JOE HALDEMAN

FIRE, ICE

A story told as a sonnet redouble by Joe Haldeman

The first time that I died was
fire and ice.
Cancer fire, as pain drugs lost their hold...
I told them go ahead and throw the dice;
surrender to the cryogenic cold
these old and torn, worn and stitched remains
of the body that I so gladly wore
through one life's, the first life's, pleasures and pains.
Temporary death. Ice to freeze those sores.
If it's real death, then it is nothing more.
The chance of death was figured in the price:
the price that left my heirs a little poor.
But I would rather put my life on ice...
I'm old enough to know what life is worth--
quite old, but still too young for ash or earth.

I toured their factory. I saw the place
where what was left of me would find its rest.
A pool of nitrogen, wherein we guests
will sleep for ages, waiting for the race
of future not-quite-mortals who'll erase
the ill that brought us there, and then invest
our frozen bones with life again. The rest
is up to us: to find ourselves a place
in that future world.

But what caught at me
was the cold: ice to freeze these cancer sores
into limbo. That future paradise
was too remote (and wasn't guaranteed).
Pain flame and cryogenic reservoir:
the first time that I died was fire and ice.

The final months of life, I had to bide,
and let the cancer win. An accident,
a stroke, a murder or a suicide--
any end that's swift, convenient--
would mean the brain would start to die without
the tubes and wires in place to save the cells
that make us who we are. A final bout
with pain, indignity, hospital smells
and lights and noise, noise.

Then death. And then
the blood sucked out, replaced with slippery stuff
that doesn't freeze. The pool of nitrogen...
but I could feel. I wasn't dead enough.
At least it was relief from uncontrolled
cancer fire, as pain drugs lost their hold.

I do remember that the doctors said
the senses would be gone; no ear nor eye
nor skin for silence, dark, and cold. But I
suspect that they could tell I wasn't dead.
I wonder if they knew this gelid bed
becomes a bed of dreams. You don't quite die,
but live through life again--and magnify,
with inching slowness, pain and shame and dread.

Recalling every kid I tattled on.
Recapitulating every mean
seduction, lie, double cross and vice
that soured my eighty years. Would I have gone
if I had known what I was getting when
I told them go ahead and throw the dice?

Not quite dead. I wondered if they knew--
for centuries I wondered--then for more
than centuries I plotted, and I swore
a sick revenge on that unholy crew,
who locked me in this frozen cell, this brew
of steamy cold.

But slowly, reason bore
dull fruit: since no one yet had come ashore
from this frigid sea, they had no clue
to hint that we might dream as well as sleep.
And though it felt like centuries that rolled
along, waiting for this sudden leap
of logic--it was moments, rendered old
and slow in this frozen brain's deep
surrender to the cryogenic cold.

I know I lost my mind, knowing this--
that if I slept for just one hundred years
before the warming metamorphosis,
I'd live a million centuries of fears
and pains recalled--a track of frozen tears
and silent screams that crawled its creeping way
to Dante's final circle: to the biers
of ice reserved for those who have to pay
the price for playing God.

I screamed away
a few millenniums in that cold hell,
or maybe microseconds. I didn't stay
insane for longer than Rome rose and fell.
Please. Thaw or kill these frozen brains;
these old and torn, worn and stitched remains.

Time. I had time. Dust turns into stars,
stars turn into rock, in the millenniums
I screamed away in madness. But as the sun
will one day cool to red, to brown, to black;
so cooled my lunacy. If it left scars,
it also paid this priceless premium:
no one's sanity was ever won
back from such a long and twisted track.

I do remember crazy people. Poor
Bernice, who had it all: cool intelligence,
beauty, youth, my love. The way that she
destroyed that body makes me glad to be
alive, without the inconvenience
of the body that I so gladly wore.

What I'd seen as prison was complete
freedom!--inconceivable to those
who simply live. Bars of time enclose
your cage: your heart will beat two billion beats
and then your mind will stop. My mind cheats
the grave; my body will not decompose
in all this time I have. Time that froze
not the mind, but just the dying meat.

