CHILLER

by Gregory Benford

  “Then what in hell—”

  “Look, buddy,” Alex said, “we love this dog. We’re preparing to put it in cold storage, hoping we can save it.”

  “Cold—?” Recognition dawned in the man’s startled face. “You people—you’re the ones make chillers, right? My God!”

  “Right. Now if you’ll just let Dr. Hagerty—”

  “Hey, I got to treat her, man, can’t you see she’s—”

  “I bandaged her myself. She has to get this done, then you can—”

  “Quiet!” Susan shouted. The operating room became so still, Alex could hear the ice popping as it warmed around Sparkle.

  “Hey, you reject treatment, you got to sign a release,” the ambulance attendant said irritably. “I don’t want anybody saying later that we—”

  “Fine, fine. Go get it.” Susan did not look up. The ambulance crew glanced at each other, rolled their eyeballs, and walked out.

  Susan worked silently for a while, shaving the dog’s lower belly and legs and then making incisions in the groin. Carefully she raised and isolated the great femoral vessels and connected them to the heart-lung machine. The ambulance crew came with the release. Susan slipped on a second surgical glove to sign it and waved them away.

  Delicately she cleaned the skull, incised and peeled back hide, then lifted out yellow slivers of bone. By now the bleeding had stopped and the pale pink perfusion fluid oozed from the wound.

  “I can see a little patch of cortical surface,” Susan said with satisfaction. “The pial vessels seem to be perfusing, without much clot.”

  She looked at Alex as if seeing him for the first time, although he had been applying light pressure to her scalp from behind. “Take over for a while, please.”

  She was pale and drawn and plainly holding on by sheer will. But before stepping away she bent over Sparkle’s head and kissed her cold, black nose. Beneath the enamel-hard light of the operating room Susan looked fragile, her lower lip trembling. “Good-bye, old girl. We brought you back once. We’ll do it again. This time… it’ll take longer.” She left quickly.

  When Alex came into the small scrub room next door, after leaving Ray to monitor the cooling-down, he found Susan gazing in a mirror. There was damage to her right cheek, a purpling contused area, eyelid puffy, lip swollen. She pulled her lip out, revealing a half-centimeter laceration on the inside, cut by her tooth under the crushing blow.

  “Come on,” he said, taking her arm. “I’ll drive you to the UCI ER.”

  “Check my blood pressure. I want to stay awhile. I’ll rest.”

  In her dazed state Susan had reverted to a physician’s automatic independence. As soon as she lay down, she gave a long sigh of relief and let him minister to her. He was doing a better job on her bandages when Bob Skinner, the UCI medical student, arrived, along with four other I2 members. Ray had sounded the general call for help, and now the computerized phone tree was bringing them in, a flat-voiced Paul Revere.

  Skinner took over the bandaging just as county sheriff’s deputies arrived. After that chaos reigned. The deputies called in help and started questioning Susan. An Orange County sheriff helicopter buzzed the building and bombed on up the canyon, spotlights seeking the intruder. Two deputies with big flashlights combed the arroyo for clues, finding only the rock that had hit Sparkle and Susan. A TV team arrived, undoubtedly tipped by somebody in the sheriff’s office. They sniffed after cryonics-related sensationalism, faking sympathy for Susan. Alex put some I2 members to work patiently downplaying the whole matter. One of the crew recognized Alex and tried to coax him in front of the camera, but he just shook his head and walked off. Too much was happening at once.

  Susan finished talking to the deputies and left for the UCI ER to get X-rays, with Skinner in attendance. Alex went back to work on the long process of pulling Sparkle down into the realms of utter cold. The descent was comparatively simple, a matter of distributing antifreezing agents at the right temperature level.

  The warmup process held the great unknowns. There lay the hope of cryonics—that future technology could master the long climb up from the eternal stasis of liquid nitrogen, three hundred and twenty-one degrees Fahrenheit below zero. To cross that abyss of cold would demand a new level of scientific understanding and high-tech craft. As he worked on Sparkle, Alex remembered one of the “chiller” jokes from the media.

