By Any Other Name

by Spider Robinson

  “They ran out of pink elephants,” he explained earnestly, reappearing three feet to the left and vanishing again.

  “So I came instead,” he went on from six feet to the right.

  “Which is anyway novel,” he finished from behind her, disappeared one last time and reappeared with his nose an inch from hers. Her eyes crossed, kept on crossing, and she went down like a felled tree, landing with the boneless grace of the totally stoned.

  Spud giggled, and it was not an unsympathetic giggle. “Thanks, Joe,” he said, slapping the fat man1 on the back. “You’ve done me a big favor.”

  “Glad I could help, kid,” Joe said, putting his own arm around the boy. “It must be tough to have a juicer for an old lady.”

  “Don’t worry, Joe,” Spud said, feeling that the same unexplainable certainty he had felt at the time-belt repair shop. “Somehow I’ve got a feeling Mom has taken her last drink.”

  Joe nodded happily. “I’ll be back after the Series,” he said, “and we can always try a second treatment.”

  “Okay, but we won’t have to. Now get out of here and get back to your wife—it’s late.”

  Joe nodded again. “Sure thing, Spud.” He stuck out his hand. “Thanks for everything, pal—I couldn’t have made it without you. See you in a couple o’ weeks and then, who knows—Alice an’ I might just decide this era’s the one we want to settle down in.”

  “Not if you’re smart,” Spud said wryly.

  “Well, in that case, maybe I’ll be seein’ ya again sometime,” Joe pointed out. He reached down, making an adjustment on the time-belt, waved good-bye and vanished.

  Or nearly. A pair of fat legs still stood in the living room, topped by the time-belt. As Spud stared, one of the legs stamped its feet in frustration and fury.

  Sighing, Spud moved forward to kick the damned thing again.

  ANTINOMY

  The first awakening was just awful.

  She was naked and terribly cold. She appeared to be in a plastic coffin, from whose walls grew wrinkled plastic arms with plastic hands that did things to her. Most of the things hurt dreadfully But I don’t have nightmares like this, she thought wildly. She tried to say it aloud and it came out “A.”

  Even allowing for the sound-deadening coffin walls, the voice sounded distant. “Christ, she’s awake already.”

  Eyes appeared over hers, through a transparent panel she had failed to see since it had showed only a ceiling the same color as the coffin’s interior. The face was masked and capped in white, the eyes pouched in wrinkles. Marcus Welby. Now it makes enough sense. Now I’ll believe it. I don’t have nightmares like this.

  “I believe you’re right.” The voice was professionally detached. A plastic hand selected something that lay by her side, pressed it to her arm. “There.”

  Thank you, Doctor. If my brain doesn’t want to remember what you’re operating on me for, I don’t much suppose it’ll want to record the operation itself. Bye.

  She slept.

  The second awakening was better.

  She was astonished not to hurt. She had expected to hurt, somewhere, although she had also expected to be too dopey to pay it any mind. Neither condition obtained.

  She was definitely in a hospital, although some of the gadgetry seemed absurdly ultramodern. This certainly isn’t Bellevue, she mused. I must have contracted something fancy. How long has it been since I went to bed “last night”?

  Her hands were folded across her belly; her right hand held something hard. It turned out to be a traditional nurse-call buzzer—save that it was cordless. Lifting her arm to examine it had told her how terribly weak she was, but she thumbed the button easily—it was not spring loaded. “Nice hospital,” she said aloud, and her voice sounded too high. Something with my throat? Or my ears? Or my…brain?

  The buzzer might be improved, but the other end of the process had not changed appreciably; no one appeared for a while. She awarded her attention to the window beside her, no contest in a hospital room, and what she saw through it startled her profoundly.

  She was in Bellevue, after all, rather high up in the new tower; the rooftops below her across the street and the river beyond them told her that. But she absorbed the datum almost unconsciously, much more startled by the policeman who was flying above those rooftops, a few hundred feet away, in an oversize garbage can.

  Yep, my brain. The operation was a failure, but the patient lived.

