The Astral Mirror

by Ben Bova

  I must add, sir, that the rumors you may have heard about your own wife are entirely false. After very careful investigation, I can happily assure you that she has remained steadfastly true to you and you alone. I know that she gave away the pistol that she formerly kept on her person, but there appears to be no need for weapons anymore. Alas, why protect our bodies when we have already sold our souls? (Not that your wife has sold her soul, you understand. I merely meant that the incidence of violent crime has dropped to an undetectably low level. No one feels threatened anymore.)

  The appropriate agencies are still searching for Ms. Morganthaler, but I do not hold out much hope for finding her. Most of the agents we have sent out have either disappeared or resigned.

  I have no further desires now except to return to my ancestral home in the beloved green hills of Kentucky. A distant grand-niece of mine from back in Christian County has volunteered to drive me home this coming weekend.

  She is a comely young thing, and she has given me great comfort during the past few trying weeks.

  She asked me if she could bring a few of her girl friends with her. There is plenty of room in the car. Therefore, I respectfully request to be relieved of my duties to you, sir, so that I can retire to my home, far from the turmoil of this modern world, to spend my remaining days in peace and contentment, as best I can.

  Out of Time

  The first day of the trial, the courtroom had been as hectic as a television studio, what with four camera crews and all their lights, dozens of reporters, all the extra cops for security, and just plain gawkers. But after eight months, hardly any onlookers were there when Don Carmine Lombardo had his heart attack.

  The cappo di tutti cappi for the whole New England region clawed at his chest and made a few gasping, gargling noises in the middle of his brother-in-law’s incredibly perjured testimony, struggled halfway out of his chair, then collapsed across the table in front of him, scattering the notes and depositions neatly laid out by his quartet of lawyers as he slid to the floor like a limp sack of overcooked spaghetti.

  The rumor immediately sprang up that his brother-in-law’s testimony, in which he described the Don as a God-fearing family man who had become immensely wealthy merely by hard work and frugality, brought down the vengeance of the Lord upon the old man. This is probably not true. The heart attack was no great surprise. Don Carmine was almost eighty, grossly overweight, and given to smoking horrible little Sicilian rum-soaked cigars by the boxful.

  The most gifted and expensive physicians in the Western world were flown to Rhode Island in the valiant attempt to save the Don’s life. Tenaciously, the old man hung on for six days, then, like the God he was said to have feared, he relaxed on the seventh. He was declared dead jointly by the medical team, no single one of them wishing to take the responsibility of making the announcement to the stony-eyed men in their perfectly-tailored silk suits who waited out in the hospital’s corridors, eating pizzas brought in by muscular errand boys and conversing in whispered mixtures of Italian and English.

  But Don Carmine did not die before issuing orders that his body be preserved in liquid nitrogen. Perhaps he truly did fear God. If there was any chance that he could survive death, he was willing to spend the money and take the risk.

  “What is this cryo... cryology or whatever the hell they call it?” snarled Angelo Marchetti. He was not angry. Snarling was his normal mode of conversation, except when he did get angry. Then he bellowed.

  “Cryonics,” said his lawyer, Pat del Vecchio.

  “They froze him in that stuff,” Marchetti said. “Like he was a popsickle.”

  Del Vecchio was a youngster, one of the new breed of university-trained legal talents that was slowly, patiently turning the Mob away from its brutal old ways and toward the much more profitable pursuits of computer crime and semi-legitimate business. There was far more money to be made, at far less risk, in toxic waste disposal than in narcotics. Let the Latinos cut each other up over the drug trade. Let one state after another legalize gambling. Del Vecchio knew the wave of the future: more money was stolen with a few touches of the fingers on the right computer keyboard than with all the guns the old-timers liked to carry.

  Marchetti was one of the last surviving old-timers among the New England families. Bald, built like a squat little fireplug with a glistening, narrow-eyed bullet head stuck atop it, he had been a bully all his life. Once he cowed men with his fists. Now he used the threat of his powerful voice, and the organization behind him, to make men do his will. He had inherited Don Carmine’s empire, but the thought that the Don might come back some day bothered him.

