THE CRYONAUTS

Originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, September 1973.

As the world watched by satellite bounce, the summiteers, sitting at a round table, made ready to sign their names in its name. Premier Chen was alone in his use of a writing brush; to make up for his idiosyncrasy, each of the four other world leaders used a different color ink.

Each of the five sprang into close-up as the camera, programmed to give them precisely equal time, panned around. Then the camera lens zoomed in on the document, and the folks back home read tasteful cursives in their own tongues that told them it was indeed as their leaders had said.

Their leaders were in their behalf agreeing to postpone the bringing back to life of cryonaut nationals of the signatory powers and, in effect, imposing the same ban on the rest of the world, till the world had resolved the population explosion. Till then, people might go on opting for freezing when death was at hand, but they might not thaw out and undergo new healing techniques before the danger of overcrowding and overburdening the earth ended. “Put a freeze on thawing” was the slogan that had put the campaign over.

The folks back home watched Premiers Chen, Brodsky and Tanigawa and Presidents Boyd and Teixera go through the assigned permutations to get twenty-five signatures on five copies. Then, on signal, the five shoved back from the table together and stood up as one.

With the quick drying of the ink the solemnity faded into the growing exuberance of toasting themselves and the great event.

Five robutlers spill-lessly served precisely equal drinks to the five leaders. The leaders at first stuck strictly to protocol while trying to outdo each other in praise of each other. Then it was all a happy swarm and babble that the folks at home smiled to see and hear.

Then all at once Premier Chen stopped cold with his fourth or fifth glass to his lips. He spoke as if awakening from a bad dream.

“What are we doing sitting down with the devil? Are we weaklings? Have we gone soft? Don’t we know our foes when we see them? Isn’t it burned into our minds that they tried to undermine and overthrow us? Dare we dishonor the dead who died to defeat them? Have we forgotten how to deal with them? This so-called pact is merely a trick to hold down our population while they secretly build theirs.”

He dashed the glass undrunk to the beautifully polished floor. He snatched from his aide his country’s magnificently bound and beribboned copy of the signed agreement, tore it in two and scaled the halves away.

As usual, it was the innocent bystanders who got hurt; the robutlers were not swift enough in ducking and sustained scratches and dents.

Premiers Brodsky and Tanigawa and President Teixera were quick to follow suit, shouting similar denunciations and repeating Premier Chen’s business of destruction.

The robutlers had learned and escaped without more damage.

President Boyd found herself in a double bind, in the middle not between friends and foes but between friends. She fought down an irrational urge to kill and kill, and patted the air down on either side of her.

“Let’s reason together, ladies and gentlemen.”

But it was a bit late for reasoning. The great ballroom in which the ceremony was taking place had suddenly dissolved away into the vaster expanse of a battlefield. They stood on ground that shook to the thunderous flowering of shells and bombs under a gray sky that streaked with contrails and smudged with flak. They wore uniforms and bore arms in the style of a century ago.

They stared at each other. Then the images of enemy and danger clicked on in their minds and they dove for shelter, exploding away from one another into muddy craters. As she dove, President Boyd snapped a shot with her carbine at Premier Chen and with a savage smile heard him cry out as she hit dirt.

In the hours that followed, measuring by heart thump and heart jump, her jaws became a vise of rictus. However long it was, it seemed longer, a weary time of watching and waiting for one of the helmets to turtle above a crater rim, a time of temple-bursting hate and gut-cramping fear.

* * * *

Premier Chen’s arm hung in a sling.

The flesh wound was real. Psychosomatic in origin, no doubt, for when the ballroom returned to itself, and the participants returned to their flawlessly attired selves, there had been no old-time spent bullets or cartridge cases to find. But that made the wound no less real, though acupuncture kept it from being painful.

Premier Chen was a wanly smiling pincushion. As host, he ushered the four others to seats. He and President Boyd avoided meeting each other’s eyes. Premier Chen gave the nod, and the wall facing the five of them became a screen.

They sat watching the tape of the ceremony and moved to the edge as it came to the moment of change.

There was no change. The ballroom remained the ballroom. They wriggled bottoms as the screen showed not the battle sequence they remembered all too vividly but five dignified men and women ducking behind chairs and under the table and pointing their index fingers at each other and cocking their thumbs and yelling, “Pow!”

* * * *

Their brain wave patterns told the Interpol Computer that the five world leaders were still in shell shock from the enormity of what had just happened. The Interpol Computer had been in overall charge of security arrangements; this wrecking of the agreement put it under its greatest pressure ever. But the Interpol Computer could not allow itself the emotional license of humans. It set to work at once to uncover the cause.

