Mindscan Page 13

  “Mr. Sullivan,” he said at once, rising from behind his kidney-shaped desk; there weren’t so many of us skins yet that he couldn’t keep track of us all. “What can I do for you?”

  “I have to return to Earth.”

  Hades raised his eyebrows. “We can’t allow that. You know the rules.”

  “You don’t understand,” I said. “They’ve found a cure for my problem.”

  “What problem is that?”

  “Katerinsky’s syndrome. A kind of arteriovenous malformation in the brain. It’s why I’m here. But there’s a new technique that can cure it.”

  “Really?” said Hades. “That’s wonderful news. What’s the cure?”

  I had the vocabulary of all this down pat; I’d lived with it so long. “Using nanotechnology, they endovascularly introduce particles into the AVM to clog off its nidus; that shuts the AVM down completely. Because the particles use carbon-based nanofibers, the body doesn’t reject, or even really notice, them.”

  “And that means … what? That you’d live a normal lifespan?”

  “Yes! Yes! So, you see—”

  “That’s terrific. Where do they do the procedure?”

  “Johns Hopkins.”

  “Ah. Well, you can’t go there, but—”

  “What do you mean, I can’t go there? We’re talking about saving my life! I know you’ve got rules, but …”

  Hades held up a hand. “And they can’t be broken. But don’t worry. We’ll contact people there on your behalf, and bring an appropriate doctor to our facility here. You’ve got an unlimited medical benefit, although …”

  I knew what he was thinking. That my accountant—good old Larry Hancock—would certainly notice the … what? Millions? The million this would cost. But Hades wasn’t getting the point. “No, no, you don’t see. Everything is different now. The conditions under which I agreed to stay here no longer pertain.”

  Hades’s voice was infinitely solicitous. “Sir, I’m sorry. We’ll certainly arrange for you to have this cure—and right away, since I understand how precarious your current health is. But you can’t leave here.”

  “You have to let me go,” I said, an edge honing my words.

  “We can’t. You have no home on the outside, no money, no identity—nothing. This is the only place for you.”

  “No, you don’t understand …”

  “Oh, but I do. Look—how old are you?”

  “Forty-four.”

  “Think of how lucky you are! I’m fifty-two, and I’ll have to work for many more years, but you’ve gotten to retire a decade or two before most people do, and are enjoying the absolute lap of luxury.”

  “But—”

  “Aren’t you? Is there anything you lack here? You know we pride ourselves on our service. If there’s something that’s not up to your standards, you just have to ask. You know that.”

  “No, no … it’s all very pleasant, but …”

  “Well, then, you see, Mr. Sullivan, there’s nothing to worry about. You can have anything here that you can have on the outside.”

  “Not anything.”

  “Tell me what you want. I’ll do whatever I can to make your stay here happy.”

  “I want to go home.” It sounded so plaintive, so like my early days at summer camp, all those years ago. But it was what I wanted now, more than anything else in the world—in all the worlds. I wanted to go home.

  “I’m truly, truly sorry, Mr. Sullivan,” said Hades, shaking his head slowly back and forth, the pony tail bouncing as he did so. “There’s just no way I can allow that.”

  CHAPTER 17

  You have to clear U.S. customs at Pearson Airport in Toronto before you can even get on a plane bound for the States. I’d been afraid we’d have a hard time doing so, but the biometrics of our new bodies matched those of the old ones in key places, and we made it through automated screening without any difficulty. I’d thought Karen would have trouble because her current face was so much more youthful than the one in her passport photo, but whatever facial-recognition software was being used must have relied on underlying bone structure, or something, because it agreed that the person in the photo was indeed her.

  I hadn’t flown since I’d been a teenager. My doctors had urged me not to because the pressure changes that accompanied flying could have set off my Katerinsky’s. Now, of course, I felt no pressure changes at all. I wondered whether airline food had improved over the years, but I had no way to find out.

  One of the advantages of no longer sweating is that we didn’t have to pack many clothes when we traveled; we had only carry-on luggage. Once we arrived in Atlanta, we headed straight to the Hertz counter and got a car—a blue Toyota Deela. Since there was no need to go by the hotel first to freshen up, we drove straight to the funeral home.

  Karen still had a valid driver’s license, although she said she hadn’t driven for years; she was afraid her reflexes had dulled too much. But she was happy to do the driving now. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d ridden shotgun, but it did give me a chance to look at the scenery; they really do have a lot of peach trees in Georgia.

  As we continued along, Karen told me about Daron. “He was my first love,” she said. “And when it’s your first, you have nothing to compare it to. I had no idea it wasn’t going to work out … although I suppose no one ever does in advance.”

  “Why’d you break up?” It had been the first question that had occurred to me, and I figured I’d now waited long enough to be entitled to give it voice.

  “Oh, any number of reasons,” said Karen. “Fundamentally, we just wanted different things from life. We were still in university when we got married. He wanted to be a printing salesperson, like his father—that’s back when working in printing seemed like a good career choice—and he wanted me to get a job soon, too. But I wanted to stay in university, go to grad school. He wanted the house with the big yard in the suburbs; I wanted to travel and not be tied down. He wanted to start a family right away; I wanted to wait to have kids. In fact …”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “No. Tell me.”

