by Roger Elwood
Menninger Institute was a pretty place. Besides the twelve stories of glass and mock-brick that formed the main building, there were at least a dozen outbuildings of varied ages and designs that ran from boxlike rectangles to free-form organics poured in foam plastic. They were all wide apart, separated by green lawns and trees and flower beds. A place of peace, a place with elbow room. Pairs and larger groups passed me on the curving walks: an aide and a patient, or an aide and several less-disturbed patients. The aides were obvious at a glance.
“When a patient is well enough to go outside for a walk, then he needs the greenery and the room,” Doctor Hartman told me. “It’s part of his therapy. Going outside is a giant step.”
“Do you get many agoraphobes?”
“No, that’s not what I was talking about. It’s the lock that counts. To anyone else that lock is a prison, but to many patients it comes to represent security. Someone else to make the decisions, to keep the world outside.”
Doctor Hartman was short and round and blond. A comfortable person, easygoing, patient, sure of himself. Just the man to trust with your destiny, assuming you were tired of running it yourself.
I asked, “Do you get many cures?”
“Certainly. As a matter of fact, we generally won’t take patients unless we feel we can cure them.”
“That must do wonders for the record.”
He was not offended. “It does even more for the patients. Knowing that we know they can be cured makes them feel the same way. And the incurably insane . . . can be damned depressing.” Momentarily he seemed to sag under an enormous weight. Then he was himself again. “They can affect the other patients. Fortunately there aren’t many incurables, these days.”
“Was Charlotte Chambers one of the curables?”
“We thought so. After all, it was only shock. There was no previous history of personality disturbances. Her blood psychochemicals were near enough normal. We tried everything in the records. Stroking. Fiddling with her chemistry. Psychotherapy didn’t get very far. Either she’s deaf, or she doesn’t listen—and she won’t talk. Sometimes I think she hears everything we say . . . but she doesn’t respond.”
We had reached a powerful-looking locked door. Doctor Hartman searched through a key ring, touched a key to the lock. “We call it the violent ward, but it’s more properly the severely disturbed ward. I wish to hell we could get some violence out of some of them. Like Charlotte. They won’t even look at reality, much less try to fight it. Here we are.”
Her door opened outward into the corridor. My nasty professional mind tagged the fact: if you tried to hang yourself from the door, anyone could see you from either end of the corridor. It would be very public.
In these upper rooms the windows were frosted. I suppose there’s good reason why some patients shouldn’t be reminded that they are twelve stories up. The room was small but well lighted and brightly painted, with a bed and a padded chair and a tridee screen set flush with the wall. There wasn’t a sharp comer anywhere in the room.
Charlotte was in the chair, looking straight ahead of her, her hands folded in her lap. Her hair was short and not particularly neat. Her yellow dress was of some wrinkleproof fabric. She looked resigned, I thought, resigned to some ultimately awful thing. She did not notice us as we came in.
I whispered, “Why is she still here, if you can’t cure her?”
Doctor Hartman spoke in a normal tone. “At first we thought it was catatonic withdrawal. That we could have cured. This isn’t the first time someone has suggested moving her. She’s still here because I want to know what’s wrong with her. She’s been like this ever since they brought her in.”
She still hadn’t noticed us. The doctor talked as if she couldn’t hear us. “Do the ARMs have any idea what was done to her? If we knew that, we might be better able to treat her.”
I shook my head. “I was going to ask you. What could they have done to her?”
He shook his head.
“Try another angle, then. What couldn’t they have done to her? There were no bruises, broken bones, anything like that—”
“No internal injuries either. No surgery was performed on her. There was the evidence of drugging. I understand they were organleggers?”
“It looks likely.” She could have been pretty, I thought. It wasn’t the lack of cosmetics, or even the gaunt look. It was the empty eyes, isolated above high cheekbones, looking at nothing. “Could she be blind?”
“No. The optic nerves function perfectly.”
