The Precipice

NEW KYOTO

The Yamagata family estate was set on a rugged hillside high above the office towers and apartment blocks of New Kyoto. Built like a medieval Japanese fortress, the solid yet graceful buildings always made Dan think of poetry frozen into shapes of wood and stone. It had suffered extensive damage in the earthquakes, Dan knew, but he could see no sign of it. The repairs had flawlessly matched the original structures.

Much of the inner courtyard was given to an exquisitely maintained sand garden. There were green vistas at every turn, as well: gardens and woods and, off in the distance, a glimpse through tall old trees of Lake Biwa, glittering in the late afternoon sun.

The tiltrotor plane settled down, turbines screeching, in the outer courtyard. Dan pulled off his sanitary mask and unbuckled his safety belt. He was through the hatch before the pilot was able to stop the rotors. Squinting through the dust kicked up by the downwash, Dan saw Nobuhiko Yamagata waiting at the gate to the inner courtyard, wearing a comfortable kimono of deep blue decorated with white herons, the Yamagata family’s emblem.

For an instant Dan thought he was seeing Saito Yamagata, Nobuhiko’s father, the man who had been Dan’s boss in the old days when Randolph had been a construction engineer on the first Japanese solar power satellite. Nobo had been ascetically slim when he was younger, but now his face and body had filled out considerably. He was tall, though, some thirty centimeters taller than his father had been, even several centimeters taller than Dan himself. The two men bowed simultaneously, then grasped each other’s shoulders.

“By damn, Nobo, it’s good to see you.”

“And you,” Nobuhiko replied, smiling broadly. “It’s been much too long since you’ve visited here.” His voice was deep, strong, assured. “You’re looking well,” Dan said as Yamagata led him past the flowering shrubbery of the inner courtyard, toward the wing of the old stone and wood house where the family lived.

“I’m too fat and I know it,” Nobo said, patting his belly. “Too many hours behind a desk, not enough exercise.”

Dan made a sympathetic noise.

“I’m thinking of taking a trip to Selene for a nanotherapy session.”

“Aw, come on, Nobo,” Dan said, “it’s not that bad.”

“My doctors nag me constantly.”

“That’s what the double-damned doctors always do. They learn it in medical school. No matter how healthy you are, they always find something to worry you about.”

They walked along a winding path of stones set across the middle of the carefullyraked sand garden. Dan noticed the miniature olive tree off in one corner of the garden that he had given Nobo’s father many years earlier. It looked green and healthy. Before the greenhouse cliff had struck, even in June the tree would have been covered by a heated transparent plastic dome to protect it from the occasional frost. Now the winters were mild enough to leave the tree in the open all year long.

“What’s your father’s status?” Dan asked as they removed their shoes at the open door to the main house. Two servants stood silently just inside the door, both women, both in carnelian-red robes.

Nobuhiko grimaced as they walked down the hallway lined with shoji screens. “The medical researchers have removed the tumor and cleaned father’s body of all traces of cancerous cells. They are ready to begin the revival sequence.”

“That can be tricky,” Dan said.

Ten years earlier, Saito Yamagata had had himself declared clinically dead and then frozen in liquid nitrogen, preserved cryonically to await the day when his cancer could be cured and he would be revived.

“Others have been thawed successfully,” Nobo said as they entered a spacious bedroom. It was paneled in teak, with bare floors of bleached pine, and furnished sparely: a western-style bed, a desk in the opposite corner, two comfortablelooking recliner chairs. One wall consisted of sliding shoji screens; Dan figured they covered a closet, built-in drawers, and the lavatory. Dan saw that his one travel bag had already been placed on a folding stand at the foot of the bed. “Still,” he said, “thawing must be pretty dicey.”

Yamagata turned to face him, and Dan saw Saito’s calm brown eyes, the certainty, the power that a long lineage of wealth and privilege can bring to a man. “We have followed the research work very thoroughly,” Nobo said. He smiled slightly. “We have sponsored much of the work ourselves, of course. It seems that Father could be revived.”

