To Live Again

  Tandy, too, had had her shortcomings. Risa clearly recognized the persona’s flaws: laziness, shallowness, lack of discipline. Tandy came from a moneyed family, one of the old New England lines, but it was a family in which no one had done any work in at least five generations. To a Kaufmann such an attitude was abhorrent and almost incomprehensible. Kaufmanns worked. They might flit about the world to a dozen parties a week, they might go off to Venus for a month if the mood took them, they might spend a fortune on clothing or furnishings or illuminated portraits of Uncle Paul or additional personae. Their great wealth entitled them to any luxury they chose, save only the luxury of idleness. Risa’s father devoted many hours of his day to business activities that could just as easily be run through hired managers, or even left entirely to the computer services. Risa herself had a keen understanding of the uses of the business cycle, and had every intention of taking her place in the Kaufmann banking hierarchy. But Tandy had no training, no interest in anything but sensuality, no marketable skills. If for some reason the Cushing estate had failed, she would have had no choice but to go into prostitution.

  Risa disapproved of Tandy’s flightiness. Tandy disapproved of Risa’s aggressiveness. They had much to offer one another, by way of countervailing forces.

  During their first few days of life together they spent long hours sorting through each other’s memory files. Risa withdrew to her apartment for what would have seemed to an outsider as passive meditation, but which was in fact an exciting, vivid, and unending colloquy of the most intimate kind. All in a rush she entered Tandy’s backlog of events, the love affairs, the trips, the parties. It was like gaining eight extra years of past in a moment. Tandy, at twenty-four on the date of her final persona recording, had done everything that Risa in her first sixteen years had done, and had gone beyond those first tentative experiments to a full-blown erotic career. Risa had had a few affairs, impulsive, fragmentary, hesitant, the fleeting curiosities of a girl on the edge of womanhood. Tandy had known love, or what she regarded as love, and the record of emotional storm and fervor, of sunrise and sunset, lay accessible to Risa.

  She knew now the sensations of lying naked to couple in the Antarctic snows. She tasted strange cocktails in a hotel on the slopes of Everest. She experienced orgasm in free fall. She quarreled with lovers, raked their faces with clawed hands, kissed away the salty tricklings of blood.

  Risa sensed that it would not take her very long to exhaust Tandy’s stock of incident. Oh, there would always be interesting formative events to return to, yes, and there would always be the useful presence of a second mind within hers, but Risa knew that the present keen stimulation of having Tandy with her would wear off in a year or two, and their relationship would settle into coziness, a marriage that had consumed its passion. Tandy simply did not have the complexity of personality that would permit indefinite mining of her experiences, colorful as those experiences had been. By the time Risa reached Tandy’s final age, she would be far beyond the point Tandy had reached at her death.

  Then it would be time to add another persona. An older woman, Risa thought. From Tandy she had acquired voluptuousness, a sense of physicality that her own lean body would never provide for her. From the next persona Risa wanted an advanced course in avarice and shrewdness. It would be useful to have the benefit of age to draw upon as she entered the larger world of conflict and achievement.

  But that was for the future. For now, Risa had exactly what she wanted.

  “You’re satisfied?” her father asked her.

  Spring sunlight flooded Risa’s apartment. She wore an airy gown that might have been made of woven cobwebs. “Very satisfied. It’s all I dreamed it would be.”

  “The change in you is very pronounced.”

  “A change for the better?”

  “I think so,” Kaufmann said.

  “Then why did you fight me, Mark? Why couldn’t you have given your consent when I asked for it the first time?”

  He looked sheepish, an expression she had never seen on his face before. “Sometimes I miscalculate too, Risa. It seemed to me you weren’t ready. I was wrong. I admit it. You and Tandy are good friends, eh?”

  “Extremely.”

  “What’s she like?”

  “Very much like me, only eight years older, and much more relaxed about things. With one exception.”

  “And that is?”

  “The manner of her death. Tandy’s obsessed with that. She’s convinced she was murdered.”

