James Halperin - The First Immortal

Gary laughed. “Why am I here, Grammy?”

“You’re here to record my dying wishes. To prove I’m of… sound mind.”

“I think we’ve accomplished that!” He smiled warmly. “What are your dying wishes?”

“With all my heart… and mind, Gary, I want to be frozen with my son.”

“Why, Grammy?”

“I have nothing… to lose. If it doesn’t work, I’m dead! So what? If I didn’t try it, I’d be dead anyway. But if it works… oh, if it works… what wonders I might see!”

“Don’t you want to see heaven, Grammy? And Sam?”

“Sam loves me,” she whispered. “If heaven’s real, he’ll wait for me. And I’m in no hurry… to leave this earth.”

“The paperwork’s all filled out,” Gary said, and carefully read each entry to her. Afterward he guided her hand and she made the mark that would have to pass as her signature. Finally he could shut off the video camera and talk to her in privacy.

“You know, it’s very strange,” he said, holding her hand, giving comfort and receiving it. “In life, Dad was so much closer to my sisters. Yet now he’s—I don’t want to say ‘dead’—no longer with us, I guess.” How odd, Gary thought. His father was like a specter. not just a memory, but also a half-living, half-dead reality. A pseudobeing, trapped on the far side of a wall. “And I seem to understand him better than they do.”

“How do you… mean that?”

“When he told me about his ordeal after they sank the Boise, I couldn’t admit this at the time—I was still too hurt—but as much as I refused to acknowledge it, even to myself, I began to know him then.” God, if only he’d said that to his father that morning in 1982, Gary suddenly thought. Instead of telling him he forgave him, for chrissake, knowing full well Ben would recognize that the opposite was true. Would always be true. Even if he could never forgive him, Gary did understand him. And that’s what Ben had really needed to know; still needed to know. Gary only hoped he could tell him someday; have another chance to… to be honest with him.

Ben had always been honest with him , hadn’t he?

Gary continued, “I could practically see him floating in the ocean, exhausted, swallowing that putrid fuel and saltwater. And later, crammed in there in his filthy clothes, sitting in his own excrement on that Japanese hellhole. I can almost hear the screams of agony myself. Think what it must have been like just to breathe in there; how every breath would’ve required an act of will. His only goal was to get himself through it. Not that he compromised his principles to do it. Mom told me about how he saved his friend’s life, and those prisoners in the camp he treated despite the risks, and how he wouldn’t crack when the commandant questioned him. Ol’ Dad, he kept his cool, by God. He stayed tough and smart and patient enough to keep himself alive. And I know how he did it. I understood the way he simply anchored himself to the idea that when it was all over, whatever the suffering, his survival would be worth any price he’d have to pay. My father, your son, was, is, a man who truly cherishes life.”

“Yes, he is,” Alice whispered. “I hope he got it… from me.”

“I’ve been reading about cryonics, you know,” he said. “Read The Prospect of Immortality last month. And every newsletter from every cryonics outfit I can find.”

She stared up at him. Was it going to work? The thought sent a shudder from the nape of her neck to the base of her spine. “What do you think… about cryonics?” But even as she asked the question, Alice decided that her grandson’s answer was irrelevant; nothing he said could change her mind or diminish her optimism. She needed the hope, just like Ben must have during his final moments.

“It seems possible to me,” Gary said. “I won’t say it’s a sure thing, or even likely, but it’s a shot. I’ll tell you the most encouraging part is the sort of people it attracts. You’d think mostly superstitious, gullible souls would become cryonicists. But it’s just the opposite. It’s the skeptics, the mathematicians, the scientists who sign up to be frozen. People who think for themselves; who know how to think. People like Dad.”

“And me.”

“That’s right. And you, Grammy.” He kissed her cheek. “Now try to get some sleep, okay?”

“What time is it?”

“Twelve past six.”

“I’ll sleep at… seven-thirty… after Toby leaves.”

“Toby Fiske is visiting you here?”

“Every day. Except when… he knows the girls… are coming.”

“Damn,” Gary whispered. “Dad sure chose his friends well. The more I learn, the more confused I get.”

“Sometimes those who love most deeply… can’t get past… the weight of… their own feelings.”

“See you tomorrow” was all he could say. And, “I love you, Grammy.”

Alice smiled. “Oh… do I love you.”

March 15, 1991

—The Emir of Kuwait returns from exile to a devastated country whose populace is demanding a more democratic government.—At a Los Angeles Police Commission hearing, participants castigate Police Chief Daryl Gates for sanctioning police brutality against Hispanic and black men.—Medical researchers announce the isolation of a gene that appears to mutate at the initiation of colon cancer, suggesting a possible approach to allow much earlier detection of the disease.

It was almost eleven A.M. when Dr. Tobias Fiske raised his eyes from his computer monitor. “How’d you get in here?” he asked and immediately wished he could snatch the words from the air, swallow them, and start again.

“Just limped right in,” Gary said. “Guess I look like I belong.”

He looked more like he’d just walked off the set of a 1938 detective movie, Toby thought. “I’m sorry. I’ve been anticipating, and dreading, this moment for a while now.” Toby allowed his eyes to drift back to the computer screen, thinking that maybe if he finished reading this new angioplasty protocol, his emotions might stop quivering like the plucked strings of a harp. But the words and symbols suddenly conveyed no meaning to his frontal lobes. They could as easily have been Mayan hieroglyphics.

He rose to close the door to his private office. “Please sit down,” he invited the younger man. “I suppose we’d better talk.”

“Good.”

“I didn’t murder your father,” Toby said, knowing full well he shouldn’t even be talking to Gary about the case. If Pat Webster were ever to find out, he’d have a fit. “At least in my own mind,” he added, “and, I think, in his.”

“But you did kill him,” Gary said in a matter-of-fact tone, his candor chilling.

“It was, er, necessary that he die just a little sooner than nature’s hand would provide, so his dreams might have some hope of fulfillment.” Toby tried to offer this as an honest explanation, but even he could discern its false echo.

“You broke the law, Toby, and every traditional code of morality.” The swiftness of Gary’s statement suggested a sure purpose. “But I didn’t come here for an explanation or an apology.”

Toby was taken aback. Then what did he want?

“I came to tell you something, Dr. Fiske.” Gary spoke with a softness that Toby found menacing. “Not the other way around.”

Toby felt himself stiffen, and resolved to accept whatever Ben’s son must now do or say.

“For some weeks, I’ve been deliberating what I should tell you and how I should say it.” Gary was still speaking in measured, clearly well-rehearsed words. “So my observations will take a few minutes to spell out.”

“Take whatever time you need.”

“Please understand that this is very difficult for me. I still face my own unresolved conflicts. But those aren’t your concern. Just listen closely; that’s all I ask.”