Infinity One

by Robert Hoskins (Ed. )

  “Sure, sure, Rassmussen,” said the other gunman. His stocking mask was fire pink. “Look, you’re dealing with the real old established Mafia here. We aren’t amateurs. Giacomo Macri set this all up perfect. He even used a computer. Bam, we fly in, bam, we hit you, bam, we go

  back home on that new Penn Central train. It’s lovely.”

  “Look at him,” insisted Janey. “Does he look like Rasmussen?”

  “Sure. A little greener than in his photos, but more or less. Well, not that much maybe but we haven’t got time to fool around. We’re already one bam behind.”

  “Didn’t you hear him say Macri used a computer on this,” said the other masked man. “Those things don’t make mistakes. Rasmussen is supposed to be here weekdays after ten, so this is him. You want to be gunned down standing or sitting, Big Wally?”

  “Okay, punks, grab some ceiling,” said a harsh, faintly Irish voice. The bedroom door was swinging open. “Drop the roscoes and reach.” Carnahan, still unmade and rumpled, rolled up to the opening. From beneath his box springs two black .45 automatics were pointing.

  “Who’s under there?” asked the fire pink gunman.

  “The name is Carnahan, sweetheart. Drop the rods.”

  The man let his pistol fall, but his partner did not. He dived to the side and started firing at Carnahan.

  Carnahan’s two automatics roared at once with a tremendous sound. The gunman was hit in the left side, but he kept on shooting. The big bed was having trouble squeezing through the doorway. He had to tilt himself up partially sideways and that put him at an awkward angle. The wounded gunman put four bullets into Carnahan’s underside.

  Barry had jumped up at the first shot and rushed Janey across the room, down on the floor and away from the shooting. “Into the kitchen,” he told her now.

  The masked man who’d given up his gun grabbed it up and ran for the front door as Carnahan began shooting again. “This isn’t going as programmed,” he said as he left.

  His partner got off one more shot at Carnahan’s still exposed mechanism and followed out the front door.

  The living room was sharp with the scent of gunpowder. Barry waited for a moment, then stood. “You okay, Janey?”

  She hugged herself, said, “Yes. You?”

  “Seem to be.”

  Carnahan gave a rasping cough. His voice was dim when he asked, “Hey, are you two kids okay?”

  Barry approached the bed. “I’ll get you unstuck and we’ll have you repaired, Carnahan.”

  One of Carnahan’s automatics dropped from his retractable metal hand. “No, sweetheart, it’s too late for repairs. Too late for tears. I figure I can kiss tomorrow goodbye.”

  Janey got to her feet and came toward her husband. “We have some talking to do, Barry,” she said. “I’ll call the police now.”

  “No,” Barry said. “We’ll talk first, then call the police.” “The big sleep,” said Carnahan. “The big sleep.” He made a low ratcheting sound and ceased to function.

  We are born to play a certain role. The fortunate in life find that role one of their own choosing ...

  THE PACKERHAUS METHOD

  Gene Wolfe

  The social worker sat primly, knees together, hands in lap. She looked the part, with short, sensible hair, round-lensed glasses and large, kind, brown eyes.

  The old woman in the rocker looked her part too, perhaps almost too much: snow white hair, bifocals, knitting, cat. “It’s the Packerhaus method,” she said. “Perhaps you’ve heard of it?” She was smiling at her two front doors.

  “Mmmh,” the social worker replied, looking troubled.

  “Meow,” said the cat.

  “The Packerhaus method. I believe I heard you to say that you were familiar with the name but not fully cognizant of all the details?”

  The social worker waved a hand. “Something like that. It’s rather a shock to have one pop out at me in that way and then learn .. .” She let the sentence trail away, wishing she could herself.

  “Fine,” the old woman said. She had been knitting, apparently, instead of listening. One of the front doors opened and a man in uniform rapped gently on the varnished frame. “Meter reader.”

  The old woman looked up from her knitting, smiling. “In the basement,” she said. “Just come right through, Frank.”

