Descent from Xanadu by Harold Robbins Read Free Book Online Page A

seven pages of computer printout.
     
    born: 25 june 34 n.y.n.y.
    doctors hosp. 5:01 p.m.
    genealogy:
    father: samuel taylor crane
    born:
    died: 18 feb. 62

7
    Barbara looked out of the window at the white carpet of snow that blanketed Central Park. “Your father said this was the most beautiful scene in New York. White snow across Central Park with the gray and glass skyline of the buildings behind it.”
    Judd stood next to her. “My father was a strange man.”
    “Only to you,” she said. “And only because he was your father. All children think their parents are strange.”
    “You loved him,” Judd said, less a question than a statement.
    “Yes.” Her answer was simple.
    “Why did you wait so long before you married?”
    Her answer was just as simple. “He never asked me before.”
    “But you stayed with him?”
    “If you mean were we sleeping together?” she asked, and answered herself, “No.”
    Judd looked at her. “Strange. I always thought you did.”
    “Everybody did,” she said. “But your father had his own ideas. He never mixed business with personal emotions.”
    “He was a fool.”
    “Maybe,” she said. “But it’s over now. Somehow it doesn’t matter anymore.”
    He was silent for a moment. “How are you feeling?”
    “All right,” she said. “But now that it’s happened, numb.”
    “It’s going to be a circus,” he said. “The whole fucking world is going to be there. Except Kennedy. The President never liked him. Maybe he didn’t like the idea that Father had more money than his own father. Anyway he’s sending Vice President Johnson to the funeral. Johnson liked Father. He always likes people with money and power.”
    Barbara smiled wanly. “Your father didn’t care then, and I’m sure he doesn’t care now.”
    Judd nodded. “In a sort of way that’s what I want to talk to you about. I know that after the services at St. Thomas’s his body is being taken to a crematorium.”
    “That was his wish,” Barbara said. “He never liked the idea of being buried in a cemetery.”
    “I have another idea,” Judd said. “I don’t want his body cremated. I want it sent to the research hospital in Boca Raton.”
    “What good would that do?” she asked. “They must have already prepared his body at the mortuary.”
    “No they haven’t,” he said. “Less than five minutes after he died I arranged to have him frozen cryogenically.”
    “You don’t believe that bullshit,” she said. “That he could be revived in another year when that disease is curable and that he can be brought back?”
    “That’s not what I’m trying to do.” He took a deep breath. “We have the technology now that allows us to examine cells in his body genetically and with DNA methodology discover the causes of his disease.”
    “That sounds ghoulish,” she said.
    “It’s not,” he said earnestly.
    “I don’t know,” she said. “Your father’s wishes were explicit.”
    “His wishes are no longer binding. Dead, he doesn’t own his own corpse. His corpse is your property and you can do with it whatever you wish. That’s the law.”
    Barbara looked at him. “Is that why you asked me?”
    He nodded. “As his wife you have the legal right. I do not.”
    “What right do you have?”
    “None. Unless you predeceased him and I’d been the next blood survivor.”
    She sat silent for a moment. “I think I need a drink.”
    He crossed the room and filled two glasses with Scotch on the rocks. Silently they sipped their drinks. After a moment she looked at him. “Do you think it might do some good?”
    “I don’t know,” he said. “But we’re trying to learn more about living longer. That’s why I built the research center in Boca Raton. Maybe if we’d started years before we could have prolonged his life.”
    “And you, Judd,” she asked softly, “what do you want?”
    “I want to live forever.”
    She stared at him, then finished her drink. “Okay, I’ll go for