CHILLER Page 18

  “It says plain as day, ‘And ye shall know that I am the Lord, when I have opened your graves, O my people, and brought you up out of your graves.’ But before that Ezekiel says over and over that the bones were very dry and white.”

  “True enough.”

  “So the bodies must rot first, before resurrection.”

  “Ah.”

  “Then their graves can be opened. But these corpse-freezers, they stop the natural process.”

  “You have hit upon the perfect text,” the Reverend said. “I only wish I had done so well on that TV talk show.”

  “You were wonderful.”

  The Reverend brushed aside the compliment and returned to George’s own life. With nods and small phrases he brought forth more and more. And forgave. George felt himself lifted, as if the mass of knotted troubles that he had carried now for years were borne away by bright-winged angels. He spoke of his love of order and cleanliness, of mathematics and numbers, and finally of his profession. Of his search for a mission, and his dawning conviction that somehow this time and this place held the answer.

  When he was finished, wrung out, the Reverend pursed his lips. “You are a valiant warrior, sent at a crucial moment in our struggle. Brother George, I think you should continue this”—the Reverend paused an instant, his large eyes peering up into the high vaulting of the massive, shadowed study—“this harrying of our enemies. It is God’s work, indeed.”

  “I’d hoped you’d say that… support the work…”

  The Reverend frowned again, this time a different, deeper scowl that suggested the weight of unseen obligations upon his broad shoulders. “The cathedral has many tasks.” Smoothly, as though to get some distance from George’s trembling supplications. “I fear we have little money to help.”

  “Oh, nossir! That’s not what I meant.”

  “The effort you described, your plans, the harassment of these Godless people—that will require time, perhaps money. I support these ideas fully, but as they verge on matters no Church should undertake, I hope you understand, my friend George, that I cannot publicly support them. Indeed, I cannot even condone them.”

  “Sir, I only want your blessing for my struggle against them.”

  “That is freely given, brother. You do understand, however, that we of the cathedral do not oppose true scientific research, including especially the preservation of organs.”

  “I don’t know anything about that,” he said uncertainly.

  “There are fine companies, one right here in Orange County, devoted to saving organs for transplantation. A Dr. Lomax has achieved much in this field and contributed handsomely to the construction of the cathedra] itself. A good man.”

  Montana peered closely at George, making him uncomfortable. “I don’t care about that stuff. That’s different,” George said.

  Montana seemed relieved. “Good. Now, I don’t wish to be told of your plans or of your detailed actions.”

  George nodded. “The Lord’s soldiers must keep their own counsel.”

  The Reverend sat back in the thick brown folds of his chair, visibly relieved. “Still, in doing such works of virtue, you will need to support yourself.”

  “I can do it through my—my method.”

  “Method?”

  So George told him of his other side, of mathematics and banks and the river of cash in which he swam.

  It took a while. The Reverend did not at first comprehend, and then he did not believe it was even possible. But George pulled forth his decks of credit cards, showed the bountiful paper prosperity he had created with them, and the Reverend’s face became rapt with thoughtful respect.

  After a long, meditative silence, the Reverend said, “You feel that this method of making a living is sinful?”

  “Well, it is, isn’t it?”

  “You can’t think in the usual way about yourself, friend. You are not a usual person.”

  “I never tell anybody about it. I mean, I don’t have any relatives to speak of. Not that I’d ever call them.”

  “Unethical. At least sleazy. That’s what you’ve been feeling that other folks would think about you, isn’t it?”

  George nodded. There was worse, much worse, but George knew that he was no sinner for killing the high school principal. That was a blood debt he had paid off, pure and simple. But he would not speak of such things now. They would merely clutter this discussion, which had already so lifted from him a burden of wrong thoughts.

  “You’ve been saying to yourself that you’re living off other people’s money?”

  “Well, I am.”

