CHILLER

by Gregory Benford

  The dean peered at her, using his eyebrows again. His full face gave him a look of solid, grave authority. “And your response to these charges, Dr. Hagerty?”

  “I admit points one and two, but I do not believe they contravene UCI standards. Point three is simply sanctimonious drivel. I ask that it be dropped immediately.”

  The committee looked surprised, as she had hoped. She could not resist the little flare of outrage at the end.

  Dr. Jacobs frowned and pursed her lips. The rest of the committee looked at her expectantly. The first salvo was often the one you remembered.

  Susan wondered if Jacobs, one of the older women physicians at UCI, would be an ally. No, that was old-style feminism, and good riddance. Women had to stand on their own merits, Susan felt, and she disdained the sorority-sister underpinnings of the usual professional women’s organizations. Ruefully she reflected that this, too, might cost her today.

  Dr. Aronski asked, “These experimental chemicals, these… transglycerols? You developed them yourself?”

  Susan said precisely, “They’ve been synthesized before. Actually, I use the term to cover a mixture of polyalcohols, including butanediols and glycerol. I simply found a usable combination, an extension of cryoprotectant and vitrification work I did years ago.”

  “Yeeeesss…” Aronski leafed through his folder. “I hear that a local company, Vitality or Vigor or something, does this kind of work, too.”

  “Vitality Incorporated,” Susan said. “They have some research but aren’t willing to share results. They have a reputation of being very competitive for patent rights.”

  “I wish we could get some patent money,” Aronski mused. “I must say, you have a fine file here. Harvard Ph.D. in cryobiology, taken before you went into medicine. Then Rockefeller. Boards in both emergency and internal medicine. Most impressive.”

  The dean came in smoothly, “Dr. Hagerty’s diverse academic background was one reason for her recruitment. Now, so we don’t waste time, I’d like to take these points one at a time. Does anyone have any questions?”

  Susan looked around the table, admiring the way Aronski had built her up, then handed off to the dean. It had an uneasy resemblance to a doctoral oral exam.

  Dr. Jacobs asked, “Do you believe we should not be able to control the use of drugs developed here?”

  Susan nodded. “UCI’s patent rights are fully covered. I was simply using the transglycerols in a test case.”

  Blevin shook his head furiously, his narrow face compressed by sudden emotion. “My brief is that at a minimum, UCI should have been compensated for use of materials it developed.”

  “You mean paid?” Susan asked calmly.

  “Yes, then UCI could have a voice in whether they would be used.” Blevin glared at her, then smiled mechanically. “I have no doubt about which way that decision would have gone.”

  Susan shot back, “Nothing in my NIH or UCI agreements gives UCI control over further experimental uses.”

  Blevin countered, “I believe that matter should be settled by university legal counsel.”

  “Lawyers don’t make policy, we do,” Susan said.

  “And so we are, I believe,” the dean came in smoothly.

  Dr. Jacobs peered over her bifocals. “These documents show that you receive twenty percent of your laboratory support from UCI, and the rest from NIH. How much of that goes for the manufacture of these drugs?”

  “Very little to make the transglycerols. Most are easy to cook up, and Aldrich Chemical will make up anything special I need. Testing them—that’s what costs. Even in guinea pigs.”

  Dr. Jacobs had a kindly look, but her voice was sharp and businesslike. Susan knew the manner, for she had used it herself. Women were a rare species here, and they had to show that they could play by the same hardball rules as men. “How much, would you say, for the drugs you used on the dog?”

  “Two hundred eighty-seven dollars and sixty cents.” Susan rattled it off, having calculated it to the penny a dozen times.

  “Trivial expense,” said Dr. Aronski. He was quick-witted and ambitious and had been scribbling in a notebook the whole time. Susan suspected he was working on something entirely different, keeping track with one ear cocked, a common practice during committee sessions. That usually meant that he had already made up his mind, but Susan could not read his expression.

  “There is also point two,” the dean said. “Circumvention of the Human and Animal Subjects Review Board is most serious.”

