Robert Sawyer - Mindscan

“I was paid one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars for this service.”

Deshawn looked at the jurors, almost inviting them to whistle. One of them did.

“Thank you, Dr. Chandragupta. Your witness, Ms. Lopez.”

“Dr. Chandragupta,” she said, rising from her seat next to Tyler, “you said you are a medical doctor?”

“I am.”

“And what is your medical specialty?”

“I am a surgeon, specializing in cerebrospinal circulatory issues.”

I shifted in my seat. I wondered what, if anything, he knew about Katerinsky’s syndrome.

“Where did Ms. Bessarian die?”

Deshawn was on his feet. “Objection, your honor. Assumes facts not in evidence. We have not determined that Ms. Bessarian is, in fact, dead. Indeed, we assert exactly the opposite.”

Judge Herrington did his small-mouthed frown. “Mr. Draper, Detroit is not your home turf. Most lawyers in this town know that I hate picayune semantic distinctions.” My heart sank, but Herrington went on. “However, I concede that you do have a point in this instance. Sustained.”

Lopez nodded graciously. “Very well. Dr. Chandragupta, do you personally believe that Karen Bessarian is dead?”

“I do, yes.”

“And where is it that you personally believe that Karen Bessarian died?”

“In Heaviside Crater, on the far side of the moon.”

“And how do you know this?”

“Because I was there.” I could see several members of the jury sitting up straight at this.

“What were you doing on the moon?” asked Lopez. “I had been flown there to perform surgery—they were requiring my expertise.”

That was a comforting thought, I suppose. Nice to know that Immortex really did look after its charges.

“So there are no other doctors at Heaviside?” continued Lopez.

“Oh, but no. There are several—perhaps a dozen. Good ones, too, I might add.”

“But they lacked your particular skills?”

“Correct.”

“The patient you had gone to the moon to treat was not Ms. Bessarian, was it?”

“No.”

“Then what contact did you have with Ms. Bessarian there?”

“I was on hand at her death.”

“How did that circumstance arise?”

“I was in the medical facility at Heaviside when the Code Blue sounded.”

“Code Blue?”

“A standard hospital code for cardiac arrest. Recall that I am a circulatory specialist. When I heard it announced, I ran into the corridor, saw other doctors and nurses running—indeed, fairly bouncing off the walls in the low lunar gravity. I joined them, reaching the hospital room containing Ms. Bessarian at the same time her personal physician did.”

“That would be the Dr. Donald Kohl you mentioned during direct?” asked Lopez.

“That’s right.”

“Then what happened?”

“Dr. Kohl tried defibrillating Ms. Bessarian.”

“And the result?”

“The results were negative. Ms. Bessarian passed away then and there. I must say, Dr. Kohl performed admirably, doing everything he should. And he seemed quite genuinely saddened by Karen Bessarian’s passing.”

“I’m sure he was,” said Lopez. She looked meaningfully at the jury, “As are we all.” Her voice wasn’t one that carried sympathy well, but she was trying. “Still, wouldn’t it normally be Dr. Kohl who would have issued a death certificate?”

“ ‘Normally’ being the operative word, yes.”

“What do you mean?”

“He told me he wasn’t going to issue one.”

“How did the topic come up?”

“I asked,” said Chandragupta. “When Ms. Bessarian died, I was curious about procedures. Given the unusual location, I mean—on the moon. I asked Dr. Kohl how the paperwork for a death would be handled.”

“And what did he say?”

“He said there was no paperwork. He said the whole point of having people like Ms. Bessarian up on the moon was so that they’d be outside of anyone’s jurisdiction.”

“So there would be no requirement that a death certificate be issued, correct?”

“Correct.”

“What about notifying the next of kin?”

“Kohl said they weren’t going to do that, either.”

“Why not?”

“He said it was part of their agreement with their clients.”

Lopez looked meaningfully at the jury, as if Chandragupta had just revealed a heinous conspiracy. She then turned slowly back to him. “How did you feel about that?”

Chandragupta apparently had a habit of stroking his beard; he was doing so now. “It bothered me. It didn’t seem right.”

“What did you do about this when you returned to Earth?”

“I contacted Tyler Horowitz in Detroit.”

“Why?”

“He is Ms. Bessarian’s next of kin—her son, in fact.”

“Now, let’s back up a step. How did you know that the woman who had died on the moon was Karen Bessarian?”

“Firstly, of course, because that was the name all the other doctors referred to her by.”

“Any other reasons?”

“Yes. I recognized her.”

Lopez had delicate eyebrows, which she lifted now; she’d frosted the outside tips of them with blonde, too. “She was known to you personally?”

Another stroke of the beard. “Not prior to this. But I’d read her books to my kids dozens of times. And I’d seen her on TV often enough.”

“You have no doubt in your mind about the identity of the woman who died on the moon?”

At last Chandragupta took his hand away from his face, but only to make an emphatic sweep of it, palm held out. “None at all. It was Karen Bessarian.”

“All right. And knowing this, you contacted her son, is that right?”

“Yes.”

Lopez lifted her eyebrows again. “Why?”

“I felt he should know. I mean, his mother was dead! A child deserves to know that.”

“And so you called him?”

“Yes. It was a sad duty, but certainly not the first time I’d had to do such a thing.”

“And did Tyler ask you to do anything?”

“Yes. He requested I issue a death certificate.”

“Why?”

“He said he knew that the doctors on the moon wouldn’t issue one. He said he wanted to wrap up his mother’s affairs.”

“And so you agreed?”

“Yes.” Hand back on beard again. “It’s a duty I’ve performed before. I had the requisite electronic form stored locally. I filled out a copy, and emailed it to Mr. Horowitz, along with my digital signature.”

“Again, how confident are you that the dead woman was Karen Bessarian?”

“One hundred percent.”

“And how confident are you that she was, in fact, dead?”

“Also one hundred percent. I saw her stop breathing. I saw her EKG go flat. I saw her EEG go flat. I observed personally that her pupils had exploded.”

“Exploded?”

“Dilated to the maximal extent, leaving only the thinnest ring of iris visible around them. It is a sure sign of brain death.”

Lopez smiled ever so slightly. “Thank you, Dr. Chandragupta. Oh, one more question—your fee. Mr. Draper made much of how much your were paid for this service. Would you care to comment on that?”

“Yes, I would. The fee was Mr. Horowitz’s idea; he said I deserved it. Called it ‘Good Samaritan’ money—his way of saying thank you.”

“Did he offer the large fee before or after you agreed to provide a death certificate?”

“After. It was after, of course.”

“Thank you,” said Lopez. “No further questions.”

Deshawn was on his feet. “Redirect, your honor?”

Herrington nodded.

“Dr. Chandragupta,” Deshawn said, “what’s the normal fee in Maryland for issuing a death certificate?”

“I’d have to look that up.”

“Just a ballpark figure, sir. Round it up to the nearest thousand.”