by Basil Copper
‘How are things going?’ I asked.
‘Capital, capital,’ he said. ‘Many of the famous have become converted to the idea of immortality. It appeals to their vanity, no doubt. Travis Holbine is coming here, you know. Next week.’
‘The poet?’ I asked.
He nodded. ‘One and the same, Mr Stint. We have reserved the first two banks of refrigerators initially for the celebrated and the famous. As the service grows we hope eventually to have a Hall of Immortality devoted to the Arts’.
As he went on speaking I was trying to place his accent. Central European for sure. I had him pegged for a fraud, of course, but I liked his smooth approach. He was a high-quality professional, the way he was giving me the spiel. Any regular customer would have had his hand halfway to his cheque book by now. Compared with him the mad doctors played by Boris Karloff were pretty normal. I straightened my face and preserved a blank exterior behind my dark glasses. I let him talk on for a bit. He came round to the subject of money eventually, as I knew he would.
‘It is, of course, a tremendous project to bring such a boon to humanity,’ he mused. ‘A tremendous project. And one requiring enormous capital outlay.’
I wasn’t biting. Krug drummed with his fingers on the desk top. I could see irritation on his face as surely as if it had been written on his forehead.
‘You would, of course, have been considering investing in your loved one’s future through a perpetuity trust?’ he said at length, breaking an awkward silence.
‘I haven’t at all, Dr Krug,’ I said quite truthfully.
I could almost hear his teeth click with frustration. ‘But think of the advantages, Mr. Stint,’ he said, holding on to himself with an effort.
‘What would it cost?’ I asked at last. I didn’t want to be responsible for his nervous breakdown. He’d evidently written me off as a congenital idiot and I could see a tell-tale trembling around the corners of his mouth. I wondered if he used drugs.
‘Well, now, Mr Stint,’ he said at last, dragging out one of his best six-dollar smiles. ‘Since you ask … ’
As he had achieved the purpose for which he’d been working the last half-hour he allowed himself the luxury of another brief relaxation of the jaw muscles. He needn’t have worked at it. It only made his face look twice as ugly.
‘Our usual fee is a ten thousand dollar down payment.’
I guess he figured it would sound less if he said it quickly.
‘That includes all medical services, time-capsule and spare, refrigeration processes, including a hundred per cent guarantee against mechanical breakdown; insurance; inspection and maintenance fees, including the day and night services of medical attendants, expert mechanics and electrical engineers; upkeep of freezer units; single or party visits by relatives and friends; and many other services. You’ll find them all covered by the booklet.’
My face must have given me away, even with the help of the glasses, for Krug went on anxiously, ‘Of course, Mr. Stint, if there are any financial problems, we have an easy-payment plan, by which the down payment can be accumulated over a period of time. That is, of course, providing the patient survives until we can arrange for his admission.’
‘You’ve given me a lot to think about, Dr Krug,’ I said. ‘What I should really like would be a conducted tour of your establishment before making up my mind.’
Krug’s face dropped as he saw me put my cheque book back in my inside pocket. He lifted his hand. ‘It is really most irregular, Mr Stint,’ he said.
At that moment we were interrupted by the soft buzz of a telephone. He lifted the grey plastic receiver off the corner of his desk. ‘Excuse me one moment.’
I could hear a woman’s voice, faint and tinny in the receiver. Krug listened intently. He licked his lips once or twice, nervously, with a discoloured tongue.
‘You’re certain of this?’ he said softly, as though I couldn’t hear him. He looked at the watch on his wrist. ‘You’re quite certain?’ he asked again, shooting a glance at me. The voice on the phone went on.
‘Very well, then, if it’s urgent,’ Krug said. ‘I’ll come at once.’
He put down the phone and stood up. ‘So sorry, Mr Stint,’ he said, repeating the lop-sided smile. ‘I find I’m called away.’
I got out my cheque book once more and put it down on the edge of the desk. ‘How much did you say, Dr Krug?’ I said in a thoughtful voice.
