Identity Theft

“You’re lying,” said McCrae. He handed his flashlight to Pickover, and brought the disk up in front of him, holding it vertically by its two U-shaped handles. “I’ve read the specs.”

“Are you willing to take that chance?” asked Joshua.

I could only arch my neck a bit; it was very hard for me to look up and see Mac, but he seemed to be frowning, and, after a second, he turned partially away. Pickover was standing behind him, and—

And suddenly an electric whine split the air, and Joshua was convulsing beneath me, and his hands were squeezing my throat even more tightly than before. The whine — a high keening sound — must have been coming from the disrupter. I still had my hands inside Joshua’s chest and could feel his whole interior vibrating as his body racked. I yanked my hands out and grabbed onto his arms, pulling with all my might. His hands popped free from my throat, and his whole luscious female form was shaking rapidly. I rolled off him; the artificial body kept convulsing as the keening continued. I gasped for breath and all I could think about for several moments was getting air into me.

After my head cleared a bit, I looked again at Joshua, who was still convulsing, and then I looked up at Mac, who was banging on the side of the disrupter disk. I realized that, now that he’d activated it, he had no idea how to deactivate it. As I watched, he started to turn it over, presumably hoping there was some control he’d missed on the side he couldn’t see — and I realized that if he completed his move, the disk would be aimed backward, in the direction of Pickover. Pickover clearly saw this, too: he was throwing his robot-like arms up, as if to shield his face — not that that could possibly do any good.

I tried to shout “No!,” but my voice was too raw, and all that came out was a hoarse exhalation of breath, the sound of which was lost beneath the keening. In my peripheral vision, I could see Joshua lying facedown. His vicious spasms stopped as the beam from the disrupter was no longer aimed at him.

But even though I didn’t have any voice left, Pickover did, and his shout of “Don’t!” was loud enough to be heard over the electric whine of the disrupter. Mac continued to rotate the disk a few more degrees before he realized what Pickover was referring to. He flipped the disk back around, then continued turning it until the emitter surface was facing straight down. And then he dropped it, and it fell in Martian slo-mo, at last clanking against the deck plates, a counterpoint to the now-muffled electric whine. I hauled myself to my feet and moved over to check on Joshua, while Pickover and Mac hovered over the disk, presumably looking for the off switch.

There were probably more scientific ways to see if the transferred Joshua was dead, but this one felt right just then: I balanced on one foot, hauled back the other leg, and kicked the son of a bitch in the side of that gorgeous head. The impact was strong enough to spin the whole body through a quarter-turn, but there was no reaction at all from Joshua.

Suddenly, the keening died, and I heard a self-satisfied “There!” from Mac. I looked over at him, and he looked back at me, caught in the beam from the flashlight Pickover was holding. Mac’s bushy orange eyebrows were raised and there was a sheepish grin on his face. “Who’d have thought the off switch had to be pulled out instead of pushed in?”

I tried to speak, and found that I did have a little voice now. “Thanks for coming by, Mac. I know how you hate to leave the station.”

Mac nodded in Pickover’s direction. “Yeah, well, you can thank this guy for putting in the call,” he said.

He turned, and faced Pickover full-on. “Just who the hell are you, anyway?”

I saw Pickover’s mouth begin to open in his mechanical head, and a thought rushed through my mind.

This Pickover was bootleg. Both the other Pickover and Joshua Wilkins had been correct: such a being shouldn’t exist, and had no rights. Indeed, the legal Pickover would doubtless continue to demand that this version be destroyed; no one wanted an unauthorized copy of himself wandering around.

Mac was looking away from me, and toward the duplicate of Pickover. And so I made a wide sweeping of my head, left to right, then back again. Pickover apparently saw it, because he closed his mouth before sounds came out, and I spoke, as loudly and clearly as I could in my current condition. “Let me do the introductions,” I said, and I waited for Mac to turn back toward me.

When he had, I pointed at Mac. “Detective Dougal McCrae,” I said, then I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and pointed at Pickover, “I’d like you to meet Joshua Wilkins.”

Mac nodded, accepting this. “So you found your man? Congratulations, Alex.” He then looked down at the motionless female body. “Too bad about your wife, Mr. Wilkins.”

