by Dave Smeds
“I recognize the approach,” she said pointedly. “I’m happy that you and your reef gorillas have done so well for yourselves, but I really don’t need any company right now.”
“I was only—”
She pressed four slim fingers against his bare chest. “I know what you were doing, Master Sheldon. I’m not the same fool I was a hundred years ago. Sorry.”
Louis stood anchored in place by the utter dismissal in her tone. She continued her tour into the cargo hold.
Blinking, shaking his head, Louis stalked out of the exhibit, and out of the hotel. He claimed an empty seat in an extreme corner of the beachfront patio, gave the waiter the coding for his favorite shitkicker Scotch — a single malt from a tiny village on the Isle of Skye — and settled back in the hope that the liquor would defuse his murderous frame of mind.
His mood only grew worse. Buried in his thoughts, he nearly swallowed an ice cube. A hundred years he’d waited. He’d become the fastest rising master of marine biology, candidate for adept in half the usual time. He’d refined the lines, the moves, the look. Right now, he could wander down to the beach and find twenty women eager to have him.
He would have made her feel good. She would’ve forgotten all about that wimp Bernd Hauser. She would have realized she’d made a mistake a century back, and he’d no longer have to acknowledge that, on one unique occasion, a woman had actually dumped him.
The weekend’s success, the career-driven euphoria, drowned in the Scotch. It had become an incomplete success.
He was still brooding an hour later when the object of his thoughts strolled by in the distance, following a palm-lined path toward a small group of bungalows. His eyes smoldered as he tracked her. She disappeared into the third bungalow.
Even the woman’s housing arrangements insulted him. Apprentices, journeymen, and masters like him had to squeeze into the hotel. Only maestros and adepts received detached dwellings. Without uttering a word, Veronica had just demonstrated that she was part of the elite, while he, in spite of his supreme efforts, lingered down in the struggling masses of this crowded planet of immortals.
Her own lonely dwelling . . .
A smile took hold of Louis’s lips and winched up the corners until he would have shamed a circus clown.
o0o
“Bernd!” Louis called. Sunset was casting long shadows out over the gulf as a large group of conference attendees converged on the hotel ballroom for a dinner business meeting. Louis stepped up to his colleague and placed a hand on his shoulder.
“Hello again, Louis. Anything I can do for you?”
“Actually, there is. Are you going on the night dive out at the shoals?”
“Yes, I am.”
Louis smiled, inwardly and out. “Good. If you see Hank Sauls out there, tell him I’m sorry I couldn’t make it. I decided I needed more time to prepare for my speech tomorrow.”
“Sure thing. Glad to help.”
“Thanks.”
As Louis removed his hand from Bernd’s shoulder, he lifted away a stray hair that had lain there. After Louis found his seat at the banquet, he carefully placed the strand in a tiny inner pocket of his tuxedo, where it remained throughout the meal.
Louis left the business meeting early. He sequestered himself in his room and ordered the Link to refuse all calls.
As in all the better hotels, the bed also served as a full-sized nanoplayer, programmed to generate towels, toiletries, and a broad selection of attire. Louis set the hair he had taken from Bernd in the center of the mattress.
On the underside of the bedframe, where it was out of the way of guests but still readily accessible to the hotel’s staff, he found the programming port.
Lying on the floor, staring at the blinking ready light of the device and its minuscule key pad, he hesitated. He was one action away from a major crime.
If he proceeded and got caught, he wouldn’t be facing mere fines or imprisonment. They’d sentence him to a personality remorph. Like a retardate or a psychotic, he’d have his chemical levels balanced, his neural circuits redesigned. Worse, they’d tinker with the identity genome. He’d emerge “healthy and well-adjusted” according to the technicians in charge of the procedure, but he would not be the same person who went in. He’d be like all those hapless political victims back in the days before the passage of the Preservation of Identity Act.
He drew in a breath. With one command from him, the bed scanned Bernd’s hair for its genetic information. After a few considerably more complex instructions, Louis lay down and let the player go to work on him.
Louis’s skin began to ripple. A hazel tone washed away the blue of his irises. His spine stretched, adding an inch to his height. He writhed, desperate to scratch, but before his willpower gave out, his flesh grew quiescent. The strange creak in his bones faded. He stood up and looked into the mirror.
The very image of Bernd Hauser gazed back at him.
Almost. The nose was a little different, the hairline drawn into the beginnings of a widow’s peak. His morph was a clone of what Bernd would have looked like in early adulthood, without the customizations the man had overlaid upon it.
Not good enough. Louis called up Bernd’s entry in the Baker edition of Contemporary Marine Biologists and funneled the visual parameters into the programming port. He lay back down and within seconds, his nose thinned, his hairline moved forward, several moles disappeared, and his complexion evened out.
There. Louis checked repeatedly. Yes. He looked as much like Bernd as Bernd did.
A little more programming, and he wore a print shirt of the same style as those he’d seen on Bernd many times. All that was left was to unbutton it and leave it untucked, in accord with Bernd’s laidback approach to his attire.
