Host, p.29
Host, page 29
‘Hello?’ he said.
It was Juliet and her voice was strange, not drunk, but very slurred. She sounded in great distress. ‘Joe. Please …come … and … help me. Please … can you … come quickly.’
‘Where are you?’ He was aware of a clank as someone, presumably Karen, picked up the other receiver, but he didn’t pay any attention.
‘I’m asht … university. Compusher room. Terrible pain – my head. Can’t move my legs. ’Sh’I’m paralysed.’
‘I’ll be right there,’ he said. ‘I’ll come straight over.’
He ran downstairs, pushed his way through the gathering, pulled his coat out from under several that had been heaped on top, checked that his car keys were in the pocket, then made his way towards the front door.
Karen cut him off, blocking his path by pressing her back to the door. Her expression was venomous. ‘Where the hell are you going, Joe?’
‘I won’t be long – I have to go to the university – one of my students is sick.’
‘Juliet, I presume?’
He hesitated a moment too long before replying. ‘For God’s sake, don’t be ridiculous.’
‘You bring me back a gift-wrapped dog turd, then you walk out on my birthday party and you tell me not to be ridiculous?’
‘I’ll be back in a quarter of an hour.’
‘It takes you a quarter of an hour just to get to the university.’
Joe glanced desperately at the guests either side of them, lowering his voice. ‘Karen, this girl is dying. She has an aneurism and could drop dead anywhere. I have to make sure she’s OK.’
Karen lowered her voice also. ‘You leave now, Joe, you go out that door and I’m taking Jack and moving back to Toronto. Do you understand?’
Joe breathed deeply and nodded, his heart aching. ‘Half an hour. Straight there and back,’ he said. Then he went out.
33
October 1990. Felixstowe Docks.
Customs Officer Titcombe was beginning to regret his decision to have the metal dewar containing the frozen body opened up. It was nearly six in the evening and his shift officially ended an hour ago. But the team of people he had been forced to allow in to perform the opening up were still preparing their equipment. And he wanted to see for himself.
The dewar had now been removed from its plastic container and lay on its side on the floor of the shed. Ten cylinders of liquid nitrogen stood near it and the team were all dressed in protective clothing with face shields; they looked like firefighters about to deal with a chemical blaze.
Titcombe had a date tonight, a girl whom he was meant to be meeting at eight. He looked around with growing irritation. The team seemed to be milling around now, wasting his time deliberately.
‘Right, come on, must be about ready; what are you waiting for?’
‘The ice box,’ a man said. ‘It’s another cylinder which will be maintained at the same temperature, see; we can transfer the patient straight into it. Should be here in about an hour.’
‘About an hour!’ Titcombe exploded, but he knew he was defeated. He’d been bombarded with phone calls and faxes all day. An English lawyer was now present in the room, as well as a doctor and several scientists. And a lawyer in Los Angeles had warned him in no uncertain terms of the consequences of damaging the corpse. Death certificates had been faxed to him, as well as documents from the LA and Denver coroners offices and Crycon Extended Life Foundation’s credentials as a mortuary. Crycon, indeed! Con was just the right word for it if you asked him. Christ, he’d had no idea how many people took this crap so seriously. In the end, to try to cut the process short, he’d agreed that all he would do would be to look inside the dewar, check that it really was a human cadaver, then allow them to seal it straight back up. He would not request the cadaver to be thawed and medically examined.
He gripped a styrofoam cup of coffee between his frozen hands, grateful for its warmth, and looked at the American doctor. Forrester had been making him angry, making him boil at times. Everything was becoming too damned American in England. Burgers; lawnmower engines; clothes; television; now corpses. We were importing American corpses, for Christ’s sake!
Titcombe shook his head. ‘I still don’t understand what sort of medical research you’re going to do over here, Dr Forrester.’ He said ‘Dr’ each time with a snide twist in his voice. ‘Why do you need an American corpse – surely you could freeze an English one?’
The American ran his eye up and down Titcombe. ‘You mean like a dead version of yourself.’
The customs officer hesitated, unsure how to take the remark.