  Susan quickly replied, “They approved all my earlier work with mice. The canine experiment was not UCI-funded work.”

  “I have served on the board and believe I understand its guidelines,” Dr. Jacobs said slowly, her lined face still impassive, unreadable. “I wonder how the board would rule on higher animals used in such a bizarre manner.”

  “Issues before the board deal with pain and discomfort felt by animals. I assure you, the canine simply fell asleep from anesthesia. It felt no pain.”

  Dr. Jacobs said, “And at recovery? Prolonged attachment to a heart-lung machine? It endured having its blood replaced with these chemicals, then the reverse.”

  “Only while it was unconscious.”

  “But did you measure anomalous neurological activity while it warmed up?” Dr. Aronski asked.

  “Of course. There is always some. We cannot tell if that activity correlates with pain.”

  “But you cannot rule out that it might have,” Dr. Jacobs said pointedly.

  “One never can. It is a very remote possibility. Surely that cannot be the standard by which—”

  “That is for the board to decide,” Dr. Jacobs said, her downturned lip ending the subject.

  “A role you denied the board, by simply failing to inform it of your outside activities,” Dr. Aronski said, still looking down at his notebook. Was he avoiding her eyes?

  Dr. Blevin said with a note of satisfaction, “That covers points one and two. I wish to point out that documentation from the state business registry shows that in fact Longevity Laboratories is a paper shell. It is wholly owned by Immortality Incorporated, the corpse-freezing business we in our profession know all too well. I would point out that there is even a little joke, for the Longevity letterhead features a large L2.” He held up a sheet. “Notice how similar it is to the I2 on this letterhead. Not very subtle.”

  Sometimes the playfulness of cryonicists was a bit much, Susan thought. She said quickly, “Surely you don’t think that is an argument.”

  Blevin held up the sheets a moment longer, then said with pinched-mouth precision, “I offer it as an observation.”

  Events were moving swiftly here, Susan thought—an ominous sign. Neither Jacobs nor Aronski seemed to be deliberating over the issues. Aronski was obviously wrapped up in some paperwork, even taking a few blue departmental memos out of one stack, marking them and moving them to another pile of orange sheets. She wished she had taken the time to use a little political finesse on Jacobs and Aronski, working through colleagues. A quiet conversation over drinks oiled academic machinery better than a barrage of memos. Her recovery from the trauma to her head had been fairly quick, but for over a week the headaches and general weakness, typical signatures of such injuries, had sapped her energies. Preparing her own paperwork justifications had taken all her time.

  Susan rubbed her temple reflexively, fruitlessly trying to recall any further details of the attack, then snapped her focus back to the dean. Her attention had strayed—another slow-fading symptom of the blow.

  Luckily, the dean had digressed into a matter involving procedures. He had considerable power here, and Blevin’s eyes jerked about anxiously enough to give Susan hope.

  The dean said with rolling, nearly biblical majesty, “I have been advised by counsel that ultimately some aspects of these issues will have to be referred to the appropriate committees of the Academic Senate. However, I entertain arguments regarding Dr. Blevin’s point number three, in hopes that we c
an keep such matters within the medical school.”

  Susan said, “I believe this committee can fully well perceive that Dr. Blevin is hounding me out of a misguided sense of medical propriety.”

  “In my view,” Blevin said carefully, looking at each person in turn around the table, “any association, however slight, with an obvious fraudulent scheme sorely damages UCI.”

  “The key word here is fraudulent, of course,” Susan said.

  Blevin looked down at the table, fingering his yellow pencil, but addressed Susan. She wondered if this was a studied courtroom-style tactic, to express his unwillingness to even see her. “I wonder if my colleague would agree that no leading figure in cryobiology regards your cryonics”—he paused, sniffed in lofty disdain—“as serious science?”

  Susan replied evenly, “That is merely a way to define leading. There are cryobiologists who believe cryonics has at least a chance to work.”

  “Well then, not wanting to embroil this committee in fruitless definitions, let me ask you to name them.”

