Mindscan

36

Deshawn thought the jury would deliberate for four days The jury consultant he’d hired was estimating a full week, and the commentator on Court TV opined it would be at least eight days. Karen and I went back to her mansion and tried to keep our minds occupied by anything but worrying about the verdict. We were both sitting in her living room—we’d decided we liked sitting, even though it wasn’t necessary from a fatigue point of view; it just felt more natural. I was in that leather La-Z-Boy, and Karen was in an adjacent easy chair, trying to read a paper book. While reclined in the La-Z-Boy, I could clearly see what page she was on, and noticed she kept going back to re-read the same section. I guess her inner zombie was the only one able to pay attention while we waited.

I was watching highlights of the baseball games I’d missed on a small handheld viewer, with the sound off—I could do the play-by-play at least as well as the paid commentator.

Suddenly—is there any other way for it?—my cell phone rang; my ring tone was the theme to Hockey Night in Canada. The device was sitting on Karen’s coffee table. I brought the La-Z-Boy to the upright position, scooped up the phone, held it in front of my face, and looked at the small picture screen, which said “Audio Only,” followed by “Long Distance.” I’ve never been good at resisting the phone; Karen says she has no trouble completely ignoring it—I suppose celebrity would do that to you. I hit a key and brought the handset to my ear. “Hello?” There was silence; I thought no one was there. “Hello?” I said again. “Hell—”

“Hello,” said a man’s voice with a British accent. “May I please speak with Jacob John Sullivan?”

“You’ve got him … Hello? Hello? Is there—”

“Good, excellent. Mr. Sullivan, my name is Gabriel Smythe. I work for Immortex.”

“What can I do for you, Mr. Smythe … Mr. Smythe … Hello? Hello?”

“I apologize for the delays, Mr. Sullivan. You see, I’m calling you from the moon—”

“The moon!” I saw Karen react in surprise. “Is this about—”

“—in fact, from Heaviside Crater, on Lunar Far—yes, yes, this is about the original you. As I was saying—”

“What about him?”

“I’m at Heaviside, the facility—please, Mr. Sullivan, it’s very difficult talking with these delays. Perhaps if we each said ‘over’ when we’re done. Over.”

Well, I’d always wanted to do that. “That’s fine. Over.”

Silence, then: “There, that’s better. Now, as I was saying, I’m at Heaviside, at the facility our brochures call High Eden. Mr. Sullivan, it’s about your original here. He’s—”

“He’s passed on?” I hadn’t expected to be directly informed. Karen placed a soothing hand on my arm. “I, ah, don’t want to—”

“—taken three people hostage, and—what? No, he hasn’t passed on. Please, wait for me to say ‘over.’ He’s taken three people hostage—”

“Hostages! That’s impossible. Are you sure—”

“—and barricaded himself inside a moonbus, along with his captives, and—Please, Mr. Sullivan; we agreed you’d wait until I said ‘over.’ I haven’t yet—”

“Sorry.”

“—finished. Your original is demanding to talk with you. There, now: over.”

Karen had moved in close so she could hear both sides of the conversation. Her green eyes were wide.

“Mr. Sulli—”

“Yes, I’m here. Sorry.”

“—van? Are you there? Over.”

“Yes, yes. I’m here. But, look, this is crazy. I know—I know myself. There’s just no way on God’s green Earth—or anywhere else, for that matter—that I’d ever do something like taking hostages.” Silence, then I remembered: “Over.”

Karen and I exchanged anguished looks while the seconds past, then: “Yes, we understand that. But—um, perhaps you know this? They found a cure for your … for his condition. Over.”

“Really? Wow. No, I had no idea. That’s … well, that’s amazing. Um, over.”

Silence, then: “We arranged for the procedure, of course. But there have been some aftereffects of the surgery. The doctor who treated him theorizes that his neurotransmitters are temporarily out of whack, and rather severely so. It’s making him paranoid and violent. Over.”