He grinned at the image in the mirror. He wouldn’t get caught. It was as simple as that.
o0o
Louis lingered in the shadow of the palms that lined the walkway to Veronica’s bungalow. He watched her outline glide across the closed blinds of her window. Mosquitoes whined in bloodlust and frustration as they tried to penetrate his personal body shield. Other than the insects’ complaint, the only sound that reached his ears was the gentle rumble of the breakers against the nearby beach. No one was watching, and her silhouette indicated no companion in her quarters.
He strode to her door, and raised his hand to knock.
He savored the instant, knowing that this was the point when other men faltered. For him, the moment of commitment burned with a kiss almost as sweet as that of victory.
He tapped his knuckles lightly against the wood.
“Who is it?”
“It’s Bernd.”
Louis was deliciously aware of the pulse in his temples as he waited for her response. The very fact that she had not immediately told him to leave provided the opportunity for a thousand strategies.
He thought he heard the hum of a nanoplayer generating a garment. Seconds later, Veronica opened the door a body-width, and stood in the gap.
She wore a silk bathrobe. So — she did not want to be naked in front of Bernd Hauser, though she had no compunction about it in public that afternoon. Yet she positioned her body at an angle that permitted him an enticing view of her cleavage, and had chosen a style that made only a token effort at covering her thighs.
Vulnerable, cautious — but not inaccessible.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“Do you want me to leave?”
She pulled her lips inward, between her teeth, and let them out again, a nervous gesture that did not fit her perfect features. “No . . .”
“Can I come in?”
“I’m not sure your — Christine, is it? — would approve of you being here.”
“This is between you and me,” Louis said. “I . . . left some things unsaid.”
“Yes, you did,” she said, strain taking the breath from her voice. She inhaled suddenly, eyes watering. “You left a lot unsaid.”
; He reached out and cupped her neck. With one thumb, he stroked the soft, fine curls just behind her ear.
Her mouth parted. Her eyelids fluttered almost to closure.
“Let me come in,” he said.
Veronica laughed tonelessly, without mirth. She stood aside. “I am so spineless.”
Louis slid into the room. Veronica closed the door and turned to face him, shoulders slumped. The backed-up tears at last rolled down her cheeks.
Now, thought Louis. He had to move swiftly, take the initiative, before she considered longterm consequences, before logic overwhelmed her immediate need for emotional support.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry.” He spread his arms.
Like a fly giving herself to the spider, she drew within his reach and allowed him to wrap her up. His steely, masculine hands pressed the fabric of her bathrobe into the muscles of her back. She leaned against him, her breath shifting the hairs of his chest, between clavicle and nipple. She moaned at the touch of his fingers massaging their way down her spine.
“I need to know that you don’t hate me,” he said, making his voice crack, the way poor, guilty Bernd Hauser’s would have, had the real Bernd possessed the courage to utter those same words.
Veronica looked up. He tilted his head, until their mouths were poised barely far enough apart for her sentence to squeeze into the gap.
“Hating you is not the problem,” she said.
He let her bridge the space. Their lips united. Her tongue probed tentatively, seeking the assurance of familiarity. He kissed her back firmly, letting passion override telltale differences between his touch and that of the real Bernd.
Her bathrobe drifted open. With it went any other barrier between Louis and his goal.
o0o
Veronica lingered in the bed while Louis slipped into his clothes. She watched him as intently as if she were a cat, and he a canary flitting about its nest. The scrutiny bothered him. He had to remind himself not to button the shirt.
“You’re leaving already?” she asked.
Disappointment colored the words. He preferred to think that she was sorry to see him go, but in truth, those pensive eyebrows of hers had drawn together as soon as they’d finished making love.
No doubt Bernd would have talked more. Perhaps that was it. But Louis didn’t dare say too much, or she might see through the façade. He’d had what he’d come for. It was time to get the hell out of there, before she became suspicious and asked the Net who he really was.
“I promised Christine I’d call her tonight. She’s probably waiting already.”
Veronica dropped her glance to the floor. “Of course,” she said softly.
“I, uh . . .” Louis said, in his best imitation of Bernd’s indecisiveness.
“Don’t say it. Just go.” She rolled away from him, and did not see him smile as he made his exit.
o0o
Back in his quarters, Louis immediately lay down on the bed and tripped the programs he’d pre-set. His morph reverted to his normal one. His clothes became the tux he’d worn to the banquet. Reaching under the bed to the programming port, he erased every one of his entries from the buffer.
He did not neglect to place Bernd’s hair in the recycler and make sure it was deconstituted.
With luck, Veronica would never guess what had happened. But even if she did, just let her try to prove it. And then, remembering that he had a formal paper to deliver in the morning, he fell into deep, refreshing slumber.
o0o
The auditorium hummed with the babble of the audience as Louis approached the podium, taking the place of the earlier speaker. The assemblage applauded him and settled down to listen.
Louis scanned the room. A good crowd — large, attentive. He basked in it, and began orating.
