Linda Nagata - Tech Heaven

Tech Heaven

By Linda Nagata

Tech Heaven

Table of Contents

Part I: fugitive

1: To Live Forever

Part II: liquid nitrogen

2: The Future Won't Happen Unless We Make It

3: Dead Man on Ice

4: Choices

5: Arrested on the Way to God

6: What Is a Dream?

7: The Modern World

8: Guardians of the Red Desert

9: Disintegration in the Web of Life

10: Our-World

11: Success on the Hill

12: Troubled World

13: Freedoms of Democracy

14: On the Threshold

15: Tactics of Domination

16: New Trajectories

Part III: human rites

17: The Research Arm of the Commonwealth

18: The Right to Try

19: Unnatural Life Spans

Part IV: tech-heaven

20: The Last Day

21: Electronic Existence

22: Too Many of Us

23: Self-Preservation

Part I:

fugitive

LA. FLOW--LIFESTYLES "Parent-Child Dialogue #1, Version 17"

CHILD: Daddy, Why do people get old?

PARENT: Aw, that's just the little fee nature charges for all those wild birthday parties.

CHILD: Why do people have to die?

PARENT: Hmm. Because nobody's figured out a way to live forever, I guess.

CHILD: Why not?

1:

To Live Forever

Katie Kishida rode into the little Andean village of La Cruz on the back of a bony black steel mannequin.

Through her VR suit she directed each crunching step along the mineral soil of the village's lone street. A

freezing wind whistled through the mannequin's external joints and soughed past the rim of her VR

helmet. She clung to the mannequin's back, studying the helmet's video display, anxiously searching the

village for signs of life. But there was nothing--not a wisp of smoke or a scrounging bird, or even a cat

slinking through the cluster of worn, wood-frame buildings.

She commanded the remotely controlled unit to stop. The village made a neat frame for an imposing line

of white peaks supporting a heavy ceiling of storm clouds. Bass thunder rumbled there, arriving almost

below the range of hearing, a deep vibration that set Katie's slight, sixty-four-year-old body trembling,

and snapped the brittle tethers she'd placed upon her fear.

The Voice cops had forgotten her.

She didn't want to believe it. Certainly in Panama they'd tried to stop her. Failing that, they'd seized her

holding company, Kishida-Hunt. They'd confiscated her assets, declared her a criminal, and then...

nothing. She'd journeyed south for weeks with no sign of pursuit, and that worried her most of all,

because the Voice cops wouldn't give up unless they thought she was dead... or disarmed. Maybe they

knew about her bootleg copy of the Cure. Maybe they'd seized it before it could be shipped to La Cruz.

Or maybe the life-extension schedule was a fraud, and there had been no pursuit since Panama because

there was no Cure--and no way to restore life to the cryonic suspension patients hidden in a clandestine

mausoleum in the mountains above La Cruz.

Fear had become her default emotion.

She shut down the remote, then slid from her perch on its back to stand on her own stiff legs. Her lean

muscles ached and her ass was forever sore. She lifted the video helmet off her head. The wind streamed

past her cheeks, its bitter touch oddly familiar. She thought she could feel Tom's presence in the

mountains' unremitting cold. Tom had been dead thirty years. Or maybe he'd just become a crystalline

life-form when his heart had stopped, his body and their marriage both immersed in liquid nitrogen, -196°

C, a cold that had haunted her life.

A child's laughter suddenly broke through her reverie. Katie looked up quickly. Motion caught her eye,

drawing her gaze up the street to a single-story building slightly larger than all the others, with a

hand-lettered sign by the door declaring Provisiones. Katie remembered. This was the same store

where she'd bought a cup of hot coffee fifteen years ago. Back then, the building had been painted a

shade of blue that matched the sky. But time had bleached and chipped away the paint until now there

was only a hint of color left between the cracks. The walls were further abused with rusty staples, a few

still clenching the tattered corners of handbills that had long since blown away. A little girl was peering

past the partly opened door, bouncing up and down in excitement as she exclaimed in lilting Spanish over

the skeletal aspect of the remote.

