Mindscan

31

The moonbus’s airlock controls were located, logically enough, next to the airlock door. The pilot hadn’t arrived yet, which was just as well. I got on board first, and waited for others to join me. I really only needed one, but—but, damn it, the next two people to board, a white woman and an Asian woman, came in together. Ah, well.

I moved to the airlock controls, and was about to hit the appropriate switch, when I saw that Brian Hades, of all people, was coming down the corridor, his pony tail doubtless bouncing behind him in the low gravity. Was I better off with him inside or outside? I had to make a split-second decision, and I decided I’d have even more clout if he was in. I waited till he’d passed through the door, and then I hit the emergency control that slammed the airlock shut.

The two women had already taken seats—and not together; I guess, although they’d been chatting, they weren’t actually friends. Hades was still standing, and he turned in surprise at the sound of the airlock closing.

He turned and looked at me for the first time, his eyes wide. “Sullivan?”

I pulled the piton gun from the small backpack I’d placed on the seat I was standing beside, then cleared my throat in the dry air of the cabin. “Mr. Hades, ladies—please forgive me but…” I paused; there was a stab of pain through the top of my skull. I waited for it to abate a bit.

“Mr. Hades, ladies,” I repeated as if my earlier words weren’t still hanging in the air, “this is a hijacking.”

I’m not sure what reaction I’d expected: screams, shouts? The three of them stared at me blankly.

Finally, Hades said, “You’re kidding, right?”

“No,” I said. “I’m not.”

“You can’t hijack a moonbus,” said the Asian woman. “There’s nowhere to take it.”

“I’m not going to take it anywhere,” I said. “We’re going to stay right here, plugged into High Eden’s life-support equipment, until my demands are met.” There. It wasn’t quite the lunch counter at Woolworth’s, but it would do.

“And what are your demands?” asked the white woman.

“Mr. Hades knows—and I’ll tell the two of you later. But first, let me say I don’t want to hurt anyone; it’s they who do the hurting. My goal is for all of us to walk out of here safe and sound.”

“Mr. Sullivan, please,” said Hades.

“ ‘Please’?” I sneered. “I said ‘please’ to you. I asked you. I begged you. And you refused.”

“There has to be a better way,” said Hades.

“There was. You didn’t take it. Now, first things first. Mr. Hades, sit down—up at the front, there, in the first row.”

“Or what?” said Hades.

“Or,” and here I fought to keep my voice steady, “I will kill you.” I held up the piton gun.

“What’s that?” asked the Asian woman.

“It’s for lunar mountain climbing,” I said. “It will shoot a metal spike right through your chest.”

Hades considered for a moment, then folded his long body into one of the two front seats. He then swiveled it around to face me.

“Very good,” I said. “I’ve had enough of being spied on. Each of you: turn to the window next to you, and pull the vinyl shade down.”

Nobody moved.

“Do it!” I snapped.

First the Asian woman did it, then the white one. Hades made a show of trying to lower his, and then he turned to me and said, “It’s stuck.”

I wasn’t about to lean across him to try it for myself. “You’re lying,” I said simply. “Close it.”

Hades considered, then tugged theatrically at the blind again until it came down.

“That’s better,” I said. I pointed to the white woman. “You, get up and pull down all the other shades, please.”

“ ‘Please’?” she said, mocking me mocking Hades. “What you really mean is, do it or I’ll kill you.”

I wasn’t going to argue the point. “I’m Canadian,” I said, my hand still holding the gun, but not raising it. “I can’t help saying ‘please.’ ”

She was stationary for a moment, then shrugged a little and got up, moving about the cabin, pulling down the rest of the blinds. “Now, close the door to the cockpit, too.”

She did so; the front wraparound window was no longer visible from the cabin—meaning we were no longer visible tnrough it. “Thank you,” I said. “Now, take your seat again.”

There was a pounding noise on the other side of the airlock—someone trying to get us to open up. I ignored it, and instead moved to the communications panel near the airlock. It had a twenty-centimeter videophone screen.

An attractive dark-eyed brunette appeared. “Heaviside Transit Control to Moonbus Four,” she said. “What’s wrong? Is your airlock malfunctioning? Have you developed a leak?”

“Heaviside, this is Moonbus Four,” I said into the camera. “Jacob Sullivan speaking. There are three other people aboard, including Brian Hades, so do exactly as I say. No one is to try to enter this Moonbus. I am fully conversant in Moonbus operations—ask Quentin Ashburn; he’ll tell you. If I don’t get what I want, I’ll vent the starboard fuel tank. The monohydrazine will sublimate into a cloud of explosive vapor, and I’ll fire the main engine, igniting that cloud. The explosion will take out half of High Eden.”

The brunette’s eyes were wide. “And you too,” she said. “Come on—you’ll die!”

“I’m dead already,” I shouted. Damn it, I was trying to keep it together, but the pounding in my head was increasing. “I’m a shed skin, a discard. I’ve got no identity, no personhood.” I took a deep breath and I swallowed. “I’ve got nothing to lose.”

“Mr. Sullivan—”

“No. Nothing further right now. I don’t want to deal with a traffic controller. Get someone on the line who has the power to negotiate. Until then—” I stabbed the OFF switch.

I wish there had been no need to involve other people. But there was. They might have evacuated High Eden, or found some way to launch the moonbus by remote control. I needed there to be more at stake than just equipment, no matter how expensive.

