Red Planet Blues

by Robert J. Sawyer

  Suddenly the simulacrum’s eyes opened. “Wow,” said a voice that was the same as the one I’d heard from the man next door. “That’s incredible.”

  “How do you feel, Mr. Hansen?” asked the male technician.

  “Fine. Just fine.”

  “Good,” the technician said. “There’ll be some settling-in adjustments, of course. Let’s just check to make sure all your parts are working . . .”

  “And there it is,” Cassandra said to me. “Simple as that.” She led me out of the room, back into the corridor, and closed the door behind us.

  “Fascinating.” I pointed at the left-hand door. “When do you take care of the original?”

  “That’s already been done. We do it in the chair.”

  I stared at the closed door and I like to think I suppressed my shudder enough so that Cassandra was unaware of it. “All right. I guess I’ve seen enough.”

  Cassandra looked disappointed. “Are you sure you don’t want to look around some more?”

  “Why? Is there anything else worth seeing?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Cassandra. “It’s a big place. Everything on this floor, everything downstairs . . . everything in the basement.”

  I blinked. “You’ve got a basement?” Almost no Martian buildings had basements; the permafrost layer was very hard to dig through.

  “Yes,” she said. She paused, then looked away. “Of course, no one ever goes down there; it’s just storage.”

  “I’ll have a look,” I said.

  And that’s where I found him.

  He was lying behind some large storage crates, face down, a sticky pool of machine oil surrounding his head. Next to him was a stubby excimer-powered jackhammer, the kind many fossil hunters had for removing surface material. And next to the jackhammer was a piece of good old-fashioned paper. On it, in block letters, was written, “I’m so sorry, Cassie. It’s just not the same.”

  It’s hard to commit suicide, I guess, when you’re a transfer. Slitting your wrists does nothing significant. Poison doesn’t work and neither does drowning. But Joshua-never-anything-else-at-all-anymore Wilkins had apparently found a way. From the looks of it, he’d leaned back against the rough cement wall and, with his strong artificial arms, had held up the jackhammer, placing its bit against the center of his forehead. And then he’d pressed down on the jackhammer’s twin triggers, letting the unit run until it had managed to pierce through his titanium skull and scramble the material of his artificial brain. When his brain died, his thumbs let up on the triggers, and he dropped the jackhammer, then tumbled over himself. His head had twisted sideways when it hit the concrete floor. Everything below his eyebrows was intact; it was clearly the same reptilian face Cassandra Wilkins had shown me.

  I headed up the stairs and found Cassandra, who was chatting in her animated style with another customer.

  “Cassandra,” I said, pulling her aside. “Cassandra, I’m very sorry, but . . .”

  She looked at me, her green eyes wide. “What?”

  “I’ve found your husband. And he’s dead.”

  She opened her pretty mouth, closed it, then opened it again. She looked like she might fall over, even with gyroscopes stabilizing her. “My . . . God,” she said at last. “Are you . . . are you positive?”

  “Sure looks like him.”

  “My God,” she said again. “What . . . what happened?”

  No nice way to say it. “Looks like he killed himself.”

  A couple of Cassandra’s coworkers had come over, wondering what all the commotion was about. “What’s wrong?” asked one of them—the same Miss Takahashi I’d seen earlier.

  “Oh, Reiko,” said Cassandra. “Joshua is dead!”

  Customers were noticing what was going on, too. A burly flesh-and-blood man, with short black hair, a gold stud in one ear, and arms as thick around as most men’s legs, came across the room; he clearly worked here. Reiko Takahashi had already drawn Cassandra into her arms—or vice versa; I’d been looking away when it had happened—and was stroking Cassandra’s artificial hair. I let the burly man do what he could to calm the crowd, while I used my wrist phone to call Mac and inform him of Joshua Wilkins’s suicide.

  FOUR

  Detective Dougal McCrae of New Klondike’s Finest arrived about twenty minutes later, accompanied by two uniforms. “How’s it look, Alex?” Mac asked.

  “Not as messy as some of the biological suicides I’ve seen,” I said. “But it’s still not a pretty sight.”

