Just when it happened, or how it happened, or what brought about the realization, no one now could tell-but there came the day when it became apparent that the little movement of 1964, now called Forever Center, had become the biggest thing the world had ever known.
Big in many ways. Big in the hold it had on the public imagination, which, in many instances, now constituted a firm belief in not only the purpose of the program but in its capacity to carry out the program. Big in the participation in the program, with millions of frozen bodies stored away to await revival. And, perhaps most important of all, big in its assets and investments.
For all those millions who now lay frozen had left their funds in trust with Forever Center. And one day the world woke to find that Forever Center was the largest stockholder of the world and that in many instances it had gained control of vast industrial complexes.
Now, too late, the governments (all the governments) realized they were powerless to do anything about Forever Center, if, in fact, they had wanted to do anything about it. For to investigate it, to license, to restrict it in any way would have been flying not only into the face of an entrenched financial position but also into the face of an awakened public interest.
So there was nothing done and Forever Center became more powerful and more invulnerable. And today, thought Frost, it was the government of the world and the financial institution of the world and the world's one hope.
But a hope that was dearly paid for-a hope that had made tightfisted moneygrubbers of the people of the world.
He'd gone without a pint of milk-a pint of milk he'd wanted, a pint of milk that his body had cried out for-when he ate his lunch. And that lunch had been
two thin sandwiches from a paper bag. And all of this because each week he must put away a good part of his salary in Forever stock, so that during those long years when he lay dead and frozen the funds would multiply by interest and by dividend. He lived in this wretched room and he ate cheap food, he had never married.
But his fund against revival and th «second life grew week by week and his whole life centered on the credit book that showed his ownership of stock.
And this afternoon, he recalled, he had stood ready to sell Forever Center and his position with Forever Center for a quarter million dollars—more money than he could hope to accumulate in his entire initial lifetime. He had been ready, even willing, to take the money, then, if necessary, to deliberately seek death.
The only thing that had stopped him was the fear that it was a trap.
And had it been a trap? he wondered.
If it had been a trap, why had the trap been set? For what reason had Marcus Appleton become his enemy?
The missing paper? And if that were the case, what made the paper so important—so important that he must be discredited before he tried to use it.
For if the paper were important and somehow incriminating, they'd expect that in his own good time he'd put it to his use. For that is what they would have done themselves. That was what anyone would do— anything at all to squeeze out that extra dollar, to gain a preferred position that would mean an extra dollar.
He'd chucked the paper in the desk and now, today, when he'd hunted for it, it had not been there. And if they'd gotten the paper back, then why…
But wait a minute. Had he chucked the paper in the desk? Or had he stuffed it in his pocket?
He crouched deeper in the chair and tried hard to remember. But he could not remember with any clarity. He might have put it in his pocket instead of in the church was compromise and expediency, manned by men of little faith.
If a man could only pray, he thought. But there was no point in praying when the prayer was never more than a mouthful of ritualistic words. Man prayed with his heart, he thought, never with his tongue.
He stirred uneasily and dropped his hand into the pocket of his cassock. His fingers closed upon the rosary and he pulled it out and laid it on the table.
The wooden beads were worn and polished from much handling and the metal crucifix was dull and tarnished.
Men still prayed by such as this, he knew, but not as many as had at one time. For the old established church at Rome, perhaps the one and only church that still retained some remnant of its old significance, had fallen on bad days. Most men today, if they paid any service to formalized religion, paid it to the new church that had j risen—the formalized and impersonal reminder (and j remainder) of what once had been religion.
Here was faith, he thought, fingering the rosary. Here-was blind and not-quite-understanding faith, but a better thing than no faith at all.
The rosary had come down to him, down through die family, generation after generation, and there was, he recalled, an old story that went with it—how an old grandmother, many times removed, in some forgotten village in Central Europe, had been bound for church when a sudden rain came up, and how she had sought shelter in a nearby cottage, and after gaining shelter had, on impulse, thrust the rosary out the door, commanding the rain to stop. And the rain had stopped and the sun came out. And how all the days she lived she had held perfect faith that the rosary stopped the rain. And how others, long after she had died, had told of the incident, also in perfect faith.
This, of course, Knight told himself, was no more than the mere trappings of faith, but it, at least, was something.
If he had held only a portion of the faith of that old I grandmother, he could have helped the man. The one man, in all the thousands he had known, who had ever felt the need of faith.
Why should this one man, one in many thousands, SO stand in need of faith? What mental mechanism, what driving spiritual sense had impelled him on his hunt for faith?
He conjured up the face of the man again—the horror haunted eyes, the unruly shock of hair, the sharp, high cheekbones.
It was a face he knew. The face, perhaps, of empty man—a lumping together of all the faces he had ever seen.
But it was not that entirely. It was not the universal face. It was an individual face, a face that he had seen, and not too long ago.
Suddenly it came clear—the memory sharp and hard — this same face staring out at him from the front page of the morning paper.
And this, he thought, in sudden terror at his own inadequacy, was the man that he had failed—a man who had nothing left but faith, absolutely nothing in the world but the hope of faith.
The man who had come into the church and had left again, as empty when he left as when he entered, perhaps emptier, for then even hope was gone, had been Franklin Chapman.
12
Frost jerked the door open in a sudden, violent motion, his body tensed and ready for whoever might be standing there and knocking.
A woman stood there, cool and poised, the faint light of the hall bulb glinting in the blackness of her hair. "Are you Mr. Frost?" she asked.
Frost gulped in astonishment, perhaps even in relief, "Yes, I am," he said. "Will you please step in?" She stepped through the doorway.
"I do hope," she said, "that I'm not intruding. My name is Ann Harrison and I'm an attorney."
"Ann Harrison," he said, "I am pleased to meet you. Aren't you the one…"
"Yes, I am," she said. "I defended Franklin Chapman." "I saw the pictures in the paper. I should have recognized you at once."
"Mr. Frost," she said, "I'll be honest with you. I sneaked up on you. I could have phoned, but you might have refused to see me, so I took the chance of coming here. I hoped you wouldn't throw me out."
"I wouldn't throw you out," said Frost. "There is no