“Can you fix that?”

More silence, while radio waves bridged worlds, then, even though I hadn’t properly terminated my last sentence, the cultured British voice came on again. “Surely—if we can get him into treatment, he’ll be fine. But right now, as I said, he’s holding three people hostage in a moonbus. And he’s demanding his rights of personhood back. Of course, we—”

“He’s what?”

“—explained to him why that was impossible. There’s simply no legal procedure to allow… repatriation I suppose would be the word … to allow repatriation of personhood. Anyway, we need your help, Mr. Sullivan. We need you to come here, to Heaviside, to parlay with him. Over.”

“Come to the moon? I’ve never even been to Europe, for God’s sake, and you want me to come to the moon? Uh, over.”

The maddening delay, then: “Yes. Right away. You’re the only one he’ll talk to.

There’s far more than just the three lives at stake; if he explodes the moonbus’s fuel, he’ll kill almost everyone here at High Eden. Over.”

“Well, put him on the phone. There’s no need for me to go all the way to the moon. Over.”

There was silence even longer than the speed of light required. “Umm, we, ah—we tried a deception earlier, in hopes of expeditiously resolving matters. It didn’t work. He won’t believe he’s talking to the real you unless he can see you face to face and speak to you directly. Over.”

“Christ. I—I have no idea how to go about arranging such a trip. Over.”

“We’ll take care of all of that. You are in Toronto, right? We can have—”

“No, no. I’m in Detroit, not Toronto.”

“—a driver at your door, and—oh. Detroit. Okay, we can still do this. We’ll have a driver at your door within the hour to take you to Metropolitan Airport. From there, we’ll fly you to Orlando, and from Orlando we’ll have a small jet standing by to transfer you directly to the Kennedy Space Center. We can get you on a cargo rocket—by luck, one’s scheduled for launch six hours from now to bring medical supplies to High Eden. That’s not unusual; there are a lot of complex, perishable pharmaceuticals that the residents here rely on, and that are only manufactured on Earth. Anyway, there’s lots of residual cargo capacity that they were going to fill with gourmet foodstuffs, but we can get that off-loaded to make room for you. Over.”

“Um, I’ve got to think about this. Let me call you back. Over.”

A pause, then: “It’s complex ringing the moon. Please—”

“Then you call me back in thirty minutes. I need to think. Over—and out.”

I’d had to let my … my guests … aboard the moonbus go to the washroom. I’d worried the first two times that they might get up to something in there, but it didn’t seem there was anything that could be used to their advantage. The mirror above the small sink, for instance, was polished stainless steel, rather than glass. Still, I made them keep the door open while they used the facilities.

But soon enough I myself would have to go. There was no way I would back myself into a stall, but I’d also never been good at peeing in public. I guess I’d have to get them all to turn their backs while I did it into a jar or something … if I could find a jar. Of course, it would be even worse when I eventually had to defecate, since that was an exceedingly vulnerable posture. If only I—

The videophone bleeped. I went over to answer it.

“We’ve established contact with the other you,” said Smythe, appearing on the small screen. “He’s in Detroit.”

“Detroit?” I said. I had the piton gun in my right hand and gently swung it back and forth between Chloe, Akiko? and Hades … although Akiko was currently napping, so she probably didn’t pose much of a threat. “What the hell would he be doing in Detroit?” And then it hit me. The trial—he must have been curious enough, for some reason, to go watch it. “Anyway,” I said, before Smythe could reply, “what’s he say?”

“He says we have to call him back in thirty minutes.”

“Damn it, Smythe, if you’re stalling—”

“We’re not stalling. We should have an answer for you soon. So, please, please, for the love of God, don’t do anything desperate.”

Karen and I looked at each other. She was still holding her paper book aloft; it was effortless to do so, and unless she actually told her arm to drop down, it wouldn’t.

For my part, I was sitting on the La-Z-Boy, but with it upright, the mechanisms within it and the mechanisms within me both tense.

