Red Planet Blues

by Robert J. Sawyer

  Rory spluttered in a mechanical way. I looked at Van Dyke. “Those mines were passive protection,” I said, “and you planted them long ago. But when you learned that Denny O’Reilly’s granddaughter was coming to Mars, you decided you had to take active steps, right?”

  Van Dyke said nothing. I let out a theatrical sigh. “You’re not getting how this works, Billy-boy. I ask you questions, you answer—or you die. It’s really not a difficult concept.”

  Van Dyke was looking not at me but at the wall where a freeze-frame of the deepscan of Rory was still being displayed. I suppose it galled Van Dyke that Rory could have comfortably taken the scanner’s radiation forever, when it was radiation exposure that had given Van Dyke cancer. But he said nothing.

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll tell you. You knew Denny O’Reilly had a mistress whose last name was Takahashi, of course. And you work for InnerSystem Lines—you get to see the passenger manifests for all their ships; you check them each time you return to Earth. When you saw there was a Reiko Takahashi booked to come to Mars, you got curious. It didn’t take much digging to find out who she was. And, well, a collector of one sort knows collectors of other sorts: she’d doubtless made inquiries about selling the only extant copy of her father’s diary—and you figured it might note the location of the Alpha. Couldn’t have something like that kicking around. And so you sent in the clones.”

  “They’re not clones,” Van Dyke snapped.

  “Work with me,” I replied. “You’ve spent most of the last thirty-plus years on ice. Physically, you’re—what?—thirty? Thirty-two?”

  Van Dyke glared at me defiantly for a moment, and I raised the gun higher. “Thirty-eight,” he said at last. And then, acknowledging that he didn’t even look that old despite the ravages of cancer, he added, “I stay out of the sun.”

  “I guess it’s a good deal for InnerSystem Lines,” said Rory. “Your training stays fresh. From your point of view, it’s been only a couple of years since you first started your job. You just thaw out for a few days or weeks between each journey, while this ship is prepared for its next voyage.”

  “I usually don’t even bother coming out of deep freeze here on Mars,” Van Dyke said. “When I do come back to living here, I’m going to come back in style.”

  “You’re going to transfer,” I said.

  Van Dyke snorted.

  “What?” I said.

  “Like I would ever do that.”

  “But that’s the cure for cancer. Hell, that’s the cure for everything.”

  “No,” said Van Dyke. “It isn’t—but there will be a cure for cancer.”

  “That’s what they’ve been saying forever,” said Pickover. “But it seems like it’s always twenty years in the future.”

  “The are making progress,” Van Dyke said. “I check, every time I come out of hibernation. I’m guessing it’s just ten years off now . . .”

  “And if you can stay on ice for most of that time,” I said, “you can get the cure.” I shook my head. “But why not just transfer? I know it was hellishly expensive back when you were first diagnosed, but—”

  “That’s not the reason.”

  I frowned and it came to me. “Lakshmi—the writer-in-residence here—told me that you’re devoutly religious. Is that why you haven’t transferred?”

  “Transferring,” he said. “Such crap. It’s not the same person.”

  Rory tilted his head to look at the man who’d been slicing him open. “People feel differently about it now.”

  “God doesn’t,” said Van Dyke.

  Rory couldn’t dispute that and so he fell silent.

  “And what are you going to do when they find a cure?” I asked. “When you’re well again?”

  “Go fly a kite.”

  “Okay. I’ll tell you. Weingarten and O’Reilly promised you a share of the proceeds from the Alpha. And you want what you think is coming to you. When you’re well, you’re going to work that claim.”

  “And you’re out to stop anyone who might exploit it first,” said Rory.

  “Hence hiring the thugs with Dazzling Don Hutchison’s face,” I added. But then I found myself taking a step backward. “No,” I said. “No, wait a minute. You didn’t hire those guys.” The word “skytop” was echoing in my head—the decades-old slang Tres had used. “Christ, you are those other guys. You’re—my God—you’re all three of them. You have transferred. That’s why Tres called you ‘Actual’—you’re the actual Willem Van Dyke, and they’re copies.”

