Red Planet Blues

FOUR





Detective Dougal McCrae of New Klondike’s Finest arrived about twenty minutes later, accompanied by two uniforms. “How’s it look, Alex?” Mac asked.

“Not as messy as some of the biological suicides I’ve seen,” I said. “But it’s still not a pretty sight.”

“Show me.”

I led Mac downstairs. He read the note without picking it up.

The burly man soon came down, too, followed by Cassandra Wilkins, who was holding her artificial hand to her artificial mouth.

“Hello, again, Mrs. Wilkins,” Mac said, moving to interpose himself between her and the prone form on the floor. “I’m terribly sorry, but I’ll need you to make an official identification.”

I lifted my eyebrows at the irony of requiring the next of kin to actually look at the body to be sure of who it was, but that’s what we’d gone back to with transfers. Privacy laws prevented any sort of ID chip or tracking device being put into artificial bodies. In fact, that was one of the many incentives to transfer: you no longer left fingerprints or a trail of identifying DNA everywhere you went.

Cassandra nodded bravely; she was willing to accede to Mac’s request. He stepped aside, a living curtain, revealing the synthetic body with the gaping head wound. She looked down at it. I’d expected her to quickly avert her eyes, but she didn’t; she just kept staring.

Finally, Mac said, very gently, “Is that your husband, Mrs. Wilkins?”

She nodded slowly. Her voice was soft. “Yes. Oh, my poor, poor Joshua . . .”

Mac stepped over to talk to the two uniforms, and I joined them. “What do you do with a dead transfer?” I asked. “Seems pointless to call in the medical examiner.”

By way of answer, Mac motioned to the burly man. The man touched his own chest and raised his eyebrows in the classic “Who, me?” expression. Mac nodded again. The man looked left and right, like he was crossing some imaginary road, and then came over. “Yeah?”

“You seem to be the senior employee here,” said Mac. “Am I right?”

The man had a Hispanic accent. “Horatio Fernandez. Joshua was the boss, but I’m senior technician.” Or maybe he said, “I’m Señor Technician.”

“Good,” said Mac. “You’re probably better equipped than we are to figure out the exact cause of death.”

Fernandez gestured theatrically at the synthetic corpse, as if it were—well, not bleedingly obvious but certainly apparent.

Mac shook his head. “It’s just a bit too pat,” he said, his voice lowered conspiratorially. “Implement at hand, suicide note.” He lifted his shaggy orange eyebrows. “I just want to be sure.”

Cassandra had drifted over without Mac noticing, although of course I had. She was listening in.

“Yeah,” said Fernandez. “Sure. We can disassemble him, check for anything else that might be amiss.”

“No,” said Cassandra. “You can’t.”

“I’m afraid it’s necessary,” said Mac, looking at her. His Scottish brogue always put an edge on his words, but I knew he was trying to sound gentle.

“No,” said Cassandra, her voice quavering. “I forbid it.”

Mac’s tone got a little firmer. “You can’t. I’m required to order an autopsy in every suspicious case.”

Cassandra opened her mouth to say something more, then apparently thought better of it. Horatio moved closer to her and put a hulking arm around her small shoulders. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll be gentle.” And then his face brightened a bit. “In fact, we’ll see what parts we can salvage—give them to somebody else; somebody who couldn’t afford such good stuff if it were new.” He smiled beatifically. “It’s what Joshua would have wanted.”



* * *



The next day, I was sitting in my office, looking out the small window with its cracked pane. The dust storm had ended. Out on the surface, rocks were strewn everywhere, like toys on a kid’s bedroom floor. My phone played “Luck Be a Lady,” and I looked at it in anticipation, hoping for a new case; I could use the solars. But the ID said NKPD. I told the device to accept the call, and a little picture of Mac’s face appeared on my wrist. “Hey, Alex,” he said. “Come by the station, would you?”

“What’s up?”

The micro-Mac frowned. “Nothing I want to say over open airwaves.”

