The Relic Keeper

by Anderson, N David

  “What people?”

  “When I first realised that I was ill I arranged for the preservation of my body, it was with a company called Live Right, they arranged everything and set up the whole process. Anyway, I also arranged for them to preserve Paula’s body. That’s my wife. She should be here somewhere, I mean in this world, not necessarily this clinic. I need to know how to find out where she is.”

  “Up until a few weeks ago I didn’t even know that you were here, or anything of your circumstances, so finding out about your wife may not be that simple. Having said that, of course, I was never looking for you. I don’t think that you were a secret, I just don’t think that Dr Warwick particularly publicised the fact.”

  “Well, maybe you could ask Dr Warwick, I’m sure he’d know. Or if he comes here again, if we do another broadcast, then perhaps I could ask.”

  Rei smiled slightly. “Dr Warwick doesn’t really mix with the staff or patients unless it is in his interest. He has far more important matters to attend to, I imagine.” She reset some of the machines, closed down the ethervision projection on the c-pac, and poured a glass of water into a clear beaker by the bed.

  “Well, Mathew, I shall see what I can do. In the meantime ask that porter, James is it? To send you some literature from his master unit for your little toy here.”

  Mathew turned the c-pac over in his hand, while it gently played a piece from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. A strange sense of nostalgia washed over him, and thought of a time in the last century, which to Mathew seemed only a few weeks ago, when he’d heard the same tune in lifts and while waiting on hold for his bank. He’d probably never use a telephone again, he thought, or drive a car, or play a CD, or a million other things that he’d taken for granted. But above all this, he might never see Paula or Jessica. He might never be able to hold them, or talk to them, tell them he loved them. Everything from his life might well be gone forever, and it was all too late to do anything about it. He accessed the c-pac’s memory as he’d been shown and searched under Armstrong, Louise, but there was nothing stored under it; nor could he find Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Benny Goodman or Billie Holiday. He put down the box and stared at the wall until sleep overtook him.

  20

  Philip was amazed at the ease with which he’d been able to arrange the interview. He’d expected to have to go through assistants and clerical bureaucracy, but instead he’d been able to set it up with relative ease. Initially he’d encountered the legions of hostile receptionists and administrators that the health sector was famed for, but as soon as the first message had filtered up to the top floor it had been plain sailing. There could only be one reason; this Dr Theodore Marcus Warwick must have an ego the size of the planet. Warwick had actually contacted him to set a date for the interview, and although Philip may have bolstered his credentials a tiny bit (such as suggesting that he had a full-time job in the communications industry, and had been nominated for a Pulitzer), it hadn’t taken much to convince him to do a one-to-one. Better still, Warwick wanted to do the piece without any support from staff, or lawyers. All Philip had to do was one good bridge-building exercise and the rest of the story might just unroll before him, and Warwick himself was going to start the ball rolling.

  Philip had some details on the Walden Centre, and it would be interesting to see these compared to Warwick’s account. Justine from the bureau had excelled herself in getting the info for him.

  “What is it you need to know?” she’d asked.

  “Not really sure, J. Get me everything to start with and I’ll let you know what else I need later.” And she really had got him everything. The data file she transmitted was huge, and Philip reckoned he had more information on the centre than Warwick himself knew. As the doors to the elevator slid shut he couldn’t help a tiny smug smile. This was going very well.

  The office into which he was shown was large, grand and tasteless. Philip noted the mock antiques and artificial inlays in the pieces strategically arranged to appear like randomly placed furniture. He could imagine Warwick showing clients around: “Oh that table’s been here since I have. What’s that? Eighteenth century? I really had no idea.” ok, he could be wrong about this, but….

  The door opened and Dr Theodore Warwick entered like a hurricane. Two assistants followed him as he barked orders at them without turning round, and he swung a carefully battered case theatrically at his side. If Philip had been told that the whole entrance had been rehearsed and choreographed he wouldn’t have been in the least surprised.

  “Mr Brading, I am delighted to meet you. I’ve heard much about you, and I read that fascinating piece you wrote for Tomorrow’s History two years ago on the potential rise of Indo-China. Do you really believe that the area could rival industrial South East Asia and the Sub-Continent in economic growth during the next century?”

  “Well, yes I believe that’s a very likely scenario given the current rate of change in the area. Although it’s obviously dependant on at least one generation of political stability in the region. And that of course was always the obstacle that stopped the Middle East rivalling the superpowers in the twentieth century,” he replied. Very good, Doctor. You’ve certainly done your homework too, he thought.

  “Still, I don’t imagine that you’re here to chat about politics. Drink?” He produced a large bottle of malt from his desk and two rather expensive looking glasses.

  “Thanks, but I’ll stick to water if you don’t mind. I like to keep a clear head while I’m working. But please, don’t let me stop you.” Philip watched enviously as the liquid was poured and his water was handed to him. “If we meet again later, though, when I have less work, I would feel honoured to join you in a glass. It’s not every day that I meet someone with your…potential.” Warwick took the compliment well.

  “I should very much like that. In my profession we need all the good publicity we can get,” he said with a grin.

