by Rich Horton
Waldo studied me, thinking that one over. Whatever he'd expected me to say, that wasn't it. Waldo was seated on his desk, which had gone soft beneath him in response. His arms were crossed, and his single, heavy eyebrow was pulled down in an almost comical frown. In his harrumphy way he said, “Rogue or authorized?"
"A little of both,” I answered, unsure what else to say about it.
Waldo digested that, and finally nodded. “Hmm. Humph. Yeah. One of those."
A bit of the tension went out of the room. The details must surely be unique, but Waldo had been a cop for a hundred years longer than I'd even been alive. He'd seen his share of weirdness, and understood that the law was gray. What cop didn't know that? The law was designed for assaults and robberies, angry neighbors fighting over the pruning of a tree or the disposition of its fruits. By definition, you couldn't legislate the unanticipated, and existing laws—sensible laws—sometimes yielded perverse or even contradictory results. Do we divide the child in two?
And in this age of plenty there just wasn't all that much thuggery. The sorts of things that had value anymore were not sorts of things you could steal a gunpoint, and anyway such obvious crimes were always solved, always punished. With enough decades behind them, even the most hardened criminals eventually got the message.
So what did that leave? Juvenile mischief, and the weirdness at the margins of the grown-up world. The need for cops and courtrooms would never go away.
"Why are you here?” Waldo asked with less hostility.
I tried on a half smile. “It seemed ... more polite than going directly to Pamela. I figured he'd go and see her. I knew he would. He's an archive copy from when that ... issue was relatively fresh."
"So why'd you print him?"
"Contractual obligation, I guess you'd say. I'll spare you the insipid details."
"Hmmph. Thanks. Are you going to get rid of him?"
I could only shrug. “I'm not sure I can, Waldo. He's defending another person's archive copy against exactly that procedure. Removing him would be a form of pre-trial tampering, and if his case prevails—which it very well might—then it's anyone's guess what my legal rights are. Pray for a wise judge."
Waldo didn't like that answer. “Really. How convenient. There's a little Carmine running around from the period of the restraining order—and believe me, you where nitwit back then—and he's got all the rights of being you and none of the responsibilities of being himself. He can bug my daughter all he likes, unless I file an updated order against you. Which I guess I'll just have to do."
And that made me angry, because the revival of a seventy-year old restraining order would look bad on my record. It would hurt my image, hurt my business, hurt my pride. And for what? “You know, Waldo, your darling Pamela wasn't exactly an innocent in all this. If there were courts of law for faithless lovers..."
"You were a nitwit, and your friends were nitwits, and you made her sad. The only surprise is that it took her two years to realize the fact. And like a shit, you refused to crawl back under your block. You just couldn't leave it alone. You wanted to own her. You tried buy her like a doll."
At that, in a wildly uncharacteristic gesture, I slammed the wall sideways with my fist, hard. “I wanted nothing of the kind, Deputy. Even now, you refuse to acknowledge my point. It was simple enough for a small town cop and his daughter to understand, if they put their minds to it. For years I licked the wounds she inflicted so casually. For years. Like an old tree, I got whole again only by growing around the scar. Burying it inside me, surrounded it with strong, healthy tissue. But the defect itself is permanent."
"Love always is,” Waldo lectured, as if to a child. “We all have our little scars. It doesn't give you any special rights. And just for your education, punk, you fix a tree by printing an undamaged copy. If that ‘wound’ of yours is so terrible, why do you keep it?"
"You've been in love, Waldo. You know why."
The old cop sighed and harrumphed. “I don't know where you crawled out from, pal, and I don't care, but understand: we keep the peace here in Jules Verne. You know how many arrests I've made this year? Six, and three of them were the same guy. You know how many times I've called the Constabulary in the past decade, to solve some capital crime of Queendom-wide importance? Zero."
"Congratulations."
Waldo answered with a mocking expression, and then a more seriously threatening one. “I may not have jurisdiction outside this crater, Mr. Douglas, but you've got five minutes to get your ass out of here before I throw it in jail. Don't let me catch you here again, ever."
And this was a strong statement indeed, because Waldo Red would never die, never grow old and retire. Never forgive a young man's trespasses.
Well, I had my own rights to worry about, and said so: “If you do that, or file an injunction of any kind, I'll sue for defamation. I'll make it stick, too."
And with that I stomped out, feeling in spite of everything that the visit had gone better than expected.
—
7.
Pamela, Read
—
Pamela herself, whom I visited next, surprised me by being a lot more understanding.
"Daddy called,” she said by way of introduction. “I heard about your little ... technical difficulties."
Her house was one of nine at the summit of Mt. Terror, on Antarctica's Ross Island overlooking both the volcano's active caldera and the Ross Sea coast, aglow in the lights of McMurdo City and, across the water, of Glacia and Victoria Land. It was nighttime here as well, in a place where night was winter, or in this case early spring. And Pamela's foyer, like many in cold climates, was poorly insulated on purpose, to discourage surprise visitors.
My wellcloth suit did the best it could, but it had been out of the sun for hours now, and its power reserves were getting low. It settled for swathing me in black velvet, lined with some crinkly, unbreathable superreflector that left my skin feeling hot and suffocated, even as my body heat bled away through my uncovered hands and head.