  Karen was quiet for a time as we rolled along. Finally, she said, “I had an abortion. I’d gotten pregnant—stupid, right? I hadn’t been careful about taking my pills. Anyway, I never even told Daron about it, since he would have insisted we keep it.”

  I consciously suppressed my natural inclination to blink. They’d been married in the 1980s, and this was the 2040s. If Karen hadn’t aborted the child, he or she would be something like sixty now … and that child, too, would likely be en route to the funeral of the man who had been its father.

  I could almost feel the swirling of timelines, the fog of lives that might have gone differently. If Karen hadn’t ended that pregnancy all those decades ago, she might have stayed with Daron for the good of her child … meaning she’d probably never have written DinoWorld and its sequels; it was her second husband who had encouraged her to write. And that would have meant she’d never have been able to afford Immortex’s services. She’d just be an old, old lady, hampered by bad joints.

  We pulled into the parking lot of the funeral home. There were lots of empty places; Karen took one of the handicapped spaces.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “What? Oh.” She put the car in reverse. “Force of habit. Back when I could drive before, we were entitled to use those spots—my poor Ryan needed a walker.” She found another place to park, and we got out. I thought Toronto was hot in August; here, it was like a blast furnace, and drenchingly humid.

  Another couple—ah, that loaded word!—was up ahead of us, entering the building. They clearly heard our footfalls, and the man held the door for us, turning around as he did so.

  His jaw dropped. Damn, I was getting tired of being stared at. I forced what I hoped was a particularly theatrical smile and caught the door. Karen and I walked in. There were three grieving families today; a sign in the lobby
directed us to the correct room.

  The casket was open. Even from this distance, I could see the corpse, trying to feign the look of life.

  Right. Like I should talk.

  Of course, all eyes were soon on us. A woman who must have been in her eighties—the same age that Karen herself still was—rose from a pew and came over to us. “Who are you?” she said, looking at me. Her voice was reedy, and her eyes were red.

  The question, of course, occupied a lot of my thoughts these days. Before I could reply, though, Karen said, “He’s with me.”

  The crab-apple head before us turned to face Karen. “And who are you?”

  “I’m Karen,” she said.

  “Yes?” prodded the woman, the single syllable dry, demanding.

  Karen seemed reluctant to use her last name. Here, surrounded by real Bessarians—Bessarians by birth, and by enduring marriages—perhaps she didn’t feel entitled to it. But at last she spoke again. “I’m Karen Bessarian.”

  “My … God,” said the woman, her eyes narrowing as she studied Karen’s youthful, synthetic face.

  “And you are … ?” asked Karen.

  “Julie. Julie Bessarian.”

  I didn’t know if she was Daron’s sister or another of Daron’s widows, although Karen presumably did; she’d certainly remember the names of her ex-sisters-in-law, if any.

  Karen held out her hands, as if to take Julie’s in sympathy, but Julie just looked at them. “I always wondered what you looked like,” Julie said, returning her gaze to Karen’s face.

  Another widow, then. Karen tilted her head back slightly, defiantly. “Now you know,” she replied. “In fact, this isn’t all that far off what I was like back when Daron and I were together.”

  “I—I’m sorry,” said Julie. “Forgive me.” She looked over at her dead husband, then back at Karen. “I want you to know, in the fifty-two years we were married, Daron never said a bad word about you.”

  Karen smiled at that.

  “And he was so very happy for all your success.”

  Karen’s head nodded a bit. “Thank you. Who’s here from Daron’s family?”

  “Our children,” said Julie, “but you wouldn’t know them, I don’t think. We had two daughters. They’ll be back shortly.”

  “What about his brother? His sister?

  “Grigor died two years ago. That’s Narine over there.”

  Karen’s head swiveled to have a look at another old woman, supported by a walker, chatting with a middle-aged man. “I’d—I’d like to say hello,” Karen said. “Offer my condolences.”

  “Of course,” said Julie. The two of them moved away, and I found myself walking forward, to the front of the room, looking down on the face of the dead man. I hadn’t consciously thought about doing that—but when it became apparent what my body was up to, I didn’t veto the action, either.

  I don’t say all my thoughts are charitable or appropriate, and I often enough wish they had never occurred to me in the first place. But they do, and I must acknowledge them. That man, there, in the coffin, had done what I would never do: feel Karen’s flesh, join with her in real, animal passion. Yes, it had been sixty years ago … long before I was born. And I didn’t resent him for it; I envied him.

  He seemed calm, lying there, arms crossing his chest. Calm—and old, wrinkled, face deeply lined, head almost entirely bald. I tried to regress his countenance, to see if he’d been handsome in his youth, wondering if such ephemeral concerns had ever mattered to Karen. But I really couldn’t tell what he’d looked like at twenty-one, the age he’d been when he’d married her. Ah, well; perhaps it was best not to know.

  Still, I couldn’t take my eyes off his face, the sort of face I’d never have now. But more than appearance separated us, for this man—this Daron Bessarian—was dead, and … I was still trying to make sense of it … I likely would never be.