  “I cannot. Their views are privately held. I will not divulge them without permission.”

  Blevin tossed his pencil onto the table, an eloquent way to convey his dislike without having it show up on the tape. “So—invoking shadow colleagues.”

  “I think the simple fact that you have successfully called me up before this committee speaks of the reasons why they would remain silent,” Susan said, measuring out her words for full effect on the others.

  “Tell me, then, does the Society for Cryobiology accept papers on this ‘discipline’?”

  “No. The governing board decided to avoid publicity.”

  “Ummmmm, I see.” Blevin was enjoying this, laying a finger to his bony nose in comic meditation. “So we are expected to have UCI involved with elements that the scientific community has ruled out.”

  “Science lies in the results, not in people’s opinions.”

  “Oh?” Mock surprise. “And your results that you wish to publish—that’s how this matter came to light, wasn’t it?”

  “As you full well know, Dr. Blevin, since you brought my paper to the dean’s attention.”

  “Well, what about your results?”

  “I still intend to publish them.”

  “And the proof? The recovered dog? Where is it?”

  She saw which way Blevin was going, as she had feared before, but could see no way to stop him. “It—is cryonically suspended.”

  “You mean what the rest of us would term clinically dead, is that not right?”

  Her anger rose at being cross-examined. “The information lodged in that dog’s brain is still there. Damaged by the ischemia and the vitrification process, yes—but there.” She slapped her palm on the table.

  She had not intended to show emotion, but that resolve was wearing down in the face of Blevin’s sarcasm. She could tell from their faces, though, that it did not go over well with the rest of them.

  “I wish to point out that the dog died in an incident at the Immortality Incorporated facility. The dog was killed, and Dr. Hagerty injured by persons unknown.” Blevin produced Xerox copies and handed them around. “I ascertained this from the police reports, which I give you.”

  He does his homework, she thought ruefully. The rumor mill must have led him to the police blotter. Better head him off.

  “This has nothing to do with my case. The man who attacked me was probably just a vagrant we surprised in the dark.”

  “I must say that having UCI associated with such incidents is troublesome,” Jacobs put in.

  To Susan’s surprise, Aronski raised his head from his papers and said emphatically, “Isn’t the death of the dog awfully… convenient?”

  “I resent your implication,” Susan said sharply, but she felt as though she had stepped off a stairway in the dark and found nothing but thin air. Aronski’s vote was crucial, and this was his first signal.

  “Well”—he shrugged—“miracle dog rises from the dead. I’d sure like to see it catch a ball.”

  “So would I,” she said with sudden feeling. “She wasn’t just an experimental animal, the kind we discuss in committees like this without ever really seeing them, much less petting them. I loved that dog.”

  There was a long silence, which she realized came from the embarrassment of the others. Well, I’m not ashamed of how I feel, she thought defiantly.

  Though of course emotion was never enough. Susan had not made a big splash herself over Sparkle’s revival—though I2 had—because of nagging doubts about whether she could repeat the success. Her earlier work with lab mice had not been nearly as convincing, because one couldn’t be sure the mice really retained memories well. And she needed time to do more extensive dog experiments. Medicine couldn’t settle for one test, even a successful one. She felt acutely uncomfortable to be talking even this much about her one case, and she hoped the committee wouldn’t misread her unease as a sign of guilt.

  The dean raised one bushy gray eyebrow, shifted uncomfortably in his neatly tailored ash-gray suit, and said formally, “I have myself considered Dr. Blevin’s point three and feel that it is indeed out of order. I dismiss it.”

  Susan sat up straight. Dismissed?

  Blevin blinked, then rubbed his nose to cover his surprise. “I am dismayed that—”

  “Further, I believe that Dr. Blevin has acted out of personal enmity.” The dean shot Blevin a piercing look.

  Blevin gaped. Apparently he had assumed the dean was an ally. “I assure you that my concerns were purely—”

  “Just why have you spent so much time assembling this investigation, rather than allowing an independent member of the faculty to do so? Did your professional responsibilities suffer as a result?”

