Resurrection, Inc.

by Kevin J. Anderson

  Danal found the problem to be delightfully normal.

  Gregor waited for them in a semi-private area. Low to the uneasy water, where several pilings clumped together and blocked him off from sight, the leader of the Wakers reclined on a wide hammock. A sturdy plank platform had been attached to the pilings and supported by ropes from above, forming a firm floor. Several sunlamps beat down with a harsh yellow glow. Stripped to the waist, Gregor lay back, sunning himself and reading a thin hardcover book, Frankenstein.

  The nurse/tech led Danal along the narrow, creaking walkways and climbed down into the leader’s area. Gregor placed a bookmark on his page and snapped the volume shut as he sat up. The hammock swayed as Gregor gripped its edges.

  “You’d better tell me what happened, Laina,” Gregor said before she could speak. The leader of the Wakers was a large man with high cheekbones, a heavy jaw, and distant brown eyes. Dark circles around his eyes made him look deeply concerned—not angry, but heavily burdened.

  Laina kept her control and beamed at the leader, though her voice had a petulant tone. “It’s your orders to assist other awakened Servants at all costs. But wait until you hear who this is.”

  She introduced Danal. He responded uneasily, still not at peace with all he had learned, too much too fast. But he and the nurse/tech managed to tell his story. He had hoped the pain would die away with another retelling—the wounds still ran as deep, but they did seem a little more bearable now.

  When they had finished, Gregor appeared impressed. He pursed his lips. “Vincent Van Ryman? And an imposter. Knowledge is a powerful thing, Danal, and you’ve just greatly increased our power.” He stroked his chin and regarded the three support pilings with a distant gaze.

  Danal was baffled, and honored in a strange way, but before he could ask Gregor to explain himself, he heard someone else approaching, running recklessly down the narrow boards.

  With a thump, another Waker landed on Gregor’s platform, panting. Danal saw him to be a young boy with grayish freckled skin that looked splotched and diseased with his Servant pallor. Agitated, the boy gave Laina and Danal only a cursory glance, and then spoke to Gregor. He wore part of a disguise, some flesh-colored makeup that had been smeared, and a reddish wig tucked under his arm.

  “We’ve lost Monica!” he burst out. With time-slowed clarity Danal saw Gregor stiffen and sit like a statue, afraid. The boy continued. “At Resurrection, Inc.! After we managed to get Rodney Quick’s body free, some Enforcers came around and interrogated the Servants.” The boy swallowed, then continued. “She—she terminated herself so she couldn’t answer them.”

  Gregor hung his head. “Not Monica…” he mumbled. The boy Waker stood waiting, looking at the leader, then at Danal and the nurse/tech. But Danal had focused on a different comment. “Rodney Quick?” He could hardly believe what he had heard. “That—that’s the technician, the one I killed! What were you doing with his body?”

  “We had business with him.” Gregor scowled, but used the question as a crutch to lift himself up from his grief. The leader looked at him with a hard, cold stare.

  “We are the Cremators.”

  26

  After curfew, at high tide, all of the Wakers gathered down by the water level. Danal sat in awe, counting forty-five Wakers—forty-five other Servants who had regained their memories. Just like him.

  Smoky torches hung in metal racks on the sides of the pilings; a black feathering of old soot streamed up the concrete. Danal could smell smoke from creosote and burning wood, mingling with the sour odor of the sluggish sea. The reflected torchlight looked like fireworks cast upon the water.

  “Come on, this is something you must see,” Gregor had told him. “It’s our most sacred gathering.”

  Danal hesitated, uneasy. “Are you sure I should?”

  Gregor’s fixed gaze seemed filled with understanding. “You’re one of us now. Everything we do is open to you.”

  Danal squatted on the platform nearest the water, withdrawn from the other Wakers, still confused, numb. Laina sat near him, wearing a bulky Servant jumpsuit instead of her nurse/tech outfit. The other Wakers respected Danal’s wish for privacy.

