Mindscan (9 page)

"Ladies and gentlemen," said a voice over the moonbus intercom, "as you can see on the monitors, we're about to pass around onto the far side of the moon. So, please do take a moment to look out the windows and enjoy your last sight of the Earth; it won't be visible at all from your new home."

I turned and stared at the crescent planet, beautiful and blue. It had been an image I'd known all my life, but when Karen and the rest of these old folks had been children, no one had yet seen the Earth like this.

Karen was sitting next to me at the moment; Quentin Ashburn, my old seatmate from back on the spaceplane, was off chatting with the moonbus pilot about their shared pride and joy. Karen had been born in 1960, and it wasn't until December 1968 that
Apollo VIII
got far enough away from the home world to take a photograph of the whole thing. Of course, I wouldn't normally remember a date like December 1968, but everyone knew that humans first landed on the moon in 1969, and I knew that
Apollo VIII
— the first manned spaceship to leave Earth orbit — had gone there over Christmas the year before; my Sunday School teacher had once played a staticky audio of one of those astronauts reading from Genesis to commemorate that fact.

Now, though, both Karen and I were seeing for the last time the planet that gave birth to us, and to every one of our ancestors. Well, no, of course, that wasn't quite true.

Life had originated only once in the solar system — but on Mars, not Earth; it had been seeded on the third planet from the fourth some four billion years ago, transferred on meteorites. And although Earth, less than 400,000 kilometers away, would be forever invisible from Lunar Farside, Mars — easy to spot, brilliant with the color of blood, of life — would frequently be visible in the night sky from High Eden, even though it was often a thousand times farther away than was Earth.

I watched as the nightside part of Earth — lenticular in this perspective, like a cat's black pupil abutting the blue crescent of the dayside — kissed the gray lunar horizon.

Ah, well. One thing I wouldn't be missing was Earth's gravity, the little stab of pain each time I put weight on my left foot.

But what people would I miss? My mother, certainly — although, of course, she'd have the new him, the durable him, for company. And I'd miss some of my friends — though, now that I thought about it, not as many as I would have supposed; I'd apparently already come to terms with never having any contact with most of them again, even though, with so many of them, the last words I'd said to them or they'd said to me had doubtless been, "See you." Christ, I wondered what my friends would make of the new me. I wondered what…

Yes, yes, there was one friend I'd miss. One very special friend.

I looked at the Earth, looked at Rebecca.

More of the planet was below the horizon than above it now, and the moonbus continued to speed along.

I tried to make out what part of the globe was facing me — but it was impossible to tell with all those clouds. So much hidden, even before one got to the surface of things.

I looked over at Karen Bessarian, who was staring out the little window next to our row of seats. Her deeply lined cheek was wet. "You're going to miss it," I said to her.

She nodded. "Aren't you?"

"Not the planet, no," I said.
Mostly one person there.

All of the unilluminated part of the globe was below the horizon now; only a small blue segment was visible. For a second, I thought I was seeing the brilliant whiteness of the north pole — it had certainly stood out from Low Earth Orbit, even if, as Karen had said, it was much reduced in size from when she had been a girl. But, of course, the orientation was all wrong: we were flying parallel to, and not far south of, the lunar equator, so Earth was lying on its side, with its north-south axis running horizontally. Both poles were now well below the horizon.

"Going…" It was Karen, next to me, speaking softly.

Earth was fiercely bright against the black sky; if the moon had an atmosphere, Earthsets — only visible from a moving vehicle, since at all locations on nearside, the Earth hung motionless in the sky — would have been spectacular. Even though I was color-blind, and understood that I'd been missing out on some aspects of the spectacle others saw, I'd still always enjoyed sunsets.

"Going…" said Karen again. There was only a tiny bead of blue still visible.

"Gone."

And it was, totally and completely. Everyone I'd ever known, every place I'd ever been.

My mother.

My father.

Rebecca.

Out of sight.

Out of mind.

The moonbus sped on.

After the disastrous visit to my mother's house, I returned home. Clamhead continued to stare out the window, waiting for someone else.

