“Meanwhile,” she continued, “I have the strength of ten men; I could literally pull your limbs from their sockets, or crush your head between my hands, squeezing it until it pops like a melon and your brains, such as they are, squirt out. So, what’s it going to be, Mr. Lomax? Are you going to let me walk out that door and be about my business? Or are you going to pull that trigger, and start something that’s going to end with you dead?”
I was used to a gun in my hand giving me a sense of power, of security. But just then, the Smith & Wesson felt like a lead weight. She was right: shooting her with it was likely to be no more useful than just throwing it at her. Of course, there were crucial components in an artificial body’s makeup; I just didn’t happen to know what they were, and, anyway, they probably varied from model to model. If I could be sure to drop her with one shot, I’d do it. I’d killed before in self-defense, but…
But this wasn’t self-defense. Not really. If I didn’t start something, she was just going to walk out. Could I kill in cold…well, not cold blood. But she was right: she was a person, even if Pickover wasn’t. She was the one and only legal instantiation of Cassandra Wilkins. The cops might be corrupt here, and they might be lazy. But even they wouldn’t turn a blind eye on attempted murder. If I shot her, and somehow got away, they’d hunt me down. And if I didn’t get away, she would be attacking me in self-defense.
“So,” she said, at last. “What’s it going to be?”
“You make a persuasive argument, Mrs. Wilkins,” I said in the most reasonable tone I could muster under the circumstances.
And then, without changing my facial expression in the slightest, I pulled the trigger.
I wondered if a transfer’s time sense ever slows down, or if it is always perfectly quartz-crystal timed. Certainly, time seemed to attenuate for me then. I swear I could actually see the bullet as it followed its trajectory from my gun, covering the three meters between the barrel and—
And not, of course, Cassandra’s torso.
Nor her head.
She was right; I probably couldn’t harm her that way.
No, instead, I’d aimed past her, at the table on which the faux Pickover was lying on his back. Specifically, I’d aimed at the place where the thick nylon band that crossed over his torso, pinning his arms, was anchored on the right-hand side—the point where it made a taut diagonal line between where it was attached to the side of the table and the top of Pickover’s arm.
The bullet sliced through the band, cutting it in two. The long portion, freed of tension, flew up and over his torso like a snake that had just had forty thousand volts pumped through it.
Cassandra’s eyes went wide in astonishment that I’d missed her, and her head swung around. The report of the bullet was still ringing in my ears, of course, but I swear I could also hear the zzzzinnnng! of the restraining band snapping free. To be hypersensitive to pain, I figured you’d have to have decent reaction times, and I hoped that Pickover had been smart enough to note in advance my slight deviation of aim before I fired it.
And, indeed, no sooner were his arms free than he sat bolt upright—his legs were still restrained—and grabbed one of Cassandra’s arms, pulling her toward him. I leapt in the meager Martian gravity. Most of Cassandra’s body was made of lightweight composites and synthetic materials, but I was still good old flesh and blood: I outmassed her by at least thirty kilos. My impact propelled her backwards, and she slammed against the table’s side. Pickover shot out his other arm, grabbing Cassandra’s second arm, pinning her backside against the edge of the table. I struggled to regain a sure footing, then brought my gun up to her right temple.
“All right, sweetheart,” I said. “Do you really want to test how strong your artificial skull is?”
Cassandra’s mouth was open; had she still been biological, she’d probably have been gasping for breath. But her heartless chest was perfectly still. “You can’t just shoot me,” she said.
“Why not? Pickover here will doubtless back me up when I say it was self-defense, won’t you, Pickover?”
He nodded. “Absolutely.”
“In fact,” I said, “you, me, this Pickover, and the other Pickover are the only ones who know where the alpha deposit is. I think the three of us would be better off without you on the scene anymore.”
“You won’t get away with it,” said Cassandra. “You can’t.”
