Analog SFF, December 2006

by Dell Magazine Authors

  She shook her head. “No need to apologize, Mr. Sawyer. You didn't know, and it will be held under wraps for as long as possible to give you time to look into the case, because, you see ... he isn't really dead."

  * * * *

  "The woman is beautiful. The woman is rich. The woman has more sex appeal clad in a burlap sack than a platoon of Playmates in lingerie. So why are you acting like a spoiled child who didn't find what he wanted under the Christmas tree?” my terminal demanded. “You're a real pain when you're like this, you know."

  I glared at the terminal, seeing my own image staring back at me. “I'll remind you of that the next time you throw a tantrum,” I said.

  "I,” he said loftily, “don't throw tantrums. I left all that behind me when I ascended to a higher plane of existence."

  I recoiled with a twisted face. “'Higher plane of existence?’ What, you've become a Buddhist? If you're an example of what I have to look forward to in my next incarnation, I'll stick to the traditional live-till-you-die plan and turn out the lights when it's time to go."

  "Buddy, I am your next incarnation,” he pointed out acidly. “It's just that, through some oversight on the part of the Great Network In The Sky, you were allowed another chance to adjust your karma. Those of us who know you personally could have told the Grand Poo-Bah it was a waste of time, but there's no telling the gods anything."

  There was more than a grain of truth in what he said, which made it difficult to refute his logic. Once upon a time, I had been killed. Rather messily murdered, in fact. Fortunately, I had a recent personality backup in the network. Had things progressed normally, I would have had a new body grown, been read into that body, and rejoined the living, thereby exchanging my chance to play a harp for the dubious privilege of worrying about rent and other sundry mundane topics. But, as fate would have it, there had been a slight detour on the way back to my current body—I had been awoken within the computer network. It's not an unknown thing, just rare due to the expense involved. The cusp came when I managed to make a copy of myself while still in the system. Now I was back in flesh, while my doppelganger resided within the network. This was beyond rare. To our knowledge, the situation was unique and quite possibly illegal. As such, his existence was kept a secret, lest he get his plug pulled.

  All this talk about being on a higher plane of existence was sour grapes on his part; a poorly disguised lament for the fact that he no longer had taste buds or hormones. That simple fact didn't interfere with his memory of better times, though, and at the moment he was stealing glances at my glass of Brora.

  I took an ostentatious sip, closed my eyes, and savored the taste of the scotch as it tickled my taste buds with memories of malted barley luxuriating in peat smoke. “Ahh,” I sighed, just to rub it in.

  "You are rude, crude, and socially unacceptable,” he spat angrily. “One of these days I'm going to be sitting where you are with a glass of Highland Park in my hand and you're going to regret this."

  "Tell you what,” I said. “I'll do a personality backup tonight before I go to bed, and you'll get the fresh memory. I'll even go so far as to throw in what I can remember of the steak dinner I had Saturday night for free."

  "All this and secondhand Amanda McBey, too,” he snarled. “What more could a guy ask for?"

  "It's not like I kissed her or anything,” I protested. “All I did was look at her."

  "Looking at Amanda McBey is more nourishing than actual intimacy with most women. She's about as close to perfection as I can imagine, and believe me, I've become quite the expert in imagining—seeing as how it's all I've got."

  I gave him a rueful look. “Fantasy is all we're going to get, I'm afraid. No matter how charming I am, I am simply hired help."

  My counterpart heaved a theatrical sigh. “All right, all right. I surrender. Beggars can't be choosers and all that. Just get me that personality backup, okay? I don't want the passage of time to dull your recollection of details."

  "Well, if it's details you want ... her skirt was black and came to right about here—"

  "Stop! Stop!” he screamed. “I don't want to know any more. You're a fiend from hell, did you know that?"

  "You should know. You're me."

  "Don't remind me,” he groused. “What do we have to do to make Amanda forget the chasm between our respective social strata and fall in love with us?"

