“The one on the video I saw lived,” answered Billy, “but my lawyer got out of Polinzer that only one out of three survives regeneration. After that I got to see a tape of one that didn’t make it. You’re right about one thing, sergeant. It looks like a hard way to go.”
Draper leaned back against the cell wall and frowned as he continued his examination of Billy Stark’s face. “You are going to suffer like few humans have ever suffered, your mind is going to be wiped of everything, and in the unlikely event that you live—”
“I thought about this for a long time, sergeant. You think I’ll quit out now and run back to the hotseat just because you shake the bogeyman at me?”
“No.” Draper patted his coat pocket, reached in and withdrew an evil smelling briar pipe. Holding it by the bowl, he tapped the stem against the fingers of his left hand. “I’m just trying to figure out why you’re doing this. It’s not for medicine or science or anything like that. You’ve never did anything for another person in your entire life.”
Billy remembered a boy he helped once, but that was a murder the cops didn’t know about. Anyway, he was beyond having to prove anything to anyone. Billy shrugged. “I guess I figure it’s a better chance than the chair. That’s all there is to it.”
The detective stood and looked down at the killer. “You don’t get it at all, Billy. The odds of you living might be two to one against, but the you that is you has no chance. No chance at all. The regeneration process wipes the slate acid clean.”
Turning around to his desk, Billy reached into the box of his belongings and withdrew an issue of New Detective Magazine . “I read the story you wrote. ‘Blood’s Truth.’ Your first story it says in here.”
Astonished, Draper looked from the magazine to the killer’s face. “Yeah.”
“I liked it.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“Are you going to go full time writing?”
Draper curled his lip, glanced away for a moment, then faced the prisoner. “I have a few more killers to put away before I try anything like that. Think about what I said.”
Sgt. Draper turned to go and Billy held out the magazine. “Could you autograph it? I never asked for an autograph before.”
The detective burst out with a single laugh, stared at the open magazine for a moment, then took it as he reached into his inside breast pocket for a pen. “I never gave an autograph before.” He scribbled for a bit, handed back the copy, and left the cell. As his leather heels echoed on the block, Billy opened the magazine to the proper page and read the inscription:
To Billy Stark,
You’re all finished. Rot in Hell,
John Draper
Billy looked at the sentiment and wondered. The chimp in the first video Dr. Polinzer had shown him was an intelligent creature, good at games and quick to learn, according to the tests that were described in the beginning. More than that, the chimp’s face was expressive. It showed that there was more there than a dumb animal. The animal was full of mischief and liked to play jokes. When he thought he had been especially clever or funny, there was this thing he did with his mouth. A strange sort of grimace.
When the film cut to the testing of the regenerated baby chimp, it showed that the baby chimp remembered none of its tests or games. There was something else, though; something that didn’t fit within the tests; something none of the scientists appeared to have noticed.
The baby chimp pinched its handler, a studious youth with glasses that made him look like an owl. The handler jumped back and yelped. Then the baby chimp did that thing, that strange sort of grimace, with its mouth. Something of the old chimp’s thinking might have made it through the regeneration, thought Billy. The chimp in the second video had a completely different set of expressions before it died. On the first chimp, though, some individuality had made it through. Maybe. Possibly.
There was that study he had read about in Science News where a worm was trained to make some simple moves in response to a stimulation. Then the pencil necks conducting the experiment ground up the worm and fed it to some other worms. After those worms ate the smart worm, they became smart, too. They could all do what the ground up worm had been trained to do.
Doc Lamb, the serial killer children’s dentist in the cell next to his on the Row, had been the one who told Billy about the worm study. Lamb also mentioned that humans are a little more complicated than flatworms.
Cell regeneration. It was such a slender thread. It was a chance, though, and any chance is more of a chance than Old Sparky would give him.
“Stark.”
Billy looked up at the guard standing in the open door to his cell. The man’s name tag said he was Connely. “Yeah?”
The guard cocked his head toward the block access door. “On your feet, Stark. Shrink wants to see you.”
Billy Stark stood, placed the magazine into the box next to his coded notebook, and followed the guard named Connely. The coded notebook reminded him to apply for a phone call later in the day. It was November second.. The experiment would be in less than two weeks and there were some details that needed tending.
Just in case.
Over the next eleven days it seemed to Billy that he took and repeated at least four times every psychological and physical test ever invented. Ellen Nash, the prison psychologist, seemed very excited by the project, even though the people from the Steiman Institute seemed to have difficulty tolerating her. Dr. Nash was very young and very beautiful behind the dowdy image she presented for the benefit of the male prison population, but that didn’t seem to be reason enough to irk her coworkers.
On the day of the experiment, as he floated in the warm fluid of the tank the techs called “The Iron Womb,” Billy worked at trying to let the drugs relax him. He had just about written off Ellen Nash’s problems with the institute bunch as a personality thing when the tech supervising his monitors let slip to a nurse that, as prison shrink, Ellen Nash’s approval had been required to secure the necessary funding. The price of her approval was participation in the experiment and credit on any papers published.
A touch of ambition, thought Billy. It doesn’t mean anything. Everybody’s in everything for what they can get. If playing poker made Mother Theresa feel better than helping the poor, she’d be in Vegas dealing stud. Ellen Nash had been pleasant and had tried to be helpful. He didn’t begrudge the shrink a little career boost.
The tech nodded, looked at Billy, and said, “So long, killer.” The nurse pushed the plunger on a syringe and Billy reviewed his numbers one last time:Eleven, three, ninety-seven. Four-three-one-two. Twenty-four forty-two and … and a bright color—
Billy’s breath caught, the images around him smeared and went blinding white. He felt a slight burning sensation in his arm followed by his entire body getting warm. Immediately afterward his entire body felt as though it had been dipped into molten steel. His mouth opened and he heard himself cry out, then scream. For a split second he wondered if Sgt. Draper was watching, then it all dropped into a nightmare of plasma flashes, thundering sounds no synthesizer ever produced, smells of fire, feces, and fear, violent touch sensations from every nerve in his body, the taste of salt and blood. As the pain transcended mere sensation, he felt himself lifted from his body into a great dark.
…the sound of a heartbeat, dull and steady, layers of existence in flight. A voice garbled, distorted.