Krug licked his lips and his eyes shone behind the square spectacle frames. He glanced down at his watch.
‘Please make yourself comfortable,’ he said. ‘I shall only be a quarter of an hour or so. You will find some magazines on the table.’
He went out another door behind his desk, a different one from where I’d come in. I gave him three minutes. There was no sound in the office except the hum of the air conditioning. I’d made up my mind what my story was going to be. This was too good an opportunity to miss. I went over to the door and listened. It opened quietly to my touch. I put my head slowly out. I saw a long corridor with several doors leading off it. The hum of generators was louder here. I closed the door behind me and went on down the end of the passage.
There was a coat-rack hanging here. Among the dark overcoats and raincoats were several pegs on which hung long white jackets like those worn by laboratory assistants. I stood for a moment thinking. It was the best chance I was likely to have for some time. I took off my dark glasses. I put on my raincoat, slipped one of the white coats over it and buttoned it up to the neck. I took a deep breath, opened the door in front of me and stepped through.
Chapter Seven - Two Heads are Better
It was a big room with a concrete floor and long tables. The air was full of the pulsating noises of machinery. Fans whirred, dynamos hummed. Men in white coats were busy at benches. One or two walked about on metal galleries round the sides of the room. No-one looked up as I came through the door. I picked up a sheaf of dockets on the table nearest to me and pretended to study them. Light spilled in from large skylights set in the ceiling of the room; through the smears of rain on the dirty glass I could see the grey sky and low, ragged cloud.
I kept hold of the papers and pretended to consult them as I went up a short flight of metal stairs on to the first balcony. The clang of my feet on the treads seemed to me like a broadside from the U.S.S. Lexington but no-one took any notice. I moved along the balcony, immersed in my papers, but eyeing the area below. I soon spotted the blond muscleman who had been unloading the ambulance out front the other day; the one with the prominent revolver butt.
He was standing at a bench with another character in a white coat, while they struggled with a catch on one of the metal canisters. The place looked like some sort of repair depot. The benches were littered with electrical equipment while rackfuls of the stainless steel cylinders lined the walls. An electric drill screamed suddenly. It all looked very ordinary but there was something that didn’t ring true to my suspicious mind.
Like the man who suddenly came round a corner of the gallery and almost cannoned into me. Unlike the technicians he wore a dark brown suit and a red bow tie. His eyes were set close together and glazed over with big windcheaters. He muttered an apology and hurried away down the gallery. He didn’t even pause to look at my face; the white coat had been sufficient. But I had a good look at him and the afternoon suddenly seemed worthwhile. I went on round the corner while the little man passed through a door in back of the Gallery.
I recognized him as a character called Morey Wilson, who had done time here and there up and down the States for various activities. But his biggest speciality, which had nothing to do with violence, had made him much in demand by certain operators. I wondered all the afternoon what a forgery expert like Morey was doing in the Sunset Gardens set-up.
Sparks danced up from the floor of the workshop; a man in blue denims knelt by one of the cylinders with an oxy-acetylene torch. An angry rain of white-hot particles flew through the air, throwing his heavy f
ace and dark goggles into high relief. I circled quietly round the gallery, taking stock. One part contained banks of numbered partitions. I figured these were some of the freezer units which would eventually contain the bodies.
I turned at right angles along the balcony and found I was in a dark corner hidden from the shop floor. Light shone from under a metal door set back in the angle of two walls; there was a fanlight over the top. Next to the door was a pile of steel drums which were labelled; CHEMICALS — WITH CARE. I went back to the edge of the balcony and glanced down on to the floor. All the men were engaged in their tasks. I wandered over to the staircase at my end, which led down to ground level.
This was where Morey had come up and I didn’t want to be surprised again. I put my bundle of papers on top of a packing case where I could grab it in case of need. I saw the door opened outwards. I quietly rolled one of the metal containers in front of it. That would keep anyone inside from getting out if I had to leave in a hurry. Then I got up on top of one of the drums and peered through the fanlight.