  “She died in a power-ski accident last summer, didn’t she?”

  “That’s the official verdict,” Risa said. “Tandy tells me that it couldn’t have happened that way. She was an expert skier, and her equipment had safety devices anyhow.”

  “Safety devices fail. Does she have any recollection of her last moments?”

  “How could she?” Risa laughed. “She recorded her persona two months before she was killed! They don’t take recordings of dying girls at the scenes of accidents!”

  Mark looked sheepish again. “Stupid of me. But does she have any basis for thinking she was murdered, or is it simply an irrational obsession?”

  “Since she’s got no evidence, it has to be considered irrational,” Risa said. “But she’s asked me to do a little checking, and I will.”

  “Checking? What sort of checking?”

  “Detective work. Reconstructing her last day of life. Finding the man she was skiing with.”

  Frowning, Mark said, “You could get yourself into trouble doing that, Risa. If you like, I’ll have a man assigned to—”

  “No. I’ll handle it, Mark. I’m curious about it too.”

  It was time to get started on that project, Risa told herself. She had hesitated to make any outward moves, in this week of orientation; but now there was no further reason for waiting. She prodded Tandy for details of her final memories.

  “Who would you have gone to St. Moritz with?”

  —I’m not sure. Perhaps Claude. Or maybe Stig.

  “They were both power-skiers?”

  —Yes. And I was seeing both of them last spring. You know that much already.

  “Did you have any plans for power-skiing with either of them at St. Moritz?”

  —How would I know?

  Risa studied Tandy’s recollections of her two escorts. Claude Villefranche was a Monegasque, a citizen of that anomalous little Mediterranean principality that so stubbornly retained its sovereignty in a day when such notions were long obsolete. Filtered through Tandy’s eyes, he was tall, wide-shouldered, dark, moderately sinister-looking, with a tapering sharp nose and thin, easily scowling lips. He was about thirty, it seemed, athletic, wealthy, a man of strong tastes and a somber, brooding nature.

  As for Stig Hollenbeck, the Swede, he was Claude’s complement: sunny and open, a slender, lithe man in his late twenties, blond, fair, looking somewhat as Risa imagined Charles Noyes must have looked when younger, though not so tall and lanky. His family had shipbuilding money; Stig himself, like nearly everyone in the late Tandy Cushing’s orbit, was a non-worker.

  Tandy had been sexually intimate with each of them on many occasions in the last two years of her life. Each had been aware of her interest in the other; neither had shown any flicker of jealousy. There was nothing in Tandy’s view of either one that led Risa to think they were capable of murder. Yet Tandy had a powerful conviction that one or the other of them had accompanied her to St. Moritz last August and had chosen to sabotage her equipment with intent to kill.

  “I’ll look them up and find out if they can tell me anything about your final two months,” Risa said. “Which one should I begin with?”

  —Stig.

  “Why?”

  —Because Claude’s got such an ominous face. He’s the kind of man who looks like a murderer. So we ought to begin with the less obvious suspect.

  Risa was amused by that. But she humored Tandy; this entire enterprise struck Risa as frivolous, and so there was no point
in trying to impose rational judgment on any segment of it. Murder was a rarity in the world Risa knew. Since everyone had a recent persona recording on file, and thus could be said always to be in transition from one carnate existence to the next, it was pointless to risk erasure by committing that crime. If you took life intentionally, your own recordings were destroyed and you were barred forever from participation in the rebirth program. Who would risk such a dread punishment? Why jeopardize one’s own eternal life for the sake of bringing a temporary interruption to another’s span?

  Yet Tandy was convinced she had been murdered, doubtless because she could not accept the notion that some clumsiness of her own had led to her early death in the snows of St. Moritz. Risa dialed the master directory and requested information on the whereabouts of Stig Hollenbeck. To her surprise and relief, it turned out that Stig was currently living on his family estate just outside Stockholm. She placed a call to him the following morning, when it was early evening in Sweden.