“Many of you here today have some cause, now and then, to use a bit of paleontology in your work. Even if you don’t, I’m sure nearly all of you are aware of the aquatic ape concept. Sir Alister Hardy and Elaine Morgan’s theory that early man must have spent several million years in a largely marine environment encountered resistance when first proposed, but became doctrine once fossil confirmation was brought to light. The question has remained — just how much did this oceanside environment alter the primates we are descended from, and how fast? By the time our ancestors returned to inland Africa, how close were they to modern man?”
Louis felt the respectful attention. He released the words in careful, measured doses. “My team addressed this question using the increasingly popular Berliner Method. With the guidance of archaeogeneticist Mbebe Ongo, we created a small population of live apemen, just as they might have existed during the Pliocene drought, when diminishing primate habitats on the African continent forced them into the water, where they could find reliable safety and a plentiful source of food. With each pregnancy, we further manipulated genes in order to accelerate evolution, and have twice replaced the entire troop in order to make jumps in development.”
Raising his eyes from his notes, Louis paused.
She was out there. He had spotted her as if magnetically drawn. She was seated in the upper left quarter of the audience, quietly observing, listening. She did not react to his glance, but for just a brief moment, he faltered, and was forced to check his prepared speech.
“We’ve found, just as the theory predicted, that our reconstructions began to take on features typical of modern humans almost from the moment the species adopted the aquatic lifestyle, achieving an early version of Homo maritimus, or reef apes, in the equivalent of less than a million years. . . .”
When Louis next looked at Veronica Rizal, he did not stumble. She did not act like a woman hiding strong emotions. If anything, she seemed humble, the way she might look as if she’d only just realized what a watermark Louis had reached in his career, and was sorry she’d rejected his invitation the previous afternoon.
How perfect, he thought. He sailed through the remainder of the talk. The audience gave him the longest applause yet heard at the conference, and for the rest of his stay in Baja California, he rode a wave of professional and sexual triumph.
The next day, as he was leaving the conference, he failed to notice Veronica engaged in conversation with Bernd Hauser.
o0o
Helen Renault, Attorney-at-Law, considered increasing the intensity of her personal body shield, so tangible was the wave of anger coming from the woman whose virtual self sat on the other side of the desk.
“Veronica,” Helen began slowly. “It’s going to be hard to get a conviction.”
“What do you mean? He was there in my room that night. The Net will confirm that.”
The lawyer looked down. “Master Sheldon isn’t denying that. But according to his attorney, he was there by your invitation, and whatever happened occurred with your full consent and cooperation.”
“What?!”
If Veronica had been there in the flesh, rather than as a transmitted image, Helen would have taken her hands in hers and held them. “I want you to think very hard, before we’ve pressed charges, before it’s public. I want you to picture the scenario as the jury or the D.A. might see it.”
Veronica sank back in an invisible chair. Furrows rippled across her forehead. “Talk to me.”
“First, there’s your story: Sheldon impersonated your old lover and had sex with you under false pretenses.”
“You make it sound so incidental.”
“Let me finish,” Helen said. “On the other side is Sheldon’s story: You seemed interested in him, so he propositioned you and you accepted. After intercourse, he claims that you began to ask probing questions about his research, which he declined to answer. According to him, that made you angry, and you asked him to leave. Apparently he’s arguing that your anger prompted you to fabricate a rape and impersonation story.”
“Don’t you think that’s rather far-fetched?” Veronica countered.
Helen was perspiring, caught in a role she didn’t
want. Self-conscious, the lawyer sub-vocally cued her nanodocs to tone down her pores, even though Veronica couldn’t detect the odor while in virtual mode.
“Yes and no,” she replied. “It has been decades since you produced any truly significant research, Veronica. A good lawyer — and his is a maestro — might convince a jury that you wanted some sort of career boost out of Sheldon, and were desperate enough to seduce him, and, when that failed, to try to blackmail him with a rape case. You were known to be emotionally upset about your break-up with Bernd Hauser. An image could be constructed of an angry, unstable woman ready to lash out at a convenient target.”
Veronica opened her mouth, but closed it without speaking.
“We need something more than your word against his,” the attorney continued. “Remember, we have to utterly convince the jury that our version of the events is the truth; all Sheldon’s side has to do is raise ‘reasonable doubt.’”
“And you don’t think we can manage it,” Veronica said stiffly.
Helen coughed. “Well, first off, neither you nor Master Sheldon asked the Net to record your encounter at the time it occurred, so the privacy parameter remained in effect. There is no document of what went on that night, except for the Net’s location log. That proves both of you were in the bungalow, but it says nothing about what you did, or what either of you felt about those actions, and by design the log’s only accurate to the nearest three meters.”
“But we have the semen traces,” Veronica interjected.
“Yes. But the analysis came back showing Sheldon’s DNA pattern, not that of Bernd Hauser. That doesn’t support your claim that he was disguised.”
Veronica massaged her forehead, brows drawn tight. “He must not have altered his morph down to that level.”
“Let’s assume the jury believes that. And that they accept that the hair and particles of skin we retrieved from the bedding had been programmed to revert to their normal pattern upon being sloughed off. That’s sophisticated stuff. Ordinarily only someone licensed in cosmetology could pull it off.”
“You mean he had help?”