  The uniformed man smiled in return and moved across the living room on a small rectangular platform. A door at the far side opened to receive him.

  The social worker gulped. “He didn’t walk,” she said. “He was riding on a sort of little cart”

  “The Packerhaus method is not perfect.” The old woman looked at her severely. “And please note, my dear, that neither I nor Col. Packerhaus ever once said it was. He was my cousin, did I tell you that? But it gives, in the felicious phrase the Colonel coined, ‘a living memorial to the living.’ That became the motto of the company he founded when he left the Army Graves Registration Service, you know.”

  “No,” the social worker said humbly. “I didn’t.”

  “The Colonel conceived of his method as a means of assuaging the grief of the sorrowing parents, wives, and sweethearts; but it was not really well suited, as he used to say subsequently, to a military application. So many soldiers are damaged by death.”

  The meter reader re-emerged from the door he had entered and glided across the room again, tipping his cap.

  “Your grandfather . . . didn’t your grandfather come through that door a minute ago?”

  “My father.” The old woman nodded, rocking. “A wonderful man, looking for a light for his cigar. That’s what he does, mostly—looks for a light.” She sat rocking and knitting after pronouncing this, half waiting for the social worker to reply, half listening for the tea, kettle. After a time an old man with a cigar in his fingers entered the room on a platform like the meter man’s. He wore drooping black trousers and a loose white shirt, and looked like Mark Twain and a little like Ralph Waldo Emerson.

  The social worker jerked slightly on seeing him, and he asked her for a match; he had a deep, resonant voice.

  “You shouldn’t smoke, Papa,” the old woman said. And to the social worker, “It’s the Packerhaus method. I believe I told you?”

  “You mean he’s not just a doll?”

  “Oh no.” The old woman shook her head, smiling. He’s a living memorial. By which the Colonel and I mean that it is really he. Aren’t you you, Papa?”

  He was looking under an antimacassar for matches.

  “The Packerhaus method,” the old woman continued, “preserves the entire brain by saturating it with a phenolic resin. Then an exterior source of voltage powers the nerve impulses.” She leaned forward confidentially, lowering her voice. “He can’t breathe, you know. I don’t keep matches in the house, but sometimes he remembers that he can light his cigar from the stove element. Then he finds out he can’t draw on it, and it makes him very angry.”

  The social worker was watching the old man’s back. “If he can’t breathe, how can he speak?”

  “A fan,” the old woman said. “A fan in the base forces air past his vocal cords. The tube runs up his leg.”

  “Meow,” said the cat.

  Turning around the old man asked for a match again in his deep voice; the social worker said she had none and he left.

  “Not back to the stove, I hope,” the old woman said. “He’ll lift off my tea kettle and forget to put it back. I always made tea for him when he was ill. Did I tell you that?”

  The social worker shook her head and asked, “He can still move?” She looked faint.

  “Of course he can still move. That was the other half of Col. Packerhaus’s great discovery. Muscles, you know, will still respond to an impulse after death. We used to do it with frogs’ legs and a galvanic cell when I was a little girl in school—no doubt you modems have more advanced methods.”

  “I seem to remember something like that in biology,” the social worker said weakly.

 
“The Colonel’s fluid preserves this attribute, you see— at least for a long time. It’s based on formaldehyde like the old fluid, but it contains vitamins and proteins in solution, and oxygenators, and ever so many other things. You may have smelled the formaldehype the first time you met Papa, but no doubt you thought it was after shave lotion.”

  “I think I must be going.” The social worker looked around vaguely for her bag.

  The old woman smiled. “Oh no, not yet. I’ll be leaving myself soon. Papa had stomach cramps—did I tell you that? Just like Frank, who used to come around for the gas company. That’s funny, isn’t it: stomach cramps and the gas company.” There was a knock at the door and the old woman called, “Not now, Frank. We’re talking.”

  “He can think?”

