Riverside is the city that gives Dan Davis’s search for Frederica Heinicke a destination. The name first appears in a newspaper entry recording her withdrawal from the Riverside Sanctuary; later, Dan travels there and asks to be present when she regains consciousness. The city thus marks the passage from a discovery made through public records to an urgent, personal attempt at reunion.

Identification and Significance

Riverside is a California city associated in the novel with the Riverside Sanctuary, where Frederica Heinicke is a committed cold-sleep client. Its importance is not established through a broad description of the city but through Dan’s movement toward it: a location identified in a newspaper becomes the place where he hopes to encounter Frederica at the moment she returns to consciousness.

The city’s role unfolds through sharply different kinds of information. At first, it is part of a terse withdrawal notice in the Times; later, it is the endpoint of Dan’s travel by express Way and the setting of his appointment with the sanctuary director. That progression turns Riverside from a name on a page into the scene of a possible reunion.

The Newspaper Discovery

After a distressing dream, Dan searches the week’s newspapers, reading not only the vital-statistics category that first drew his attention but also births, deaths, marriages, divorces, adoptions, name changes, commitments, and withdrawals. He worries that he might have glimpsed Frederica’s name without consciously recognizing it, perhaps in an announcement of a marriage or a birth. The newspaper’s withdrawals listing instead supplies the decisive clue: for May 2, 2001, it records “Riverside Sanctuary . . . F. V. Heinicke.”

The entry does not itself explain who F. V. Heinicke is or whether she is alive and ready to wake. Dan recognizes “Heinicke” as Frederica’s grandmother’s name, though he cannot initially account for how he knows it. He suspects the name had been buried in his memory, perhaps heard from Frederica or Miles Gentry, or possibly encountered when he met the older woman at Sandia. The newspaper therefore works as more than a record: it joins a fragment of remembered information to a current institutional notice, allowing Dan to identify Frederica’s location.

Once he has made the connection, Dan is trembling so badly that he can hardly fit the information into the communications slot. He requests Riverside Sanctuary, specifying its location in Riverside Borough, and waits while the system searches for and connects the circuit. A man on the screen tells him that he has reached the sanctuary but that it is closed for the night. When Dan presses for more information, he learns that Frederica has already checked out. Riverside is consequently tied not only to the discovery of her whereabouts, but to the frightening possibility that he may have arrived too late.

Dan’s Journey to Riverside

Dan’s first obstacle is practical rather than geographical: he lacks cash for a cab that could take him to Riverside. Living in West Hollywood, he rides the Ways downtown to the twenty-four-hour bank at the Grand Circle of the Ways. The universal checkbook system lets him obtain cash quickly through the citywide cybernet clearinghouse, despite being away from his home bank across from Hired Girl, Inc. He then takes the express Way to Riverside, arriving in daylight.

His exhausted appearance complicates the arrival. At the sanctuary he has a day’s beard, is wild-eyed, may smell of beer, and has not prepared a consistent explanation for why he is there. The only people present are the night technician with whom he had spoken and the night nurse, his wife. The urgency that has carried Dan across the city does not make him an assured or persuasive visitor; his disordered state makes the meeting more precarious.

A later account of his approach to Riverside supplies further particulars. On Monday, April 30, Dan checks out and goes to the city, taking a room at the old Mission Inn. The hotel objects to admitting Pete, and its autobellhop cannot be bribed; the assistant manager, however, proves more receptive to a crisp, rustling incentive. Dan sleeps badly from excitement. These mundane negotiations—lodging, a cat, a bribe, and a night without rest—place his extraordinary hope inside the ordinary frictions of travel.

At the Riverside Sanctuary

At ten o’clock the next morning, Dan presents himself to the sanctuary director, Dr. Rumsey. He identifies himself as Daniel B. Davis and asks whether Frederica Heinicke is a committed client there. To establish his identity, he shows a 1970 Denver driver’s license and a withdrawal certificate from Forest Lawn Sanctuary. The documents connect his earlier life and his own passage through cold sleep to the institution where he hopes to see Frederica.

Dan believes Frederica is scheduled for withdrawal that day. His request is specific: he does not ask to observe the processing routines, but whether he may be present at the last moment, when she is ready for the final restimulant and consciousness. The distinction makes Riverside the point at which his long-range search narrows to an immediate question of access. The available account establishes his arrival and his appeal to Dr. Rumsey; it does not, in these passages, establish the outcome of that request.

Riverside’s significance therefore lies in the convergence of record, memory, and action. A newspaper notice supplies the clue; Dan’s half-recalled knowledge makes it legible; communications and public transport carry him toward the sanctuary; and his papers allow him to present himself there. The city is not merely a destination on his route. It is where the possibility of reunion becomes concrete, while remaining uncertain until the sanctuary permits him to approach Frederica’s awakening.