Callahan's Place 02 - Time Travelers Strictly Cash (v5.0)

by Spider Robinson

  The phone rang, and he answered it. "Right. Let's go, Reb. They're ready."

  The top of the cryotank had been removed now, allowing direct access to Archer Howell's defrosted body. At present it was only a body—no longer a corpse, not yet a man. It was "alive" in a certain technical sense, in that an array of machinery circulated its blood and pumped its lungs—but it was not yet Archer Howell. Dr. Bharadwaj awaited Rebecca Howell's command, as ordered, before firing the complex and precise charge through the pineal gland that he believed would restore independent life-function—and consciousness—to the preserved flesh.

  "The new liver is in place and functioning correctly," he told her when she arrived. "Indications are good. Shall I—"

  "At once."

  "Disconnect life support," he snapped, and this was done. As soon as the body's integrity had been restored, he pressed a button. The body bucked in its plexiglass cradle, then sank back limply. A technician shook her head, and Bharadwaj, sweating prodigiously, pressed the button a second time. The body spasmed again—and the eyes opened. The nostrils flared, and drew in breath; the chest expanded; the fingers clenched spasmodically. Rebecca Howell cried out, Dimsdale stared with round eyes, Bharadwaj and his support team broke out in broad grins of relief and triumph…

  And the first breath was expelled. In a long, high, unmistakably infantile wail.

  Rebecca Howell's mind was both tough and resilient. The moment her subconscious decided she was ready to handle consciousness again, it threw off heavy sedation like a flannel blanket. The physician monitoring her telemetry in the next room started violently, wondering if he could have cat-napped without realizing it.

  "What's wrong?" Dimsdale demanded.

  "Nothing. Uh, she—a second ago she was deep under, and—"

  "—now she's wide awake," Dimsdale finished. "All right, stand by." He got up stiffly and went to her door. "Now comes the hard part," he said, too softly for the other to hear. Then he squared his shoulders and went in.

  "Reb…"

  "It's all right, John. Truly—I'm okay. I'm terribly disappointed, of course, but when you look at it in perspective this is really just a minor setback."

  "No," he said very quietly. "It isn't."

  "Of course it is. Look, it's perfectly obvious what's happened. Some kind of cryonic trauma wiped his mind. All his memories are gone, he'll have to start over again as an infant. But he's got a mature brain, John. He'll be an adult again in ten years, you wait and see if he isn't. I know him. Oh, he'll be different. He won't be the man I knew; he'll have no memories in common with that man, and the new 'upbringing' is bound to alter his personality some. I'll have to learn how to make him love me all over again. But I've got my Archer back!"

  Dimsdale was struck dumb—as much by admiration for her indomitable spirit as by reluctance to tell her that she was dead wrong. He wished there were some honorable way he could die himself.

  "What's ten years?" she chattered on, oblivious. "Hell, what's twenty years? We're both forty, now that I've caught up with him. With the medical we can afford, we're both good for a century and a quarter. At least sixty more years we can have together, that's four times as long as we've already had! I can be patient another decade or so for that." She smiled, then made herself become businesslike. "I want you to start making arrangements for his care at once. I want him to have the best rehabilitation this planet can provide, the ideal childhood. I don't know what kind of experts we need to hire, you'll have to—"

  "No!" he cried.

  She started, and looked at him closely. "John, what in God's name is wrong with—" She paled. "Oh my God, they lost him, didn't they?"

  "No," he managed to say. "No, Reb, they haven't lost him. They never had him."

  "What the fuck are you talking about?" she blazed. "I heard him cry, saw him wave his arms and piss himself. He was alive."

  "He still is. Was when I came in here, probably still is. But he is not Archer Howell."

  "What are you saying?"

  "Bharadwaj said a lot I didn't understand. Something about brain waves, something about radically different indices on the something-or-other profile, something about different reflexes and different—he was close to babbling. Archer was born after the development of brain-scan, so they have tapes on him from infancy. Eight experts and two computers agree: Archer Howell's body is alive down the hall, but that's not him in it. Not even the infant Archer. Someone completely different." He shuddered. "A new person. A new, forty-year-old person."