In her eagerness, Katie dropped the helmet in the street, forgetting it before it hit the ground. She

hobbled toward the battered building, fighting muscle cramps in her legs. If the Cure had been

successfully shipped from Vancouver, then it would be here, in the village store. She could claim her

package and push on, higher still into the mountains, to the hidden mausoleum where Tom waited. If she

could get to that quiet place, with the Cure in hand and no cops on her trail, then perhaps she could

finally confront the ghost that had haunted her for thirty years. The little girl smiled at her. From inside the

store, a woman shouted. The girl glanced over her shoulder, then turned back to Katie with a grin. She

opened the door wider. "Hola, Senora. Entre usted, por favor."

Inside the store the air was warm with electric heat and light, Katie began to perspire under her many

layers of clothing, even before the door had closed behind her. She felt disoriented as she pulled off her

gloves and stuffed them in a pocket. The physical comfort of the store's interior seemed alien, bold and

fragile at once. Outside, the frigid wind gusted hard past the roofline. The building seemed to inflate, and

then it shuddered. It was only a matter of time, Katie thought. The wind would penetrate this bubble of

warmth, cool it, slow it, stretch it out in time, arresting the process while preserving the structure.

There wasn't much left in the store beyond structure anyway. Most of the shelves and ceiling hooks were

bare, as if the owners had already finished their going-out-of-business sale. Near the back though, Katie

discovered a couple of beautiful woven blankets, and some food and modern camping supplies. Behind a

yellowed linoleum counter an old woman, dressed in native woolens, watched with stern eyes.

Katie browsed self-consciously through the meager selection, gathering a supply of food--beans and rice

and aseptic juice cartons. A blanket. A pair of heavy woolen socks. Her heart raced; her pulse felt

thready. Was the package here? Was it? She piled the items on the counter, then produced a false ID.

Her jaw worked for a few seconds as she tried to introduce saliva into the terribly dry cavity of her

mouth. If the package wasn't here then it was over. All over. And she could climb up into the mountains

or wander down to the sea and it wouldn't matter. Tom would remain on ice. And she would have to

endure his ghost every time she closed her eyes.

She passed the old woman an ID card bearing the fictitious name of Theresa Myers. Then she asked, in

Spanish, as if it were something of small importance, "Do you have a package for me?"

The woman squinted at the ID. Then her eyebrows shot up. She looked at Katie with a kind of awe.

"Theresa Myers? Theresa Myers? Ah, you have come. At last, at last." And she ducked down under the

counter and pulled out a cardboard box that was no larger than a briefcase. "All the other villagers have

gone to Arica or even beyond. But I swore to remain until you came. My granddaughter and I. Now we

can follow." She took Katie's ID and entered it on her phone while Katie cautiously touched the box.

The woman handed her back the card. "I'm a wealthy woman now, Senora. I'll buy a home in Arica. This

village has always been my home, but now the mountains are at war with the sun and people are no

longer welcome here...."

Katie nodded, only half listening as she used a knife to open the package. Inside was an unlocked

ceramic case whose top slid back, curving, to disappear into the liner. Nested in the padded interior was

a collection of nearly two hundred sealed ampules and a cyberbook.

She ran trembling fingers across the ampules; touched the buttons on the cyberbook, scarcely breathing.

This was supposed to be a general rejuvenation therapy, developed in her own European labs. It hardly

seemed possible.

The Cure.

Be young again. Raise the dead. Neat and easy.

The market value of this kit would be incalculable... if it worked.

Where were the Voice cops?

She wondered again if she'd gambled away her life and fortune on a fraud.

Then her lips set in a stubborn line. Silently, she chastised herself. She'd come so far, given up so much.

She was not going to succumb to pessimism now. The Voice cops were not omniscient. It was still

possible to move beneath their gaze without being seen.

She reclosed the case, then pulled on her gloves. Nodding her thanks to the old woman, she tucked the

case under one arm, grabbed the sack of groceries with the other, and went outside.

The wind had grown in strength. It tugged angrily at the hood of her parka, and as she watched, it

unbalanced the remote, sending it toppling to the unpaved street, where it lay humped around the supply

pack strapped to its chest.

