CHILLER

by Gregory Benford

  “Ummm, so it’s women who drive men off on their voyages?”

  “Could be. Hey, Odysseus took off for the war with Troy, and a woman sure started that.”

  Susan laughed. One of the best things about the war between the sexes was that it would never be over.

  There was work to do here, too. As always, her double life at UCI and I2 created a tangle of details. She went through the I2 computer files, searching out the paper house that legal help had erected around Susan’s research here. They had known the ground beneath their feet was tricky, liable to spring open with any distant tremor of jurisprudence. Now her survival at UCI would turn upon piles of paper speckled with whereas and wherefore and thereupon such that. Formalisms were useful, she knew. Medicine abounded in them. But the study of law seemed to sharpen minds by narrowing them.

  When the work was done she walked back through the main bay, among soft shadows cast by the big steel canisters. A valve clicked open automatically and fed liquid nitrogen into one of the great Thermos bottles. A brass fitting snapped as the nitrogen cooled it. It was composed and restful here. The required big notices of HUMAN TISSUE and HIV POSITIVE MATERIAL were taped to the sides where the lights would always strike them, a point the state inspector had made.

  She stopped before a particular cylinder and gently rested her hand on the cool sheen. The grave’s a fine and private place, she recited, but none I think do there embrace.

  “Hello, Roger,” she whispered.

  She stood for a long time thinking of nothing, ridding her mind of the day’s distresses. He rested only inches away, utterly inert. For a while in the first year she had imagined that she could feel him in there, sense some faint aura or emission from him that came into her as a soothing presence. Logic and science told her this was nonsense. She did not in fact believe in it, in the sense that she understood belief. But she came here regularly still.

  The cells that contained memories and instincts and character and self—those drifted in lazy eternity. Damaged, surely. Ripped and gouged by the rude intrusions of sharp-edged ice crystals. But still carrying some fraction of their initial meaning.

  How much of Roger had truly glided through these nine dreamless years no one knew. But there was something. At least there was hope. And it did not suffer time’s rub.

  “Good-bye, lover,” she whispered.

  A final stroke of the smooth, frosty metal. Then she walked out through the steel cluster and was back in the world.

  She exchanged some small talk with Alex, picking up some printouts. He was just leaving for a date with Kathryn, which Susan gathered would be mainly spent in bed, and not because Alex was still recovering from the broken arm. This heartened her in the way that fresh love always strikes a vibrant chord in those who have known it. She wished him the best of luck with Kathryn and gave her seal of approval, administered with a firm, warm kiss planted in the middle of his forehead.

  Then she headed for home, looking forward to an exhausting, cleansing run on El Morro Beach. If she beat the traffic down Laguna Canyon Road, she could catch the sunset, with her dog Travis racing at her heels.

  A salty, zestful romp. There were few moments in her day that brought more pleasure. She hurried.

  8

  GEORGE

  He drove north on Coast Highway, away from the sunny evils of Laguna Beach. He passed Irvine Cove, with its enormous houses perched on tiny lots, the upper storys bulging out, like ladies lifting their skirts to avoid a mouse. Aromas of blacktop highway and fragrant honeysuckle waned in the slanting rays of approaching sunset.

  He was driving against the commuter flow of tired executives fleeing southward into the endless pseudo-Mediterranean bungalows of south county, so he reached the bluff above El Morro Beach in plenty of time. The parking lot at Reef Point was deserted. Hotels and homes inland caught the sun’s descending glow. Few tourists ventured down to this long beach between Laguna and Corona del Mar, and locals departed with the sun. He changed into a dark blue jogging suit that he had never worn before and never would again and sat in an inconspicuous gully looking down at the beach.

  The sun seemed to speed down the sky and kiss the sea with ripe orange streamers. Darkness closed in. He had marshaled his resources for this last ten days, and his reward was this oncoming gloom. No moon at all, just as the Farmer’s Almanac said, and a steady autumn breeze bringing moisture from the slumbering sea. As the land cooled, the air mass moving in might condense out a touch of its vapor into coastal fog.

