Free Vital Parts by Thomas Berger

the set warmed up—a tiny six-inch Sony on which he still owed many payments; it sat on Claude’s old desk, which had had to be disassembled and re-erected to get it in the room—Reinhart swung back in the swivel chair and perused the schedule. Alas, he had seen the two movies: Joan Crawford, playing a female impersonator married to a softy named Craig, and one of those Hercules films starring a cast of weightlifters who reminded him unpleasantly of his own fiberless lard.
    The screen developed a picture of several gnomes sitting on doll furniture. They were less grotesque but more grainy when he leaned over the desk and put his eyes against the glass. One man, seated behind a desk, was conversing with people arranged along a sofa, a young woman bare from the waist down though with her legs crossed so nothing could be seen but haunches, a recognizable actor who played villains, and nearest to the host, an individual in heavy-rimmed glasses and sideburns with a touch of gray: Reinhart’s host at lunch, Bob Sweet.
    The host said: “Bob, may I call you Bob? We want to hear more of this incredible process of yours after Jody’s song.”
    Jody rose from the couch and turned out to be wearing a short skirt which now fell just past her groin. She gave a serviceable rendition of a Broadway show tune, which Reinhart listened to intermittently, dying to get on to Sweet.
    At last, after three endless commercials, the host resumed.
    â€œNow, Bob, what is this about freezing dead men? Are you putting me on?”

3
    â€œNo, Mr. Alp,” said Bob Sweet, “this is no joke. Cryonics is a serious science.”
    â€œNow have I got it right?” asked Alp, joining his brushy eyebrows. “I didn’t have time for more than a glance backstage at the notes taken by a member of my staff, and he was probably drunk as usual.” Alp smirked, and the audience guffawed as a single entity.
    â€œSimply,” Sweet said, “it is this: if a body is frozen within a certain time after what is known as clinical death—the cessation of heartbeats and brainwaves—but before any cellular degeneration sets in, it can be maintained in that state of suspended animation interminably.”
    The camera pulled back to show the returned Jody’s naked thighs. Alp pointed at them and wisecracked: “Even a body like that?”
    Sweet said soberly: “Any body.”
    Alp’s face grew disingenuously bland. “Well, that’s your theory anyhoo. Why? Explain it to the folks.”
    â€œExcuse me?”
    â€œTo freeze,” said Alp, between puffs of a cigarette, “a human body. The purpose of it. I gather it’s not for weirdo kicks but a contribution of a serious nature.”
    â€œYes, indeed. It begins with the proposition that medicine has made more advances in the past fifty years than in all the preceding centuries. Think of how man in the Dark Ages was helpless against the plague, which decimated whole populations. All of us can remember that only a few years ago polio was a dreaded scourge. Perhaps a cure for cancer is just around the corner, yet people are still dying every day from it. Suppose such a victim, instead of being declared lifeless and lowered into the ground—from which there is no return—is quick-frozen and stored in a facility until the day when science has arrived at a cancer cure. At which time he is thawed out, his tissues still in serviceable condition except for those ravaged by the disease. He is brought to life and treated with the new therapy—”
    Under his nimbus of smoke, Alp said: “Hold on. How easy you say that. ‘Brought to life.’ Well, that’s the rub. What makes you think that basic trick can be pulled off? And without it, like they say, you ain’t got nothin’ for nobody nohow.” He mugged at the camera.
    Sweet smiled calmly. “Fish can be frozen solidly into a block of lake ice,