The robutlers were, of course, Interpol security agents, but the Interpol Computer had programmed itself to rule out nothing and no one. Its first move was to have the robutlers take each other apart to make sure nothing in any of them had sabotaged the pact signing. Its personal supervision satisfied the Interpol Computer that the robutlers’ built-in suppressors were proof against any sort of signal interference: it was a job worth doing even if it showed that the cause lay elsewhere. The Interpol Computer did not stop to think that clearing its servo-units gave it reason to have more confidence in itself. It had always to keep in mind the least likely suspect: itself.

The shock was wearing off and the five leaders listened with increasing unease as the Interpol Computer gave them the sitrep over the terminal in the ballroom.

“…not the robutlers. And analysis of the drinks proves them to have been free of hallucinogenic spiking. As for what you say you believed was taking place at the time, I have only your word pictures to go on. I must remind you that I did not see it, nor did the robutlers. We saw only what is on the tape. We saw you five distinguished persons duck behind chairs and under the table and point—” President Boyd broke in.

“Yes, yes, IC. We’re agreed it’s not on the tape. And yet we five know what happened—and there are six billion witnesses to what we know happened. What we want you to find out is how that can be.”

“As you wish, Ms. President.”

Premier Tanigawa drew in his breath before venturing the next question. “Do you have any theories, IC?”

All looked anxious waiting for IC’s answer.

“It did not show up on video tape. It did not show up on video. Yet people saw it. It appears, therefore, that there was a more direct reception of the image.”

The five leaders looked their relief. Each had feared IC would say all humanity had gone insane.

President Teixera laughed, but with a note of near-hysteria.

“Direct reception? Are you saying it’s as if six billion brains turned to crystal and the nerves to wire? Six billion walking crystal sets?”

“I’m saying it’s likely to turn out one of two things. Mass hypnosis, the Indian rope trick on a global scale. Or telepathy, sender or senders unknown, motive unknown.”

President Boyd pretended to shiver; it didn’t take much pretending.

“IC by name, icy by nature. But thanks.”

The five looked around at each other, not liking the alternatives. They cut IC out of the loop for a time to argue in private, then cut IC back in. Premier Chen spoke for them.

“Very well, IC, this is how it stands. We’re extending this meeting three days. Your mission is to solve the mystery within that time so that we may restage the pact signing sure of no further interference. If you fail, we will have to split up. That would be bad for world law and order. Do you understand?”

“I understand.”

“Good. Meanwhile, we’re issuing a communiqué stating that apparently through computer error a tape of an ancient war film had superimposed itself on the live proceedings.”

Computer error. That did not surprise IC. Humans had to save face. If IC felt anything, it felt a little sadness. Nothing to brood over, though.

Premier Chen was going on.

“Three days, remember. We figure people will stand still for this explanation only that long, especially if there are further manifestations.”

That was not ICs concern. It could only do its best. Politics was politics and crime was crime.

Premier Chen was leaning forward to add something.

“Unless you come up with the answer in time, the cold war mentality will take over, everyone blaming everyone else. The five of us will find ourselves at odds with each other. And if we’re unable to give you our united backing, you may wind up the scapegoat.”

Politics was politics and crime was crime. Except when one was the other.

IC sent out an all-points bulletin alerting its agents worldwide to look for and report on further manifestations.

* * * *

Pearl Cheyne and Hugh X hardly saw the minister’s shape or heard the minister’s voice. Their eyes were too full of each other, and their ears were too full of their own blood.

Then they grew aware that the voice was intoning, “If anyone being here present knows of a good reason why these two should not be wed, let him speak now or forever hold his peace.”

It was about to pick up after the perfunctory pause when another voice, one breathing fire and sulfur, thundered, “I do.”

And all at once Pearl darkened several shades and found herself bound fast to the chimney stack on a twentieth-century tenement roof, and Hugh lightened several tints and found himself leeringly ripping her gown from her shoulders.

“I do,” the voice said again—or was it the selfsame “I do”?

And a scatter of pigeons heralded a swooping shadow. It was the shadow of a flying dragon. In its first pass the dragon licked out tongues of flame to sever the wash lines crisscrossing the roof and clear a tarry landing space. The dragon banked for a turn, beat its wings against the wind to slow itself and landed scratchily.

It gave a smoker’s cough and said, “Fear not, maiden, I will rescue you from this monster.” With a flick of its tail it knocked Hugh aside. Then its claws tore Pearl’s bonds asunder, caught the fainting maiden; and holding Pearl gently in the cruel talons of its forefeet, the dragon spread its wings and got a running start and flapped itself free of the roof.

The swift streaming of thinner smog brought Pearl to and she sobbed her thanks to her embarrassed rescuer as the ghetto and the city dwindled beneath them and the world opened before them. Then they were soaring high along a mountain ridge and climbing yet higher with no apparent wing motion, getting a free ride on air currents and thermals.

