“Guaranteed,” Todd assured him. “The pro-Spacers promise they’ll do their damnedest to protect you. Arrange a new identity for a while. ComLink’s a big enough outfit for you to get lost in. Besides, I can always use a top computer tech. You might have to spend some time in a backwater office or an oceanic rectenna station, temporarily . . .”
Lutz laughed. “Won’t bother me. I travel light. Might even get me a trip into space, huh? Never been there, but I’d like to go.” He was a few years older than Todd, a man Earth-bound by economics and circumstances, yet not afraid of the world beyond the sky as so many planetsiders were.
“Free fall’s tricky,” Dian warned him, smiling.
“I got a strong stomach. Hey! You sure are beginnin’ to look like Wyoma Lee, know that? Sound like her, too. You were just a dirty-faced kid last time I saw you. Wyoma was about to send you off to school, get you smart and out of this mess. Did, too, from what I see on the vid. Doctor Foix! Wyoma would be proud as hell. Doin’ you and your man this turn is payin’ Wyoma back, just a little. Debt I’ve had on my mind a long time. May she rest easy.”
He spoke out of grim times. Todd’s own memories of the Chicago crater towns and the brushfire wars of the Teens had left nightmares which still haunted him. The three of them had made it out of that environment, by different methods. Now terrible events were bringing them together again in the same area.
The black man drained his cup. “Somethin’s not right, down in that Enclave. Truth is, Mr. Saunder, me and a lot of other people who go on the tour been wondering ‘bout things. But we’re just li’l-bitty fish. We know the rules: Keep your mouth shut and sign here. I went on the first tour and a coupla others, these past five years.” He offered Dian and Todd refills on their caffa, then looked intently at Todd. “You’re a big fish, Mr. Saunder. A mighty big fish. You sure you want to do sometbin’ like this?” General Ames’s pointed question, more politely phrased.
Todd felt Dian’s scrutiny and replied with a nervous laugh. “There have been times, this past week, when I’ve asked myself that. I have to, Ed.”
Lutz nodded. “Yeah. I guess I do, too. You know, Wyoma Lee ain’t in the Enclave. Maybe that’s why I have to, Mr. Saunder. There’s other things movin’ me this way, but that’s an important one. I got my idents ready for you. And I checked to be sure—nobody’s going on this tour who knows me. But I got to tell you, you won’t see nothin’, just monitors showin’ the frozen people. The Committee big shots ask a bunch of stupid questions, same stupid questions every tour, far’s I can figure out, and the top techs grin and answer them . . . same stupid answers every time, too . . . and then we catch the next flight north outa that oversized snowdrift. Can’t see that we’re doin’ any good.”
“Didn’t they take you down onto the preservement floor at all?” Todd asked.
“Nah. They say we’ll melt the bodies if we do that.”
Todd smiled. “You won’t. The setup’s too well built to be bothered by the small amount of body heat a tour group emits, even if you weren’t wearing insu-suits.” Ed Lutz looked utterly blank. “The self-contained insu-suit,” Todd explained, “is what you wear to go into the preservement area so you won’t get cold or leak any body heat and strain the cooling mechanisms. They don’t use those on the tours?” Lutz slowly shook his head. Obviously he had never seen or worn the equipment. Todd weighed that fact. “Interesting. I wonder why. Something else to investigate. Sounds like the Committee hasn’t got the faintest idea how my father’s cryogenics systems operate. They should. The big shots are supposed to be instructed in—”
An unpleasant thought struck Todd forcibly. Collusion? Payoffs? How high did this conspiracy run? The black man’s speculations seemed to be going in the same direction. “Maybe they’ve got all the same tricky ins and outs the Spacers have, huh? These people been carrying messages back and forth these past few days, settin’ up this deal between us, Mr. Saunder. They’re efficient. Scary the way they can do things and show up when you least expect ‘em.” He read the apprehension in Dian’s expression. “They already tried to shoot you down once, Mr. Saunder. How you know they won’t catch you this time and stuff you in one of those boxes and freeze you?”