  "Solve the case, I imagine. The story goes like this—her husband, Lan Hielsby, went to a charity auction this past Thursday night. He left the house just after dinner, about seven thirty or eight. No one paid attention because they didn't know that it was going to matter."

  "Thursday night, eh? And now, with my vastly superior intellect, I stretch forth my hand, seeking information on auctions this past Thursday night and ... lo, it appears. I assume that this was the Lakewood Children's Home auction?"

  "Yep."

  "Got it. It started at eight. Given the distance from their place to the site where the auction was being held, I'd estimate that he would have had to leave closer to seven fifteen if he wanted to get there on time."

  That's what my software twin brings to the table. He can scrounge information instantly. My role is to do the things that require physical presence. I nodded. “Sounds good to me. Anyway, he got there, shook hands and schmoozed with all the right people, put in a few token bids—"

  "They raised one point eight million, it says here,” he put in.

  "And left around ten thirty. He got in the car, drove off, and was never seen again."

  "Until...” he prompted.

  "Until his car was found crushed against a boulder at the bottom of a ravine."

  "The body was somewhat the worse for wear, I take it."

  "Severe physical trauma and burns,” I said.

  "Ugh,” he said, “Okay, you win this round. I'm glad I'm not a real human at this particular moment. I don't mind having left nausea behind when I came to live in here."

  "Yeah, well, this is where the plot thickens. Amanda doesn't think it's him, or at least not the real him."

  Computers being able to think much faster than flesh and blood, he was on that like a wolf on a rabbit. “Amanda thinks the body was a clone."

  I nodded. “Exactly."

  "Any evidence to support this, or is it just the latest way to enter denial that your loved one is really dead?"

  "Nothing you could hang your hat on, but there's this one nagging little detail."

  "Yes...?” he responded, right on cue.

  "She thinks that Hielsby has been in contact with his old high-school sweetheart."

  "Oh, ho! Now, that is interesting,” my alter ego said. “Okay, so the death was staged, is that it?"

  "That's what she thinks. And since she's already paid for two weeks in advance, we're thinking that way, too."

  "Gotcha,” he said. “Our job is to investigate the possibility that he's run off with an old flame. What do the police say?"

  "They say that the DNA matches and there's no sign that Hielsby withdrew money from the bank, packed a suitcase, or did any of the things you might expect someone to do."

  He frowned. “All that does is rule out the possibility that he's a complete idiot. Anyone with an ounce of sense would know that the cops would check that sort of thing. If you're going to skip out and don't care who knows it, then, fine, raid the piggy bank, but if you want to slip away without anyone being the wiser, you'd be well advised to do it carefully,” he said.

  "If Amanda's right and her husband has left, then he's off to a good start,” I pointed out.

  "If she's right, we're dealing with a cold-hearted man. Anyone who can kill a perfectly good clone that way is inhuman."

  Given that my twin and I have more than the average interest in the well-being of clones, that observation gave me shivers. “You're suggesting that he might take a similarly cavalier attitude toward our lives?” I asked.

  The image in the terminal nodded. “Make sure you do an absolutely
complete personality backup tonight before you go to bed.” He started to shut down for the evening, then popped back up. “Oh, and while you're at it, go over the Amanda parts twice."

  I gave him a reproachful look. “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife,” I reminded him.

  "We're not neighbors, so that doesn't apply. Lust away, lad.” And he was gone.

  * * * *

  The next morning started badly. I banged my little toe on a chair leg and spent the next five minutes inventing new ways to curse. Then I dropped a bowl and broke it. In the process of picking up the broken glass, I cut my hand. Needless to say, I was in a rare mood when I finally headed out the door.

  From the comparative safety of the computer terminal, my double said, “You know, on days like today, being in here doesn't seem so bad after all."

  I turned slowly and gave him a glower that would have withered a flesh-and-blood human. “The way things are going, I may end up in there whether I want to or not."

  "Plenty of room,” he noted conversationally. “And you've got a fresh personality backup. A nice one, at that."