  He began to worry that today she had deviated from her pattern. Sometimes she parked inland and ran up Muddy Canyon instead. But that was when the surf was high, and now the tides were mild, the waves rolling into sheets of white foam.

  He stood up and looked south toward Abalone Point, where a house of jutting wood and glass dominated the wave-weathered rock. Below it a line of run-down beach cottages were trapped between the churning waves and the Coast Highway, seeming to shrink back from the ocean as far as they could get. They were eyesore shacks, their cheap plywood battered by the winter storms. A few runners padded along with the usual agonized/distracted air. Traffic on the Coast Highway buzzed, and he wondered if she would hazard the left turn across the streams of commuters.

  But then he saw her unassuming Buick sedan pull into the lot scarcely a hundred yards from his own car.

  He had planned this moment for so long, seeing every gauzy possibility. Now the unfolding, matter-of-fact reality had a piercing, razor-sharp exactness. She got out with the keeshond and let him off his leash.

  “Come here, Travis boy,” George muttered. “Gooood dog.” The sharp sea breeze snatched the words away, and George ducked back into his hollow.

  Dr. Susan Hagerty trotted down the ramp to the beach, wearing a dark blue jogging suit.

  Excellent. Her usual suit. A week before she had run earlier in the day and gotten hot. She had left the jacket top on a rock and ran on to Corona del Mar. Before she returned, he had checked the label and taken a few threads. Creslan, an acrylic fiber, Sears Active Wear. Now George was wearing exactly the same.

  Travis followed her, barking happily.

  This was a state park, no dogs allowed. The Hagerty woman flaunted the law and society itself, smiling as she went.

  Now his work would bear fruit. The vicious prank played on the Reverend had finally confirmed that these people would stop at nothing, not even at the defiling of a house of God with filthy insects. On such transgressions the Bible was quite explicit. George had listened, aghast, as the Reverend described the terror struck into his parishoners’ hearts. And in the Reverend’s grave, iron-hard face there had been a silent message. For George. For George alone, who could move as a swift knight through the swamp of this society.

  The last dregs of sunset drained from the sky as she hit the sand. George had been so focused on her that when his eyes shifted out to the west, he was surprised to see a sullen line of mist hanging off shore.

  His heart sang. Was it moving? Yes—drifting shoreward, a thin vapor thickening into a white sludge as the sun’s buoyancy left it. An ally. A sign.

  She turned north, as always. George began to trot along on the high bluff that shot straight up from the sand.

  Here he could watch her on her daily round and yet be unseen from below. Anyone in the parking lots would just see a man out for a jog. Along the miles of beach ahead of her he saw a single runner, also headed north. The warm yellow lights of Corona del Mar twinkled weakly through the gathering gloom.

  She was a good runner. Wiry, with the strength that comes from steadily working at it. He huffed along and watched the fog roll in. She rounded Reef Point and made good time.

  Crystal Cove was a tiny group of beach cottages, a time-honored assembly permitted to remain, as this last virgin stretch of coast in the entire county was transformed into what the real estate guy had called a profit center. The important thing was that few people lived there, except weekends.

  Tha
t was his first worry, and the second was the runner ahead of her. As she picked up speed George had to run faster. She seemed more energetic today, and he hoped that meant she would go the full distance, not turn back at Crystal Cove. George prayed, muttering through his panting, that the guy ahead of her was not out for a long slog. Timing, that was the thing.

  And method. The general rule is that a brutal facial attack means the killer knew the victim, one of the journal papers had said. But their rules didn’t matter if the injury looked natural.

  The fog loomed closer.

  George was prepared to come back here night after night from here on, prepared for little things like the male jogger or even one of the Coast Guard helicopters to get in the way. But he had chosen this moonless night as the best time to begin, and God was saying to him now, with the fog, that this would be it.

  Not a slap-dash job like the high school principal or a sudden impulse like the waitress. More like the pets: clear command.