  For a ghastly moment there was a great abyss within her, into which she must surely fall. But her mind had more strength than her body. She willed the abyss to disappear, and it did. I may be insane, but I’m not going to go nuts over it, she thought, and giggled. She decided the giggle was a healthy sign, and did it again, realizing her error when she found she could not stop.

  It was mercifully shorter than such episodes usually are; she simply lost the strength to giggle. The room swam for a while, then, but lucidity returned rather rapidly.

  Let’s see. Time travel, huh? That means…

  The door opened to admit—not a nurse—but a young man of about twenty-five, five years her junior. He was tall and somehow self-effacing. His clothes and appearance did not strike her as conservative, but she decided they probably were—for this era. He did not look like a man who would preen more than convention required. He wore a sidearm, but his hand was nowhere near the grip.

  “What year is this, anyway?” she asked as he opened his mouth, and he closed it. He began to look elated and opened his mouth again, and she said, “And what did I die of?” and he closed it again. He was silent then for a moment, and when he had worked it out she could see that the elation was gone.

  But in its place was a subtler, more personal pleasure. “I congratulate you on the speed of your uptake,” he said pleasantly. “You’ve just saved me most of twenty minutes of hard work.”

  “The hell you say. I can deduce what happened, all right, but that saves you twenty seconds, max. ‘How’ and ‘why’ are going to take just as long as you expected. And don’t forget ‘when.’” Her voice still seemed too high, though less so.

  “How about ‘who’? I’m Bill McLaughlin.”

  “I’m Marie Antoinette, what the hell year is it?” The italics cost her the last of her energy; as he replied “1995,” his voice faded and the phosphor dots of her vision began to enlarge and drift apart. She was too bemused by his answer to be annoyed.

  Something happened to her arm again, and picture and sound returned with even greater clarity. “Forgive me, Ms. Harding. The first thing I’m supposed to do is give you the stimulant. But then the first thing you’re supposed to do is be semiconscious.”

  “And we’ve dispensed with the second thing,” she said, her voice normal again now, “which is telling me that I’ve been a corpsicle for ten years. So tell me why, and why I don’t remember any of it. As far as I know I went to sleep last night and woke up here, with a brief interlude inside something that must have been a defroster.”

  “I thought you had remembered, from your first question. I hoped you had, Ms. Harding. You’d have been the first…never mind—your next question made it plain that you don’t. Very briefly, ten years ago you discovered that you had leukemia…”

  “Myelocytic or lymphocytic?”

  “Neither. Acute.”

  She paled. “No wonder I’ve suppressed the memory.”

  “You haven’t. Let me finish. Acute Luke was the diagnosis, a new rogue variant with a bitch’s bastard of a prognosis. In a little under sixteen weeks they tried corticosteroids, L-aspiraginase, cytosine arabinoside, massive irradiation, and mercrystate crystals, with no more success than they’d expected, which was none and negatory. They told you that the new bone-marrow transplant idea showed great promise, but it might be a few years. And so you elected to become a corpsicle. You took another few weeks arranging your affairs and then went to a Cold Sleep Center and had yourself frozen.”

  “Alive?”

  “They had
just announced the big breakthrough. A week of drugs and a high-helium atmosphere and you can defrost a living person instead of preserved meat. You got in on the ground floor.”

  “And the catch?”

  “The process scrubs the top six months to a year off your memory.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve been throwing around terminology to demonstrate how thoroughly I’ve read your file. But I’m not a doctor. I don’t understand the alleged ‘explanation’ they gave me, and I dare say you won’t either.”

  “Okay.” She forgot the matter, instantly and forever. “If you’re not a doctor, who are you, Mr. McLaughlin?”

  “Bill. I’m an Orientator. The phrase won’t be familiar to you—”

  “—but I can figure it out, Bill. Unless things have slowed down considerably since I was alive, ten years is a hell of a jump. You’re going to teach me how to dress and speak and recognize the ladies’ room.”

  “And hopefully to stay alive.”

  “For how long? Did they fix it?”

  “Yes. A spinal implant, right after you were thawed. It releases a white-cell antagonist into your blood-stream, and it’s triggered by a white-cell surplus. The antagonist favors rogue cells.”