  “Show me.”

  I led Mac downstairs. He read the note without picking it up.

  The burly man soon came down, too, followed by Cassandra Wilkins, who was holding her artificial hand to her artificial mouth.

  “Hello, again, Mrs. Wilkins,” Mac said, moving to interpose himself between her and the prone form on the floor. “I’m terribly sorry, but I’ll need you to make an official identification.”

  I lifted my eyebrows at the irony of requiring the next of kin to actually look at the body to be sure of who it was, but that’s what we’d gone back to with transfers. Privacy laws prevented any sort of ID chip or tracking device being put into artificial bodies. In fact, that was one of the many incentives to transfer: you no longer left fingerprints or a trail of identifying DNA everywhere you went.

  Cassandra nodded bravely; she was willing to accede to Mac’s request. He stepped aside, a living curtain, revealing the synthetic body with the gaping head wound. She looked down at it. I’d expected her to quickly avert her eyes, but she didn’t; she just kept staring.

  Finally, Mac said, very gently, “Is that your husband, Mrs. Wilkins?”

  She nodded slowly. Her voice was soft. “Yes. Oh, my poor, poor Joshua . . .”

  Mac stepped over to talk to the two uniforms, and I joined them. “What do you do with a dead transfer?” I asked. “Seems pointless to call in the medical examiner.”

  By way of answer, Mac motioned to the burly man. The man touched his own chest and raised his eyebrows in the classic “Who, me?” expression. Mac nodded again. The man looked left and right, like he was crossing some imaginary road, and then came over. “Yeah?”

  “You seem to be the senior employee here,” said Mac. “Am I right?”

  The man had a Hispanic accent. “Horatio Fernandez. Joshua was the boss, but I’m senior technician.” Or maybe he said, “I’m Señor Technician.”

  “Good,” said Mac. “You’re probably better equipped than we are to figure out the exact cause of death.”

  Fernandez gestured theatrically at the synthetic corpse, as if it were—well, not bleedingly obvious but certainly apparent.

  Mac shook his head. “It’s just a bit too pat,” he said, his voice lowered conspiratorially. “Implement at hand, suicide note.” He lifted his shaggy orange eyebrows. “I just want to be sure.”

  Cassandra had drifted over without Mac noticing, although of course I had. She was listening in.

  “Yeah,” said Fernandez. “Sure. We can disassemble him, check for anything else that might be amiss.”

  “No,” said Cassandra. “You can’t.”

  “I’m afraid it’s necessary,” said Mac, looking at her. His Scottish brogue always put an edge on his words, but I knew he was trying to sound gentle.

  “No,” said Cassandra, her voice quavering. “I forbid it.”

  Mac’s tone got a little firmer. “You can’t. I’m required to order an autopsy in every suspicious case.”

  Cassandra opened her mouth to say something more, then apparently thought better of it. Horatio moved closer to her and put a hulking arm around her small shoulders. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll be gentle.” And then his face brightened a bit. “In fact, we’ll see what parts we can salvage—give them to somebody else; somebody who couldn’t afford such good stuff if it were new.” He smiled beatifically. “It’s what Joshua would have wanted.”

  * * *

  The next day, I was sitting in my office, loo
king out the small window with its cracked pane. The dust storm had ended. Out on the surface, rocks were strewn everywhere, like toys on a kid’s bedroom floor. My phone played “Luck Be a Lady,” and I looked at it in anticipation, hoping for a new case; I could use the solars. But the ID said NKPD. I told the device to accept the call, and a little picture of Mac’s face appeared on my wrist. “Hey, Alex,” he said. “Come by the station, would you?”

  “What’s up?”

  The micro-Mac frowned. “Nothing I want to say over open airwaves.”

  I nodded. Now that the Wilkins case was over, I didn’t have anything better to do anyway. I’d only managed about seven billable hours, damn it all, and even that had taken some padding.

