CHILLER

by Gregory Benford

  “But that will greatly damage my ability to use the work in my next proposal to the NIH,” Susan said.

  Blevin gave her a superior, gleeful grin. “Should have thought of that before you got into this mess.”

  “But…” Her voice trailed off.

  The committee was leaving as quickly as it could. She saw in their faces the simple truth: They weren’t impressed with her case because they didn’t believe her. Anybody who took cryonics seriously was pretty doubtful already, right?

  Obviously nothing she could say would deflect the professional calamity now descending upon her. At best she could hobble along on half pay, marshaling her arguments for the senate review. She would need a lawyer for that. The whole thing would grow and eat into her time. She could fight that battle with one hand, and with the other try to keep her NIH support going. Clearly, the dean would cut off UCI’s customary twenty percent support.

  Then she saw it. The dean wanted her to resign.

  They all did. That was the simple, elegant way to avoid professional disgrace, rumors, the inevitable sensational treatment in the newspapers. The Times would take the high road and broadly hint, while the Register would run color photos of Sparkle.

  All she had to do was resign. It would all go away. Poof.

  By the time she saw this and knew that a part of her was tempted by the idea, she realized that she now stood alone in a deserted room, without a soul to see her cry.

  5

  KATHRYN

  “Hey, didja feel that?”

  Kathryn froze, one hand on a rack of nylon blouses. “Ummm—no.”

  “Maybe I’m just a tad hung over,” Sheila said. The slim black woman pressed the back of her hand against her forehead and did her warbling southern accent imitation. “Or pahaps ah’m a-havin the vapors, Rhett.”

  The broad main room of Fashion Circus was crisp, calm, and fresh in the morning sunlight, and then she heard a small tinkling noise, and this time Kathryn felt something, a definite jolt that brought pops and creaks from the ceiling.

  “Geez, should we—?” Sheila looked around with large eyes, saw that there was really noplace to seek shelter, and started for the front door.

  “Stay away from that glass!” Kathryn called.

  The shaking was no worse, not seeming to build up into something really strong, and she could not decide which way to go herself. Is it getting rougher? No, calming down, slower… A part of her mind tried to put body English on the universe for a moment, as if hoping could stave off a repeat of yesterday’s major quake. Then it definitely did ebb, and she let out a long sigh. She looked past Sheila at the street outside, where people stood still, glancing around, while traffic muttered on, oblivious. A mild little reminder, Kathryn reassured herself. A nothing.

  But one man was not reacting to the fading trembles. He stood across the street looking directly at Fashion Circus—peering, Kathryn thought, directly at her. He was husky and seemed a bit out of place in a blue serge suit, like a banker going for lunch who had lost his way. But it was only eleven o’clock.

  Sheila said, “Y’know, gal, I haven’t been that scared since I was stuck in traffic and remembered that for breakfast I had three cups of coffee and two bran muffins.”

  “What about yesterday?”

  “I was drivin’ on the Santa Ana Freeway. Didn’t feel a thing. Life’s dangerous enough there—nobody notices li’l quakes.”

  Kathryn had been walking in the Mile Square Park. She had learned that earthquakes are a threat only to civilized man; we fear the fall of our own constructions. In the park, spindly eucalyptus had swayed with stately grace, and Kathryn had simply sat down until the shocks passed.

  By the time she walked home, past a traffic jam generated by people who seemed to think there was someplace safer to go, the media blitz had started. The TV coverage showed the same collapsed freeway overpass and sprawling buildings over and over, as if hoping to see a survivor crawl out at any moment. None did. In all only fourteen people died, the same as a slow weekend’s toll in traffic accidents.

  There were tiny tsunamis in hot tubs, and a news spot about them. Platoons of shrinks appeared on the tube, talking about After-Shock Emotional Care, with workshops to be announced. Nobody recommended a magnum of cabernet sauvignon, Kathryn’s favorite therapy. A ferret-eyed Freudian said the earthquake was primarily significant as an “internal event” and that it gave him a sense of “existential anger.” Old friends called her from South Dakota, where the week before tornados had killed a dozen people, to ask “But aren’t you afraid?” This morning on the way to Fashion Circus she saw a man wearing a T-shirt that said I SURVIVED THE EARTHQUAKE MEDIA COVERAGE. She had given him a thumbs-up and called, “Right!”