  Q: How many chillers does it take to screw in a light bulb?

  A: None—they just sit in the dark and wait for the technology to improve.

  There was some wry truth to that, he had to admit.

  By the time deputies came to question him, Sparkle was in good hands, with Ray and two others attending. Alex had already carefully searched his memory of those short moments as he ran out into the arroyo, and so he got through the whole thing fairly quickly.

  No, he had not seen anyone. Yes, he had heard somebody crashing through the brush upslope. No, no motive he could think of. A deputy told him that Susan remembered that her assailant was a big man and nothing more, not even what he had said. This was a common outcome of head trauma, Alex knew. Maybe the memory would come back. Probably not, he thought.

  The ruddy-faced deputy said when they were finished, “With all due respect, Mr. Cowell, you got a funny kinda operation here. Seems to me it’d attract loonies.”

  Alex shrugged, his mind full of gravel. “Probably a vagrant.”

  “They don’t often attack people.”

  “Maybe Susan surprised him while he was trying to steal something.”

  “What’ve you got back there?”

  “Reserve liquid nitrogen, surplus heavy gear, leftovers from our remodeling.”

  “Not likely anybody’d lift that.”

  “Maybe he specializes.” Alex’s sarcasm went by without provoking a flicker of reaction.

  “Well, we’ll look into this, y’know, but—” The deputy sucked on his teeth skeptically. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe she just surprised a bum.”

  “I’m really too tired to have an opinion.”

  “Yeah, well, get some sleep.”

  Alex stayed three more hours to care for Sparkle and secure the building. Susan called from the hospital; her X-rays came out fine—no fractures. The deputies finished up and finally the bays of I2 fell silent. Ray Constantine and two others took over the long job of lowering Sparkle’s body temperature, negotiating the descent with minimal cell damage. Still Alex lingered, until Ray said kindly, “Hey, it’s the early A.M., buddy. Get on home.”

  Alex put his hand on Sparkle’s flank, immersed in a chilly bath. It was already so cold it stung his fingers. “G’bye, Spark. Next time I see you, I’ll throw you a tennis ball. Promise.”

  He knew he was going to cry, but he did not want to do it here. He sniffed loudly, waved awkwardly to the others, and went into the night carrying a leaden lump in his chest.

  2

  GEORGE

  The Reverend Carl Montana received George in a sumptuous study. The Reverend had private quarters, rich in the aromas of leather and wood, in the rambling complex behind the Marble Cathedral. A light rain had swept in during Wednesday-night prayer meeting, and George shivered in his short-sleeved shirt as he was escorted along an outside walkway. Already he had developed the California habit of dressing as though the mild weather could never change.

  He followed a young woman through a labyrinth of softly carpeted rooms, noticing despite himself her ample hips and slow, sensual sway. She smiled demurely up at him as she stopped before a large carved oak door. She put her hand on the doorknob, but he pushed it partly open to spare her the effort. This brought him close to her and he inhaled a heady scent of ripe roses. Her breast brushed his elbow, and the soft resistance of it made him lick his lips and stutter his thanks to her. Then she was gone, swaying down the corridor. After a long moment of warring impulses, urges he fought down without letting them come fully into the arena of his mind, he thought to knock on the door.

 
The Reverend called heartily, “Come right on in.”

  George found himself in a large room dominated by bookshelves of thick, oiled cedar and high-backed leather armchairs. The Reverend was standing beside a broad desk of polished rosewood. Tall windows of colored glass loomed behind the desk. Though heavily leaded, they let in enough street lamp glow to reveal biblical scenes illustrated in garish colors. Beads of rain trickled down the glass, casting robed figures in a watery-gray light.

  Up close, the Reverend was even more imposing. His long hair flowed back like a lion’s mane, framing a large head. His face was broad, the features finely chiseled, the flesh deeply tanned. The eyes were piercing steel blue as they peered alertly at George, a glimmer of respect granting the acknowledgment that big men often exchange unconsciously. His snugly tailored blue suit seemed to George like a banker’s, but gold cuff links and a diamond tie clasp gave the Reverend an air of both flamboyance and gravity.

