The Minority Report and Other Classic Stories (47 page)

“I have no friends here on Terra,” Kathy said. “But the spaceport people told me that the Severely is a good hotel, so I’m going there. I started from Callisto as soon as I heard that my grandfather had died,”

“You made good time,” he said. He hadn’t expected her for another twenty-four hours.

“Is there any chance—” The girl sounded timid. “Could I possibly stay with you, Mr. Barefoot? It scares me, the idea of a big hotel where no one knows me.”

“I’m sorry,” he said at once. “I’m married.” And then he realized that such a retort was not only inappropriate … it was actually abusive. “What I mean is,” he explained, “I have no spare room. You stay at the Severely tonight and tomorrow we’ll find you a more acceptable apartment.”

“All right,” Kathy said. She sounded resigned but still anxious. “Tell me, Mr. Barefoot, what luck have you had with my grandfather’s resurrection? Is he in half-life, now?”

“No,” Johnny said. “It’s failed, so far. They’re working on it.”

When he had left the mortuary, five technicians had been busy at work, trying to discover what was wrong.

Kathy said, “I thought it might work out that way.”

“Why?”

“Well, my grandfather—he was so different from everyone else. I realize you know that, perhaps even better than I… after all, you were with him daily. But—I just couldn’t imagine him inert, the way the half-lifers are. Passive and helpless, you know. Can you imagine him like that, after all he’s done?”

Johnny said, “Let’s talk tomorrow; I’ll come by the hotel about nine. Okay?”

“Yes, that’s fine. I’m glad to have met you, Mr. Barefoot. I hope you’ll stay on with Archimedean, working for me. Goodbye.” The phone clicked; she had rung off.

My new boss,
Johnny said to himself.
Wow.

“Who was that?” Sarah Belle murmured. “At this hour?”

“The owner of Archimedean,” Johnny said. “My employer.”

“Louis Sarapis?” His wife sat up at once. “Oh… you mean his granddaughter; she’s here already. What’s she sound like?”

“I can’t tell,” he said meditatively. “Frightened, mostly. It’s a finite, small world she comes from, compared with Terra, here.” He did not tell his wife the things he knew about Kathy, her drug addiction, her terms in jail.

“Can she take over now?” Sarah Belle asked. “Doesn’t she have to wait until Louis’s half-life is over?”

“Legally, he’s dead. His will has come into
force.” And,
he thought acidly,
he’s not in half-life anyhow; he’s silent and dead in his plastic casket, in his quick-pack, which evidently wasn’t quite quick enough.

“How do you think you’ll get along with her?”

“I don’t know,” he said candidly. “I’m not even sure I’m going to try.” He did not like the idea of working for a woman, especially one younger than himself. And one who was—at least according to hearsay—virtually psychopathic. But on the phone she had certainly not sounded psychopathic. He mulled that over in his mind, wide-awake now.

“She’s probably very pretty,” Sarah Belle said. “You’ll probably fall in love with her and desert me.”

“Oh no,” he said. “Nothing as startling as that. I’ll probably try to work for her, drag out a few miserable months, and then give up and look elsewhere.”
And meanwhile,
he thought,
WHAT ABOUT LOUIS? Are we, or are we not, going to be able to revive him?
That was the really big unknown.

If the old man could be revived, he could direct his granddaughter; even though legally and physically dead, he could continue to manage his complex economic and political sphere, to some extent. But right now this was simply not working out, and the old man had planned on being revived at once, certainly before the Democratic-Republican Convention. Louis certainly knew—or rather had known—what sort of person he was willing his holdings to. Without help she surely could not function.
And,
Johnny thought,
there’s little I can do for her. Claude St. Cyr could have, but by the terms of the will he’s out of the picture entirely. So what is left? We must keep trying to revive old Louis, even if we have to visit every mortuary in the United States, Cuba and Russia.

“You’re thinking confused thoughts,” Sarah Belle said. “I can tell by your expression.” She turned on the small lamp by the bed, and was now reaching for her robe. “Don’t try to solve serious matters in the middle of the night.”

This must be how half-life feels,
he thought groggily. He shook his head, trying to clear it, to wake up fully.