"Shit." Not an auspicious sign.

She tramped over to it, and set her booty on the ground.

The bipedal remote unit had been designed to function as a full-body prosthesis. Its legs and arms were

slender and well-braced at the joints, like reconstructed bones. Its torso was narrow, sitting in a swivel

joint on the pelvic girdle. Its head was a smooth model of a human skull, with glass lenses where the eyes

should have been and a blank surface instead of a mouth and nose. It was controlled through the VR,

giving its user a physical presence in remote locations. But it required constant guidance.

Picking up the helmet, Katie dusted it off and set it back on her head, pulling it down over her hood. She

flicked it on. A video image appeared on a screen just inches before her eyes. She frowned, then realized

the remote was looking straight up into a roiling ceiling of heavy gray clouds. Well. At least the satellite

eyes of the Voice cops wouldn't be witnessing this scene.

A finger-width plug dangled from the helmet. She grabbed it, then felt beneath her collar for the socket.

Close to the skin, beneath her many layers of clothing, she wore a wired suit. Sensors in the suit's fabric

picked up every flexion, every muscle twitch of her body. Processors, working from experience, weighed

the validity of the motion, culling the random stretches, the cramps, the sighs, the farts, while sending the

purposeful signals on to the steel body of the remote unit. In the process, the scale of motion was

amplified. A tiny twitch in Katie's thigh and calf translated into a four-foot stride for the mannequin. A

slight shift of her weight caused it to turn.

Now she guided it carefully to a standing position, feet set wide and torso leaning slightly into the wind.

As always, its metal hands were locked behind its hips, palms spread flat to create her seat.

She felt a lull in the wind and switched out of the remote's sensorium. Grabbing the case that contained

the Cure, she stuffed that and her groceries into the pack on the remote's chest. Then she hurried around

to its back and climbed on. She could feel it rocking under her as a gust of wind shot down the village

street. Quickly, she switched back into the remote, and suddenly she felt balanced, strong. She lifted her

head; looked with glass eyes toward the peaks. Lightning played there. Thunder grumbled. A wholly

appropriate setting for bringing the dead back to life. She grinned, and started the remote unit running up

the road.

Fifteen years ago, the cryonics company, Forward Futures, had established a hidden mausoleum high in

the Chilean Andes. They'd chosen a nineteenth century copper mine for the site. Katie had been part of

the team that had come down from California to settle in the cryonic suspension patients, set up the

compact distillation facility that would manufacture liquid nitrogen from the atmosphere, and finally, to

help seal the mausoleum.

The abandoned mine had been situated at the bottom of a steep slope laden with snow. The crew had

concealed the entrance behind a huge slab of rock that had flaked off the mountain. The activity

generated a small avalanche, leaving the slab half-buried--a natural-looking stone lean-to that shielded the

outer steel door from casual observation. A scree-slope facsimile netting, manufactured in California for

landscaping purposes and guaranteed for twenty years of use, had been hung over the door as further

camouflage. Finally, the crew had closed the road behind them with a few sticks of dynamite.

Fog shrouded the slope as Katie clambered over the rocky debris that blocked the road, and then

walked the remote past the mine's huge pile of tailings. Using her video display, she gazed through the

streaming mists, straining for a sight of the tiny mining village that had already been abandoned when

she'd made her first visit here. At last she saw the bell tower of the church, a dark edifice in the fog. A

few steps more, and she was saddened to see that the weight of snow and time had caused the church

roof to collapse, though the walls still stood. Three other structures had been part of this village too, but

all now lay crushed on the ground, like detritus found in the footprint of a mountain god.

She looked around. There was not a scrap of vegetation. Patches of snow lingered on the leeward side

of every tumbled rock. The air was dry and thin and bitterly cold and the only sounds were the rush of

the wind as it curled past her helmet and the crunch of the remote's worn feet against the sterile ground.

She passed the church and wandered another half mile, around the foot of a ridge that flanked the village.

The abandoned mine had been used as a mausoleum even before Forward Futures took it over. Fifteen

years ago there had still been a cross fixed over the entrance.