  The doctor outside was on his toes, feeding tranquilizers and sedatives into her system in a frantic attempt to keep his telemetry readings within acceptable limits. But her will was a hot sun, burning the fog off her mind as fast as it formed. "Impossible," she cried, and sprang from the bed before Dimsdale could react, ripping loose tubes and wires. "You're wrong, all of you. That's my Archer!"

  The doctor came in the door fast, trained and ready for anything, and she kicked him square in the stomach and leaped over him as he went down. She was out the door and into the hallway before Dimsdale could reach her.

  When he reached the room assigned to Archer Howell, Dimsdale found her sitting beside the bed, crooning softly and rocking back and forth. An intern and a nurse were sprawled on the floor, the nurse bleeding slowly from the nose. Dimsdale looked briefly at the diapered man on the bed, and glanced away. He had once liked Archer Howell a great deal. "Reb—"

  She glanced up and smiled. The smile sideswiped him.

  "He knows me. I'm sure he does. He smiled at me." As she spoke, a flailing hand caught one of hers, quite by accident. "See?" It clutched, babylike, but with adult strength; she winced, but kept the smile.

  Dimsdale swallowed. "Reb, it's not him. I swear it's not. Bharadwaj and Nakamura are absolutely—"

  The smile was gone now. "Go away, John. Go far away, and don't ever come back. You're fired."

  He opened his mouth, and then spun on his heel and left. A few steps down the hall he encountered Bharadwaj, alarmed and awesomely drunk. "She knows?"

  "If you value your career, Doctor, leave her be. She knows—and she doesn't believe it."

  Three years later she summoned him. Responding instantly cost him much, but he ignored it. He was at her Alaskan retreat within an hour of the summons, slowed only by her odd request that he come alone, in disguise, and without telling anyone. He was conveyed to her den, where he found her alone, seated at her desk. Insofar as it was possible for one of her wealth and power, she looked like hell.

  "You've changed, Reb."

  "I've changed my mind."

  "That surprises me more."

  "He's the equivalent of a ten or twelve year old in a forty-three year old body. Even allowing for all that, he's not Archer."

  "You believe in brain-scans now?"

  "Not just them. I found people who knew him at that age. They helped me duplicate his upbringing as closely as possible." Dimsdale could not guess how much that had cost, even in money. "They agree with the scans. It's not Archer."

  He kept silent.

  "How do you explain it, John?"

  "I don't."

  "What do you think of Bharadwaj's idea?"

  "Religious bullshit. Or is that redundant? Superstition."

  " 'When you have eliminated the impossible…' " she began to quote.

  "—there's nothing left," he finished.

  "If you cannot think of a way to prove or disprove a proposition, does that make it false?"

  "Damn it, Reb! Do you mean to tell me you're agreeing with that hysterical Hindu? Maybe he can't help his heritage, but you?"

  "Bharadwaj is right."

  "Jesus Christ, Rebecca," he thundered, "is this what love can do to a fine mind?"

  She overmatched his volume. "I'll thank you to respect that mind."

  "Why should I?" he said bitterly.

  "Because it's done something no one ever did in all history. I said you cannot think of a way to prove or disprove Bha
radwaj's belief. No one ever has." Her eyes flashed. "I can. I did."

  He gaped at her. Either she had completely lost her mind, or she was telling the truth. They seemed equally impossible.

  At last he made his choice. "How?"

  "Right here at this desk. Its brain was more than adequate, once mine told it what to do. I'm astonished it never occurred to anyone before."

  "You proved the doctrine of reincarnation. With your desk."

  "With the computers it has access to. That's right."

  He found a chair and sat down. Her hand moved, and the chair's arm emitted a drink. He gulped it gratefully.

  "It was so simple, John. I picked an arbitrary date twenty-five years ago, picked an arbitrary hour and minute. That's as close as I could refine it; death records are seldom kept to the second. But it was close enough. I got the desk to—"

  "—collect all the people who died or were born at that minute," he cried, slopping his drink. "Oh my God, of course!"

