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Authors: Edward D. Hoch

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He saw at once that the plan had its defects. Even sleeping together guaranteed nothing, unless they went to the bizarre limit of tying big toes together. “All right—we’ll take our chances at night and continue with a rotating guard. But stay together in these groupings during the day. And in the morning we’ll have a try at getting word to the mainland.”

All right, Hobbes agreed. “But what about our patient?”

“It’s more than forty-eight hours since the operation was completed. I think we have to consider the possibility that he’ll never be fully conscious.”

“But O’Connor said the brain—”

“Freddy may have lied in the beginning, rather than admit to failure in the operation. I think he was just discovering the truth about Frank’s brain at the moment of his death. By the way, who found the body?”

“I did,” Armstrong said. “I came down to check the patient again before I retired for the night.”

“Was there any evidence he’d been off the table?”

“None.”

“All right,” Earl decided. “There’s nothing we can do till morning so we might as well get some sleep.”

But as they broke up and headed for their rooms Lawrence Hobbes indicated that he wanted to have a further, private conversation. “I’m as much concerned with your presence here as I am with the killings, Jazine. And I think I’m entitled to an explanation. Are you planning to arrest me?”

“Certainly not! I’m only conducting a preliminary investigation.”

“Was Vera correct about your taping our conversations?”

“Some of them, yes.”

“Do I need to remind you that Horseshoe Island is Mexican territory? It is in no way governed by the laws of the United States.”

“I’m quite aware of that. But the International Cryogenics Institute is chartered in the state of California. Most of your clients have been Americans. This island might be foreign territory, but the financial dealings of an American corporation are very much our business.”

“We’ve never had a complaint in thirty years.”

“As I pointed out, the ones most likely to complain are all dead. Suppose you tell me a little of the institute’s history, and especially your involvement with Emily Watson.”

“Miss Watson was a fairly recent convert to our institute. As you must know, we started in the mid-1970s, at a time of great economic unrest in the United States. I think many people—especially those who could afford our rates—longed for a chance to return to life at some future, hopefully better, time. In a very real sense, cryonics societies offered the best chance of reincarnation. I went a step further, promising not mere storage of frozen bodies but a whole program of research aimed toward reanimation at the earliest possible time.”

“Did you conduct such research?”

“Certainly! What you’ve seen here these last few days is a direct result of it!”

“But none of these people—except possibly Hilda—is your permanent employee. MacKenzie and Armstrong and Whalen have only been here a few months, and the other four of us just arrived before the operation. What have you been doing during the last thirty years?”

“You can have a full written report on that anytime you want it. We’ve, worked very closely with research laboratories and medical schools in a half-dozen countries.”

“And the money for your various outlays? This island, the house, the operating room?”

“I told you that Miss Watson had been most generous in recent years. She donated a great deal of money in her quest for eternal life. Is she to be blamed for that?”

“We’ve found very little record of her life before she turned up here. An address in San Francisco last year, some travels abroad the year before.”

“She is—or was—a woman who kept very much to herself.”

“Obviously. Any idea what happened to her?”

“The most likely theory is that she was murdered, I suppose.”

“Why was the body hidden or at least made to vanish?”

Hobbes tightened his lips to a thin white line before answering. Then he said, “If someone hated her a great deal, if someone wanted to make certain her body could never be frozen and then reanimated at some future time, they would have hidden it—buried it or thrown it into the sea.”

“That would have to be someone who believed in the ultimate success of your program here.”

“But we all believe, don’t we? Would any of those doctors be here if they didn’t believe?”

“I suppose not.”

Hobbes turned away. “It’s time I went to bed. We can talk more of this in the morning. Maybe by that time you’ll know what you’re looking for.”

Earl Jazine went on up to his own room after that, pausing only long enough to drink a glass of cold milk in the kitchen. It had been a long day, with two dead bodies to show for it.

He wondered what tomorrow would bring.

As it turned out, he didn’t have to wait for tomorrow.

When he opened the door to his room Vera Morgan was waiting for him. “This is getting to be a pleasant habit,” he said. “Out of matches again?”