She rounded the last rock outcropping. A natural terrace fronted the mine. She saw the slab just beyond.

Carefully negotiating a field of tumbled rock, she worked her way to the slab and squeezed behind it. Her

remote eyes immediately adjusted to the semidarkness and she caught her breath in concern. The cross

was gone. And the facsimile netting had been pulled off the door. It lay crumpled on the frozen ground.

She stared at it a moment through the remote's camera eyes, and then she disconnected herself from the

machine and dismounted, removing her helmet with arms stiff from the cold. How long ago had the

vandals been here? Years? Or days?

Her gazed turned to the door. It was still intact. She crouched in front of it, studying the lock, her breath

coming fast and deep in the thin atmosphere. The lock's protective cover had been torn away and the

keypad had been bashed with rocks or bullets. But when she pushed on the door, it held. That brought

her momentary relief. Probably the vandals hadn't gotten inside.

She worked at the broken stubs of the buttons, running the combination through while thunder boomed

and wisps of fog swept past on a bitter wind. She completed the combination, but the door failed to

open. She stared at the lock in consternation. The day was starting to fade. Though she had a tent and a

sleeping bag and heating rods, the thought of camping at this elevation, in this weather, frightened her.

She suspected it wouldn't be hard to fall asleep and never wake up again.

So she ran the combination again, going slowly this time, pressing each button hard. Still the door failed

to open. She stripped off her gloves and ran the combination again. Four times. Five. Cursing. Fingers

fumbling; really feeling the altitude; hardly able to think. Six times. Or was it eight? And then she had it

Something rumbled inside the steel door. She pushed. The door gave a little. She pushed harder, and

slowly, the heavy panel swung in on its hinge.

Inside was a dark passage through the native stone, no more than six feet long, and then another door.

Slowly, carefully, she entered the second combination, grinning in overdone triumph when she got it right

the first time.

She shoved the door open, releasing a puff of supercold air bearing a faint earthy smell. The interior was

pitch-black. But it wasn't silent. A soft machine whir filled the air like an ethereal hum. She could hear the

drip of liquid, the click of automatic equipment, the distant howl of wind as it clawed through turbines

mounted in the air shafts that ventilated the caverns of this former copper mine.

She put her gloves and helmet back on, then reestablished the electronic link with the remote. Its skeletal

body became her body; its steely hands, her own. She walked it into the mausoleum, making it turn and

close the doors behind it. Then she slipped the helmet off, blinking into the frozen darkness, "Hark: Lights

on," she said softly, and the primitive AI that resided here obeyed.

Fixtures deeper in the cavern flicked on. The light spilled out over the chiseled rock of the first chamber,

revealing niches that held frail human figures wrapped in colorful woolens. These were the Indians who'd

been interred here after the mine played out.

Forward Futures had secured its own dead in the second and third chambers. They'd brought them here,

seeking to protect them from the turbulence of politics as well as the assaults of time. But the patients

were owed more than protection. Katie's hand slipped into the pocket of her parka, tightening around the

cool weight of the pistol she carried. Forward Futures had an obligation to bring their suspension patients

back to life... even in defiance of the law. She didn't trust them to do it. Her fellows on the board of

directors were a cautious lot. They would have told her to wait. As if waiting were a safe option. Hesitate

now, and their only chance to revive the patients might be sealed permanently in the past. So Katie had

made her own decision. She'd refused a political appointment to the Voice colony on Mars to come here

herself.

She left the gun in her pocket. Turning back to the remote, she opened the chest pack and retrieved the

sack that held her groceries, and the satchel that contained the Cure. Leaving the remote to stand sentinel

at the door, she set off across the rough stone floor of the first chamber. The walls narrowed, then

expanded again into the second chamber. Here, fluorescent light fixtures shone down on silver-bright

steel cylinders, twin rows of them, standing shoulder to shoulder and more than man-high. They lined

both sides of the passage, towering over her head like crowded columns in some futuristic temple. On the

ceiling, the glowing fluorescent light tubes were interspersed with ceramic tracks that crisscrossed the

rock. A small robot rolled slowly along the tracks. It had two manipulator arms and camera eyes and it

looked like a crab as it moved stolidly from one storage cylinder to another, monitoring the levels of

liquid nitrogen in each. These were the cryogenic habitats of the new dead. No colorful woolens for

them. Their bodies were wrapped in plastic and immersed in liquid nitrogen. All biological processes

stopped at -196° C.