Forrester eyed him again, carefully, then shook his head. ‘Nope, wouldn’t work. You wouldn’t be any good. We need a whole human being, not just an asshole in a uniform.’
Titcombe looked back at him, seething, slopping hot coffee on his hands in his rage, and ignoring it. He wagged a threatening finger. ‘Don’t push your luck, doctor, you’re not through customs and immigration yourself yet.’
He glared at his watch, then at the total chaos in the shed. His phone had rung non-stop all afternoon with a succession of shipping agents whingeing about the delay in clearing the Arctic Venus’s cargo. There would be complaints to his superiors which wouldn’t do him much good, although he knew he would get their support. Corpses were regularly used for gem and drugs smuggling, but they were normally shipped by air. He was right to query a corpse coming by sea. Quite right.
Except he had never seen a dead body before and the prospect was beginning to make him a little scared.
*
It was nine o’clock before the last bolt was unscrewed, then four men in protective clothing began struggling to remove the lid of the capsule. As it finally came free, a dense, hissing cloud of steam engulfed them.
They carried the lid clear and laid it on the ground with a metallic clank, and Titcombe stared wide-eyed into the container from which strange, almost ethereal steam was now pouring. It seemed to take an age before it began to clear, and as it did so he looked away, too scared for a moment to peer inside. When he finally did, all he could see was what looked like blue wadding.
Two of the men crouched down, inserted their gloved hands and gripped the sides of a metal tray. As it rolled stiffly out, Titcombe could see that the wadding was in fact a quilted blue nylon sleeping bag, coated in ice, and tied in a cylindrical bundle with webbing straps. Both men turned to Titcombe, as if giving him the opportunity to stop now, if he wanted. Someone else was timing the proceedings on a stop watch and another person was taking photographs. Wisps of steam drifted through them. It was like a dream, Titcombe thought; a frigging eerie dream.
One of the men tried in vain to free the buckles with his gloved fingers. ‘Frozen solid,’ he said.
‘Cut them!’ the American ordered. ‘You’re taking too long. One minute, maximum.
Someone reached forward with a knife and the man slit each of the three straps, then pulled the bag open. Titcombe could scarcely look, so great was his fear now. He stared at the ground and bit his lip until several gasps of amazement and a babble of remarks made him look up. Something glistened between the folds of nylon, like a window.
He stepped forward cautiously, heart in his throat, and looked down, struggling to keep control as he found himself staring at a face encased in ice that was as clear as glass.
He trembled in awe, afraid to go on looking but too fascinated to turn away. ‘Christ,’ he said. ‘Been dead fifteen years?’ He continued to stare down, transfixed. ‘Not decomposed at all.’ A massive shiver rocked him. ‘Christ – it’s like – it’s – not dead at all – just asleep.’ He managed a nervous twitch of a smile, then felt the goosepimples racing up his back. He turned to the group around him, no longer the king pin but a frightened man in need of reassurance. ‘As if it – could – you know – wake up at any moment.’ He forced a short laugh. But no one joined him.
‘OK?’ the American said tensely. ‘Seen enough –’ It wasn’t a question.
34
Joe ran from the car park down the steps and around to the front of the COGS building. He pushed open the door and stopped in the lobby. Half past nine on a Saturday night and the place felt deserted. A Student Union poster fluttered in the draught as the door swung shut behind him; the heating system pumped away, a steady clatter above him, and a warm draught purred on his neck. He ran past the closed and dark enquiry office, down the stairs into the basement, pushed open the fire door at the bottom and sprinted along to the far end of the narrow corridor.
When he flung the door open, there was a sharp whirr and Clinton clattered towards him. Joe ignored the robot. Juliet was slumped at a strange angle across her keyboard, hair awry. The screen was packed full, as usual, with rows of hexadecimal numbers. He ran across to her.
‘Juliet?’
She did not move. One eye stared weakly up at him, like the eye of a dying fish, with only the barest hint of recognition. He took her right hand, which was limp, and fumbled for her pulse. Her skin felt clammy. He leaned over and kissed her but she didn’t react.