  He sat on the patio of his luxurious home in Newport, gazing out at the lovely seascape formed by Narragansett Bay. The blue waters were dotted by dozens of white sails; the blue sky, by puffy white clouds. Marchetti often spent the afternoon out here, relaxing on his lounge chair, ogling the girls in their bathing suits through a powerful pair of binoculars. He was not oblivious to the fact that the great robber barons of the previous century had built their summer retreats nearby. The thought pleased him. But today he was worried about this scientific miracle called cryonics. “I mean, is the old Don dead or ain’t he?”

  Del Vecchio, lean and dapper in a sharply-cut doublebreasted ivory blazer and dark blue slacks, assured Marchetti, “He’s legally, medically, and really dead.”

  Marchetti scowled suspiciously. “Then why didn’t he wanna be buried?”

  With great patience, del Vecchio explained that while the old man was clinically dead, there were some scientists who believed that perhaps in some far-distant future it might be possible to cure the heart problem that caused the death. So Don Carmine had himself frozen, preserved in liquid nitrogen at the temperature of 346 degrees below zero Fahrenheit.

  “Christ, that’s cold!” Marchetti growled.

  At that temperature, del Vecchio said, the old man’s body would be perfectly preserved for eternity. As long as the refrigerator wasn’t turned off.

  “And if the scientists ever find a way to fix what killed him, they can thaw him out and bring him back to life,” the young lawyer concluded.

  Marchetti squinted in the sunlight, his interest in the sailboats and even the bathing beauties totally gone now.

  “Maybe,” he said slowly, “somebody oughtta pull the plug out of that icebox.” He pronounced the word in the old neighborhood dialect: i-sa-bocks.

  Del Vecchio smiled, understanding his boss’s reluctance to return the New England empire to a newly-arisen Don Carmine.

  “Don’t worry,” he soothed. “There’s one great big loophole in the situation.”

  “Yeah? What?”

  “Nobody knows how to defrost a corpse, once it’s been frozen. Can’t be done without breaking up the body cells. Try to defrost Don Carmine and you’ll kill him.”

  Marchetti laughed, a hearty, loud, blood-chilling roar. “Then he’ll be twice as dead!” He laughed until tears streamed down his cheeks.

  The years passed swiftly, too swiftly and too few for Angelo Marchetti. Despite del Vecchio’s often-repeated advice that he get into the profits that can be skimmed from legalized casino gambling and banking, Marchetti could not change his ways. But the law enforcement agencies of the federal government were constantly improving their techniques and inevitably they caught up with him. Marchetti (he never thought to have himself styled “Don Angelo”) was brought to trial to face charges of loansharking, tax evasion, and—most embarrassing of all— endangering the public health by improperly disposing of toxic wastes. One of the companies that del Vecchio had urged him to buy through a dummy corporation had gotten caught dumping chemical sludge into a public storm sewer.

  Thirty pounds heavier than he had been the year that Don Carmine died, Marchetti sat once again on the patio behind his mansion. The binoculars rested on the flagstones beside his lounge chair; they had not been used all summer. Marchetti’s eyesight was not what it once was, nor was his interest in scantily-c
lad young women. He lay on the lounge chair like a beached white whale in size 52 plaid bathing trunks.

  “They’ve got the goods,” del Vecchio was saying, gloomily.

  “Ain’t there nothin’ we can do?”

  Standing over his boss’s prostrate blubber, the lawyer looked even more elegant than he had a few years earlier. Still lean and trim, there were a few lines in his face now that might have been wisdom, or debauchery, or both. He was deeply tanned, spending almost all his time under the sun, either during the New England summer or the Arizona and California winter. He even had a sunlamp system installed over his bed, encircling the smoked mirror on the ceiling.

  “We’ve tried everything from change-of-venue to bribery,” del Vecchio said. “Nothing doing. Uncle Sam’s got your balls in a vise.”

  “How about putting some pressure on the witnesses?” Marchetti growled. “Knock off one or two and the rest’ll clam up.”

