Dr. Futurity (1960) (10 page)

Parsons said, "How long has this man been in the cube?"

"He has been dead thirty-five years," Loris said matter-of-factly.

Parsons said, "I'll know more once I've been able to examine him. Can he be brought out of the cold-pack?"

"Yes," Helmar said. "For no more than half an hour at a time, however."

"That should be enough," Parsons said.

Almost together, Helmar and Loris said, "Then you'll do it?"

"I'll try," he answered.

A wave of relief ran between the two of them; relaxing, they smiled at him. The tension in the room waned.

"Is there any reason," Parsons said, "why you can't tell me your relation to this man?" He faced Loris squarely.

After a pause, she said, "He's my father."

For a moment, the significance did not register. And then he thought,
But how can she know?

Loris said, "I'd prefer not to tell you any more. At least, not now. Later." She seemed tired out by the situation. "Let me have a servant show you to your apartment, and then perhaps we can--" She glanced at the man in the cube. "Perhaps you could begin your examination of him."

"I'd like to get some rest first," Parsons said. "After a good night's sleep I'd be in better shape."

Their disappointment showed clearly. But immediately Loris nodded, and then, more reluctantly, Helmar. "Of course," she said.

A servant came to show him to his apartment. Carrying Parson's gray case, the servant preceded him up a wide flight of stairs. The man glanced back once, but said nothing. In silence they reached the apartment; the servant held the door open for Parsons, and he entered.

What luxury, he thought. Beyond doubt, he was the honored guest of the Lodge.

And with good reason!

At dinner that night he learned, from Loris and Helmar, the physical layout of their Lodge. They were slightly over twenty miles from the city which he had first encountered, the capital, at which the Soul Cube and Fountain were located. Here in the Lodge, Loris, as the Mother Superior, lived with her entourage. Like some great, opulent queen bee, Parsons thought. In this busy hive. Beyond that area controlled by the government; this was sacred land.

The Lodge, like a Roman demesne, was self-contained, independent economically and physically. Underneath the buildings were giant power turbines, atomic generators a century old. He had briefly glimpsed the subterranean landscape of drive-trains and whirring spheres, in some cases rust-covered masses of machines that still managed to roar and throb. But, as he had tried to penetrate further, he had been firmly turned back by armed uniformed guards, youths wearing the familiar Wolf emblem.

Food was grown artificially in subsurface chemical tanks. Clothing and furniture were processed from plastic raw materials by robots working somewhere on the grounds. Building materials, industrial supplies, everything that was needed, was manufactured and repaired on the Lodge grounds. A complete world, the core of which, like the city, was the cube. The miniature "soul" with which he would soon be working. He didn't have to be told how carefully the secret of its existence was kept. Probably only a few persons knew of it; probably not more than a fraction of those living and working at the Lodge. And how many of them understood its purpose, the reason for its existence? Perhaps only Loris and Helmar knew.

As they sat at the table, sipping after-dinner coffee and brandy, he asked Helmar bluntly, "Are you related to Loris?"

"Why do you ask?" Helmar said.

"You resemble the man in the cube--her father. And you resemble her, faintly."

Helmar shook his head. "No relation." His earlier excitement and eagerness now seemed masked over by politeness. And yet Parsons felt it still there, still smoldering.

There were so many things that Parsons did not understand. Too much, he decided, was being kept back. He had accepted the obvious: Loris and Helmar were acting illegally. Had been for some time. The very possession of the miniature cube was clearly a crime of the first magnitude. The maintenance of the body, the attempt to restore it to life--all were part of a painstakingly guarded and constructed plan of which the government and certainly the other tribes knew nothing.

He could understand Loris' desire to see her father alive. It was a natural emotion, common possibly to all societies, including his own. He could understand the elaborate lengths she had gone to, in attempting to realize that wish. With her great influence and power, it might actually be possible to do this--as contrary as it was to everything the society stood for. After all, the man had been preserved uncorrupted for all of Loris' lifetime. The cube, the complex maintenance equipment, the whole Lodge itself, was geared to this task. The development and use of the time dredge, no doubt. If so much had already been done, the rest might follow.