  “When you get a line of credit from the American Express people—say, five thousand dollars—do you imagine that they take five thousand dollar bills and put it in a shoebox somewhere, saying ‘This is George’s money now, nobody else touch it’—do you?”

  “No, it’s just an electronic notation. Still—”

  “The only reason you’ve got that five thousand is because people think you have five thousand.”

  He pondered for a moment, and he couldn’t see anything wrong with that argument. One of the things he liked about the Reverend was that this big, important man with plenty to do would sit there and talk to George, letting him figure things through in silence. Most other people hurried you.

  “You are not thinking deeply enough, my brother. Now, I know you are a very intelligent fella—shucks, you’re way smarter ‘n I am!—but you’ve been fed a lot of media lies.”

  “But in Corinthians it says—”

  “Please don’t quote Scripture to me, brother. I could quote plenty more back at you.”

  “I’m sorry, but—”

  “George, do you know how most people make money—big money?”

  “Sure, they invent something, or get a big salary, or—”

  “No!” The Reverend smacked his palm flat on the slick leather arm of his chair. “That’s what most people think, but I’m a little surprised, George, that you do, too.”

  He said hurriedly, “I know there are plenty other ways, movie stars, gold mines—”

  To his surprise the Reverend laughed heartily, slapping his hands on his knees and rocking forward. The laugh cut off suddenly, and with theatrical grace Reverend Carl gazed slowly up at George. “How about the banks?”

  George hesitated. “Uh…”

  “They make it off you and me. Off our money. Most of the big guys have always made their fortune by using other people’s money!”

  He felt a puzzled pleasure spread through him. “The fat cats.”

  “You betcha—they got fat on your money. And mine. On all the little people.”

  “You’re not little.”

  “Oh, I am. Born poor. Hope to die poor, too—after giving it all away to others, in the service of Christ.”

  “Like Jesus.”

  “Like the Jesus who drove the moneylenders from the temple, George. Not that I compare myself to Him.”

  He saw the Reverend’s point and nodded vigorously.

  “I think you don’t give yourself enough credit, George. I think you’re not a thief. Just the opposite.”

  “Opposite?” He was replaying the story of Jesus in the temple, seeing the scene of crashing tables and spilling gold coins, righteous anger blazing from the Savior’s eyes.

  “Government bigwigs are all the time complaining and worrying about ‘consumer growth’ slowing down, about recession. You help with that for them. You keep money moving, George. Take an advance from Subitomo, stimulate our economy with it, and pay it back somewhere downstream with a MasterCard. I got to hand it to you—it’s a brilliant idea.”

  “You really think—I mean, I’m not sinning at all?”

  The Reverend frowned solemnly and a little sadly, the way he did in the sermon when he got to the really serious part. “The true meaning of a man’s labor is which direction it points. You support yourself this smart way to carry out divine purposes. How can work—warrior’s work—be sinful? Th
at’s the crucial point, George.”

  A warm and peaceful gratification stole over him like a benediction.

  “Money isn’t real, my friend. It’s not like having land or owning some chickens. It’s a figment. A fiction. A story we make work for the Lord.”

  “I—I kind of knew that. It bothered me a little, but I could feel how important it was to keep going, to be ready for my future missions.”

  He peered around the big room, its recesses of thick books and biblical sources. There was a Wall of Respect, thickly covered with plaques and medals and photographs of the Reverend with famous people. Deeply tanned movie stars with perfect white teeth. The Reverend Billy Graham. Even two presidents, smiling in big glossy prints, autographed. This was a place of learning and authority and it spoke to him silently with its heavy cedar scent, its smooth leather, its cottony quiet broken only by a grandfather clock’s solemn brass pendulum stroke and the faint patter of rain. Here was purpose, weight, destiny.

  “Those who freeze the dead and rob them of their salvation are worthy foes for your missions.” The Reverend’s deep baritone soothed his thoughts and yet quickened his pulse.

