Chapter Seven

 

Mildred sat in the swivel chair behind the main comp bank and began to type at the keyboard once more, pausing only to move the mouse to click onto new screens of information.

 

"You know what they used to call freezies back in my day?" she mused aloud. "The 'frozen chosen.' Like you were saying, Ryan, we were the ones lucky enough to cheat death and waggle our fingers bye-bye at man's final frontier. We were being put on ice to await the coming of the new technologies, capable of saving our dying asses."

 

A screen blinked and a set of tiny speakers beeped, indicating the search of the data bank Mildred has asked for was finished.

 

"No wonder health care was so expensive in my day," she said. "Most of the people in that room who underwent the cryo process weren't even sick. I'm talking about the ones with bodies, not the headless horsemen. I see three senators, a governor, four millionaires and some other names and rankings I don't recognize here listed as being put into the program within hours after skydark." Doc slowly shook his head. "More madness."

 

"Not true," Mildred replied. "You forget, Doc. I was one of the whitecoats involved in cryo research. Cryonics was a complex, controversial medical procedure that stored either the whole body or just the head of a clinically dead person in liquid nitrogen, at a temperature of minus 196 degrees Celsius. After the big chill, a suspension team prepared the body for its icy descent into a large Dewar flask, where it was stored until time for revival. Doing so took some effort to mount."

 

Mildred turned from the screen and ran her fingers through her long beaded hair. She looked very sad as she started to remember, and to speak.

 

"We were all mavericks in cryo research back then, driven by an insatiable urge to stop time and restart it on a schedule we dictated, not the predetermined one set by fate or nature. Looking back, I guess I was considered one of the tamer practitioners. Others, like Saul Kent, one of the founders of the Cryonics Society of New York, had his own mother decapitated and frozen in the hope that she could be reanimated sometime in the future."

 

"Geez, he chopped off his own mom's head?" Dean asked. "Gross."

 

"Who better? I mean, let's face it. The prospect of immortality inspires the unusual. He loved his mother, she loved her son, ergo, she willed her body to science and upon her death, he decided to test his theories. If it had worked out, he could have saved her life. Brought her back from death as we understood it."

 

"I cannot help but comment that all of this sounds most grotesque, Dr. Wyeth," Doc said with an exaggerated shudder. "The removal of the head and brains and dropping them into cold storage puts me in the mind of the most outlandish of Lovecraftian horror."

 

"Why not? Lovecraft was predicting this sort of thing in many of his short stories. Course, I didn't read them until when I was in college," she replied. "No, my interest in this branch of science came early. I was in an accelerated program in school and had an adult's library card with full access to all of the closed stacks. I guess that's where I first found Professor Robert Ettinger's book called The Prospect of Immortality . That book came to be considered the flashpoint of the concept of life-extension technology. He believed in it so strongly, he froze his mother, as wellin fact I guess he was the first."

 

"Entire generations suspended in time. Barbaric." Doc declared.

 

"I thought it was marvelous, although some of my more religious kin didn't find the suggestion of avoiding the hereafter by sticking your body in a freezer a proper way of following the plans of the Lord."

 

"Your father was a preacher," Krysty said. "I'd say he had trouble accepting some of the more fantastic theories you were spouting off."

 

"Actually my father wasn't the problem. He didn't care for the idea, but he let me be. Most of my grief came from two meddling aunts, the old biddies. They were always coming to him as his concerned sisters, worrying about my welfare. My brother, Josh, after he became a minister like our father, also showed more compassion and understanding of my chosen career."

 

"Yeah, relatives can make your life a living hell, bastard quick," Ryan observed, thinking of his own corrupted family ties.

 

"Professor Ettinger's book suggested that people could be frozen in 'suspended death' until medical technology was able to cure what killed them and breathe new life into their bodies. No big deal to us now, but at the time, it was considered all-out voodoo," Mildred mused. "See, his problem was, his attempt to achieve immortality conflicted with some of the most conventional truths modern science had been built upon up to that point, including the premise that death is final in a world of mortals."

 

"Nothing is absolute," Ryan said reflectively. "Trader used to say that."

 

"Correction, my dear Ryan. One thing is absolute, and that is if there is a cliche for the occasion, the good Trader was wont to have uttered it," Doc muttered as he slumped down like a weary scarecrow into one of the free chairs near Mildred.

 

"You're just jealous, Doc," Krysty said.

 

"Pray explain," Doc said with mock severity.

 

"Trader's the only man in the Deathlands with more arcane sayings than you."

 

Doc sniffed. "The mantle of Trader is not a title I envy."

 

"In Ettinger's book, I remember his saying that mankind had been conditioned to accept death for thousands of years. However, he grew up in a new world expecting that one day old age would be preventable and reversible. And the man practiced what he preached. Ettinger was a pioneer and helped in the formation of cryonics."

 

"Pardon me, but I thought the term was cryogenics." Doc said, unable to pass up the opportunity to correct Mildred in her own branch of science.

 

Mildred shook her head and smiled wistfully. "No, Doc. Common mistake. Cryonics was, and is, a more radical branch of cryogenicscryogenics being really nothing more than the recognized field of cold-temperature medicine. You know, research contributing to the aging process, the best way to preserve human organs for transplant, bloodless surgery. Nothing half-baked or hidden about it."

