Red Planet Blues

SIX





Ispent the next several hours tracking down and interviewing three other recent transfers; none of them seemed to be anyone other than who they claimed to be.

After that, the next name on my list was one Dr. Rory Pickover. His home was in a cubic apartment building located on the outer side of the First Circle, beneath the highest point of the dome; several windows were boarded up on its first and second floors, but he lived on the fourth, where all but one of the panes seemed to be intact. Someone was storing a broken set of springy Mars buggy wheels on one of the balconies. From another balcony, a crazy old coot was shouting obscenities at those making their way along the curving sidewalk. Most of the people were ignoring him, but two kids—a grimy boy and an even grimier girl, each about twelve but tall and spindly in the way kids born here tend to be—decided to start shouting back.

Pickover lived alone, so there was no spouse or child to question about any changes in him. That made me suspicious right off the bat: if one were going to choose an identity to appropriate, it ideally would be someone without close companions.

I buzzed him from the lobby. A drunk sleeping by the buzzboard was disturbed enough by the sound to roll onto his side but otherwise didn’t interfere with me.

“Hello?” said a male voice higher pitched than my own.

“Mr. Pickover, my name is Alex Lomax. I’m from the NewYou head office on Earth. I’m wondering if I might ask you a few questions?”

He had a British accent. “Lomax, did you say? You’re Alexander Lomax?”

“I am, yes. I’m wondering if we might speak for a few minutes?”

“Well, yes, but . . .”

“But what?”

“Not here,” he said. “Let’s go outside.”

I was pissed, because that meant I couldn’t try the screwdriver trick on him. But I said, “Fine. There’s a café on the other side of the circle.”

“No, no. Outside. Outside the dome.”

That was easy for him; he was a transfer now. But it was a pain in the ass for me; I’d have to rent a surface suit.

“Seriously? I only want to ask to ask you a couple of questions.”

“Yes, yes, but I want to talk to you and . . .” The voice grew soft. “. . . and it’s a delicate matter, deserving of privacy.”

The drunk near me rolled onto his other side and let out a wheezy snore.

“Oh, all right,” I said.

“Good chap,” replied Pickover. “I’m just in the middle of something up here. About an hour from now, say? Just outside the east airlock?”

“Can we make it the west one? I can swing by my office on the way, then.” I didn’t need anything from there—I was already packing heat—but if he had some sort of ambush planned, I figured he’d object to the change.

“That’s fine, that’s fine—all four airlocks are the same distance from here, after all! But now, I really must finish what I’m doing . . .”



* * *



Of course I was suspicious about what Rory Pickover was up to and so I tipped Mac off before making my way to the western airlock. The sun was setting outside the dome by the time I got there to suit up. Surface suits came in three stretchy sizes; I put on one of largest, then slung the air tanks onto my back. I felt heavy in the suit, even though in it I still weighed only about half of what I had back on Earth.

Rory Pickover was a paleontologist—an actual scientist, not a treasure-seeking fossil hunter. His pre-transfer appearance had been almost stereotypically academic: a round, soft face, with a fringe of graying hair. His new body was lean and muscular, and he had a full head of dark brown hair, but the face was still recognizably his own. His suit had a loop on its waist holding a geologist’s hammer with a wide, flat blade; I rather suspected it would nicely smash my fishbowl helmet. I surreptitiously transferred the Smith & Wesson from the holster I wore under my jacket to an exterior pocket on the rented surface suit, just in case I needed it while we were outside.

We signed the security logs and then let the technician cycle us through the airlock.

Overhead, the sky was growing dark. Nearby, there were two large craters and a cluster of smaller ones. There were few footprints in the rusty sand; the recent storm had obliterated the thousands that had doubtless been there earlier. We walked out about five hundred meters. I turned around briefly to look back at the transparent dome and the ramshackle buildings within.

“Sorry for dragging you out here, old boy,” said Pickover. “I don’t want any witnesses.” There was a short-distance radio microphone inside that mechanical throat for speaking outside the dome, and I had a transceiver inside my fishbowl.

“Ah,” I said, by way of reply.

“I know you aren’t just in from Earth,” said Pickover, continuing to walk. “And I know you don’t work for NewYou.”

We were casting long shadows. The sun, so much tinier than it appeared from Earth, was sitting on the horizon now. The sky was already purpling, and Earth itself was visible, a bright blue-white evening star. It was much easier to see it out here than through the dome, and, as always, I thought for a moment of Wanda as I looked up at it. But then I lowered my gaze to Pickover. “Who do you think I am?”

His answer surprised me, although I didn’t let it show. “You’re the private-detective chap.”

It didn’t seem to make any sense to deny it. “Yeah. How’d you know?”

“I’ve been checking you out over the last few days,” said Pickover. “I’d been thinking of, ah, engaging your services.”

We continued to walk along, little clouds of dust rising each time our feet touched the ground. “What for?”

“You first, if you don’t mind,” Pickover replied. “Why did you really come to see me?”