“I’ve gotten away with plenty over the years,” I said. “I don’t see an end to that in sight.” I cocked the hammer, just for fun.
“Look,” she said, “there’s no need for this. We can all share in the wealth. There’s plenty to go around.”
“Except you don’t have any rightful claim to it,” said Pickover. “You stole a copy of my mind, and tortured me. And you want to be rewarded for that?”
“Pickover’s right,” I said. “It’s his treasure, not yours.”
“It’s humanity’s treasure,” corrected Pickover. “It belongs to all mankind.”
“But I’m your client,” Cassandra said to me.
“So’s he. At least, the legal version of him is.”
Cassandra sounded desperate. “But—but that’s a conflict of interest!”
“So sue me,” I said.
She shook her head in disgust. “You’re just in this for yourself!”
I shrugged amiably, and then pressed the barrel even tighter against her artificial head. “Aren’t we all?”
“Shoot her,” said Pickover. I looked at him. He was still holding her upper arms, pressing them in close to her torso. If he’d been biological, the twisting of his torso to accommodate doing that probably would have been quite uncomfortable. Actually, now that I thought of it, given his heightened sensitivity to pain, even this artificial version was probably hurting from twisting that way. But apparently this was a pain he was happy to endure.
“Do you really want me to do that?” I said. “I mean, I can understand, after what she did to you, but…” I didn’t finish the thought; I just left it in the air for him to take or leave.
“She tortured me,” he said. “She deserves to die.”
I frowned, unable to dispute his logic—but, at the same time, wondering if Pickover knew that he was as much on trial here as she was.
“Can’t say I blame you,” I said again, and then added another “but,” and once more left the thought incomplete.
At last, Pickover nodded. “But maybe you’re right. I can’t offer her any compassion, but I don’t need to see her dead.”
A look of plastic relief rippled over Cassandra’s face. I nodded. “Good man,” I said. I’d killed before, but I never enjoyed it.
“But, still,” said Pickover, “I would like some revenge.”
Cassandra’s upper arms were still pinned by Pickover, but her lower arms were free. To my astonishment, they both moved. The movement startled me, and I looked down, just in time to see them jerking toward her groin, almost as if to protect…
I found myself staggering backward; it took a second for me to regain my balance. “Oh, my God…”
Cassandra had quickly moved her arms back to a neutral, hanging-down position—but it was too late. The damage had been done.
“You…” I said. I normally was never at a loss for words, but I was just then. “You’re…”
Pickover had seen it, too; his torso had been twisted just enough to allow him to do so.
“No woman…” he began slowly.
Cassandra hadn’t wanted to touch Pickover’s groin—even though it was artificial—with her bare hands. And when Pickover had suggested exacting revenge for what had been done to him, Cassandra’s hands had moved instinctively to protect—
Jesus, why hadn’t I see it before? The way she plunked herself down in a chair, the fact that she couldn’t bring herself to wear makeup or jewelry in her new body; her discomfort at intimately touching or being intimately touched by men: it was obvious in retrospect.
Cassandra’s hands h
ad moved instinctively to protect her own testicles.
“You’re not Cassandra Wilkins,” I said.
“Of course I am,” said the female voice.
“Not on the inside, you’re not,” I said. “You’re a man. Whatever mind has been transferred into that body is male.”
Cassandra twisted violently. Goddamned Pickover, perhaps stunned by the revelation, had obviously loosened his grip, because she got free. I fired my gun again and the bullet went straight into her chest; a streamer of machine oil, like from a punctured can, shot out, but there was no sign that the bullet had slowed her down.
“Don’t let her get away!” shouted Pickover, in his rough mechanical voice. I swung my gun on him, and for a second I could see terror in his eyes, as if he thought I meant to off him for letting her twist away. But I aimed at the nylon strap restraining his legs and fired. This time, the bullet only partially severed the strap. I reach down and yanked at the remaining filaments, and so did Pickover. They finally broke and this strap, like the first, snapped free. Pickover swung his legs off the table, and immediately stood up. An artificial body had many advantages, among them not being woozy or dizzy after lying down for God-only-knew how many days.