  “There’s talk of a Noble Prize linked to this discovery,” Philip added.

  “Really?” replied the doctor, raising his glass. “Cheers.”

  “Yeah, cheers. It’s a fantastic story. The implications for the sick, not to mention aspects like space travel where being able to revive someone from a catatonic state, are truly phenomenal.” Philip sipped his water and took the chair that Warwick silently invited him to.

  “Yes, we really are most pleased with our star patient. And at the moment there are no apparent problems.”

  “At the moment?”

  “Turn of phrase, Mr Brading. No procedure is ever free from problems, as I’m sure someone with your knowledge would be aware.”

  “Oh quite. So could you tell me something about this man and the conditions under which he was, err, reanimated.”

  “We prefer the term ‘revived’. Mathew Lyal died on the 14th of June 1999. He had a condition known as angina. Not always fatal, but it caused him heart problems throughout his adult life, resulting in a series of coronaries, the penultimate one hospitalised him, and the following one caused his death. He was 38. Fortunately for Mr Lyal he’d had the foresight to make provisions with a cryonic suspension company called Live Right at the time he first realised that his condition might seriously reduce his life expectancy.”

  “Was that common in the twentieth century?”

  “No. Although it wasn’t unknown. Several prestigious people had been preserved in this way for more than three decades by the time that Mr Lyal fell ill. Presidents, politicians, even a rather well known producer of children’s films, but it was expensive and was certainly not a mainstream procedure. What Live Right did was provide a financial package linked to people’s life assurance, or mortgage, which brought the technique into a more accessible market. That was what allowed people like Mr Lyal to access this type of procedure, albeit only for a short while. The financial services of the company appear to have left a great deal to chance, and the group went into liquidation early this century.”

  “Really? W
hat were the implications of that on the, err, patients?”

  “Anyone held in a cryonic state became the responsibility of the company that bought the rest of Live Right’s assets. That was Turner and Brown, a company specialising transplant research. They were keen to get their hands on Live Right’s research files, many of which were based on work undertaken in the former United States. They took on the clinics and kept the cadavers in suspension, although they seem have to have shown no concern in any further work in that area. There were no more clients, but the existing ones were maintained in the same state of preservation that they always had been. All Turner and Brown had to do was keep them at the required temperature and they were able to use any research that had been related to the setting up of the clinic. With the money that Turner and Brown had behind them they were able to make a major impact in the field of transplantation and storage of human tissue. The board sold the share they owned after less than five years and made profits of over six hundred per cent.”

  “The people behind Live Right must have missed out on a major money-spinner then.”

  “They had the medical knowledge, but lacked the financial muscle to really impact upon the market to the extent that they could have. In this profession we are always looking towards the next paradigmatic shift. They and many of their clients and investors were ruined, but Turner and Brown made billions. That’s how business works, Mr Brading, as I’m sure you’re aware.”

  Philip swallowed a mouthful of water down and tried not to think of the scotch nearby. “So how did the Walden Centre end up with custody of these people?” he continued.

  “Responsibility, not custody, please. When Turner and Brown sold their assets an expanding medical research company managed to get some backing to buy their human tissue programme; the patients in storage were decreed as being part of that deal. Then they were included in a take over a couple of years later, and so forth and so forth. Then in 2045 the Walden Centre came to own the assets, due to our interest in the storage and transplant research, and the rest, as they say, is history. It is slightly ironic that our most staggering piece of research has come about as a result of nearly 60 years of financial wrangling. Those people in storage were never the main centre of attention. They have merely come along with the other assets. Now, of course, we are very pleased that we came to be responsible for them, even if that was never our intention in buying the stock.” He swilled his scotch and leaned back, obviously feeling delighted in his luck.

  “So how long have you been involved Dr Warwick?”

  “I have been managing various clinics since ’52. I have a track record that I feel speaks for itself. I was invited to work for the Walden Centre in 2060 and was made Chief Executive two years later. The centre was performing some interesting research, but was not cost effective. Now we are not only running at a sizeable profit, but, as you are aware, we are at the pioneering edge of research that could take the West forward into a new era. For the Western world this could be a new renaissance; in every sense of the word. This is one of the most important events for humans since the discovery of the wheel or the harnessing of fire.”

  “You must be very excited.”

  “Of course, I am excited as a businessman to watch my part of this company grow, and as a doctor to have been involved in this research from its heart since we began the project 3 years ago. I was a consultant in theatre when Mr Lyal was revived you know.”

  “Really, you get that involved.”

  “Yes, I like to be involved in every stage of work like this. It’s my ability as a consultant as well as a businessman that has allowed us make these breakthroughs; to convince the board that money for this programme was a wise investment; and that costs cut in certain areas could finance research that would be ten or twenty times as lucrative.”