  His calm, appealing face smiled out of the screen at her, the eyes friendly, a little puzzled. He looked much like Tandy’s image of him, though younger and a trifle more lean.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m Risa Kaufmann. I’d like to talk to you about Tandy Cushing, if I might.”

  He lowered his eyes. “Tandy, yes. A great tragedy. Were you a friend of hers?”

  “I’ve obtained transplant of her persona.”

  Hollenbeck’s reaction was vivid: a sudden spasm of the muscles of the throat, a lifting of the eyes, a quick and involuntary turning of the head several inches to the left. Risa, watching closely, wondered whether this was the response of a guilty man taken by surprise, or whether, perhaps, he simply was startled by the knowledge that Tandy’s persona was at large in the world again and looking at him through Risa’s eyes.

  At length he said, “I had not heard that she was back.”

  “Quite recently. Last week. She suggested I get in touch with you. There are questions I’d like to ask.”

  “Very well. If I can be of any service—”

  “Not by phone. May I visit you in Stockholm tomorrow?”

  “As you wish. It would be a great pleasure for me to meet—ah—Tandy’s new friend. Shall you be coming from America?”

  “From New York, yes.” As she spoke, Risa requested a timetable over her data line, and discovered there was space available on a flight leaving at nine the following morning. “We could have lunch together,” Risa said.

  They arranged to meet at the airport. When she stepped through the immigration scanners, he was there, looking pale and rather more fragile than she had imagined. They embraced in the courtly manner prescribed between strangers at their first meeting. As he held her, he peered into her eyes, and it seemed to her that his cold blue eyes were trying to stare through her at the Tandy lurking within. A muscle throbbed in his cheek. Risa doubted that this man had committed murder.

  —He’s changed, Tandy commented. He looks older, quieter. Almost shy.

  “I have reserved a lunch for us,” he said to Risa. “My hopter is waiting.”

  Within minutes they were in a sumptuous building many hundreds of years old that stood at the edge of a lovely park in metropolitan Stockholm. He had arranged for their meal to be served in a private chamber, upstairs, at the inn. At face value, that might seem to be an invitation to a seduction; but Risa sensed that he had no physical interest in her. She was good at detecting the radiations of desire, and there were none forthcoming from him. Evidently he preferred the more robust, fleshy physique of a Tandy. She wondered if he knew Elena Volterra.

  A robot servitor brought them cold aquavit and tapering flasks of chilled golden beer. Then a table of delicacies was wheeled into their room, and she followed him about, selecting bits of aromatic herring, snippets of smoked reindeer, lush strips of salmon. A huge window admitted a maximum of sunlight: a scarce commodity at this latitude, and so highly prized.

  Tandy fluttered and palpitated within her. It excited her terribly to be in the presence of her former lover. She seemed eager to go to bed with him once more, even vicariously. Without speaking, Risa attempted to communicate to the persona Stig’s lack of yearning for her.

  As they ate, Stig said, “You wish to ask questions about Tandy?”

  “You were very close to her, weren’t you?”

  He smiled. “Surely you must know that I was.”

  “Yes. I do. I’m sorry to have voiced the obvious. Can you tell me when you last saw her?”

  “Last summer,” he said. “Some time before her—death.”

  “How long before?”

  “Let me think. In the spring we were together at Veracruz. April and part of May. Then she returned to Europe, to Monte Carlo and Claude. You know of Claude?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, then. It must have been at the end of June that I saw her again.”

  —After I made my last recording, said Tandy.

  “Where was this?” Risa asked.

  “We met in Lisbon. We traveled together as far as Stockholm, where I had family obligations. She continued on into Suomi—into Finland. I joined her there in mid-July. We journeyed through the arctic regions together, down to Kiev again, and flew to Zurich. In Zurich I left her. Several weeks later she was dead.”

  “You didn’t see her at all after the end of last July?”