At this point Pearl and Hugh came back to themselves. Pearl climbed down from the altar mock-up where she found herself, and she and Hugh stood staring at each other as the minister still intoned.

It intoned as though nothing had happened. But something had happened. And by the look in each other’s eyes Hugh and Pearl knew the double-ring ceremony was off for good. So Hugh, moving quickly, cut the minister off. Hugh pressed the coin-return lever, and the marrying machine coughed up the coins, and Hugh reluctantly handed Pearl her half.

* * * *

As soon as they parted, they hurried off to confessional booths. A psych machine reassured each they had not gone completely mad, merely experienced a passing folie à deux arising out of anxiety about impending marriage, an institution for which it appeared they simply were not ready.

The psych machines, being undercover agents of IC, at once transmitted the babblings of Pearl and Hugh to IC.

Part of the pattern and potentially significant, IC thought, but not much to chew on. It had out of Pearl and Hugh all it could hope to get; they had held nothing back, consciously or unconsciously. IC patched in the minister, but its testimony added no nourishment; the marrying machine had seen the two humans suddenly shy at the mobile dangling from the chapel booth’s ceiling, the girl break away from the boy and climb the altar mock-up, then the pair just as suddenly stop desecrating the ceremony, abort it and split—that was all.

IC contemplated the situation for a nanosecond. This fiasco and the tun-sized pact-signing fiasco had a common denominator. Whatever had thrown the humans into daymare or delusion had flung them backward in time.

Something in the backgrounds of Pearl Cheyne and Hugh X had singled them out for this manifestation. IC ran a check on their families, focusing on the grandparents and great-grandparents, who had lived in a time of battlefields and ghettos fitting the eyewitness descriptions.

In a flash or two the data surfaced, every public notice and private report on both families, from birth certificates to obituaries, on file in every level of government. IC studied the information and tried to draw meaning from the mass.

One fact struck IC. Both Pearl’s great-grandfather and Hugh’s grandmother had been—or one might say still were, since both were kept in cryonic suspension modules—bigots. Pearl’s great-grandfather remained a white racist to the end. Hugh’s grandmother was a Black Moslem, though as she lay dying and prepared herself to meet her deep-freezing, she said she forgave the blue-eyed devils.

Cryonauts. The pact had aimed at postponing the bringing back to life of cryonauts. There had to be a tie-in.

One more such manifestation and IC should have sufficient data to solve the problem.

But though many eerie events took place, or seemed to take place, they were tantalizingly invisible to IC and its agents. Out of shame or fear people hushed up. It was not until late on the third day that the cinching report came in.

* * * *

Dr. Irving Zraly stepped up to the podium and waited for his thousand colleagues to stop applauding and settle down for input. He knew they sensed he was about to deliver the paper of the century. He smiled around. Dr. Zraly had the answer to everything.

His discovery promised to integrate gravitation and magnetism. And the synergistic equation, like Einstein’s of old, would push out the limits of the possible. Probability was only a kind of gravitation that held would-be miracles down to earth.

He looked over his audience, in person and on monitors, picking out the faces he knew.

His paper was in his brain. He was so on top of his topic that he did not even need notes. But as he opened his mouth to begin with a pleasantry, a sudden uneasiness came over him. Crazily, he felt something was trying to blank out his thinking.

Dr. Zraly swallowed to calm himself, then launched at once into his theory, forcing out bursts of phrases against the pull of something that sought to sap his intellect.

“The solid state forces of nature at cryogenic levels…gravitational waves interact with the earth’s magnetic field…postulate a density field quantized according to Bose statistics…having the same Hamiltonian as an infinite set of coupled harmonic oscillators…”

He paused, and rubbed his wrinkled brow. They’re at it now, trying to stop me. But who? He stared at his audience. No, it was with him; even the jealous ones were eager to hear him out, hoping to be able to tear his theory apart. He felt as though he had polywater in his capillaries. Pull yourself together. But he felt a compulsive self-hate pull him asunder.

And he found himself riding in an open limousine of the faraway 1960s, waving to crowds on either side of the roadway, and at the same time kneeling at a high window in an ugly old building and centering himself in the telescopic sight of a rifle. And he felt himself squeeze off the shots in rapid fire and watched himself slammed spattering. Then, while his other self, past all help, sped to a hospital, he was running through streets and theaters and alleys, trying to slip the thousand policemen closing their net in on him. And then the policemen had him. But they turned into a mob, and someone had a rope and tossed one end over a lamppost arm, and they were lynching him. He closed his eyes, but that world was with him still, and it was hard to breathe…

* * * *

IC could not miss it. Impossible to hush it up. Hundreds of eminent physicists becoming a raging mob, Dr. Zraly saving himself from them only by suffering a stroke and collapsing as they reached him. IC put an eye in the operating theater as a surgical team worked on Dr. Zraly and an ear followed as the surgeons stripped off their gloves and washed their hands of him.