The room was rigged up as a medical laboratory; long metal tables; stainless steel sinks with hose attachments on the taps. Racks of chemical retorts and equipment. The walls were painted pale green and operating theatre lights glared down on to the tables. There were several of the steel capsules on rubber-tyred trolleys scattered about the room. Three men were busy among the chipped ice and frosted metal of the containers.
One of the men I knew quite well; I certainly never expected to see him out here. The other two I tagged as having some medical knowledge; I’d never seen them before. There were three bodies stretched out on the tables receiving attention. There was a lot of laughter and chat going on for such an unfunny proceeding. I glanced over my shoulder but there was no-one around. I looked down at the scene in front of me again.
I couldn’t hear anything so I guessed the room must be fairly well sound-proofed. It was more like Belsen than anything I was figuring to see on this side of the Atlantic. The man I knew picked up a grey plastic telephone from a bench next to one of the sinks. He nodded two or three times and then put the phone down. He reached out his hand and touched the thigh of one of the naked cadavers; the flesh looked blue and pinched from where I was. Ice crystals glistened on the skin. Then he did an incredible thing. He moved over to the other two men who wore red rubber gloves and were working on one of the bodies. He had his back to me so I couldn’t see what he was doing.
When he turned he had taken the head of the corpse completely off; he held it carefully in front of him and stepped away from the headless body. The other two men were laughing. The head was that of an elderly man with white hair. The third man placed it with loving care inside one of the steel capsules. He came back carrying another head, that of a younger man with a black moustache.
He went over to the corpse and again turned his back to me. When he straightened up the body had a different head on it. This time all three men were laughing. A door at the far end of the laboratory opened at this point and Dr Krug came through. The laughter died away. Krug joined the three men round the table and they went into a huddle. I guessed the entertainment was about over. I had a sudden flash of intuition as I got down from the chemical drums.
My stomach muscles started to return to normal. I needed something else to strengthen my theory and I wasn’t long in finding it. I wheeled back the other drum from in front of the door, picked up my papers and gum-shoed back along the gallery. There was a bank of green filing cabinets here, indexed under letters and numbers. From the way they were stacked it looked as though the stuff was ready to be moved.
Then I remembered that Sunset Gardens was in the early stages. Dr Krug hadn’t got things straight yet. The cabinets were all locked but I found a key in one of them. The drawers were full of bulky envelopes. I opened the nearest to hand, making sure I put it back in the right place. They were patients’ files. Each envelope contained a form like the one I’d filled in for Krug’s receptionist, together with photographs, full face and profile of the dear departed, and other relevant details, both medical and scientific. Another card gave date of entry and a list of temperatures. A space on the index form was headed, ‘Date of Discharge’ in each case. They varied from 1998 to the mid twenty-first century.
The first picture I looked at was that of a Mr Luis Chavallo; he was a thin, watery-eyed hombre with black curly hair and a soulful look. I put him back into his envelope. I didn’t give much for his chances of resurrection. I was smiling as I closed the cabinet. It hadn’t been a wasted afternoon. I went down the ladder to the ground floor without any attempt at concealment. I put down the papers where I’d found them. The oxy-acetylene boy went on with his firework display; the other men bent over their benches. No-one looked up.
I went back through the door. I took off the white coat, hung it up on the same hook, turned down my raincoat collar and put on the dark glasses. I got hold of the handle of the nearest door in the corridor and found myself entering the Hall of Immortality. I stepped back into a treacly world of fountains and organ music.
*
The Hall of Immortality was just what I had pictured it to be. Dim lights, dark red carpets on the floor, marble pillars supporting a cavernous roof. Red velvet ropes were clipped on to brass poles all around the hall to make a circulating area for the public. A Bach cantata boomed discreetly from concealed speakers. The door I’d just come out of had Private on it in heavy black letters so I got away from it as quickly as I could.