  Del Vecchio shook his head. “Most of the ‘witnesses’ against you are computer records, tapes, floppy disks. The F.B.I. has them under tight security, and they’ve made copies of them, besides.”

  Marchetti peered up at his lawyer. “There’s gotta be something you can do. I ain’t goin’ to jail—not while you’re alive.”

  A hint of surprise flashed in del Vecchio’s dark eyes for a moment, but Marchetti never saw it, hidden behind the lawyer’s stylish sunglasses. Del Vecchio recognized the threat in his employer’s words, but what shocked him was that the old man was getting desperate enough to make such a threat. Soon he would be lashing out in blind anger, destroying everything and everyone around him.

  “There is one thing,” he said slowly.

  “What? What is it?”

  “You won’t like it. I know you won’t.”

  “What the hell is it?” Marchetti bellowed. “Tell me!”

  “Freezing.”

  “What?”

  “Have yourself frozen.”

  “Are you nuts? I ain’t dead!”

  Del Vecchio allowed a slight smile to cross his lips. “No, but you could be.”

  Actually, the plan had been forming in his mind since Don Carmine’s immersion in the gleaming stainless steel tank full of liquid nitrogen. Even then, del Vecchio had thought back to his college days when, as an agile young undergraduate, he had been a star on the school’s fencing team. He remembered that there were strict rules of procedure in foil fencing, almost like the fussy rules of procedure in a criminal court. It was possible for a fencer to score a hit on his opponent, but have the score thrown out because he had not followed the proper procedure.

  “Out of time!” he remembered his fencing coach screaming at him. “You can’t just stab your opponent whenever the hell you feel like it! You’ve got to establish the proper right-of-way, the proper timing. You’re out of time, del Vecchio!”

  He realized that Marchetti was glowering at him. “Whattaya mean I could be dead?”

  With a patient sigh, del Vecchio explained, “We’ve gotten your case postponed three times because of medical excuses. Dr. Brunelli has testified that you’ve got heart and liver problems.”

  “Fat lot of good that’s done,” Marchetti grumbled.

  “Yeah, but suppose Brunelli makes out a death certificate for you, says you died of a heart attack, just like old Don Carmine.”

  “And they put somebody else into the ground while I take a vacation in the old country?” Marchetti’s face brightened a little.

  “No, that won’t work. The law enforcement agencies are too smart for that. You’d be spotted and sent back here.”

  “Then what?”

  “We make you clinically dead. Brunelli gives you an injection...”

  “And kills me?” Marchetti roared.

  Del Vecchio put his hands up, as if to defend himself. “Wait. Hear me out. You’ll be clinically dead. We’ll freeze you for a while. Then we’ll bring you back and you’ll be as good as ever!”

  Marchetti scowled. “How do I know I can trust you to bring me back?”

  “For God’s sake, Angelo, you’ve been like a father to me ever since my real father died. You can trust me! Besides, you can arrange for a dozen different guys to see to it that you’re revived. And a dozen more to knock me off if I try to keep you frozen.”

  “Yeah... maybe.”

  “You won’t only be clinically dead,” del Vecchio pointed out. “You’ll be legally dead. Any and all charges against you will be wiped out. When you come back, legally you’ll be a new person. Just like a baby!”

  “Yeah?” The old man broke into a barking, sandpaper laugh.

  “Sure. And just to make sure, we’ll keep you frozen long enough so that the statute of limitations runs out on all the charges against you. You’ll come out of that freezer free and clear!”

  Marchetti’s laughter grew louder, heartier. But then it abruptly stopped. “Hey, wait. Didn’t you tell me that nobody knows how to defrost a corpse? If they try to thaw me out it’ll kill me all over again!”

  “That’s all changed in the past six months,” del Vecchio said. “Some bright kid down at Johns Hopkins thawed out some mice and rabbits. Then a couple weeks ago a team at Pepperdine brought back three people, two men and a woman. I hear they’re going to thaw Walt Disney and bring him back pretty soon.”

  “What about Don Carmine?” asked Marchetti.

  The lawyer shrugged. “That’s up to you.”