  Kathryn said, “I hope that wasn’t a bigger quake, just farther away than yesterday’s.”

  Sheila shook her dreadlock curls adamantly. “You immigrants, you don’t know the dance steps at all. That one was sharp, God slappin’ the earth. The ones a long way off, they come in as rollers, waves. They’ve had time to spread out and ease into their rhythm by the time they get here, see?”

  Kathryn puzzled this out. “So if it’s a quick jolt, but not really powerful, that’s good news.”

  “Ri-aight. We’ll turn you into a native yet, girl.”

  The normal buzz returned to the street outside as people took up their lives, ignoring the sudden intimation of mortality. A couple came through the door, first customers of the day, and Kathryn went to help. The Fashion Circus was two blocks from what the legislature called California State University at Fullerton and what everyone else called Cal State. The area was a litter of boutiques, small cafés, a photocopy shop, a dance studio over a Danish modern furniture store, and three trendy jeans outlets. They were two doors down from a fried chicken shop (“Chicken Parts! Buy the part you like best!”) and across the street from a Victoria’s Secret outlet, which led to what the manager termed a “diverse clientele.” An example now came clumping through the big front door.

  They were full-bore punk—black clothes, both sporting three-color mohawks that looked like lurid, frozen explosions. Each had what was obviously a carefully chosen assortment of earrings and safety pins in their ears. The woman wore dead-white Kabuki makeup with bright red eyelids.

  Fear not the weird, Kathryn reminded herself, they make life interesting. These were true punks, not the young teenagers trying to look all of sixteen who betrayed their sullen, supercilious air with sudden giggles. The woman had a leathery look. To Kathryn’s surprise, they proved to be polite and well-mannered. They wanted sheath shirts and Brazilian leather belts, which were in stock, and in black, too. The man called Kathryn “ma’am” and spoke precisely, both showing such diffidence that by the time they left, she felt like creeping out to buy herself a walker.

  “Yeah, punks’re like that,” Sheila said when they had left. “Maybe since they look like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse on a bad day, they figure they should talk like Leave It to Beaver. Keep the straights off balance.”

  Kathryn had been working here only three weeks, but she already felt as though she had known Sheila all her life. The slim, quick-eyed woman was a blend of seemingly incompatible traits, from her meticulous vegetarian diet to her reflexive drinking of caffeine-heavy diet drinks, from her street savvy to her offhand knowledge of things like the Four Horsemen. If anybody had shaken Kathryn awake in the middle of the night, she would have guessed that the Four Horsemen were an old shoo-bop group, but in bright daylight she vaguely recalled that they were the classical image of bad news.

  “Hey, whatcha think of these?” Sheila prompted, beginning their daily game.

  They shared the conviction that customers’ buying patterns were obvious the instant they stepped into the store. “Sorority girls,” Kathryn gave her snap judgment. “And I use the word girls on purpose.”

  “Right. See the circle pin on the one in the red sweater? Cashmere, I can tell from here.”

&nbs
p; “They’re going to stop at the lingerie counter, I’ll bet you a dollar.”

  “No sale, Dr. Watson,” Sheila said in her Sherlock Holmes imitation. “They betray far too obvious a predilection for the scuzzoid.”

  The two blondes were nearly identical in soft sweaters and pearl combs that held back waterfalls of obviously bleached hair. One had on jeans and the other culottes. “Slumming. Bargain-hunting for undies,” Kathryn assessed.

  “Tsk-tsk. Decidedly poor economics.”

  “How do?”

  “Skimp on the lingerie, your boyfriend gets halfway home and he hits the bargain basement. Gives a gentleman a poor impression.”

  Kathryn nodded. “At just the moment you want his pulse rate to climb.”

  Both the girls picked up cheap, frilly white bras and looked around for help. “Betcha they never use any verbal lubrications,” Sheila observed.