Todd wouldn’t let Dian voice her second to that worry. He forced a grin and replied with more confidence than he felt. “Because as far as they’re concerned, I’m not going to be in Antarctica. Todd Saunder is in space, at Geosynch orbit. So’s Dian. I’m cruising around, minding my corporation’s business, out of everyone’s hair. The last place they’ll look for me is on the tour of the Enclave.”
Bewildered, Lutz asked, “And what are you goin’ to do when you get there?”
“See what changes they’ve made, if any. They’ve made some, or you’d know about insu-suits, just for starters.”
“Todd helped build the Enclave, Ed,” Dian told him. “He knows more about the equipment and the way it functions than the Committee does, maybe even more than the Enclave techs do. He even knows how to get around the security systems.”
“If they didn’t alter those to serve some nefarious purpose,” Todd added sourly.
Lutz sighed. “I hope you find whatever it is—and stop all this meanness. It’s just gettin’ damned bad. Better stop it.” He tried to put a bright face on the situation. “Way these Spacers been doin’ things, getting this all ready for you, it ought to work. You’re me now.” Again he stared admiringly at Todd’s disguised face, then looked at his own hand and at the clever bioelectrical-embedded prosthetic handprints Todd now wore.
“He’ll do,” Dian said. Like Todd, she was trying to project more assurance than she felt. “I noticed the resemblance between the two of you when I first met Todd. But it never seemed important. Until this stuff about the Enclave came up. Then I remembered your note, and seeing your name on the Human Rights list.”
“My name,” Todd reminded her with a sly grin. “Ed Lutz.” He examined his palms, hoping. The tissue implant, like his artificially darkened skin and irises, should last at least a week—long enough, if all went well. “The blood type’s a good match, fortunately. But if they start taking DNA samples, I’m in trouble. Dian and I worked out a scheme to get around that, too. It isn’t just the espionage experts who’ve contacted you who’ve been busy, Ed. I’ve made my own plans. Don’t worry. If the disguise doesn’t work, Dr. Tedesco promised he’d refund my money.”
The joke fell flat. Ed didn’t get it, and Dian didn’t think it was funny, not considering the risk involved.
Todd hurried on to business. “How long before you’re due at the Committee rendezvous in Buenos Aires?”
Lutz glanced at a chronometer. His notification printout from P.O.E. was propped alongside the timepiece as a reminder. “About thirty-six hours.”
“And your job leave is cleared?”
“Yeah. Boss likes the funds P.O.E. grants him for letting me take the tour. Civic contribution, you know? I don’t get paid enough, anyway, and then he gets the bonus because I’m volunteering to freeze my balls off. I’ll be glad to be shut of him and the job. I been a model citizen, playin’ the big shots’ game too many years. And if you’ll take me on without references . . .”
“Dian’s your reference,” Todd said earnestly. “I’d never argue with that. Now we’d better get started. I want to fine-polish your speech and body movement patterns until I can pass for you.”
Dian and Ed Lutz laughed. Todd was mystified until Dian explained. “That’s a very old term, historical. Wyoma Lee said her mother remembered some black people trying to pass for white. They felt they had to do that to get away from prejudice and have a chance at the so-called good life.” She and Lutz looked at each other and laughed louder.
“And you’re doin’ the passin’, this time, so you can freeze your balls off instead of me!” Lutz exclaimed, doubling over and slapping his thighs in merriment.
Unoffended, Todd grinned. “Oh, I don’t intend to freeze. Just find out if some other peo
ple really are frozen.” He didn’t elaborate further. He got busy with his final homework. Dian had briefed him as well as she could, and he had used Lutz’s holographic image as a model. This was his last chance to perfect his role before he had to play it in front of a potentially hostile audience. Dian acted as judge, or as director, of the rehearsal. Todd aped Lutz’s mannerisms until fatigue forced him to nap. Then he woke and went at it again.