I nodded. Now that the Wilkins case was over, I didn’t have anything better to do anyway. I’d only managed about seven billable hours, damn it all, and even that had taken some padding.

I walked into the center along Ninth Avenue, passing filthy prospectors, the aftermath of a fight in which some schmuck in a pool of blood was being tended to by your proverbial hooker-with-the-heart-of-gold, and a broken-down robot trying to make its way along with only three of its four legs working properly.

I entered the lobby of the police station, traded quips with the ineluctable Huxley, and was admitted to the back.

“Hey, Mac,” I said. “What’s up?”

“Morning, Alex,” Mac said, rolling the R in “Morning.” “Come in; sit down.” He spoke to his desk terminal and turned its monitor around so I could see it. “Have a look at this.”

I glanced at the screen. “The report on Joshua Wilkins?”

Mac nodded. “Look at the section on the artificial brain.”

I skimmed the text until I found that part. “Yeah?” I said, still not getting it.

“Do you know what ‘baseline synaptic web’ means?”

“No, I don’t. And you didn’t either, smart-ass, until someone told you.”

Mac smiled a little, conceding that. “Well, there were lots of bits of the artificial brain left behind. And that big guy at NewYou—Fernandez, remember?—he really got into this forensic stuff and decided to run it through some kind of instrument they’ve got there. And you know what he found?”

“What?”

“The brain stuff—the raw material inside the artificial skull—was pristine. It had never been imprinted.”

“You mean no scanned mind had ever been transferred into that brain?”

Mac folded his arms across his chest and leaned back in his chair. “Bingo.”

I frowned. “But that’s not possible. I mean, if there was no mind in that head, who wrote the suicide note?”

Mac lifted those shaggy eyebrows of his. “Who indeed?” he said. “And what happened to Joshua Wilkins’s scanned consciousness?”

“Does anyone at NewYou but Fernandez know about this?”

Mac shook his head. “No, and he’s agreed to keep his mouth shut while we continue to investigate. But I thought I’d clue you in, since apparently the case you were on isn’t really closed—and, after all, if you don’t make money now and again, you can’t afford to bribe me for favors.”

I nodded. “That’s what I like about you, Mac. Always looking out for my best interests.”



* * *



Perhaps I should have gone straight to see Cassandra Wilkins and made sure we both agreed that I was back on the clock, but I had some questions I wanted answered first. And I knew just who to turn to. Juan Santos was the city’s top computer expert. I’d met him during a previous case, and we’d recently struck up a small-f friendship—we both shared the same taste in Earth booze, and he wasn’t above joining me at some of New Klondike’s sleazier saloons to get it. I called him and we arranged to meet at The Bent Chisel, a wretched little bar off Fourth Avenue, in the sixth concentric ring of buildings. The bartender was a surly man named Buttrick, a biological who had more than his fair share of flesh, and blood as cold as ice. He wore a sleeveless gray shirt and had a three-day growth of salt-and-pepper beard. “Lomax,” he said, acknowledging my entrance. “No broken furniture this time, right?”

I held up three fingers. “Scout’s honor.”

Buttrick held up one finger.

“Hey,” I said. “Is that any way to treat one of your best customers?”

“My best customers,” said Buttrick, polishing a glass with a ratty towel, “pay their tabs.”

“Yeah,” I said, stealing a page from Sergeant Huxley’s Guide to Witty Repartee. “Well.” I made my way to a booth at the back. Both waitresses here were topless. My favorite, a cute brunette named Diana, soon came over. “Hey, babe,” I said.

She leaned in and gave me a peck on the cheek. “Hi, honey.”

The low gravity on Mars was kind to figures and faces, but Diana was still starting to show her forty years. She had shoulder-length brown hair and brown eyes, and was quite pleasantly stacked, although like most long-term Mars residents, she’d lost a lot of the muscle mass she’d come here with. We slept together pretty often but were hardly exclusive.

