CHILLER Read online

  When they cut back to the set, the hostess bit her lip, studying Alex as though he had crawled out from under a rock. “You promise people immortality this way?”

  “No, we offer a chance at life extension. Immortality—you’ll have to ask God for that.”

  “But even if people can be thawed out—this is wild!” Kathryn saw that unlike the host, Wendy wasn’t faking her response. Wendy uncrossed her legs, losing the seam-showing shot, and rushed on. “These people will come out—no assets, no friends, no family, not even skills they can use. I mean, it will be hell for them!”

  The host joined in: “Yes, ‘way in the future, there might not even be a USA!”

  Both of them looked appalled, as though they had never thought of this possibility before. The hostess added with an incisive air, “Sending people into the future—how far?”

  “A century, maybe longer,” Alex began. “You—”

  “That’s completely irresponsible!” the hostess said, blinking rapidly. “They’ll—they’ll be completely lost.”

  Yeah, no skills, disoriented—they could become talk show hostesses, Kathryn thought.

  Alex responded in calm, measured tones. “Wendy, I really wish you wouldn’t project your own anxieties onto me. This is the future we’re talking about, right? I’ve got friends already frozen—they might be there for me.”

  “But I’m sure I don’t have any of my friends in—in—”

  The host broke in, “Look, it’s a tremendous crapshoot, that’s what you’re saying, am I right?” He glanced at Wendy, a quick ripple of concern showing in his mouth.

  “Of course. Probably—”

  “They won’t want these—these chillers, these throwbacks to the twentieth century, will they? With their strange germs and ailments?” Wendy licked her lips, staring at Alex and ignoring the host, who held up a hand in a small cautionary gesture.

  Kathryn thought Alex would blow it then, go after Wendy with a derisive laugh. She could see the beginnings of it flicker in his lips, but then the drilling they had done together took hold and he turned it into a lighthearted grin, lifting his eyebrows, giving the host a quick glance as if to ask, Are we playing with a full deck here?

  “Wendy”—good, Kathryn thought, use first names, warm, we’re-just-folks-here—“We spend billions every year to cure people in the Third World. People of different races, creeds. Life is precious. I’m willing to bet that human decency will grow in the future—that if they can bring us back from the cold, they will.”

  “Boy, I hope you’re right,” the host said. “We’ll come at this from a different direction when we return.”

  They cut for commercials. Kathryn realized she had been holding her breath and let it out. Alex shifted on the set, stood up, and stretched his lean frame, visibly letting out the kinks. He seemed more aware of his body than most men she knew, conscious of riding in a machine that spoke to him in muted, blunt ways. It seemed an almost feminine trait, for she had always felt that women were tied to the rhythms of the planet more firmly, a blood-deep current that ran through their lives.

  Another feminine trait rose in her—the desire to go up there and mop his brow (now visibly moist), and pass a few private words, a moment in isolation. But winsome Wendy rose and crossed to him, speaking rapidly, plenty of business with the eyes. Alex took another gander at her legs, plainly noticing the pseudoforties seams. Kathryn gritted her teeth and stayed in her seat.

  The audience around her muttered, but she couldn’t get any reading on their reactions.

  The next guest was tall and bulky, wearing what Kathryn had always thought of as an “ice-cream suit,” immaculately white. He was commanding, moving with a casually powerful grace.

  The host grinned. “No stranger to our show, I want to welcome again the Reverend Carl Montana. He presides over the largest congregation in Orange County and is widely known as a forthright voice on religious issues.”

  Kathryn saw why the Reverend Carl was a regular here. His lion’s mane dirty-blond hair framed a well-tanned face that broke into a sunny smile, head bobbing slightly in thanks for the host’s compliments, one hand waving modestly at the audience.

  “I’m powerfully grateful to be here,” Reverend Montana said in a rich, well-modulated baritone. He sat carefully at the other end of the couch, adjusting the seams of his pants. Kathryn judged him to be early thirties but with a striking physical presence that made him seem older. His thick wrists gave an impression of strength, while his hands, cupped together in an almost prayerful gesture, conveyed a strangely sensual piousness.

