Robert Sawyer - Mindscan

Something that I guessed was supposed to look like computer graphics appeared on the screen—apparently they drilled a hole all the way to the back of Steve Austin’s skull to put in his artificial eye—and soon the rebuilt human was running on a treadmill. I read the boxy numbers on its display. “Sixty kilometers an hour?” I said, disbelieving.

“Better,” said Karen grinning. “Sixty miles an hour.”

“Did he get insects spattered all over his face, like cars do on their windshields?”

Karen laughed. “No, and his hair never gets mussed either. I had posters of him in my bedroom when I was a teenager. He was gorgeous! ”

“I thought you were into that Superman guy, and—what was his name—Tom something?”

“Tom Selleck. Them, too. I had more than one wall, you know.”

“So this introduction to your culture is going to be one teen heartthrob after another, is that it?”

Karen laughed. “Don’t worry. I also used to watch Charlie’s Angels —I had my hair like Farrah Fawcett’s when I was seventeen. I’ll show you one of those next time; you’ll like it. It was the first jiggle show.”

“Jiggle?”

She snuggled close to me. “You’ll see.”

The American-style restaurant at High Eden was mostly empty: a couple of old white people dining together near what I presumed was a holographic fireplace, and a black man dining alone. The black man had close-cropped white hair. He looked a bit like Will Smith, who’d won an Oscar last year for his portrayal of Willy Loman in the new version of Death of a Salesman . For that role, Smith had had to suppress the natural twinkle in his eye, but this Smith-like fellow had no need to do that here, and even just sitting by himself he had a lively, alert face. On a whim, I walked over to his table.

“Hello,” I said. “Would you like some company?”

The man smiled. “If I wanted to eat alone, I’d eat at home.”

I pulled out a chair and sat down. As I did so, I was briefly conscious of the fact that the chair’s legs must have been heavily weighted—I guess people had a tendency to pull out chairs and send them flying in this low gravity.

“Jake Sullivan,” I said extending my hand.

“Malcolm Draper,” said the man. I noticed he had a Tafford ring on his right index finger, but because of my color blindness I couldn’t tell if it was red or green; didn’t matter—I wasn’t about to proposition him. I’d left my own Tafford in my suite; couldn’t imagine needing it here, among all these old people. I’d been celibate for a couple of years at a go in the past, although never by choice, and, indeed hadn’t had sex with anybody since that one wonderful, poignant time with Rebecca Chong back on New Year’s Eve. So, I could certainly manage being celibate for the couple of years I had left, before my Katerinsky’s would either completely kill me or cause my sworn advance directive to be executed. Anyway, my lack of a Tafford should discourage cougars. Of course, my Tafford was green, or so I’d been told, meaning I was straight. Still, the luck I had with women sometimes made me think the sales clerk had taken advantage of my color blindness and sold me a red one.

“Nice to meet you, Jake,” said Malcolm after we’d shook hands.

“Malcolm Draper,” I said, repeating the name he’d proffered. Something tickled at the back of my brain. “Should I know you?”

The man looked wary. “You a Fed?”

“Pardon?”

“Agent for one of my ex-wives?”

“No. Sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”

A sly smile. “Oh, you’re not. I’m just teasing. Some people have heard of me, yes. I used to be the Dershowitz Professor of Civil Liberties Law at Harvard.”

“Right! Right. High-profile cases. That primate research lab, no?”

“That was me. Put an end to vivisection of great apes anywhere in the U.S., and to their unlawful confinement.”

“I remember that. Good for you.”

He shrugged amiably. “Thanks.”

“You don’t look that old,” I said.

“I’m seventy-four. Hell, I could still be a Supreme Court justice … not that a black liberal has had a chance at an appointment for, well, forever.”

“Hmm,” I said, having no better response. “Did you ever argue before them?”

“Who?”

“The Supreme Court. The U.S. one, that is. I’m a Canadian myself.”

“You were a Canadian,” said Draper. “Now you’re nothing at all.”

“Well,” I said.

“But, yes, to answer your question, I argued before the Supreme Court several times. Most recently in McCharles v. Maslankowski .”

“That was you?”

“Yes.”

“Wow. A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Draper.”

“Malcolm, please.”

He looked so chipper, I couldn’t believe he was near death. “So … so are you just visiting?”

“No. No, I’m a resident. I transferred my consciousness, too. The legal Malcolm Draper is still practicing law back on Earth. There are lots of battles that still need to be fought, and lots of great young minds to train to be jurists, but I was just getting too tired to keep doing it. The doctors said I was probably good for another twenty years, easy, but I just didn’t have it in me to work that hard anymore. So I retired up here—now they tell me I might live another thirty years in this gentle gravity.”

“Thirty years…”

He looked at me, but was too polite to ask the question. I wondered how it was for lawyers—able to ask any pertinent question, no matter how direct or personal, in the courtroom, but constrained the way the rest of us are outside it. I decided there was no reason not to tell him. “I’ve probably only got a short time left.”

“A young guy like you? Come now, Mr. Sullivan, you’re under oath…”

“It’s the truth. Bad blood vessels deep in the brain. They can image it, but can’t get in with anything to repair it. I could go at any time, or, even worse, end up a in a vegetative state.”

“Oh,” said Draper. “Ah.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “At least a version of me will continue on.”

“Exactly,” said Draper. “Just as with me. And I’m sure they’ll do us both proud.” He paused. “So, finding any companionship here?”

Surprised by his directness, I said nothing.

“I saw you with that writer woman—Karen Bessarian.”

“Yeah. So?”

“She seems to like you.”

“Not my type.”

“Not your age, you mean.”

I didn’t reply.

“Well,” said Malcolm, “they’ve got great hookers here.”

“I know. I read the brochure.”

“I used to write a civil liberties column for Penthouse . Just like Alan Dershowitz, before me.”

“Really?”

“Sure. Its slogan was ‘The magazine of sex, politics, and power.’ ”

“And of women peeing.”

“That, too,” said Malcolm, smiling. I used to sneak the occasional peek when I was a teenager, before Penthouse and Playboy went bankrupt, unable to compete with Web alternatives. “What’s the matter?” Malcolm continued. “Don’t like paying for it?”

“I never have before.”

“I thought that sort of thing was legal up in Canada.”

“It is, but—”

“Besides, look at it this way. You’re not paying for it. The Jake Sullivan down on Earth, he’s the one paying the bills. Which maintenance plan are you on?”

“Gold.”

“Well, then, the hookers are included.”

“I don’t know…”

“Trust me,” said Malcolm, with that twinkle in his eye, “you haven’t really made love until you’ve done it in one-sixth gee.”