“You’ve got to go,” Karen said. “You’ve got to go to the moon.”

“They don’t need me. They need a professional. A hostage negotiator, or a…”

“Or a what? A sniper? Because that’s what they’ll send: not someone who can talk him out of it, but someone who can take him out.”

Damn. All I’d ever wanted was what everyone else gets: a normal life—just a normal fucking life. “All right,” I said at last. “I’ll go.”

“And I’m going, too,” said Karen.

“Where?” I replied. “To Florida?”

Karen shook her head. “To the moon.”

“I’m, ah, not sure they’d pay for that.”

“I can afford it.”

I was taken aback for a second—but she was right; she certainly could. Even if her bank accounts were never unfrozen, the advance from St. Martin’s would more than cover it. “Are you sure you want to go?”

“Absolutely. God knows how long the jury deliberations will go on, and, anyway, they don’t need me here just to read a verdict. So I have to wait an extra 1.5 seconds to find out what the verdict is up on the moon; I can live with that.”

Karen got up, turned, and faced me. She put out her hands and I took them, and she effortlessly pulled me to my feet. Placing her head against my shoulder, she continued: “And, bluntly, I’ve got too much at risk to stay here. I love—I love talking with you, Jake. I love the way you play with ideas. But you’re too quick to see the other person’s perspective. I don’t want you to be talked into shutting yourself off. The transfer was legal and binding: you are Jacob Sullivan. I don’t want whatever’s up there on the moon playing mind games with you. The people from Immortex only care about getting their hostages back. Your original, at least in his current medical state, apparently only cares about himself. There needs to be someone up there who cares about you.”

I drew her even closer, hugged her, feeling the soft exterior and the hardness beneath. “Thank you.”

“How long till they call you back?”

“I said thirty minutes, but I doubt they’ll be that patient, and—”

As if on cue, the phone rang. I glanced down at the call display, which said “Long Distance” again. I’ll say.

“Hello?” I said, after touching my cell’s speakerphone button.

Two seconds of digital silence, then: “Mr. Sullivan, thank you for picking up. Sorry to ring you back so soon, but we really—”

“No, that’s okay. I’ll come.”

“—need to have an answer from you. The situation up here is—you will? Brilliant! Brilliant! I’m delighted. We’ll—”

“There’s one condition. Karen Bessarian gets to come with me, too. Over.”

Silence, then: “You mean the Mindscan version of her? Why? Her—um, well…”

“We know her original has passed on. But she’s my friend, and I want her with me. Over.”

“Mr. Sullivan, I’m not authorized—”

“I’ll pay for it myself,” said Karen.

“—to make arrangements for anyone else. This is going to be—what’s that? Well, if you’ll cover the costs; I assume that’s Ms. Bessarian speaking. But I warn you, ma’am, we’re planning to use an express rocket; an extra fifty kilograms will cost … Anna? Give me a sec … approximately six million dollars. Over.”

I smiled at Karen. “The six million dollar woman.”

“No problem,” she said.

“Well … all right, then,” replied Smythe. “All right. But, again, we’re using an express cargo rocket—fastest way to get here. They’re uncrewed, and not designed for passengers. It won’t be a comfortable trip. Over.”

“What is comfort, anyway?” said Karen. “Neither of us need padded chairs. We’re aware of the temperature, but indifferent to it. How long will the trip take?”

“You have to say, ‘Over,’ ” I added helpfully.

“Um, over,” said Karen.

The time lag, then: “Twelve hours.”

Karen snorted—something I wasn’t aware we could still do. “I’ve spent longer on airplane flights.”

“Then it’s settled,” I said. “We’ll go. You said you’d send a car for us? Over.”

“Will do. What’s the address there?”

Karen told him.

“Great,” said Smythe. “We’ll get it all arranged. You’re on your way to the moon.”

On my way to the moon…

I shook my head.

On my way to the fucking moon.