“What?”
“Sit down,” said Brendan. “Relax. Watch the game.”
Norton was growing tired standing up, and now he finally sat on the floor. But there was no way he could relax, and he’d no intention of watching a game he couldn’t understand.
“No one wants you for spares, John Wayne,” Brendan continued. “You don’t have to worry about that.”
It was something Norton hadn’t worried about. Until now.
“New body parts can be grown to order,” Brendan said. “If someone needs a new arm, they usually prefer to have one the same size and colour as the other. A matching pair.”
“That was before the Crash,” said Mandy. “These days, there’s quite a demand for used parts.”
“Only at the lower end of the market,” said Brendan. “Second-hand hands are cheap, but they don’t come with a guarantee.”
“Bodysnatchers are not a myth. I made an in-depth investigative investigation one afternoon.”
“You mean I might be… cannibalised?” said Norton.
“No one will eat you,” said Brendan.
“No one human will,” said Mandy. “Or very few. But some aliens have strange tastes.”
“Aliens !” said Norton. “There are aliens in the world? Little green men?”
“Little and green?” said Brendan. “Probably. It takes all kinds to make a universe.”
“We’ve been invaded by Martians? The flying saucers have landed?”
Brendan looked away from the screen, first at Norton, then at Mandy, back to Norton again, before returning to the screen.
“As I was saying,” he continued, “you’ve got a body. Lots of them don’t because they only had their heads frozen. Maybe so storage would be cheaper. But that’s all they are. Heads.”
“Aliens,” whispered Norton.
“They might as well be aliens,” said Brendan, “because what good are they to me? Or to anyone? The most vital part of a person is the brain, but without a body there’s no… ah…”
“Vitality?” offered Mandy.
“Vitality,” agreed Brendan. “They must have been crazy. What did they think would happen when they were thawed out? That there’d be spare bodies they could be attached to? That we’d chop off someone’s head and give them the body? ‘Sorry to trouble you, but we’ve decided you’re not using your body to its full potential, so we’re giving it to someone who hasn’t got one.’ ”
“You could have grown a body for each head,” said Mandy.
“Why should I go to more expense?”
“What you did was just so, so… oh, words aren’t enough to say how awful it was.” Mandy glanced at Norton. “You know what he did?”
“No,” muttered Norton, who was still thinking: aliens …
“I gave them life,” said Brendan. “Some of them. I gave them bodies.”
“He stuck their heads on animals! On dogs and shigs and monkeys. Isn’t that just the worst scenario you can imagine?”
“Just the worst,” Norton agreed. A shig must be an alien from another galaxy.
“I was doing them a favour,” said Brendan. “I revived them, gave them a taste of life. Maybe it did mean partnering them with a non-human body, but what thanks did I get? A threat of prosecution, that’s what.”
“He tried to sell the poor creatures as hybrids.”
“Oh,” said Norton.
“Animal lovers!” Brendan spat. “What do you think happened to the heads after the ruling?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t ask.”
“I didn’t.”
“They’re still alive, if you can call it that. Kept on a shelf in some archive. They can’t move. Not without bodies. They can’t talk. They can’t do anything. Nothing. Ever. If they weren’t crazy to begin with, they’re stark staring mad by now. Staring! That’s all they can do, stare at each other.”
Brendan and Mandy and Wayne Norton all stared at each other for a while, then Brendan watched the screen again.
“So,” said Mandy, ” what did you do?”
“When?” asked Norton.
“In your first life. You weren’t rich and you weren’t famous, but you were put into suspended animation, so what did you do?”
“I was a police officer.”
Mandy and Brendan looked at each other. She laughed. Then so did he.
Norton knew he should have lied. His experience in the police force had proved that honesty was the worst policy, but after three centuries it had temporarily slipped his mind.
“You were in the police?” said Brendan.
“Really?” said Mandy.
Norton said, “Well…”
For a moment, he’d thought Mandy and Brendan were showing some interest in him and the twentieth century. But all they wanted to know was what skills and talents might make him worth more on the labour market.
“Could be worse,” said Brendan. “I suppose.”
“Really?” said Mandy.
They both laughed again.
“Let’s be serious,” said Brendan. “I want this ready to go out tomorrow.”
“It will be,” said Mandy. “I’m always serious about my work.”
“Why the rush?” asked Norton. After so many years, what was a day or two?
“Because,” answered Brendan, “you might be one of those who doesn’t survive very long.”
Wayne Norton suddenly felt icy cold again, and he shivered.
It was as if someone had stepped on his cryonic grave.
Norton survived long enough to see the programme Mandy had made about him, and they watched it together in his room. They sat side by side on his bed, and for the first time he was glad there seemed to be no chairs in the future.
The size of the screen made it more like watching himself at the movies than on television. He knew the plot, but the film was difficult to follow. Everything happened very fast, there was so much going on at once, with weird images and strange music. It was part documentary, part commercial, its purpose to sell a product: a man from the twentieth century.
Norton saw himself waking up, presumably after oversleeping for three hundred years. Mandy was there, speaking to him as he opened his eyes. It hadn’t happened like that, of course. In fact, very little happened the way he remembered.
Mandy stared at the screen, at herself, but Norton found it very hard to concentrate because he kept thinking of what she’d told him a few minutes ago.
“I’ve got a good feeling about this, John Wayne,” she’d said. “It could be a new beginning for me. And if I feel good, I want to share that feeling. How about it?”
“How about what?” asked Norton.
“You and me, that’s what!”
“Oh. You and me. Yeah. Me and you. Sure. You think we should go on a date?”
“What’s all this about dates? It’s long gone.”
“So you don’t want to go out with me?”
There was a whole new world outside. It was called the future. Norton had watched this amazing world on television, and it both frightened and fascinated him. Even if aliens and cannibals—or cannibal aliens—did exist, he had to go out there and see everything for himself.
And he would. He had no intention of being sold. As soon as he had the chance, he was going to escape; and Mandy looked like his best chance.