  “Oh yes." The old woman rocked back and forth. “Think and talk. The standing ones are put on a platform with the extra equipment in it so they can move about, while the seated ones just have it built into their chairs. Now Kitty here,” she leaned over and stroked the cat, “was a special job just for me, and the extra equipment is let into the floor under her; but they don’t often do animals.”

  “If they can think and move,” the social worker asked, “how is it different from being alive?” She answered her own question. “Alive, but crippled perhaps, like someone who has to use a wheel chair.”

  “Now you’ve hit it,” the old woman said. She was putting away her knitting. “It’s the memory, my dear. You see, the moment-to-moment memories a person has are electrical, as you might say, in their nature. But the permanent ones, the things a person recalls more than just five or ten minutes, are due to changes in the molecules that make up one’s brain. With the Packerhaus method, since the brain isn’t alive it can’t change itself that way.” She waved a hand, pleased with her explanation. “That’s why Papa can’t remember that he can’t smoke, for example.”

  “Stomach cramps."

  “Yes, just like you. Col. Packerhaus had them too, but though I do love having people around me I don’t have him here, of course. The company has him down in the lobby of the Packerhaus Mortuary Number One where the bereaved can talk to him. He’s still quite a good salesman, you know, and very comforting.” The old woman stood up, stowing the knitting under her rocker. “It’s interesting, too, to see how long his memory span is; it seems to improve with age. I was about to say that it almost seemed his brain had learned to make the moment-to-moment kind last longer—but that would be silly, wouldn’t it? I mean since after the resin hardens it can’t learn at nil. But you’ll see for yourself.”

  “I want to go home,” the social worker said.

  “You can’t, dear,” the old woman told her gently. “But it was nice of you to come around to visit an old lady.” She bent quickly and kissed the social worker on the forehead. “And,” she added when she had straightened up again, “I have some lovely news for you: when I go myself I’m going to have it done too. It’s all in my will. Then we can just sit and talk all the time. You and I and Papa, and of course Frank, when Frank wants to talk. And the new girl they’re sending to look in on me. There’s a note on the outside front door, but if you remember you might tell her that there’s a cup set out for her with a tea bag already in it, and hot water on the stove. I have to go to the store, but I’ll be back soon.”

  “Meow,” said the cat.

  The social worker leaned forward to stroke it, but found she could not leave her chair. The clock ticked. A slow horror filled her, and there was an agonizing tightness in her throat. She should be crying, she knew; but there was no moisture in her eyes.

  One of the front doors opened and a man in uniform rapped gently on the varnished frame. “Meter reader, lady.”

  “You’re Frank, aren’t you?” The clock ticked.

  The other front door opened and a new social worker came in. She looked the part, with brown, sensible hair, round-lensed glasses and large, kind, short eyes.

  “You have short eyes,” the social worker said.

  The new social worker smiled. “Short sighted, you mean. Yes, that’s why I have to wear these awful things.” She tapped her glasses with a forefinger.

  “Meow,” said the cat.

  “I’m the meter reader,” said Frank. “Sometimes I look in too; old people get lonely you know.”

  “Charmed,” said the new social worker. “I do hope you folks don’t mind my barging in like this. There was a note on the door saying I’d find tea on the stove. I didn’t realize the old lady already had company.” She went into the kitchen.

  “You’re very kind, aren’t you?" the social worker said to Frank. The clock ticked.

  The new social worker came back, carrying a cup of tea and smiling. “There’s an elderly gentleman in the kitchen,” she said. “He’s cursing his cigar.”

  The social worker dropped Frank’s hand. “I was either to tell you to drink that tea, or not to drink it; but I can’t recall which. And he’s behind you.”

  “Oh?” said the new social worker, and turned around.

  Grandfather had followed her from the kitchen, and he asked the new social worker for a light for his cigar. “I’ve been trying to light if from the stove,” he complained, “but it won’t draw.”

  The clocked ticked.

  “Meow,” said the cat.

  “That cat’s shedding,” said the new social worker. “In fact I don’t think I’ve ever seen a cat shedding quite so much. The hair’s coming out of her in quite a remarkable way.”

  The clock ticked.

  The clock ticked.