I couldn't remember the last time I'd cried — and now I was utterly incapable of it.

But I wanted to. Crying was cathartic; it got things out of your system.

My system. My fucking system.

I lay down on my bed — not because I was tired; I was
never
tired anymore — but because that had always been my habit when thinking. I looked up at the ceiling. The old me might have popped a pill at this point. But the new me couldn't do that.

Of course, I could get in my car and drive up to Immortex's offices in Markham.

Perhaps Dr. Porter could do something, adjust some bloody — some
bloodless
— potentiometer, but…

But there was that damned asking-for-help thing again: stupid, stubborn, but part of who I am, and the last thing I wanted to do right now was behave out of character, lest even I begin to think what my mother and my dog and the one and only woman I loved did, that I was some sort of ersatz knockoff, some pale imitation, an impostor, a fake.

Besides, I had an appointment to see Porter tomorrow, anyway. All of us new uploads had to visit him for frequent checkups and tuneups, and—

Karen.

Karen had to do that, too.

Of course, she might have gone home to Detroit, but how practical was commuting internationally every few days? No, no, Karen was a sensible woman. She'd almost certainly be staying here in Toronto.

Where exactly, though?

The Fairmont Royal York.

The thought burst into my synthetic head. The place where the sales pitch had been held. Directly opposite the train station.

I looked at my phone. "Phone, call Fairmont Royal York Hotel; audio only."

"Connecting," said the phone.

Another voice came on, female, perky. "Royal York. How may I direct your call?"

"Hello," I said. "Do you have a Karen Bessarian registered?"

"I'm afraid not."

Oh, well. It had been just a thought. "Thank you — wait. Wait." She was famous; she probably used something other than the name she was best known by. "Ms. Cohen,"

I said, suddenly remembering her maiden name. "Do you have a Ms. Karen Cohen?"

"I'll put you through."

Karen would doubtless know who was calling; the hotel room's phone would inform her. Of course, it was possible that she wasn't in, but—

"Hello," said that Southern-accented voice.

In that moment, I realized that she couldn't have had the same experience I'd had, not if she hadn't yet gone home to face family and friends. But, as I said, she had to know it was me; I couldn't just hang up. "Hello, Karen."

"Hi, Jake."

Jake.

My name.

"Hi, Karen. I—" I had no idea what to say, but then it occurred to me to put it on her. "I guessed you might still be in town. I thought you might be lonely."

"Aren't you sweet!" Karen declared. "What did you have in mind?"

"Um…" She was in downtown Toronto. Right by the theater district. Words came tumbling out. "Would you like to go see a play?"

"I'd
love
to," Karen said.

I turned to my wall screen. "Browser, show me live theater tonight in downtown Toronto for which good seats are still available."

A list of plays and venues appeared on the screen. "You know David Widdicombe?" I said.

"Are you kidding?" said Karen. "He's one of my favorite playwrights."

"His
Schrodinger's Cat
is on at the Royal Alex."

"Sounds great," Karen said.

"Wonderful," I said. "I'll pick you up at seven-thirty."

"Perfect," she said. "It's — that's perfect." She'd started to say 'it's a date,' I'm sure, but of course it was nothing of the kind.

The moonbus, as I'd seen before boarding it, was a simple-looking affair: a brick-shaped central unit, with great engine cones protruding from its rear end, and two cylindrical fuel tanks, one strapped to each side. The bus was silvery white, and the tanks, I was told, were painted a color called teal, apparently a mixture of blue and green. It sported the Hyundai logo in several places, and a United Nations flag on each side near the back.

There was a wide window across the front of the brick for the pilot (he apparently didn't like to be called a driver) to see through. The bus could accommodate fourteen passengers: there were eight swiveling seats along one side, and six down the other; a gap after the second seat made room for hanging space suits. Next to each passenger seat was a window about the size of those on airplanes; each window even had one of those vinyl blinds you could draw down, like on a plane.