  “No, no, I—”

  “Be in my office tomorrow morning at nine so that I might discuss your professionalism with you at length, doctor.”

  Blevin looked as though the dean had slapped him. For a long moment no one spoke.

  “Now we should take up points one and two,” the dean went on crisply, ignoring Blevin. Susan felt a stab of hope. Was the dean in a mood to minimize this entire matter?

  “Further, I rule that Dr. Blevin will not vote on these points.”

  Blevin opened his mouth and slowly closed it.

  Dean Wronsky held the eyes of Jacobs and Aronski, lowering his voice to get the full effect of a rich, authoritative baritone. “We have the power to refer these issues to the Academic Senate for disciplinary action, or to dismiss them. I believe a vote is in order. Do you concur?”

  Both Jacobs and Aronski nodded, and Aronski even put down his pen.

  “Point one, that Dr. Hagerty knowingly and repeatedly used experimental chemicals developed at UCI, in operations conducted off campus, without authorization.”

  Taking this to the Academic Senate guaranteed some press coverage, Susan thought, and the dean could not want that. Unless it could be taken care of backstage, with what amounted to a plea bargain…

  “Who favors forwarding point one to the senate?” the dean asked.

  Aronski raised his hand. Jacobs shook her head.

  “Very well. Point two—that Dr. Hagerty performed experiments on a canine without undergoing proper scrutiny by the Human and Animal Subjects Review Board.”

  Aronski picked up his pen and held it aloft. A few seconds crept by. Dr. Jacobs looked at Susan and slowly raised her hand, saying in a small voice, “We have to be very scrupulous about the animal issue.”

  The dean let out a loud sigh. “Very well. You realize that I have not voted. I feel I must retain my distance from your deliberations, since my responsibilities exceed those of faculty. Also, my powers.”

  All this he said as he gazed pensively at the papers in front of him. Then he raised his eyes to peer directly at Susan. “I shall forward the documentation regarding point two to the Academic Senate for appropriate review. Point one is more difficult for me to decide without further thought.
I instead turn to the matter that is solely my province. As dean I may determine the clinical responsibility of each faculty member.”

  He pursed his lips, and a momentary hardness flitted in his face. Susan sucked in her breath. Now she saw that the quashing of point three had been a neat maneuver, designed to make the dean appear moderate. In tongue-lashing Blevin, he had distanced himself from Blevin’s obvious unprofessionalism.

  All very clean and cosmetic. The dean would be seen as making the best of a messy squabble. She would have to defend herself in the Academic Senate, a process that could take a year, but the dean could inflict pain immediately.

  Medical schools run on the ample grease of money. Faculty can presumably make more in private practice but prefer the intellectual luxury of research and some freedom from the incessant parade of patients. To soothe the financial loss, most do clinical work in the hospital, which often pays more than their purely teaching salary. The “clinical component of salary” was the meat in the sandwich.

  “I rule that as a disciplinary measure, Dr. Hagerty be reduced to base salary. Pending the outcome of this matter.”

  Back to base meant no clinical practice at all. Since Susan was a 2X, earning twice her base salary now, that cut her income in half.

  Susan sat open-mouthed until she realized that the dean had not even waited for a reaction from her. He was getting to his feet. She snapped out of her shock and said loudly, “I protest!”

  Dean Wronsky studied her owlishly. The others were busily gathering up papers, deliberately looking elsewhere. “You may do so when the Academic Senate takes up your case, Dr. Hagerty.”

  Hold your temper. Don’t give them the satisfaction. “What about the point that started all this?”

  “Your choice of outside association?” the dean asked, puzzled.

  “No! My paper. I reported the results of the canine revival. I plan more experiments to back it up. You saw that paper, and your office has blocked its submission to a journal.”

  “I should think you would await the findings of the senate,” the dean said patiently, as though explaining to a child. “As you must remember, no work done outside the protocols of the animal subjects provisions can be submitted.”