Ice and Fire

Chapter Nine

"Richard Neal Ginsberg, born March 22, 1970. Occupation..." Krysty turned away from the VDT screen. "Just says that his job was listed and sec-coded with a high B classification. That's all we know."

The freezie was around five-ten in height and seemed to be around 160 pounds. His hair was very dark, cut short, with tight curls. Ryan noticed that his muscle tone was very poor, which could indicate some side effect of the cryogenic treatment, or it could show that Richard Ginsberg had worked in a sedentary job and rarely took much exercise.

He had been sitting up in his polished capsule, peering out through the glass door. Other than the two short questions, he'd said nothing. He simply lay down again as the six friends moved toward him. Then he fell into what seemed a natural and peaceful sleep.

Ryan and Jak had lifted him out, winding the crackling sheet of plastic off his naked body. They lowered him carefully onto the floor and covered him with some blankets that Krysty had discovered in a wall closet. In the cubicle, in a green locker, J.B. found what they guessed must have been the freezie's own clothes — laundered underclothes, a gray shirt with a trim collar, a suit in a darker gray material, light fawn socks and tan shoes in imitation leather. The only other item in the locker was a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles.

Now that they'd actually got themselves a live one, none of the group quite knew what to do with him. In the end they agreed it was best to let him rest peacefully for a while, so that he could sleep off his hundred years of sleep.

"Wish there was more in the computer about him," Ryan said. "Name, age and a secret job. Not much to go on."

"When he comes around he can tell us himself, can he not?" Doc asked.

"Think his brain shitted up," Jak offered.

"I wouldn't be surprised. I trust that none of you has noticed anything amiss, but there are, confidentially, times that I find my own brain becoming a touch fuzzy at the edges."

Ryan grinned at the old man. "We never would have guessed if you hadn't told us, Doc." And now that he'd thought about it, Ryan was amazed at how lucid Doc had been since they'd entered the cryo section.

While they were waiting they checked out the other six capsules that had been activated by the master control. Each of them had been occupied. Five men and one more woman.

What had happened to them gave a dreadful insight into how experimental the freezing process must have been, and how unreliable were the systems that controlled the thawing out.

All of them were dead.

Extremely dead.

Doc's guess was that somehow the controls had malfunctioned, causing a grotesque speeding up of the unfreezing.

The flesh seemed to have puddled off the bones in a sludge of instant decay. The cubicles reeked with the warm, sweet scent of rotting meat.

Fortunately it was possible to keep the capsules hermetically sealed, so that the odor scarcely filtered out into the main control area.

"It's like opening a domestic freezer in the middle of August," Doc observed, "and finding that the power had been disconnected three weeks earlier. Or like poor Monsieur Valdemar, if that was his name."

"Who's he, Doc?"

"Who, Krysty, my dear?"

"Somebody Valdemar?"

"Oh, yes. A character in a tale of grue. A man on his deathbed who is miraculously given the blessing of eternal life. But it becomes a curse as he is permanently fixed at the moment of death. He is finally released from this damnation and his body liquefies and rots to nothing in a matter of moments. Rather like those poor devils in those gleaming coffins. Better they should have passed on in a natural way, I think. Far better."

Richard Ginsberg woke several times, but never seemed to come all the way back to anything approaching full awareness. He opened his eyes and blinked around, showing only a mild bewilderment at where he might be. But he would almost immediately slide back into sleep.

Once he spoke. "Thirsty," he said.

Everyone pulled out small ring-pulls of clean water, and it was Lori who opened one of hers and held it for Ginsberg to sip. He coughed and choked, but managed something that might have been a crooked smile.

"Probably getting dark soon," J.B. said. "Best get him to the sleepers for the night. Be instant chill to go out into strangeness with him. Any trouble and we're all dead meat."

Ryan sucked at a tiny hole he'd recently noticed in a back tooth. "Yeah," he agreed reluctantly. "Rather have moved. We're all ready. But you're right, J.B. It'd be self-death if we tried." He looked at the others. "We're going to where we slept last night. We'll take turns carrying the freezie. Let's go, friends. Let's go."