  Rather than reply, I slammed the door shut, cutting off further conversation.

  The drive to the office was no worse than usual—it just seemed that way. The usual percentage of cars cut in front of me, but my attitude toward their drivers was decidedly more hostile. By the time I parked and got out of the car, I had grudgingly come to the realization that I was a menace to society in general and myself in particular. Unfortunately, that only made things worse.

  The note I received from Amanda did nothing to improve my mood. A gossip columnist had caught wind of the fact that Hielsby was missing. Amanda thoughtfully provided a link to the online article. I read it once quickly, then again more slowly. The rudiments were there. The auction. Hielsby departing. The car at the bottom of the ravine. But the take was he was dead, i.e., the superficial story. It went on from there to the usual hand-wringing about the grief-stricken wife.

  Obviously, she wasn't describing the Amanda I'd met. While not exactly a merry widow, she was far from grieving.

  Trial and error has produced a system where my doppelganger stays away from the office. Don't get me wrong, it would be nice to have someone to talk to on slow days, but having him around both at work and at home is a little too much of a good thing. We find ourselves bickering and arguing, and life quickly becomes miserable for both of us. Besides, given that he's supposed to keep a low profile, we can't talk much. Having him at the apartment suited both of us better. Granted, he could “be” anywhere in the world that there was a computer, but we both agreed that it was safer for him to run on a computer that was under our control.

  That didn't mean that we never spoke when I was at the office, however. I prodded the button that would summon my twin from the apartment. The journey took milliseconds.

  "You rang?” he inquired.

  "What if the whole thing's a lie?"

  "You mean Amanda?"

  "Yeah. What if she arranged the whole scenario just to get rid of Hielsby?"

  He turned sour. “I don't like the sound of this."

  I said, “Look at the overall arc of the thing for a moment. She didn't shed any tears when she was here. In fact, she was able to joke and chat as though we'd bumped into one another at a dinner party. For a woman who has just—supposedly—lost her husband, that's not a normal reaction."

  "Okay ... so noted."

  "She is clearly perceptive, intelligent, and detail oriented. All factors that would work in her favor in planning a caper such as this,” I added.

  "What does your gut say?"

  I paused before shaking my head. “I don't think she did it. But what if I'm wrong?"

  He shrugged. “There are about forty different permutations that we could consider, but I think our best bet for the moment is to take her version of things at face value and earn our money. If we run across anything that doesn't fit, we can reconsider."

  I grunted. “Let's hope that things don't go that way. I'd hate to think that Amanda McBey was that evil on the inside."

  "Yeah, the classic looker with a heart of mold. That would be a rather effective counterweight to her other charms.” He departed. For the moment, the majority of the work was going to fall on him. He needed to track down phone records, vehicle registrations, and look for plane tickets. My job was to scuff some shoe leather trying to locate Lan Hielsby's old girlfriend.

  * * * *

  I always get a sense of satisfaction from starting a new case. All things seem possible when the scent of money is in the air. It clears the mind and sharpens the senses in a way that few other motivators can.

  The address Amanda McBey had given me for Bettina Harncort was all the way across town. Bettina hadn't answered her phone earlier, but that didn't necessarily mean anything. My part was to verify the street address, then sit back to watch. In an ideal world, I could simply ask Bettina and she would tell me whether she'd seen Lan recently, but the reality was that I'd have to do some sleuthing to find out whether Lan Hielsby was with her. Unfortunately, if Lan Hielsby was as clever as we thought, it was unlikely that he would spoil such a well-planned disappearance by openly taking up with his old girlfriend in less than a week. Still, one could hope.

  I drove past the entrance to the Cedar Ridge development, noting the manned guardhouse. There was even a black steel gate across the road. The guard may have been bored, but he was alert enough to watch me drive past. I'm sure that being checked in and out made the residents of Cedar Ridge feel secure, but the illusion was shattered by the low split-rail fence surrounding the grounds.