The next morning he parked his car in the underground garage of the Beverely and ascended by elevator to the lobby and the front desk where he was greeted by the smiling day clerk. It was not much of a hotel, Johnny decided. Clean, however; a respectable family hotel which probably rented many of its units by the month, some no doubt to elderly retired people. Evidently Kathy was accustomed to living modestly.

In answer to his query, the clerk pointed to the adjoining coffee shop. “You’ll find her in there, eating breakfast. She said you might be calling, Mr. Barefoot.”

In the coffee shop he found a good number of people having breakfast; he stopped short, wondering which was Kathy. The dark-haired girl with the stilted, frozen features, over in the far corner out of the way? He walked toward her. Her hair, he decided, was dyed. Without makeup she looked unnaturally pale; her skin had a stark quality, as if she had known a good deal of suffering, and not the sort that taught or informed one, made one into a “better” person. It had been pure pain, with no redemptive aspects, he decided as he studied her.

“Kathy?” he asked.

The girl turned her head. Her eyes, empty; her expression totally flattened. In a little voice she said, “Yes. Are you John Barefoot?” As he came up to the booth and seated himself opposite her she watched as if she imagined he would spring at her, hurl himself on her and—God forbid—sexually assault her.
It’s as if she’s nothing more than a lone, small animal,
he thought.
Backed into a corner to face the entire world.

The color, or rather lack of it, could stem from the drug addiction, he decided. But that did not explain the flatness of her tone, and her utter lack of facial expression. And yet—she was pretty. She had delicate, regular features… animated, they would have been interesting. And perhaps they had been, once. Years ago.

“I have only five dollars left,” Kathy said. “After I paid for my one-way ticket and my hotel and my breakfast. Could you—” She hesitated. “I’m not sure exactly what to do. Could you tell me… do I own anything yet? Anything that was my grandfather’s? That I could borrow against?”

Johnny said, “I’ll write you a personal check for one hundred dollars and you can pay me back sometime.” He got out his checkbook.

“Really?” She looked stunned, and now, faintly, she smiled. “How trusting of you. Or are you trying to impress me? You were my grandfather’s public relations man, weren’t you? How were you dealt with in the will? I can’t remember; it’s all happened so fast, it’s been so blurred.”

“Well,” he said, “I wasn’t fired, as was Claude St. Cyr.”

“Then you’re staying on.” That seemed to relieve her mind. “I wonder… would it be correct to say you’re now working for
me?”

“You could say that,” Johnny said. “Assuming you feel you need a P.R. man. Maybe you don’t. Louis wasn’t sure, half the time.”

“Tell me what efforts have been made to resurrect him.”

He explained to her, briefly, what he had done.

“And this is not generally known?” she asked.

“Definitely not. I know it, a mortuary owner with the unnatural name of Herb Schoenheit von Vogelsang knows it, and possibly news has trickled to a few high people in the drayage business, such as Phil Harvey. Even Claude St. Cyr may know it, by now. Of course, as time goes on and Louis has nothing to say, no political pronouncements for the press—”

“We’ll have to make them up,” Kathy said. “And pretend they’re from him. That will be your job, Mr. Funnyfoot.” She smiled once more. “Press-releases by my grandfather, until he’s finally revived or we give up. Do you think we’ll have to give up?” After a pause she said softly, “I’d like to see him. If I may. If you think it’s all right.”

“I’ll take you there, to the Blessed Brethren Mortuary. I have to go there within the hour anyhow.”

Nodding, Kathy resumed eating her breakfast.

As Johnny Barefoot stood beside the girl, who gazed intently at the transparent casket, he thought bizarrely,
Maybe she’ll rap on the glass and say, “Grandfather, you wake up.” And,
he thought,
maybe that will accomplish it. Certainly nothing else has.

Wringing his hands, Herb Schoenheit von Vogelsang burbled miserably, “I just don’t understand it, Mr. Barefoot. We worked all night, in relays, and we just aren’t getting a single spark. And yet we ran an electrocephalograph and the ‘gram shows faint but unmistakable cerebral activity. So the after-life is there, but we can’t seem to contact it. We’ve got probes at every part of the skull, now, as you can see.” He pointed to the maze of hair-wires connecting the dead man’s head to the amplifying equipment surrounding the casket. “I don’t know what else we can do, sir.”

