"Tell me about yourself, Steve," Jess said. "Anything at all. Start at the beginning—your earliest memories."
"I remember the early days all right. My childhood, if you can call it that." I rubbed the side of my face and tried to think about it, but the ideas that should have been ready to jump into my mind felt rusty and old, as if I hadn't thought about them, hadn't used the words, for a long, long time.
"I was kicked up in a tough part of Philly, went to sea, joined the Army when the Chinese busted loose in Burma. After the war I went to school, got enough education to start in as a white-collar man with a grocery chain. Five years later, I owned the company. . . ." I listened to myself talking, remembering it all in a vague, academic sort of way, as if it was something I saw in the movies.
"Go on."
"The office; the plant. A big car with two telephones. . . ." Shadowy memories were taking shape; but there was something dark there I didn't like.
"What else?" Jess whispered.
"I remember my days at sea better." This was a safer subject; I was talking to myself now, looking into the past. "That was real: The stinks and the rust on the deck and the mold growing on my shore shoes, and coastlines in the morning like white reefs coming out of the mist, and the noise and the lights in port at night, and the waterfront joints and the lousy booze and the guy that used to play sad tunes on the fantail after the hatches were down."
"It sounds quite romantic."
"Like a case of the yaws. But it had a certain something; something to do with being young and tough, sleep anywhere, eat anything, fight anybody. . . ."
"Tell me about your business associates. Perhaps one of them. . . ." he let it trail off. I thought about it, tried to sort out the conflicting impressions. A young fellow with black hair; an old bird with a neck like a turkey. . . .
"My best pal was a fellow I served with in China and Nepal. He saved my life once; plugged the hole in my wrist where a Chink .25 mm went through." I remembered it all: The two-mile walk back to the forward aid station, handling the gun left-handed while the woods buzzed with scatter-shell fragments; the surgeons clucking like hens and then settling down to three hours of needlework that would have won prizes at the county fair, while Frazier poured slugs for both of us and kept my cigar lit. They'd done a nice job of putting nerves and blood vessels back together, but the carpal joint was never the same, and there was an inch-wide scar that was the reason I'd taken to wearing my Rolex Oyster on my left wrist. . . . I had a sudden idea, one that had been ducking around the edge of my consciousness, flapping its arms for attention ever since I woke up in the rain.
I flipped my cuff back and looked at the wrist. The skin was unflawed. The scar was gone.
"What is it?" Jess was watching my face. I turned the cuff back down.
"Nothing. Just another little slip in my grip on reality. What would you say to another shot of what we just had?"
He watched me while I poured out a nice jolt. I took it back without bothering to roll it on my tongue.
"This freezing process," I said. "Does it remove scars?"
"Why, no—"
"Does it make you look younger?"
"Nothing of that sort, Steve—"
"Then scratch your theory."
"What do you mean?"
"If I was one of your freeze cases, I'd remember a brick wall running at me, or a sickbed and a flock of medicine bottles and some old goat shaking his whiskers and saying, 'Ice this boy until I figure out what to do next.' "
Jess pushed his lips in and out. "It's quite possible that the trauma associated with the shock—"
"It wasn't an accident; no scars, remember? And if I had a fatal ailment—who cured it?"
He looked a little nervous. "Perhaps you weren't cured."
"Relax, cancer's not catching."
"Steve—this is no joking matter! We have to find out who you are, what you know that makes you a threat to ETORP!"
"I'm no threat. I'm just a mixed-up guy who wants to get unmixed and back to minding my own business."
"They're afraid of you! Nothing else could explain a class Y search for you—and therein lies a weapon to be used against them!"
"If you're talking revolution, count me out."
"Count you out—on the quest for the greatest prize the world has ever known?"
"What are you dancing around the edge of, Jess?"
His eyes went to slits with a glint back of them like Midas thinking about Fort Knox.
"Immortality."
"Sure. Throw in flying carpets while you're at it."
"It's no myth, Steve! They have it! It's there, don't you understand? We don't have to die! We could live forever! But will they share it with us? No, they let us toil and die like grubs in an ant heap!"
"You toil, Jess? Don't tickle me; my side still hurts."
"Longevity treatments, rejuve!" Jess spat out the words like a dirty taste. "A sop for the tech class they need to keep their corrupt machine functioning. Limb and organ graft and regeneration—and the ultimate iniquity, brain transfer, and the attendant black market in bodies that makes it unsafe for an unarmed man to walk abroad at night. And all in order to keep up the value of their stock-in-trade!"
"Times haven't changed much," I said. "In my day it was Zionist plots and pills you could drop in the gas tank to convert water to gasoline."
"You think I'm raving? Consider it, Steve! Medical research long ago synthesized protoplasm, created life in the laboratory, cured cancer—and in the process, inevitably discovered the secret of the aging process. It's a disease, like any other—and they've cured it. Nature doesn't care, you see; her intent was only to preserve the individual past the breeding age. Fifteen years to sexual maturity, another fifteen years of vigorous life to see the next generation on the way—then—decay. Just as we've begun to learn to live, we begin to die! No wonder the race lives in anarchy and turmoil, each generation repeating the mistakes of the one before. The world is run by children, while our mature minds, seasoned by life, go down to death. And they could stop it!"