In the handful of seconds it had taken to free Pickover, Cassandra had made it out the door that I’d pried partway open, and was now running down the corridor in the darkness. I could hear splashing sounds, meaning she’d veered far enough off the corridor’s centerline to end up in the water pooling along the starboard side, and I heard her actually bump into the wall at one point, although she immediately continued on. She didn’t have her flashlight, and the only illumination in the corridor would have been what was spilling out of the room I was now in—a fading glow to her rear as she ran along, whatever shadow she herself was casting adding to the difficulty of seeing ahead.
I squeezed out into the corridor. I still had my flashlight in my pocket; I fished it out and aimed it just in front of me; Cassandra wouldn’t benefit much from the light it was giving off. Pickover, who, I noted, had now done his pants back up, had made his way through the half-open door and was now standing beside me. I started running, and he fell in next to me.
Our footfalls now drowned out the sound of Cassandra’s; I guessed she must be some thirty or forty meters ahead. Although it was almost pitch black, she presumably had the advantage of having come down this corridor several times before; neither Pickover nor I had ever gone in this direction.
A rat scampered out of our way, squealing as it did so. My breathing was already ragged, but I managed to say, “How well can you guys see in the dark?”
Pickover’s voice, of course, showed no signs of exertion. “Only slightly better than biologicals can.”
I nodded, although he’d have to have had better vision than he’d just laid claim to in order to see it. My legs were a lot longer than Cassandra’s, but I suspected she could pump them more rapidly. I swung the flashlight beam up, letting it lance out ahead of us for a moment. There she was, off in the distance. I dropped the beam back to the floor in front of me.
More splashing from up ahead; she’d veered off once more. I thought about firing a shot—more for the drama of it, than any serious hope of bringing her down—when I suddenly became aware that Pickover was passing me. His robotic legs were as long as my natural ones, and he could piston them up and down at least as quickly as Cassandra could.
I tried to match his speed, but wasn’t able to. Even in Martian gravity, running fast is hard work. I swung my flashlight up again, but Pickover’s body, now in front of me, was obscuring everything further down the corridor; I had no idea how far ahead Cassandra was now—and the intervening form of Pickover prevented me from acting out my idle fantasy of squeezing off a shot.
Pickover continued to pull ahead. I was passing open door after open door, black mouths gaping at me in the darkness. I heard more rats, and Pickover’s footfalls, and—
Suddenly, something jumped on my back from behind me. A hard arm was around my neck, pressing sharply down on my Adam’s apple. I tried to call out to Pickover, but couldn’t get enough breath out…or in. I craned my neck as much as I could, and shone the flashlight beam up on the ceiling, so that some light reflected down onto my back from above.
It was Cassandra! She’d ducked into one of the other rooms, and lain in wait for me. Pickover was no detective; he had completely missed the signs of his quarry no longer being in front of him—and I’d had Pickover’s body blocking my vision, plus the echoing bangs of his footfalls to obscure my hearing. I could see my own chilled breath, but, of course, not hers.
I tried again to call out to Pickover, but all I managed was a hoarse croak, doubtless lost on him amongst the noise of his own running. I was already oxygen-deprived from exertion, and the constricting of my throat was making things worse; despite the darkness I was now seeing white flashes in front of my eyes, a sure sign of asphyxiation. I only had a few seconds to act—
And act I did. I crouched down as low as I could, Cassandra still on my back, her head sticking up above mine, and I leapt with all the strength I could muster. Even weakened, I managed a powerful kick, and in this low Martian gravity, I shot up like a bullet. Cassandra’s metal skull smashed into the roof of the corridor. There happened to be a lighting fixture directly above me, and I heard the sounds of shattering glass and plastic.