  “Jake?”

  I looked up from my reverie. Karen was approaching in a series of very small steps; Julie had taken Karen’s artificial arm for support, seemingly now at ease with being in contact with it.

  “Jake,” repeated Karen, as she drew nearer, “forgive me for not introducing you earlier. This is Julie, Daron’s wife”—a small kindness, that, not to say “second wife.”

  “I’m terribly sorry for your loss,” I said.

  “He was a good man,” said Julie.

  “I’m sure he was.”

  Julie was silent for a moment, then: “Karen has told me about what’s been done to the two of you.” She gestured with a thin, gnarled hand at my body. “I’d heard a little about such things, of course—I still watch the news, although it mostly depresses me. But, well, I never thought I’d ever meet anyone who had enough money to …” She trailed off, and I had nothing to say in response, so I just waited for her to go on, which, at last, she did.

  “Sorry,” Julie said. She looked over at the coffin, then back at me. “I wouldn’t want what you’ve got, anyway—not without my Daron.” She touched my synthetic forearm with her flesh one. “But I do envy you. Daron and I only had fifty years together. But the two of you! To have so much time still to come!” Her eyes grew moist again, and she looked back at her dead husband “Oh, how I envy you …”

  I’d heard someone quip shortly after I arrived on the moon that one advantage of lunar life was that there were no lawyers here. But, of course, that’s not entirely true: my newfound friend Malcolm Draper was a lawyer, even if he was now, by his own testimony, a retired one. Still, he was the obvious person to seek out for advice about my predicament. I called him on the internal High Eden phone system—the only one we residents had access to. “Hey, Malcolm,” I said, when his distinguished face appeared on the screen. “I need to talk to you. Got a minute?”

  He raised his grizzled eyebrows. “What’s up?”

  “Can we meet somewhere?” I said.

  “Sure,” said Malcolm. “How about the greenhouse?”

  “Perfect.”

  The greenhouse was a room fifty meters on a side and ten meters tall, full of tropical plants and trees. It was the only place in High Eden where the air was humid. The huge assortment of flowers seemed colorful even to me; I couldn’t imagine the riot of hues and shades Malcolm must be seeing. Of course, the plants weren’t just here to make residents feel less homesick; they were also an integral part of the air-recycling system.

  From my occasional visits to greenhouses in Toronto—Allan Gardens was my favorite—I was used to moving along slowly, quietly, almost like when visiting a museum, going from placard to placard. But walking on the moon was different. I’d seen historical footage of Apollo astronauts bouncing around as they walked—and they’d been wearing spacesuits that massed as much as the astronauts themselves did. Malcolm and I, in gym shorts and loose T-shirts, couldn’t help but fly up with each step. It doubtless looked comical, but I wasn’t in a fun mood.

  “So what’s up?” asked Malcolm. “Why the long face?”

  “They’ve found a cure for my condition,” I said, looking at a cluster of vines.

  “Really? That’s wonderful!”

  “It is, but …”

  “But what? You should be jumping up and down.” He smiled. “Well, all right, you do have quite a spring in your step, but you don’t sound very happy.”

  “Oh, I’m happy about the cure. You don’t know what it’s been like, all these years. But, well, I spoke to Brian Hades.”

  “Yes?” said Malcolm. “And what did the pony-tailed one have to say?”

  “He won’t let me go home, even after I’m cured.”

  We bounced along for several paces. Malcolm’s arms flew out from time to time to steady himself, but his face was drawn, and he was clearly carefully considering what to say next. Finally, he spoke: “You are home, Jake.”

  “Christ, you too? The conditions under which I agreed to come here have changed. I know contract law isn’t your specialty, but there must be something I can do.”


  “Like what? Like go back to Earth? You’re still there; the new version of you is there, living in your house, going on with your life.”

  “But I’m the original. I’m more important.”

  Malcolm shook his head. “The Two Jakes,” he said.

  I looked at him, as he batted some overhanging foliage out of his way. “What?”

  “Ever see it? It’s the sequel to Chinatown, one of my favorite films. The original was fabulous, but The Two Jakes is a lousy movie.”

  I didn’t hide my irritation. “What are you talking about?” “Just that there are two Jakes now, see? And maybe you’re right: maybe the original is more important than the sequel. But you’re going to have a hard time proving it to anyone except you and me.”

  “Can’t you help me—you know, in your professional capacity?”

  “A lawyer’s only any use within an infrastructure that supports litigation. This is the Old West; this is the frontier. No police, no courts, no judges, no jails. Your replacement down on Earth might be able to change things—not that I can see any reason why he’d want to—but there’s nothing you can do up here.”

  “But I’m going to live for decades now.”

  Malcolm shrugged. “So am I. We’ll have some great times together.” He gestured at the garden surrounding us. “It really is a wonderful place, you know.”

  “But … but there’s someone, down on Earth. A woman. Things are different now—or they will be, once I have the operation. I have to get out of here; I have to go home—home to her.”

  We walked along some more. “Greensboro,” said Malcolm, softly, almost to himself.