Behind the last two seats were a small toilet on one side, and a tiny airlock cubicle on the other — "Pity the poor fool who mixes them up," the pilot had quipped during his orientation remarks.

The passenger cabin only extended halfway down the brick; the other half was taken up with cargo holds, the engines, and life-support equipment.

The moonbus's normal run was from LS One, on the Lunar Nearside, to High Eden, then on to Chernyshov Crater, both on Farside. Chernyshov was the site of a SETI facility, where big telescopes scanned the heavens for the radio chatter of alien lifeforms. Immortex leased space at High Eden to the SETI group, and had allowed an auxiliary radio telescope to be built there, giving the SETI researchers an eleven-hundred-kilometer baseline for interferometry. There were always a few SETI researchers at High Eden, and, indeed, two of the moonbus's other passengers today were radio astronomers.

We were getting close to High Eden, according to the status display shown on the monitors that hung from the ceiling. The gray, pockmarked lunar surface continued to streak by beneath us while a song I'd never heard before was playing through the moonbus's speakers. It was rather nice.

Karen, the old lady next to me, looked up and smiled. "What a perfect choice."

"What?" I asked.

"The music. It's from
Cats
."

"What's that?"

"A musical — from before you were born. Based on T. S. Eliot's
Book of Practical Cats
."

"Yes?"

"You know where we're going, no?"

"High Eden," I said.

"Yes. But where is it?"

"The far side of the moon."

"True," said Karen. "But more specifically, it's in a crater called Heaviside."

"Yes?" I said.

She sang along:
"Up up up past the Russell Hotel/Up up up to the Heaviside
l
ayer…"

"What's the Heaviside layer?"

Karen smiled. "Don't feel bad, my dear boy. I imagine most people who saw the musical didn't know what it was, either. In the musical, it was the cat version of heaven. But 'Heaviside layer' is actually an old term for the ionosphere."

I was surprised to hear a little old lady talking about the ionosphere — but, then again, as I had to keep reminding myself, this was the author of
DinoWorld
. "See," she continued, "when it was discovered that radio transmissions worked over large distances, even over the curve of the Earth's horizon, people were baffled; after all, electromagnetic radiation travels in a straight line. Well, a British physicist named Oliver Heaviside figured there must be a charged layer in the atmosphere that radio signals were bouncing off. And he was right."

"So he got a crater named after him?"

"Two, actually. One here on the moon, and another on Mars. But, see, in a way we're not just going to Heaviside crater. We're going to the best place ever — the ideal retirement community. The perfect heaven for old cats."

"Heaven," I repeated. I felt my spine tingle.

Toronto. August. A warm breeze off the lake.

The play had been terrific — perhaps Widdicombe's best — and the evening was pleasantly warm.

And Karen looked — well, not lovely; that would be going too far. She was a plain thirty-year old woman, but she'd dressed up very nicely. Of course, some people had stared at us, but Karen had just stared right back. In fact, she'd told one gawking man that if he didn't look away, she'd turn on her heat vision.

In any event, I could hardly complain about Karen's appearance. I hadn't been any bargain to look at when I'd been flesh — too skinny, I knew, eyes too close together, ears too large, and…

And…

Funny, that. I only remembered those things because Trista, that cruel girl, had enumerated them in high school, ticking off my faults when I'd asked her out on a date — another of the great moments in Jake's love life. I could remember her words, but…

But I was having a hard time conjuring up a mental picture of my current self. The psychologists at Immortex had advised us to get rid of any photos of our old selves we had on display in our homes, but I hadn't had any. Still, it was days since I'd seen myself in a mirror, and even then — now that I no longer had to shave — they'd only been cursory glances. Could I really be forgetting what I used to look like?

Regardless of appearances, though, it was doubtless easier for an eighty-five-year-old woman to put her hand on the knee of a forty-four-year man than the other way around.

And, to my shock, Karen did just that, back in her hotel suite, after the play, the two of us sitting side by side on the lush, silk-upholstered couch in the living room. She unfolded her hand in her lap, lifting it, moving it slowly, giving me plenty of time to signal with body language or facial expression or words that I didn't want it to complete its obvious trajectory — and she let it come to rest on my right thigh, just above the knee.