She reminded me of a wirehead. You can’t get a wirehead’s attention either, when house current is trickling down a fine wire from the top of his skull into the pleasure center of his brain. But no, the pure egocentric joy of a wirehead hardly matched Charlotte’s egocentric misery.
“Tell me,” said Doctor Hartman. “How badly could an organlegger frighten a young girl?”
“We don’t get many citizens back from organleggers. I . . . honestly can’t think of any upper limit. They could have taken her on a tour of the medical facilities. They could have made her watch while they broke up a prospect for stuff.” I didn’t like what my imagination was doing. There are things you don’t think about, because the point is to protect the prospects, keep the Lorens and the Anubises from reaching them at all. But you can’t help thinking about them anyway, so you push them back, push them back. These things must have been in my head for a long time. “They had the facilities to partly break her up and put her back together again and leave her conscious the whole time. You wouldn’t have found scars. The only scars they can’t cure with modem medicine are in the bone itself. They could have done any kind of temporary transplant—and they must have been bored, Doctor. Business was slow. But—”
“Stop.” He was grey around the edges. His voice was weak and hoarse.
“But organleggers aren’t sadists, generally. They don’t have that much respect for the stuff. They wouldn’t play that kind of game unless they had something special against her.”
“My God, you play rough games. How can you sleep nights, knowing what you know?”
“None of your business, Doctor. In your opinion, is it likely that she was frightened into this state?”
“Not all at once. We could have brought her out of it if it had happened all at once. I suppose she may have been frightened repeatedly. How long did they have her?”
“Nine days.”
Hartman looked worse yet. Definitely he was not ARM material.
I dug in my sporan for the pressure implanter. “I’d like your permission to put a tracer needle in her. I won’t hurt her.”
“There’s no need to whisper, Mr. Hamilton—”
“Was I?” Yes, dammit, I’d been holding my voice low, as if I were afraid to disturb her. In a normal voice I said, “The tracer could help us locate her in case she disappears.”
“Disappears? Why should she do that? You can see for yourself—”
“That’s the worst of it. The same gang of organleggers that got her the first time may be trying to kidnap her again. Just how good is your . . . security. . . .” I trailed off. Charlotte Chambers had turned around and was looking at me.
Hartman’s hand closed hard on my upper arm. He was warning me. Calmly, reassuringly, he said, “Don’t worry, Charlotte. I’m Doctor Hartman. You’re in good hands. We’ll take care of you.”
Charlotte was half out of her chair, twisted around to search my face. I tried to look harmless. Naturally I knew better than to try to guess what she was thinking. Why should her eyes be big with hope? Frantic, desperate hope. When I’d just uttered a terrible threat.
Whatever she was looking for, she didn’t find it in my face. What looked like hope gradually died out of her eyes, and she sank back in her chair, looking straight ahead of her, without interest. Doctor Hartman gestured, and I took the hint and left.
Twenty minutes later he joined me in the visitor’s waiting room. “Hamilton, that’s the first time she�
�s ever shown that much awareness. What could possibly have sparked it?”
I shook my head. “I wanted to ask, just how good is your security?”
“I’ll warn the aides. We can refuse to permit her visitors unless accompanied by an ARM agent. Is that good enough?”
“It may be, but I want to plant a tracer in her. Just in case.
“All right.”
“Doctor, what was that in her expression?”
“I thought it was hope. Hamilton, I will just bet it was your voice that did it. You may sound like someone she knows. Let me take a recording of your voice, and we’ll see if we can find a psychiatrist who sounds like you.”
When I put the tracer in her, she never so much as twitched.
All the way home her face haunted me. As if she’d waited two years in that chair, not bothering to move or think, until I came. Until finally I came.
My right side seems weightless. It throws me off stride as I back away, back away. My right arm ends at the shoulder. Where my left eye was is an empty socket. Something vague shuffles out of the dark, looks at me with its one left eye, reaches for me with its one right arm. I back away, back away, fending it off with my imaginary arm. It comes closer, I touch it, I reach into it. Horrible! The scars! Loren’s pleural cavity is a patchwork of transplants. I want to snatch my hand away. Instead, I reach deeper, find his borrowed heart, and squeeze. And squeeze.