  Three Wakers swam in the water, naked, exuberant in the cold sea. The water would clutch at them when the tide turned and began to march back out to the unseen ocean, but for now they enjoyed the freedom. Danal saw their carefree attitude, but he recalled too clearly—like pounding heartbeats in his head—the death of Julia, the betrayal by Nathans, his own murder during the High Sabbat….

  “Cremators?” he had asked Gregor, astonished. “But… why? Why do you do it?” He sat for a moment, then shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

  “To keep others from coming back. To stop them returning from death, as we did. We can’t destroy Resurrection, Inc., and I would not, in good conscience, try to. But someone has to offer the living this crucial choice, whether to risk becoming Servants, whether to risk remembering.”

  Danal was unable to choose among the many things he did not understand. “But how? How did I awaken? How did you get your memories back?”

  Gregor shrugged. “It’s in the resurrection process. The bacteria in the final purging stage have a habit of mutating. We’re doing some of our own analyses, but we’re restricted by our limited manpower, you know, and because we have to be so damned careful when using other facilities. Apparently, a more potent strain of the purging bacteria can loosen some of the roadblocks to your old memories, the ones that are mercifully sealed away by death. Through one mechanism or another, all of us Wakers have regained our pasts, and our own thoughts and personalities.

  “From your story, Danal, I suspect that Francois Nathans intentionally set you up, created the conditions for you to get your memory back. You should be able to figure out his reasons better than I can. But you claim Nathans is dead anyway, so the why of it all doesn’t really matter.”

  “Are you saying that Nathans knew how to awaken Servants all along? Does he know about your people?”

  “No, you’re jumping to conclusions. Other batches of the purging solution have mutated, and other Servants have indeed awakened, but anyone—including Nathans—would think these were just isolated instances. Any Servant would be disoriented and confused after getting the memories back—you remember it yourself. The first thing a newly awakened Servant does is to seek help in the obvious way, from humans. Most of these spontaneous Wakers are spotted, and summarily deactivated at Resurrection, Inc.

  “But does anyone suspect our presence? Not at all. We wouldn’t survive an hour if anyone did, especially Nathans. You know how he hated the Cremators.”

  Danal pondered this, and Gregor continued, “Have you ever heard of a story called R.U.R.? Rossum’s Universal Robots?” Danal shook his head. “It’s a rather obscure play today, but important when it first appeared in the year 1921. It was written by a Czechoslovakian named Karel Capek, and he first introduced the world to the term ‘robot.’ Derived from a Czech word meaning ‘involuntary service.’ Now, Rossum’s robots weren’t ratcheting mechanical monstrosities with blinking lights and buzzing voices—they were organic, humanlike servants to do all forms of tedious and unpleasant manual labor. Sound familiar? Rossum’s robots eventually awakened to their condition and took over the world, destroying all mankind.”

  Gregor let out a long sigh. “I certainly have no intention to parallel that, although I do use the false name of Rossum Capek when I put on my disguise and go out to meet prospective clients for the Cremators.”

  “Like Rodney Quick,” Danal muttered.

  “Yes, like him.”

  Now, down by water level, the Wakers were quiet, expecting something. Gregor sat among them, merely one of the group—Danal could not tell from appearances that he was their leader.

  One of the Wakers, the burly man who had previously posed as an Enforcer, came up to Gregor. “All the repair-rats are out of the vicinity. They won’t set off any fire alarms.”

>   Gregor nodded. He looked at his own chronometer and consulted the hardcopy of a tide table. He folded the table and thrust it into his pocket, then nodded to the swimmers. They dove under the water and swam together between the clustered pilings into a deep blanket of shadows.

  Danal watched with a kind of dread as he saw something emerge, floating on the water, pushed and pulled by the three Waker swimmers. It was a raft of some kind, scattered with wood shavings, kindling, paper, and broken logs. The sweet chemical smell of a volatile hydrocarbon drifted to his nostrils.

