"Tomorrow and Tomorrow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sheffield Charles)

Chapter 3 Second Chance

Three and a half weeks of his efforts proved futile. After the first half-dozen tries Drake learned how to dispose ruthlessly of false leads. Unfortunately, before each one could be rejected it had to be explored. And there were so many: homeopathy, acupuncture, bipolarized interferon, amygdalin, ion rebalance, meditation, chelation, Kirlian aura manipulation, biofeed-back, quantum energy…

The list seemed endless, and hopeless. Whatever else they might do, they would not cure Ana.

By the fourth week it was obvious that Drake had to do something. Ana, though she never complained, was failing fast. He was approaching the end of his endurance. He had been sleeping only a couple of hours a night, making his data-bank searches and long-distance telephone calls when Ana lay in drugged sleep. He had canceled or postponed all commitments, except for one short television piece that could not wait. He disposed of that in a desperate seventeen-hour session, hearing as he worked at his computer the far-off voice of Professor Bonvissuto: “You think you write fast and good, Merlin? Maybe. Mozart, he write the overture for Don Giovanni, full score, in one sitting.”

When Ana was awake they spent their time in an opiate dream world, touching, smiling, savoring each other, drifting. Except that Drake had taken no drugs and he could not afford to drift. Or wait.

At last it crowded down to a single desperate option. He would have liked to discuss it with Ana, but he could not do so. If she knew what he had in mind, she would veto it. She would make him promise, on her dying body, that he would abandon the idea.

So. She must not know, must never even suspect.

When he had done all that he could and was ready for the final step, he called Tom Lambert and asked him to come over to the house.

Tom arrived after dinner. It was fantastic weather for early April, with daffodils, tulips, and hyacinths bursting into blossom after a cool spring. Life and energy seemed everywhere except inside the darkened house. Ana was sleeping in the front bedroom. Tom gave her a brief examination and led Drake into the living room. He shook his head.

“It’s going faster than I thought. At this rate Anastasia will pass into a final coma in the next three or four days. You ought to let me take her to a hospital now. There’s nothing you can do for her, and you need the rest. You look as though you’ve had no sleep for the past month.”

“There’ll be time enough for sleep. I want her to stay here with me. In fact, it will be necessary.” Drake placed Tom in the window seat and sat himself down opposite, knee to knee. He explained what he had been doing for the past week, and what he wanted Tom to do in the next few days.

Lambert heard him out without a word. Then he shrugged his shoulders.

“If that’s what the two of you want to do, Drake, it’s your call.” There was a pitying look in his eyes. “I’ll help you, of course I will. And I agree, Anastasia has nothing at all to lose. But you realize, don’t you, that they’ve never done a successful freeze and thaw?”

“On fish, and amphibians—”

“Don’t kid yourselves, Drake. Fish and amphibians mean next to nothing. We’re talking humans here. I have to tell you, in my opinion you are wasting your time and money. Just making the whole thing harder for yourself, too. What does Ana have to say about it?”

“Not much.” It was a direct lie. The idea had never been discussed with her. But how could he make a decision, this one above all, without telling Ana? Drake forced himself away from that thought and went on. “She’s willing. Maybe more for my sake than hers. She thinks it won’t work, but she agrees that she has nothing to lose. Look, I’d rather you don’t mention this to her. It’s like — like assuming she’s already dead. I’ll prepare the papers. And I’ll get Ana’s signature.”

“Better not wait too long.” Tom’s face was grim. “If you’re going to do this, she has to be able to hold a pen.”

“I know. I told you, I’ll get her signature.”

After Tom left, Drake wandered out into the backyard. It was still warm outside, with the promise of summer. But spring was a mockery, an unkind and cruel joke. He roamed from one flowering border to the next. They had created this garden with their own hands. When they moved into the house, seven years ago, the yard had been badly

neglected. It had been nothing but weeds and bare earth. He had done most of the work, but it had been according to Ana’s design and under her direction. These were her walkways and flower beds, not his. How could he bear to look at them, if she was gone?

After five minutes he went inside. He had to check all the legal procedures one more time. •

•

• Three days later Drake called Tom Lambert again to the house. The doctor went to the bedroom, felt Ana’s pulse, and took blood pressure and brain-wave readings.

He emerged stone-faced. “I’m afraid this is it, Drake. I’ll be very surprised if she regains consciousness. If you are still set on this thing, it has to be done while she has some normal body functions. Another three days… it will be a waste of time.”

The two men went together into the bedroom. Drake took a last look at Ana’s calm, ravaged face. He told himself that this was not a last farewell. At last he nodded to Tom.

“Go ahead.” He could not tear his gaze away from her face. “Any time.”

Time, time. A waste of time. To the end of time. Time heals all wounds. 0! call back yesterday, bid time return.

“Drake? Drake? Are you all right?”

“Sorry. I’m all right.” Again he nodded. “Go on, Tom. There’s no point in waiting.”

The physician made the injection. Working together, they lifted Ana from the bed and removed her clothes. Drake wheeled in the prepared thermal tank. He laid her gently into it. She was so light, it was as though part of her was already lost to him.