She passed under a ventilation shaft. The howl of the turbine grew louder. Cables dropped out of the

shaft like a tree's black roots. They hugged the ceiling, and she followed them to the third chamber. Here

there were cylinders on only one side, and a vast collection of black-boxed batteries on the other. She

counted carefully down the line of cylinders, two, three, four, five from the door. There. In the front row.

That one had Tom.

With her gloved hand she touched the steel surface. Traced the stenciled number. It had been so long.

She turned, and with her back pressed against the cylinder, slid to the ground. Her legs bent reluctantly,

and she winced against a dull ache in her hips. She was sixty-four and could no longer deny that age was

catching her, despite the rigorous diet, the constant exercise. Her eyes closed, and again she felt the

clutch of fear, like a black-hooded figure rattling the bars of her rib cage, warning her that she was

running out of time.

Suddenly, the howl of the turbines rose in pitch as the wind outside heightened, and she distinctly heard

Tom's voice calling her, distant, almost angry. Her eyes snapped open. Dry and gritty eyes, accustomed

to facing unpleasant scenes.

Tom does not want to come back.

She could hear his spirit twisting through the turbines. Staring straight ahead at the stacked black boxes

of the batteries, she tried to ignore the cold howl of his demands. "It's not like I'm offering you a choice,"

she muttered. "So shut up."

She pulled the satchel onto her lap and opened it. Amid the vials was a spindle of clear plastic, longer

than her hand but no wider than her little finger. She picked it up and held it to the light. The soft plastic

squished a little within her grip.

Embedded inside the transparent spindle was a glittery white shaft, as fine as a human hair. She tipped

the spindle back and forth and watched the shaft sparkle like a thread of fresh snow. It was a

hypodermic needle, encased in protective plastic. Six inches long, the ceramic needle was sharp enough

to penetrate a human skull--even a skull that had been frozen for thirty years.

"See this, Tom?" she asked softly. "I'm going to use this to drag you back--whether you want to come or

not. Because you owe me. Dammit, Tom, you owe me plenty, and I'm going to collect."

She looked up expectantly, waiting to hear the roar of his protest in the humming voice of the turbine. But

there was nothing beyond the mindless howl of the gale.

Part II:

liquid nitrogen

EARLY TV COMMERCIAL: MARS NOW! (excerpted dialogue)

The time is now.

In the first decade of the new century the United States of America will take a bold step forward.

We'll expand the horizons of all the world's people by establishing a permanent human presence

on Mars. And what's more, we'll do this without rending the pocketbooks of the American people.

Using available technology, we'll launch an unmanned mission to Mars that will use automated

and robotic equipment to establish a habitat on the planet's surface--a habitat that will be put to

use by a manned mission scheduled to follow twenty-six months later.

We'll do this, if we choose. Mars Now! Because the future won't happen until we make it.

2:

The Future Won't Happen Unless We Make It

Katie Kishida had been thirty-four years old when Tom's surgeon informed her in hushed tones that she

would soon become a widow. "You understand. His internal injuries are just too extensive."

Katie tried to understand. Tom had been alive when the rescue team pulled him and his crew of

firefighters from the wreckage of the forest service helicopter. Alive. And she'd been allowed to hope.

Now ...

"Oh, Katie!"

Katie turned to see quiet tears on her mother's crepe-paper cheeks. Belle Schiller had arrived at the

hospital during the hours Tom had been in surgery. Now her arm went around Katie's waist as she

hugged her daughter close. "Oh, Katie, I'm so sorry. This is just so wrong. So wrong."

The surgeon hovered over them, his hands half-raised as if he wanted to contain any sign of hysteria they

might exhibit. Katie tried to nod. Tried to assure him that she did understand, that she was all grown-up,

in control. But her voice broke. "What am I going to tell my children?" Joy was twelve, Nikki was ten.