  Van Dyke looked like he was going to deny it. But someone who had gone to such extraordinary lengths to stay alive doubtless had a certain appreciation for what my Smith & Wesson could do to him. “I’ve made proxies, that’s all,” he said, in his thin, disease-ravaged voice. “I’m the real me; I’m the one with the soul. Those are just knockoffs. I made a deal with the guy who runs NewYou here to produce them in secret.”

  “Horatio Fernandez?” Rory asked.

  “No, no. His name is—”

  “Joshua Wilkins,” I supplied.

  “That’s him. Nasty man, but he could be bought. I had him create the three Dazzling Dons a couple of years ago.”

  “It’s illegal to make multiple versions of the same person,” Rory said. “It’s obscene to do so.”

  “They were disposable—and they aren’t people.”

  “What do they think about that?” I asked.

  “Same thing I do, of course.”

  “Why three guys who look the same?”

  Van Dyke lifted his eyebrows as if it were obvious. “To remind them that they aren’t real people. They’re ersatz; interchangeable; disposable.”

  I nodded. “And I bet they were supposed to be each other’s alibis—one would be seen in public while the others did whatever needed to be done to protect the Alpha; they were never meant to all be seen in the same place at the same time. But then one of them was shut down, and so you figured a bigger force was needed next time.”

  And that explained why Tres had rushed Huxley, even though Mac had told him they had a broadband disruptor. Tres was probably as ignorant of what one could do as Willem Van Dyke had been; they all had minds three decades out-of-date.

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  “Where?”

  “Prison, ultimately, I imagine.”

  “I’m not going to jail,” Van Dyke said.

  “No? You roughed me up, shot Dr. Pickover, and then kidnapped him and Miss Takahashi with the intention of murdering them.”

  “I did no such thing. Uno, Dos, and Tres did all that, not me. And Tres is deactivated, and Uno and Dos are already in police custody.”

  “You masterminded it all.”

  “You’d have a hard time proving that.”

  I stole a line from Mudge the computer. “Be that as it may.”

  “Regardless,” said Rory, “you booby-trapped the Alpha.”

  “Even if I did—and I admit nothing—that’s outside the police’s jurisdiction.”

  I gestured with the gun. “Walk.” I picked up my helmet and got him out into the brightly lit corridor, followed by me and then Rory. I continued to speak: “If I were you, I’d do a deal with the police. You said it yourself: you’ve only got a couple of years left. Don’t waste them in court. Cop a plea, pay a fine, forget about the Alpha, and get back to being on ice—and, who knows, maybe someday they will find a cure for cancer.”

  The corridor switched from carpeted to uncarpeted as we approached the airlock, and our six footfalls were now making a fair bit of racket.

  The airlock door was closed. I wondered how Mac had managed to get through; there’s no way he could have crammed himself and the two meese in all at once. It was a puzzle in logic—the kind Juan Santos enjoyed.

  There were also three of us, but there was no reason we had to all go through at once. It was a toss of a coin whether Rory should exit first, or Van Dyke and I should. Of course, Van Dyke needed to get into a surfac
e suit to do so, but there was a surface suit hanging by the door, and—

  Ah, and it had the name Jeff Albertson on it. Well, he was part of the crew.

  The light above the inner airlock door suddenly changed from green to red: someone was coming through from the other side. I supposed Mac could be returning, after having handed over the meese to other cops. Or it could be Bertha or someone else from the shipyard, or Beverly Kowalchuk or one of the local InnerSystem staff. Without knowing who it was, it seemed premature to get Van Dyke into a surface suit; maybe there was a moose out there named Cuatro, and having Van Dyke suited up would be playing right into his giant hands. “Don’t bother changing,” I said. “Not yet.”

  I held my gun in front of me with both hands and aimed it at the airlock door. It wasn’t long before the light above it changed back to green, the door popped open that fifteen centimeters to reveal the recessed handle, someone pulled the door aside the rest of the way, and—

  And a transfer with holovid star Krikor Ajemian’s face was standing there in front of us.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Berling?” I said, looking at the transfer framed in the airlock doorway. “Stuart Berling?”

