CHILLER Page 14

  Alex shifted uncomfortably. “Well…”

  Kathryn asked, “She had stated her last wishes for burial?”

  Wendy nodded, gulping, eyes wavering.

  “Then you had to carry them out.”

  “I suppose. But I didn’t know, I hadn’t even heard of—”

  Alex said kindly, “You did what you had to.”

  Something firmed in Wendy. She shook her head and stood taller. “And it’s just a long shot, that’s what you said.”

  Kathryn was taken aback by this sudden shift of mood. Alex said, “Well, yeah.”

  “A big gamble. Costing a lot of money.”

  “True,” Kathryn said guardedly.

  “I’m sure my mother would have wanted to leave that much money to her children.”

  “Probably,” Kathryn kept her tone flat and neutral.

  With an edge in her voice Wendy said, “In fact, that’s what she did do. Left that money for the living.”

  Alex said diplomatically, “We have no argument with individual decisions like that. These are very personal matters. Your mother—”

  Wendy’s gaze hardened. “So there’s no reason, no reason at all, to listen to you people try to sell me some scheme to—”

  “Absolutely,” Kathryn said rapidly. “You did the right thing.”

  “Yes,” Alex added quickly. “Yes, that’s right.”

  “I was doing what my mother wanted.”

  “That’s right.” Alex took Kathryn’s arm and turned to go. “Thanks for all your help, and we’ll be going now.”

  As they walked out of the studio Kathryn sighed with relief. She was shaken by the raw emotions and by her own reaction. Cryonics was a long, long shot—but the reality of death now seemed far worse, a chasm of no return.

  Behind them Wendy called out, “It’ll never work anyway!”

  In the parking lot outside Kathryn gave him a solid, deep kiss before climbing into his old Volvo. “Forget her.”

  He grinned ruefully. “She could be right. For some reason we can’t guess, maybe it won’t work at all.”

  “No, I meant forget her legs.”

  “What legs?”

  “She was walking around on them.”

  “Gee, I thought she had wheels.”

  “Grrrr.”

  7

  SUSAN

  She was finishing a difficult sample preparation when a knock came at her laboratory door.

  Susan Hagerty called out, “Wait a sec!” and finished flushing the prep zone with argon. Her hands were in flex-gloves which reached into a transparent-walled isolation chamber. This part of the job was finished, and she needed a break; might as well answer the knock.

  Seal all the caps. Check the valves. Now do it again. She made herself go through all the procedures. A screw-up here would destroy months of careful labor.

  She finished and extracted her hands from the gloves. They felt clammy in the dry, faintly antiseptic air of UCI General. She waved them as she walked away from the isolation chamber, feeling her back muscles speak to her, protesting how long she had been working in a fixed position. Should get more exercise, she reminded herself. She had been working solid twelve-hour days for as long as she could remember.

  She unlocked the big metal lab door and found a secretary from her department nervously shifting from one foot to another. She was a good-looking woman in a red sheath dress, and Susan vaguely recalled that she worked in the upper reaches of UCI Medical administration. Susan didn’t seem to have the time anymore to get to know the steadily swelling ranks of new people; UCI was growing fast.

  “Sorry to bother you, Dr. Hagerty.” A cool, polyvinyl smile. “Dean Wronsky would like to see you.”

  “Okay, I’ll finish up some of my notes, and—”

  “He said, uh, right away.”

  A small alarm went off way in the back of her mind, as distant as the echo of a pealing church bell in a far valley. Sending a human messenger was part of the message. “I’ll be there.”

  “Well, he wanted me to bring you up.”

  “I can find my own way, thanks.”

  She kept her voice neutral, letting the words alone carry all the sarcasm. The secretary frowned, as if trying to puzzle out something, then Susan closed the door.

  Some secretaries still felt awkward dealing with physicians who happened to be women. At times they unconsciously slipped into a we’re-just-nobodies camaraderie with Susan. Often they automatically assumed that Susan would jump to do the bidding of as august a person as the dean.