  To Kathryn’s raised eyebrow she answered, “Y’know, like ‘please’ and ‘thank you.’ We’re spear carriers in their opera.”

  “Ah so.” Kathryn tipped her hands together and made an Oriental bow of respect. “I shall check your theory, honorable one.”

  Sheila proved absolutely correct, and the two went on to a predictable pattern of collecting armloads of blouses and dresses, liking none of them, and leaving them in piles on the fitting-room floor.

  “Hey, you’ll pick up the signs once you’ve been in the business,” Sheila said at their midmorning break, sipping a Diet Pepsi and eating stalks of broccoli.

  “Ummm. I’ve done retail before, but it was usually upscale clientele.”

  “Ri-aight, ladies lookin’ for some clothes that Make A Statement.”

  “We get all walks, don’t we?”

  “Near enough to Santa Ana to get some gang members. We pull in some matrons who’re maybe down on their luck, husband laid off or could be facin’ slim days after a divorce. Even see the occasional fast-lane trophy wife, comin’ down from the Orange hills looking for something hubby’d get a laugh out of.”

  “Like those old bomber jackets with Pacific mission tags?”

  “Exactly. Gotta be real if you want over a hundred bucks for them. The search for authenticity, I call it.”

  “Authenticity? But it’s somebody else’s jacket.”

  “You aren’t perkin’ this mornin’, girl. Authenticity is a commodity, y’see. Like the hooker joke.”

  “Which one?”

  “Dude asks for somethin’ special, and she says, ‘Sure, and sincerity will cost you ten extra.’”

  When Kathryn smiled, Sheila said deadpan, “Hey, girl who told me that story said it was for real.”

  “Well, my sincerity costs more.”

  “And here I been giving it away.”

  “Spreading it thin, the way you tell it.”

  Sheila made a mock-indignant face with arched eyebrows and jutting jaw. “Just because I apply the principles of democracy to my social life?”

  “I couldn’t help but notice that your date schedule book is broken down into half hours.”

  “That’s so I don’t miss any soap operas in between assignations.”

  “Your life is a soap opera.”

  “Tsk-tsk, is that envy I hear? Anyway, you know full well that ladies like us, we may have lives that look like rerun soaps from the outside, but they have all the sweep and grandeur of War and Peace from the inside. And how is old Abe, or Arthur, or whatever his name is?”

  “Alex. Now I know why you have that fat date book—you can’t tell the players without a scorecard. He’s fine.”

  “Stayin’ cool?”

  “That’s what cryonicists do,” Kathryn countered.

  “You hear the one about why the chiller guys are so sad?”

  Inwardly groaning, Kathryn looked quizzical.

  “All their women are frigid,” Sheila supplied, and Kathryn made the required face. But then Sheila said hesitantly, “Y’know, Kath, this stuff—I mean, it sounds just plain bizarro. Could it work?”

  She had to shrug. “It’s a gamble. A long shot.”

  Kathryn could see that Sheila had been thinking the matter over and was slow to come to terms with it. She had seen this often, a reluctance to ponder the darkness that surrounds each tiny life.

  “You believe any of this after-death experience stuff?”

  To Kathryn, such experiences were a last-ditch stand by the mind against the onrushing abyss. Perhaps the inner self held off insanity with this last invention, a hallucination of a bright light welcoming it into immortality. But she didn’t know that, and no one ever would. So she said, “Could be. Me, I’d like some insurance.”

  Sheila paused in an uncharacteristic meditative moment. “I can see that. I bought my ticket, might as well see the whole show. So far I’ve had Birth, Childhood, and Hideous Adolescence. Coming up are Midlife, Plastic Surgery, Futile Regrets, then Death Or Whatever.”

  “Go for Whatever, I’d say.”

  “I’ve got time to fret. My problem isn’t Dr. Death—it’s bozo boyfriends.”

  “Say, want me to bring some stuff by about cryonics?” The instant Kathryn heard her own words, she knew that Sheila wasn’t ready to think concretely about it. The standard problem: how to lightly talk about a heavy subject. But it was not really her problem, she reminded herself. She wasn’t a convinced, signed-up cryonicist, after all.