  He scowled. “Lomax? What the hell are you doing here?” But then his gaze shifted to Willem Van Dyke, and his brown eyes went wide. “My God,” he said shaking his handsome head. “My God, it’s true. You haven’t aged a day.”

  “Do I know you?” Van Dyke replied. He gave no hint that he recognized the famous face in front of him, and, indeed, if he’d spent most of the last three decades on ice, he probably didn’t.

  “I’m Stu Berling,” the transfer said.

  Van Dyke spread his arms slightly. “Should I know you?”

  “I was on the—on this damned ship.”

  “When?”

  “Thirty years ago. The last time it sailed under the name—” He swallowed, then managed to get it out: “B. Traven.”

  “Oh,” said Van Dyke, softly.

  “I’d had questions about that for decades,” said Berling. “But now I’ve got money—and money buys answers. A guy at InnerSystem’s office here in New Klondike told me you were aboard. I couldn’t believe it—couldn’t believe you were still part of the crew after all these years.”

  “I don’t know who you are,” said Van Dyke.

  “I’m the one who woke you. During the flight. All those years ago.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  Berling seemed pissed that this was being disputed. “I am, damn you.”

  “I don’t know what that geeky kid—he was just eighteen or nineteen—grew up to look like, but you’re not him. You’re a damn transfer, a nothing.”

  Berling’s tone was venomous. “I’m more of a man than you ever were. It was four days before I was able to get past that madman, get to your hibernation chamber, wake you up. And you didn’t do a thing to stop him.”

  “There was nothing I could do,” said Van Dyke. “He had guns; I was unarmed.”

  “You were the backup bowman,” snapped Berling. “You were the only other crew member. You should have stopped him.”

  “I tried,” said Van Dyke. “That kid saw me try.”

  “You had smuggled land mines aboard,” said Berling.

  “The official report said it was Hogart Pierce, the primary bowman, who had done that.”

  “Pierce was dead,” said Berling. He gestured behind himself. “They shot him as he came out that airlock here on Mars. When they found the land mines, they said he’d been smuggling them for some client here. But it wasn’t him; it was you.”

  Van Dyke looked like he was going to utter a reflexive denial, so before he could, I asked Berling, “How’d you figure it out?”

  “Like I said, money unlocks things. I started digging into this.” He pointed at the scrawny man, but looked at me. “Van Dyke had come to Mars once before that hellish journey, did you know that?”

  “On Weingarten and O’Reilly’s second expedition,” I said.

  Berling nodded. “And why didn’t he come back on the third?”

  “He’d had a falling-out with Weingarten and O’Reilly,” I said, “over how to split profits, and—ah. As you greased enough palms to dig into Van Dyke’s past, you discovered—what? That he was a munitions expert? Former bomb-disposal guy?”

  “Black-market arms dealer,” said Berling.

  Van Dyke sneered, apparently offended by the term. “My expertise was in putting high-powered buyers in touch with those who had things of great value to sell. That’s why Simon and Denny brought me aboard . . . literally.”

  “But then they double-crossed you,” I said. “Or you double-crossed them.”

  Van Dyke said nothing.

  “And, my God,” I said, taking a half step backward. “You—God, yes, of course! You sabotaged their ascent stage on the third expedition. You couldn’t have used the same model of land mine to do it—those were introduced after that ship left Earth. But an earlier model would have worked just as well—or some other explosive you had access to, as an arms dealer. You killed Simon Weingarten.”

  “And Denny O’Reilly,” said Berling.

  “No,” I said, “but only because Weingarten marooned O’Reilly here.” Berling looked surprised at this bit of news, but before he could speak, I went on. “So you’re a murderer,” I said to Van Dyke. “No wonder you’re in no hurry to meet your maker.”

  “You could have halted the insanity,” Berling said, also to Van Dyke. Pickover, wisely, was staying out of all this.

  “No, I couldn’t!” Van Dyke shouted at him. “The land mines were locked in a cargo hold; there was no way to get at them during the flight.”

  “You could have detonated them by remote control,” said Berling.

  “That would have blown up the ship!”

  “It would have stopped him.”

  “It would have killed us all.”

  “It would have stopped him.” Berling was reaching his boiling point; he looked like he was going to explode.