  Philip had wondered about this. His research showed that the clinic had been losing money at an incredible rate before Warwick arrived. Within months he had practically halved the workforce, ridden roughshod over the ensuing cries of the unions and support groups, and managed to increase the number of patients brought into the clinic, especially from Japan and Malaysia, from where he also managed to recruit many of his staff. It seemed he had promoted the clinic to rich Japanese students as a chance to work in an area where their expertise would be rewarded by relieving their social conscience, rather than simply working in the Far East for ten times the wages. At the same time Warwick had also advertised the clinic for patients in the East as a cheaper alternative to the hospitals and clinics of Tokyo and Kuala Lumpur, but with the same attention to detail and, of course, their expertise was visible in the number of people working there of South East Asian extraction. Somehow Warwick had pulled this off, and now wealthy Westerners were starting to take note of the clinic too. As a result the cost of becoming a patient here was spiralling, which in turn seemed to indicate to many people that the quality of the centre must be excellent. Although from its accounts it wasn’t making the money that Warwick seemed to indicate. It’s amazing how gullible people can be, Philip had thought as waded through his research on the clinic.

  “So, if you don’t mind me asking, how will Mr Lyal be funding his treatment here?” he asked Warwick. “I assume from what you’ve said about him that he wasn’t, er, I mean isn’t, a wealthy man.” The doctor grinned back.

  “We don’t discuss our patients’ financial arrangements Mr Brading, I’m sure you know that. What I can tell you is that arrangement that was made with Live Right was for storage only, not revival. That has been taken care of as part of the research. It would seem wrong, would it not, to cure someone from the point of death, and then present them with a bill before they were even allowed back into society?”

  “Is that what will happen? Will Mr Lyal simply leave and become a regular part of society?”

  “I’m not really able to speak for him. But it is our intention that he should remain here for a short time and then leave to make his own contribution to the world. What that will be is not up to me to say.”

  “Indeed. So will I be able to meet him?”

  “At the moment he is still unable to receive visitors, I’m afraid. I can introduce you to Reiko Ishinomori, who is currently working exclusively with him. If you would like me to that is?”

  “Certainly.”

  Philip had followed the doctor from his office and endured the seemingly endless corridors and elevators that led to Lyal’s room. There he was allowed to see Lyal, via a one way mirror, and talk to Reiko through a communicator linked to her apartment in the building. He recognised her from the news pictures and she’d impressed Philip more than he’d expected. She seemed to be vastly intelligent, very caring, and as prickly as a hedgehog. Her answers were curt and to the point: yes, he can speak and does know where he is; no, he is not in pain; no has not left the clinic, nor asked about doing so; yes he is recovering well; no, he would probably not like to talk to a journalist when he is feeling more healthy. And then within ten minutes of meeting her, Philip was out of the building and heading back to work on the interview. He had intended to travel straight back to Woking, but as he left the Walden Centre he saw something that changed his mind: he saw Deon.

  21

  Deon left the bar and walked into the rain. It had been a strange day. He’d left the centre a couple of hours earlier as usual. He tried to run through the day’s events in his head, before the cloud descended and jumbled his memory.

  “Goodnight Jamie,” the security officer had called as Deon passed out of the centre. It had taken him several days to remember to acknowledge the alias, but by now it was second nature. On some days, when the veil of mist clouded his memory, he almost forgot that he wasn’t Jamie Peacock. Even in his dreams he sometimes he seemed to look like the dead man, who was now lying in festering batch of garbage at the bottom of a tenement waste shoot. He nodded at the tall man behind the desk, who in turn hardly seemed to raise his head from the shimmering screen he was reading from
, and headed into the cold air outside. For a late spring day the weather was cold and grey. The rain had halted, for the moment, but it looked like it would return before he got back to the apartment. He had been working at the clinic for over two weeks now, and had been able to ingratiate himself into many areas that he should not have been able to as a porter; he was sure that Jamie Peacock wouldn’t have been this successful.

  The job seemed easy. No-one hassled him, and he had access to most of the centre, albeit largely because he had altered Peacock’s status level and given himself the run of the place. His supervisor seemed to assume that Peacock’s record meant that he’d know what he was doing, and so ignored him, and no-one at the clinic seemed to have known James, all of which suited Deon just fine. That was the advantage of working in a place with several thousand employees. And although he wasn’t officially supposed to be part of the team that worked on Mathew Lyal, a small manipulation of data and a little charm had allowed him access here. Why people bothered getting qualifications for jobs was beyond Deon, it was just so simple to bullshit your way into any position you wanted.

  But now he faced a problem. He’d managed to get to Mathew, and even spoken to him, hopefully instigating a friendship, but he needed to speak to him about the future. It was always possible that Mathew may not have realised the enormity of his divine mission, but if that were the case he’d have to be treated very gently to avoid giving Mathew the impression that Deon was part of any lunatic fringe. However, if Mathew was aware, Deon would need to make himself known as Mathew would need all the allies he could find; especially in this age. Deon still had no idea how long Mathew was due to stay at the centre. This was his priority. He needed to get some details on him, and that meant accessing his medical history. He tried to get details from the Japanese girl, but this had proved less than useless. And the longer he left it, the more chance there was of getting caught. All it would take was for someone to work with him who had known Peacock, and that was his cover and best shot blown. If he started doing the work that Peacock did that would certainly happen, yet if he carried on working in areas where Peacock was not permitted he would increase the chance of discovery. A month at the most was all he could spend being James Peacock. He needed to act soon.