New Frontiers (10 page)

“Call me Alex,” he heard himself say.

“Alex.”

“How do you feel?”

For a moment she didn't reply. Then, pulling herself up to a sitting position, she said, “Fine, I think. Yes. Perfectly fine.”

He took her arm and helped her to her feet, peering at her, wondering if she was still the same person.

“Vartan?” she asked, glancing around the small compartment. “Has Vartan been awakened?”

Ignatiev sighed. She's the same, he thought. Almost, he was glad of it. Almost.

“Yes. He's waiting for you in the lounge. He wanted to be here when you awoke, but I told him to wait in the lounge.”

He walked with Nikki down the passageway to the lounge, where Gregorian and the rest of the crew were celebrating their revival, crowded around one of the tables, drinking and laughing among themselves.

Gregorian leaped to his feet and rushed to Nikki the instant she stepped through the hatch. Ignatiev felt his brows knit into a frown. They love each other, he told himself. What would she want with an old fart like you?

“You should be angry at Dr. Ignatiev,” Gregorian said brashly as he led Nikki to the table where the rest of the crew was sitting.

A serving robot trundled up to Ignatiev, a frosted glass resting on its flat top. “Your chilled vodka, sir,” it said, in a low male voice.

“Angry?” Nikki asked, picking up the stemmed wine glass that Gregorian offered her. “Why should I be angry at Alex?”

“He's stolen your job,” said Gregorian. “He's made himself navigator.”

Nikki turned toward him.

Waving his free hand as nonchalantly as he could, Ignatiev said, “We're maneuvering through the hydrogen clouds, avoiding the areas of low density.”

“He's using the pulsars for navigation fixes,” Gregorian explained. He actually seemed to be admiring.

“Of course!” Nikki exclaimed. “How clever of you, Alex.”

Ignatiev felt his face redden.

The rest of the crew rose to their feet as they neared the table.

“Dr. Ignatiev,” said the redheaded engineer, in a tone of respect, admiration.

Nikki beamed at Ignatiev. He made himself smile back at her. So she's in love with Gregorian, he thought. There's nothing to be done about that.

The display screen above the table where the crew had gathered showed the optical telescope's view of the star field outside. Ignatiev thought it might be his imagination, but the ruddy dot of Gliese 581 seemed a little larger to him.

We're on our way to you, he said silently to the star. We'll get there in good time. Then he thought of the consternation that would strike the mission controllers in about six years, when they found out that the ship had changed its course.

Consternation? he thought. They'll panic! I'll have to send them a full report, before they start having strokes.

He chuckled at the thought.

“What's funny?” Nikki asked.

Ignatiev shook his head. “I'm just happy that we all made it through and we're on our way to our destination.”

“Thanks to you,” she said.

Before he could think of a reply, Gregorian raised his glass of amber liquor over his head and bellowed, “To Dr. Alexander Alexandrovich Ignatiev. The man who saved our lives.”

“The man who steers across the stars,” added one of the biologists.

They all cheered.

Ignatiev basked in the glow. They're children, he said to himself. Only children. Then he found a new thought: But they're
my
children. Each and every one of them. The idea startled him. And he felt strangely pleased.

He looked past their admiring gazes, to the display screen and the pinpoints of stars staring steadily back at him. An emission nebula gleamed off in one corner of the view. He felt a thrill that he hadn't experienced in many, many years. It's beautiful, Ignatiev thought. The universe is so unbelievably, so heart-brimmingly beautiful: mysterious, challenging, endlessly full of wonders.

There's so much to learn, he thought. So much to explore. He smiled at the youngsters crowding around him. I have some good years left. I'll spend them well.

 

INTRODUCTION TO

“IN TRUST”

 

Biomedical breakthroughs are taking us to a new frontier right here on Earth. How will the world change when we can live virtually unlimited lifespans? That's a frontier I wouldn't mind exploring!