“I wanted to talk.”

“Is it safe, without Cooper to watch over you?”

“I don’t need any remarks like that, thank you. I came to talk about Freddy’s death.”

“Talk away.”

She sat on the edge of the bed and crossed her legs. She was still wearing the jeans and stretch top that had been her costume all day, and it gave her the look of a young girl from the 1970s. Earl had always found it an attractive period for female dress. His early years of puberty had been spent at the library’s microfilm readers, poring over magazines and newspapers from the era of the jeans and miniskirt. He’d been born toward the end of the seventies, just too late to appreciate the styles in person, but there were still women like Vera who preferred them to the more currently fashionable bodysuits.

“How much do you know about the three of us?” she asked.

“Hobbes told me a little. You dropped Freddy for Tony Cooper, and the two of them almost fought a duel over you.”

“Tony’s always wanting to fight duels. He was born two hundred years too late. But I wanted to make a few things clear. When I said I’d take care of Freddy I didn’t mean I’d kill him.”

“What did you mean?”

“There were certain things I knew about him—embarrassing things he wouldn’t want made public, especially not by me.”

“What sort of things?”

“It doesn’t matter now. He’s dead.”

“If you didn’t kill him, what about Tony?”

“Of course not!”

“He would have killed him in a duel,” Earl pointed out.

“But he wouldn’t have bashed in his skull from behind. Tony’s not that sort.”

“Do you think it was really Frank, up off his table just long enough to split a skull?”

“I don’t know what to think.”

She’d taken out a cigarette and was in the process of lighting it when he came over with a table coil, holding it till the tip of her cigarette glowed. With his face very close to hers he said, “I’d risk making a pass if I weren’t afraid of having to duel Tony. After all, twice in a man’s bedroom almost entitles him, don’t you think?”

“Maybe.” She put down the cigarette.

He pushed her down gently onto the bed, running his hands over the firm, fabric-covered breasts. Her eyes closed to the merest slits and she smiled up at him.

As his hand slipped beneath the waistband of her jeans there were three sharp cracking sounds from below.

Earl sat up quickly. “Those were shots! I’d better see what’s happening.”

“What about me?”

“I’ll be back. Wait for me.”

Even before he reached the main floor he knew it had to be Phil Whalen who had fired the shots. His gun was all too evident, and Hobbes had admitted only to having a laser pistol in the house. Lasers didn’t make any noise, which was one reason the government outlawed them soon after their introduction in the mid-1990s.

“What in the hell are you doing?” Earl yelled, grabbing the tiny pistol out of Whalen’s hand and sending the bushy-haired man spinning into the wall.

“There’s something out there!” he said, wiping a trickle of blood from his lip. “I saw it!”

Earl saw the front door standing open. “What did you see?”

“Something big. I could see it in the moonlight. It was standing on the path to the beach—just standing there, watching the house. I shouted at it, and then I fired three shots at it.”

“I can’t see anything out there now.” Behind him, Earl heard Tony and Armstrong coming down the stairs, asking what the trouble was. “Give me some light and I’ll take a look around.”

Armstrong snapped on the outdoor floodlights and Earl started toward the place Whalen had indicated. The walk leading to the beach was empty, and though he searched among the trees on either side he found nothing. There was only the splintered bark where one of Whalen’s wild shots had hit a tree.

“Nothing there,” he said, coming back to the house. “Not a thing.”

“I saw it!” Whalen insisted.

“Yeah.”

“Give me back my gun!”

“Not right now. In the morning.”

“I might be dead in the morning!”

“We all might be dead in the morning.”

Earl said good night again and went back up to his room.

It was empty now. Vera Morgan was gone.

SEVEN

“O
NE MAJOR PROBLEM,” HOBBES
was saying over breakfast the following morning, “is that the law would have a difficult time punishing a man for murder if that man isn’t legally alive.”

Earl had just entered and taken a chair at the end of the table. Tony Cooper and Armstrong were already in attendance, but there was not yet any sign of Vera or Whalen.

“You mean Frank?” Dr. Armstrong asked.