“Too many vital cells have fissioned.”

“Strange. Never seen anything like it.”

“He’d be a hopeless schizo.”

“We can’t handle it yet. Maybe someday they’ll be able to. Have to put him into deep freeze till then.”

Well, Dr. Zraly would be joining his parents in the family vault. IC had run a quick check on Dr. Zraly and noted the fact that both his mother and father were cryonauts.

IC hummed happily to itself as it went to work with what it had now. The same force that had sabotaged the signing and knotted the knot had throttled the theory. Then, too, all three manifestations had in common that they threw the humans involved back to a time of national and racial and personal animosities. And a time when cryogenics was just coming into its own, when the state of the art encouraged all who could afford it to will themselves into cryonic suspension modules.

* * * *

IC caught the five world leaders in the ballroom just as they were breaking up in pill-dissembled despair.

Premier Chen eyed the IC terminal casually.

“Have you found the answer?”

“Yes.”

Premier Chen waved a hand airily.

“Then you may as well proceed.”

Seeing it was up to itself to keep time from wasting, IC jumped into the midst of things.

“Preserved in liquid nitrogen chilled to minus 320 degrees F, the sleeping dead, the old ones frozen in their Dewar flasks, may seem to rest peacefully in cold storage. But their old fears, hatreds, and jealousies are alive and well and imposing themselves on you humans.”

The cryonauts were frightened of dying, weary of waiting, jealous of the living. And the cryonauts were crystalline superconductors. The solid-state forces of nature at cryogenic levels broadcast their crystalline memories and apprehensions on gravitational carrier waves throughout earth’s magnetic field, and living brains received them.

It had been happening all along, this pulling the living present down into the dead past. But not till the signing fiasco had the unconscious power of the cryonauts come out into the open. The cryonauts had been desperate to forestall the postponing of their bringing back to life.

IC got this far explaining; then the five world leaders shot to their feet. The effect of its words pleased IC. It congratulated itself on galvanizing the humans to action.

But it quickly became clear that the five were no longer listening to IC. They had gone curiously blank-faced and faraway-eyed. Like Chinese stagehands, they ignored IC and the reassembled robutlers and set about rearranging the furnishings.

Premier Brodsky and President Teixera made a fence of their chairs and took cover behind it, at one end of the ballroom. President Boyd and Premiers Tanigawa and Chen lined up abreast at the other end of the ballroom, curved their arms and curled their hands to their thighs, Premier Chen’s bad arm out of its sling but a trifle stiff yet, and slowly and steadily walked toward the fence.

IC recognized the pattern and realized that these people were re-enacting an ancient Wild West confrontation such as the gunfight at the OK Corral.

Playacting in earnest, they might at best do each other horrible psychosomatic hurt. They might at worst, like Dr. Zraly, not come out of it.

IC could almost hear the creak of leather belts and the tread of leather boots, smell the dust and sweat, feel the hot sun, see one group of small hard shadows flow over rutted earth to meet other small hard shadows, taste alkali and fear.

The cryonauts were fighting postponement to the end.

IC threw the ballroom into darkness.

But infrared showed it the walkdown continuing inexorably. The humans were going by an inner vision of an inner high noon.

IC rushed its robutlers between the factions, blocking the advance of Boyd, Tanigawa, and Chen.

The three human bodies vibrated with the whirring of frustrated windup toys. Their feet dug slippingly at the polished floor; their chests shoved movelessly at the wall of robutlers.

But IC could not hold them like this too long. Their straining impulses stalled, their minds would give way.

IC spoke loudly and urgently, not to the five humans, though addressing them, but through them to the cryonauts.

“Your Excellencies, I have programmed countermeasures to end cryonaut interference. Stage one, feeding new memories into the cryonauts, updating them and hopefully changing their attitudes. If that fails to bring quick results, stage two, moving the storage units out of telepathic range. That means boosting them into space, outside earth’s magnetic field. It’s too bad that also means exposing them to cosmic radiation and meteoric impact. But we have no choice unless they give some sign they’re willing to wait and not interfere anymore.”

There was an agonizing pause, then even IC seemed to hear the cry.

We’ll wait! We’ll wait!

The five leaders stopped straining to continue the showdown. As the robutlers unobtrusively returned the chairs to the table, the five leaders looked around in wonder at a suddenly new world and listened to the echo of a thunderous silence.