He already knew who I was, and I had a very good idea who he was. I had my phone on the outside of my suit’s left wrist, and it was connected to the headset in my helmet. “Call Dougal McCrae.”

“What are you doing?” Pickover asked.

“Hey, Alex,” said Mac from the little screen on my wrist; I heard his voice over the fishbowl’s headset.

“Mac, listen, I’m about half a klick straight out from the west airlock. I’m going to need backup.

“Lomax, what are you doing?” asked Pickover.

“Kaur is already outside the dome,” said Mac, looking offscreen. “She can be there in two minutes.” He switched voice channels for a moment, presumably speaking to Sergeant Kaur. Then he turned back to me. “She’s north of you; she’s got you on her infrared scanner.

Pickover looked over his shoulder, and perhaps saw the incoming cop with his own infrared vision. But then he turned back to me and spread his arms in the darkness. “Lomax, for God’s sake, what’s going on?”

I shook my phone, breaking the connection with Mac, and pulled out my revolver. It really wouldn’t be much use against an artificial body, but until quite recently Joshua Wilkins had been biological; I hoped he was still intimidated by guns. “That’s quite a lovely wife you have.”

Pickover’s artificial face looked perplexed. “Wife?”

“That’s right.”

“I don’t have a wife.”

“Sure you do. You’re Joshua Wilkins, and your wife’s name is Cassandra.”

“What? No, I’m Rory Pickover. You know that. You called me.”

“Come off it, Wilkins. The jig is up. You transferred your consciousness into the body intended for the real Rory Pickover, and then you took off.”

“I—oh. Oh, Christ.”

“So, you see, I know. And—ah, here’s Sergeant Kaur now. Too bad, Wilkins. You’ll hang—or whatever the hell they do with transfers—for murdering Pickover.”

“No.” He said it softly.

“Yes,” I replied. Kaur was a sleek form about a hundred meters behind Pickover. “Let’s go.”

“Where?”

“Back under the dome, to the police station. I’ll have Cassandra meet us there, just to confirm your identity.”

The sun had slipped below the horizon now. He spread his arms, a supplicant against the backdrop of the gathering night. “Okay, sure, if you like. Call up this Cassandra, by all means. Let her talk to me. She’ll tell you after questioning me for two seconds that I’m not her husband. But—Christ, damn, Christ.”

“What?”

“I want to find him, too.”

“Who? Joshua Wilkins?”

He nodded, then, perhaps thinking I couldn’t see his nod in the growing darkness, said, “Yes.”

“Why?”

He tipped his head up as if thinking. I followed his gaze. Phobos was visible, a dark form overhead. At last, he spoke again. “Because I’m the reason he’s disappeared.”

“What? Why?”

“That’s why I was thinking of hiring you myself. I didn’t know where else to turn.”

“Turn for what?”

Pickover looked at me. “I did go to NewYou, Mr. Lomax. I knew I was going to have an enormous amount of work to do out here on the surface now, and I wanted to be able to spend weeks—months!—in the field without worrying about running out of air or water or food.”

I frowned. “But you’ve been here on Mars for six mears; I read that in your file. What’s changed?”

“Everything, Mr. Lomax.” He looked off in the distance. “Everything!” But he didn’t elaborate on that. Instead, he said, “I certainly know this Wilkins chap you’re looking for. I went to his shop and had him transfer my consciousness from my old biological body into this one. But he also kept a copy of my mind—I’m sure of that.”

“That’s . . .” I shook my head. “I’ve never heard of that being done.”

“Nor had I,” said Pickover. “I mean, I understood from their sales materials that your consciousness sort of, um, hops into the artificial body. Because of that, I didn’t think duplicates were possible at the time I did it, or I never would have undergone the process.”

Kaur was now about thirty meters away, and she had a big rifle aimed at Pickover’s back. I held up a hand, palm out, to get the cop to stand her ground.

“Prove it to me,” I said. “Prove to me you are who you say you are. Tell me something Joshua Wilkins couldn’t know, but a paleontologist would.”

“Oh, for Pete’s—”

“Tell me!”

“Fine, fine. The most-recent fossils here on Mars date from what’s called the Noachian efflorescence, a time of morphological diversification similar to Earth’s Cambrian explosion. So far, twenty-seven distinct genera from then have been identified—well, it was originally twenty-nine but I successfully showed that both Weinbaumia and Gallunia are junior synonyms of Bradburia. Within Bradburia there are six distinct species, the most common of which is B. breviceps, known for its bifurcated pygidia and—”

“Okay!” I said. “Enough.” I held up fingers to show Kaur which radio frequency I was using and watched her tap it into her wrist keypad. “Sorry, Sergeant,” I said. “False alarm.”

The woman nodded. “You owe me one, Lomax.” She lowered her rifle and headed past us toward the airlock.

I didn’t want Kaur listening in, so I changed frequencies again and indicated with hand signs to Pickover which one I’d selected. He didn’t do anything obvious, but I soon heard his voice. “As I said, I think Wilkins made a copy of my mind.”