  "I told you. Oh, there were holes all over. Not all deaths are recorded, not by a damn sight, and not all of the recorded ones are nailed down to the minute, even today. The same with birth records, of course. And the worst of it was that picking a date that far back meant that a substantial number of the deaders were born before brain-scan, giving me incomplete data."

  "But you had to go that far back," he said excitedly, "to get live ones with jelled personalities to compare."

  "Right," she said, and smiled approvingly.

  "But with all those holes in the data—"

  "John, there are fifteen billion people in the solar system. That's one hell of a statistical universe. The desk gave me a tentative answer. Yes. I ran it fifteen more times, for fifteen more dates. I picked one two years ago, trading off the relative ambiguity of immature brain-scans for more complete records. I got fifteen tentative yeses. Then I correlated all fifteen and got a definite yes."

  "But—but damn it all to hell, Reb, the fucking birthrate has been rising since forever! Where the hell do the new ones come from?"

  She frowned. "I'm not certain. But I note that the animal birthrate declines as the human increases."

  His mouth hung open.

  "Do you see, John? You're a religious fanatic too. The only difference between you and Bharadwaj is, he's right. Reincarnation exists."

  He finished his drink in a gulp, milked the chair for more.

  "When we froze Archer, he died. His soul went away. He was recycled. When we forced life back into his body, his soul was elsewhere engaged. We got pot luck."

  The whiskey was hitting him. "Any idea who?"

  "I think so. Hard to be certain, of course, but I believe the man we revived was a grade three mechanic named Big Leon. He was killed on Luna by a defective lock-seal, at the right instant."

  "Good Christ." He got up and began pacing around the room. "Is that why there are so many freak accidents? Every time you conceive a child you condemn some poor bastard? Of all the grotesque—" He stopped in his tracks, stood utterly motionless for a long moment, and whirled on her. "Where is Archer now?"

  Her face might have been sculpted in ice. "I've narrowed it down to three possibilities. I can't pin it down any better than that. They're all eleven years old, of course. All male, oddly enough. Apparently we don't change sex often. Thank God."

  Dimsdale was breathing heavily. "Rebecca," he began dangerously.

  She looked him square in the eyes. "I've had a fully equipped cryotheater built into this house. His body's already refrozen. There are five people in my employ who are competent to set this up so it cannot possibly be traced back to me. There is not one of them I can trust to have that much power over me. You are the only person living I trust that much, John. And you are not in my employ, which is another plus."

  "God damn it—"

  "This is the only room in the system that I am certain is not bugged, John. I want three perfectly timed, untraced murders."

  "But the bloody cryotechs are witnesses—"

  "To what? We freeze and thaw him again, hoping it will bring him out of it somehow. From the standpoint of conventional medicine it's as good an idea as any. No one listened to Bharadwaj, there is no accepted explanation for Archer's change. And no one but you and I know the real one for certain—even the desk doesn't remember." She snorted. "Nine more attempted defrostings since Archer, none of 'em worked, and still nobody's guessed. There's a moratorium on defrosting, but it's unofficial. We can do it, John." She stopped, and sat back in her chair, became totally expressionless. "If you'll help me."

  He left the room, left the house, and kept going on foot. Four days later he re-emerged from the forest, bristling with beard, his cheeks gaunt, his clothes torn and filthy. Most of his original disguise was gone, but he was quite unrecognizable as John Dimsdale. The security people who had monitored him from a distance conveyed him to her, as they had been ordered, and reluctantly left him alone with her.

  "I'm your man," he said as soon as they had gone.

  She winced, and was silent for a long time.

  "You'll have to kill Bharadwaj too," she said at last

  "I know."

  Rebecca Howell gazed again at the defrosted thing that had once been Archer Howell, but the torrent of emotions was tamed this time, held in rigid control. It may not work on this shot, she reminded herself. I'm only guessing that his soul will have an affinity for his old body. He may end up in a crib in Bombay—this time. She smiled. But sooner or later I'll get him.

  "Señora, it would be well to do it now."

  The smile vanished and she turned to the chief surgeon. "Doctor Ruiz-Sanchez, I said 1200 hours. To the second. You have made me repeat myself."