While Tom filled out the death certificate, Drake placed the call to Second Chance. He told them to come at once to the house. He set the tank at three degrees above freezing, as instructed. Tom inserted the catheters and the IVs. The next stages were automatic, controlled by the tank’s own programs. Blood was withdrawn through a large hollow needle in the main external iliac artery, cooled a precise amount, and returned to the femoral vein.

In ten minutes Ana’s body temperature had dropped thirty degrees. All life signs had vanished. Ana was now legally dead. To an earlier generation, Drake Merlin and Tom Lambert would have been judged murderers. It was hard not to feel that way as they sat in the silence of the bedroom, awaiting the arrival of the Second Chance team. Tom was filled with pity — for Drake. Ana was now beyond pity.

Drake’s thoughts and plans were fortunately beyond his friend’s imaginings.

He had a hard time with Tom Lambert and the three women who arrived from Second Chance. Not one of them could see a reason for Drake to go over to the Second Chance preparation facility with Ana’s body.

Tom thought that Drake couldn’t face the idea that it was all over. He urged his friend to come home with him and have a drink. Drake refused. The preparation team didn’t know what to make of it as he hovered close by them. He seemed like a ghoul or some sort of necrophiliac, yet the look on his face showed he was clearly suffering. They carefully explained that the procedures were very unpleasant to watch, especially for someone so personally involved. They agreed with Dr. Lambert. Drake would be much better off leaving everything in their experienced hands and going home with his friend. They would make sure that everything was all right. If he was worried, they would be sure to call him as soon as the work was finished.

Drake couldn’t tell them the real reason he wanted to see the whole preparation procedure, down to the last grisly detail. But by simply refusing to take no for an answer, he at last had his way.

The head of the team then decided that Drake wanted to come along because he was afraid that some element of the job would be botched. She explained the whole procedure to him, kindly and carefully, on the one-hour drive to the facility. They were sitting together in the rear of the van, next to the temperature-controlled casket.

“Most of the revivables — we much prefer that term to cryocorpses — are stored at liquid nitrogen temperatures. That’s about minus two hundred degrees Celsius. It’s almost certainly cold enough. But it’s still about seventy-five degrees above absolute zero. All measurable biological processes become imperceptible long before that. However, there are still some chemical reactions going on. The laws of statistics guarantee that a few atoms will have enough energy to

induce biological changes. And mind and memory are very delicate things. So for people who are worried about that, we make available a deluxe version. That’s what you bought. Your wife will be stored at liquid helium temperatures, just a few degrees above absolute zero. That’s supersafe. When it’s so cold, the chance of change — physical or mental — goes way down.”

And the cost, although she did not mention the fact, went way up. But cost was not even a variable to be considered from Drake’s perspective. When they arrived at the Second Chance facility he hung around the preparation room, ignoring all hints that he should wait outside; and he watched closely.

The team members became more sympathetic. They were now convinced that he was simply terrified that a mistake would be made. They allowed him to see everything and answered all his questions. He was careful not to ask anything that sounded too clinical and dispassionate. The main thing he wanted was to see, to know at absolute firsthand what had been done, and in what sequence.

After the first few minutes there was in any case not much to see. He knew that all the air cavities within Ana’s body had been filled with neutral solution, and her blood replaced with anticrystalloids. But then she went into the seamless pressure chamber. The body was held there at three degrees above freezing, while the pressure was raised slowly to five thousand atmospheres. After that was done, the temperature drop started.

“Back in the eighties and nineties, they had no idea of this technique.” The team leader was still talking to Drake, perhaps with the idea that she might make him feel more relaxed. “They used to do the freezing at atmospheric pressure. There was a formation of ice crystals within the cells as the temperature dropped, and it was a mess when the thaw was done. No return to consciousness was possible.”

She smiled reassuringly at Drake, who was not reassured at all. So they didn’t know what they were doing in the eighties and nineties. Would they claim in twenty more years that people didn’t know what they were doing now? But he had no alternative. He couldn’t wait for twenty years, or even twenty hours.

“The modern method is quite different,” she went on. “We make use of the fact that ice can exist in many different solid forms. Ice is complicated stuff, much more than most people realize. If you raise the pressure to three thousand atmospheres, then drop the temperature, water will remain liquid to about minus twenty degrees Celsius. And when it finally changes to a solid, it isn’t the familiar form of ice — what is usually called phase 1. Instead it turns to something called phase 3. Drop the temperature from there, holding the pressure constant, and at about minus twenty-five degrees it changes to another form, phase 2. And it stays that way as you drop the temperature still farther. If you go to five thousand atmospheres pressure — that’s what we are doing here — before you drop the temperature, water freezes at about minus five degrees and adopts still another form, phase 5. The trick to avoiding cell rupture problems at freezing point is to inject anticrystalloids, which help to inhibit crystal formation, then by the right combination of temperatures and pressures

work all the way down toward absolute zero, passing into and through phases 5, 3, and 2.