Ginsberg seemed to be slipping into a deeper sleep, verging on coma. When they got him to the living quarters in the middle of the redoubt, Doc examined him, peeling back his eyelids, finding no response.

"Shock, maybe. He's becoming catatonic, switching off his mind so he won't have to come to terms with what must be a great disturbance. The alternative, sadly, is that the thawing hasn't worked quite as it should... or we have omitted something important. And poor Mr. Ginsberg is, quite simply, dying."

"Nothing we can do. Jak's given him some of that soup. Most dribbled right on out again. We've wrapped him warm and snug. Figure someone should stay with him through the night?"

Krysty's question wasn't answered immediately. Ryan broke the silence. "No. He's next door to us and the partition doesn't run to the ceiling. Jak and J.B. are to the other side. If he makes any noise, one of us'll hear him and wake."

By morning, Ginsberg looked close to death. His pulse and respiration had both fallen away to critical levels. His skin felt cold, and he failed to respond to any kind of stimulus.

"Gotta be something we can do," Lori said, standing with the others around the freezie's bed.

"We can leave him to die and get out of this place for a look-see," J.B. suggested.

"Just like that?" Doc retorted, the anger riding at the front of his voice.

"Yeah. He'll be worm fodder in a day. Mebbe less than that. Why wait and watch?"

"Sometimes, John Barrymore Dix, I have serious doubts about the code by which you live. By which we all live. I fear that I cannot — and will not — simply pass by this poor refuge from the past. Walk on the farther side and avert my eyes? No, thank you, my friends. That is not the way of Theophilus Algernon Tanner."

The Armorer took the reproach with a reasonable grace. "You got a point, Doc. Grant that. But if there was close danger here, you still wouldn't see me for dust. And the freezie could go get frozen again. But what can we do for him, Doc? You tell me that, will you?"

"Wish I knew, J.B., I wish I knew. He seems to be gently slipping through our fingers. After all those years..."

A short while later Richard Ginsberg appeared to stabilize. His heart and breathing steadied and even rallied a little. And, beneath the blankets, his flesh no longer felt so bitterly cold.

By noon there was a rekindling of a real hope for him.

"Looks better, Doc," Ryan said.

"I feel now we should try to restore him to consciousness. And try to make him take nourishment."

"How?" Lori queried.

Doc scratched his head. "Excellent question, my sweet passion flower of youth. How indeed?"

"Slap his face a few times, sit him up and pour some hot soup down his throat," Krysty suggested.

"Might kill him," J.B. said. "Then again... might cure him."

"What do you think, Doc?" Ryan asked.

"I do wish that you would all make a little more effort to recall that I may be called 'Doc' but that I know precious little about medicine. I am a doctor of science, and none of my science is of any avail here and now. I don't know, Ryan Cawdor. Why not try it? I doubt it will actually contribute to his death."

Ryan supported the dark-haired man, sitting him up on the bed. Krysty sat at his side, licking her lips nervously, looking at Ginsberg. "He's starting to show a beard. Look. All that stubble frozen for ten decades."

"Get on with it," Ryan urged her.

"Gaia help me," she whispered. "May the force of the Earth Mother act through me to save this stranger from the past."

Ryan noticed how the sensory curls of her crimson hair had retreated in tight bunches, as if seeking to protect her. Krysty swung her arm back, and then whipped it forward, hitting Ginsberg a solid slap across the left cheek. Though Ryan was braced against it, he was still rocked.

"Fireblast! You don't have to force his skull off his spine, lover."

"No point unless I do it hard. Keep him still there."

This time she used her left hand, leaving the vivid imprint of palm and fingers on the pale skin. Ginsberg's eyes jerked open, unfocused, then closed once more. Ryan could feel that the man's breathing had quickened.

"Again," he ordered.

Krysty slapped the helpless freezie's face twice more — a sharp back-and-forth motion, making the head roll from side to side.

This time the eyes flicked open, and stayed that way.

"Again?" Krysty asked, hand lifted ready.

"No," Richard Ginsberg gasped in a weak but clearly audible voice. "Thank you, but no. Not again."

"Welcome to the future," Doc said.