Vital Parts
Page 46
Reinhart helped Bob to his feet.
“Sorry about that. You might be a crook, but I know you are serious about the freezer program, the end of which may indeed justify the means: some do. I don’t question your good faith. I’ll tell you what I’ll do: I’ll make up a will by which my body will be donated to you when I die a natural death. If I don’t outlast you, that is. But now I need Winona. She doesn’t need me, make no mistake about that. In a profound way she is invulnerable.”
Bob was bent over. In that position he said: “We got … our man.” He breathed carefully several times, and gingerly straightened up. “Mainwaring. … He didn’t make it. Gone too far before the cell therapy.”
It came to Reinhart that this was final. Splendor, his old friend, had died, for all the bold talk.
Sweet said: “But it works! If Hans had got to him a few weeks earlier, maybe only days, he would have brought him around. The large intestine, you see—”
“He was dying anyway,” said Reinhart. He looked at Bob. “You did no harm. You tried.”
Sweet was gaining energy. “No time to stand around and snivel, Carl. His head is packed with ice cubes from the refrigerator now, and they are rapidly melting. We need dry ice. I came back here to find Hans’s supply has evaporated. Otto apparently let himself out of his cage and broke open the insulated crates.”
“He needed a hammer or crowbar for that,” Reinhart said wondrously. “Imagine, he can use tools!” He looked around for the animal.
“All the dealers are closed at this hour. I’ve been calling everywhere. The head is at present wrapped in a plastic laundry bag full of ice cubes.”
Reinhart did not want to think of poor Splendor, beyond hope. He was still searching for the remarkable Otto.
Bob struck his arm. “Carl, we need your aid. Unless that brain is frozen while it’s still vital, we’ve lost. Hans has a portable iron heart going, to maintain blood circulation. But all that water ice can do is a slight cooling. The head must be packed in dry ice before we can bring the body over here. Those Black Assassins aren’t helping any, either. They’re holding Hans a virtual prisoner, a hostage, with the corpse.”
Reinhart saw Splendor as he had been twenty years before: healthy, handsome, quixotic. A man dies when he becomes effective. Then he saw helpless Bob Sweet, whose toupee had got off register in the fall to the floor.
“Look,” Reinhart said. “You know who’d have a whole truckful of dry ice? It’s still early evening. There may still be some ice-cream vendors making their rounds. There’s your answer: send the Assassins out to hijack a Mr. Softee truck.”
Bob thought for an instant. Then he said: “Carl, you have proved your worth to this organization.” He pointed to the wall telephone. “Would you mind? They might listen to you.”
“Splendor was my friend,” said Reinhart. “You know he never mentioned the pain, not once. It must have been indescribable. I never knew him as well as I should have.”
Bob’s exigent finger stabbed the air. “Then get going,” he cried. “You can make up for it in the next century, when you are both thawed out.”
“But that,” said Reinhart, “may be more than a century from now. Meanwhile, we won’t know if it works. Also, it supposes that I too will be successfully revived. But what if I live another forty-four years, am then frozen, and—”
“Carl, there are times when you can be petty.” Sweet changed color in exasperation. “This is a serious matter, and when did you ever know anything serious that was absolutely certain?”
Reinhart reflected on this interesting question while he dialed the number.
A Biography of Thomas Berger
Thomas Louis Berger (b. 1924) is an American novelist best known for his picaresque classic, Little Big Man (1964). His other works include Arthur Rex (1978), Neighbors (1980), and The Feud (1983), which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.
Berger was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, the son of Thomas Charles, a public school business manager, and Mildred (née Bubbe) Berger. Berger grew up in the town of Lockland, Ohio, and one of his first jobs was working at a branch of the public library while in high school. After a brief period in college, Berger enlisted in the army in 1943 and served in Europe during World War II. His experiences with a medical unit in the American occupation zone of postwar Berlin inspired his first novel, Crazy in Berlin (1958). This novel introduced protagonist Carlo Reinhart, who would appear in several more novels.
In 1946, Berger reentered college at the University of Cincinnati, earning a bachelor’s degree two years later. In 1948, he moved to New York City and was hired as librarian of the Rand School of Social Science. While enrolled in a writer’s workshop at the nearby New School for Social Research, Berger met artist Jeanne Redpath; they married in 1950. He subsequently entered Columbia University as a graduate student in English literature, but left the program after a year and a half without taking a degree. He next worked at the New York Times Index; at Popular Science Monthly as an associate editor; and, for a decade, as a freelance copy editor for book publishers.
Following the success of Rinehart in Love (1962), Berger was named a Dial Fellow. In 1965, he received the Western Heritage Award and the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Award of the National Institute of Arts and Letters for Little Big Man (1964), the success of which allowed him to write full time. In 1970, Little Big Man was made into an acclaimed film, directed by Arthur Penn and starring Dustin Hoffman and Faye Dunaway.
Following his job as Esquire’s film critic from 1972 to 1973, Berger became a writer in residence at the University of Kansas in 1974. One year later, he became a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Southampton College, and went on to lecture at Yale University and the University of California, Davis.
Berger’s work continued to appear on the big screen. His novel Neighbors (1980) was adapted for a 1981 film starring John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd. In 1984, his novel The Feud (1983) was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize; in 1988, it too was made into a movie. His thriller Meeting Evil (1992) was adapted as a 2012 film starring Samuel L. Jackson and Luke Wilson.
In 1999, Berger published The Return of Little Big Man, a sequel to his literary classic. His most recent novel, Adventures of the Artificial Woman, was published in 2004.
Berger lives ten feet from the Hudson River in Rockland County, New York.
In 1966, two years after he wrote Little Big Man, Berger stands at Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, the site of Custer’s last stand in 1876. This was Berger’s first visit to the famous battlefield.
This black-and-white image became the readers’ vision of Berger: dark and esoteric. (Photo courtesy of Gerry Bauer.)
A snapshot of Berger with his friend Zulkifar Ghose, taken in midtown Manhattan in the summer of 1974. (Photo courtesy of Betty Sue Flowers.)
This marked-up manuscript page comes from a story called “Gibberish,” from Berger’s original short story collection Abnormal Occurrences.
In this 1984 letter to his agent, Don Congdon, Berger tells Congdon that he was mentioned on The David Susskind Show, a television talk show.
In this 1997 letter, Berger writes to Roger Donald, his editor at Little, Brown, about characters, props, and plot points in The Return of Little Big Man.
In 1997, Berger wrote to Congdon about communications from Michael Korda, editor in chief of the publisher Simon & Schuster, and Donald.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1970 by Thomas Berger
ISBN: 978-1-4976-7469-1<
br />
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
345 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
www.openroadmedia.com
EBOOKS BY THOMAS BERGER
FROM OPEN ROAD MEDIA
Available wherever ebooks are sold
Open Road Integrated Media is a digital publisher and multimedia content company. Open Road creates connections between authors and their audiences by marketing its ebooks through a new proprietary online platform, which uses premium video content and social media.
Videos, Archival Documents, and New Releases
Sign up for the Open Road Media newsletter and get news delivered straight to your inbox.
Sign up now at
www.openroadmedia.com/newsletters
FIND OUT MORE AT
WWW.OPENROADMEDIA.COM
FOLLOW US:
@openroadmedia and
Facebook.com/OpenRoadMedia