Flatlander - Larry Niven [32]
Some had gambled. Not many in any given year, but it had been going on ever since the first experimental freezer vault revivals, a generation before I was born. It was better than suicide. They were young, they were healthy, they stood a better chance of revival than any of the frozen, damaged dead. They were poorly adapted to their society. Why not risk it?
Two years ago they had been answered. The General Assembly and the world vote had passed the Freezer Bill into law.
There were those in frozen sleep who had not had the foresight to set up a trust fund or who had selected the wrong trustee or invested in the wrong stocks. If medicine or a miracle had revived them now, they would have been on the dole, with no money and no trace of useful education and, in about half the cases, no evident ability to survive in any society.
Were they in frozen sleep or frozen death? In law there had always been that point of indecision. The Freezer Law cleared it up to some extent. It declared any person in frozen sleep who could not support himself should society choose to reawaken him to be dead in law.
And a third of the world’s frozen dead, twelve hundred thousand of them, had gone into the organ banks.
“You were in charge then?”
The old man nodded. “I’ve been on the day shift at the vault for almost forty years. I watched the ambulances fly away with three thousand of my people. I think of them as my people,” he said a bit defensively.
“The law can’t seem to decide if they’re alive or dead. Think of them any way you like.”
“People who trusted me. What did those Freezeout Kids do that was worth killing them for?”
I thought: they wanted to sleep it out while others broke their backs turning the world into paradise. But it’s no capital crime.
“They had nobody to defend them. Nobody but me.” He trailed off. After a bit, and with visible effort, he pulled himself back to the present. “Well, never mind. What can I do for the United Nations Police, Mr. Hamilton?”
“Oh, I’m not here as an ARM agent. I’m just here to, to—” Hell, I didn’t know myself. It was a news broadcast that had jarred me into coming here. I said, “They’re planning to introduce another Freezer Bill.”
“What?”
“A second Freezer Bill. Naming a different group. The communal organ banks must be empty again,” I said bitterly.
Mr. Restarick started to shake. “Oh, no. No. They can’t do that again. They, they can’t.”
I gripped his arm to reassure him or to hold him up. He looked about to faint. “Maybe they can’t. The first Freezer Law was supposed to stop organlegging, but it didn’t. Maybe the citizens will vote this one down.”
I left as soon as I could.
The second Freezer Bill made slow, steady progress without much opposition. I caught some of it in the boob cube. A perturbingly large number of citizens were petitioning the Security Council for confiscation of what they described as “The frozen corpses of a large number of people who were insane when they died. Parts of those corpses could possibly be recovered for badly needed organ replacements …”
They never mentioned that said corpses might someday be recovered whole and living. They often mentioned that said corpses could not be safely recovered now, and they could prove it with experts, and they had a thousand experts waiting their turns to testify.
They never mentioned biochemical cures for insanity. They spoke of the lack of a worldwide need for mental patients and insanity-carrying genes.
They hammered constantly on the need for organ transplant material.
I just about gave up watching news broadcasts. I was an ARM, a member of the United Nations police force, and I wasn’t supposed to get involved in politics. It was none of my business.
It didn’t become my business until I ran across a familiar name eleven months later.
Taffy was people watching. That demure look didn’t fool me. A secretive