  “You were watching backstage,” the hostess began, “and I was wondering—”

  “I heard it, yes.” Montana shifted toward Alex, his mouth turning down sternly. “I must say I am amazed to hear the voice of mindless and immoral technology come right out and say such things.”

  Kathryn could see Alex’s torso stiffen, but his face showed nothing as the #1 camera zoomed in.

  Montana’s full lips formed an amused, distant smile. “You spoke the truth earlier, though no doubt by accident.” A ripple of laughter from the audience. “You said you sell life extension, and that Wendy would have to ask God for immortality. Now, there I agree with you. Absolutely, amen!”

  To Kathryn’s astonishment the audience burst into applause.

  The host moved smoothly in. “You feel that our guest here is intruding into Godly matters?”

  “Let me just ask a simple question from a simple man of the Lord,” Montana said, not looking at Alex but focusing on camera #2, which had moved in for a close shot. Kathryn could tell that Alex was trying to figure out how to counter this surprise threat. He glanced out into the audience, as if looking for help from her, but the studio lights seemed to prevent him from spotting her.

  “You wish to avoid the natural order of life, not by curing disease, or even by lifting the burden of pain from these people—am I correct, doctor?”

  Alex said tersely, “First, I’m not a medical doctor—”

  “Not a real doctor?” Montana seemed genuinely shocked. “Yet you believe yourself qualified to send good people, God-fearing people, into your frozen oblivion?”

  “We have an attending physician at all—”

  “And if God has a destiny for their souls—which from Scripture we are told, many times, is the Lord’s divine intention—then what have you already done to those souls?” Montana’s voice rose in alarm, yet Kathryn had to admit that the effect worked; a man near her whispered, “Why, yes!” with genuine shock.

  But Alex had used the moment to take the measure of Montana. “Remember that boy who fell into an icy river last winter?” It was a trap to simply answer your opponents’ questions, Kathryn knew, always on the defensive. “He was in there fifty-five minutes. When they pulled him out, he had no heartbeat, no breathing—but he’s going to junior high right this minute. Where was his soul while he was in that cold river, Reverend? Are you telling me that boy is walking around now, loved by his parents, shooting baskets in the gym—and he has no soul?”

  Kathryn clapped loudly, but no one else in the audience did. She glared at the people around her, then stopped.

  Alex made a little gesture toward her with his right hand, a grin playing at the edges of his mouth. The host said rapidly, “I’m not sure that’s—”

  “The Lord knows things you do not, sir,” Montana said severely. “He may well have taken that poor boy’s soul into his mighty grasp, held it, then returned it.”

  “Okay, then why can’t the Lord do the same for cryonics suspension patients?” Alex said mildly, turning with genuine interest toward Montana.

  “Because you are keeping them for years. For centuries!”

  “I thought God took the long view in these matters,” Alex said.

  “You are interrupting a part of life that is as natural as birth. More natural, for it leads to the very gates of heavenly reward.”

  “I’d say that was supernatural,” A
lex said, and at once saw his error, eyes darting out into the studio, for boos came from the audience.

  The host said, “You do take a short-term profit out of all this, don’t you, Mr. Cowell?”

  “What?” Alex was peering at the audience and this took him off guard.

  “You charge how much to freeze a corpse?” the host asked.

  “We regard them as patients—people who can still be saved.”

  “But how much?” Wendy joined in.

  “A hundred thousand dollars to suspend the entire body.”

  Montana said in a sly drawl, “I’d say that sounds like a lot of money. My parishioners don’t have that kind of cash to throw around, I know that.”

  “It provides for indefinite suspension,” Alex said. “In the United States we spend about fifty thousand dollars on the last two months of a hospital patient’s life, trying to haul them back from the brink of doctor-defined death.”

  Wendy said, “So you would rather people spent that money becoming chillers?”

  Alex shrugged with an easygoing smile, an exercise Kathryn had put him through repeatedly. It made him look more moderate and emotionally balanced. “I’d never deny anybody medical treatment. But I’m not alone in thinking that we’re paying a lot to extend people’s lives by just a few days.”

