Worlds Apart by Joe Haldeman Read Free Book Online Page A

pack on her wrist, tore it open, and pressed the tranquilizer button.
    Her teeth ached when her jaws unclenched. The pulse stopped hammering in her ears. The muscles in her arms and legs deliciously relaxed. A spear clattered on the steps next to her.
    She looked up and a small boy was running away. Languidly she aimed in his direction, thought about it, and fired deliberately high. His hair caught on fire and he ran on even faster, beating at it.
    “Poor child,” she said. “I ought to do you a favor.” She stood up and resisted the impulse to brush herself off. Someone was shouting at her.
    “Goodman! O’Hara! What happened down there?”
    “Goodman’s dead now. I’m coming back.” She switched off the intercom for a while and started walking back up the runway. Every now and then she fired a random burst into the brush. That seemed prudent.
    Funny how the jungle had taken over. Two years before, these grounds were all carefully landscaped. She remembered the fat funny woman who had shown them around the place, stream of wisecracks in her lovely lilting accent. They’d each been given a flower, a lily red as blood. You come back some time now.
    From the cryogenic warehouse to the Mercedes, the jungle was a solid sheet of flame. The paint on one side of the warehouse was starting to blister and smoke. Jackson and Ahmed were standing guard. She turned on her intercom and went inside.
    They had found a forklift and were loading it with long gray cylinders. There was a large vault door beside the racked cylinders. O’Hara didn’t care to think about what was behind the door. Heads.
    This was a storage area for Immortality Unlimited, the only one in Africa. Dying people would have their heads separated from their bodies, the blood replaced with some more lasting fluid, and then have the head quickly frozen to the temperature of liquid nitrogen and sent here for storage. The idea was that a new body could eventually be cloned from a cell, and the brain recharged with some memories intact. No one knew how much. When they did it with dogs the dogs would remember some tricks. O’Hara thought it was ghoulish—and so much like groundhogs, to stockpile millions of new mouths to feed someday, when half the world was starving already.
    She remembered the fat lady talking about it, talking seriously for a change. The storage area was here because some of the heads were bound for orbit. The initial cost was higher but there was no maintenance fee. It was easier to keep things cold in orbit, and you wouldn’t have toworry about earthquakes or anything. She didn’t say war. O’Hara wondered whether anybody had bothered to waste a missile on the vault satellite. It was possible. There were a lot of politicians up there whom some people would like to have stay dead.
    Another forklift came rumbling through the door, and Berrigan told her to help with the loading. They should be able to empty the rack in two more trips.
    The cylinders were heavy. Two people could barely handle them. O’Hara worked with Berrigan and another engineer, alternating, two wrestling the cylinder into place while the third held the stack together on the fork. She was glad for the strain of the work but noticed it was getting rather smoky.
    “You’re sure he was dead?” Berrigan asked.
    “Oh, he was dead all right. They shot him with a dart from a rifle, it must have been a poison dart. His face got all puffed up. And then his tanks exploded. He’s really dead.” She set the cylinder into place but didn’t move to get another one.
    “Are you all right, Marianne? You could go trade places with Ten or Jackson.”
    “No, I’d rather do this. I’ve really had enough of guns.” She went to another cylinder and knocked the supporting flange away, and stood holding the cylinder in place.
    “You took something.” Berrigan did the same on her side, and they rolled the cylinder out.
    “A trank. I was starting to really lose it.”
    “Don’t blame