of a snowflake, fine fabric of mega parsec lace, busy graviton woven, each thread a billion atom stars, each electron spinning orb of elementals.
And from one electron in the cosmic snowflake, life gushes forth.
HELEN’S LAST WILL
The lobby of Advanced Technologies was steel struts and white polymer panels reaching towards a high vaulted ceiling of clear glass. The receptionist and an armed guard sat in a glass-enclosed booth on an otherwise vast but empty floor of black marble. Both looked up as Blanche approached the booth.
“May I help you, Madam?” asked the receptionist, a blond, pretty man in his twenties.
“I wish to see the body of my sister,” said Blanche. “She was interred here last Thursday.”
The young man smiled, fingers poised over a keyboard. “Name?”
“Helen Charlston Winslow. Age eighty-four. I believe the arrangements were made by Arthur Winslow, her son. It was all quite sudden, and I wasn’t notified.”
“Are you a relative?”
“Her sister, Blanche Charlston Packard.” Blanche sniffed, and slid her national identity card under a partially opened window in the booth. The man looked at it, then at something on his computer screen.
“Helen Winslow, yes. She was brought here directly from her home. Arthur Winslow attended her admission to verify identity.”
Blanche managed a sob. “I talked to her personal physician, and he didn’t even know she’d been ill. I’m wondering why he wasn’t called in or at least notified when she died.”
The man gave her a sympathetic smile. “We have a staff of twenty physicians, Madam. Three attended your sister, and pronounced her dead at twenty forty five. Cause of death was a massive cerebral hemorrhage.” He turned back to his computer screen, and studied it.
“Your sister had a long-term contract with us. Everything was done according to her specifications.”
“Yes, of course. I knew she was an investor in your firm. When may I view her body?”
The young man’s eyes wandered from hers. “Ah—that won’t be possible. There are no viewings here. The clients are placed in sealed tanks. Decanting them for viewing would involve considerable expense. The tissue cannot be allowed to warm above liquid nitrogen temperature once it’s quick-frozen.”
Blanche’s manner changed abruptly. “Save that for the believers, young man. I want to see my sister’s remains, and I want to see them now.”
The guard in the booth shifted his feet uneasily, and the receptionist forced a smile.
“I understand, Ms. Packard, I really do, but it isn’t possible, and there are no exceptions. It’s in the contract. The remains can be removed only for advanced medical treatment when there is a high probability for success, as determined by our physicians. There’s so little to see, anyway. Your sister’s contract allowed only her head to be preserved. The rest of her body has been designated for research purposes.”
Blanche put a hand on the window, as if to ward off an evil spirit. “You decapitated my sister?” she asked softly.
“It’s quite common, Ms. Packard. The expense for preserving the head is a fifth of that for the entire body. Over half our clients choose this option. The others have specific medical problems they wish to have solved when the technology is available in the future. It would seem your sister didn’t have such a problem.”
“Only a massive cerebral hemorrhage,” said Blanche. “All right, I want to speak to one or more of the physicians who attended my sister, and find out what’s going on here. This entire thing smells foul to me.”
“If you leave your number, someone will call you and hopefully explain things better than I have.”
Blanche gave him her card. “It had better be tonight, or we’ll be talking about this in a court of law.”
“I’ll forward this card right away, and tell them your concerns,” said the receptionist.
Blanche turned her back on him and marched away fuming, swinging her arms. She was dressed expensively in white pants suit and black tie, and looked important. She was a handsome woman, looking perhaps fifty, even forty, yet she had recently turned seventy-six. She pulled out her cell phone, and spoke a number. Waited, one foot tapping the floor.
“Arthur Winslow, please,” she said, and waited again, then, “Arthur, this is Blanche. I’m here at Advanced Technologies, and I’ve just been told I can’t see my sister because you’ve had her decapitated. Now what are you up to, you miserable little worm?”
She waited a moment, then punched the phone off in a fury.
Arthur had hung up on her.
* * * *
“There’s a conspiracy here, Randal, and I expect you to unravel it.”
Randal Haug, Blanche’s expensive attorney and longtime friend of her late husband Ralph, leaned over his expansive desk to study the document there, and thumped it with a finger.
“Nothing,” he said. “Not one red cent. The last version I saw had you down for over two million in stocks and property alone. What happened between you and Helen?”
Blanche’s fingers twisted together in her lap. “I don’t know. We saw a lot of each other until a few years ago. I think it started when Fred died. Helen was a recluse for months after that, but Arthur was there to comfort her. Dear Arthur, her baby-boy. Fred didn’t leave him a dime; it all went to Helen. Even then, she designated a portion of the estate for me; we’d talked about establishing a foundation to support local performing arts. I know Arthur opposed that. I heard him say so. The man is a financier, an accountant. He exists solely in his left brain.”
“You think Arthur has manipulated his mother into changing her will?”
“I do.”
“For what purpose? The bulk of the estate was left to him in the older version of the will, and he’s an independently wealthy man without it. You don’t need the money. Ralph left you, what, twenty five million? Fifty? I can’t recall now.”
Blanche’s voice rose in pitch. “It’s not the money, Randal. Not money for me, that is, but Helen and I had a foundation planned, and suddenly I’ll have to do it alone while that son of hers puts all her money back into the company that has mutilated her for no reason. Cost, indeed! My sister would never have allowed her head to be removed and her body destroyed just to save a measly hundred thousand each year. They say it’s in her contract, then tell me I can’t see the thing to verify it. There’s something sinister about this, Randal, and I want you to get to the bottom of it! I’m thinking of filing a Wrongful Death suit against both the company and Arthur Winslow. Murder would be harder to prove.”
“You’re not serious,” said Randal.
“I have inside sources. As of last Tuesday, Arthur owns twenty percent of Advanced Technologies. The buy he made Tuesday had to come from his inheritance; my sources can list the stocks he traded. We can link them to Helen’s holdings. We have a motive, Randal. The method is harder to prove.”
Randal seemed suddenly interested, and drummed the fingers of his right hand on the desktop, then pointed at Blanche and said, “I can write that in a way to force a Show Cause Hearing before a judge. But if I get one, will you accept the judgment? If it goes against you, will you drop all of this? Helen was also my friend, Blanche, and I think she’d be very unhappy with me for dragging her son into court. Arthur has always struck me as being smart and hard working. I don’t think he’d do what you’re suggesting here. He could just be making what he considers to be a wise investment with his inheritance. You have no physical evidence for anything else.”
“You’re not being supportive, Randal,” said Blanche softly. “You’ve been my lawyer for years, but