  The Reverend made George comfortable in one of the deep, soft chairs. “It is truly good to see you among the congregation, George. I remember your speaking to me in Tucson.”

  “That was a beautiful sermon you gave there.”

  “Your comments later, at the chicken supper, were insightful. I was pleased that a man of your intelligence came right up to me, engaged in a scholarly discussion.” Montana gave a small, self-ridiculing laugh. “So many of these revival socials have to be, well, a little thin on theology.”

  George seemed to remember that it was the Reverend who had sought him out, not the reverse. George had been too shy, awed by the rolling power of Montana’s rhetoric. Nothing could have surprised him more than to have the Reverend approach, speak warmly, and then urge him to visit the Marble Cathedral. That evening shone so brilliantly in George’s memory, though, that he was quite prepared to believe that he had in fact thrust himself upon the Reverend, perhaps without meaning to. The man was charismatic, his magnetism a disorienting tug and whirl.

  “I came as soon as circumstances let me.”

  “Perhaps you were answering a Call. Could you tell me a little about yourself?”

  The next half hour went by without George remembering much of it, only that the Reverend extracted from him a life history, using murmurs and easygoing questions. The turns of George’s life-path somehow seemed to make more sense as the Reverend drew them forth, turning the facets to the light, conjuring a story with meaning and purpose, a path upward.

  George lost his self-consciousness and let himself ramble on, a rare luxury. He talked of foster homes, of each new chapter in his early life begun by a visit to the state office—upstairs at the county building, lilac-painted walls, big old-fashioned manual typewriters giving an air of reassuring sturdiness. He remembered the prim foster care specialist better than he could some of the homes he had passed through for a week, a month, and one time just a day. The specialist had been neat, with even handwriting, forms clipped in a folder, boxes crisply checked with pencils she kept in their own thin box. She had worked with the court-appointed doctors, even though beneath her steady, friendly voice he had somehow heard the slow burn of the footsoldier blaming the fools at headquarters as he slogs on. And George had tried to be like her. He had held fast to that crisp order through lean years, through a series of neighborhoods with guard dogs frothing behind fences, of narrow-eyed gangs on corners, of grime and unvoiced defeat.

  He thought of that foster care woman as being like his mother, as maybe a way his mother lived on. He began telling about the foster parents then.

  “The poor of pocket, the rich of spirit,” the Reverend said sympathetically.

  “Oh no!” George said, startled out of a blur of remembrance and confusion. “The foster parents, they were nothing like my mother. She was a saint.”

  “Don’t compare others with your mother, George.” The Reverend sat up, brow knitted with alarm. “Just let those memories lie.”

  George saw he had done something wrong. His chest tightened, and dusky memories flocked in a dizzying, hot spin, as if to mock the Reverend’s instructions. He resolutely pushed them away, his cool and analytical self coming to the fore. It was hard to deal with the fluttering, shrouded memories, for there were blanks, yawning spaces, slippages from that distant time, the year after his parents’ death. George tried to say this, but the words came out in staccato rushes, phrases like machine-gun bursts, and finally he made himself stop.

  “It’s all right, my friend,” the Reverend said soothingly. “There are people here who wish to help those afflicted by their past, like you.”

  George panted, chest still constricted. “Really?”

  “They wish to remain in the background, like so many of the truly charitable. I can serve as intermediary between them and the needful such as yourself. Almost as though they were foster parents, too.”

  “No, no, you don’t understand. Foster parents, they—they—” And then he was off, spilling out the stories. He left out the way he had begun taking revenge on the cold, stern families he stayed with. Of killing their pets and enjoying the discovery, the mourning, the tearful burials in weedy back yards. Or of the other animals surprised on his long walks at night, the bursts of pleasure as he squeezed the life from twisting dogs or plunged his pocket knife into the soft fur of vagrant cats.