Juan Santos came in, wearing a black T-shirt and black jeans. He was almost as tall as me, but nowhere near as broad-shouldered; in fact, he was pretty much your typical pencil-necked geek. And like many a pencil-necked geek, he kept setting his sights higher than he should. “Hi, Diana!” he said. “I, um, I brought you something.”

Juan was carrying a package wrapped in loose plastic sheeting, which he handed to her.

“Thank you!” she said with enthusiasm before she’d even opened it; I didn’t know a lot about Diana’s past, but somewhere along the line, someone had taught her good manners. She removed the plastic sheeting, revealing a single, long-stemmed white rose.

Diana actually squealed. Flowers are rare on Mars; those few fields we had were mostly given over to growing either edible plants or genetically modified things that helped scrub the atmosphere. She rewarded Juan with a kiss right on the lips, and that seemed to please him greatly.

I ordered a Scotch on the rocks; they normally did that with carbon dioxide ice here. Juan asked for whiskey. I watched him watching Diana’s swinging hips as she headed off to get our drinks. “Well, well, well,” I said, as he finally slid into the booth opposite me. “I didn’t know you had a thing for her.”

He smiled sheepishly. “Who wouldn’t?” I said nothing, which Juan took as an invitation to go on. “She hasn’t said yes to a date yet, but she promised to let me read some of her poetry.”

I kept my tone even. “Lucky you.” It seemed kind not to mention that Diana and I were going out this weekend, so I didn’t. But I did say, “So, how does a poet sneeze?”

“I don’t know, how does a poet sneeze?”

“Haiku!”

“Don’t quit your day job, Alex.”

“Hey,” I said, placing a hand over my heart, “you wound me. Down deep, I’m a stand-up comic.”

“Well,” said Juan, “I always say people should be true to their innermost selves, but . . .”

“Yeah? What’s your innermost self?”

“Me?” Juan’s eyebrows moved up. “I’m pure genius, right to the very core.”

I snorted and Diana reappeared to give us our drinks. We thanked her, and she departed, Juan again watching her longingly as she did so.

When she’d disappeared, he turned back to look at me, and said, “What’s up?” His face consisted of a wide forehead, long nose, and receding chin; it made him look like he was leaning forward even when he wasn’t.

I took a swig of my drink. “What do you know about transferring?”

“Fascinating stuff,” said Juan. “Thinking of doing it?”

“Maybe someday.”

“You know, it’s supposed to pay for itself now within three mears, because you no longer have to pay life-support tax after you’ve transferred.”

I was in arrears on that, and didn’t like to think about what would happen if I fell much further behind. “That’d be a plus,” I said. “What about you? You going to do it?”

“Sure, someday—and I’ll go the whole nine yards: enhanced senses, super strength, the works. Plus I want to live forever; who doesn’t? ’Course, my dad won’t like it.”

“Your dad? What’s he got against it?”

Juan snorted. “He’s a minister.”

“In whose government?”

“No, no. A minister. Clergy.”

“I didn’t know there were any of those left, even on Earth,” I said.

“He is on Earth; back in Santiago. But, yeah, you’re right. Poor old guy still believes in souls.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Really?”

“Yup. And because he believes in souls, he has a hard time with this idea of transferring consciousness. He would say the new version isn’t the same person.”

I thought about what the supposed suicide note said. “Well, is it?”

Juan rolled his eyes. “You, too? Of course it is! Look, sure, people used to get all worked up about this when the process first appeared, decades ago, but now just about everyone is blasé about it. NewYou should take a lot of credit for that; they’ve done a great job of keeping the issue uncluttered—I’m sure they knew if they’d done otherwise, there’d have been all sorts of ethical debates, red tape, and laws constraining their business. But they’ve avoided most of that by providing one, and only one, service: moving—not copying, not duplicating, but simply moving—a person’s mind to a more durable container. Makes the legal transfer of personhood and property a simple matter, ensures that no one gets more than one vote, and so on.”

“And is that what they really do?” I asked. “Move your mind?”

