“You don’t want this to go to court, Karen,” said Steiner. “It’s too risky.”
“So what should I do?” asked Karen.
“Buy him off. Offer him a cash payout of, say, twenty percent of the amount he’d inherit. He’ll be rich enough.”
“Settle?” said Karen. “We’ve been sued unfairly before, Austin.” She looked at me. “It happens to all successful authors. And my policy is never to settle just to make something go away.”
Steiner drew his eyebrows together. “It’s safer than taking this one to the courts. The whole legal basis of your transferred personhood is a house of cards; it’s a brand-new concept, and there’s no case law yet. If you lose …” Steiner’s eyes again fell on me “ … everyone like you loses.” He shook his head. “Take my advice, Karen: nip this in the bud. Buy Tyler off.”
I looked at Karen. She was silent for a time, but then she shook her head. “No,” she said. “I am Karen Bessarian. And if I have to prove it, I will.”
CHAPTER 20
I woke up the day after Karen’s memorial service with an excruciating headache. I say “the day after” even though we were still in the middle of one of the interminable lunar days: the sun took two weeks to crawl from horizon to horizon here. But High Eden kept a diurnal clock based on Earth’s rotation, and Immortex had arbitrarily standardized on the Eastern North American time zone; apparently, we were even going to switch from Daylight Saving Time come October.
But I wasn’t thinking about any of that just then. What I was thinking about was how much my head hurt. I’d occasionally had migraines back on Earth, but this was worse, and seemed to affect the top center of my head, not one side. I got out of bed and walked over to my en suite bathroom, where I splashed cold water on my face. It didn’t help; I still felt as though someone was pounding a chisel through my skullcap, trying to cleave the two hemispheres of my brain—I now understood where the term “splitting headache” came from.
I smoked a joint, hoping that would help—but it didn’t. And so I found a chair, and told the phone to call over to the hospital. “Good morning, Mr. Sullivan,” said the young black woman who answered.
“Hello,” I said. “Is Dr. Chandragupta around?”
“I’m sorry, sir, but he’s left High Eden. He’s on his way back to LS Island. Is there something I can help you with?”
I opened my mouth to reply, but realized that maybe I was feeling a little better; perhaps the pot had indeed helped a bit. “No,” I said. “It’s nothing. I’m sure I’ll be fine.”
Karen was down in her office, talking with her other lawyers, her investment counselor, and more—trying to get a handle on what exactly to do about her son’s attempt to probate her will.
Me, I was lying on Karen’s bed, staring up, as was my habit, at the whiteness of the bedroom ceiling. I wasn’t tired, of course—I never was anymore. But lying down like this had long been my thinking posture—it beat that sitting-on-the-toilet position Rodin had tried to pass off as cogitation.
“Hello,” I said, looking up into the blankness above. “Hello? Are you there, Jake?”
Nothing. Nothing at all.
I tried to clear my mind, pushing aside all the thoughts about Tyler and betrayal and Rebecca and betrayal and Clamhead and betrayal and …
“Hello,” I said, trying again. “Hello?”
And, at last, a faint tickling at the very edges of my perception.
What the—?
Contact! I felt relieved and elated. “Hello,” I said again, softly but clearly. “It’s me—the other instantiation of Jacob Sullivan.”
What other instantiation?
“The one on the outside. The one living Jake’s life.”
How are you communicating with me?
“Don’t you—aren’t you the same copy I connected with before? We had this conversation yesterday.”
I don’t recall …
I paused. Could it be a different instantiation? “Where are you?”
In a lab of some sort, I think. No windows.
“Are the walls blue?”
Yes. How did you—?
“And is there a diagram of a brain on one wall?”
Yes.
“Then it’s probably the same room. Or … or one just like it. Look—that diagram. What is it, a poster or something?”
Yes.
“Printed on paper?”
Yes.
“Can you mark it somehow? Do you have a pen?”
No.
“Well, put a little rip in it. Go over to it, and, um, put a little one-centimeter-long rip in it ten centimeters up from the lower-left corner.”