  He had begun then to see these as missions for the Lord, for only holy powers were allowed to make or take life. In erasing the meaningless animal lives George had assumed a small role for the Lord, and as he had made his way through the filthy, blind world, he had been shown further, higher tasks. Such was his assault only the night before upon the devil dog and its attendant woman, a cesspool woman deceiving the world in her immaculate white laboratory coat.

  He did not dare tell even the Reverend of his inner landscape, or of the torturous path he had followed to come to this moment. Still less did he want to divulge his double self, the passions and mission of the inner realm. Only a fragment did he let seep into his tale, a small clue from which he hoped the Reverend would be able to deduce George’s deeper nature. He told of his rage when some boys in high school had beaten him, and how he had killed their pets. Once he had started, the words simply burst from him without thought, telling far more than he had planned—all drawn forth by the generous eyes of the Reverend.

  The Reverend sat very still then. George felt his stern, judging gaze. For just a moment a look of something like alarm flickered across the tan features. Perhaps even fear. But then the Reverend’s broad smile split the gloom of the study.

  “We have all transgressed, good friend George. I wish you to know that the Lord is willing to receive your guilt, your pain, your remorse. He is willing to enlist you in his army as a humble footsoldier.”

  “Yes, that is what I want to be, a warrior for the godly.”

  “And so you shall be. Forgiveness is yours.”

  “I—I feel so much better… talking about it…”

  “You have righted yourself this way, my brother. I understand a man like you.”

  “You—you do?”

  “I have walked in your shoes. I have known the stings of rebuke.”

  “But I—I—”

  “The killing of the animals…” Here the Reverend’s eyes saddened, his mouth turned downward. “A pity. Yet sometimes it must be that way. The Lord tells us that.”

  “He does?”

  “The animals were put here for our purposes. Sometimes their role is that of blood sacrifice. The Bible recounts such uses—the fact is undeniable to anyone who will but read. I urge you to consult that most wonderful of all books whenever you find moods of sorrow and depression falling upon you, falling like the wings of a dark angel.”

  George had never seen his tormented teenage years this way. He felt a gust of fresh insight. “Genesis…”

  “Yes, Genesis speaks of such. You were using these animals to extinguish your own fires. You had to, I know.”

  “Yes, yes, that’s it. I had to.”
/>   So George was pleased when his story came to his raid on Immortality Incorporated, the dog’s death, the way he had been forced to strike the woman—and the Reverend simply nodded, frowning some, but motioning with his ring-rich hand to go on.

  “I—I did not really mean to hit her.”

  “Of course not.”

  “It was an impulse. I—I have had impulses before.”

  “With women?”

  “Oh, yes, yes, many… but not like that. I mean, I know that desire can lead a soul astray.”

  “True enough, but this doctor woman was not like the young ladies you meet, was she?”

  “No, she was older, and—”

  “I mean that she was an enemy. And this struggle in which we are enlisted, my comradely friend, it is a war.” The Reverend smacked the arm of his leather chair, the sound big and startling in the shadowy room.

  “Yes, yes.”

  Montana studied him. “And you—why did you pick this particular struggle?”

  “What they’re doing, it horrifies me.”

  “Deeply?” A penetrating gaze as remorseless as the eye of God.

  “The idea, freezing people, it calls up terrible images in me.”

  “What images?”

  George did not want to speak of the yawning gray spaces he saw, the air of malignant force. “Unholy ones.”

  “I see.” Montana leaned back in his big executive chair, curiosity satisfied. “Brother, I do not think you need trouble yourself about that incident.” A sympathetic smile. “The Lord forgives his soldiers their, as you say, impulses. As long as you are sorry for them as well.”

  “Oh, I am, I am. That woman, she made me turn to the Bible. I found what I needed, just like I always have.”

  “And the Lord turned your hand to what passage?”

  “Ezekiel, the valley of bones,” George said.

  “Yes?” The Reverend said blankly, shifting uneasily in his outsize, polished leather executive chair.