  As the raft came into the full light, Danal saw the body of Rodney Quick laid out upon the piled wood debris. He cringed and felt the nurse/tech’s hand on his shoulder. He tried to leave, but Laina held him back.

  “I shouldn’t be here,” he said.

  “You, of all people, should see this,” Laina countered.

  The technician’s body had been washed and clothed in a clean white robe. Surrounding the unlit pyre lay flower petals and brightly-colored ornaments. The Wakers swam harder, bringing the bier close to the gathered crowd. Gregor stood up and swept his gaze over the Wakers, speaking formal words in a baritone voice:

  “This man bore the name of Rodney Quick. That cannot be taken from him, though he is gone now.”

  “He’s gone now,” the Wakers echoed.

  “He will remain wherever he is now, the World of Light, and nothing will ever bring him back.”

  The other Wakers muttered appreciatively.

  “We are the Cremators. We preserve the soul by destroying the flesh.”

  “Preserve the soul by destroying the flesh.”

  Other people took torches from their holders and tossed them to the three swimmers. Treading water, the Wakers caught the torches and simultaneously set alight the bier containing Rodney Quick’s body. As the flames caught on the naphtha-soaked kindling, the three swimmers went to the side of the raft and pushed, swimming furiously, until the pyre began to drift away. Gregor had timed it perfectly, for the outgoing tide drew the raft with it.

  The other Wakers began to moan a somber yet somehow joyous chant. Gregor stood tall and took a deep breath, and then quoted poetry in a kind of eulogy. “This man bore the name of William Shakespeare. He was a great and literate man, and is remembered long after his death. He wrote,

  ‘To die, to sleep

  To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;

  For in that sleep of death what dreams may come

  When we have shuffled off this mortal coil?’”

  Gregor recited the lines from memory, in a rich and serious voice. The other Wakers sat enthralled, listening. The leader paused and then intoned again:

  “In another place, another play, William Shakespeare said,

  ‘Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,

  That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

  And then is heard no more; it is a tale

  Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

  Signifying nothing.’”

  Danal felt a deep, stabbing sadness and guilt, but also wonder at the proceedings.

  Gregor drew a long breath, as if exhausted, and then spoke a final time as the gathered Cremators waited, watching Rodney’s pyre drift away, burning bright.

  “This man bore the name of Percy Bysshe Shelley. He was a poet and a revolutionary. He wrote a poem of a traveler coming upon a ruined statue alone in an empty and deserted wasteland:

  ‘And on the pedestal these words appear:

  “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

  Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

  Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

  Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

  The lone and level sands stretch far away.’”

  Gregor closed his eyes. “After Percy Bysshe Shelley drowned during a storm, his friend Lord Byron built a pyre for him on the beach. While the villagers watched, Byron swam back out to his own yacht, turning to gaze at the flickering beacon as the growing fire freed the soul of Percy Bysshe Shelley and turned his body to ash.”

  Above, the Cremators had set filters and traps to capture any smoke before it could waft upward and be seen rising through the KEEP OFF THE GRASS patches, though so late after curfew no one should have noticed anyway. The dripping Waker swimmers pulled themselves back up onto one of the platforms. The receding tide carried the still-burning pyre along with it, and Danal could see the flickering light drifting farther and farther from him. By morning the ashes of Rodney Quick would be dispersed far out to sea.

  Danal wished he could get rid of his memories, his guilt so easily.

  Gregor made a motion of dismissal, and the gathered Wakers stood up, beginning to move away. “Thank you all,” Gregor said.

  Danal came up to the leader as the other Wakers began to leave. As if anticipating his question, Gregor said quietly, “All this ritual and ceremony means nothing. But it makes us feel honored, and content with ourselves.”

  Danal frowned, puzzled, and noticed a thin woman approaching Gregor, looking frightened. The leader smiled warmly at her. “Yes, Shannah. Come and meet our new companion. His Servant name is Danal.”

  She looked distractedly at Danal and then back to Gregor. She was extremely gaunt, and dark rings of sleepless anxiety encircled her eyes. Unlike all the other Wakers in their world below, Shannah still wore a long fluffy blond wig to cover her Servant baldness.