  “Thanks, but I’ll just go home and relax and worry about my shrinking ovaries.”

  Predicting people’s purchases from what they were wearing, Kathryn mused, was easier than guessing their reaction to cryonics. Sheila would mull it over, she knew, for a long time, never truly able to put the idea completely from her mind.

  “Uh-oh.” Kathryn looked out at the main display areas. “Looks like the noon rush is early.”

  An hour passed in a busy blur. There were college guys boisterously trying on unlikely hats and gaudy shirts—and finally leaving with goods that looked like what they already wore. Then a pair of what Kathryn thought of as Helgas, big and blond and shouting to each other across the store, excited by their discoveries. Asian tourists lusting after Hawaiian shirts. Japanese searching out 501 jeans with the coveted black “E” tags. Aged hippies, gray and long of tooth, seeking Indian cottons. A man who was nearly bald and had carefully combed the last few black strands across the dome of the head to make it look worse. He bought a Panama hat.

  A rumble in her stomach announced a need for lunch, and Kathryn hurried to finish putting new filmy blouses on the racks. She slipped on her reading glasses to fill in the inventory form.

  Fashion Circus was a fill-in job until she could get a position that used her bachelor’s degree, but she reminded herself to do the best work she could here, anyway, as a matter of principle. Despite Sheila’s slangy derision, Kathryn knew that the black girl felt the same way; pride in your work kept you steady and prepared for the next step. She was nearly through when a deep man’s voice said, “Could you help me, ma’am?” and she turned to confront a wall of blue serge suit. She tucked her reading glasses away.

  “Well—yes, what did you…?” Her voice trailed off as she studied the mail-slot mouth that smiled with a strangely cold confidence. The man was broad and yet athletically light. Despite his white-on-white shirt and black tie with thin red stripes, which she had to admit worked quite well with the serge, he did not seem remotely like a banker.

  “Say, you look better with your glasses off.”

  She suppressed the urge to reply, You look better without my glasses on, too, but said, “You were looking for…?”

  “Some ties,” he answered, more businesslike now.

  “We don’t have very many. Our selection is a little depleted.” She was still daunted by his bulk and by his outsize hands that hung from thick arms. She noticed that even hanging at his sides, his fingers curled back to touch his palms.

  “Just something simple,” he said, not taking his eyes from her face.

  She had violated
one of her own rules, playing down the stock even before showing it off. She put on a bright smile and spun the lone tie rack. “We have some good conservative knits. Are you looking for something close to what you have on?”

  “No, something different. Something that will catch the eye of a woman who knows how to dress, like you.” He smiled again, the edges of his mouth pulling up but somehow not changing the straight, tight draw of the center. His lips were full but bloodless, and his face seemed shiny and stretched taut over strong cheekbones. He was starkly, provocatively handsome.

  “How about a deep red, maybe burgundy?” she said cheerily, offering several ties.

  “Lemme see,” the man said, his pronunciation roughening as he reached for the ties. His extended arm showed thick wrists and ropy muscles beneath the white shirt sleeve, a hint of concealed power. “Kinda nice.” As soon as his attention focused on the ties, his diction suffered, she noted, a southwestern twang coming in.

  “Will you be wearing them with a formal suit like this one?” she asked smoothly, the bright customer patter coming from years of part-time work to get herself through university.

  “Maybe.” He worried the ties around a little but hardly glanced at them. Instead he looked steadily at her.

  She plucked three shades from the rack, turning away from the inquiring eyes. “Perhaps these will help you think about the differences.”

  He tossed the first ties onto a glass counter and laid the three across his arm. “Ummmm.”

  Kathryn knew when to withdraw from a customer and let the product itself do the selling. But this duck simply tossed the three aside as well and looked back at her expectantly.

  “Maybe something in a green? That would go well with—”

  “I need somethin’ that will catch a lady’s eye, y’know?”

  “Well, a bright color will do that.”

  “Yeah, bright.” But he didn’t look at the tie rack.

  “How about a brilliant red, then?”

  He glanced down at the choices she offered and shook his head. “What I really need is a lady who’ll show me how they work out with my clothes, y’see.”