“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 carefully-raked 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 comfortable-looking 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 cryonically-preserved 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.”