“Is there measurable brain metabolism?” Johnny asked.

“Yes sir. We called in outside experts and they detected it; it’s a normal amount, too, just what you’d expect, immediately after death.”

Kathy said calmly, “I know it’s hopeless. He’s too big a man for this. This is for aged relatives. For grandmothers, to be trotted out once a year on Resurrection Day.” She turned away from the casket. “Let’s go,” she said to Johnny.

Together, he and the girl walked along the sidewalk from the mortuary, neither speaking. It was a mild spring day, and the trees here and there at the curb had small pink flowers. Cherry trees, Johnny decided.

“Death,” Kathy murmured, at last. “And rebirth. A technological miracle. Maybe when Louis saw what it was like on the other side he changed his mind about coming back… maybe he just doesn’t
want
to return.”

“Well,” Johnny said, “the electrical spark is there; he’s inside there, thinking something.” He let Kathy take his arm as they crossed the street. “Someone told me,” he said quietly, “that you’re interested in religion.”

“Yes, I am,” Kathy said quietly. “You see, when I was a narcotics addict I took an overdose—never mind of what—and as a result my heart action ceased. I was officially, medically, dead for several minutes; they brought me back by open-chest heart massage and electroshock… you know. During that time I had an experience, probably much like what those who go into half-life have experienced.”

“Was it better than here?”

“No,” she said. “But it was different. It was—dreamlike. I don’t mean vague or unreal. I mean the logic, the weightlessness; you see, that’s the main difference. You’re free of gravity. It’s hard to realize how important that is, but just think how many of the characteristics of the dream derive from that one fact.”

Johnny said, “And it changed you.”

“I managed to overcome the oral addictive aspects of my personality, if that’s what you mean. I learned to control my appetites. My greed.” At a newspaper stand Kathy halted to read the headlines. “Look,” she said.

“Interesting,” Johnny said.

Kathy, picking up the newspaper, read the article which accompanied the headline. “How strange,” she said. “They’ve picked up a sentient, living entity… here, you can read it, too.” She passed the newspaper to him. “I did that, when I died… I drifted out, free of the solar system, first planetary gravity then the sun’s. I wonder who it is.” Taking the newspaper back she reread the article.

“Ten cents, sir or madam,” the robot vender said, suddenly.

Johnny tossed it the dime.

“Do you think it’s my grandfather?” Kathy asked.

“Hardly,” Johnny said.

“I think it is,” Kathy said, staring past him, deep in thought. “I know it is; look, it began one week after his death, and it’s one light-week out. The time fits, and here’s the transcript of what it’s saying.” She pointed to the column. “All about you, Johnny, and about me and about Claude St. Cyr, that lawyer he fired, and the Convention; it’s all there, but garbled. That’s the way your thoughts run, when you’re dead; all compressed, instead of in sequence.” She smiled up at Johnny. “So we’ve got a terrible problem. We can hear him, by use of the radio telescope at Kennedy Slough. But he can’t hear us.”

“You don’t actually—”

“Oh, I do,” she said matter-of-factly. “I knew he wouldn’t settle for half-life; this is a whole, entire life he’s leading now, out in space, there, beyond the last planet of our system. And there isn’t going to be any way we can interfere with him; whatever it is he’s doing—” She began to walk on, once more; Johnny followed. “Whatever it is, it’s going to be at least as much as he did when he was alive here on Terra. You can be sure of that. Are you afraid?”

“Hell,” Johnny protested, “I’m not even convinced, let alone afraid.” And yet—perhaps she was right. She seemed so certain about it. He could not help being a little impressed, a little convinced.

“You should be afraid,” Kathy said. “He may be very strong, out there. He may be able to do a lot. Affect a lot… affect us, what we do and say and believe. Even without the radio telescope—he may be reaching us, even now. Subliminally.”

“I don’t believe it,” Johnny said. But he did, in spite of himself. She was right; it was just what Louis Sarapis would do.

Kathy said, “We’ll know more when the Convention begins, because that’s what he cares about. He failed to get Gam elected last time, and that was one of the few times in his life that he was beaten.”

“Gam!” Johnny echoed, amazed. “That has-been? Is he even still in existence? Why, he completely disappeared, four years ago—”