Tomorrow and Tomorrow Read online

  Drake knew her name, or at least part of it. Werlich. And she knew his. They stood in the corridor, staring at each other.

  “Did you hear that?” she said at last. “Performing together. Do you think he meant it?”

  “I don’t know.” Drake had played before small groups only. The idea of a public concert froze his blood. “But he usually means what he says when it’s about music.”

  She held out her hand. “I’m Anastasia Werlich. Ana for short.”

  “I’m Drake Merlin.” He took her hand and felt an odd compulsion to admit his secret “It’s actually Walter Drake Merlin, but I really hate Walter.”

  “So don’t use it. You didn’t pick it. I’m not too fond of Werlich.” She frowned. “How much money do you have?”

  The question threw him. Did she mean in the world, or in his pocket? Either way, it was an unsatisfactory answer.

  “I have four dollars.”

  She nodded. “All right. And I have nine. So I’m the rich one. I buy you a Coke.”

  “I don’t drink Coke. Caffeine doesn’t agree with me. It gives me the jitters.” Drake wondered why he was saying something so terminally stupid. Here he was, keener to continue a conversation with Ana than he had ever been with anyone, and he sounded like he was freezing her off.

  But all she said was, “Sprite, then, or 7UP,” and she steered them off toward the cafeteria at the end of the building.

  They talked through the rest of the afternoon and all evening, so absorbed in each other that the presence of others in the cafeteria was totally irrelevant.

  It had pleased Drake at first to learn that she was as badly off as he was. Her fluent German and knowledge of the world came not from an expensive private-school education in Europe, but because Ana was an army brat, whose tough childhood had dragged her from school to school all over Europe and most of the rest of the world. Like him, Ana was poor, too poor to attend a university without a scholarship.

  And then, after just a few hours together, money or the lack of it didn’t matter.

  What did matter was that they were so keen to talk and listen to each other that Ana came close to missing her last bus home. What mattered was that when they were at the bus stop she said, with the directness that she would never lose, “I’ve been waiting to meet you since I was five years old.”

  What mattered was her face, gray eyes closed, upturned for a brief good-night kiss. When the bus drove away Drake felt the deepest loss of his eighteen years. He knew, even then, that he had found the girl he would love forever.

  That first day set the pattern for all their time together. They were with each other every moment that they could manage. When Ana had an out-of-town performance she would return home on the earliest possible flight. When commissions or premiere performances took Drake away to New York or Miami or Los Angeles, he chafed at the obligatory dinners and cocktail parties that were part of the deal. He didn’t want free dinner and drinks or extravagant praise of his talents. He wanted to be with Ana. Even in the early days, when they were desperately poor, he would go without dinner so he could take a taxi rather than a bus, and be home an hour sooner.

  Drake recalled one day when Ana was involved in a major traffic accident on the Beltway. He was in bed with a fever of 102 when a telephone call came in from a total stranger, telling him about the accident but assuring him that Ana was all right.

  He did not remember getting out of bed or dressing or driving to the scene. He recalled only the terrible feeling of possible loss, of doom hanging over him until he had his arms around her. Her car was totaled, and he didn’t notice or care. He had been consumed with the fear of losing her.

  And now…

  Drake looked at the illuminated face of the bedside clock. It was past midnight, almost one o’clock. He rose, went through to the bathroom, and flushed the prescription for tranquilizers that Tom had given him down the drain.

  There would be opportunity for sorrow later. Now he had work to do, and little time to do it. He needed all his faculties, unblurred by drugs. For twelve years he and Ana had done their thinking and planning together. It couldn’t be like that this time. She needed all her strength to fight her disease. It was up to him.

  He didn’t know what he would do, or how he would do it. He only knew he would do something.

  Ana was his life; without her there was nothing.

  He could not bear to lose her.

  He would not lose her.

  Ever.

  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 antic
rystalloids, 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.