Pickover turned to face me, clearly seeking guidance. “It’s so sad,” I said quickly. “She was insane, Mac — had been threatening to kill her poor husband Joshua here for weeks. He decided to fake his own death to escape her, but she got wise to it somehow, and hunted him down. I had no choice but to try to stop her.”

As if on cue, Pickover walked over to the dead artificial body, and crouched beside it. “My poor dear wife,” he said, somehow managing to make his mechanical voice sound tender. He lifted his skinless face toward Mac. “This planet does that to people, you know. Makes them go crazy.” He shook his head. “So many dreams dashed.”

Mac looked at me, then at Pickover, then at the artificial body lying on the deck plating, then back at me.

“All right, Alex,” he said, nodding slowly. “Good work.”

I tipped my nonexistent hat at him. “Glad to be of help.”

* * *

I walked into the dark interior of the Bent Chisel, whistling.

Buttrick was behind the bar, as usual. “You again, Lomax?”

“The one and only,” I replied cheerfully. That topless waitress I’d slept with a couple of times was standing next to the bar, loading up her tray. I looked at her, and suddenly her name came to me. “Hey, Diana!” I said. “When you get off tonight, how ’bout you and me go out and paint the town…” I trailed off: the town was already red; the whole damned planet was.

Diana’s face lit up, but Buttrick raised a beefy hand. “Not so fast, lover boy. If you’ve got the money to take her out, you’ve got the money to settle your tab.”

I slapped two golden hundred-solar coins on the countertop. “That should cover it.” Buttrick’s eyes went as round as the coins, and he scooped them up immediately, as if he was afraid they’d disappear — which, in this joint, they probably would.

“I’ll be in the booth in the back,” I said to Diana. “I’m expecting Mr. Santos; when he arrives, could you bring him over?”

Diana smiled. “Sure thing, Alex. Meanwhile, what can I get you? Your usual poison?”

I shook my head. “Nah, none of that rotgut. Bring me the best scotch you’ve got — and pour it over water ice.”

Buttrick narrowed his eyes. “That’ll cost extra.”

“No problem,” I said. “Start up a new tab for me.”

A few minutes later, Diana came by the booth with my drink, accompanied by Raoul Santos. He took the seat opposite me. “This better be on you, Alex,” said Raoul. “You still owe me for the help I gave you at Dr. Pickover’s place.”

“Indeed it is, old boy. Have whatever you please.”

Raoul rested his receding chin on his open palm. “You seem in a good mood.”

“Oh, I am,” I said. “I got paid this week.”

The man the world now accepted as Joshua Wilkins had returned to NewYou, where he’d gotten his face finished and his artificial body upgraded. After that, he told people it was too painful to continue to work there, given what had happened with his wife. So he sold the NewYou franchise to his associate, Horatio Fernandez. The money from the sale gave him plenty to live on, especially now that he didn’t need food and didn’t have to pay the life-support tax anymore. He gave me all the fees his dear departed wife should have — plus a very healthy bonus. I’d asked him what he was going to do now. “Well,” he said, “even if you’re the only one who knows it, I’m still a paleontologist — and now I can spend days on end out on the surface. I’m going to look for new fossil beds.”

And what about the other Pickover — the official one? It took some doing, but I managed to convince him that it had actually been the late Cassandra, not Joshua, who had stolen a copy of his mind, and that she was the one who had installed it in an artificial body. I told Dr. Pickover that when Joshua discovered what his wife had done, he destroyed the bootleg and dumped the ruined body that had housed it in the basement of the NewYou building.

Not too shabby, eh? Still, I wanted more. I rented a surface suit and a Mars buggy and headed out to 16.4 kilometers south-southwest of Nili Patera. I figured I’d pick myself up a lovely rhizomorph or a nifty pentaped, and never have to work again.

Well, I looked and looked and looked, but I guess the duplicate Pickover had lied about where the alpha deposit was; even under torture, he hadn’t betrayed his beloved fossils. I’m sure Weingarten and O’Reilly’s source is out there somewhere, though, and the legal Pickover is doubtless hard at work thinking of ways to protect it from looters.

I hope he succeeds. I really do.

But for now, I’m content just to enjoy this lovely scotch.

“How about a toast?” suggested Raoul, once Diana had brought him his booze.

“I’m game,” I said. “To what?”

Raoul frowned, considering. Then his eyebrows climbed his broad forehead, and he said, “To being true to your innermost self.”

We clinked glasses. “I’ll drink to that.”