  When she was ushered into Dean Wronsky’s office a few minutes later, she saw immediately how he helped along the secretaries’ reverential attitude. The room was startling after the fluorescent and linoleum and shiny enameled surfaces of the hospital outside. Here a jade-green Chinese rug spread like a tranquil mountain clearing, its design of bamboo stalks radiating outward from a center of frosted lime. The rug lapped at the base of well-oiled paneling of tongue-in-groove cedar, which exhaled a woodsy air. An ample Louis XIII sofa occupied one wall of the spacious preserve, upholstered in a pale blue-green that perfectly matched the rug. The sofa led Susan’s eye to broad windows that cast a slanted wedge of afternoon sunlight into the hushed spaces here. A polished mahogany desk dominated the room. A broad felt pad of forest-green filled most of the desk top, supporting only a file folder and a brass pen holder, which held two gold-plated pens with ebony crowns. The remaining light in the room came from three copper lamps, one a spindly floor model and the other two on end tables bracketing the sofa.

  It was a textured, welcoming space, the lamps shedding buttery radiance in pools. The single intrusion from the hard-edged hospital ambience outside was the plastic-rimmed file folder that lay on the desk blotter. Even that matched the blotter’s deep green; she wondered if that was deliberate.

  The dean sat in a posture that looked studied, leaning just far enough back into his tall leather chair to be able to place one hand on the folder. He smiled and said, “I’m happy you could join us,” without looking happy at all.

  “Us” included Sidney Blevin, who half-rose from the sofa in an apparently aborted gesture of politeness.

  Susan felt her pulse rate increase. The Skinner incident last week. I’ve been so busy, I completely forgot it.

  Dean Wronsky had the affable look of a man who enjoyed life and had, in Susan’s judgment, let it take a toll of him. She estimated that he was about twenty pounds overweight, though his beige sharkskin suit was expertly tailored to reduce the usual midriff bulge and narrow chest. His face was slightly pudgy, giving him an air of generosity and calm judgment. A quick intelligence showed itself in his veiled eyes and the guarded set of his mouth. She had met him only once before, at the reception welcoming him half a year before. He had been captured by the administration from Harvard, a coup accomplished by an above-scale salary and certain perks that were only whispered about but certainly included a Lincoln Continental that he parked in a slot bearing his name; she saw it every day on her hike in from a distant parking lot.

  Susan followed his languid gesture to a wicker wing-backed chair, sat, crossed her legs.

  “I’ve been reading with great interest this most recent quarterly report of yours,” Wronsky said. “Good, yes, very good.”

  “Thanks,” Susan said. She knew one of her own irritating traits was an unwillingness to smooth conversations along when plainly the other person was trying to, so she added, “It’s the culmination of a decade of work.”

  “Umm, I’m sure, I’m sure,” Dean Wronsky said rather obscurely. He opened his mouth, firming up the thick lips to say something decisive, then frowned, the lips going slack. “I must say I was surprised. To be able to hold a specimen that long, below freezing, and recover it—intact and functional—after weeks. I would not have believed it.”

  “Yes,” Blevin said dryly.

  Susan caught the edge in his voice. Before she could stop herself, she shot Blevin a piercing look. “Wh
at?”

  The dean hurried to intercede. “I read very carefully your description of the actual revival. Admirable use of these new compounds you’ve spent so much time developing, these…”

  “Transglycerols,” she supplied.

  “Odd name,” Blevin said.

  “They perform the same function as glycerol, only better,” Susan said. “They raise the transport rate of water through cell walls. As we freeze—”

  “We?” Blevin’s eyebrows rose.

  “I. As I freeze the cells, these transglycerols speed water evacuation from the cells themselves. Before actually freezing, water spreads easily outside cell membranes, easing the pressure imbalances. That lessens the ripping damage if ice crystals do form. It also inhibits harm to enzymes, I found.”

  The dean gave Blevin a veiled look that Susan could not read. “I gather that you spent years simply developing these glycerol-type compounds. This was your first use on a living specimen?”

  “No, I worked with tissue samples first. Then smaller species. Insects first, then mice.”

