its fitful night. Making ready for the next day. Civilization cast little glow here to guide him and from behind came the scrape of pursuit.

  Almonds. Bitter almonds. Somewhere he had read that executed prisoners smelled that in their last moments.

  He ran forward into nearly complete blackness. Find a place to hide. Or else try to outrun this guy.

  Hiding seemed like a better idea. He tripped, stumbled, smacked his head. Scrambled up, charged on. A stick rolled out from under his shoe, and he went down, banging hard on his right knee.

  Soft slaps of running shoes behind.

  He turned and saw the big silhouette blotting out the pale sky glow. The man’s head turned, sweeping the view methodically, radar-serene.

  He has the goggles back on. His head spun with this realization. Hiding would be impossible.

  Run, then. He ducked low, hoping that would help, and trotted along the brow of the worn rock.

  Footsteps behind. Coming fast. Sure, steady, able to see the way.

  A dark mass to the left. Alex veered away from it and hit something hard. A boulder. It knocked the wind out of him. No time to recover. He slipped around the rough sandstone and walked, unable to see his footing. No sound from behind. Then a crunch, very close. He dodged right, and a hand struck him hard on the left temple. Pink fireflies.

  The squirting noise. Droplets spattered his face.

  Bitter almonds.

  Choking pain. Needles spiking his throat.

  “You scientist chiller bastards know about cyanide don’t you?” Voice rasping the thick air. “Dilute solution, fifty milligrams per liter. Taste good? Bastard heathen corpse-kisser, taste good
? Makes you easy to do, not enough to leave a trace. God’s science, chiller asshole.”

  Through a dizzying haze of pain he swung wide at the voice. He could not see the man at all. The screwdriver cut only the air.

  A scuffling to the right. He jabbed. Struck solidly. Jabbed again. A startled cry. A fist grabbed the screwdriver, yanked it away.

  Alex fought to not breathe, but it made no difference. His head raged with red pain. Steel teeth raked his chest. He felt himself teeter, fall. Stone slapped him in the face.

  Hands caught him. Swung him with lazy gravity toward the brim of rock. Lifting.

  Up into the chill night. Below lay consuming blackness.

  “Bless you,” the hollow voice said.

  A distant grunt of effort.

  Arcing up toward the sky glow.

  Weightless.

  Falling.

  SIX

  DEATH, BE NOT PROUD

  One short sleep past, we wake eternally,

  And Death shall be no more: Death, thou shalt die.

  —John Donne

  “Death, Be Not Proud”

  1

  KATHRYN

  She had worked late at Fashion Circus, and her feet were only now beginning to feel like true, loyal members of her body again.

  Earlier, they had protested being encased in high heels for what felt like half the age of the universe. She had changed into petite white walking shoes when they had finally closed the doors on the Annual Thank You Sale. “Thank you and good-bye!” Sheila had boomed out, slapping the bolt lock shut. They had fueled up with some fast food and Cokes, and then dived into the annual inventory. The manager, a phlegmatic woman with a whim of iron, had kept them at it until after midnight. Kathryn had barely gotten home to receive Alex’s call, and now she could look forward to a few soul kisses to increase her pulse rate.

  Kathryn crossed the I2 parking lot, a dry wind tossing her hair, her reflection a pale ghost in the mirror wall. She remembered the day she had come here to report for work, and was surprised to realize that it was not even two months ago.