CHILLER

by Gregory Benford

  When they led in the old man, she at first did not recognize him. Then the quizzical turn of mouth, the sharp nose and glinting eyes gave her enough clues. But he’s so old! she thought, but did not say. Gray hair, mostly gone, scrawny arms that had once bulged with muscle, brown spots on hands and across a lined forehead.

  “Ray,” she said. “Ray Constantine.”

  He said something, but it was swallowed in a sudden sob that burst from him. He had lasted out these years, tending to the suspended patients. A long labor with no promise of success. For her, too, the image of a once-familiar face warped, became watery, and slid in diffuse light as the tears came.

  8

  GEORGE

  Lomax got him safely through the security people with their veiled eyes and funny-shaped weapons. This was a big facility, crisply run, but Lomax’s authority still counted for something. He had the right metallic identity-plates, IDs, the works. But then Lomax hung back.

  “Come on,” George said, striding across the broad lawn beside the creamy buildings. He felt the air zing with energy, promise.

  “This is enough.” Lomax turned back toward the gate.

  There was nobody nearby. George grabbed his arm and twisted it roughly. “I need you to show me around some, straighten it out with the staff.”

  Lomax’s face went gray with pain and fear. “I don’t—”

  “March.” They went across the grass and along a utility road. There was a ragged band of people carrying signs beyond a chain-link fence. ZOMBIES HAVE NO RIGHTS, ONE SAID IN VIOLENT RED. $ FOR THE LIVING! They wore their hair sculpted into wings and were well dressed in tight pants and breechcoats. Respectable people, George thought, protesting this madness. He should be with them. Only he knew that just marching around like that got you nowhere. Only true soldiers could stop this. Just like thirty-eight years ago. He had left the battle then, and just look what had happened.

  “Look, I got you in with one of my people, McAndrews. He’ll do right by you and keep quiet.” Lomax smiled, clearly hoping this would get him off the hook.

  “There’ll be things I won’t pick up on. You’re going to pay a visit to the processing center, the operating rooms, that stuff. Draw me a map.”

  “But if I’m too closely identified with you—”

  George had his hand around Lomax’s elbow and he gave it a savage wrench. “You’re in, like it or not.”

  Fretwork colors played in the corners of his vision, but he kept up a quick pace, bristling with energy. This corrupt place was smooth and clean, but it reeked of sin. There were plenty of troubles in this world of runaway biology. Folks not knowing what the hell was natural and what was literally a God-damned abomination. Creations of atheists swarmed everywhere. New plants. Even “better” animals. A putrid hell on earth.

  “What’s the name of this company?” George demanded.

  “Didn’t you read the paperwork?” Lomax was panting with the effort of keeping up. “It’s a big medical conglomerate.”

  “Not Vitality Incorporated anymore?”

  Lomax looked startled, frightened by something new. “Well, we have several partner firms.”

  “Chillers. All of them, chillers,” George muttered, bile seething in his mouth.

  “Look, there’s been a complicated reorganization—”

  “Never mind. You get me the plans, the equipment manuals.”

  “Okay, okay.” Lomax held up a placating hand. “Only don’t let anybody see you with them. Janitors aren’t supposed to have any of that technical—”

  George grinned. “Yeah, janitors are dumb. Nobody pays them any attention. And they go everywhere.”

  9

  SUSAN

  She had a strange moment upon awakening. A sound bubbled up into her lazy half-sleep, a wet, strangled gasp. She thought it was a last ragged remnant of a dream. She opened her eyes in the twilight her room assumed when it sensed that she was asleep. Awakening eased the lights slightly higher, following some therapeutic routine. In the dawn-like glow she saw a hospital orderly leaning over her.

  “Ummm… what?” she asked.

  The man’s breath rasped, but she could not read his expression, since he wore the surgical mask all attendants did near her. Above the whiteness his eyes danced, jerking from her to the equipment that surrounded her bed, then back to her again.

  “What is it?”

