Iris

illusion. He saw that the colored sky was not just a wall at some great distance, that it was the infinite heaven of innumerable literary references. A translucent eternity . . . 'I'm not sure we can really do it. ... Even as an abstraction, it's complex. Personality transfer has been done between living people. In a sense, it's just an extension of Downlink Rapport. On one occasion, it was used to bring back a man who'd recently died.'

'Really?' John looked slightly startled. 'I don't remember ever hearing about anything like that.'

'You wouldn't have. It's illegal on Earth.... A couple of years ago, on Luna, an important scientist had the bad judgment to have an aneurysm while he was working on a crucial transition zone in the higher math of a cataclysm system. More than just data . . . insights that he had failed to explain were lost. They put him on emergency life support.' Krzakwa grinned, remembering. 'Since I was a colleague of his, they brought me, among others, in with the idea that one of us might understand whatever they could get out of him. They tried to resuscitate him the usual way, but he was too far gone. So they grabbed a condemned criminal—'

'They have a death penalty on the Moon?'

Tem nodded. 'It's a state secret, but, yes, they do. Anyway, they read off what was left of Dr. Hanscom's neuroelectrical patterns and pumped it into this poor fucker, right on top of his own personality. It resulted in a really bizarre psychosis, but we managed to reconstruct the transition math before he became catatonic.'

Shaking his head, looking pale, John said, 'I never imagined . . .' He stopped and thought about it. In a way that he had not really come to terms with, Elizabeth Toussaint's personality was overlying his own, and he shuddered. 'All right, first things first. Is Brendan really gone?'

'Depends on what you mean. We still have an alien intelligence down in Iris that is a virtual unknown. It could give him back if we ask in the right way. But the process of contacting it again seems to involve a repetition of the danger. I've just got to think about it some more.' John scuffed the mossy vegetation with his foot, watching it darken and lighten like velour. 'The implications of all this are staggering. We're talking about more than immortality. Frankly, I didn't think we had come this far.'

The Selenite shrugged. 'What did you think the Data Control Insurrection was about, really? Even in the distorted history they taught me on Luna I could see that all this was coming. Why they allowed Shipnet is the real question; thetotal control they exercise over the elements of Comnet is the only thing that preserves the illusion of normalcy.'

'I suppose . . .' John squeezed his eyes shut. 'How would it work between Jana and Brendan? Aren't our personalities partially hard-wired into our heads? Neural pathways and all that?'

'Yeah. If we manage to get a good scan, we'll have a new person with Jana's memories and Brendan's emotional characteristics. Call it nine to one in Jana's favor.'

'I ... don't know if it's worth it.' Cornwell felt himself rapidly sinking into a fuguelike state. 'Really, it seems . . .'

'We probably won't be able to do it. It's never been tried on someone so thoroughly dead before.'

'But you said she'd keep.'

'As meat, John! Jana had the extremely poor taste to freeze to death slowly. Every cell in her body is packed with ice crystals, ruptured.'

'Because of me.'

'All the more reason to think hard about the whole thing. Jana is—was—obviously unstable. In a way, we'll have the worst of both worlds. . . .'

Cornwell passed a hand over his face. 'We'll have to talk to the others....'

'If you like.' A wave of exhaustion passed through Krzakwa, and he noticed a grainy, faintly kaleidoscopic pattern pulsating in the sky, in time with his heartbeat. 'I've got to get some rest. . . .'

Aksinia Ockels, wearing a rumpled orange space suit with the hood thrown back, was in a compartment of the containerized cargo hold where Brendan had stored the hefty mass of personal belongings that had come along with him on the Deepstar's flight. She'd been rummaging through his collection of antique books and had at last come upon the thing she sought. Now she stared fixedly at a color plate, a picture of a six- sided being, its parts neatly labeled, cephalosome, tail-sheath . . .

'I knew it,' she muttered. She packed the book into a silver-lined environment bag and drew the top together intoits seal. Then, with some fumbling, she hardened her suit and hood and stepped into the airlock.

Krzakwa, who had just awakened from an unsatisfying nap upon the heather, was kneeling on the rim of the pool and splashing cool water on his face. The entrance at the far end of the dome made its

'cycling' warning and he wondered who had been outside. Finally the door came open and Aksinia came through, eagerness quickening her steps.