"How could they keep a thing like that a secret—if they had it?"
"By limiting its use to a favored few—in whose interest it would be, of course, to preserve the deception."
"Uh-huh—but somebody would notice after a while if old Mr. Gotrocks never showed up in the obit column."
"Who? Who keeps records of such things? It's not as it was in your day, Steve; we have no public figures as you knew them; we live in a rigidly stratified society; Dooses know little of the activities of Crusters; Threevees never venture down to Forkwaters; and no graded citizen ever sets foot dirtside, among the visaless Preke rabble."
"That's all guesswork, Jess. Why get excited about it—"
"There are those of us who feel that man wasn't meant to die in his prime, Steve! It's not his destiny! Life eternal is almost in our grasp—life in which to see the stars and the planets and the riches thereof—"
"Seventy years are long enough. I won't waste 'em chasing a pot of gold at the end of a cardboard rainbow."
"Seventy years?" Jess popped his eyes at me. "I'm seventy-nine now!" his voice broke. "I expect to live to a hundred and fifteen, even without the blessing of ETORP. But there's more, Steve—so much more—and that's where you can help!"
"Sorry—I've got other plans."
"Plans? You, a nobody without even an identity?"
Just then, as if it had been waiting for the signal, a cool chime cut through the still of the evening.
Jess came out of his chair like a cocky featherweight answering the bell for Round 2. All his teeth were showing in a grin that had no humor in it. The tone sounded again, twice, three times.
"Minka?" Jess asked the air.
The chime stopped and somebody pounded on the door.
"Just like old times," I said. "That sounds like copper to me, Jess."
"How could they. . . . ?" he started and then closed his mouth. He gave me a narrow-eyed look.
"You can trust me now," he said, "or not, just as you please. Neither of us wants you found here. There's one way out for us."
"What have you got in mind?"
"Out there." He pointed to the terrace. "I'll give them something to think about. What you do is up to you." He didn't wait to catch my reaction, just started across toward the door. That left me a couple of seconds to think it over. I looked around, saw three blank walls and the columns leading to the terrace. I went out, stood in the shadows.
Jess opened the door—and was backing into the room, holding his hands out from his sides. A man was pushing him and another was behind, looking as happy as his kind of face could. They were lean, slim-hipped lads, buckled into black uniforms with silver cord down the pants seams and more silver worked into their stiff stand-up collars. They wore holsters strapped down low, in working position, and their eyes had that screw-you-Jack look that spelled cop or professional soldier as far as you could hear a pair of heels click.
"Say all the right things," one of them said in a filed-steel voice, "and you could live to cash in your chits."
"What's all this?" Jess sounded a little breathless. "My visa is in order—"
The cop backhanded him down onto the floor.
"Topside wants you bad," the cop nodded. "I guess this is the first clean spring from the Palace in sixty years. Now, let's have it all: How you handled the outer ring, how you took the main vault, who did the thaw job—the works."
Jess was sitting up, looking tearful. "You're making a mistake—"
The Blackie hit him. Jess curled up on the rug and made noises like a lonely pup.
"Start now and save muscle all around," the Blackie said. "Who was your first contact?"
Jess looked up at him. "He was a big fellow, about seven-three, with chin whiskers and a glass eye," he said in a nasty tone. "I didn't get the name."
"Funny man." The Blackie swung his foot and caught Jess in the shoulder as he rolled away. The other cop kicked him back.
"Where's the other one at?"
They fanned out and looked at the bare walls. One of them blew air out over his lower lip and looked at his partner.
"I thought you had this pile staked off."
"Maybe the mothering crot's got an outlaw shaft."
"He couldn't have used it. Power block, remember?"
"We should have called this in, Supe."
I backed a quiet step; a light breeze moved palm fans in a pot beside me. They weren't big enough to help much. The boys inside didn't look any smarter than their kind usually do, but after a while it was going to occur to them to take a peek out on the back porch.
"He couldn't have gone out—" one of the cops said, and stopped. I could almost hear his brains working: If there were two guys in a locked room and only one in sight, how many are still hiding under the rug?
I thought about stepping out and trying the honest citizen route, but those guns the boys packed looked big and impatient. And even if I didn't buy Jess' program a hundred percent, there were a couple of things about this pair that put me on the other side.
"I don't like it, Supe," the number two cop was saying. "We shouldn't of played wise with a Y priority."
"There's twenty-year chits in it for the ones that take him solo. . . ." The voices were keeping up the patter, coming my way. I blinked sweat out of my eyes and waited. What I needed was a break, one lousy little break. It was too much to ask for, too much to expect from a frail-looking little fellow who had already absorbed more punches than a Golden Gloves runner-up losing the big one. But something about the little I'd seen of Jess made me set myself and get ready. . . .