  The attendant blinked rapidly and raised his hands. They hovered in the air, indecisive. She could see his gloves trembling. The eyes swerved, taking in the machinery around her, veering back to her face, then darting away again.

  She was vaguely exasperated, still woozy from sleep, and no doubt assisted by a sophisticated mix of pharmaceuticals.

  “What’s going on?”

  The man’s breathing was unnaturally loud. Sharp intakes, followed by a harsh, irregular panting.

  She felt a faint alarm. He was wearing the standard coverall, and his hair was cut close to the skull, showing plenty of gray among the brown. And now his eyes were rapt, fixed, as if he listened to some interior voice.

  She sat halfway up and opened her mouth to say something severe.

  Abruptly the man moved—away, backing into a bank of monitoring equipment. He bumped heavily into the panel of subdued green lights, hands still held up before him, his posture rigid.

  “Ah!” The collision startled him out of his trancelike fixation. He jerked away from the monitor. His hands came down. For three heartbeats he stood looking at Susan.

  Then he swiveled and marched away, legs moving in a curiously sticklike, choppy stride. He reached the other end of her room and without looking back slipped through the positive-pressure door.

  Susan lay back. What had that been? A fresh orderly, somehow unnerved by a real, live patient? Her years of instructing interns had taught her that medical people were just as moody and unpredictable as anyone. She put the matter out of her mind and settled snugly into her incredibly comfortable bed. The room seemed to sense her mood, easing the lights down. She dozed off within a few moments.

  10

  ALEX

  When he woke up he was dead.

  No pressure on his skin. Deep silence. A terrible, blank blackness.

  No scents. Not even the bland, moist taste of his own mouth. His nerves were like an open circuit, bringing in nothing.

  His mind spun alone in vacancy. What was this place? What had happened to him?

  He had been working in the arroyo, yes. Started back toward I2…

  Running in the darkness. Scraping his knee. Cold stars, so far away. Struggling up a slope of gritty sandstone.

  Then a long silent drifting time, and out of that seeped a voice. A woman’s, dry and monotonous. “… blood decomp going flat… neuroelectric fluctuation… point two seven milliamp… getting plateau… registering malfs in channels three and sixteen… bypassing…”

  Other voices then, men and women, hollow musics coming down from an unseen sky. He remembered floating in a warm sea, caressed by tropical currents, tasting salt, wondering why he could not see the sun on such a day.

  But there had been no day, only the vast voices.

  He focused on the memories. There had been a background rustle of steps, instruments clicking, electronic hums, the purr of cooling fans.

  Someone had talked to him. A man this time, with a slight, melodious Spanish accent: “You’re all right. Don’t worry, you’re out of danger. We’ll need a little time to work here. We just wanted to know if your sensations were okay. They’re registering fine. Try to sleep.”

  Gradually it came back to him. He had not slept. Instead he had clung to consciousness, though the warm sea he floated in dulled him with gentle insistence. Gradually, the voices lapped around him, and he understood. He was in an operating room. They were pulling him back together after some accident.

  But that had been long ago. He had finally slept. Now he was awake, but there was no lukewarm, nuzzling bath. No buoyant sense of weightles
sness. Nothing.

  He felt a rush of cold fear. Loss of senses. That meant severing of the major nerves where they wound up through the spine.

  But then why had he felt and heard before? Why was all that gone?

  True, he could not remember actually moving then. Maybe they had him floating in a fluid to support his spine? He knew of no such surgical procedure.

  Slowly, vague memories seeped through the haze in his mind. He had been hurt. A blurry constellation of pains lay back there, associated with a cool night, with running, with the rasp and bite of falling on sandstone.

  Confusion rose in him. He pushed it away. He didn’t know what had happened, but remembrances coiled through his mind like tendrils of fog. He felt something ominous, bruised clouds scudding in from a far horizon.

  The only explanation that made sense was that he was experiencing some new procedure. Maybe some drug had dulled his senses. Maybe the smart thing was to just lie here and wait for it to pass. Or for sleep.

  No. Something was wrong. He knew it.