  “I have friends in the mortuary profession, good God-fearing members of this church. Parishioners who make an honest dollar burying those who have passed beyond, in proper Christian ground. They tell me tales of what these cryonics people do to the bodies before freezing—stories that would horrify you.”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “Frozen bodies do not release the soul to heaven. That is the role of decay.”

  “I see that. Every decent person should.”

  The Reverend’s voice seemed to fill the room. “Even the papists disapprove of cryonics. All faiths are united in this.”

  George felt a trembling, awed energy within himself.

  “These people who make their chillers, as the jokes say—those people are far worse sinners than you ever could be, my brother George. And their name: Immortality Incorporated! That is a blasphemy itself.”

  George nodded, but he could hardly follow the Reverend’s words, his mind was swirling so with thick, hot emotion. “My mission—it’s very important to me.”

  The Reverend came from behind his big desk and stood over George, his height seeming to take him soaring up into the gabled gothic ceiling of the study, like the upthrusting columns of the Marble Cathedral, forever yearning skyward.

  “Do you know Ecclesiastes forty-one, George?”

  “Uh… ‘Fear not the sentence of death’?”

  “You are a scholar. The rest says, ‘Remember them that have been before thee, and come after: this is the sentence from the Lord over all flesh. And why dost thou refuse, when it is the good pleasure of the Most High?’ It was as though the word were spoken directly to us. To you and me.”

  The Reverend laid a fatherly hand on George’s shoulder. “Your mission is clear. Go forth, brother, and may the Spirit fill you in the service of the Lord.”

  “I—yes. Yes.” The room felt warm, constricting him.

  “Go, with Jesus walking beside you.”

  As the Reverend raised his hands in benediction, a spotlight caught a facet in his gleaming hair. George left blindly, his mind swarming. He registered nothing more until he was outside, walking back to his car in the night of rain and fog, amid moist tendrils and muffled murmurs. His heart thumped hard with longing and fresh power.

  3

  KATHRYN

  The first six melodious notes of a Bach chorale sounded in the large storage bay. Kathryn knew this was the signal announcing a nonemergency call on the main I2 telephone line, but she kept a firm grip on two guy wires. They held in place a large steel cylinder that was canted at an angle, looming up into the bay.

  “Who’s got phone duty tonight?” Alex asked, not looking up front his welding job. Bright blue sparks cast strange shadows across the faces of Alex and Ray Constantine as they worked on a seam of the cylinder. Their goggles made them look like underwater divers.

  Kathryn said reluctantly, “Me.” There was something serene about doing manual labor, a relief from her chatter-clogged day job in retail sales, and she didn’t want the mood interrupted. But she secured the lines and trotted into the executive office, catching the phone just before the answering program cut in.

  I2 had an extensive integrated telephone and computer system, and she found it daunting despite all her practice. With some hesitation she punched a blinking button and said, “Good evening, Immortality Incorporated.”

  “You’re the people who were on the TV, right?” A woman, voice thin and edgy.

  More fallout from Alex’s appearance. “Some of our staff have been on talk shows, yes.”

  “You freeze people, right?”

  Many of their calls were from cranks. By now Kathryn had learned the protocols for dealing with a public that was often hostile and even obscene. Keeping a professional manner was the best defense, but she still had to brace herself for each call. She found she had been holding her breath. “We cryonically suspend them, yes.”

  This time there was no nasty accusation, no cry of “Heathen grave robber!”—just a long silence, a decisive intake of breath at the other end, and then the distant woman’s words came tumbling out as though from a bursting heart.

  “It’s my mother, Mildred Appleton. I was thinking all the time these last three days, while we were holding vigil at her bedside, after her second stroke, the bad one. I talked to her about it, even. She could still understand what I was sayin’ and I told her how I saw your people on the TV and how you looked and all and would she like to try that, and she didn’t understand much at first, but when she did, she nodded and said yes. Yes, she would.”

  Kathryn said carefully, “And how is your mother?”