  “Stuart . . .” I said gently.

  He wheeled on me. “That madman abused us. He tortured us. And Van Dyke could have stopped it. He could have stopped him. Instead it went on for another two months. Two months before we reached Mars, two months of horrific abuse.”

  “I’m sorry,” Van Dyke said.

  “Sorry!” shouted Berling. “That’s not enough. I can’t go home. I can’t go back to Earth. I’m rich now—but there’s nothing to spend it on here. I could never lock myself aboard another spaceship for months. And it’s your fault.” He didn’t take a deep breath; he couldn’t. But he did stop and look around—and then he shuddered. “Right over there—right down that hallway? See? That’s where he first . . . where he first . . .”

  “Stuart,” I said again, as gently as I could. “It was thirty years ago.”

  “It’s not thirty years for me! I relive it over and over again.”

  “I am sorry,” Van Dyke said again. “There really was nothing I could do, and—”

  Berling moved with a transfer’s speed, and with the same violent temper I’d experienced from him at Ye Olde Fossil Shoppe. He leapt forward, landing less than half a meter from Van Dyke, and he rammed Van Dyke back against the wall—hard.

  Maybe a healthy man could have taken it. And, of course, if this Van Dyke had been one of his transfer copies, he’d have survived it easily. But he wasn’t—and he didn’t. Berling’s open palm crushed Van Dyke’s chest. Berling took a step back, a look of horror on his face—as dramatic as a transfer’s expression could get. “Oh, God . . .” he said.

  Van Dyke crumpled to the floor. I rushed in and felt for a pulse. “His heart’s stopped.”

  “Oh, God . . .” Berling said again, very softly.

  I stretched Van Dyke out on his back and placed hands over his sternum to start chest compressions, but—

  But his sternum was caved in and it felt as though the heart beneath it had been crushed. The
re was nothing to lose by this point, and so I did the compressions, but I could feel bone breaking further and an appalling squishiness beneath it all.

  “Oh, God . . .” Berling said for a third time. “I didn’t mean—I didn’t want . . .” His jaw dropped. “I—I just wanted to talk to him.”

  “You killed that man,” said Rory, speaking at last, his voice faint.

  “I—I’m sorry. I—”

  Rory did a series of body and facial movements that I guess were akin to taking a deep breath; he was clearly composing himself, and thinking about what to say. “All right, okay, I understand that you were a victim of abuse, but . . . but he wasn’t the abuser, and . . .” He paused and shook his mechanical head slightly. “I’m sorry, you poor blighter, but you must know that even the NKPD won’t be able to turn a blind eye to your killing him. InnerSystem is a division of Slapcoff Interplanetary; they’ll demand to know what happened to their crew member, and the police will have to investigate.”

  Berling spun on his heel. I’d seen biologicals take hostages before: they often put an arm around someone’s neck from behind—but even a broken neck could be repaired on a transfer. Instead, Berling had reached around from behind to clasp Pickover’s forehead. His other arm had grabbed one of Rory’s own just below the elbow. He propelled the paleontologist into the airlock.

  “Don’t take him,” I said. “Take me. I’m the better hostage—you can easily overpower me.”

  “No dice,” said Berling. “The police have that disruptor thing. They won’t dare use it on me so long as I’m next to this guy.”

  “Alex . . .” said Rory, pleadingly.

  Berling squeezed, and I saw indentations, like the beginning of finger holes for a bowling ball, appear in Rory’s forehead. “Shut up!” snapped Berling. Rory did so. Berling released his grip on Rory’s arm just long enough to pull the inner airlock door closed. There were a couple of minutes until the cycling process would finish, so I went down on one knee next to Van Dyke to see if there was anything at all that could be done, but he was gone.

  I put on my fishbowl. The light above the airlock door turned green: Berling and Pickover had exited and were presumably now making their way down the ramp to the ground. Neither of them needed to eat or drink, and they could go months without charging up; my guess was that Berling would drag Rory out into the Martian desert. Of course, Rory still had a tracking chip in him, unbeknownst to Berling. But it would be better to stop them on the open planitia, rather than let them get somewhere that could be defended.