 

"Cryogenics. Like the swapping of organs for the tech Lars Hellstrom was so fond of back at Helskel."

 

"Exactly, but with more humane intent. But cryonics went further in design. Cryonics were designed to slow and eventually halt the process of death. In my case, putting me under saved my life until I was found and awakened by all of you."

 

"Sounds good to me," Dean remarked, entranced by the story Mildred was telling. "Who wouldn't want to live forever?"

 

"Out of the mouths of babes," Krysty said, winking at Ryan.

 

"Indeed," Doc added. "Trust me, young Cawdor. As a man who has spent over two hundred years bouncing around this mortal coil, I can say that immortality always comes with a price."

 

"Yeah, but you're old," Dean protested.

 

"Not as old as you think, young man."

 

Mildred grinned at Dean. "In a discussion like we're having, the idea of beating death does sound promising. It's when you start putting such ideas into motion that people get nervous. The world was different in my time. In the mid-1960s, cryonics advocates were a small fringe group. The structure of some organizations was rocked by scandal, sometimes at the hands of incompetent people and equipment, and other times because of sensational media coverage."

 

"Media?" the boy asked.

 

"Newspapers. Video. Tabloids. The media. They broke all of the news stories that made people nervous stories such as how in the early days of the programs, scientists were having to make do with storing bodies in the surplus wingtip fuel tanks of Air Force jets. No big deal, until it got out that the tanks weren't 'one size fits all,' and when they had people too obese to fit, they'd chainsaw their arms off and stick them in that way."

 

Mildred paused, looking lost and far away for a moment. "After my father's murder by immolation at the hands of those Klansmen, I wonderedcould cryonics have preserved him until such a time as miraculous regenerative processes would be the norm? I'm sure he might have seen it as an abomination, but I've always wondered. I suppose that curiosity is what continued to carry me into the field. I wanted to go beyond theories and tests. I wanted to be one of the new, innovative thinkers blazing onto new ground"

 

"So, what happened?" J.B. asked. "Why did the cryo program go the way of mat-trans units and Operation Chronos and Overproject Whisper and all of the other subtly named covert government projects?"

 

Mildred chuckled bitterly. "Believe it or not, what really, truly, undeniably saved the program was government interest and involvement. If the average hardworking American believed cryonic suspension to be the stuff of bad science-fiction novels, so much the better. Grants and equipment were available to the right doctors, and my own profile was high for a number of reasons."

 

"How so?"

 

Mildred counted down the list on her fingers "I was a woman, I was black, my theories made sense and I was a former Olympic medalist. You couldn't ask for a more suitable candidate. Once I was in the door, I soon discovered that organizations such as the American Cryonics Society and the Alcor Life Extension Foundation were all smoke screens. Only a few dozen people were listed officially as "being frozen" at the end of the year 2000, with a waiting list of hundreds wanting to join the program."

 

"We all know that's a crock," Dean interjected.

 

"Of course. In actuality the number stretched into the thousands, with chambers and preparations being made for thousands more in case of war. Cryonic suspension was expensive, too. Only the rich and the powerfulor the very importantgot a seat in the freeze chambers. I made it because of my research and because of the woman who operated on me pulling some strings. She was my friend, and she didn't want me to die on an operating table."

 

"So there could be an untold number of freezies waiting to be discovered?" Krysty asked.

 

"Yeah. I imagine some high-muck-a-muck couldn't resist the idea of a cryo version of Noah's Ark, which means any and all living creatures up to skydark may be safely tucked away somewhere sleeping."

 

"How much jack are we talking to freeze somebody?" Ryan asked, his own fascination coming into play. Some of what she was telling the others wasn't unfamiliar to him after what he'd seen going on the Black Hills laboratories of the Anthill. In those frigid chambers, he'd held conversations with men dressed in business suits with wag coolant for blood.

 

The woman thought for a moment. "Seems like I recall the official public price as being something along the lines of one hundred twenty-five thousand dollars for a whole-body suspension or, in the case of just wanting to preserve the head in a procedure called neuropreservation, that was around fifty thousand dollars. Pricey, and beyond most people's means."

 

Mildred stopped talking and stood. There was nothing much else to say.

 

The group left the cryo labs quietly.

 

Outside, the scavie became most distraught, begging Mildred to "Unchill the bastards so we can divvy up the loot."

 

"There's no 'loot' to be had, Alton," she replied tiredly. "Cryo patients aren't placed inside their capsules wearing rings on their fingers and bells on their toes. This process isn't like preparing the dead for a burial in a coffin with jewelry and their favorite things to take along on their journey into a new life. You go into a freeze tube as naked as the day you were born, with only a sheet to cover your soon-to-be-lifeless body."

 

"Aw, shit," he said sadly. "Are you sure?"

 

"Yeah."

 

"Hell, much as it cost to do this, no wonder there's no valuables with these freezies," J.B. told the man. "Spent all their loot getting put them in this condition."

 

"Lighten up, Adrian," Ryan said, handing back the glum scavie's captured Colt .45. "Let's blow this joint before another party of stickies decides to come looking for the batch we chilled."