How can I sleep nights, knowing what I know? Well, Doctor, some nights I dream.
Taffy opened her eyes to find me sitting up in bed, staring at a dark wall. She said, “What?”
“Bad dream.”
“Oh.” She scratched me under the ear, for reassurance.
“How awake are you?”
She sighed. “Wide awake.”
“Corpsicle. Where did you hear the word corpsicle? In the boob cube? From a friend?”
“I don’t remember. Why?”
“Just a thought. Never mind. I’ll ask Luke Gamer.”
I got up and made us some hot chocolate with bourbon flavoring. It knocked us out like a cluster of mercy needles.
Lucas Gamer was a man who had won a gamble with fate. Medical technology had progressed as he grew older, so that his expected lifespan kept moving ahead of him. He was not yet the oldest living member of the Struldbrugs’ Club, but he was getting on, getting on.
His spinal nerves had worn out long since, marooning him in a ground-effect travel chair. His face hung loose from his skull, in folds. But his arms were apishly strong, and his brain still worked. He was my boss.
“Corpsicle,” he said. “Corpsicle. Right. They’ve been saying it on tridee. I didn’t notice, but you’re right. It’s funny they should start using that word again.”
“How did it get started?”
“Popsicle. A popsicle was frozen sherbet on a stick. You licked it off.”
I winced at the mental picture that evoked. Leviticus Hale, covered with frost, a stake up his anus, a gigantic tongue—
“A wooden stick.” Gamer had a grin to scare babies. Grinning, he was almost a work of art: an antique, a hundred and eighty-odd years old, like a Hannes Bok illustration of Lovecraft. “That’s how long ago it was. They didn’t start freezing people until the nineteen sixties or seventies, but we were still putting wooden sticks in popsicles. Why would anyone use it now?”
“Who uses it? Newscasters? I don’t watch the boob cube much.”
“Newscasters, yah, and lawyers . . . How are you making out on the Committees to Oppose the Second Freezer Bill?”
It took me a moment to make the switch. “No positive results. The program’s still running, and results are slow in some parts of the world, Africa, the Middle East. . . . They all seem to be solid citizens.”
“Well, it’s worth a try. We’ve been looking into the other side of it, too. If organleggers are trying to block the Second Freezer Bill, they might well try to intimidate or kill off anyone who backs the Second Freezer Bill. Follow me?”
“I suppose.”
“So we have to know who to protect. It’s strictly business, of course. The ARM isn’t supposed to get involved in politics.”
Garner reached sideways to tap one-handed at the computer keyboard in his desk. His bulky floating chair wouldn’t fit under the keyboard. Tape slid from the slot, two feet of it. He handed it to me.
“Mostly lawyers,” he said. “A number of sociologists and humanities professors. Religious leaders pushing their own brand of immortality; we’ve got religious factions on both sides of the question. These are the people who publicly back the Second Freezer Bill. I’d guess they’re the ones who started using the word corpsicle.”
“Thanks.”
“Cute word, isn’t it? A joke. If you said frozen sleep someone might take you seriously. Someone might even wonder if they were really dead. Which is the key question, isn’t it? The corpsicles they want are the ones who were healthiest, the ones who have the best chance of being brought back to life someday. These are the people they want revived a piece at a time. By me that’s lousy.”
“Me too.” I glanced down at the list. “I presume you haven’t actually warned any of these people.”
“No, you idiot. They’d go straight to a newscaster and tell him that all their opponents are organleggers.”
I nodded. “Thanks for the help. If anything comes of this—”
“Sit down. Run your eyes down those names. See if you spot anything.”
I didn’t know most of them, of course, not even in the Americas. There were a few prominent defense lawyers, and at least one federal judge, and Raymond Sinclair the physicist, and a string of newscast stations, and—“Clark and Nash? An advertising firm?”
