Robert Sawyer - Red Planet Blues

Mac had a strong Scottish brogue—so strong, I figured it must be an affectation. “Ah, yes. Who’s your client? The wife?”

I nodded.

“Quite the looker,” he said.

“That she is. Anyway, you tried to find her husband, this Wilkins…”

“We looked around, yeah,” said Mac. “He’s a transfer, you knew that?”

I nodded.

“Well,” Mac said, “she gave us the plans for his new face—precise measurements and all that. We’ve been feeding all the videos from public security cameras through facial-recognition software. So far, no luck.”

I smiled. That’s about as far as Mac’s detective work normally went: things he could do without hauling his bony ass out from behind his desk. “How much of New Klondike do they cover now?” I asked.

“It’s down to forty percent of the public areas.”

People kept smashing, stealing, or jamming the cameras faster than Mac and his staff could replace them; this was a frontier town, after all, and there were lots of things going on folks didn’t want observed. “You’ll let me know if you find anything?”

Mac drew his shaggy eyebrows together. “Even Mars has to abide by Earth’s privacy laws, Alex—or, at least, our parent corporation does. I can’t divulge what the security cameras see.”

I reached into my pocket, pulled out a fifty-solar coin, and flipped it. It went up rapidly but came down in what still seemed like slow motion to me, even after a decade on Mars; Mac didn’t require a transfer’s reflexes to catch it in midair. “Of course,” he said, “I suppose we could make an exception…”

“Thanks. You’re a credit to law-enforcement officials everywhere.”

He smiled, then: “Say, what kind of heat you packing these days? You still carrying that old Smith & Wesson?”

“It’s registered,” I said, narrowing my eyes.

“Oh, I know, I know. But be careful, eh? The times, they are a-changin’. Bullets aren’t much use against a transfer, and there are getting to be more of those each day, since the cost of the procedure is finally coming down.”

“So I’ve heard. Do you happen to know the best place to plug a transfer, if you had to take one out?”

Mac shook his head. “It varies from model to model, and NewYou does its best to retrofit any physical vulnerabilities that are uncovered.”

“So how do you guys handle them?”

“Until recently, as little as possible,” said Mac. “Turning a blind eye, and all that.”

“Saves getting up.”

Mac didn’t take offense. “Exactly. But let me show you something.” We left his office, went farther down the corridor, and entered another room. He pointed to a device on the table. “Just arrived from Earth. The latest thing.”

It was a wide, flat disk, maybe half a meter in diameter and five centimeters thick. There were a pair of U-shaped handgrips attached to the edge, opposite each other. “What is it?”

“A broadband disruptor,” Mac said. He picked it up and held it in front of himself, like a gladiator’s shield. “It discharges an oscillating multifrequency electromagnetic pulse. From a distance of four meters or less, it will completely fry the artificial brain of a transfer—killing it as effectively as a bullet kills a human.”

“I don’t plan on killing anyone,” I said.

“That’s what you said the last time.”

Ouch. Still, maybe he had a point. “I don’t suppose you have a spare I can borrow?”

Mac laughed. “Are you kidding? This is the only one we’ve got so far, and it’s just a prototype.”

“Well, then,” I said, heading for the door, “I guess I’d better be careful.”

My next stop was the NewYou building. I took Third Avenue, one of the radial streets of the city, out the five blocks to it. The NewYou building was two stories tall and was made, like most structures here, of red laser-fused Martian sand bricks. Flanking the main doors were a pair of wide alloquartz display windows, showing dusty artificial bodies dressed in fashions from about five mears ago; it was high time somebody updated things.

The lower floor was divided into a showroom and a workshop, separated by a door that was currently open. The workroom had spare components scattered about: here, a white-skinned artificial hand; there, a black lower leg; on shelves, synthetic eyes and spools of colored monofilament that I guessed were used to simulate hair. And there were all sorts of internal parts on the two worktables: motors and hydraulic pumps and joint hinges.

The adjacent showroom displayed complete artificial bodies. Across its width, I spotted Cassandra Wilkins, wearing a beige suit. She was talking with a man and a woman who were biological; potential customers, presumably. “Hello, Cassandra,” I said, after I’d closed the distance between us.

“Mr. Lomax!” she gushed, excusing herself from the couple. “I’m so glad you’re here—so very glad! What news do you have?”

“Not much. I’ve been to visit the cops, and I thought I should start my investigation here. After all, you and your husband own this franchise, right?”

Cassandra nodded enthusiastically. “I knew I was doing the right thing hiring you. I just knew it! Why, do you know that lazy detective McCrae never stopped by here—not even once!”

I smiled. “Mac’s not the outdoorsy type. And, well, you get what you pay for.”

“Isn’t that the truth?” said Cassandra. “Isn’t that just the God’s honest truth!”

“You said your husband moved his mind recently?”

“Yes. All of that goes on upstairs, though. This is just sales and service down here.”

“Do you have security-camera footage of Joshua actually transferring?”

“No. NewYou doesn’t allow cameras up there; they don’t like footage of the process getting out. Trade secrets, and all that.”

“Ah, okay. Can you show me how it’s done, though?”

She nodded again. “Of course. Anything you want to see, Mr. Lomax.” What I wanted to see was under that beige suit—nothing beat the perfection of a high-end transfer’s body—but I kept that thought to myself. Cassandra looked around the room, then motioned for another staff member to come over: a gorgeous little biological female wearing tasteful makeup and jewelry. “I’m sorry,” Cassandra said to the two customers she’d abandoned a few moments ago. “Miss Takahashi here will look after you.” She then turned to me. “This way.”

We went through a curtained doorway and up a set of stairs, coming to a landing in front of two doors. “Here’s our scanning room,” said Cassandra, indicating the left-hand one; both doors had little windows in them. She stood on tiptoe to look in the scanning-room window and nodded, apparently satisfied by what she saw, then opened the door. Two people were inside: a balding man of about forty, who was seated, and a standing woman who looked twenty-five; the woman was a transfer herself, though, so there was no way of knowing her real age. “So sorry to interrupt,” Cassandra said. She smiled at the man in the chair, while gesturing at me. “This is Alexander Lomax. He’s providing some, ah, consulting services for us.”

The man looked up at me, surprised, then said, “Klaus Hansen,” by way of introduction.

“Would you mind ever so much if Mr. Lomax watched while the scan was being done?” asked Cassandra.

Hansen considered this for a moment, frowning his long, thin face. But then he nodded. “Sure. Why not?”

“Thanks,” I said, stepping into the room. “I’ll just stand over here.” I moved to the far wall and leaned against it.