Michael Bienes was a good friend who enjoyed intellectual puzzles. One evening over dinner he asked me if I would want to have my body frozen after clinical death, in the hope that sometime in the future medical science might learn to cure whatever it was that killed me and bring me back to life. I answered yes, tentatively.

Then he asked me who I would trust to watch over my frozen body for all the years—maybe centuries—that it would take before I could be successfully revived. That started a lively conversation about insurance companies and social institutions.

By the time dessert was being served we had agreed that there was only one institution we could think of that had the “staying power” and the reputation for integrity that would lead us to trust our frozen bodies to it.

“Now why don't you write a story about it?” Michael prompted.

So I did.

 

IN TRUST

 

TRUST WAS NOT
a virtue that came easily to Jason Manning.

He had clawed his way to the top of the multinational corporate ladder mainly by refusing to trust anyone: not his business associates, not his rivals or many enemies, not his so-called friends, not any one of his wives and certainly none of his mistresses.

“Trust nobody,” his sainted father had told him since childhood, so often that Jason could never remember when the old man had first said it to him.

Jason followed his father's advice so well that by the time he was forty years old he was one of the twelve wealthiest men in America. He had capped his rise to fortune by deposing his father as CEO of the corporation the old man had founded. Dad had looked deathly surprised when Jason pushed him out of his own company. He had foolishly trusted his own son.

So Jason was in a considerable quandary when it finally sank in on him, almost ten years later, that he was about to die.

He did not trust his personal physician's diagnosis, of course. Pancreatic cancer. He couldn't have pancreatic cancer. That's the kind of terrible retribution that nature plays on you when you haven't taken care of your body properly. Jason had never smoked, drank rarely and then only moderately, and since childhood he had eaten his broccoli and all the other healthful foods his mother had set before him. All his adult life he had followed a strict regimen of high fiber, low fat, and aerobic exercise.

“I want a second opinion!” Jason had snapped at his physician.

“Of course,” said the sad-faced doctor. He gave Jason the name of the city's top oncologist.

Jason did not trust that recommendation. He sought his own expert.

“Pancreatic cancer,” said the head of the city's most prestigious hospital, dolefully.

Jason snorted angrily and swept out of the woman's office, determined to cancel his generous annual contribution to the hospital's charity drive. He took on an alias, flew alone in coach class across the ocean, and had himself checked over by six other doctors in six other countries, never revealing to any of them who he truly was.

Pancreatic cancer.

“It becomes progressively more painful,” one of the diagnosticians told him, his face a somber mask of professional concern.

Another warned, “Toward the end, even our best analgesics become virtually useless.” And he burst into tears, being an Italian.

Still another doctor, a kindly Swede, gave Jason the name of a suicide expert. “He can help you to ease your departure,” said the doctor.

“I can't do that,” Jason muttered, almost embarrassed. “I'm a Catholic.”

The Swedish doctor sighed understandingly.

On the long flight back home Jason finally admitted to himself that he was indeed facing death, all that broccoli notwithstanding. For God's sake, he realized, I shouldn't even have trusted Mom! Her and her, “Eat all of it, Jace. It's good for you.”

If there was one person in the entire universe that Jason came close to trusting, it was his brother, the priest. So, after spending the better part of a month making certain rather complicated arrangements, Jason had his chauffeur drive him up to the posh Boston suburb where Monsignor Michael Manning served as pastor of St. Raphael's.

Michael took the news somberly. “I guess that's what I can look forward to, then.” Michael was five years younger than Jason and had faithfully followed all his brother's childhood bouts with chicken pox, measles, and mumps. As a teenager he had even broken exactly the same bone in his leg that Jason had, five years after his big brother's accident, in the same way: sliding into third base on the same baseball field.

Jason leaned back in the bottle-green leather armchair and stared into the crackling fireplace, noting as he did every time he visited his brother that Michael's priestly vow of poverty had not prevented him from living quite comfortably. The rectory was a marvelous old house, kept in tip-top condition by teams of devoted parishioners, and generously stocked by the local merchants with viands and all sorts of refreshments. On the coffee table between the two brothers rested a silver tray bearing delicate china cups and a fine English teapot filled with steaming herbal tea.