  “Maybe you fellas would like a slice of that money?” Reverend Montana said with a folksy grin.

  “I resent that,” Alex flared. “I—”

  “How much do you make a year, Mr. Cowell?” Wendy asked.

  “Twenty thousand,” he shot back.

  “Not much,” the host mused. “Uh, I mean—for a person of your obvious ability.”

  Not much compared to talk show hosts, you mean, Kathryn thought. Still, more than I’m pulling down right now.

  “Less than the Reverend here, I’ll bet.”

  Montana shook his head with hound-dog sadness. “I get along on the gifts of my parishioners.”

  “You expect dying people to come up with that much cash?” Wendy played this line with righteous-indignation special effects, Kathryn noted—raised eyebrows, bulging eyes, accusatory curl of lips, jutting chin.

  “No, our clients handle it through an insurance policy that pays off when they die.”

  The host turned to the audience, “That’s called a whole life policy, I believe. I always thought that just meant you paid your whole life long.”

  This got dutiful muted laughs. But Montana chose to shake his head sorrowfully. “That money could go to the relatives of the deceased, who are in their darkest hour of grief.”

  “Money doesn’t help the grieving very much, in my experience,” Alex said crisply.

  “That pays for thawing out the chiller, too?” Wendy persisted.

  “It pays for indefinitely long suspension in liquid nitrogen at seventy-seven degrees above absolute zero. That’s cold enough to arrest all decay.”

  “But who’ll thaw them?”

  “We will—Immortality Incorporated of Orange County.” Good, Kathryn thought, get in the plug.

  “A fly-by-night chiller company?” Wendy asked incredulously. “They’ve failed before, I remember.”

  “Yes, that was a tragedy, an awful, illegal—”

  “What you’re doing is legal,” Montana broke in, “though it violates the laws of God.”

  Get him, Alex! Kathryn felt such a rush of fighting spirit that for a second she was afraid she had actually shouted the words out. Hey, you’re not a cryonicist, remember? she reminded herself.

  “Reverend, I respect your calling enormously. But might I point out that Jesus gave four missions to his disciples? To heal the sick. To feed the poor. To spread the word—that’s your job. The fourth was to raise the dead. But Jesus did not say how to do these things. I’m trying a valid, scientifically possible way.”

  Montana blinked. “That is a perverse version of the Lord’s charges.”

  “I take my stand on Scripture,” Alex said mildly. Kathryn could see the smallest hint of a smile playing at the corners of his mouth, but he suppressed it.

  “You feel yours is a—a holy mission?” Wendy asked wonderingly.

  “You could put it that way,” Alex answered, remembering to lean back and nod agreeably.

  “That is a foul and deceptive claim. An insult.” Montana’s homespun veneer fell away. His nostrils flared, and he sat bolt upright, the white suit making him loom large. His reddening face showed a completely different inner personality that looked out on the world with slitted eyes, his eyebrows gathering like thick, dark knots. With some surprise Alex turned as Montana raised a massive fist and shook it under Alex’s nose, the deep voice carrying a harsh edge now: “There is only one answer for those who use the sacred word against the Lord’s true intent.”

  “Do you really believe you know God’s intentions better than anybody?” Alex asked with real curiosity, staring at the fist hovering a few inches in front of his nose.

  He doesn’t believe this guy will slug him, Kathryn realized.

  “I know the hand of the Black One when I see it,” Montana said loudly.

  “Go to it!” a man near Kathryn yelled.

  “You can’t stop ideas with fists,” Alex said, sitting back on the couch, spreading his arms out along the back of it. This was exactly the right move, Kathryn saw, because it left Montana leaning forward, threatening, fist hanging in air, face contorted. Montana blinked, seemed to recover himself. He snorted with exasperation and stood up to face the cameras, which had grouped tightly around him.

  “I won’t pretend to be kindly and civil toward such vermin,” he said loudly. “I do humbly apologize to you all, but there are some insults to God’s laws that I cannot abide.”

