Robert Sawyer - Red Planet Blues

“Why don’t you—”

“Take a long walk off a short pier? The nearest one of those is back with the trees.”

Rory was staring at the man now, his eyes wide. “My… God,” he said. “Willem Van Dyke—I never thought I’d see you in the flesh, but…” He shook his head. “The disease has taken a lot out of you, but, yes, I can see it now. Well, well, well. There are a million things I’d like to ask you about the second expedition, but…” He drew his artificial eyebrows together, and his voice turned angry. “Christ, you almost killed me!”

Van Dyke slid off the examining bed. “I did no such thing. That incision in your torso can be sealed easily enough. And besides, you can’t be killed.”

“Not here,” said Rory. “Not now. Before. You’re the one who brought the land mines along on the B. Traven. You’re the one who booby-trapped the Alpha. Damn it, you blew half my face off! You could have killed me!”

“You can’t be killed,” Van Dyke said. “You’re not alive.”

Rory spluttered in a mechanical way. I looked at Van Dyke. “Those mines were passive protection,” I said, “and you planted them long ago. But when you learned that Denny O’Reilly’s granddaughter was coming to Mars, you decided you had to take active steps, right?”

Van Dyke said nothing. I let out a theatrical sigh. “You’re not getting how this works, Billy-boy. I ask you questions, you answer—or you die. It’s really not a difficult concept.”

Van Dyke was looking not at me but at the wall where a freeze-frame of the deepscan of Rory was still being displayed. I suppose it galled Van Dyke that Rory could have comfortably taken the scanner’s radiation forever, when it was radiation exposure that had given Van Dyke cancer. But he said nothing.

“All right,” I said. “I’ll tell you. You knew Denny O’Reilly had a mistress whose last name was Takahashi, of course. And you work for InnerSystem Lines—you get to see the passenger manifests for all their ships; you check them each time you return to Earth. When you saw there was a Reiko Takahashi booked to come to Mars, you got curious. It didn’t take much digging to find out who she was. And, well, a collector of one sort knows collectors of other sorts: she’d doubtless made inquiries about selling the only extant copy of her father’s diary—and you figured it might note the location of the Alpha. Couldn’t have something like that kicking around. And so you sent in the clones.”

“They’re not clones,” Van Dyke snapped.

“Work with me,” I replied. “You’ve spent most of the last thirty-plus years on ice. Physically, you’re—what?—thirty? Thirty-two?”

Van Dyke glared at me defiantly for a moment, and I raised the gun higher. “Thirty-eight,” he said at last. And then, acknowledging that he didn’t even look that old despite the ravages of cancer, he added, “I stay out of the sun.”

“I guess it’s a good deal for InnerSystem Lines,” said Rory. “Your training stays fresh. From your point of view, it’s been only a couple of years since you first started your job. You just thaw out for a few days or weeks between each journey, while this ship is prepared for its next voyage.”

“I usually don’t even bother coming out of deep freeze here on Mars,” Van Dyke said. “When I do come back to living here, I’m going to come back in style.”

“You’re going to transfer,” I said.

Van Dyke snorted.

“What?” I said.

“Like I would ever do that.”

“But that’s the cure for cancer. Hell, that’s the cure for everything.”

“No,” said Van Dyke. “It isn’t—but there will be a cure for cancer.”

“That’s what they’ve been saying forever,” said Pickover. “But it seems like it’s always twenty years in the future.”

“The are making progress,” Van Dyke said. “I check, every time I come out of hibernation. I’m guessing it’s just ten years off now…”

“And if you can stay on ice for most of that time,” I said, “you can get the cure.” I shook my head. “But why not just transfer? I know it was hellishly expensive back when you were first diagnosed, but—”

“That’s not the reason.”

I frowned and it came to me. “Lakshmi—the writer-in-residence here—told me that you’re devoutly religious. Is that why you haven’t transferred?”

“Transferring,” he said. “Such crap. It’s not the same person.”

Rory tilted his head to look at the man who’d been slicing him open. “People feel differently about it now.”

“God doesn’t,” said Van Dyke.

Rory couldn’t dispute that and so he fell silent.

“And what are you going to do when they find a cure?” I asked. “When you’re well again?”

“Go fly a kite.”

“Okay. I’ll tell you. Weingarten and O’Reilly promised you a share of the proceeds from the Alpha. And you want what you think is coming to you. When you’re well, you’re going to work that claim.”

“And you’re out to stop anyone who might exploit it first,” said Rory.

“Hence hiring the thugs with Dazzling Don Hutchison’s face,” I added. But then I found myself taking a step backward. “No,” I said. “No, wait a minute. You didn’t hire those guys.” The word “skytop” was echoing in my head—the decades-old slang Tres had used. “Christ, you are those other guys. You’re—my God—you’re all three of them. You have transferred. That’s why Tres called you ‘Actual’—you’re the actual Willem Van Dyke, and they’re copies.”

Van Dyke looked like he was going to deny it. But someone who had gone to such extraordinary lengths to stay alive doubtless had a certain appreciation for what my Smith & Wesson could do to him. “I’ve made proxies, that’s all,” he said, in his thin, disease-ravaged voice. “I’m the real me; I’m the one with the soul. Those are just knockoffs. I made a deal with the guy who runs NewYou here to produce them in secret.”

“Horatio Fernandez?” Rory asked.

“No, no. His name is—”

“Joshua Wilkins,” I supplied.

“That’s him. Nasty man, but he could be bought. I had him create the three Dazzling Dons a couple of years ago.”

“It’s illegal to make multiple versions of the same person,” Rory said. “It’s obscene to do so.”

“They were disposable—and they aren’t people.”

“What do they think about that?” I asked.

“Same thing I do, of course.”

“Why three guys who look the same?”

Van Dyke lifted his eyebrows as if it were obvious. “To remind them that they aren’t real people. They’re ersatz; interchangeable; disposable.”

I nodded. “And I bet they were supposed to be each other’s alibis—one would be seen in public while the others did whatever needed to be done to protect the Alpha; they were never meant to all be seen in the same place at the same time. But then one of them was shut down, and so you figured a bigger force was needed next time.”

And that explained why Tres had rushed Huxley, even though Mac had told him they had a broadband disruptor. Tres was probably as ignorant of what one could do as Willem Van Dyke had been; they all had minds three decades out-of-date.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s go.”

“Where?”

“Prison, ultimately, I imagine.”

“I’m not going to jail,” Van Dyke said.

“No? You roughed me up, shot Dr. Pickover, and then kidnapped him and Miss Takahashi with the intention of murdering them.”

“I did no such thing. Uno, Dos, and Tres did all that, not me. And Tres is deactivated, and Uno and Dos are already in police custody.”