  “All done here?”

  “Mostly. I have lab space here and on campus.”

  The dean leaned back, tapping the folder. “Supported by NIH.”

  Susan nodded. The National Institutes of Health spent a bit for the development of cold preservation of organs—cryopreservation. Saving human body parts was already standard procedure. Surgeons routinely salvaged skin, corneas, heart valves, even human embryos and froze them for later use. In fact, it had been the astonishing saving of embryos, those compact constellations that cradled the miracle of human inheritance, that had first interested Susan in trying for something bigger, grander. She started research in the late 1980s. It had been a long, hard labor. “They’ve kept me going. UCI chipped in, too.”

  “Yes…” The dean paused, tapping the folder again. “But there is no record of any experiments here on… dogs.”

  Here it came. “I didn’t do the dog revival here.”

  Blevin said sharply, “Where, then?”

  “Private lab.”

  “Private! You know damn well—” Blevin broke off when the dean raised his hand.

  “Which laboratory was that?” the dean asked mildly.

  “Longevity Laboratories.”

  “Ummm. Never heard of them.”

  Blevin said nothing, but peered at her closely.

  The dean asked, “Where are they?”

  Keep things matter-of-fact, girl, she thought. “Right here, Orange County.”

  Blevin looked disconcerted. He shifted uncertainly on the Louis XIII couch, his orange sweater clashing so strongly with the subdued colors that she had a momentary, mad fantasy of the couch attacking him, turning into a giant yawning blue-green mouth with a drooling scarlet tongue, and swallowing the offending orange morsel whole, like an exotic fruit. She suppressed the lunatic image and the beginnings of a grin. Time to be strictly professional, yes.

  The dean opened the file, which she read upside down: HAGERTY BKGND. Background on what? “I could not help but notice that your file in the Register of Animal Experimentation does not mention any work with higher animals.”

  Couldn’t help it, see, somebody forced me to read this specially prepared file… “I didn’t go any higher than mice.”

  “Not here, you mean.”

  “Right.”

  Because I’d have to go before the whole review board, she thought. The pressure from animal rights activists was incessant. They would want all details, and of course they would be horrified to learn that she had killed Sparkle by freezing. The UCI guidelines on animal experiments did not include such methods.

  Yet cooling down was a painless method, leading to lethargy and then a deep sleep well before onset of the conventional definition of death. That fact made no difference to the animal rights types, though, and universities all across the land were careful not to offend their tender feelings.

  Susan had some sympathy with the animal rights movement, but she indulged in no sentimentality about which came first, mice or men. To her, “rights” themselves were the wrong way to look at relations between species. In a time ruled not by reason but by lawyers, ideas like rights, which evolved to lubricate human relations, were extended willy-nilly in all directions. No species had an inherent right to live to a fat old age, including humans. They won that “right” by making it happen. All life fed off other life, down to the very bottom rung of the food chain. And animal rights movements themselves had no affection for cockroaches or snakes or even lowly lab mice, preferring to focus on pets like kittens and rabbits. And dogs.

  The dean pursed his lips, sighed. “I am sorry to say that is a violation of our regulations.”

  She knew it was, of course. Her moves had been thought out long ago. “I did not do the work using UCI or NIH funding.”

  The dean nodded. “However, in a UCI document you report animal experiments far beyond our guidelines.”

  “True. I believe I can defend them.”

  Blevin said, “Ah—but these ‘transglycerols.’ You developed them here.”

  “Of course. I—”

  “Regulations cover use of experimental chemicals developed at UCI,” Blevin said triumphantly.

  “Some types of chemicals,” the dean added.

  “I can explain my—”

  “And use in an unauthorized facility may well transgress the regulations as well,” Blevin said rapidly, warming to his subject.

  He had engineered this whole meeting, of course, and made up that folder. He must have seen her quarterly report, which after all was a public document. Once he saw her mention of Sparkle, it was simple to bring her research to the attention of The Dean. That was how it must have happened. Deans spent their energies managing bureaucratic appetites and getting money, not sipping from the heady wine of research reports.

