Robert Sawyer - Mindscan

“I—please don’t take this the wrong way—but in retrospect, I’m glad I started poor,” said Karen.

“I suppose it builds character,” I said. “But I didn’t ask to be rich. In fact, there were times I hated it, and everything my family stood for. Beer! Christ, where’s the social conscience in making beer?”

“But your family donated that library to the university, you said.”

“Sure. Buying immortality. It’s—”

I paused, and Karen looked at me expectantly.

After a moment, I shrugged again. “It’s exactly what I’ve just done, isn’t it?” I shook my head. “Ah, well. Anyway, it goes to your head sometimes, having all that money when you’re young. I, um, I was not the best person early on.”

“Paris the Heiress,” said Karen.

“Who?”

“Paris Hilton, granddaughter of the hotel magnate. You would have been just a toddler when she was briefly famous. She—well, I guess she was like you: inherited a fortune, had billions in her twenties. She lived what we writers call a dissipated life.”

“ ‘Paris the heiress,’ ” I repeated. “Cute.”

“And you were Jake the Rake.”

I laughed. “Yeah, I suppose I was. Lots of parties, lots of girls. But…”

“What?”

“Well, it’s pretty hard to know if a girl really likes you for you , when you’re rich.”

“Tell me about it. My third husband was like that.”

“Really?”

“Absolutely. Thank God for pre-nups.” Her tone was light. If she’d been bitter once, enough time had apparently passed to let her now joke about it. “You’ll have to only date women who are rich in their own right.”

“I suppose. But, you know, even—” Damn it, I hadn’t meant to say that aloud.

“What?”

“Well, you never know about people—know what they’re really thinking. Even before I was rich, I—there was this girl named Trista, and I thought she … I thought w e …”

Karen raised her artificial eyebrows, but said nothing. It was clear I could go on, or not, as I wished.

And, to my great surprise, I did wish. “She seemed to really like me. And I was totally in love with her. This was, like, when I was sixteen. But when I asked her out, she laughed. She actually laughed in my face.”

Karen’s hand briefly touched my forearm. “You poor thing,” she said. “Are you married now?”

“No.”

“Ever been?”

“No.”

“Never found the right person?”

“It’s, um, not exactly like that.”

“Oh?”

Again, to my surprise, I went on. “I mean, there was—there is —this woman.

Rebecca Chong. But, you know, with my condition, I…”

Karen nodded sympathetically. But then I guess she decided to lighten the tone.

“Still,” she said, “you don’t necessarily have to wait for the right person to come along. If I’d done that I’d have missed out on my first three husbands.”

I wasn’t sure if my artificial eyebrows rose spontaneously in surprise; certainly, if I’d still been in my old body, my natural ones would have. “How many times have you been married?”

“Four. My last husband, Ryan, passed away two years ago.”

“I’m sorry.”

Her voice was full of sadness. “Me, too.”

“Do you have any kids?”

“Um—” She paused. “Just one.” Another pause. “Just one who lived.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said.

She nodded, accepting that. “I take it you don’t have any children?”

I shook my head and indicated my artificial body. “No, and I guess I never will.”

Karen smiled. “I’m sure you would have made a good father.”

“We’ll never—” Damn these new bodies! I’d thought the obvious, self-pitying thought, but had never intended to actually say it aloud. As before, I didn’t manage to kill it until a couple of words were already spoken. “Thanks,” I said. “Thank you.”

A pair of Immortex employees entered the lounge—a white woman and an Asian man. They looked surprised to see us there.

“Don’t let us disturb you,” Karen said to them as she stood up. “We were just leaving.” She held out a hand to help me get up. I took it without thinking, and was on my feet in a matter of seconds, Karen effortlessly pulling me up. “It’s been a long day,” Karen said to me. “I’m sure you want to go back to your room.” She paused, as if realizing that, of course, I couldn’t possibly be tired, then added, “You know, so you can change out of that robe, and so on.”

There it was—a perfect out; the escape that I’d been looking for earlier, the polite way to beg off that my lack of the need for sleep or food had denied me. But I didn’t want it anymore. “Actually,” I said, looking at her, “I’d like to do some more walking practice, if, ah, you’re willing to help me.”

Karen smiled so broadly it surely would have hurt had her face been flesh. “I’d love to,” she said.

“Great,” I replied, as we headed out of the lounge. “It’ll give us a chance to talk some more.”

The spaceplane was still climbing. I’d thought the constant acceleration would be uncomfortable, but it wasn’t. Out the window, I could see sunlight glinting off the Atlantic ocean far below. I turned my head to face inside, and the presumably redheaded man sitting next to me seized his chance. “So,” he said, “what’s your job?”

I looked at him. I didn’t really have a job, but I did have a true-enough answer. “I’m in wealth management.”

But that caused his freckled forehead to crease. “Immortex wants wealth managers on the moon?”

I realized the source of his confusion. “I’m not an Immortex employee,” I said. “I’m a customer.”

His light-colored eyes went wide. “Oh. Sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry about,” I said.

“It’s just that you’re the youngest customer I’ve ever seen.”

I smiled a smile that hopefully wasn’t an invitation to more questions. “I’ve always been an early adopter.”

“Ah,” said the man. He stuck out a hand that was as freckled as his face. “Quentin Ashburn,” he said.

I shook his hand. “Jake Sullivan.” I didn’t really want to continue talking about me, so I added, “What do you do, Quentin?”

“Moonbus maintenance.”

“Moonbus?”

“It’s a long-distance surface vehicle,” Quentin said. “Well, actually, it flies just above the surface. Best way to cover a lot of lunar territory fast. You’ll be riding in one when we get to the moon; the ship from Earth will only take us to Nearside.”

“Right,” I said. “I read about that.”

“Oh, moonbuses are fascinating,” said Quentin.

“I’m sure they are,” I said.

“See, you can’t use airplanes on the moon, because—”

“Because there’s no air,” I said.

Quentin looked a bit miffed at having his thunder stolen, but he went on. “So you need a different kind of vehicle to get from point A to point B.”

“So I’d imagine,” I said.

“Right. Now, the moonbus—it’s rocket-propelled, see? Funny thing, of course is that instead of polluting the atmosphere, we’re giving the moon an atmosphere—an infinitesimal one, to be sure—and all of it is rocket exhaust. Now, for the Moonbus, we use monohydrazine…”

I could see that it was going to be a very long trip.

I was slowly getting the hang of walking with my new legs, thanks to Karen Bessarian’s help. I’d always been impatient; I suppose thinking you didn’t have much time left was part of the cause. Of course, Karen—in her eighties—must have similarly felt that her days had been numbered. But she’d apparently adapted immediately to the notion of being more or less immortal, whereas I was still stuck in the time-is-running-out mindset.