  A voice. He had half-heard it, not long ago. Murmuring, low. It had filled him with a prickly sense of dread.

  But he could not attach any name or face to the dimly heard voice—only a blank terror that had dragged him up from sleep.

  He concentrated, stilled his own mind, tried to sense beneath the scramble of thoughts.

  And felt something. A weak, regular thump. His heart?

  Behind that, like a background rustle, came a slow, rhythmic fluttering. Breathing. His basic functions, plodding on.

  He strained for more, but that was all. The human body wore its nerves like clothes, all for the surface. Internal senses were thinly spread, giving only blunt sensations. He caught a dim pressure that might be his bladder.

  He tried to move his head. Nothing.

  Open an eye? The same blank blackness.

  He fought against a bitter, growing despair. Maybe he had some motor control, even if he couldn’t feel? He didn’t know enough about the neuromuscular system to even guess if that was possible. None of this made much sense to him, but he knew that the only way to hang on to himself was to do something, not just lie here like a numb doormat.

  He willed his legs to move. If he had sensed the sweet ache of his bladder, maybe a moving leg would bring a pressure somewhere, a signal.

  Nothing. That meant his lower motor control was shut off.

  Something told him that control was shut off, not destroyed. The huge voices from before had talked about him as a system, a wiring diagram, not as a helpless victim. He did not know why, but he felt himself as a labyrinth of connected parts, an intricate web. Some zones of him were not reporting in. This way of thinking was odd and yet somehow automatic, seeming to arise from his body itself. The idea came as a jittery forking in him, soft summer lightning.

  He was afraid, of course, but it was a strangely cool fear. No adrenaline surge came automatically, no answering chemical symphony of the body.

  He had to try everything. Eyebrows? He urged them upward, but felt nothing.

  Mouth? Smile, kid. Not even a slight flicker.

  Talk? Maybe somebody would come. He made himself go through the steps. Constrict the throat. Force air out. Move tongue and lips.

  No faint hum echoing in his sinus cavities to tell him that muscles worked, that breath stirred his vocal cords.

  Despair gathered in him like a weight.

  Arms. Left, first. No answering shift of inner pressures. Right? Again, no response—but wait.

  A smattering of tight pain. Welcome pain.

  He had gone through life with instant feedback from every fiber, anchoring him in his body. Every gesture suggested the next, an ongoing song. Now he had to analyze precisely: How did he raise his arm? Some muscles contracted to pull one side of the arm, lever at the shoulder. Others relaxed to let the arm follow.

  Pull. His arm could be sticking straight up in the air, and he wouldn’t know it.

  He tried again and again. Did he feel a reply? Faint, so faint. Maybe his imagination.

  Was he a candle glow of a mind, trapped inside failed machinery? Despairing, he lost his concentration.

  And felt a thump. His arm had smacked into something.

  A table? Certainly not a warm bath.

  So his right arm worked, even though his senses were nearly gone. The nerves were there, they took orders. They just weren’t reporting back very well.

  He felt a slow tingling on his right side. The movement must have reawakened some nerves, kindled them.

  He wondered what could have happened to him. Turned the question over, inspected it, and then set that aside. I think, therefore I am. At the moment that was just about all he knew. That, and how to move his right arm.

  Okay, use that. He willed the arm up again. Careful, slow. Maybe his hand worked, too. Remembering how to do it, he lowered the arm, rotating it.

  A meaty thump. Harder than the last one. The arm had fallen. Balance was going to be hard.

  He practiced rotating the arm without raising it. A slight feel of sliding, as if on slick steel. Some moves felt right, familiar. He worked without feedback, trying to summon up the exact moves that turned his right hand. Sliding the arm. There, an edge. Faint, remote impressions. The lip of a table. He dipped his hand. Over the lip. Working the fingers. Senses were coming back now, dull and thick. He had an image of the Pillsbury Doughboy, with fingers fat and spongy, hard to work with.