“That’s great!” Dan blurted. “Sai will be back with us-” Nobuhiko raised a hand. “Two problems, Dan.”

“What?”

“First, there are very strong political forces opposing revival of any cryonicallypreserved person.”

“Opposing… oh, for the love of Peter, Paul, and Peewee Reese. The New Morality strikes again.”

“Here in Japan it’s an offshoot of the New Dao movement. They call themselves the Flowers of the Sun.”

“Flowers of crackpots,” Dan grumbled.

“They have a considerable amount of political power. Enough to get nanotechnology banned in Japan, just as your New Morality people got it banned in the States.”

“And now they’re against reviving corpsicles?”

A reluctant grin cracked Yamagata’s solemn expression. “Delicately put, Dan. My father is a corpsicle.”

Waving a hand, Dan said, “You know I don’t mean any disrespect.”

“I know,” Nobuhiko admitted. “But the unhappy fact is that these Flowers of the Sun are attempting to pass a law through the Diet that would forbid cryonics altogether and make it a crime to attempt to revive a frozen body.”

“Why, for god’s sake? On what grounds?”

Nobuhiko shrugged. “They say the resources should be spent in rebuilding our ravaged cities. They say that we don’t need rich old people to be brought back among us, what we need are healthy young people who can work hard to rebuild Japan.”

“Bullcrap,” Dan muttered. Then he brightened. “Hey, I know how you can get around them! Fly your father up to Selene. They’ll revive him there. They can even use nanomachines if they have to.”

Nobo sat on the bed, his shoulders sagging. “I’ve thought of that, Dan. I’m tempted to do it, especially before the government bars removal of frozen bodies from the country.”

“They can’t do that!”

“They will, before the next session of the Diet is over.”

“Goddammit to hell and back!” Dan shouted, pounding his fist into his palm. “Has the whole stupid world gone crazy?”

“There’s something else,” Nobo said, his voice barely above a whisper.

“Something worse.”

“What on earth could be worse?”

“The people who have been revived. Their minds are gone.”

“Gone? What do you mean?”

With a helpless spread of his hands, Nobuhiko repeated, “Gone. The body can be revived, but apparently the freezing process wipes out the brain’s memory system. Those we’ve revived are mentally like newborns. They even have to be toilet trained all over again.”

Dan sank into one of the plush recliners. “You mean Sai’s mind… his personality… gone?”

“That’s what we fear. Apparently the neural connections in the brain break down when the body is frozen. The mind comes out a virtual tabula rasa.”

“Shit,” Dan muttered.

“We have our research scientists working on the problem, of course, but there’s no point to reviving my father until we know definitely, one way or the other, how his mind has been affected by the freezing.”

Dan hunched forward, forearms on his thighs. “Okay. I understand now. But get Sai’s body to Selene. Now! Before these religious fanatics make it impossible to move him.”

Nobuhiko nodded grimly. “I believe you’re right, Dan. I’ve felt that way myself for some weeks now, but I’m glad that you agree.”

“I’m heading up to Selene next week,” Dan said. “If you like, I’ll take him with me.”

“That’s very good of you, but this is a family matter. I’ll take care of it.”

Dan nodded. “Okay. But if you need any help — anything at all, just let me know.” Nobuhiko smiled again, and for the first time there was real warmth in it. “I will, Dan. I certainly will.”

“Good.”

The younger man rubbed at his eyes, then looked up at Dan again. “Very well, I’ve told you my problem. Now tell me yours. What brings you here?” Dan grinned at him. “Oh, nothing much. I just need a couple of billion dollars.” Nobo’s face remained completely impassive for a long moment. Then he said, “Is that all?”

“Yep. Two bill should do it.”

“And what do I get in return for such an investment?”

With a chuckle, Dan replied, “A bunch of rocks.”