  “Slick. I always liked feedback control. Is it foolproof?”

  “Is anything? Oh, you’ll need a new implant every five years, and you’ll have to take a week of chemotherapy here to make sure the implant isn’t rejected before we can let you go. But the worst side-effect we know of is partial hair-loss. You’re fixed, Ms. Harding.”

  She relaxed all over, for the first time since the start of the conversation. With the relaxation came a dreamy feeling, and she knew she had been subtly drugged, and was pleased that she had resisted it, quite unconsciously, for as long as had been necessary. She disliked don’t-worry drugs; she preferred to worry if she had a mind to.

  “Virginia. Not Ms. Harding. And I’m pleased with the Orientator I drew, Bill. It will take you awhile to get to the nut, but you haven’t said a single inane thing yet, which under the circumstances makes you a remarkable person.”

  “I like to think so, Virginia. By the way, you’ll doubtless be pleased to know that your fortune has come through the last ten years intact. In fact, it’s actually grown considerably.”

  “There goes your no-hitter.”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “Two stupid statements in one breath. First, of course my fortune has grown. A fortune the size of mine can’t help but grow—which is one of the major faults of our economic system. What could be sillier than a goose that insists on burying you in golden eggs? Which leads to number two: I’m anything but pleased. I was hoping against hope that I was broke.”

  His face worked briefly, ending in a puzzled frown. “You’re probably right on the first count, but I think the second is ignorance rather than stupidity. I’ve never been rich.” His tone was almost wistful.

  “Count your blessings. And be grateful you can count that high.”

  He looked dubious. “I suppose I’ll have to take your word for it.”

  “When do I start getting hungry?”

  “Tomorrow. You can walk now, if you don’t overdo it, and in about an hour you’ll be required to sleep.”

  “Well, let’s go.”

  “Where to?”

  “Eh? Outside, Bill. Or the nearest balcony or solarium. I haven’t had a breath of fresh air in ten years.”

  “The solarium it is.”

  As he was helping her into a robe and slippers the door chimed and opened again, admitting a man in the time-honored white garb of a medical man on duty, save that the stethoscope around his neck was cordless as the call-buzzer had been. The pickup was doubtless in his breast pocket, and she was willing to bet that it was warm to the skin.

  The newcomer appeared to be a few years older than she, a pleasant-looking man with grey-ribbed temples and plain features. She recognized the wrinkled eyes and knew he was the doctor who had peered into her plastic coffin.

  McLaughlin said, “Hello, Dr. Higgins. Virginia Harding, Dr. Thomas Higgins, Bellevue’s Director of Cryonics.”

  Higgins met her eyes squarely and bowed. “Ms. Harding. I’m pleased to see you up and about.”

  Still has the same detached voice. Stuffy man. “You did a good job on me, Dr. Higgins.”

  “Except for the moment of premature consciousness, yes, I did. But the machines say you weren’t harmed psychologically, and I’m inclined to believe them.”

  “They’re right. I’m some tough.”

  “I know. That’s why I brought you up to Level One Awareness in a half-day instead of a week. I knew your subconscious would fret less.”

  Discriminating machines, she thought. I don’t know that I like that.

  “Doctor,” McLaughlin cut in, “I hate to cut you off, but Ms. Harding has asked for fresh air, and—”

  “—and has less than an hour of consciousness left today. I understand. Don’t let me keep you.”

  “Thank you, Doctor,” Virginia Harding said. “I’d like to speak further with you tomorrow, if you’re free.”

  He almost frowned, caught himself. “Later in the week, perhaps. Enjoy your walk.”

  “I shall. Oh, how I shall. Thank you again.”

  “Thank Hoskins and Parvati. They did the implant.”

  “I will, tomorrow. Good-bye, Doctor.”

  She left with McLaughlin, and as soon as the door had closed behind them, Higgins went to the window and slammed his fist into it squarely, shattering the shatterproof glass and two knuckles. Shards dropped thirty long stories, and he did not hear them land.

