Mercury

He was sealing the Velcro seam up his torso when someone rapped politely on his door frame. They can see me, Bracknell realized, looking up toward the ceiling. They must have a camera in here somewhere.

He sat on the bed and swung his legs up onto the sheet. “Come in,” he called. Then he realized that his feet were bare. They hadn’t brought any shoes.

Two men entered his cubicle as Bracknell touched the control stud that raised the bed to a sitting position. One of the men wore a white hospital smock over what looked like a sports shirt and corduroy slacks. He was round-faced and a little pudgy, but his eyes seemed aware and alert. The other was in a gray business suit and white turtle-neck, hawk-nosed, his baggy-eyed expression morose.

“I’m Dr. DaSilva,” said the medic. “I understand you’re having a little trouble remembering things.”

Bracknell nodded warily.

“My name is Pratt,” said the suit. “I represent United Life and Accident Assurance, Limited.” His accent sounded vaguely British.

“Insurance?” Bracknell asked.

DaSilva grinned. “Well, you remember insurance, at least.”

Bracknell fell back on a pretense of confusion. “I don’t understand …”

Pratt said, “We have an awkward situation here. Like many ship’s crews, the crew of Alhambra was covered by a shared-beneficiary accident policy.”

“Shared beneficiary?”

“It’s rather like an old-fashioned tontine. In case of a fatal accident, the policy’s principal is paid to the survivors among the crew—after the deceaseds’ beneficiaries have been paid, of course.”

“What does that mean?” Bracknell asked, feeling nervous at being under DaSilva’s penetrating gaze.

“It means, sir,” said Pratt, “that as the sole survivor of Alhambra’s fatal accident, you are the secondary beneficiary of each member of the crew; you stand to gain in excess of ten million New International Dollars.”

Bracknell gasped. “Ten million?”

“Yes,” Pratt replied, quite matter-of-factly. “Of course, we must pay out to the families of the deceased; they are the primary beneficiaries. But there will still be some ten million or so remaining in the policy’s fund.”

“And it goes to me?”

Pratt cleared his throat before answering, “It goes to you, providing you can identify yourself. The company has a regulation against paying to anonymous persons or John Does. International laws are involved, you know.”

“I… don’t remember … very much,” Bracknell temporized.

“Perhaps I can help,” said DaSilva.

“I hope so,” Bracknell said.

“Before we start scanning your brain to see if there’s any physical trauma, let me try a simple test.”

“What is it?”

DaSilva pulled a handheld from the breast pocket of his smock. Smiling cheerfully, he said, “This is what I call the ring-a-bell test. I’m going to read off the names of Alhambra’s crew and you tell me if any of them ring a bell.”

Bracknell nodded, thinking furiously. Ten million dollars! If I can get my hands on that money—

“Wallace Farad,” DaSilva called out.

Bracknell blinked at him. “The captain’s name was Farad.”

“Good! Your memory isn’t a total blank.”

“You couldn’t forget the captain,” said Bracknell fervently. Then he remembered that the captain was dead. And Addie. And all the rest of them. Dead. Killed by Yamagata.

“I’ll skip the women’s names,” DaSilva was saying. “I don’t think you had a sex-change procedure before they picked you up.”

Pratt chuckled politely. Bracknell thought of Addie and said nothing.

DaSilva read off several more names of the crew while Bracknell tried to figure out what he should do.

Finally DaSilva said, “… and Dante Alexios. That’s the last of them.”

Dante Alexios had been the vessel’s second mate, Bracknell knew. He didn’t know much about him except that he wasn’t a convict and he didn’t have a wife or children.

“Dante Alexios,” he repeated. “Dante Alexios.”

“Ring a bell?” DaSilva asked hopefully.

Bracknell looked up at the psychotechnician. “Dante Alexios! That’s who I am!”

Pratt looked less than pleased. “All well and good. But I’m afraid you’re going to have to prove your identity before I can allow the release of the policy’s payout.”

HELL CRATER

Catch-22, Bracknell thought as he sat on his bed. I can get ten million dollars if I can prove I’m Dante Alexios, so I need to let them scan my body. But as soon as they do they’ll find out I’m Mance Bracknell and ship me back out to the Belt as a convict.

A different nurse breezed into his cubicle and shoved a data tablet onto his lap. “Press your right thumb on the square at the bottom,” she said.

Bracknell looked up at her. She was young, with frizzy red hair, rather pretty.

“What’s this?” he asked, almost growling.

“Standard permission form for a full-spectrum body scan. We need your thumbprint.”

I don’t want a scan, Bracknell said to himself, and I don’t want to give them a thumbprint; they could compare it with Alexios’s real print.

He handed the tablet back to the nurse. “No.”

She looked stunned. “Whattaya mean, no? You’ve got to do it or we can’t do the scan on you.”

“I don’t want a scan. Not yet.”

“You’ve got to have a body scan,” the nurse said, somewhere between confused and angry at his refusal. “It says so in your chart.”

“Not now,” Bracknell said. “Maybe tomorrow.”

“They can make you take a scan, whether you want to or not.”

“The hell they can!” Bracknell snapped. The nurse flinched back half a step. “I’m not some criminal or lunatic. I’m a free citizen and I won’t be coerced into doing something I don’t want to do.”

She stared at him, bewildered. “But it’s for your own good.”

“I’ll decide what’s good for me, thank you.” And Bracknell felt a surge of satisfaction well up in him. He hadn’t asserted himself for years, he realized. I used to be an important man, he told himself. I gave orders and people hopped to follow them. I’m not some convict or pervert. I didn’t kill all those people. Yamagata did.

The redheaded nurse was fidgeting uncertainly by his bed, shifting the tablet from one hand to the other.

“Listen,” Bracknell said, more gently, “I’ve been through a lot. I’m not up to getting poked and prodded —”

“The scan is completely nonintrusive,” the nurse said hopefully.

“Okay, tell you what. Find me a pair of shoes and let me walk around a bit, stretch my legs. Then tomorrow morning I’ll sign for the scan. Okay?”

She seemed relieved, but doubtful. “I’ll hafta ask my supervisor.”

“Do that. But first, get some shoes for me.”

Less than half an hour later Mance Bracknell walked out of Selene Hospital’s busy lobby, wearing his old gray coveralls and a crinkled pair of hospital-issue paper shoes. No one tried to stop him. No one even noticed him. There was only one guard in the lobby, and when Bracknell brazenly waved at him the guard gave him a halfhearted wave in return. He wasn’t in hospital-issue clothes; as far as the guard was concerned, Bracknell was a visitor