But out of all this, one element still made no sense. In this society, all zygotes were developed and preserved by the Fountain, a purely artificial process.

Parsons chose his words carefully. "This man," he said to Loris. "Your father. Was he born at the Fountain?"

Both she and Helmar regarded him with equal caution. "No one is born outside the Fountain," Loris said in a low voice.

Helmar, with impatience, said, "What does such information have to do with your work? We have complete data on his physical condition at the time of his death. It's his death that's germane to you, not his birth."

"Who built the cube?" Parsons demanded bluntly.

"Why?" Loris said, almost inaudibly. She glanced at Helmar.

"The design," Helmar explained slowly, "is the same as the Fountain the government operates. No special knowledge was required to duplicate on a small scale what the government operates on a large scale."

"Somebody brought schematics here and constructed all this," Parsons persisted. "Obviously at great risk, and for considerable purpose."

Loris said, "To preserve
him
. My father."

At once, Parsons pounced; he felt his pulse race. "Then the cube was built
after
his death?"

Neither of them answered.

"I don't see," Loris said finally, "what this has to do with your work. As Helmar says."

"I'm a hired employee, then?" Parsons said. "Not a genuine equal who can communicate with you as equals?"

Helmar glared at him, but Loris seemed more troubled than angry. Falteringly, she said, "No, not at all. It's just that the risk is so great. And it actually doesn't concern you, does it? Why should it, Doctor? When you treat a patient, a person who's sick or injured, do you inquire into his background, his beliefs, his purpose in life, his philosophy?"

"No," he admitted.

"We'll repay you," Loris said. "We can place you in any time period that you desire." Across the table from him, she smiled hopefully, coaxingly.

But Parsons said, "I have a wife whom I love. All I want to do is get back to her."

"That's so," Helmar said. "We noticed her while we were out scouting you."

"And knowing that," Parsons said, "you still brought me here, without my knowledge or permission. I gather that my personal feelings are of no concern to you." He hesitated. "In your estimation, I'm no better than a slave!"

"That's not true," Loris said. And he saw tears in her eyes. "You don't have to help us. You can go back to your own time if you want. It's your choice." Suddenly she rose from the table. "Excuse me," she said in a choked voice, and ran at once from the room.

Presently Helmar said, "You can sympathize with her feelings." He sat stoically sipping his coffee. "There's never been any chance before your coming. Let's acknowledge that you don't particularly care for me. But that's not the issue. You're not doing this for me. You're doing it for her."

The man had a point there.

And yet, even Loris had hung back, had not given him honest answers. The whole atmosphere was pervaded with this sense of the hidden, the concealed. Why from him? If they trusted him enough to show him the man in the cube, to reveal the cube itself, then what more could there be? Did they suppose that if he knew more about them, he would not co-operate?

He filed his suspicions away, and sat, like Helmar, sipping his coffee royal. Unobtrusively, servants came and departed.

Neither he nor Helmar said anything; they sipped in silence. The brandy was very good, an authentic cognac. At last Helmar put down his cup and stood up.

"Ready, Doctor?" he said. "To make your initial exploratory examination?"

Parsons, too, stood. "Yes," he said. "Let's go."

TEN

The three of them stood together, watching tensely as automatic machinery moved the cube forward, toward them. The cube came directly in front of them and stopped there.

The chamber was a blaze of lights. In the glare, Parsons watched the cube gradually tip backward until it came to rest. Within its depths the inert figure drifted quietly, eyes closed, body relaxed. The dead god, suspended between worlds, waiting to return . . .

And in the chamber, his people.

The chamber was crowded. Men who had stayed in the shadows until now were beginning to emerge. Parsons had not realized the extent of the project. He paused to take in the sight of this first appearance in real force, the actual strength that operated the Lodge.