I felt the warmth of her touch — not quite 37 degrees Celsius, but certainly more than room temperature.

And I felt the pressure, too: the gentle constricting of her fingers on the shifting plastic over the mechanics and hydraulics of my knee.

The hand of the biological Karen would have-been liver-spotted, with translucent, loose skin, and swollen, arthritic joints.

But
this
hand…

This hand was youthful, with clean unblemished skin, and silvery white nails. I noticed she wasn't wearing a wedding ring; she'd still been wearing one at the Immortex sales pitch. I guess maybe she'd let the biological original take it to the moon.

Still, that hand…

I shook my head slightly, trying to dispel the picture of her old biological appendage that my mind kept superimposing on the new, sleek, synthetic one.

I remembered taking a psychology course, years ago, in which the prof talked about intentionality — the ability of the mind to affect external reality. "I don't think
about
moving my arm," she said. "I don't work out the steps involved in contracting the muscles. I just move my arm!" And yet I realized what I did next would have enormous consequences, would define a road, a path, a future. I found myself hesitating, and—

There, my arm moved. I saw it twitch slightly. But I must have aborted the move, overriding my initial impulse, exercising that conscious veto Porter had spoken about, for my arm was almost immediately still again.

Just move my arm!

And, at last, I did, swiveling it at the shoulder, hinging it at the elbow, rotating it at the wrist, gently curving the fingers, placing my hand over hers.

I could feel warmth in my palm, and—

Electricity? Isn't that what it's called? The tingle, the response to the touch of — yes, damn it, yes — another human being.

Karen looked at me, her cameras — her eyes, her beautiful green eyes — locking on mine.

"Thank you," she said.

I could see myself reflected in her lenses. My eyebrows went up, catching, as always, a bit as they did so. "For what?"

"For seeing the real me."

I smiled, but then she looked away.

"What?"

She was silent for several seconds. "I … I haven't been a widow that long — only two years — but Ryan … Ryan had Alzheimer's. He couldn't…" She paused. "It's been a long time."

"It's like riding a bicycle, I suspect."

"You think?"

I closed my eyes and listened to Karen's voice, which, I had to admit, did sound warm and alive and human. "That's okay," she said, snuggling her body against mine. "We've got all the time in the world."

I smiled. "Sure."

And Karen smiled her perfectly symmetrical smile back at me. She had a luxurious two-room suite. We repaired — funny word, that — to the bedroom, and…

And I found nothing sexy about it, dammitall. I
wanted
it to be sexy, but it was just plastic and Teflon rubbing together, silicon chips and synthetic lubricants.

On the other hand, Karen seemed to be enjoying it. I knew the old joke about having a cherry sundae every day for years, and then suddenly not being able to have one anymore; you'd
really
want another cherry sundae. Well, after several years, I guess any cherry sundae tasted good…

Eventually, Karen came — if the term had any etymological validity in this context.

She closed her plastiskin lids over her glass eyes and made a series of increasingly sharp, and increasingly guttural, sounds as her whole mechanical body went even more rigid than it normally was.

I felt kind of sort of a bit close to coming myself while Karen was; I'd always felt more aroused, more sexy and sexual, when someone was orgasming thanks to me.

But it didn't crest, didn't peak, didn't last. I pulled out, my prosthetic member still rigid.

"Hi, stranger," said Karen, gently, looking into my eyes.

"Hi," I replied. And I smiled, doubting it was easy to tell a forced smile from a real one with these artificial faces.

"That was…" she said, trailing off, seeking a word. "That was
fine
."

"Really?"

She nodded. "I never used to come during intercourse. It took … um, you know."

She made a contented sound. "There must be some women working on Immortex's body-design team."

I was happy for her. But I also knew that the old saying was true. Sex didn't happen between the legs; it happened between the ears.

"What about you?" asked Karen. "How are you doing?"

"It's just…" I trailed off. "It's, ah, it's going to take some getting used to."