Robert Silverberg: To Live Again

“Where do we eat lunch? You talked yesterday about Florida House for clams and squid.”

“We’ll eat here,” said Kaufmann. “Have Florida House send over whatever you’d like to have. I won’t be able to go out until later. Business.”

“Business! Another ten millions to make before nightfall!”

“Excuse me,” he said. He left Elena arrayed like a fashionable piece of sculpture in the library and made his way to his office. He touched the doorseal, full palm here, not merely thumb. The thick tawny oaken door, inset with twining filaments of security devices, yielded to him, an obedient wife that would surrender only to the right caress. Within, Kaufmann consulted the stock ticker the way an uneasy medieval might have searched for answers in the sortes of Virgil, or perhaps in a random stab into the Talmud. The market was off six points; the utilities averages were up, finance steady, interworld transport a little shaky. Kaufmann’s fingers tapped the console as he executed two swift trades for ritualistic purposes. He closed out at 94 a thousand shares of Metropolitan Power purchased that morning at 89 3 Ъ4, and an instant later accepted a realized loss of half a point on a lot of eight hundred Kцnigin Mines. The net effect on his central credit balance was inconsequential, but Kaufmann had learned the therapeutic value of making small trades in times of stress from his uncle, long ago.

Next he switched on the neutron flux scanner with which he monitored Risa’s apartment. There was little of the voyeur in his psychological makeup; he merely regarded it as good sense to keep an eye on his increasingly more unruly daughter. Especially when, as today, she had blackmailed him into giving his consent to a transplant by the elegantly simple method of threatening to get pregnant. Now that she had voiced the notion, he knew he had to guard against it. He was well aware of Risa’s sexual adventures of the past year, and had no objections to them, but a pregnancy was beyond the scope of the acceptable.

He watched her for a few moments. She was naked again, rushing about the apartment, getting ready to go out. No doubt to make the preliminary arrangements for her transplant. Kaufmann allowed himself the pleasure of admiring her coltish grace, her long-limbed sleekness. Then he switched the scanner over to record and let it run; it would monitor her apartment so long as he wished.

Swinging around to his desk, he activated the telephone. “I want my daughter traced wherever she goes today,” he said. “I expect her to visit the soul bank, and don’t interfere with that but tell me where she goes afterwards. Especially if she goes to any of her friends. Male friends. No, no interceptions; just surveillance.”

He suspected he was being overcautious. Nevertheless, he would have her watched, at least today. If necessary, he’d order surreptitious external contraceptive measures as an extra precaution. Risa could sleep around all she liked, but he had no intention of allowing her to get more than a few days into any premarital pregnancies just yet.

Kaufmann said to the telephone, “Get me Francesco Santoliquido.”

It took more than a minute. Even Mark Kaufmann had to be patient about getting a call through to Santoliquido, who was not merely an important man, as chief administrator of the soul bank, but also a very busy one. Whole light-years of secretarial barricades had to be penetrated before Santoliquido could discover who was calling and was able to free himself long enough to respond.

Then the amiable face blossomed on the screen. Santoliquido was about fifty, ruddy of skin, white-haired, with a large, commanding oval face. He was a man of considerable wealth who had entered the bureaucracy out of a sense of mission.

“Yes, Mark?”

“Frank, I wanted you to know that my daughter will soon be on her way down to your bank to pick out a persona.”

“You broke down, then!”

“Let’s say Risa broke me down.” Santoliquido shook with pleasant laughter. “Well, she’s a strong-willed girl. Strong enough to handle a transplant I’d say. What shall I give her? A Mother Superior? A lady banker?”

“On the contrary,” said Kaufmann. “Someone softly feminine, to balance all the aggression in her. Someone who died young, quite sadly, after a life of suffering for love. Preferably a girl of an opposite physical type, too, less athletic, less masculine of build. You follow?”

“Certainly. And what if Risa isn’t interested in a person of those specifications?”

“I think she will be, Frank. But if she isn’t, give her what she wants, I suppose. I’ll leave the final decisions up to the two of you.”

“You’ll have to,” said Santoliquido. His eyes regarded Kaufmann with some amusement. “You know, Mark, you were supposed to come to the bank yourself this month. You haven’t been recorded in nearly a year.”

“I’ve been so damned busy. Paul’s death, and everything—”

“Yes, I know. But you shouldn’t neglect the semiannual recording. A man of your stature — you owe it to the world, to the future inheritors of your persona, to keep yourself up to date, to etch all the new experiences into the record—”

“All right. You sound like a recruiter.”

“I am, Mark. We’ve been expecting you for weeks.”

“What if I come tomorrow, then? I wouldn’t want to be there today. If I ran into Risa, she’d think her horrible old father was spying on her.”

“True. Tomorrow, then,” Santoliquido said. “Is there anything else, Mark?”

“Just one thing.” Kaufmann hesitated. “The question of Paul’s persona.”

“No decision’s been taken yet. None. We’ve had dozens of applicants.”

“Roditis among them?”

“I couldn’t say.”

“You could say. Maybe you won’t say, but that’s a different thing. I know Roditis is hungry to add Paul to his collection of transplants. I’d merely like to emphasize that such a transplant would be distasteful and offensive not only to the immediate Kaufmann family, but to—”

Santoliquido’s ringed hand swept across the screen. “I’m aware of your feelings,” he said gently. “However, family wishes cannot be binding upon us. The decisions of the soul bank are made strictly on an impersonal basis, taking into account the stability of the recipient and the merit of his application, and you know very well that we regard it as desirable to go outside the genetic group whenever possible.”

“Meaning that you favor giving Paul to Roditis?”

“I said nothing of the kind.” Santoliquido’s geniality began to ebb. “We’re still weighing all applicants.”

“I wish I could take Uncle Paul myself, and keep him out of the skull of that — that fishmonger!”

“What about the consanguinity laws?” Santoliquido asked. “Not to mention your uncle’s own will? He’ll have to go outside the family, Mark. And I suspect we won’t be giving him to any Schiffs or Warburgs or Lehmans or Loebs, either. Can we drop the subject, now?”

“I suppose?” Santoliquido smiled again. “I’ll see you tomorrow. And then, Saturday, your party, Dominica.”

“Yes. Dominica on Saturday” The screen went dark. Kaufmann felt cross; he had played his hand poorly, making that frontal attack on Santoliquido just now. Risa had upset him, clearly, shaking his tactical faculties. Or was it Roditis? Roditis. Roditis. For ten years, now, Kaufmann had watched that grasping little man accumulate first wealth, then power, and then some measure of social prestige. Now the audacious upstart wished to thrust himself deep into the core of a fine old family, making up for his own lack of ancestry by seizing the available persona of the late Paul Kaufmann. Mark scowled. He was less of a snob than he had a right to he, considering who and what he was, but nevertheless the thought of Roditis lying down on a pallet in the soul bank and emerging with Uncle Paul was intolerable to him. He had to be blocked.