Dana eased the body to the edge of the drawer until she was afraid to bring it farther. She looked down. “He’s in position. Hold tight, I’m coming off. Be ready to catch him — he might slip.”
She shouldn’t have said that. Art and Seth straightened at once and reached up to steady Guest’s body and make sure it didn’t fall. Dana’s feet slid off their backs. She tried to protect the flashlight, dropped it, and landed on the metal floor on her tailbone with a jolt that rattled her teeth.
“Shit!” She rubbed at her backside. “What did you do that for?”
They ignored her complaints. “Never mind your ass,” Seth said. “Get that flashlight goin’, an’ stand in between us an’ shine it up. I got the shoulders, Art got the legs, but we can’t see what we’re doin’. If we have problems, grab his middle an’ steady him as we bring him down.”
It was easy to give orders, but if Dana worked the flashlight crank she had no hands free. Something had to give.
“Take a good look where you want your holds to be. And then be ready to bring him down in the dark.”
Dana worked the light to its brightest beam, keeping it going until Art and Seth were sure of their holds. She looked where her own grip on the body should be, stuck the flashlight quickly into her pocket, and reached up fast as the light faded.
Even with three people it was an effort. Oliver Guest was a big man, and Dana felt as if at least half his weight fell on her. She braced herself, tightened her jaw, and lowered him as slowly and carefully as she could to the floor.
“He’s down.” Art’s voice came out of the darkness, beside her on the floor. “But where the devil is the flashlight? I can’t find it.”
“It’s in my pocket. Wait a second.”
By the time Dana had the beam working again, Seth had already removed his jacket and was opening his shoulder bag. “You wearing two pairs of pants?” he said to Art.
“Yes.”
“I’m not, and I got no spares. You’ll have to come through with that. I’m givin’ up my jacket an’ a shirt. We have to keep him warm, and he has to be able to travel. How about shoes?”
“I’ve got these boots, the ones I’m wearing now, and a pair of regular shoes in my bag.”
“Can he have your shoes?”
Art bent to examine Oliver Guest’s feet. “They’ll never fit him — his feet are too big. But he can have the boots. They were borrowed and they’re like boats on me.”
“An’ I have socks, plenty of ’em. Hey, that’s good.” Art had pulled a candle from his bag, lit it, and placed it on the floor. “Now we can manage without the flashlight,” Seth went on. “Can you get these onto him?”
He handed a pair of underpants to Dana. She moved to the bony feet and slipped the clothing over, pushing it carefully up the long legs. The calves and thighs were as hairless as the head, some side effect of the somnol or maybe of the long sleep itself. She felt awkward tucking in sex organs so she could pull the underpants up to his waist. His genitals were those of an adult male, but pink and hairless as a baby’s. His belly, unless it was her imagination, had warmed a few degrees since she had pulled out the IV.
Art and Seth had been busy on the upper body. Oliver Guest was now dressed in a shirt, sweater, and a jacket a size too small. Art was working the hands with their long, thick fingers into a pair of black gloves. They moved him to the tiers of body drawers and propped him up there before tackling pants, socks, and shoes.
“Ain’t he a beauty?” Seth said. “How’d you like to find this under your bed one dark night?”
Oliver Guest’s eyes were slitted open and the skin around them had an odd yellowish tinge. That, together with the bald bulging skull and the complete lack of eyebrows, suggested some evil idol from an ancient temple, brooding in the yellow glow of a worshiper’s single candle.
“Come on, Doctor G.,” Seth said. “Can you hear me yet? Guess not, but we hafta do this. You’ll lose too much heat without it.”
He was holding a green cloth cap with earflaps. He placed it on Guest’s head and pulled carefully down until it was only an inch above the narrow eyes. Seth lifted an eyelid and peered at the pupil behind. “Gettin’ a reflex reaction to light. He’s comin’ along.”
The other two were busy at the lower end. Working together they eased Art’s spare pair of trousers onto Guest’s legs and up to his middle.
“Too short,” Art said. “He’s at least three inches taller than me. But it won’t matter once we get socks and boots on. They’ll come more than high enough to cover him.”
“Quick as you can,” said Seth. “Then we done our best. The rest is up to him.”
“I think he’s still feeling the cold,” Dana said. “I’m noticing a shiver in his foot as I pull on a sock. Do we have any way to warm him?”
“Not ’til we can get him outside, and he needs to be conscious for that.” But Seth took his own blanket from his pack and began wrapping it tight around Guest’s body. “Can you do the same with yours? He’s a weight. We’ll have one hell of a time gettin’ him down them stairs ’less he can walk.”
Working together, they swaddled Guest from chin to feet. As they placed him back in position against the bank of drawers, the mouth opened and they heard a faint exhalation.
“What did he say?” Dana was behind the awakening man, making sure that his head did not bang against the metal of the drawers.
“Nothing.” Art peered at the eyes, open wider now but with eyelids that fluttered randomly and erratically. “I think he was just groaning.”
“That’s one thing you never hear when they talk about judicial sleep,” Seth said. “They tell you it’s not painful when a person goes under, it feels the same as nodding off for a nap. But what about waking up? That might hurt like a son of a bitch.”
“I looked into it four years ago,” Art said. They had done everything for Oliver Guest that he could think of, now it was wait and see. “I was down to eighty-seven pounds and my future seemed nonexistent — this was before I found out about the telomod program. I thought maybe if I was iced down for fifty years, by that time there’d be a cure. You know what they told me?”
“Let me guess.” Dana leaned against the racks of body drawers, placed her palms together, and took on the earnest expression of a funeral home director. “ ’Although we understand the reason for your request, Mr. Ferrand, you must realize that the extended syncope facilities are built and maintained using public funds. We cannot allow unsuitable and unqualified individuals to be placed there. Have you considered private alternatives?’ “
“You ran into the same jackass as I did!”
“It looks like it. Aaron Petzel?” When Art nodded, she went on, “I got so mad with him, but it wasn’t worth it. The expense of spirit in a waste of shame. He was such a sniveling bureaucrat, he acted like somnol wasn’t a restricted drug and private groups were allowed to possess it. I told him that taxes from me, and people like me, built and ran every one of those syncope facilities, and paid his fucking salary as well.”
“What did he say?”
“He told me not to use such language in his office. I never went back.”
“I did — twice. The next time I said to him, ’Let’s get this straight, Mr. Petzel. The only people who can be placed in an extended syncope facility are people who’ve done something terrible. Is that right?’ And he said, ’That is correct, Mr. Ferrand. The extended syncope facilities are part of the criminal justice system of a civilized society.’ When I went there again, I said, ’Mr. Petzel, I owe you an apology. Now I understand the way that the system has to work. I’d have to kill somebody or do something really bad to get into an extended syncope facility.’ And he said, ’That is correct, Mr. Ferrand.’ ’Good,’ I said. ’That’s what I’m going to do. And you, Mr. Petzel, are going to help me. You’d better keep your eyes open from now on, night and day, because I’m coming after you. I will kidnap you, hide you away where no one can possibly hear you scream, and kill you. You will die very slowly and painfully, and I will record every step of the process. Then I will give myself up. That ought to be enough to get me a long sentence in an extended syncope facility, wouldn’t you say?’ “