  Without an instant’s hesitation, Marchetti ran a stubby forefinger across his throat.

  Del Vecchio had every intention of honoring his commitment to Marchetti. He really did. The fireplug-shaped old terror had truly been like a father to the younger man, paying his way through college and even law school after del Vecchio’s father had been cut down in the line of duty one rainy night on the street outside a warehouse full of Japanese stereos and television sets.

  But one thing led to another as the years rolled along. Del Vecchio finally married and started to raise a family. More and more of the Mob business came under his hands, and he made it prosper better than ever before. The organization now owned banks, resort hotels and other legitimate businesses. As well as state legislators, judges, and half-a-dozen Congressmen. Violent crime was left to the disorganized fools. Del Vecchio’s regime was marked by peace, order, and upwardly-spiraling profits.

  One after another, Marchetti’s lieutenants came to depend on him. Del Vecchio never demanded anything as archaic and embarrassing as an oath of fealty, kissing the hand, or other ancient prostrations. But the lieutenants, some of them heavily-built narrow-eyed thugs, others more lean and stylish and modern, all let it be known, one way or the other, that to revive Marchetti from his cryonic slumber would be a terrible mistake.

  So Marchetti slept. And del Vecchio saw his empire grow more prosperous.

  But owning legitimate banks and businesses does not make one necessarily honest. Del Vecchio’s banks often made highly irregular loans, and sometimes collected much higher interest than permitted by law. On rare occasions, the interest was collected only after brutal demonstrations of force. There were also some stock manipulations that finally attracted the attention of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and a string of disastrous fires in Mob-owned hotels that were on the verge of bankruptcy.

  And even the lackadaisical state gambling commission roused itself when the federal income tax people started investigating the strange phenomenon of certain gambling casinos that took in customers by the millions, yet somehow failed to show a profit on their books.

  Once he realized that there was no way out of the mounting legal troubles facing him, del Vecchio decided to take his own advice. Carefully, he began to create a medical history for himself that would end in clinical death and cryonic immersion. He explained what he was doing to his most trusted lieutenants, told them that he would personally take the blame and the legal punishment for them all, allowing them to elect a new leader and go on operating as before once he was declared
dead. They expressed eternal gratitude.

  But del Vecchio knew perfectly well how long eternal gratitude lasted. So he sent his wife and their teenaged children to live in Switzerland, where most of his personal fortune had been cached with the gnomes of Zurich. He gave his wife painfully detailed instructions on when and how to revive him.

  “Fifteen years will do it,” he told her. “Can you wait for me that long?”

  She smiled limpidly at him, threw her arms around his neck and kissed him passionately. But she said, “I’ll only be fifty-eight when you get out.”

  Del Vecchio wondered if she knew about his playmates in Boston. He realized he would still be his current age, forty-seven, when he was thawed back to life. There would be plenty of other women to play with. But would his wife remain faithful enough to have him revived? To make doubly certain of his future, he flew to Zurich and had a very tight legal contract drawn by the bank which held his personal fortune. The gnomes would free him, if no one else would. Otherwise his money would be donated to charity and the bank would lose control of it.

  “What you’re doing may be legal, Del, but it’s damned immoral.”

  Del Vecchio was having dinner with one of the federal district attorneys who was prosecuting one of the innumerable current cases against him. They were old friends, had been classmates at law school. The fact that they were on opposite sides of the case did not bother either of them; they were too professional to allow such trivialities to get in the way of their social lives.

  “Immoral?” Del Vecchio shot back. “What do I care about that? Morality’s for little guys, for people who’ve got no muscle, no backbone. You worry about morality, I’m worrying about spending the rest of my life in jail.” They were sitting at a small corner table in a quiet little restaurant in downtown Providence, barely a block from the federal courthouse, a place frequented almost exclusively by lawyers who never lifted an eyebrow at a defendant buying dinner for a prosecuting attorney. After all, prosecuting attorneys rarely made enough money to afford such an elegant restaurant; candlelight and leather-covered wine lists were not for the protectors of the public, not on the salaries the public allowed them.