03-Flatlander

by Larry Niven

  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 and 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 Garner was a man who had won a gamble with fate. Medical technology had progressed as he grew older, so that his expected life span 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.” Garner had a grin to scare babies. Grinning, he was almost a work of art: an antique, a hundred 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 some day. 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? The 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.” Garner 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 farther.”

  “And?”

  “They don’t know, either.” Garner 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 been asking some subtle questions around the Struldbrugs’ Club, just because I’m a member. It had 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 bi
t farther than that?”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  At this moment Garner 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.”

  Garner 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 marginally passing. 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.

  I had wondered how he could afford a servant. The answer made me feel stupid. The secretary named Zero turned out to be a computer construct, an answering service.

  Chambers was not penniless. After the ransom had been paid, the trust fund had contained about twenty thousand marks. Charlotte’s care had eaten into that. The trustees were giving Holden enough to pay his tuition and still live comfortably. There would be some left when he graduated, but it would be earmarked for Charlotte.

  I turned off the screen and thought about it. He’d had a jolt. He’d recovered. Some do, some don’t. He’d been in perfect health, which has a lot to do with surviving emotional shock. If he was your friend today, you would avoid certain subjects in his presence.

  And he’d thrown himself backward in blind terror when a pencil rose from his desk and started to pinwheel. How normal was that? I just didn’t know. I was too used to my imaginary arm.

  Holden himself appeared at about fourteen hundred.

  Anthony Tiller was in a cold box. His face had been hideously contorted during his last minutes, but it showed none of that now. He was as expressionless as any dead man. The frozen sleepers at the Vault of Eternity had looked like that. Superficially, most of them had been in worse shape than he was.

  Holden Chambers studied him with interest. “So that’s what an organlegger looks like.”

  “An organlegger looks like anything he wants to.”

  He grimaced at that. He bent close to study the dead man’s face. He circled the cold box with his hands clasped behind his back. He wanted to look nonchalant, but he was still walking wide of me. I didn’t think the dead man bothered him.

  He said the same thing I’d said two nights ago. “Nope. Not with that face.”

  “Well, it was worth a try. Let’s go to my office. It’s more comfortable.”

  He smiled. “Good.”

  He dawdled in the corridors. He looked into open offices, smiled at anyone who looked up, asked me mostly intelligent questions in a low voice. He was enjoying himself: a tourist in ARM Headquarters. But he trailed back when I tried to take the middle of the corridor, so that we wound up walking on opposite sides. Finally I asked him about it.

  I thought he wasn’t going to answer. Then, “It was that pencil trick.”

  “What about it?”

  He sighed, as one who despairs of ever finding the right words does. “I don’t like to be touched. I mean, I get along with girls all right, but generally I don’t like to be touched.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “But you could have. And without my knowing. I couldn’t see it, I might not even feel it. It just bothered the censored hell out of me, you reaching out of a phone screen like that! A phone call isn’t supposed to be that, that personal.” He stopped suddenly, looking down the corridor. “Isn’t that Lucas Garner?”

  “Yah.”

  “Lucas Garner!” He was awed and delighted. “He runs it all, doesn’t he? How old is he now?”

  “In his hundred and eighties.” I thought of introducing him, but Luke’s chair slid off in a different direction.

  My office is just big enough for me, my desk, two chairs, and an array of spigots in the wall. I poured him tea and me coffee. I said, “I went to visit your sister.”

  “Charlotte? How is she?”

  “I doubt she’s changed since the last time you saw her. She doesn’t notice anything around her … except for one incident, when she turned around and stared at me.”

  “Why? What did you do? What did you say?” he demanded.

  Well, here it came. “I was telling her doctor that the same gang that kidnapped her once might want her again.”

  Strange things happened around his mouth. Bewilderment, fear, disbelief. “What the bleep made you say that?”

  “It’s a possibility. You’re both corpsicle heirs. Tiller the Killer could have been watching you when he spotted me watching you. He couldn’t have that.”

  “No, I suppose not …” He was trying to take it lightly, and he failed. “Do you seriously think they might want me—us—again?”

  “It’s a possibility,” I repeated. “If Tiller was inside the restaurant, he could have spotted me by my floating cigarette. It’s more distinctive than my face. Don’t look so worried. We’ve got a tracer on you; we could track him anywhere he took you.”

  “In me?” He didn’t like that much better—too personal?—but he didn’t make an issue of it.

  “Holden, I keep wondering what they could have done to your sister—”

  He interrupted coldly. “I stopped wondering that long ago.”

  “—that they didn’t do to you. It’s more than curiosity. If the doctors knew what was done to her, if they knew what it is in her memory—”

  “Dammit! Don’t you think I want to help her? She’s my sister!”

  “All right.” What was I playing psychiatrist for, anyway? Or was it detective I was playing? He didn’t know anything. He was at the eye of several storms at once, and he must be getting sick and tired of it. I ought to send him home.

  He spoke first. I could barely hear him. “You know what they did to me? A nerve block at the neck. A little widget taped to the back of my neck with surgical skin. I couldn’t feel anything below the neck, and I couldn’t move. They put that on me, dumped me on a bed, and left me. For nine days. Every so often they’d turn me on again and let me drink and eat something and go to the bathroom.”

  “Did anyone tell you they’d break you up for stuff if they didn’t get the ransom?”

  He thought about it. “N-no. I could pretty well gue
ss it. They never said anything to me at all. They treated me like I was dead. They examined me for, oh, it felt like hours, poking and prodding me with their hands and their instruments, rolling me around like dead meat. I couldn’t feel any of it, but I could see it all. If they did that to Charlotte … maybe she thinks she’s dead.” His voice rose. “I’ve been through this again and again, with the ARMs, with Doctor Hartman, with the Washburn medical staff. Let’s drop it, shall we?”

  “Sure. I’m sorry. We don’t learn tact in this business. We learn to ask questions. Any questions.”

  And yet, and yet, the look on her face.

  I asked him one more question as I was escorting him out. Almost offhandedly. “What do you think of the second Freezer Bill?”

  “I don’t have a UN vote yet.”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  He faced me belligerently. “Look, there’s a lot of money involved. A lot of money. It would pay for Charlotte the rest of her life. It would fix my face. But Hale, Leviticus Hale—” He pronounced the name accurately, and with no flicker of a smile. “He’s a relative, isn’t he? My great-to-the-third-grandfather. They could bring him back someday; it’s possible. So what do I do? If I had a vote, I’d have to decide. But I’m not twenty-five yet, so I don’t have to worry about it.”

  “Interviews.”

  “I don’t give interviews. You just got the same answer everyone else gets. It’s on tape, on file with Zero. Goodbye, Mr. Hamilton.”

  Other ARM departments had thinned our ranks during the lull following the first Freezer Law. Over the next couple of weeks they began to trickle back. We needed operatives to implant tracers in unsuspecting victims and afterward to monitor their welfare. We needed an augmented staff to follow their tracer blips on the screens downstairs.

  We were sorely tempted to tell all the corpsicle heirs what was happening and have them check in with us at regular intervals, say, every fifteen minutes. It would have made things much easier. It might also have influenced their votes, altered the quality of the interviews they gave out.