  The host said, “Reverend, we hope you’ll stay for—”

  “Good day to you all.” Montana waved, and the audience applauded loudly. He smiled and stalked off the set. Some aahhhs from the audience Kathryn interpreted as disappointment that a fistfight had not exploded.

  Camera #1 closed in on Alex, who shrugged lightly. Camera #2 picked up the host, who said rather shakily, “My, this is an issue that excites people. I’m sure the Reverend was only making his point powerfully, as he is well known to do, and did not intend any real harm to our guest, Mr. Cowell. Now, I—”

  “Oh no,” Alex said. “I think the only thing that stopped him was the TV cameras.”

  There were angry shouts from the audience that Kathryn could not make out. Wendy said, “I think, Mr. Cowell, you’ll have to expect people to become rather fired up about this idea of yours. After all, you’re saying we’ve been wrong about death, and our loved ones…” Her voice trailed off, as if something had just occurred to her. Her false eyelashes batted, and the host glanced with some alarm at the way her heavily lipsticked lips wavered.

  “Well, we promise you controversy here on Mornin’, L.A.! and we deliver,” the host said with bouncy verve, his grin a trifle strained. Kathryn could tell he had detected some unsteadiness in Wendy by the way he projected toward the audience a little too much, carefully not looking at her. The camera panned away from Wendy as she brought a hand up to her mouth as if to hide the sudden emotion written there.

  “So I want to thank you, Mr. Cowell of Immortality Incorporated—”

  “In Orange County,” Alex added quickly. So they can get the phone number from information, Kathryn noted admiringly. He’s not shaken up at all.

  “And we’ll be right back after this.”

  Kathryn noticed that Wendy got up and followed Alex off the set, but she did not think anything of it until she got backstage herself, flashing her pass at the guard. There was no sign of Reverend Montana. She would have liked to engage him in soulful discourse, or perhaps simply scratch his eyes out. The man’s arrogance and casual power had irritated her. Actually, she had to admit that she was relieved that he wasn’t here. Such men struck a chord of fear somewhere deep in her.

  Wendy was talking to Alex, her f
ace working with free-floating anxiety.

  “But—but if I understand, you’re saying that the graveyards, they’re filled with people who didn’t need to be there.” Wendy’s voice was high and tight. Backstage workers stopped and looked around at her.

  “Well, yes,” Alex said uncomfortably.

  “You can’t say that! You don’t know that!”

  Alex nodded, shifting his feet. He hitched his fingers into his belt, which Kathryn knew meant that he did not want to give away his unease. “It’s a gamble.”

  “Those people you freeze, they’ll probably never come back.”

  “We try to give them every chance.”

  “Chance? What chance can they have, hoping that you’ll come around in a hundred years? It’ll never happen!”

  “It might. Nobody knows the future.”

  “But—but saying that people were buried and they didn’t need to be, that, that—” Wendy’s mouth sagged, and her eyes jerked to left and right almost as though she were seeking an escape route.

  Alex caught sight of Kathryn with evident relief. He held out a hand, and she grasped it, finding his fingers cold. Kathryn kissed him lightly on the nose. “Winner by a knockout.”

  Wendy did not seem to register Kathryn’s presence. “I mean—how long can a person go, a dead person, before you can’t even freeze them anymore?”

  Alex plainly wanted to walk away from this stilted, tense conversation. But he turned back to Wendy and said carefully, “The short answer is that we don’t know. Memory fades away in brain cells, but how fast—that’s a subject for future research. I’d say a day or so.”

  “A… day.” Wendy’s mouth worked anxiously, but her eyes gazed into the distance.

  Kathryn said softly, “You lost someone?”

  “Yes, my mother.” Wendy turned almost gratefully to Kathryn. “Two months ago. We buried her in—in—”

  “I’m sorry,” Alex said.

  “And now you come here, come barging in, you say that wasn’t necessary, that we could have done something.” Wendy blinked rapidly, her eyes flitting from Kathryn to Alex and back again.