  I drove around the perimeter of the neighborhood as slowly as I could without attracting undue attention. I was studying the fence carefully, looking for evidence of infrared beams, cameras, or trip wires. Nothing. Surely they hadn't been that lax about their security. When I was roughly halfway around from the guard kiosk, I parked my car on a side street and walked back to the fence. I actually had one foot on the rail before I saw it—a subtle geometric variation in the growth patterns of the mown grass on the other side. Pressure sensitive plates were buried just beneath the surface of the soil.

  Ah, now that was more like it.

  All electronic security measures have strengths and weaknesses. Infrared beams are broken by heavy rain. Trip wires are susceptible to wildlife. Pressure plates are best hidden under random surfaces like fallen leaves, but fallen leaves come from trees and trees have a persistent habit of growing roots across the plates, permanently triggering them. The alternative, growing grass over them, is fine as long as you don't mow. Waist-high grass is ideal cover, but completely unacceptable to the residents of upscale residential complexes.

  Their loss, my gain.

  It takes a very careful work crew to place the sensors in a pattern that can't be penetrated by walking between the plates, so the odds were in my favor if I was patient. Sure enough, I found a break in the pattern not much further along. A particularly handsome oak had grown right where the fence would have gone. Rather than cut the tree, they had rerouted the fence. Predictably, the pattern of the pressure plates had been disrupted. I couldn't count on roots having disabled any particular one of the plates, but at least it tipped the odds in my favor.

  I studied the ground for a few minutes, making a mental map of where I would need to step. It would be tricky, but not impossible. I mounted the fence, stepped gingerly on the ground on the other side, then did a slow-motion ballet to get to the ground beyond the plates. Piece of cake, assuming that no one had happened to notice me tiptoeing oddly through apparently normal grass. Most people do not spend their waking hours staring out the windows on the off chance that a strange man might decide to pirouette under an oak tree just for fun. Even then, they're likely to decide that he's simply a bit daft and turn away rather than race for the phone.

  A few minutes later I was doing a brisk walk along the street leading to Bettina's house. I hoped that any
one who saw me would interpret my purposeful stride as being exercise rather than a stealthy approach for nefarious ends. I need not have worried. No one was in their yard, and I was passed by only one car, the driver of which ignored me, falsely confident that intruders couldn't get past the gate.

  Bettina Harncort's place answered a lot of questions, but raised others in their stead. The windows gaped, the curtains gone. A quick walk around showed that all the rooms were empty, just bare walls and carpet with indentations where the furniture had been.

  Getting back to my car revealed a complication in the guise of a guard dog. He came in low, fast, and silent, and the only thing that saved me was that I was already nearly to the fence. Throwing caution to the wind, I ran straight across the plates, vaulted the fence, feeling a snap at my calf as my right leg left the ground. The dog, fortunately, was trained to stay within the fence—nonetheless, I sprinted all the way back to the car, burning adrenaline all the way.

  * * * *

  I elected to go back to the apartment instead of the office. The dog's teeth had punctured my pants leg and I wanted a few minutes of peace and quiet to calm down. It wouldn't hurt to see how things were going on other fronts.

  "No blood drawn, I take it?” the terminal said.

  I shook my head. “No, just a pair of pants ruined."

  "Did anyone see you?"

  "Only the guy in the car and people in our income bracket are invisible to him."

  "And no guards caught you?"

  I shook my head. “I was back in the car within ninety seconds of hitting the pressure plates—in motion ten seconds after that—John Q. Citizen going about his lawful business."

  The image in the terminal nodded. “Good, good. All right, we'll assume that the pressure plates are set to something like one hundred pounds. They wouldn't normally go off if the dog stepped on them, but the force of the dog jumping might do it. With luck, they'll assume that the dog chased a squirrel up the tree, then bounced around a few times barking at it."

  "Somehow I think the dog will have been trained not to chase squirrels, but as long as they didn't see me, it's a moot point."