It was certainly illegal to do that, probably unethical, and perhaps not even technically possible; I’d have to ask Juan. “Why do you think that?”

“It’s the only explanation for how my computer accounts have become compromised. There’s no way anyone but me can get in; I’m the only one who knows the passphrase. But someone has been inside, looking around; I use quantum encryption, so you can tell whenever someone has even looked at a file.” He shook his head. “I don’t know how he did it—there must be some technique I’m unaware of—but somehow Wilkins has been extracting information from a copy of my mind. That’s the only way I can think of that anyone might have learned my passphrase.”

“You think Wilkins did all that to access your bank accounts? Is there really enough money in them to make it worthwhile? It’s gotten too dark to see your clothes but, if I recall correctly, they looked a bit . . . shabby.”

“You’re right. I’m just a poor scientist. But there’s something I know that could make the wrong people rich beyond their wildest dreams.”

“And what’s that?” I said.

He stood there, trying to decide, I suppose, whether to trust me. I let him think about that, and at last Dr. Rory Pickover, who was now just a starless silhouette against a starry sky, said, in a soft, quiet voice, “I know where it is.”

“Where what is?”

“The Alpha Deposit.”

“My God. You’ll be rolling in it.”

Perhaps he shook his head; it was now too dark to tell. “No, sir,” he replied in that cultured British voice. “No, I won’t. I don’t want to sell these fossils. I want to preserve them; I want to protect them from these plunderers, these . . . these thieves. I want to make sure they’re collected properly, scientifically. I want them to end up in the best museums, where they can be studied. There’s so much to be learned, so much to discover!”

“Does Joshua Wilkins now know where the Alpha Deposit is?”

“No—at least, not from accessing my computer files. I didn’t record the location anywhere but up here.” Presumably he was tapping the side of his head.

“But if Wilkins could extract your passphrase from a copy of your mind, why didn’t he just directly extract the location of the Alpha from it?”

“The passphrase is straightforward—just a string of words—but the Alpha’s location, well, it’s not like it has an address, and even I don’t know the longitude and latitude by heart. Rather, I know where it is by reference to certain geological features that would be meaningless to a non-expert; it would take a lot more work to extract that, I’d warrant. And so he tried the easier method of spelunking in my computer files.”

I shook my head. “This doesn’t make any sense. I mean, how would Wilkins even know that you had discovered the Alpha Deposit?”

Suddenly Pickover’s voice was very small. “I’d gone in to NewYou—you have to go there in advance of transferring, of course, so you can tell them what you want in a new body; it takes time to custom-build one to your specifications.”

“Yes. So?”

“So I wanted a body ideally suited to paleontological work on the surface of Mars; I wanted some special modifications—the kinds of the things only the most successful prospectors could afford. Reinforced knees; extra arm strength for moving rocks; extended spectral response in the eyes so that fossils will stand out better; night vision so that I could continue digging after dark. But . . .”

I nodded. “But you didn’t have enough money.”

“That’s right. I could barely afford to transfer at all, even into the cheapest off-the-shelf body, and so . . .”

He trailed off, too angry at himself, I guess, to give voice to what was in his mind. “And so you hinted that you were about to come into some wealth,” I said, “and suggested that maybe he could give you what you needed now, and you’d make it up to him later.”

Pickover sounded sad. “That’s the trouble with being a scientist; sharing information is our natural mode.”

“Did you tell him precisely what you’d found?”

“No. No, but he must have guessed. I’m a paleontologist, I’ve been studying Weingarten and O’Reilly for years—all of that is a matter of public record. He must have figured out that I knew where their prime fossil bed was. After all, where else would a bloke like me get money?” He sighed. “I’m an idiot, aren’t I?”

“Well, Mensa isn’t going to be calling you anytime soon.”

“Please don’t rub it in, Mr. Lomax. I feel bad enough as it is.”

I nodded. “But if he suspected you’d found the Alpha, maybe he just put a tracking chip in this new body of yours. Sure, that’s against the law, but that would have been the simplest way for him to get at it.”

Pickover rallied a bit, pleased, I guess, that he’d at least thought of this angle. “No, no, he didn’t. A tracking chip has to transmit a signal to do any good; they’re easy enough to locate, and I made sure he knew I knew that before I transferred. Nonetheless, I had myself checked over after the process was completed. I’m positive I’m clean.”

“And so you think he’s found another way,” I said.

“Yes! And if he succeeds in locating the Alpha, all will be lost! The specimens will be sold off into private collections—trophies for billionaires’ estates, hidden forever from science.” He looked at me with imploring acrylic eyes and his voice cracked; I’d never heard a transfer’s do that before. “All those wondrous fossils are in jeopardy! Will you help me, Mr. Lomax? Please say you’ll help me!”

Two clients were, of course, always better than one—at least as far as the bank account was concerned. “All right,” I said. “Let’s talk about my fee.”