Charles Sheffield - Aftermath

“This one won’t be coming out — not next year or in a hundred years.” Art pushed the drawer hard and closed the end panel as soon as he could work the catch.

“Do you think they’re all like that?” Dana stood half a dozen steps away and had avoided the worst of the stench. Seth was apparently still speechless, hands covering his nose and mouth.

“I might, except for one thing.” Art was walking along the aisle, shining the light on each end panel’s ID plate. “The people who were here before us took something or somebody away with them. We saw the marks in the snow. I can’t see anybody stealing a rotting corpse.”

“Why would some people have survived, when others died?”

“I can only guess. But the nutrients and somnol and ion balancers probably go to the IVs in each drawer through a gravity-assist delivery. Without a working heating system, you’ll also find temperature differences from top to bottom of the building. If that’s the case, different levels would be treated differently when the chips died in the monitoring system.”

“Higher levels would do better than ground-floor ones?”

“Or worse.”

“Let’s go find out.” Seth had recovered enough to grab his flashlight back from Art. “If Oliver Guest is dead meat, the sooner we’re out of here the better.”

“One other thing.” Art followed as Seth headed for the metal staircase. “Do you remember how long his sentence was?”

“Hell, I don’t know. A gazillion years. He didn’t just kill a whole bunch, he picked teenagers. Pretty ones. He’d be iced down to the max. Why you want to know?”

“We might get lucky. I noticed every ID in the first aisle had a wake-up time in the next year or two. It would make sense to stow short-timers on the lowest level, and a five-hundred-year sentence up where you don’t need to check it so often. And the longer terms use different drugs to maintain judicial sleep.”

They were climbing the open lattice of the metal staircase as they spoke. Art, last behind Dana, found it hard work. Serb, was well ahead but paused at the fifth level, not to let the others catch up but to inspect one of the aisles and its body drawers.

“Fourteen years to go on this one. Comin’ along.” He was shining the flashlight on a plate. “Like to take a look?”

Art nodded. The rest for his lungs was welcome. He started to open the drawer, and at once knew he did not need to go any farther.

Seth was backing away. “Don’t tell me, I can smell it. Another maggoty one. Let’s go.”

This time they plodded up another eighty feet before Seth halted and shone his flashlight along an aisle. “We got problems. No ID plates.”

“Then we must have gone too far.” Dana was a full level below, on one of the staircase landings. “They wouldn’t use the highest levels until the facility was filled all the way up. Shine the light back here, let me take a look.” And, a moment later, “This shows a 2735 revival date. Fat chance he’s got. He’s going to die.”

“But is he alive now?” asked Art. He hurried to join her. He felt sure that Dana was not going to risk opening the drawer.

He was right. “You tell me,” she said, and stood warily by as he opened the catch. “I don’t smell anything bad.”

“Because he’s not dead!” Art watched the slow rise and fall of a naked chest, then looked down the long aisle as Seth approached to give them more light. “The trickle supply system must still be working. What now?”

“Put him back. Tough for him, but we’re not here on a prisoner humanitarian release program. He’ll have to take his chances.”

“I didn’t mean that.” Art closed the drawer and tagged the latch. “My question was, how do we find Oliver Guest? He should be somewhere on this level with the other maximum sentences.”

“Unless he’s already been taken,” Seth said.

“Why would anyone except us do that?” But Art was following the beam of Seth’s flashlight, and now he saw it, too. A drawer, all the way along, was open and empty.

“We knew somebody was here before us,” Dana said. “We shouldn’t be surprised.”

“And they weren’t after Guest. That’s good news.” Seth had moved along to examine the ID on the other drawer. “The name’s sort of familiar but I can’t place it. Who the devil is Pearl Lazenby?”

“I don’t know. Whoever she is, she should have been iced down for a long time.” Art pointed to the date. “2670. Somebody didn’t want her around for a while. She’s out of here way ahead of time.”

“She was the leader of that big religious group,” Dana said. “The Legion of Argos. Her people didn’t use her real name much, that’s why you didn’t recognize it. They called her ’The Eye of God’ and they said she could foresee the future.”

“That woman!” Seth closed the drawer. “Then she oughta be in here forever. Her group killed a ton of people. It wasn’t a religion, it was a cult.”

“Your cult, my religion. The Legion of Argos certainly got one thing right. They prophesied a coming disaster.” Art unwrapped the cloth from his face. “I think we can manage without these — even you, Dana.

But our problem isn’t solved. How do we find Oliver Guest?”

“The hard way. We look at every drawer.” Seth started walking. “Come on.”

Art did the arithmetic as he followed. Eleven thousand prisoners in judicial sleep at this facility. Twelve levels occupied. They might have to examine close to a thousand IDs if the prisoners were spread evenly.

But what better way to spend your time? Art walked behind the other two in silence, up and down each aisle, checking to make sure nothing was missed.

Five aisles covered, out of a total of ten. They crossed to the other side. A sixth, and Art began to wonder what they would do next. Without Oliver Guest the last hope of telomod therapy was gone.

“Jackpot,” Seth said. He was leading, and he spoke so softly and casually that Art, ten yards behind, had no strong reaction. It was Dana’s gasp and cry of excitement that brought him hurrying to join them.

“How about that.” Seth was cranking furiously, and his light pointed straight at the ID plate.

Art read the inscription. 12-0456-97. Dr. Oliver Samuel Guest. 2621. Below it were handwritten words. You are a monster. May all your dreams be nightmares, your final hours agony, and may you rot in hell forever.

“Not too popular with somebody,” Seth said. “And now the real question. Dana, want to do the honors?”

The body drawer was six feet off the ground. Dana stood on tiptoe, opened the front panel, and peered in. “He’s alive!”

“And we have to make sure he stays that way. Seth and I will have to loan him clothes, otherwise he’ll freeze.” Art stared around in the gloom. “There must be special equipment to lower the drawer to the ground. But I don’t see it, and chances are it’s not working.”

“We’ll have to do it ourselves.” Seth began to reach up, then paused. “I was gonna say, we bring the drawer out all the way an’ lower it between us. But that’s too risky. Suppose the drawer weighs five hundred pounds? We’d drop it an’ kill him.”

“Dana will have to stand on our backs and unplug him. Then — if the publicity about somnol and judicial sleep isn’t one big pack of lies — he ought to wake up without any action on our part. And then we can roll him off and lift him down.”

“Yeah. And then it gets really interesting.” Seth leaned over, placing the top of his head against the bank of closed drawers. “I’m ready. Your move, Dr. Frankenstein. Wake the monster.”

Dana hesitated. “Do I just unhook everything?”

“We don’t know. I guess so. He shouldn’t need any life-support system once he’s awake.” Art was also bent and waiting. “Use your good judgment.”