The mind still feels: even in this drab,
not quite lifeless, cold beyond cold
it functions well enough, and still maintains
a kind of fond remembrance for the slab
of meat that brought me, more or less whole,
through one life's, the first life's, pleasures and pains.

Perhaps I think about this body more
now that I'm detached from it. The pain
that was eight years of unrelenting drain
that skewed my life--spattered it with gore
and rot!--penetrated to the core
of whatever self we have. The brain
is not the ``self,'' I know. But it's plain
that something like a self will be restored.

If anything's restored. They gave no bond,
no guarantee. I gladly paid the tab
for this most expensive and, of course,
priceless, gift, to find myself beyond
the cancer pain, even in this drab
temporary death. Ice to freeze those sores.

Something's different. Something's happening.
I hear a sound, like a flute that's purring low
and softly. Then, dim colors sparkling
at the edge of vision. A smell of snow--
not a smell remembered, but a true
perception . . . the smell of liquid nitrogen?
The colors merge into a solid blue;
I suddenly, all over, feel my skin
screaming pain, beyond the cancer pain,
shrieking now from skin through gut and bone--
and then it stops. The senses dead again,
but now the body absolutely gone.

A different kind of numbness from before . . .
if it's real death, then it is nothing more.

But then I heard my name. Not as a word
so much as a thought--but it was an alien thought,
that didn't come from me! The Outside sought
attention, the warm Outside. I said I'd heard,
and in a microsecond they transferred
a trillion bits of truth: the life I'd bought
was ready to be claimed. I could be thawed...
at least the brain. The body's dead, interred.

Which is what I'd felt. Of course it stops
the senses dead, this being bodiless.
They had a new young body they could splice
me to. A good chance, but I die if it flops.
Fifty-fifty? No, a little less.
The chance of death was figured in the price.

But this requires some thought. I could remain
for centuries in this not unpleasant state.
Be content to live within my brain--
a metaphor made frozen flesh--my fate,
at very worst, to sit and glaciate
in ponderous senility. At best,
a simple winking out. I did debate
this for a blink or two. But my bequest
to my future self was not a slow
surrender: millenniums of icy rest.
What's the future like? I had to know.
They claimed I could be thawed. So here's the test.
Let's throw the dice. That was the reason for
the price that left my heirs a little poor.

It only worked part way. I felt the cold
diminish at what seemed a rapid pace--
then realized what it was! The old
ice-on-skin sensation on my face
and body, new body: tingling, then I braced
for pain, for frostbite pain not quite controlled by
drugs ... it didn't come. The doctors
raced to save my future self. They lost their hold.

I lost a neuron here and there, but wound
up pretty much the same, in this nice
private cryogenic paradise.
They'd offered me a choice: be wheeled around
in some robot thing, alive though bound.
But I would rather put my life on ice.

Again and then again they tried. Technique
improved, and after only forty years--
more than twenty bodies--this antique
brain blinked, and saw, blurred by sudden tears,
the chrome and white and glare: the very room
where I had gone to die two centuries before.
I braced for pain, but it didn't come.
They'd fixed that part. The body that I bore
was male and young, but weak. Too weak to rise.
A nurse, in accents very strange, said Wait.
A month or two of painful exercise
and you will be ... whoever you create.
So hurt me. More than anyone on earth,
I'm old enough to know what life is worth.

To you who read this, that ``future'' world's a strange
and near-forgotten relic. I've survived
years enough to see the Pole Star change.
This antique brain rebuilt, rewired, revived,
until the clever scientists contrived
a body that would last. So now we all
slip forward to our future life, deprived
of death unless we want to die. Life palls,
you leave. I've never heard that Siren call
myself, and hope to persevere until
the heat death of the universe. We all
should keep warm until that final chill.
A million suns have risen since my birth:
I'm old, but still too young for ash or earth.