When it came, it was a bleat like a docked sheep. "I'll tell you! Why should I lose my visa for that mothering weed?"
The feet held up and then went back and I eased over to the right and faded an eye past the edge of the open door. Jess was on his feet. What was holding him there was the boss Blackie. He was standing with his back to me. He had his legs planted well apart and was holding a handful of Jess' pretty green shirt in his left fist and bending him backward over the table. There was a lot of blood on the little man's face, and one eye was swollen almost shut. The other cop was leaning against the wall to the right. If he had moved his eyes an eighth of an inch he'd have been looking straight at me. I stayed where I was and waited.
"We got all night," the cop said. "Tell it now or tell it in an hour, we don't care. We like our work."
Jess mumbled something, but I wasn't paying much attention to the conversation. What I was watching was Jess' right hand. It was feeling over the table, out of sight of the other cop. The fingers worked carefully, deliberately, as though they had all the time in the world. They teased the drawer open, came out with the tip of a thin blade between them. The fingers worked the knife around until they could touch the narrow black-taped grip, closed over it. Jess' arm came up slowly, carefully, poised for a moment with the needletip just touching the black cloth stretched over the ribs of the man bending over him. Then with a smooth thrust, he put it in.
The Blackie jerked once, as if he had touched something hot. He pivoted slowly, still holding Jess.
"What are you doing?" his partner took a step toward him. The cop's hand went to his side, caressed the knife hilt that was tight against the black cloth. Then his knees went, and he hit the floor hard. The other Blackie came forward a step, raked at the gun at his hip, and I was into the room and behind him. He was slow turning and I hit him in the neck, twice, and he dropped the gun and jackknifed to the floor and lay twisted, the way they do when the spine is shattered.
I kicked the gun across the room and Jess staggered away from the table, breathing with a lot of noise. I looked at the door.
"They came alone," Jess gasped it out. He wiped blood off his mouth. "They were keeping this play to themselves. Nice for us, Steve. No one knows where they were." He made a face and I saw he was grinning.
"You're a great actor," I said. "What do you do for an encore?"
"We make a good team," he said. "A pity to break it up."
I went to the bar and poured myself a stiff one and swallowed it.
"Let's put this pair in the back closet," I said. "Then get a map of New York City, circa 1970. I think I may have an idea."
The map on the tabletop screen showed the eastern half of the state plus a chunk of Pennsylvania and Jersey. The highway grid looked a lot denser than it should have, but otherwise it was pretty normal.
"Higher mag," I said, and he focused down until the city filled the screen. I asked him to center it on Long Island, the Jamaica section, and he worked the knobs and got a blowup that showed every street and major building. I pointed to a spot. "That's it: my old plant."
"And you imagine that would be intact today? The building probably doesn't exist—"
"The spot I'm looking for wasn't exactly in a building, Jess. It was under one—a place that was built to last. I made some arrangements for that."
"You think you might have left some clue there?"
"It's a place to look."
He poked a lever. A red dot popped up at the top of the screen, and he used two knobs to guide it down to mark the plant. Then he blanked the screen and a new map came onto it. It looked like one of those webs built by a drunk spider. There were cryptic symbols all over it like Chinese alphabet soup. Jess looked up at me. There was a strange look in his eye.
"Interesting spot you've picked," he said. "This is a cartogram of modern Granyauck, overlying the site of the town you used to know. As you'll notice, the former islands have been joined to the mainland by various hydraulic works. The section you call Long Island, here. . . ." he pointed to a green blob that covered a piece of the screen—"is an ETORP preserve. The specific point in which you expressed an interest happens to coincide almost precisely with the most closely guarded premises in the North American Sector."
"What is it?"
"The Cryothesis Center," he said. "Vulgarly known as the Ice Palace." He smiled. "I think we've made a connection, Steve."
Jess was pacing the floor. "It poses an interesting problem, Steve. I won't say it can't be done—I pride myself on my ability to enter presumably closed precincts—but the question remains—is it worth the risk involved?"
"If you want to back out, I'll go in alone."
"I'd like nothing better than to back out." He looked at me and I thought he looked a little pale around the jaw. "But as you said, it's our only lead. Therefore, the question is: How best to beard ETORP in his stronghold?"
He went back to his fancy desk and punched more keys, spent the next hour muttering at technical diagrams that were over my head like the Goodyear blimp.
"The Hudson outfall appears the likeliest spot," he said. "That means going dirtside, but it can't be helped."
"When do we start?"
"As soon as your wound has knit. And it will be as well for you to stay out of sight for a few days. After a century, that shouldn't matter much."
I conceded the point.
We ate then, and afterward sat out on the terrace and listened to music, some of it old enough to sound familiar. Then he showed me to a room papered with black roses and I stretched out in a shaft of moonlight and after a while slid down into a dream about a small pale face behind a pane of frosted glass and the vague shadows of forgotten sorrows as remote as a pharaoh's last wish.