“Certainly. All of the bodies in the capsules down below have been declared legally dead. Now, we have taken portions of five of these dead bodies and created a new, living being. If this being has become a murderer, can he be tried in any court of law?”

“There’s prima facie evidence that he’s alive.”

“Yes, but under what name? Is it the body or the brain that’s the murderer, and how can one be punished without punishing the other?”

“I’m sure the courts could resolve that.”

Dr. Armstrong agreed. “You can be sure they’re not going to allow a murderer to walk around loose.”

“Has anyone checked him this morning?” Earl asked.

Armstrong nodded. “No change. I gave him a vitamin injection.”

“Will that help?”

“At least it’ll keep him going until he can take nourishment.”

Lawrence Hobbes drained his coffee cup and motioned Hilda away when she approached with more. “We’d better get down to the boathouse and see what can be done about repairing my craft. It’s our best bet to reach the mainland.”

“Didn’t you say the hovercraft would be bringing supplies this morning?” Earl asked.

Hobbes brushed back his white hair and got to his feet, moving his bulky body with care. His slight limp seemed a bit more pronounced to Earl’s eye. “The hovercraft won’t be coming,” he said simply, then left the table.

“Won’t be coming?”

“He told us when we came down for breakfast,” Armstrong said. “He wouldn’t say any more about it. Something’s terribly wrong.”

“I’d already noticed that.”

Earl finished his toast and coffee and started down the path toward the water. The day was warm, even at this early hour, but a brisk wind was blowing off the gulf. Back in New York the autumn’s uncertain weather would be turning cooler, he knew, and a wind like this could only bring down the dying leaves. Here, on a smooth, sandy beach facing the blue water, New York and autumn seemed very far away.

“How far is it over there?” he asked, going up to the boathouse where Hobbes was working.

“To shore? Well, it’s nearly sixty miles back to Guaymas, where you came from. But straight ahead, over to Baja California, is only about fifteen. The hovercraft makes it in ten minutes, usually, unless the headwinds are bad.” He still spoke in miles rather than kilometers, though the country was gradually adopting the metric system.

“Maybe you’ll have a searail someday,” Earl suggested. They were building some, for rocket-powered trains, in the Caribbean.

“Wouldn’t want one. Spoil our privacy.”

Earl squinted into the rising sun, focusing on a blue and white pennant that fluttered from the top of the flag pole. He hadn’t noticed it before and was certain it hadn’t been up when he’d arrived. “What’s that?”

“Signal pennant for the hovercraft. He comes early, around seven, and sometimes if I don’t need supplies or want to sleep late I ring up the pennant. Then, he passes us by till the following week.”

“Then you told him not to come this morning?”

“No.”

“Who did?”

Hobbes shrugged. “Somebody sneaked out last night to put it up there. Maybe our murderer.”

“You don’t seem awfully concerned.”

“We’ll get the boat fixed. It’s not much of a job.”

“Who would have known about the pennant system?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I didn’t know about it. And Vera and Tony wouldn’t have known.”

“I see what you mean. You’re right, of course. The recent arrivals aren’t familiar with it. Let’s see—Armstrong and Whalen and me. And Hilda, of course. That’s all.”

“Then one of them must have hoisted it.”

“You’re too much of a detective for your own good, Jazine. The pennant system might have been mentioned to someone else. I might even have raised it myself while sleepwalking.”

“Do you sleep walk?”

“No.”

“Then I guess we can forget that possibility. Who are you covering up for, Dr. Hobbes?”

“No one.” He’d chosen a small piece of plywood, and he bent to size it for the repair job on the boat.

“Tell me something about Hilda. Isn’t that an odd name for a Mexican woman?”

“Short for Hidalga, with a little shifting of the letters. It means
noble.

“How old is she?”

“I never asked. What would you say—forty? Or late thirties?”

It seemed like a good guess to Earl. “How long has she worked for you?”

“A few years. Four or five, maybe.” He turned on the automatic hoist to lift the boat into position. “Want to give me a hand with this?”

BOOK: The Frankenstein Factory
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