“There's nothing that can be done?” Michael asked, brotherly concern etched into his face.

“Not now,” Jason said.

“How long…?”

“Maybe a hundred years, maybe even more.”

Michael blinked with confusion. “A hundred years? What're you talking about, Jace?”

“Freezing.”

“Freezing?”

“Freezing,” Jason repeated. “I'm going to have myself frozen until medical science figures out how to cure pancreatic cancer. Then I'll have myself thawed out and take up my life again.”

Michael sat up straighter in his chair. “You can't have yourself frozen, Jace. Not until you're dead.”

“I'm not going to sit still and let the cancer kill me,” Jason said, thinking of the pain. “I'm going to get a doctor to fix me an injection.”

“But that'd be suicide! A mortal sin!”

“I won't be dead forever. Just until they learn how to cure my cancer.”

There was fear in Michael's eyes. “Jace, listen to me. Taking a lethal injection is suicide.”

“It's got to be done. They can't freeze me while I'm still alive. Even if they could, that would stop my heart just as completely as the injection would and I'd be dead anyway.”

“It's still suicide, Jace,” Michael insisted, truly upset. “Holy Mother Church teaches—”

“Holy Mother Church is a couple of centuries behind the times,” Jason grumbled. “It's not suicide. It's more like a long-term anesthetic.”

“You'll be legally dead.”

“But not morally dead,” Jason insisted.

“Still…” Michael lapsed into silence, pressing his fingers together prayerfully.

“I'm not committing suicide,” Jason tried to explain. “I'm just going to sleep for a while. I won't be committing any sin.”

Michael had been his brother's confessor since he had been ordained. He had heard his share of sinning.

“You're treading a very fine line, Jace,” the monsignor warned his brother.

“The Church has got to learn to deal with the modern world, Mike.”

“Yes, perhaps. But I'm thinking of the legal aspects here. Your doctors will have to declare you legally dead, won't they?”

“It's pretty complicated. I have to give myself the injection, otherwise the state can prosecute them for homicide.”

“Your state allows assisted suicides, does it?” Michael asked darkly.

“Yes, even though you think it's a sin.”

“It is a sin,” Michael snapped. “That's not an opinion, that's a fact.”

“The Church will change its stand on that, sooner or later,” Jason said.

“Never!”

“It's got to! The Church can't lag behind the modern world forever, Mike. It's got to change.”

“You can't change morality, Jace. What was true two thousand years ago is still true today.”

Jason rubbed at the bridge of his nose. A headache was starting to throb behind his eyes, the way it always did when he and Michael argued.

“Mike, I didn't come here to fight with you.”

The monsignor softened immediately. “I'm sorry, Jace. It's just that … you're running a terrible risk. Suppose you're never awakened? Suppose you finally die while you're frozen? Will God consider that you've committed suicide?”

Jason fell back on the retort that always saved him in arguments with his brother. “God's a lot smarter than either one of us, Mike.”

Michael smiled ruefully. “Yes, I suppose He is.”

“I'm going to do it, Mike. I'm not going to let myself die in agony if I can avoid it.”

His brother conceded the matter with a resigned shrug. But then, suddenly, he sat up ramrod straight again.

“What is it?” Jason asked.

“You'll be legally dead?” Michael asked.

“Yes. I told you—”

“Then your will can go to probate.”

“No, I won't be…” Jason stared at his brother. “Oh my God!” he gasped. “My estate! I've got to make sure it's kept intact while I'm frozen.”

Michael nodded firmly. “You don't want your money gobbled up while you're in the freezer. You'd wake up penniless.”

“My children all have their own lawyers,” Jason groaned. “My bankers. My ex-wives!”

Jason ran out of the rectory.

Although the doctors had assured him that it would take months before the pain really got severe, Jason could feel the cancer in his gut, growing and feeding on his healthy cells while he desperately tried to arrange his worldly goods so that no one could steal them while he lay frozen in a vat of liquid nitrogen.