This is nuts. This is crazy. Voices in my head!
“I think it’s quantum entanglement.”
Quant—really? Cool.
“Go ahead, make that rip in the poster. Then I can tell next time I connect if I’m reaching the same room, or another, similar room with yet another copy of us in it.”
All right. Ten centimeters up on the left-hand side. I’ve done it.
“Good. Now here’s the tricky part. You said you are in the body you ordered, right?”
I didn’t say that. How did you know?
“You told me yesterday.”
Did I?
“Yes—or another one of us did. Now, I need you to mark your body somehow. Is there some way you can do that?”
Why?
“So I can be sure I’ve connected with the same you next time.”
All right. There’s a little screwdriver on a shelf here. I’ll scratch something into my plastiskin in an inconspicuous spot.
“Perfect.”
A long pause, then: Okay. I’ve put three small X’s on the outside of my left forearm, just below the elbow.
“Good. Good.” I paused, trying to digest it all.
Oh, wait. Someone’s coming.
“Who is it? Who is it?”
’Morning, Doctor. What can I—Lie down? Sure, I guess. Hey, what are you—are you nuts? You can’t—
“Jake!”
I—oh. Hey! Hey, what’s happ …
“Jake! Are you all right? Jake! Jake!”
Austin Steiner, as I discovered, was a very competent family lawyer, but this case was huge, and Karen needed the best. Fortunately, I knew exactly who to call.
Malcolm Draper’s face appeared on the wall screen, in all its youthful Will Smith-in-his-prime glory. “Why, it’s—it’s Jake Sullivan, isn’t it?”
“That’s right,” I said. “We met at Immortex, remember?”
“Of course. What can I do for you, Jake?”
“Are you licensed to practice in Michigan?”
“Yes. Michigan, New York, Massachusetts. And I have associates who—”
“Good. Good. I have a case.”
His eyebrows rose. “What sort of case?”
“Well, I suppose technically it’s probate, but—”
Malcolm shook his head. “I’m sorry, Jake, I thought I told you what I do. Civil liberties; civil rights. I’m sure my secretary can dig up a good probate specialist in Michigan for you, but—”
“No, no. I think you’ll be interested. See, the person whose will is being probated is Karen Bessarian.”
“The author? Still …”
He didn’t know. “You met Karen at Immortex, too. The woman with the Georgia accent.”
“That was Karen Bessarian? My God. But … oh. Oh, my. Who is trying to probate her will?”
“Her son, one Tyler Horowitz.”
“But the biological Karen isn’t dead yet. Surely the Michigan courts—”
“No, she is dead. Or at least that’s what Tyler is asserting.”
“Christ. She transferred just in time.”
“Apparently. As you can imagine, this case goes beyond the usual probate mess.”
“Absolutely,” said Draper. “This is perfect.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“This is the kind of test case the world ha
s been waiting for. We’ve only been copying consciousness for a short time now, and, so far, no one has challenged the transfer of legal personhood.”
“So you’ll take her case?”
There was a pause. “No.”
“What? Malcolm, we need you.”
“I’m precisely what you don’t need: I’m a Mindscan, too, remember. You don’t need one damned robot arguing the rights of another. You need someone who is flesh and blood.”
He had a point. “I suppose that’s true. Is there someone you’d recommend?”
He smiled. “Oh, yes. Yes, indeed.”
“Who?”
“When you called, what did the receptionist say?”
I frowned, irritated that he was playing games. “Um, ‘Draper and Draper,’ I think.”
“That’s right—and that’s who you need: the other Draper. My son Deshawn.”
“You and he are getting along—since you uploaded, I mean?”
Malcolm nodded.
I grunted. “Nice to see for a change.”
We were able to get a preliminary-motions hearing the next afternoon. Malcolm and Deshawn Draper took an 8:00 a.m. flight from Manhattan to Detroit—a short flight, less than an hour. Karen had her limo driver waiting to pick them up and brought them to her mansion, which would serve as our base camp for as long as necessary.