  Her voice was quite gentle, and a normal man would have gone very pale and shut up, but good doctors are not normal men. "Señora, the longer he is on machine life-support—"

  "HUMOR ME!" she bellowed, and he sprang back three steps and tripped over a power cable, landing heavily on his back. Technicians jumped, then went expressionless and looked away. Ruiz-Sanchez got slowly to his feet, flexing his fingers. He was trembling. "Si, señora."

  She turned away from him at once, returned to contemplation of her beloved. There was dead silence in the cryotheater, save for the murmur and chuckle of life-support machinery and the thrum of powerful generators. Cryotechnology was astonishingly power-thirsty, she reflected. The "restarter" device alone drank more energy than her desk, though it delivered only a tiny fraction of that to the pineal gland. She disliked the noisy, smelly generators on principle, but a drain this large had to be unmetered. Especially if it had to be repeated several times. Mass murder is easy, she thought. All you need is a good mind and unlimited resources. And one trusted friend.

  She checked the wall-clock. It lacked five minutes of noon. The tile floor felt pleasantly cool to her bare feet; the characteristic cryotheater smell was subliminally invigorating. "Maybe this time, love," she murmured to the half-living body. "Maybe not. But soon."

  The door banged open and a guard hurled backward into the room, landing asprawl. Dimsdale stepped over him, breathing hard. He was wild-eyed and seemed drunk.

  Only for the barest instant did shock paralyze her, and even for that instant only the tightening of the corners of her mouth betrayed her fury at his imprudence.

  "Señor," Ruiz-Sanchez cried in horror, "you are not sterile!"

  "No, thank God," Dimsdale said, looking only at her.

  "What are you doing here, John?" she asked carefully.

  "Don't you see, Reb?" He gestured like a beggar seeking alms. "Don't you see—it's all got to mean something. If it is true, there's got to be a point to it, some kind of purpose. Maybe we get just a hair smarter each time round the track. A bit more mature. Maybe we grow. Maybe what you're trying to do is get him demoted. I've studied all three of them, and so help me God every one of them is making more of his childhood than Archer did. They may not grow up to be as successful as he was. But the
y'll be happier."

  Her voice cracked like a whip now. "John! This room is not secure."

  He started, and awareness came into his eyes. He glanced around at terrified doctors and technicians.

  "Rebecca, I studied them all first hand. I made it my business. I had to. Three eleven year old boys, Rebecca. They have parents. Grandparents. Brothers and sisters, playmates, hopes and dreams. They have futures," he cried, and stopped. He straightened to his full height and met her eyes squarely. "I will not murder them, even for you. I can't."

  "Madre de dios, no!" Ruiz-Sanchez moaned in terror. The anesthesiologist began singing his death-song, softly and to himself. A technician bolted hopelessly for the door.

  Rebecca Howell screamed with rage, a hideous sound, and slammed her hands down on the nearest console. One hand shattered an irrigator, which began fountaining water. "You bastard," she raged. "You filthy bastard!"

  He did not flinch. "I'm sorry. I thought I could."

  She took two steps backward, located a throwable object and let fly. It was a tray of surgical instruments.

  Dimsdale stood his ground. The tray itself smashed into his mouth, and a needle-probe stuck horribly in his shoulder. Technicians began fleeing.

  "Reb," he said, blood starting down his chin, "whoever orders this incredible circus, you and your fucking desk can't outwit Him! Archer died, eleven years ago. You cannot have him back. If you'll only listen to me, I can—"

  She screamed again and leaped for him. Her intention was plainly to kill him with her hands, and he knew she was more than capable of it, and again he stood his ground.

  And saw her foot slip in the puddle on the floor, watched one flailing arm snarl in the cables that trailed from the casing of the pineal restarter and yank two of them loose, saw her land face first in water at the same instant as the furiously sparking cables, watched her buck and thrash and begin to die.

  Frantically he located the generator that fed the device and sprang for it. Ruiz-Sanchez blocked his way, holding a surgical laser like a dueling knife. Dimsdale froze, and the doctor locked eyes with him. Long after his ears and nose told him it was too late, Dimsdale stood motionless.