  I walked into the center along Ninth Avenue, passing filthy prospectors, the aftermath of a fight in which some schmuck in a pool of blood was being tended to by your proverbial hooker-with-the-heart-of-gold, and a broken-down robot trying to make its way along with only three of its four legs working properly.

  I entered the lobby of the police station, traded quips with the ineluctable Huxley, and was admitted to the back.

  “Hey, Mac,” I said. “What’s up?”

  “Morning, Alex,” Mac said, rolling the R in “Morning.” “Come in; sit down.” He spoke to his desk terminal and turned its monitor around so I could see it. “Have a look at this.”

  I glanced at the screen. “The report on Joshua Wilkins?”

  Mac nodded. “Look at the section on the artificial brain.”

  I skimmed the text until I found that part. “Yeah?” I said, still not getting it.

  “Do you know what ‘baseline synaptic web’ means?”

  “No, I don’t. And you didn’t either, smart-ass, until someone told you.”

  Mac smiled a little, conceding that. “Well, there were lots of bits of the artificial brain left behind. And that big guy at NewYou—Fernandez, remember?—he really got into this forensic stuff and decided to run it through some kind of instrument they’ve got there. And you know what he found?”

  “What?”

  “The brain stuff—the raw material inside the artificial skull—was pristine. It had never been imprinted.”

  “You mean no scanned mind had ever been transferred into that brain?”

  Mac folded his arms across his chest and leaned back in his chair. “Bingo.”

  I frowned. “But that’s not possible. I mean, if there was no mind in that head, who wrote the suicide note?”

  Mac lifted those shaggy eyebrows of his. “Who indeed?” he said. “And what happened to Joshua Wilkins’s scanned consciousness?”

  “Does anyone at NewYou but Fernandez know about this?”

  Mac shook his head. “No, and he’s agreed to keep his mouth shut while we continue to investigate. But I thought I’d clue you in, since apparently the case you were on isn’t really closed—and, after all, if you don’t make money now and again, you can’t afford to bribe me for favors.”

  I nodded. “That’s what I like about you, Mac. Always looking out for my best interests.”

  * * *

  Perhaps I should have gone straight to see Cassandra Wilkins and made sure we both agreed that I was back on the clock, but I had some questions I wanted answered first. And I knew just who to turn to. Juan Santos was the city’s top computer expert. I’d met him during a previous case, and we’d recently struck up a small-f friendship—we both shared the same taste in Earth booze, and he wasn’t above joining me at some of New Klondike’s sleazier saloons to get it. I called him and we arranged to meet at The Bent Chisel, a wretched little bar off Fourth Avenue, in the sixth concentric ring of buildings. The bartender was a surly man named Buttrick, a biological who had more than his fair share of flesh, and blood as cold as ice. He wore a sleeveless gray shirt and had a three-day growth of salt-and-pepper beard. “Lomax,” he said, acknowledging my entrance. “No broken furniture this time, right?”

  I held up three fingers. “Scout’s honor.”

  Buttrick held up one finger.

  “Hey,” I said. “Is that any way to treat one of your best customers?”

  “My best customers,” said Buttrick, polishing a glass with a ratty towel, “pay their tabs.”

  “Yeah,” I said, stealing a page from Sergeant Huxley’s Guide to Witty Repartee. “Well.” I made my way to a booth at the back. Both waitresses here were topless. My favorite, a cute brunette named Diana, soon came over. “Hey, babe,” I said.

  She leaned in and gave me a peck on the cheek. “Hi, honey.”

  The low gravity on Mars was kind to figures and faces, but Diana was still starting to show her forty years. She had shoulder-length brown hair and brown eyes, and was quite pleasantly stacked, although like most long-term Mars residents, she’d lost a lot of the muscle mass she’d come here with. We slept together pretty often but were hardly exclusive.

  Juan Santos came in, wearing a black T-shirt and black jeans. He was almost as tall as me, but nowhere near as broad-shouldered; in fact, he was pretty much your typical pencil-necked geek. And like many a pencil-necked geek, he kept setting his sights higher than he should. “Hi, Diana!” he said. “I, um, I brought you something.”

  Juan was carrying a package wrapped in loose plastic sheeting, which he handed to her.