Daddy had two little princesses.

The surgeon had no answer for her. From the look on his face, Katie knew he wanted to leave, that after

years of dealing with grieving relatives, he still had no idea of what to say. But something held him back.

He said, "I know it's difficult for you to hear this at this time, but we'd like you to consider an organ

donation. Your husband's heart is still strong, and his corneas could--"

"No." Unlike most people, Katie and Tom had actually talked about their own mortality, had debated the

possibilities in late-night sessions, his voice coming to her out of darkness as he lay next to her in their

bed. He'd been skeptical, frugal. She'd been insistent. Now he would soon be dead. Katie glared at the

surgeon, revitalized by sudden anger. "You won't take any part of him!" she snapped. "And you will keep

him alive as long as you can."

"Katie ..." Belle soothed. "Come sit down. You don't have to decide right now."

"The decision's made, Mom." She gently removed Belle's hand from her waist, and patted it softly.

"Excuse me, now. I have to make a phone call."

"Mrs. Kishida," the surgeon insisted. "There's no easy way to say this, but I want to strongly advise you

to reconsider. We can't help your husband. But by donating his heart, we could save somebody else's

loved one; you could give somebody else another chance at life. And your husband did indicate on his

driver's license that he wanted his organs donated."

"But it's my decision now, isn't it? And I say no."

"Katie--"

"No, Mom." She adjusted her purse on her shoulder and turned to leave.

"Mrs. Kishida," the surgeon said again, this time with a tinge of sarcasm in his voice. "You can see your

husband now. Or don't you want to be with him?"

She glanced briefly over her shoulder. "There's nothing I want more in all the world."

Tom had never wanted to spend the money. But Katie was a stockbroker and she had real estate

dealings and the money was far less important to her than Tom. She fumbled in her purse for her wallet,

shuffled through the assortment of plastic cards until she found the one bearing the emergency number of

Forward Futures, Inc. She held that and her AT&T card in one trembling hand, staring at them, willing

this moment to be part of a nightmare. This could not be real. She struggled to open her eyes, to wake

up. When that failed, she started punching numbers into the telephone.

It rang only once before a woman answered. "Forward Futures. You've reached the emergency line."

"This is Katie Kishida," she said, and gave her member number. It was the same as Tom's. They were on

the family plan, along with their two daughters. "My husband, Thomas--" Her voice broke, and for the

first time since the accident, she began to sob. "My husband Thomas is not expected to live through the

night...."

The woman from Forward Futures was solicitous as she recorded Katie's information. But she couldn't

hide the eagerness in her voice; the cryonics company didn't perform more than one or two suspensions a

year, and each one was a learning experience. She assured Katie they would have a suspension team at

the hospital in Bakersfield within three hours, and then she hung up.

Katie could smell the stench of burning forest. The scent cut across her consciousness as she returned the

phone to its cradle. She looked quickly over her shoulder, fearing... fearing some supernatural assault,

perhaps, she didn't know. Then she saw the firefighters. Four men in smoke-stained flight suits, milling

silently in the waiting room outside the ICU, their cheeks taut, their gazes carefully fixed on the floor, on

the walls, Katie's mom among them, her strong hands massaging a white tissue, the bearer of bad news.

Belle looked up as Katie approached. The firefighters looked too, for a moment anyway, their eyes

darting nervously while heartfelt banalities filled the air: "Let's not stop hoping.", "It could have been

anyone.", "Damn, what a tragedy.", "Why Tom?"

Katie hugged each one of them, though she could find nothing to say. Then she turned to her mother.

Looking on Belle, Katie saw much of herself--the same petite build, the same golden blond hair and

lightly tanned skin, the same meticulous nature--offset by a quarter century. "Who's with Tom?" she

whispered, knowing the answer even before she asked.

"Roxanne," Belle said. "She came in off the fire line to see him. She said she wanted to be alone with him

for a minute."

Katie nodded stiffly. Emergency personnel liked to help each other out. She wondered which nurse had

bent the rules to let Roxanne Scott into the ICU. She exchanged a lingering glance with her mother, then

pushed cautiously past the door.