"You look cold,” Pamela said, ushering me in through her open doorway. “You want some coffee? Soup?"
"Spiced almond chowder,” I answered gratefully, following her inside. There was no such thing as a poorly furnished home in the Queendom of Sol, but there were copyrighted patterns available only to those with money, and there were expert decorators and geomancers who could customize a space to its owners with striking—and strikingly expensive—skill. And everyone had access to a fax machine, if not in their own houses and apartments then, by law, within forty paces of their door. But to fill a house with fax machines—I counted five in my first quick look around, including the one in the foyer—took resources. And the view, also not free, was spectacular.
"Looks like you're doing all right, here,” I said, while she stepped up to her dining room fax to fetch my soup. “I hope you don't mind my saying so."
"Not a bit,” she laughed. “But I'll be the first to admit, I got lucky. Matter programming is funny that way: sometimes you hit the right combination, and this substance you've just invented is gorgeous, and it's waterproof, and it's diamagnetic, and some construction outfit on Pluto is offering you cash up front and a ten percent share of their leasing profits."
"Sounds nice,” I told her, fighting to keep any deeper feelings at bay. For the moment, I was succeeding; it had been a long time, and seeing her now was more nostalgic than painful. “Theddy became a programmer, too, you know, but he doesn't live like this."
She smiled. “Theddy. My goodness, how is he?"
"In trouble,” I said.
"Well, that figures. I suppose you're representing him?"
"Yeah."
"That figures, too. As for my alleged wealth, don't be too jealous. It won't last. Unless I get lucky again, I'll have to sell this place in a few centuries. Maybe move back to farside, although they're still talking about evacuating the entire moon, and crushing it to boost the surface gravity. You can't go home agai
n, isn't that what they say?"
Thinking about that, I looked her over, studying my feelings as they unfolded. Things weren't the same as they had been long ago, that much was definite. Her mere presence no longer panicked me, made me stupid or impulsive. Which was probably just as well, although there was a part of me that would always miss feeling that way. You can't go home, indeed.
"That would be a shame,” I said, “destroying the moon like that. Where would all the shady people go?"
She could easily have taken that the wrong way, but she chose not to, and chuckled instead as she pulled my mug of steaming soup from the fax. “The shady people always find a place, Carbo. Isn't that what keeps you in business?"
"Well,” I admitted, “sort of. It's the rich shady people that can afford my services. The poor ones get their legal help from software, which is worth every penny of the nothing they pay for it."
"Their matter programming, too,” she said. And suddenly we were laughing together, just like old times. It felt good. Cleansing. If all our times had been like this...
"Look,” I told her, “I want to apologize for inflicting Young Me on you like that. I hope he didn't scare you."
"Not in the least. Actually, he was quite charming.” She handed me the soup, and I tasted it. It was good, and here too I sensed some vague tincture of money, some subtle designer flavor to which I myself had never been privy. And I was not exactly a poor man, nor a gustatorial simpleton.
"What did he do? What did he want?"
"The usual,” she laughed. “A bit of me for his collection."
Suddenly I found myself fighting down anger again, for the second time in a single morning. Because it wasn't funny, damn it. Not to me it wasn't. The request had seemed simple enough at the time. Pamela and I had archived ourselves at the height of our passion, wanting—literally—to preserve that glorious feeling for all eternity. Later, when things had soured, when we started fighting and she finally turned me out, I had asked her to revive that feeling. Not even in her own skin, necessarily. Couldn't she print out an alternate copy, an older, younger version who was still in love with Carmine Douglas? Wasn't that the whole point of the backup?
But apparently it wasn't, at least in her mind, and apparently I had pressed the point too firmly. Well, no “apparently” about it; love could make a man do stupid things, and no force in heaven or Earth could make him regret them afterward. In love especially, we behave as we must.
In any case, my defense had taken me all way to the Solar Court itself, where my stalking and harassment convictions were narrowly upheld. I was clever enough not to lose my license over it, but the court forbade me to have any contact with Pamela Red, or her friends and family, for three long decades. The mark would be on my record forever: Carmine Douglas, sexual deviant. What was funny about that?
"Look,” she said, catching my expression, “We were young. We applied our passion to each other, and when it didn't work out we applied our passion against each other. It's the oldest story in the world. I'm assuming we both got over this a long time ago, like good little grown-ups, so let's not start fighting now. Okay? I'm genuinely sorry, about all of it."
That stung too, its own way. “About all of it? You're sorry it even happened?"
And to my surprise, her face melted in a strange mix of amusement and dismay. “Sorry it happened? What ... What are you even talking about? We were fresh, we were new, we were burning with passion for the first time in our tiny little lives. What's the point of living forever if you only get to feel that way once? Carmine, Carbo, baby doll, it was the hottest fling of my life."
What came next made perfect sense, because if I'd ever had any willpower in the Pamela Red department, we wouldn't be standing there talking about it. And if she hadn't loved me—truly loved me with all her heart, at least for a while—I wouldn't have had anything to press her about, to get in trouble about. An explosion could not occur without heat. But it was one more bit of strangeness, and I honestly didn't know if there were any law or rule or ethical guideline being broken. Would society prevent me from hurling myself on this additional complication?