  This brought a wrenching sob. “She’s gone—gone. Just of a sudden, coughed and spat up this dark stuff, and then they did that, you know, called the code and all, and—heart attack, it was. On top of her stroke.”

  “I’m so sorry to hear that.” Kathryn put all the care she could into her voice to mask her own sinking feeling. She wished fervently that she were back holding the guy lines.

  “It was so quick. The doctor, he said she’d maybe even overcome this stroke thing, get some of her left side movement back. He never said she would just up and die of a sudden like this.” The woman’s voice had turned adamant, almost irritable. Like many of the bereaved, she unconsciously thought that there was someone to blame.

  “Well, you know that medicine is not perfect, Mrs.…?”

  “Fiegelman, Doris Fiegelman, I’m her daughter. But he should have warned us. Told us, you know? I would’ve called you people right away if I’d even had the slightest suspicion that—”

  “How long has she been dead, Mrs. Fiegelman?”

  A sniff, a cough. Kathryn glanced at the digital clock—11:27 P.M. “Just, well, less than two hours, I’d say.”

  It was best to let them down easy. “And where is she now?”

  A measure of pride came into the voice. “Right away I got the hospital here to take her down, put her in the cold place.”

  “The holding morgue?”

  “Right, it has these long drawers in it, refrigerated and all, they just wheeled her right in. I made sure of that.”

  “I see.” There was fractured pain in the voice at the other end, a tightening of Doris Fiegelman’s throat that forced her sentences to end on a ragged note, as though she were hurrying to get through them.

  “So I came up here to the waiting lounge, I asked information, they were real nice, didn’t take any time at all, I found your people’s number. My brother, he’s not so sure about all this, but right off I told him not to interfere.”

  Well, here it comes. But all she could think to say was, “I see,” again.

  “So I said I’d wait here for you. It’s gettin’ late at night, I know, but you people, you must have some arrangements with—”

  “Mrs. Fiegelman, your
mother never had any contact with us, did she?”

  “Well, no. How could she? She was a terrible sick woman, been in this hospital three weeks, near.”

  The rising tone of the voice spelled trouble. Kathryn retreated into a calm, mechanical manner, telling herself that it was easier that way, really. “First, Mrs. Fiegelman, you yourself, speaking for your mother, cannot give informed consent under these circumstances. You are under severe emotional strain at this time. It simply isn’t possible for you to become adequately educated about us or—”

  “I saw you on TV.”

  “—or be objective about cryonics. Not given the emotional pressures and these circumstances. We—”

  “Look, I know enough. I know my mother’s goin’ to go into a hole in the ground unless I do somethin’.”

  “Of course, and I sympathize with you completely. But when you later understand about cryonics, well then, you could change your mind, couldn’t you? That could expose us to serious litigation.”

  “I’m not gonna change my mind, I tell you! I’ll sign anything you want.”

  “The lawyers call that signing under duress, Mrs. Fiegelman. It’s reversible, believe me—our company has been through that before.”

  “Listen, I’m the executor of my mother’s estate. I can dispose of her remains. That should be enough for you.”

  “Even if you had her will right there, Mrs. Fiegelman, we would still be on shaky legal grounds. I—”

  “But I said I’ll sign any paperwork you want.”

  “How about your brother? He has an interest in this, and you remarked that he—”

  “I’ll take care of him, don’t you worry!”

  “I wish we could be sure of that, but our experience—”

  “You’re actin’ like a hospital or something here. Bunch of clerks and lawyers, wantin’ to see the charge cards and all before they’d even let her into a bed or anything. I can show you all that same stuff, I got it right here with me, Blue Cross—”

  “Medical plans do not cover this, believe me.” Stay calm, articulate, neutral. “Questions of legal authority take time, often—”

  “Time is what we don’t have. I mean, my mother’s down there, I had them even pack some ice in around her. She needs you now.” The voice was nettled, terse. “You people, you should be set up, you know, like the ambulance, come when you’re called, on the double.”