“Now,” I said, looking at the two women and Hades, “it’s time for introductions. My name is Jacob Sullivan, and I’m from Toronto. I copied my consciousness into an artificial body because I had a devastating disease. But that disease has been cured, and I want to go back home—that’s my one demand. I honestly don’t want to hurt any of you.” I gestured at the Asian woman, being sure to do it with my empty left hand, rather than the one holding the piton gun. “Now you.” I said.

The woman looked defiant for a time, then seemed to decide that cooperation couldn’t hurt. “My name is Akiko Uchiyama,” she said. She was plain, thin, with short hair dyed some light color. “I’m a radio astronomer with the SETI institution at Chemyshov.” She paused, then added: “And I have a husband, and twin six-year-old daughters, and I very much want to get back to them.”

“And I certainly hope you will,” I said. I turned to the white woman, who was pretty, with big eyes and lots of dark hair. “You.”

“I’m Chloe Hansen,” she said. “I’m the head nutritionist and dietitian here at High Eden.”

“So you’re the one,” I said.

“The one what?”

“The one tampering with my food.”

She was a good actress, I’d give her that. “What are you talking about?”

I ignored that and turned to face Hades. “No doubt Chloe knows you, and I sure as hell do, but we may be here long time so you might as well introduce yourself to Akiko.”

Hades crossed his arms in front of his chest and frowned, but he complied. “I’m Brian Hades, the chief administrator of High Eden.”

Akiko’s eyes narrowed. “And so his complaint is with you,” she said, pointing at me. “Give him what he wants, and this ends, right?”

“I can’t do that,” said Hades. “He signed a contract. Besides, our entire business model—”

“Screw your business model!” snapped Akiko. “Just do whatever he says.”

“I won’t. The new version of him back on Earth has rights, and—”

“And I’ve got rights, too!” said Akiko. “So does—Chloe, is it? We’ve got rights!”

“Yes, you do,” I said. “And I don’t—not at the moment, that’s what this is all about. When I get my rights back, this will be over.”

The phone bleeped. I went over to the panel and hit the ACCEPT button. “Hello,” said a male voice with a classy British accent. “Is Mr. Sullivan available?”

“This is Jacob Sullivan,” I said. “To whom am I speaking?” Hearing classy British accents makes me talk like that.

“My name is Gabriel Smythe, and I’m going to have the privilege of being your principal contact as we sort out this spot of bother.”

Smythe—I knew that name. I frowned, then it came to me. He was the small, florid man with the platinum hair who’d performed the memorial service for Karen Bessarian.

“Are you in the docking control room?” I asked.

“Yes. I’m with Ms. Bortolotto, whom you spoke to earlier.”

“I remember you. You performed that service for Karen. But you’re not a rabbi … are you?”

“I’m not going to lie to you, Mr. Sullivan; I assure you of that. I’m the head psychologist for Immortex.”

“Head psychologist.” I chuckled. “I don’t think there was any other kind.”

“I beg your—oh, I get it. Yes, quite.”

I took a deep breath of the moonbus’s unpleasantly dry air. “I’m not crazy, Dr. Smythe.”

“You may call me Gabe.”

I thought about protesting. We weren’t buddies here. He was the enemy; I had to remember that. Still, calling him “Doctor” would give him an edge in status. “All right. Gabe,” I said at last. “I’m not crazy.”

“No one said you are,” Gabe replied.

“Then why are you the one talking to me?”

“We have no one on hand versed with dealing with these sorts of situations. Somebody has to do it, and the chef hardly seemed appropriate. And, after all, you do have Mr. Hades held—you have Mr. Hades detained.”

Interesting that he censored himself before he said the word ‘hostage.’ He probably had some hostage-negotiation handbook on screen in front of him, and it probably told him to avoid that word. Not a bad call; I didn’t like the word myself. But I needed clout.

“Now,” continued Smythe, “first things first. Does anyone with you have any special needs? Any medical problems?”

Yup: definitely working through a checklist.

“Everyone’s fine.”

“Are you sure?”

I looked at the three of them, all craning in their seats to look back at me. “Is everyone okay?” I asked.

Akiko looked like she was going to say something, but ultimately didn’t. The others were silent. “Yes,” I said “Everyone’s fine. And I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

“I’m very glad to hear that, Jake. Very glad. Now, do you I think we might open a video link? The families of the … the…” He must have found the approved word. “… detainees would certainly like to see their faces.”

“I’m calling the shots here,” I said—choosing that word just to make him wince; it’s fun playing mind games with psychologists. If hostages was a verboten word, so too, doubtless, was shots.

“Of course,” said Smythe. “Absolutely. Now, what are … what can I do for you?”

Demands. He’d surely been about to ask me what my demands were, but again had stopped himself. We were negotiating here. Negotiating is about win-win, about shifting positions; it couldn’t work if there were inflexible demands.

I decided to tweak him again. “I have only one demand. I require my personhood back. Return me to Earth, and let me take up my old life. Grant that, and everyone is free to go.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Nice and vague; I suspect the manual told him never to commit to anything he couldn’t be sure of delivering. “Don’t humor me, Gabe. You can’t give me back my personhood. But there is one person who can: the other Jacob Sullivan, the duplicate of my mind inside a robot body, back on Earth.”

“And there’s the rub, Jake. Surely you see that. Earth’s far away. And you must know we promised never to contact your replacement. He needs to do his best to put the fact that the original is still extant out of his mind.”

Extant. Not living. Extant. “Make an exception,” I said. “Get the other me on the radio.”

“We’re on the far side of the moon, Jake.”

“And you can bounce radio signals off the communications satellites in synchronous orbit above the moon’s equator. I’m not stupid, Gabe, and I have thought this through. Call me back when you’ve got an answer.”

And with that, I closed the channel.