I was descending now in maddeningly slow motion, but as soon as I was down, Cassandra still clinging hard to me, I surged forward a couple of paces then leapt up again. This time, there was nothing but unrelenting bulkhead overhead, and Cassandra’s metal skull slammed hard into it.
Again the slow-motion fall. I felt something thick and wet oozing through my shirt. For a second, I’d thought Cassandra had stabbed me—but no, it was probably the machine oil leaking from the bullet hole I’d put in her earlier. By the time we had touched down again, Cassandra had loosened her grip on my neck as she tried to scramble off me. I spun around and fell forward, pushing her backward onto the corridor floor, me tumbling on top of her. Despite my best efforts, the flashlight was knocked from my grip by the impact, and it spun around, doing a few complete circles before it ended up with its beam facing away from us.
I still had my revolver in my other hand, though. I brought it up, and, by touch, found Cassandra’s face, probing the barrel roughly over it. Once, in my early days, I’d rammed a gun barrel into a thug’s mouth; this time, I had other ideas. I got the barrel positioned directly over her left eye, and pressed down hard with it—a little poetic justice.
I said, “I bet if I shoot through your glass eye, aiming up a bit, I’ll tear your artificial brain apart. You want to find out?”
She said nothing. I called back over my shoulder, “Pickover!” The name echoed down the corridor, but I had no idea whether he heard me. I turned my attention back to Cassandra—or whoever the hell this really was. I cocked the trigger. “As far as I’m concerned, Cassandra Wilkins is my client—but you’re not her. Who are you?”
“I am Cassandra Wilkins,” said the voice.
“No, you’re not,” I said. “You’re a man—or, at least, you’ve got a man’s mind.”
“I can prove I’m Cassandra Wilkins,” said the supine form. “My name is Cassandra Pauline Wilkins; my birth name is Collier. I was born in Sioux City, Iowa, on 30 October 2079. I immigrated to New Klondike in July 2102. My citizenship number is—”
“Facts. Figures.” I shook my head. “Anyone could find those things out.”
“But I know stuff no one else could possibly know. I know the name of my childhood pets; I know what I did to get thrown out of school when I was fifteen; I know precisely where the original me had a tattoo; I…”
She went on, but I stopped listening.
Jesus Christ, it was almost the perfect crime. No one could really get away with stealing somebody else’s identity—not for long. The lack of intimate knowledge of how the original spoke, of private things the origi
nal knew, would soon enough give you away, unless—
Unless you were the spouse of the person whose identity you’d appropriated.
“You’re not Cassandra Wilkins,” I said. “You’re Joshua Wilkins. You took her body; you transferred into it, and she transferred—” I felt my stomach tighten; it really was a nearly perfect crime. “And she transferred nowhere; when the original was euthanized, she died. And that makes you guilty of murder.”
“You can’t prove that,” said the female voice. “No biometrics, no DNA, no fingerprints. I’m whoever I say I am.”
“You and Cassandra hatched this scheme together,” I said. “You both figured Pickover had to know where the alpha deposit was. But then you decided that you didn’t want to share the wealth with anyone—not even your wife. And so you got rid of her, and made good your escape at the same time.”
“That’s crazy,” the female voice said. “I hired you. Why on—on Mars—would I do that, then?”
“You expected to the police to come out to investigate your missing-person report; they were supposed to find the body in the basement of NewYou. But they didn’t, and you knew suspicion would fall on you—the supposed spouse!—if you were the one who found it. So you hired me—the dutiful wife, worried about her poor, missing hubby! All you wanted was for me to find the body.”
“Words,” said Joshua. “Just words.”
“Maybe so,” I said. “I don’t have to satisfy anyone else. Just me. I will give you one chance, though. See, I want to get out of here alive—and I don’t see any way to do that if I leave you alive, too. Do you? If you’ve got an answer, tell me—otherwise, I’ve got no choice but to pull this trigger.”
“I promise I’ll let you go,” said Joshua.