  The waves sent their soft rumble up the cliffs, and George ran faster, drawing even with the woman as her dog fell a little behind her. Darkness came settling in. Through the first tendrils of light vapor, he saw the guy ahead turn off into the jumble of Crystal Cove cottages. His heart leaped.

  A sudden, blitz style of attack usually indicates a younger killer.

  George laughed. Their dull-witted categories, their smug assurance.

  Now for the crucial moment. There was no easy way down to Crystal Cove here. He ran alongside the Coast Highway for a moment, pulling the cowl of his running jacket up to hide his face from the oncoming headlights. Then he slipped by the Shake Shack, its doors of chipped paint sealed shut. He pushed himself to his limit to gain distance on her as he plunged down the winding narrow road that snaked toward the cottages. Suddenly headlights pierced the dark. He crashed aside into high bushes as a motor gunned and a sports car lumbered up the road.

  The guy who had turned in, this was him. The car growled, spun its wheels in sand, and then caught. The headlights swept past George’s hiding place.

  He let the taillights dwindle and then ran on. No lights in the cottages. No dog barks. He sped among the rickety cabins and by the clock mounted near the beach, the one that always said the right time here was 1930.

  He reached the sand. Glanced left.

  Nobody. The surf boomed.

  Looked right.

  There she was.

  Hard to see in the bank of fog that came seeping in along the slick sea. Moving well for a woman. The dog not far behind her.

  She had followed her pattern. Now she would have only two choices open to her on the long stretch of beach ahead. And he knew with granite certainty which she would take.

  Bloodred patches flashed in the air around her running figure. Colors strobed and popped like flashbulbs. He gasped deeply, building up his oxygen for a hard dash. Colors worked through the air like bulging veins. Crimson streamers played among the fog.

  A person who covers up the body with clothing, or hides it, is saying that he feels pretty bad about what he has done.

  Fools, fools. George laughed with immense release and loped after his prey.

  9

  SUSAN

  She heard him coming.

  She had been watching the swells die on the beach in ghostly phosphorescent fans, letting the salty tang reach into her nostrils and leach away her bitterness. Raspy breaths and thudding heels had often drawn sour depression out of her, and tonight she hoped it could again.

  She had often shared this lonely sweep of beach with other fitness nuts. When she picked up the faint splashing rhythm, slightly faster than hers, she glanced back over her shoulder. A large figure moved with the familiar grim purpose, barely visible beside the curve of luminously foaming surf.

  In pursuit of the running high, she thought wryly. Exertion makes the body squirt endorphins into the brain. Cheaper than booze, and better for you.

  The peptides of pleasure, Roger had called them. And the man had known a lot about pleasure, both the giving and taking of it. She let herself slide into a pleasant reverie, sensual memories slipping through her. Exercise made her sexier, just as it had for Roger. Often they would do their beach run, dash home, shower, and let the toweling off—always very detailed—turn to something more.

  Then she shook her head and put the memories back in the soft nook where she kept them. Travis was demanding attention, bounding along beside her, his energy building as hers leveled off. Travis loved a long run.

  She debated turning back now, but a small thread of competition laced through her. This guy behind her was big, sure, but he looked a little too heavy. She had seen a lot of them take the first mile easily, then end up puffing and hawking and stumbling before the next one, eyes hollow and mouth sagging.

  Susan grinned. She would do some hard distance, see if the man fell behind. She quickened her pace.

  Pearly fog slid across the stars. White billows closed around her like the lacy fingers of a great fist. She liked its moist, cool touch, the sensation of running in a cottony pocket universe. She felt sheltered amid muffled breakers and crunching sand that tugged at her shoes.

  The splashing footfalls behind grew louder. Faster.

  She turned again, puzzled. Despite her burst, he was closer.

  Near enough now to see that he was not running on the clear sand. Instead, he splashed through the shallows.

  Why would anyone do that? To build up the calf muscles? Fitness freaks…

  Then something sent a sharp alarm through her.