It hardly mattered. Yes, I tumbled into bed with her, and she with me. Heedless of the consequences, we remained there for three days, refusing all calls. And it was worth any price.
—
8.
Orders
—
When I finally got home, my head was clearer somehow. It was one thing to stir up ghosts from the past, but quite another to have them walking around spouting threats. But making peace with Pamela—making more than that!—put a different face on things. Anyway, I did what I should've done in the first place, which was to file a motion for Division of Self for Theodore Kaffner, and another for Carmine Douglas.
Divisions of Self—so-called twinnings—had a sparse but readily traceable case history, and seemed the most appropriate vehicle for dealing with this mess. True, no one had ever and attempted an involuntary twinning before. Generally, they were granted to individuals who had lost a genuine twin somewhere along the way, or who could, for whatever reason, prove some tangible need to divide themselves into two legally distinct individuals. Because they'd grown in different ways, and no longer believed they were compatible.
Angry Young Theddy's argument was quite different: that he should have the right to delete his later self and try his whole adult life over again. But if the older and younger Theddies were two different people, then this desire would be nonsense from a legal standpoint, and acting on it would be murder. Which, to my thinking, sounded about right.
And Young Carmine's position was different still: having been granted the flesh and breath of life, he simply wanted to continue. He didn't want to be erased, and truthfully neither would I, if our circumstances were reversed. And the law was supposed to mean what was right, right?
The next step was to file a temporary restraining order—actually four restraining orders—prohibiting the various Theddies and Carmines from harming one another, or having any sort of contact all outside a courtroom setting. We could send legal communiques to one another through the proper channels, and that was all. Sadly, this would be another mark on my own record, another opportunity for me to look like some sort of mad stalker, but since my name was on the order as both plaintiff and defendant, it would seem more strange than incriminating. And anyone researching my background that deeply would know, should know, that Strange is my middle name.
Then I did another thing I should've done right away, which was to call my parents and let them know what was happening. “Aren't you a bit old for shenanigans like this?” my father wanted to know.
"I'm beginning to think so,” I answered.
For good measure, I called Theddy's parents as well, and found to my mild surprise that Angry Young Theddy was actually staying there with them, having vacated his apartments in Denver. This of course forced me to cut the conversation short, but that was all right. The Kaffners were drunks and dreamers, with never all that much to say to me, nor I to them.
And since these orders were of the sort that could easily be handled by hypercomputer, the so-called Telejudges—I had a stack of bonded approvals in hand within a few minutes. The Telejudges of course demanded a flesh hearing, ten days hence, so a human judge could review the facts of the case and decide the long-term disposition of the orders, and of the humans tied up in them.
And that wasn't so hard, really. Strangeness is nothing more than the shock of the new: a thing never seen before, never felt or tasted or lived through. But strangeness by itself it didn't make this thing intractable, nor guarantee in any way that the future—the Theddies and Carmines and Pamelas of centuries hence, indeed all of society—would find them unusual. Indeed, to the extent that society took any notice of this case at all, it would be as one more precedent in the legal definition of identity. No big deal of all. Or so I reasoned at the time.
And so, somewhat anticlimactically, I found that my job wa
s complete. With those orders posted, there wasn't a fax machine in the Queendom that would reconverge the older and younger Theddies, or a door that would open for them, if the opening might place the two in the same room. My client was safe, and so was I. And I found, also to my surprise, that I was shaking with relief. How about that! This was another thing my job had going for it: no matter how long I did it, there was still this aura of excitement and danger and fresh discovery. Most especially when it was about me.
After that there was only one thing left to do: call my office fax machine and retrieve Theddy—the real, contemporary Theddy—from storage.
—
9.
Wine, Interrupted
—
My apartment at the time was a pseudopenthouse—its large balcony was roofed over but otherwise genuine, and the rooms themselves were on the 13th floor of a hundred story building. But the balcony's overhang was programmed to look like sky—an illusion so good that I myself sometimes forgot—while the apartment ceiling was a fiction of dormer vaults and skylights looking up at the other tall buildings as though the higher stories of my own did not exist. This was not an extravagance; the patterns had to be customized by experts and hypercomputers, but it only took an afternoon. A team from Sears-Roebuck had done it for less money than I made in a week. Why, hundreds of people in Denver alone had the exact same decor, probably an even dozen in that very building. But low-cost and cheapness were not the same thing, and most visitors found the effect both striking and laudable.
In this, Theddy Kaffner was no exception. He leaped from the fax all stiff with anxiety, but once I'd explained the situation to him, and handed him a glass of wine, the first thing he did was look around and say, “Jesus Christ. Nice place."
The fireplace was also an illusion—you couldn't jab it with the ornamental poker or wave your hand through the flames—but it looked perfect, and crackled just so, and gave off exactly the right amount of heat for a November evening that was suddenly, finally beginning to feel like fall. I faxed up some throw pillows, and the two of us sprawled in the firelight, chugging our drinks and laughing like we had in the good old days.