Was it his imagination, or did they resemble one another? Of course, all members of this society had some similar characteristics, the same general skull formation and hair texture. And the clothing of this group was identical throughout, the gray robe and chest-emblem of the Wolf Tribe.

But there was more. The ruddy cast to the skin. A certain heaviness of the brow. Wide forehead. Flaring nostrils. As if they were of one family.

He counted forty men and sixteen women and then lost track. They were moving about, murmuring to one another. Taking places where they could watch him as he worked. They wanted to see every move he made.

Now the cube had been opened by Lodge technicians. The cold-pack was being sucked out greedily by plastic suction tendrils. In a moment the body would be exposed.

"These people shouldn't be here," Parsons said nervously. "I'll have to open his chest and plug in a pump. Danger of infection will be enormous."

The men and women heard him, but none of them budged.

"They feel they have a right to be here," Helmar said.

"But you people admittedly know nothing about medicine, about hygiene--"

"You worked on the girl Icara in public," Helmar said. "And you have numerous sterilizing agents in your case; we were able to identify them."

Parsons cursed under his breath. He turned away from Helmar and slid on his plastic protective gloves. Now he began arranging his instruments on a portable worktable. As the last of the cold-pack was drained off by the suction tendrils, Parsons flicked on a high-frequency field and placed the potentials on each side of the cube. The terminals hummed and glowed as the field warmed. Now the inert body was within a zone of bacteria-destroying radiation. He concentrated the field briefly on his instruments and gloves. The watching men and women took everything in without expression, faces blank with concentration.

Abruptly the cold-pack was gone. The body was exposed.

Parsons moved into activity. There had been no tangible decay. The body appeared perfectly fresh. He touched the lifeless wrist. It was
cold
. A chilling effluvium that trickled up his arm and made him quickly let go. The utter cold of outer space. He shivered and wondered how he was going to work.

"He will warm rapidly," Helmar grated. "It's no form of refrigeration you're familiar with. Molecular velocity has not been reduced. It has been differently phased."

The body was now warm enough to touch. Whatever alteration had been made in the vibrational pattern, the molecules were already beginning to return to their natural rate.

With scrupulous care, Parsons locked a mechanical lung in place and activated it. While the lung exerted rhythmic pressure on the immobile chest, he concentrated on the heart. He punctured the rib cage and plugged the Dixon pump into the vascular system, bypassing the suspended heart. The pump went immediately to work. Blood flowed. Both respiration and circulation resumed in this body that had died thirty-five years ago. Now, if there hadn't been much tissue deterioration from lack of oxygen and nutrition, especially in the brain . . .

Unnoticed, Loris had come over beside him, so that now her body pressed against him. Rigid as stone, she peered down.

"Instead of removing the arrow from the heart," Parsons said, "I have gone around the heart. Temporarily, at least." Now he inspected the injured organ itself.

The arrow had penetrated accurately. Probably there was little he could do to restore the organ. But, with the proper tool, he plucked the arrow out and tossed it to the floor. Blood oozed.

"It can be repaired," he said to Loris. "But the big question has to do with brain damage. If it's too great, I recommend that we destroy him." The alternative, letting him live, would not be pleasant.

"I see," she said in a stricken voice. No more than a whisper.

"In my opinion," Parsons said, addressing both her and the group, "we should proceed now."

"You mean try to revive him?" she said. He had to catch hold of her; she had begun to sway, and he saw that her eyes were almost blind with fear.

"Yes," he said. "May I?"

"Suppose you fail," she whispered, appealing to him.

"I have as much chance of success as I will ever have," he said frankly. "Every time he's revived, there will be some further deterioration of brain tissue."

"Then go ahead," she said in a stronger voice.

Helmar, behind them, said, "And don't fail." He did not say it as a threat; his voice had more a patently fanatical tone. As if, to him, failure simply could not occur; it was not possible.

Parsons said, "With the pump operating, he should revive very shortly." With instruments, he listened for pulse, for the man's breathing.
That is, if he ever does,
he thought to himself.