  Something about the dim profile, the bulky shoulders and broad head. He was tall and came lumbering across the damp sand, splashing into the surf to cut a slight angle off the curve of the beach. Intent. Remorseless.

  Her heart lurched. She suddenly knew with absolute conviction where she had seen that profile in the night.

  Outside Immortality Incorporated, in seeping shadows.

  A spurt of fear jerked into her muscles. She had slowed to turn and look, and now she lowered her head and gave herself over to the sudden impulse to flee. She sprinted, bringing her knees up high and building speed without thought of endurance.

  The lights of Corona del Mar hung yellow-warm, two miles away. There was an easy path up the cliff there.

  Could she outrun this man over that distance? She had no choice. The beach was narrow. Slippery rocks bordered the foot of the cliff. She could not possibly reverse direction, slip around him, head back to Crystal Cove.

  Her years of earnest jogging would now have to save her. She knew that she was running for her life from a man whose motives she could not guess but whose relentless steam-engine stride told all.

  The fog that had seemed, only a moment before, a sheltering moistness was now a cloak that kept anyone on the bluff above from seeing her.

  Travis bounded after her. The beach sped beneath her churning feet, and for several minutes she scarcely thought at all. She became slamming feet, plunging thighs, heaving gasps. She stretched for distance with each stride. She ground and labored and finally fought the sand for every extra foot.

  Then her years and the gnawing fear began to eat at her. The fog’s gathering grip blotted out the cliffs. Her breath rasped. A burning fatigue stole up her calves and into her thighs.

  She looked back once again, just a quick glance thrown over her shoulder. He was closer.

  The face. She was right. Him.

  She could make out the slitted mouth drawn thin across the broad face by muscles stretched tight. A mouth without meaning or emotion.

  She ran on. His low grunting followed her.

  There was another sound, a regular, hoarse moaning, and it took her a moment to realize that it was her own agonized cry.

  The lights ahead were still glimmering, dancing, distant. She knew she could not keep this pace that far. And she was in her forties, while this man behind her seemed twenty years younger.

  This man who ran in the shallows. Not on the sa
nd.

  A slight breeze thinned the pearly fog. In the last faint glow of dusk she could see the cliffs.

  It took her a moment to register the smudge of gray—a ramp that wound up to another parking lot. She was just passing it, too late to turn and try to make a burst for freedom. But that gave her the idea of using her knowledge of the bluffs. Up ahead lay Pelican Point. Maybe she could outlast him to there, then get to the next ramp beyond. But waves already broke over the outer rocks, foam glimmering through the murk. The rocks would be slippery, and he could overtake her.

  She was trapped. She had to find some way up.

  There—materializing out of the gloom. A narrow dirt path, a track used by surfers in the old days. Loose soil and worn sandstone. The man would have to slow to keep his footing. His weight would be a liability.

  Beneath the bluff were jagged rocks that buttressed the cliff and acted as a sea wall against high tides.

  She had been wrong to think she could outrun him. He would catch her at Pelican Point if she tried. Here was a second possibility, far closer than Corona del Mar.

  What were the chances that someone would be in the lot above? Not good, this late.

  But beyond the lot lay busy Pacific Coast Highway. Traffic.

  She turned toward the bluff. It loomed up out of the pearly fog and she dug in, calves clenching. Gasps roared in her throat.

  Help was only a minute of hard running away. She heard the clashing of nails on smooth rocks as Travis followed.

  And the harsh, heavy panting of the man. Close, close.

  The slope was steep and her lungs burned. She willed each leg forward, heaved back to gain momentum. She thrust as much as she could without losing her footing. Pure agony forced her up the incline.

  She was gaining on him. Yes. Yes. Then she slipped.

  —but caught herself, staggered, and pushed on. Near the top now.

  With a final burst she broke onto the brow of the bluff. The path led to a knobby platform above the beach. She decided to sprint across it. Once on flatter ground, she could work her way inland through the chaparral.