I stationed myself behind a particularly nauseating rubber plant and thought out my next move. Warm, perfumed air came up through a bronze grille at my feet. Footsteps sounded soft on the carpets so I gave my well-known impression of Burne-Jones’ Grief. My eyes were slowly adjusting to the gloom and as I glanced over the top of my dark wind-cheaters I saw one of the black-sweatered hostesses pass by on the other side of the rope barrier. She hadn’t seen me and went straight on without stopping.
The music from the speakers faded and a woman’s tape-recorded voice came through the silence. ‘Today is Visiting Day, the day for which you have all waited, the day on which you will again see your loved one.’
I didn’t listen after that. I was too busy puking behind the rubber plant. Lights started growing the other side of the concourse. Red velvet curtains masked the sides of the hall and a deep humming of electric generators filled the air. I tagged on behind when a small party of people came past. I felt like a heel but I couldn’t stand there forever.
One of the hostesses led the way. A white-coated attendant unhooked velvet ropes and ushered us through. There were young and old people in the group of about a dozen. I got in the middle of them, looked mournful and kept my face turned down. I hoped Dr Krug wouldn’t come back too soon. Presently we stopped in a place where the velvet curtains were drawn back and the organ music swelled up on the sound track. We all stood in a semi-circle facing the gleaming steel facade of a bank of freezers. The girl in the black sweater consulted a card she was carrying.
‘Mr and Mrs Erno Pizar,’ she called out.
A stout character in a brown topcoat and a stringy woman with straight grey hair and a thin smear of moustache detached themselves self-consciously from the group. They went and stood nervously in front of the freezer bank while the hostess put a reassuring hand on Mrs Pizar’s shoulder.
‘Let us pray,’ a man in a white coat standing behind the crowd invited us.
The crowd began to murmur softly the appropriate responses after him. There was a short silence, then the organ boomed out again. I was hoping for a respite after this but there was no stopping the man in the white coat. He started enthusiastically on some lines from Binyon. The extract was certainly well-chosen and I had to agree with him. I was afraid he might get on to John Donne and Wordsworth but fortunately the organ swelled up once more. The thing was kind of impressive in its way.
There was a click as the capsule slid out on its rack from behind the curtaining. A
hatch like an oven door opened downwards and there was the loved one beneath his coating of ice. A magnifying mirror set over the top of the freezer bank reflected back the deep-set eyes and sunken face of the dead man through the distorting layers of rime. The rest of us stared at the floor as the organist had another violent spasm. This went on for about five minutes. Then we heard the click of the freezer door, the lights dimmed and the curtains drew back again. As an entertainment I thought an ordinary cemetery a sight more cheerful.
‘Mr Chester Clute, Miss Minnie Clute,’ the hostess called.
Everyone stepped along two yards and the pantomime was repeated with another couple of visitors. I noted that everyone in the hall except me had each paid five dollars for this dubious privilege, according to my brochure. I hoped refreshments were included. I had dropped to the rear by this time and I stopped near the curtaining where the first freezer had been opened. There was about a foot space between and I looked through.
There was a big thermostat mechanism on the front of the freezer units. The one I looked at stood at minus 201 C. I moved on again to the group round the next bank. When they all had their eyes down in prayer, I slipped behind the curtain. There was a space of three feet between the curtaining and the freezers here and though the light was dim I could see quite clearly. Each capsule bore a name and a number; the banks had their own thermostat temperature controls. I felt the front of the bank. It was cold but not so cold as I would have expected. I glanced at the nearest thermostat, moved on, then looked back again. The needle of the dial appeared to be outside the glass.
The reading was minus 200 C here but when I put a finger against the needle it moved smoothly round. I experimented. I found it would stay at any temperature to which I set it. I now had the answers to quite a few questions. I had just got back to my proper side of the curtains when there was a ripple at the edge of the crowd. A man in a white coat looked worried and consulted with the prayer reader. Heads were turned in my direction.