The rooms on the intensive-care ward were glass-walled. A few were draped. Most were open, the

patients clearly visible. The air trembled with the rush of ventilators, the pulse of monitors, a chaotic night

song of struggle. A nurse caught sight of her and started forward with an angry glare, but before she

could reach Katie another caught her by the elbow and whispered something in her ear. "He's in the third

room," one of them said gently.

But Katie had already seen Roxanne through the glass wall. She hurried forward, only to pause in the

doorway.

Roxanne stood beside the bed, her gaze downcast, one hand resting lightly on the hose of a ventilator

that whooshed beside her. Katie could not yet bring herself to look at the figure in the bed, so she studied

Roxanne instead.

Like the firefighters outside, Roxanne still wore her forest service flight suit. But there were bloodstains

on the sleeves and chest. With a start, Katie realized it was probably Tom's blood. Roxanne was the

EMT who'd brought him in. She was also Katie's oldest friend--or at least her surrogate sibling rival.

They'd been next-door neighbors-- two only-children who'd long ago adopted the testy relationship of

sisters born too close.

Katie must have made some sound then, because Roxanne looked up, quickly removing her hand from

the ventilator's hose. Her face was dirt-streaked, her dark brown eyes framed with smeared mascara.

The scent of burning forest haunted the room. When Roxanne spoke, her words were low, but clipped

with fury. "If he's dying anyway, why don't you get him off this ventilator? You know he hated this shit.

I've been on more climbs with him than you have, Katie. I've seen him on the fire line. He was no

life-grubbing coward. He knew who he was and where he was going and he wasn't afraid to die. Please,

let him die clean."

Katie listened to the rhythmic pulse of the ventilator, so similar to the rhythm of her own breath whenever

she worked through her fear on a sheer rock face, climbing behind Tom. Roxanne liked to lead. Could

she be thinking of taking matters into her own hands? Katie lowered her chin defensively, a gesture that

echoed old backyard conflicts when Roxanne would try to tug her over the line. "His family hasn't even

seen him yet. Why are you in such a hurry?"

Roxanne's eyes narrowed. She leaned forward slightly, her fist cocked near her breast. "My old man was

left to rot on a ventilator. You remember what that did to him."

Katie felt herself grow stone cold. Roxanne might have been her friend. She might have been Tom's

friend. But she wasn't family. She had no rights here.

But Roxanne wasn't through. "My mom loved Dad too much," she said. "She didn't want to let him go."

Her gaze seemed to take Katie's measure. "I heard you told the doctors to keep Tom alive as long as

possible."

"That's right."

"And do you think a man like Tom would want to live like this?" Roxanne jerked her chin at the figure on

the bed.

Almost unwillingly, Katie followed her gaze.

Tom lay with a sheet pulled up to his bare chest, his hands slack at his sides. He had a plastic mask

strapped over his nose and mouth, his eyelids looked bruised, and his cheeks were swollen with edema.

An IV had been inserted in his neck, and his weathered bronze skin had taken on a sallow hue. Katie felt

her hands start to tremble, so she quickly stuck them in the pockets of her blazer. "Listen, Roxanne," she

said softly. "No matter what you say, no matter what you believe or what you think Tom believed, I'm

not going to let him die. Not now. Not ever."

The stinking scent of smoke that accompanied Roxanne taunted Katie, rousing perilous memories of

nights in the wilderness and the hot feel of Tom's skin against her own. She squared her shoulders. "Just

stay out of my way, Roxanne, because I'm not letting him go."

Katie heard a step behind her. Roxanne looked to the noise. Her eyes went wide in shock, then

immediately clouded in confusion. Katie turned to see Tom's brother edge into the room, his brows

pulled down in a dark scowl that was a sure sign of uneasiness among the Kishida men. Harlow was a

little taller than Tom, a little huskier, but the resemblance was close enough that she could understand

Roxanne's moment of dismay. Harlow studied Roxanne suspiciously, then turned to Katie. "Has

Linda Nagata - Tech Heaven

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