“That’s what we are doing now. But don’t expect to see much except dial readings. For obvious reasons, the pressure chamber is made without seams and without observation ports. You don’t get pressures of five thousand atmospheres, not even in the deepest ocean gulfs. Fortunately, once you have the temperature down below a hundred absolute, you can reduce the pressure to one atmosphere, otherwise the storage of revivables would be quite impracticable. As it is, we have many thousands stacked away in the Second Chance wombs. Every one of them is neatly labeled and waiting for the resurrection. That will come as soon as someone figures out a way to do the thaw.”

She glanced at Drake, aware that her last comment might have been the wrong thing to say. The official position at Second Chance was that everyone was revivable, and that the organization had full control of all the necessary technology. In due course everyone would be revived.

Drake nodded without expression. He had researched the whole subject in detail, and nothing that she had said so far was news. In his opinion it would be as hard to revive the early cryocorpses as it would be to get Tutankhamen’s mummy up and moving again. They had been frozen with the wrong procedure, and they were being stored at too high a temperature.

But who was he to make that decision? They had paid their deposits, and they had the right to sit there in the wombs until their rentals ran out. He had started Ana with a forty-year contract, but he thought of that as just the beginning.

He had brought with him a copy of Ana’s medical records. He added to it a full description of everything he had seen in the past hour or two, copied the whole document, and made sure that a complete set was included with the file records on Ana. When Ana’s body was finally taken away for storage he went back to the house, fell into bed, and slept like a cryocorpse himself for sixteen hours.

It was time for the next step. And it was not going to be easy.

When Drake was fully awake again, fed and bathed, he called Tom Lambert and asked to see him — at Tom’s home, rather than his office. He accepted the hefty drink that Tom prepared, after one look at him, for “medicinal purposes,” and laid out his plans.

After he was finished Tom walked over to Drake, poked the muscles in his shoulders and the back of his neck, pulled down his lower eyelid and stared at the exposed skin, and finally went to sit opposite him.

“You’ve been under a monstrous strain for the past few months,” he said quietly.

“Very true. I have.” Drake kept his voice just as calm.

“And it would be quite unnatural for your behavior or your feelings to be completely normal. In fact, if you seem normal now, it’s only because you have completely walled in your emotions. You certainly don’t understand the implications of what you are proposing to me.”

Drake shook his head. “This isn’t new. It’s only new to you. I’ve been thinking of this since the day I gave up on all other options.”

“Then that was the day you put the lid on your feelings.” Tom Lambert leaned forward. “Look, Drake, Ana was a wonderful woman, a unique woman. I won’t say I know what you have been through, because obviously I don’t. I do have some idea of your sense of loss. But you have to ask yourself what Ana would want you to do now. You can’t let the past become your obsession. She would tell you that you still have a life of your own. Even without her, you have to live it. She would want you to live it, because she loved you.” He paused. “Let me make a suggestion…”

While Tom was talking, Drake found it harder and harder to listen. The room felt dull and airless and he had trouble breathing. Tom Lambert’s words came from far off. They didn’t seem to say anything. He forced himself to concentrate, to listen harder.

“…of your work. You are still a young man. Forty to fifty good years ahead of you. And already you have a reputation. You are one of this country’s most promising composers, and your best works still lie ahead. Ana may have performed your work better than anyone else, but there will be others. They will learn. With your talent you owe it to the rest of us not to cut your career off before it reaches its peak.”

“I have no intention of doing so. I will compose again. Later.”

“You mean, later after that?” Tom was frowning and shaking his head. “Suppose there is no later? Drake, take my advice as both your doctor and your friend. You desperately need to get out of your house, and you need to take a vacation. Go off on a cruise somewhere, take a trip around the world. Expose yourself to some new influences. I know how you must feel now, but you should give it a year and see how you feel then. I guarantee you, everything will seem different. You’ll want to live again. You’ll give up this crazy idea.”

The breathless feeling was fading. Drake again had control of himself. He waited patiently until Tom was finished, then nodded agreement.

“I’ll do as you say. I’ll get away from here for a while. But if it turns out that you are wrong — if I come back to you, in, say, eight or ten years, and I ask you again, will you do it? Will you help me? I want you to give me an honest answer, and I want your word on it.”

The tension drained visibly from Tom Lambert. He snorted in relief. “Ten years from now? Drake, if you come back to me in eight or ten years and ask me again, I’ll admit I was completely wrong. And I promise you, I’ll help you to do what you’ve asked.”

“An absolute promise? I don’t want to hear some day that you changed your mind, or didn’t mean what you said.”

“An absolute promise. Sure, I’ll give you that.” Tom laughed. “But I’m not worried that I’ll ever be called on it. I’ll bet you everything I own that after a year or two have gone by, you’ll never mention that promise again. Hard as it seems to believe today, you’ll be living a new life, and you’ll be enjoying it.” He walked over to the sideboard and poured himself a drink. “I’d like to propose a toast, Drake. Or actually, three toasts. To us. To your future. And to your next — and greatest — composition.”

Drake raised his glass in return. “To us, and the future. I’ll drink to those. But I can’t drink to my next work, because I don’t know when I’ll create it. I have lots of other things to do — for one thing, you told me to get out of town. I’m going

to do that, right away. But don’t worry, Tom. I’ll be in touch when the time is right.”