  What now? If he was in fact some kind of basket case, he might hurt himself this way. But something remote and foreboding said no, go on. Fog-tendrils of dread drifted through him, and he knew he could not give up.

  He worked his fingers, feeling distant details. Stubby protrusions. Switches? It was like trying to read Braille with sausage fingers. He managed to get the plump index finger to jab at the switches.

  Nothing happened. He fumbled, sensing a regular array of jutting buttons.

  Abruptly a woman’s voice sliced through the background noise. “Anybody in the bay? Julie? Hello in there? Hell, she probably left to help O’Hara.”

  Her tones were slightly flat and tinny. Alex realized he was hearing something piped in, probably from some kind of control room. He was apparently lying in the “bay” listening to a high-quality intercom.

  A man’s voice answered, also with the narrow tonal range. “Patient looks okay on the visual monitors. Just lying there, no motor functions.”

  The woman said, “I’ve got him on electrosuppressants and—hey, somebody’s been fiddling with the settings. Bet it was that Julie. Always thinks she has a special empathy with the patient.”

  “She wouldn’t fool with the neurofunction board,” the man said.

  “Well, somebody has.”

  The man’s voice carried a clipped anxiety. “O’Hara says they need us on team three, pronto. I sure as hell wish we didn’t stack patients like this.”

  “Want to keep costs down, we can’t just sit around holding their hands and singing lullabyes through the whole warmup.” The woman sounded bored, as though this were a standard conversation.

  “This final tune-up stage, he’s out of danger. Fernandez popped him up into consciousness, and everything looked okay.” The man seemed harried. “Look, let’s let him run on auto.”

  “Ummm. Think so? O’Hara gets nasty if we don’t come running right away.”

  “Yeah, he’s a wart. I vote we just let the last of those blood scavengers work, clean out the patient a little more. Can’t hurt. When we come back, we’ll polish up the neurological systems.”

  The woman answered with something technical, but Alex’s attention riveted on a third voice, rising from the background as though it had just come into the room. A strong voice that struck alarm into him like a knife. “You got some used ultracleans in here to go?”

  “Huh?” the woman asked, distracted. “Oh, yeah, that bag there.”

  “Bioactive?”

  “Yes yes, the yellow bin.”<
br />
  Instantly Alex knew he had heard that voice before—as he swam up from unconsciousness. The man had been muttering to himself, reading labels or something. The memory came back clearly. The same flat tone of the intercom. So the man had been in the control room before. Not talking directly to anyone, just reading out loud.

  That voice had conjured something deep within him, a terrifying buried memory, deep and unquestionable.

  The people were still talking. The others—could they help him? Only that one voice threatened him. Alex did not know whether to make a sign, try to communicate. Just as the thought spun through his mind, he heard sounds of papers shuffling, a door banging—then silence.

  Not quite. Over the intercom came a thump, a scraping of a chair leg, a low grunt. Someone was left in the control room. And somehow he knew which voice it was.

  He had to get away. He willed his right hand to action again.

  He grasped something round. A knob? He envisioned his wrist turning, and that helped make the movement. The knob rotated. He felt a new sensation, far away. The knob went no further.

  No sounds from the intercom. What would the man in the control room do if he found out Alex was awake?

  Alex desperately punched at the buttons. A tremor ran up his right calf. Spiking pain. Cold.

  His leg was in spasm. He felt it jerk in a sudden rush of sharp agony. It was flopping on a hard slab. Flailing, like a crazed animal.

  He could not stop it. At least I can feel something. But what was happening? What could turn him on and off? Something shadowy skittered at the edge of memory. Somehow all this made sense, but he could not stop to let blurry notions come into focus. He stabbed at the buttons again.

  A welling coldness in his belly. He poked his fingers again.

  More bitter cold, this time in his right foot. Again. Again.

  A tracery of itching on his lips. Moving to his cheeks. Then all over his face, as if a dozen feathers tickled him. He longed to scratch it.

  Without thinking he brought his right arm back toward his face, then stopped. Okay, he could stand the itching. First he had better get as much of himself back as he could.