‘What’s happened?’ he said. There was no response. ‘Juliet, what’s happened?’ he asked again, although he knew the answer. He found a pulse, and it was so desperately faint he didn’t even bother timing it. ‘I won’t be a sec,’ he said, went across the room, stood watching her for a moment from the doorway, then sprinted back down the corridor to the payphone. He dialled 999, asked for an ambulance and gave them directions.
Then he took a card from his wallet on which he had a list of emergency numbers, and dialled Murray McAlister, a doctor who was one of the six members of a deanimation team on permanent standby for call out. Joe told him the situation.
McAlister said that they had friends round to dinner, but he could meet Joe at the Prince Regent Hospital in Brighton, where the ambulance would be taking her, in a quarter of an hour if Joe wanted.
Joe told him not to disturb his party – he’d call him when they got to the hospital and let him know the prognosis. Then he dashed back to the computer room.
Clinton again clattered towards him. ‘Welcome to ARCHIVE. If you have any cans of soft drink please leave them on the work surfaces and I will remove them when they are empty. Have a nice time with ARCHIVE.’
Joe knelt down. ‘Going to be all right,’ he said, putting his arm around Juliet. She was wearing an angora sweater over jeans, and he pressed his fingers through the soft strands of wool to give her a squeeze of reassurance. ‘Going to be fine.’ But he heard his voice cracking with distress. Yesterday morning when they’d parted in Florence, she had looked so happy, so radiant. So damned healthy. Now he couldn’t even tell if she was registering his presence.
Her left eye seemed disconnected, had become like Edwin Pilgrim’s roaming lazy eye. He put his own close to it, raised her lid, trying to see if the pupil was dilated, if perhaps it was a drug she had taken that was causing all this, and not her aneurism.
He felt a light tug on his hand and looked down. She was trying to grip it but her fingers didn’t seem to be working properly. She mumbled something incoherent.
‘What did you say?’ he asked gently.
‘Sh’no need,’ she said, then was silent.
‘No need?’ he repeated, coaxing her, placing his ear closer to her mouth. He glanced at his watch. He had told the ambulance operator he would be waiting outside in five minutes.
‘Decode,’ she said, squeezing on his hand again as if she had something vital to tell him. ‘Decode,’ she said again.
‘You’ve been decoding? Something’s happened? You’ve made some progress?’
She began shaking, agitated. He looked at her face again; her lips moved but no sound came out, and her right eye tried hard to communicate something to him.
‘I have to go upstairs just for a few minutes to get the ambulance. I won’t be long, I promise.’ Any anger that he had felt towards her had vanished. He did not want to believe this creature, so lovely, so horribly stricken, could even have contemplated a thing like replacing the bracelet with the dog turd. He preferred to keep the possibility alive in his mind, however slim, that it was an anonymous baggage handler, or a petty thief in the hotel room.
She gripped his arm and wouldn’t let go. ‘Sh’no need.’
‘No need to what, Juliet?’
There was a long pause. ‘Decode,’ she said finally.
‘Decode?’ He looked at the mass of digits on the screen. There was nothing to indicate any progress had been made. ‘I’ll just be a couple of minutes, OK?’
‘Pleash don’t leave me, Joe.’ Her voice sounded so plaintive, so pitiful. ‘Pain. In – s’my head.’
‘I’m not leaving you – I’ll be right back.’ He prised her fingers gently from his wrist.
As he did so she spoke again. ‘Won’t forget your promish, Joe. Sh’about my – frozen. To make sh – sh-sure – I’m – frozen.’
‘You’re going to be OK.’
‘You – promish …’ Her voice weakened, but still she insisted. ‘Make sure … frozen.’
‘I promise,’ Joe said. ‘Don’t worry. I promise.’
She tried to say something else, but drifted into silence.
Joe waited a moment. ‘Juliet – did –?’ Then he turned and left the room, fighting back tears. As he reached the lobby, he could already hear the distant wail of a siren. Normally it was a sound he hated; tonight, for the first time in his life, he welcomed it.
He drove fast, trying to keep the ambulance in sight, but lost it at a red light and didn’t meet up with it again until he reached the hospital.