  McLaughlin entered the office and closed the door.

  Higgins’s office was not spare or austere. The furnishings were many and comfortable, and in fact the entire room had a lived-in air which hinted that Higgins’s apartment might well be spare and austere. Shelves of books covered two walls; most looked medical and all looked used. The predominant color of the room was black—not at all a fashionable color—but in no single instance was the black morbid, any more than is the night sky. It gave a special vividness to the flowers on the desk, which were the red of rubies, and to the profusion of hand-tended plants which sat beneath the broad east window (now opaqued) in a riotous splash of many colors for which our language has only the single word “green.” It put crisper outlines on anything that moved in the office, brought both visitors and owner into sharper relief.

  But the owner was not making use of this sharpening of perception at the moment. He was staring fixedly down at his desk; precisely, in fact, at the empty place where a man will put a picture of his wife and family if he has them. He could not have seen McLaughlin if he tried; his eyes were blinded with tears. Had McLaughlin not seen them, he might have thought the other to be in an autohypnotic trance or a warm creative fog, neither of which states were unusual enough to call for comment.

  Since he did see the tears, he did not back silently out of the office. “Tom.” There was no response. “Tom,” he said again, a little louder, and then “TOM!”

  “Yes?” Higgins said evenly, sounding like a man talking on an intercom. His gaze remained fixed, but the deep-set wrinkles around it relaxed a bit.

  “She’s asleep.”

  Higgins nodded. He took a bottle from an open drawer and swallowed long. He didn’t have to uncap it first, and there weren’t many swallows that size left. He set it, clumsily, on the desk.

  “For God’s sake, Tom,” McLaughlin said half-angrily. “You remind me of Monsieur Rick in Casablanca. Want me to play ‘As Time goes By’ now?”

  Higgins looked up for the first time, and smiled beatifically. “You might,” he said, voice steady. “‘You must remember this…as time goes by.’” He smiled again. “I often wonder.” He looked down again, obviously forgetting McLaughlin’s existence.

  Self-pity in this man shocked McLaughlin, and cheerful self-pity disturbed him profoundly. “Jesus,” he said hars
hly. “That bad?” Higgins did not hear. He saw Higgins’s hand then, with its half-glove of bandage, and sucked air through his teeth. He called Higgins’s name again, elicited no reaction at all.

  He sighed, drew his gun and put a slug into the ceiling. The roar filled the office, trapped by sound-proofing. Higgins started violently, becoming fully aware just as his own gun cleared the holster. He seemed quite sober.

  “Now that I’ve got your attention,” McLaughlin said dryly, “would you care to tell me about it?”

  “No.” Higgins grimaced. “Yes and no. I don’t suppose I have much choice. She didn’t remember a thing.” His voice changed for the last sentence; it was very nearly a question.

  “No, she didn’t.”

  “None of them have yet. Almost a hundred awakenings, and not one remembers anything that happened more than ten to twelve months before they were put to sleep. And still somehow I hoped…I had hope…”

  McLaughlin’s voice was firm. “When you gave me her file, you said ‘used to know her,’ and that you didn’t want to go near her ‘to avoid upsetting her.’ You asked me to give her special attention, to take the best possible care of her, and you threw in some flattery about me being your best Orientator. Then you come barging into her room on no pretext at all, chat aimlessly, break your hand and get drunk. So you loved her. And you loved her in the last year.”

  “I diagnosed her leukemia,” Higgins said emotionlessly. “It’s hard to miss upper abdomen swelling and lymph node swelling in the groin when you’re making love, but I managed for weeks. It was after she had the tooth pulled and it wouldn’t stop bleeding that…” He trailed off.

  “She loved you too.”

  “Yes.” Higgins’s voice was bleak, hollow.

  “Bleeding Christ, Tom,” McLaughlin burst out. “Couldn’t you have waited to…” He broke off, thinking bitterly that Virginia Harding had given him too much credit.

  “We tried to. We knew that every day we waited decreased her chances of surviving cryology, but we tried. She insisted that we try. Then the crisis came…oh damn it, Bill, damn it.”