“Well, that’s what they say they do. ‘Move’ is a nice, safe, comforting word. But the mind is just software, and since the dawn of computing, software has been moved from one computing platform to another by copying it over, then immediately erasing the original.”

“But the new brain is artificial, right? How come we can make super-smart transfers, but not super-smart robots or computers?”

Juan took a sip of his drink. “It’s not a contradiction at all. No one ever figured out how to program anything equivalent to a human mind—they used to talk about the coming ‘singularity,’ when artificial intelligence would exceed human abilities, but that never happened. But when you’re scanning and digitizing the entire structure of a brain in minute detail, you obviously get the intelligence as part of that scan, even if no one can point to where that intelligence is in the scan.”

“Huh,” I said, and took a sip of my own. “So, if you were to transfer, what would you have fixed in your new body?”

Juan spread his praying-mantis arms. “Hey, man, you don’t tamper with perfection.”

“Hah,” I said. “Still, how much could you change things? I mean, say you’re only 150 centimeters, and you want to play basketball. Could you opt to be two meters tall?”

“Sure, of course.”

I frowned. “But wouldn’t the copied mind have trouble with your new size?”

“Nah,” said Juan. “See, when Howard Slapcoff first started copying consciousness, he let the old software from the old mind actually try to directly control the new body. It took months to learn how to walk again, and so on.”

“Yeah, I read something about that, years ago.”

Juan nodded. “Right. But now they don’t let the copied mind do anything but give orders. The thoughts are intercepted by the new body’s main computer. That unit runs the body. All the transferred mind has to do is think that it wants to pick up this glass, say.” He acted out his example, and took a sip, then winced in response to the booze’s kick. “The computer takes care of working out which pulleys to contract, how far to reach, and so on.”

“So you could order up a body radically different from your original?”

“Absolutely.” He looked at me through hooded eyes. “Which, in your case, is probably the route to go.”

“Damn.”

“Hey, don’t take it seriously,” he said, taking another sip and allowing himself another pleased wince.

“It’s just that I was hoping it wasn’t that way. See, this case I’m on: the guy I’m supposed to find owns the NewYou franchise here.”

“Yeah?” said Juan.

“Yeah, and I think he deliberately transferred his scanned mind into some body other than the one that he’d ordered up for himself.”

“Why would he do that?”

“He faked the death of the body that looked like him—and I think he’d planned to do that all along, because he never bothered to order up any improvements to his face. I think he wanted to get away, but make it look like he was dead, so no one would be looking for him anymore.”

“And why would he do that?”

I frowned then drank some more. “I’m not sure.”

“Maybe he wanted to escape his spouse.”

“Maybe—but she’s a hot little number.”

“Hmm,” said Juan. “Whose body do you think he took?”

“I don’t know that, either. I was hoping the new body would have to be roughly similar to his old one; that would cut down on the possible suspects. But I guess that’s not the case.”

“It isn’t, no.”

I looked down at my drink. The dry-ice cubes were sublimating into white vapor that filled the top part of the glass.

“Something else is bothering you,” said Juan. I lifted my head and saw him taking a swig of his drink. A little amber liquid spilled out of his mouth and formed a shiny bead on his recessed chin. “What is it?”

I shifted a bit. “I visited NewYou yesterday. You know what happens to your original body after they move your mind?”

“Sure,” said Juan. “Like I said, there’s no such thing as moving software. You copy it then delete the original. They euthanize the biological version once the transfer is completed.”

I nodded. “And if the guy I’m looking for put his mind into the body intended for somebody else’s mind, and that person’s mind wasn’t copied anywhere, then . . .” I took another swig of my drink. “Then it’s murder, isn’t it? Souls or no souls—it doesn’t matter. If you wipe the one and only copy of someone’s mind, you’ve murdered that person, right?”

“Oh, yes,” said Juan. “Deader than Mars itself.”

I glanced down at the swirling fog in my glass. “So I’m not just looking for a husband who’s skipped out on his wife. I’m looking for a cold-blooded killer.”