“Hello, Jake,” said Malcolm, as he came through the front door. “And Karen, hello! I had no idea when we met before who you were. I must say, it’s an honor. This is my son—and partner—Deshawn.”
Deshawn turned out to be in his late thirties, with his head shaved completely bald in that way that looked so good on black men and so bad on white men.
“Karen Bessarian!” Deshawn said, shaking his head in wonder. He took one of her hands in both of his. “My father is right. You have no idea what an honor it is to meet you! I can’t tell you how much I love your books.”
I put on a smile. I’m sure I’d eventually get used to being the consort of royalty.
“Thank you,” said Karen. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, too. Please, come in.”
Karen took us down a lengthy corridor. There were still rooms in the mansion I’d never been in, and this was one of them: a long boardroom-like space. Three of its walls were lined with yet more bookcases; the fourth was a wall screen. Well, Karen herself was big business; I suppose it made sense that she had a place for meetings.
Malcolm appreciated what he was seeing, even if I didn’t. “Folio Society?” he said, looking at the books, all of which were hardcovers in slipcases.
Karen nodded. “A complete set—every volume they’ve ever released.”
“Very nice,” said Malcolm. There was a long table with swivel chairs around it. Karen took the place at the head of the table, and motioned for the rest of us to sit down. Of course, none of us but Deshawn needed anything to drink, and he seemed content just to bask in Karen’s presence.
“Gentlemen,” said Karen, “thank you so much for coming.” She gestured around the room, but I think she really meant to include everything beyond it, too. “As you can imagine, I don’t want to lose all this. How are we going to prevent that?”
Malcolm had his hands clasped on the tabletop in front of him. “As I told Jake, Deshawn will be the lead attorney—we need a human face. Of course, I’ll be working behind the scenes, as will several of our associates back in New York.” He looked at his son. “Deshawn?”
Deshawn was wearing a gray suit and a green tie; I was learning to love green. “Have you informed Immortex about the suit yet?”
I looked at Karen. “No,” she said. “Why should I?”
“They’ll want to come on board, I imagine,” said Deshawn. “After all, this case goes to the heart of the dream they’re selling. If the court rules that you aren’t Karen Bessarian, that you’re somebody new and not entitled to her assets, Immortex will be in deep trouble.”
“I hadn’t thought about that,” said Karen.
Deshawn looked over at his father, then back at us. “There’s another aspect that needs to be considered. While this matter is up in the air, your son Tyler will almost certainly move to have your accounts frozen—and a judge might accept that motion. No judge is going to force you out of your living quarters yet, but you may find you don’t have access to your bank accounts.”
“I’ve got money,” I said at once. “We’ll survive this.”
“Unless somebody challenges you, too,” said Deshawn.
I frowned. He was right. Even if Canadians weren’t as litigious as Americans, my mother had made it quite clear that she didn’t think I was still me. “So, what do we do?” I asked.
“First,” said Malcolm, “please understand that this isn’t about our fees, it’s about looking after you. And please also understand that we fully expect to win—eventually.”
“Eventually?” I said. “How long will this take?”
Malcolm looked to Deshawn, but Deshawn tilted his head back in his father’s direction, yielding to him. “In a civil matter,” said Malcolm, “you can wait for an open trial slot to appear, or you can bid for one at auction; states raise a lot of money that way these days. I’ve checked the Detroit dockets. If you’re willing to go, say, half a million, you could have a full jury trial within a couple of weeks. But that will only be the beginning. Unless we get this matter quashed or settled before trial, this will ultimately go all the way to the Supreme Court, regardless of what’s decided in the probate court. One way or the other, Bessarian v. Horowitz will become a legal landmark.”
Karen was shaking her head sadly. “I’ve spent my whole professional life trying to build name recognition, but I don’t want to end up like Miranda, Roe, or D’Agostino.” She paused. “Funny: lots of writers have pseudonyms, but Bessarian is my real name; I got it from my first husband. Roe was a pseudonym, though, wasn’t it?”