“A number of advertising firms in a number of countries. Most of these people are probably sincere enough, and they’ll talk to anyone, but the coverage has to come from somewhere. It’s coming from these firms. That word corpsicle has to be an advertising stunt. The publicity on the corpsicle heirs: they may have had a hand in that too. You know about the corpsicle heirs?”
“Not a lot.”
“NBA Broadcasting has been running down the heirs to the richest members of Group II, the ones who were committed to the Freezer Vaults for reasons that don’t harm their value as—stuff.” Gamer spat the word. It was organlegger slang. “The paupers all went into the organ banks on the first Freezer Law, of course, so Group II boasts some considerable wealth. NBA found a few heirs who would never have turned up otherwise. I imagine a lot of them will be voting for the Second Freezer Bill—”
“Yah.”
“Only the top dozen have been getting the publicity. But it’s still a powerful argument, isn’t it? If the corpsicles are in frozen sleep, that’s one thing. If they’re dead, then people are being denied their rightful inheritance.”
I asked the obvious question. “Who’s paying for the advertising?”
“Now, we wondered about that. The firms wouldn’t say. We dug a little further.”
“And?”
“They don’t know either.” Gamer grinned like Satan. “They were hired by firms that aren’t listed anywhere. A number of firms, whose representatives only appeared once. They paid their fees in lump sums.”
“It sounds like—no. They’re on the wrong side.”
“Right. Why would an organlegger be pushing the Second Freezer Bill?”
I thought it over. “How about this? A number of old, sickly, wealthy men and women set up a fund to see to it that the public supply of spare parts isn’t threatened. It’s legal, at least; which dealing with an organlegger isn’t. With enough of them it might even be cheaper.”
“We thought of that. We’re running a program on it. I’ve even been asking some subtle questions around the Struldbrugs’ Club, just because I’m a member. It has to be subtle. Legal it may be, but they wouldn’t want publicity.”
“No.”
“And then I got your report this morning. Anubis and the Chambers
kid, huh? Wouldn’t it be nice if it went a bit further than that?”
“I don’t follow you.”
At this moment Gamer looked like something that was ready to pounce. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if a federation of organleggers was backing the Second Freezer Bill. The idea would be to kidnap all of the top corpsicle heirs just before the bill passes. Most people worth kidnapping can afford to protect themselves. Guards, house alarms, wrist alarms. A corpsicle heir can’t do that yet.”
Gamer leaned forward in his chair, doing the work with his arms. “If we could prove this, and give it some publicity, wouldn’t it shoot hell out of the Second Freezer Law?”
There was a memo on my desk when I got back. The data package on Holden Chambers was in the computer memory, waiting for me. I remembered that Holden himself would be here this afternoon, unless the arm trick had scared him off.
I punched for the package and read it through, trying to decide just how sane the kid was. Most of the information had come from the college medical center. They’d been worried about him too.
The kidnapping had interrupted his freshman year at Washburn. His grades had dropped sharply afterward, then sloped back to a marginal passing grade. In September he’d changed his major from architecture to biochemistry. He’d made the switch easily. His grades had been average or better during these last two years.
He lived alone, in one of those tiny apartments whose furnishings are all memory plastic, extruded as needed. Technology was cheaper than elbow room. The apartment house did have some communal facilities, sauna, pool, cleaning robots, party room, room-service kitchen, clothing dispensary. . . . I wondered why he didn’t get a roommate. It would have saved him money, for one thing. But his sex life had always been somewhat passive, and he’d never been gregarious, according to the file. He’d just about pulled the hole in after him for some months after the kidnapping. As if he’d lost all faith in humanity.
If he’d been off the beam then, he seemed to have recovered. Even his sex life had improved. That information had not come from the college medical center, but from records from the communal kitchen (breakfast for two, late night room service), and some recent recorded phone messages. All quite public; there was no reason for me to be feeling like a peeping Tom. The publicity on the corpsicle heirs may have, done him some good, started girls chasing him for a change. A few had spent the night, but he didn’t seem to be seeing anyone steadily.