  She kept her voice flat, factual. “Look, I reported the experiments with the dog in a UCI format, sure. Rules require that. But the crucial experiment was done on my own time, away from here.”

  “That may be insufficient to absolve you,” the dean said in an oracular, rolling voice. It was the kind of tone that was useful at fund-raisers, usually at the conclusion of speeches titled “Whither Medicine?”

  “Huh? Absolve me from what?”

  “From working in areas UCI has never sanctioned,” Blevin said mysteriously.

  Here it comes. “What areas?”

  “Freezing bodies,” Blevin said sternly.

  Somehow Blevin had found out. Her earlier sharp words with him, the dustup with Skinner and Mrs. Yamada on rounds—that had put him on the scent. There had probably been some speculation about her; every researcher in cryopreservation of separate organs might be a closet supporter of cryonics, after all. She wondered if all this stemmed from her momentary fit of ill temper last week. Blevin’s callous, purely technical treatment of her patient’s results had pried up the lid on Susan’s long-standing irritation at the manner of medical treatment.

  I let my fatigue and personal dislike override my own professionalism, she thought. And this is the upshot. I’ve really blown it this time. So ends my secret life.

  “I’ve worked here on cryopreservation for over a decade.” She hoped it came out calm, unconcerned.

  Blevin leaned forward, his orange sweater bagging. “Preserving organs for transplant, certainly. Not whole creatures.”

  “I repeat, I did no experiments on whole-body preservation here at UCI.”

  The dean looked judiciously at the file folder, arching his bushy gray eyebrows, an almost theatrical effect. “But you are reporting on such work in this document.”

  “Right. It is a natural continuation of—”

  “Natural!” Blevin said. “You’re working with those loonies who freeze corpses. Take the money of sick people. Sell them false hopes for a fast buck and promise them eternal life.”

  Susan said with deliberate calmness, “Nothing’s eternal, Dr. Blev
in.”

  The dean looked almost relieved by Blevin’s outburst, as though at last all the cards were on the table and he had not had to put them there. “Then you do not deny these further charges.”

  “What charges? That was just verbal abuse.” Admit nothing.

  “You have carried out research far beyond the areas which NIH and, yes, UCI have allowed.” The dean steepled his hands in the air and peered at her over them, his mouth becoming a stern, flat line.

  “What I’ve done is a natural extension of my previous work. Once we know how to keep cells from suffering mechanical damage, and how to prevent enzyme loss—”

  “You just stated to us that you did this work with something called Longevity Laboratories, correct?” Blevin talked right over her explanation.

  “Right.” Maybe if I just answer the questions, volunteer nothing—

  “And what is the relation of this outfit with something called Immortality Incorporated?” Blevin spoke the name with distaste and contempt.

  Oh damn. So much for the cover story. “They’re… connected.”

  “Using a fictitious company to hide her outside associations,” Blevin said triumphantly.

  “Not fictitious. They’re legally separate entities.”

  Blevin snorted in derision. “A transparent dodge.”

  “Longevity supports research in cryopreservation. Immortality carries out cryonic suspensions.”

  The dean looked puzzled. “Suspensions?”

  Susan looked at him soberly. “They freeze patients after they have been declared dead by current medical standards.”

  “Current medical…?” The dean sniffed. “Dead is dead, Dr. Hagerty.”

  “No, sir, not in the light of history. Dead means ‘we’re so ignorant, we don’t know how to revive this person.’ That’s all.”

  The dean said, “Nonsense. After you’ve lost all heart function—” “There’s cardioversion,” she interjected.

  The dean’s mouth tightened. “Heart function and brain function, as I was going to say, well then, the brain quickly sustains neuronal damage which cannot be repaired.”

  Great. At least the discussion’s back onto something resembling medical grounds. “No, sir”—a humble gesture can’t hurt—“a few minutes without oxygen doesn’t impair the neurons. It damages the brain’s circulatory system, clogs it. That’s why people revived after five or ten minutes, if they’ve been at room temperature, show brain function loss. They don’t get a good oxygen supply again.”