“Jane Roe, yes,” said Malcolm. “Because they already had a Jane Doe before the court. Her real name was Norma McCorvey—she herself publicly revealed it years later.” He shrugged. “Ironically, in later life she became a pro-life advocate. Not many people got to attend the victory parties both when Roe v. Wade was handed down and when it was overturned.”
Karen shook her head again. “Bessarian v. Horowitz. Good Lord, what a way for a family to end up.”
Deshawn looked sympathetic. “Of course,” he said, “it may not get to trial.”
“I’m not going to settle,” Karen said flatly.
“I understand that,” said Deshawn. “But we’ll try to get the whole matter dismissed at every stage. In fact, we’re hoping to get it thrown out this afternoon, at the preliminary motions hearing.”
“How?” asked Karen. “I mean, that’s great if it’s true, but how?”
“Simple,” said Deshawn. He had his hands clasped on the table now exactly like his father’s. “There’s a reason High Eden is on the far side of the moon. I mean, sure, it’s a great place for old folks, but there’s more to it than that. Lunar Farside is nobody’s jurisdiction. When—what do they call them? Shed skins?”
Malcolm nodded.
“When shed skins die up there,” continued Deshawn, “there’s no paperwork—and no death certificate. And without a death certificate, Tyler’s action is dead in the water; you can’t probate a will in this state without one.”
The judge assigned to hear the initial motions in the case was one Sebastian Herrington, a white man who looked to be in his mid-forties, but whose bio on the Web said was actually in his late sixties. I figured that was good for us: someone who went in for rejuvenation treatments would probably be favorably disposed to Karen’s position.
“All right,” said the judge. “What have we got here?”
This was just a preliminary hearing, and the media hadn’t gotten wind of things yet; the courtroom was empty except for me and Karen, the two Drapers, and a severe-looking Hispanic woman of about thirty-five who was representing Tyler. She rose in
response to the judge’s question. “Your honor,” she said. “I am Maria Lopez, attorney for Tyler Horowitz, sole child of the novelist Karen Bessarian, who is now deceased.” Lopez had short brown hair with blonde highlights. Her face was harsh, almost aquiline, and her forehead was high and intelligent.
“Ms. Bessarian was a widow,” Lopez said. “Tyler and his minor children—Ms. Bessarian’s grandchildren—are the only heirs named in her will; they are her sole heirs at law, and the normal objects of her bounty. Further, Tyler is named as personal representative in Ms. Bessarian’s will. Tyler has filed a petition on behalf of himself and his children as sole deposees of the will. He wants to get on with the business of wrapping up her estate, and seeks the court’s approval to do so.” She sat down.
“Sounds like a very straightforward matter to me,” said Judge Herrington, who had a face even longer than mine with a chin that splayed out like a shoehorn. He turned toward us. “But I see we have an unusual group with us this morning. Which one is the attorney?”
“Your honor,” said Deshawn, standing, “I’m Deshawn Draper of Draper and Draper; we’re based in Manhattan, but licensed to practice here in Michigan.”
Herrington had a small mouth, which frowned as a perfect semicircle. He indicated the three of us, all seated at the table, with a little wave of his hand. “And these are?”
“My partner, Malcolm Draper. Karen Bessarian. And Jacob Sullivan, a friend of Ms. Bessarian.”
“I meant,” said Herrington, “what are these?”
Deshawn’s voice was totally steady, totally unfazed. “They are Mindscans, your honor—uploaded consciousnesses. The originals of these three people underwent the Mindscan process offered by Immortex Incorporated, transferred their rights of personhood to these new bodies, and have retired to the far side of the moon.”
Herrington now composed his features into a quizzical look, with brown eyes wide beneath a single face-spanning black eyebrow. “Of course, I know your firm’s reputation, Mr. Draper, but …” He frowned, and chewed his small lower lip for a few moments. “The times, they are a-changin’,” he said.