  “Unhappily, no.” He indicated Risa’s empty plate. “Shall we proceed to the warm food, or do you wish more fish?”

  “I’d like to try some of the other kinds of herring.”

  “As do I.” He grinned, the first sign of warmth she had had from him. They filled fresh plates. At a signal, the robot produced more beer. Risa resisted more aquavit.

  “About Tandy—”

  “When she left me in Zurich, I understand she met Claude again. They went to St. Moritz.” His countenance darkened. “I did not hear of her death until October. I assumed she was still traveling with him.”

  “What can you tell me about her death?”

  “This is a wintry subject for such a sunny day.”

  “Please,” Risa said. “It’s important for me to know. For—us to know. Don’t you see, Tandy has no information about it. Her last recording was made in June. She’s trying to reconstruct her final eight weeks, and particularly the events of her—of her death. Can you help?”

  “As I say, my information is secondhand. I’m told she was skiing with Claude. They were on the high slope, making a rapid descent, one of the long jumps. She was crossing a crevasse, one hundred meters in the air. Suddenly her equipment failed. The gravity repulsors failed to hold. She fell. I understand they did not recover her body until the following week.”

  Risa felt a quiver of shock. “I hope it was a swift death.”

  “One can hope so, yes.”

  They were silent. Risa saw Stig searching her face, and knew that he must still be seeking some way to speak through her, directly to Tandy. But of course it was a grievous breach of etiquette to address someone’s resident persona. One spoke only to the living, not to the merely carnate. Stig could not possibly commit a blunder so gross; yet clearly he ached to seize Risa’s arms and find himself embracing Tandy.

  “I loved her very deeply,” he said after a while. “I doubt that she realized it. We were always so elaborately casual, after the approved manner. I would have wanted to have a child by her. I would have wanted to share her life. But I never let her see any of that, and so all we shared was a bed. I regret that.”

  “Will you be offended if I tell you that Tandy was more aware of your feelings than you thought?” Risa asked.

  He smiled faintly. But he did not look convinced.

  They scarcely touched the rest of their meal. Afterward, they walked in the garden of the inn, both of them quiet. The indirect conversation between Stig and Tandy had left Risa drained and numb. She had, at least, settled one thing to the satisfaction of herself and the persona within. If Ta
ndy had indeed died through malevolence, Stig Hollenbeck had had nothing to do with it.

  At the airport, he said as she dismounted from his hopter, “I wish I could have been of more assistance to you.”

  “You were extremely helpful. We’re both grateful.”

  “Where will you go now?”

  “To see Claude,” Risa said. “We didn’t know which one of you had been with Tandy at the end, you see. Things are much more clear now. Do you happen to know where I’m likely to find him? By this time I suppose he’s over the shock, and willing to talk about the accident.”

  Stig winced, reacting almost as sharply as he had when Risa had told him she possessed Tandy’s persona.

  “You do not know?” he asked.

  “Know what?”

  “Claude is dead too. He died in December, swimming at night on the Great Barrier Reef. He can tell you nothing. Nothing. Unless you can get information from his persona, wherever it may be.”

  9

  Francesco Santoliquido said with obviously forced heartiness, “It’s good to see you again, John. I’m always delighted when you drop in.”

  Roditis took the proffered hand. It was soft, warm, not precisely a flabby hand but certainly the hand of a man who welcomed all comforts. The décor of Santoliquido’s office did not argue that he had spartan tastes.

  “Drink?”

  “Certainly, Frank.”

  They touched ultrasonic snouts to their arms. Santoliquido beamed. “You’ve kept well, John. Still a demon for exercise, are you?”

  “I get only one body to inhabit,” said Roditis. “I keep it with respect.”

  “Naturally.” A wary expression crept into Santoliquido’s eyes. Roditis suspected that the older man was afraid of him, and he liked that, for Santoliquido was very high in the system of the world, very high indeed. He wondered just what Elena had been saying to Santoliquido about him, and what the response had been.