There was chaos in the Accident and Emergency reception. It felt to Joe as though he had come into a war zone. A team of medics raced out of a room pushing a trolley on which a man lay on his back, his chest a pulp of blood, a drip feeding into a cannula on his wrist. A woman in a room Joe couldn’t see was screaming in hysterics. Another ambulance arrived; a youngster in leather motorcyling gear was wheeled in, unconscious, his face swathed in blood-soaked bandages.
Joe filled out an admittance form as best he could for Juliet, while a doctor examined her in a small room with a curtained partition. Behind him a receptionist was trying hard on the phone to contact a neurologist. The duty neurosurgeon was in theatre operating on an emergency – a crash victim; it was Saturday night, she said by way of explanation.
When Joe reached ‘Next of kin or Person to Contact’ on the form he hesitated, remembering Juliet’s concern about her parents’ attitude to her being frozen. He was tempted to put down not known, but instead he told the receptionist he couldn’t help, but either the university or her employers would have that on their records. It might buy them until Monday, Joe thought. As he did so, it hit him for the first time that he was mentally facing up to the possibility that Juliet might be about to die. And if she could be suspended before her parents were aware of her death, one problem would be solved.
A nurse searched through Juliet’s handbag, which Joe had brought along. He wondered for a horrible moment if Karen’s bracelet might be in there, but all she pulled out was a small address book, which she began leafing through. ‘Looks like it,’ she said, stopping and tapping her finger on a page.
The receptionist suddenly started speaking into the receiver, then she hung up and looked at Joe. ‘Dr Jordan will be here in about twenty minutes.’
The casualty doctor, a young female houseman with chic brown hair, and a pretty but intensely serious face, was studying Juliet’s MedicAlert bracelet with a puzzled expression. She removed it and walked discreetly over to Joe. ‘I haven’t seen these particular instructions before – is the young lady an organ donor?’
Joe shook his head and glanced at the bracelet, checking the tiny capital letters engraved on it: MEDICAL HISTORY. CALL COLLECT 24 HOURS. IN CASE OF DEATH SEE REVERSE FOR BIOSTASIS PROTOCOL. He turned it over and read the familiar wording: CALL NOW FOR INSTRUCTIONS. PUSH 50,000 UNITS HEPARIN IV AND DO CPR WHILE COOLING WITH ICE TO TEN CELSIUS. KEEP PH 7.5. DO NOT AUTOPSY OR EMBALM.
Joe looked back at the doctor. ‘Cryonics.’
She looked back at him, her forehead furrowed, and Joe sensed trouble in her small, dark eyes. ‘Are you serious?’
Joe nodded.
The doctor went across to the receptionist, let her write down the phone number on the tag, then put the bracelet back on Juliet’s wrist and checked her pulse again. Juliet’s face was the colour of alabaster.
The houseman came back over to Joe. ‘I’ve read a bit about cryonics – sounds absolute rubbish to me.’
Joe kept calm, not wanting to rile her; he would need all the co-operation he could get if – ‘She’s a very brilliant young woman,’ he said. ‘She has a double-first in neuroscience and computing science.’
That made the young doctor’s expression change a little. ‘Really?’
‘She’s on the pharmaceutical research team of Cobbold-Tessering.’
Her eyes hardened again. ‘If she’s so brilliant, I’m amazed she could be so gullible.’
Two porters clattered an empty trolley stretcher past them, heading for the front door and the wail of an approaching siren. A figure in a white coat hurried through another door, flanked by two nurses. An orderly followed and Joe saw him and one of the nurses start to push Juliet away.
‘Where is she being taken?’ he said to the houseman.
‘Intensive Care – we’re going to put her on life support.’
‘Do you mind if I go with her?’
‘Are you a relative?’
‘No – I – she’s one of my Ph.D. students.’
‘I’m sorry. But there’s nothing you can do anyway now.’
Joe watched as Juliet was wheeled into a lift. ‘Do you think she’ll survive the night?’
The houseman looked at him rather severely, as if Joe now had no further business here. She seemed to be weighing up whether to tell him anything. ‘I think she’ll be very lucky if she does,’ she said finally.