  The clock ticked.

  “Ah,” said the old woman. “AH my little circle gathered together. Did the new girl come?”

  “New girl?” asked the social worker. There was a gagging sound from another room.

  “I think she must have gone into a bedroom to lie down,” said the old woman. “Perhaps she has gas.”

  “I thought it was the plumbing,” said Grandfather.

  “We have news for you,” said the social worker. “Good news, I hope, though it means I won’t be coming to see you any more—at least not in an official capacity.”

  The old woman was getting out her knitting. “Wonderful,” she said.

  “Meow,” said the cat.

  “Frank and I are getting married. We wanted you to be the first to know.” The social worker sat primly, knees together, hands in lap.

  “Wonderful!” exclaimed the old woman. “Marvelous! Of course,” she added in a more serious tone, “you know what this means. We’ll have to invite the minister—for tea.”

  “Come on,” said Grandfather, taking Frank by the elbow. “We’d best leave these women to plan the wedding. Got a match on you?”

  The social worker gulped. “They don’t walk,” she said. “Frank was riding on a sort of little cart. Haven’t I noticed that before?”

  “It’s the Packerhaus method,” the old woman said. “Perhaps you’ve heard of it?”

  “Mmmh,” the social worker replied, looking troubled.

  “Meow,” said the cat

  The touch of far space . . . the memories of man.

  THE WATER SCULPTOR OF STATION 233

  George Zebrowski

  Sitting there, watching the Earth below him from the panel of Station Six, Christian Praeger suddenly felt embarrassed by the planet’s beauty. For the last eight hours he had watched the great storm develop in the Pacific, and he had wanted to share the view with someone, tell someone how beautiful he thought it was. He had told it to himself now for the fiftieth time.

  The storm was a physical evil, a spinning hell that might with luck reach the Asian mainland and kill thousands of starving billions. They would get a warning, for all the good that would do. Since the turn of the century there had been dozens of such storms, developing in places way off from the traditional storm cradles.

  He looked at the delicate pinwheel. It was a part of the planet’s ecology—whatever state that was in now. The arms of
the storm reminded him of the theory which held the galaxy to be a kind of organized storm system which sucked in gas and dust at its center and sent it all out into the vast arms to condense into stars. And the stars were stormy laboratories building the stuff of the universe in the direction of huge molecules, from the inanimate and crystalline to the living and conscious. In the slowness of time it all looked stable, Praeger thought, but almost certainly all storms run down and die.

  He looked at the clock above the center screen. There were six clocks around the watch room, one above each screen. The clock on the ceiling gave station time. His watch would be over in half an hour.

  He looked at the sun screen. There all the dangerous rays were filtered out. He turned up the electronic magnification and for a long time watched the prominences flare up and die. He looked at the cancerous sunspots. The sight was hypnotic and frightening no matter how many times he had seen it. He put his hand out to the computer panel and punched in the routine information. Then he looked at the spectroscopic screens, small rectangles beneath the earth watch monitors. He checked the time, and set the automatic release for the ozone scatter-cannisters to be dropped into the atmosphere. A few minutes later he watched them drop away from the station, following their fall until they broke in the upper atmosphere, releasing the precious ozone that would protect Earth’s masses from the sun’s deadly radiation. Early in the twentieth century a good deal of the natural ozone layer in the upper atmosphere had been stripped away as a result of atomic testing, resulting in much genetic damage in the late eighties and nineties. But soon now the ozone layer would be back up to snuff.

  When his watch ended ten minutes later, Praeger was glad to get away from the visual barrage of the screens. He made his way into one of the jutting spokes of the station where his sleep cubicle was located. Here it was a comfortable half-g all the time. He settled himself into his bunk, and pushed the music button at his side, leaving his small observation and com screen on the ceiling turned off. Gradually the music seemed to fill the room and he closed his eyes. Mahler’s weary song of earth’s misery enveloped his consciousness with pity and weariness, and love. Before he fell asleep he wished he might feel the earth’s atmosphere the way he felt his own skin.