  “I’ve decided, Gregor… I’m going back,” she whispered.

  “Ah, no, Shannah.” He shook his head slowly. “Please don’t.”

  “I’ve thought about it so much, Gregor. I’ve made up my mind.”

  “You know I don’t approve. We have to survive until we know more. I don’t want to lose you.”

  Shannah’s eyes glistened. “But I keep remembering the tunnel, the bright light, the chimes. The peace. It’s calling me, Gregor. I have to go back to whatever’s there.”

  The leader regarded her in silence for a long moment and then finally came to a personal acceptance of her reasons. Danal watched carefully, trying to understand.

  “When?” Gregor asked.

  Shannah swallowed. “It better be now. I’m ready.”

  Gregor put fingers to his lips and gave a shrill, birdlike whistle. The departing Wakers stopped to listen.

  “I wish you’d reconsider this, Shannah.”

  She didn’t answer him.

  Gregor spoke aloud to the gathered Wakers once more. “Shannah has chosen to make her return journey now. We must all bear witness.”

  The other Wakers reacted with surprise and sadness. The skeletal woman stretched out on her back, listening to the whisper of the sea. Danal could still smell the acrid smoke from Rodney Quick’s disappearing pyre. Shannah brushed her palms across her slick gray jumpsuit.

  “Candles?” she whispered. “I like candles. Can you light some?”

  “Of course, Shannah.” Gregor smiled at her, trying to deface his grief. The freckle-faced boy Waker rapidly climbed up a rope ladder and returned a few moments later with a handful of thin yellow candles. Shannah sat up and watched as they surrounded her with the candles.

  One by one Gregor lit the wicks. Shannah stared fixedly at the flame nearest to her shoulder. Her breathing grew faster and faster and at last she lay back, closing her eyes and letting a peaceful sigh pass through her lips.

  “Say my epitaph, Gregor. I want to hear it.”

  Gregor closed his eyes as if searching for something appropriate. Shannah whispered impatiently, “Hurry.”

  The leader looked up. “This man bore the name of Edgar Allan Poe. He was a troubled soul who died young, grieving for lost love, but he left behind many true and somber words, such as these:

  ‘And all my days are trances,

  And all my nightly dreams

  Are where thy grey eye glances,

  And where thy footstep gleams—

  In what ethereal dances,

 
By what eternal streams.’

  And, perhaps best of all:

  ‘Is all that we see or seem

  But a dream within a dream?’”

  Shannah rested the back of her head on the watermarked plank. Her lips drifted into a smile of ecstasy. “Thank you, Gregor.” She straightened her fluffy blond wig, and then let out a long, low breath. Her face fell slack as she stopped her synHeart and shut down the microprocessor in her head.

  Gregor and the other Wakers let out a keening hum and looked up. With rapidly shifting glances they searched the air, gazing higher and higher to the invisible girders and pilings above, as if watching for Shannah’s departing soul.

  27

  Fear made Jones stumble like a drunken man. The two Elite Guard flanked him and briskly ushered him to a lift shaft. He followed mechanically, dazed. He wanted to hide, or apologize to someone, or demand answers, but the two Guards marched in silence as if daring him to speak. What did I do? he wanted to shout, but the halls were empty, silent, and none of the other Enforcers would do more than put eyes to the spyholes in their rooms.

  The lift doors closed like a guillotine as the three men began to rise upward. Jones immediately grew claustrophobic. Still only half dressed, he felt his sweat turn cold in the air.

  They emerged at the roof-level parking bay. In the black early hours of morning an eerie silence clung to the sleeping Metroplex. Without a word the two Elite Guards urged him across the poured-stone of the parking bay. Jones felt the implacable hardness of their armor and saw the determined set of their shoulders.

  He thought of Fitzgerald Helms for a moment and felt a bottomless sadness. Helms had to die before Jones could get into the Guild—and now his career would end like this. What would Helms have thought?