  “Thank you!” she said with enthusiasm before she’d even opened it; I didn’t know a lot about Diana’s past, but somewhere along the line, someone had taught her good manners. She removed the plastic sheeting, revealing a single, long-stemmed white rose.

  Diana actually squealed. Flowers are rare on Mars; those few fields we had were mostly given over to growing either edible plants or genetically modified things that helped scrub the atmosphere. She rewarded Juan with a kiss right on the lips, and that seemed to please him greatly.

  I ordered a Scotch on the rocks; they normally did that with carbon dioxide ice here. Juan asked for whiskey. I watched him watching Diana’s swinging hips as she headed off to get our drinks. “Well, well, well,” I said, as he finally slid into the booth opposite me. “I didn’t know you had a thing for her.”

  He smiled sheepishly. “Who wouldn’t?” I said nothing, which Juan took as an invitation to go on. “She hasn’t said yes to a date yet, but she promised to let me read some of her poetry.”

  I kept my tone even. “Lucky you.” It seemed kind not to mention that Diana and I were going out this weekend, so I didn’t. But I did say, “So, how does a poet sneeze?”

  “I don’t know, how does a poet sneeze?”

  “Haiku!”

  “Don’t quit your day job, Alex.”

  “Hey,” I said, placing a hand over my heart, “you wound me. Down deep, I’m a stand-up comic.”

  “Well,” said Juan, “I always say people should be true to their innermost selves, but . . .”

  “Yeah? What’s your innermost self?”

  “Me?” Juan’s eyebrows moved up. “I’m pure genius, right to the very core.”

  I snorted and Diana reappeared to give us our drinks. We thanked her, and she departed, Juan again watching her longingly as she did so.

  When she’d disappeared, he turned back to look at me, and said, “What’s up?” His face consisted of a wide forehead, long nose, and receding chin; it made him look like he was leaning forward even when he wasn’t.

  I took a swig of my drink. “What do you know about transferring?”

  “Fascinating stuff,” said Juan. “Thinking of doing it?”

  “Maybe someday.”

  “You know, it’s supposed to pay for itself now within three mears, because you no longer have to pay life-support tax after you’ve transferred.”

  I was in arrears on that, and didn’t like to think about what would happen if I fell much further behind. “That’d be a plus,” I said. “What about you? You going to do it?”

  “Sure, someday—and I’ll go the whole nine yards: enhanced senses, super strength, the works. Plus I want to live forever;
who doesn’t? ’Course, my dad won’t like it.”

  “Your dad? What’s he got against it?”

  Juan snorted. “He’s a minister.”

  “In whose government?”

  “No, no. A minister. Clergy.”

  “I didn’t know there were any of those left, even on Earth,” I said.

  “He is on Earth; back in Santiago. But, yeah, you’re right. Poor old guy still believes in souls.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Really?”

  “Yup. And because he believes in souls, he has a hard time with this idea of transferring consciousness. He would say the new version isn’t the same person.”

  I thought about what the supposed suicide note said. “Well, is it?”

  Juan rolled his eyes. “You, too? Of course it is! Look, sure, people used to get all worked up about this when the process first appeared, decades ago, but now just about everyone is blasé about it. NewYou should take a lot of credit for that; they’ve done a great job of keeping the issue uncluttered—I’m sure they knew if they’d done otherwise, there’d have been all sorts of ethical debates, red tape, and laws constraining their business. But they’ve avoided most of that by providing one, and only one, service: moving—not copying, not duplicating, but simply moving—a person’s mind to a more durable container. Makes the legal transfer of personhood and property a simple matter, ensures that no one gets more than one vote, and so on.”

  “And is that what they really do?” I asked. “Move your mind?”

  “Well, that’s what they say they do. ‘Move’ is a nice, safe, comforting word. But the mind is just software, and since the dawn of computing, software has been moved from one computing platform to another by copying it over, then immediately erasing the original.”

  “But the new brain is artificial, right? How come we can make super-smart transfers, but not super-smart robots or computers?”