After one last run-through, Dian declared Todd ready. “I’d better be.” Todd adopted his version of Lutz’s voice and accent. From the other man’s startled expression, he knew the imitation was a good one. “Good’s I’m goin’ to get.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that, lover,’ Dian returned slyly. “I’ve got lots more to teach you. But not here. You just be sure you’re on that plane when it comes back north.”
Todd was wearing some of Lutz’s clothes, carrying others in the case he would take with him. He couldn’t give himself away by even the slightest slip, such as a garment that might belong to Todd Saunder, but never to a comp tech from the United Ghetto States. Todd waited patiently while Dian reassembled her own disguise, converting herself into Ed Lutz’s new sexual interest. Lutz put on his own coat. They would leave the apartment, by a different exit, at the same time Todd headed for the shuttleport to start his trip.
“Sure they won’t miss you and come huntin’?” Lutz asked again, more concerned for his surrogate’s safety than for his own.
“Sure. For the next week, if anyone calls me in orbit, they’ll get a very messy holo-mode image of me saying I can’t hear them, can’t clear up the transmission, and maybe we’d better make connections later. That happens often enough on other telecom systems. And some of my satellites are past due for maintenance checks,” Todd said, winking at Dian. Then he pointed at Lutz and returned the man’s concern. “When I leave here, you disappear. Dian will show you how and where.”
Dian made a face at him. “You take care of you. I’ll take care of Ed and me.” Then, as Todd turned toward the door, she came close, speaking intimately. “You do take care. Hey, and you stay away from those sperm and tissue banks down there. I don’t intend to have your precious assets wasted away on anyone but me,” she finished, attempting to lighten the mood.
“I’m already on file in the Enclave,” Todd told her with amusement. “So are you. Our immortality is secure.” His grin slid off, doubts resurfacing. “I think. At least that’s what I’m going to find out.”
Lutz eyed them with mixed fondness and curiosity. But he didn’t ask questions. Dian had promised that was one of Lutz’s admirable points. Yet Todd felt he could read the black man’s thoughts. He must be wondering about a lot of things. The news about the unsuccessful attack on Todd’s flier had been snapped up by Saunder Enterprises’ competitors with more than a little malicious glee. One of the arrogant Saunder clan, nearly brought to grief. Speculations had buzzed. Nobody but Todd and Dian—and Ames—knew about the exchange he had overheard between the two pilots. As far as CNAU Enforcement was concerned, the pilots were dead. Todd realized that concealing the overheard conversation would hamper any investigation Enforcement could make, but he wasn’t willing to trust them—to trust anyone very much now.
Seabed rescue units had abandoned their efforts to recover wreckage or parts of bodies from the African plane crash. They would never find anything there, any more than Enforcement’s investigators would make anything out of those phony, sacrificed dead “pilots” and the phony planes. Gib Owens’s memorial would have to depend on what Todd Saunder discovered in Antarctica—and what he did with the information he happened to find.
Intercontinental connections went just as smoothly as Todd had hoped. He pretended to doze during the flights from Chicago to Orleans Terminal and through the long Sur Atlantique flight. When he arrived in Buenos Aires, the rendezvous time was still more than twelve hours away, per the Human Rights Committee’s plan. It recommended the tour members use pre-departure time to sleep and adjust to time-zone changes. Todd did just’ that, blending in with the local scenery and continuing to rerun his memories of SE Antarctic Enclave, boning up as thoroughly as he could. He had picked his own brains and every available file since he had left SE Mainland HQ in New York-Philly a week ago. He and Dian had staged a convincing departure for Geosynch HQ and made plans. It had been an exceedingly busy eight days. They had barely had time to contact Ed Lutz and learn if he would agree to the wild scheme, and to find the doctor to convert Todd into the man he would stand in for. He didn’t dare sleep or relax too much. He had planned as carefully as possible, but the chance of a glitch was appallingly high.
A familiarization meeting in P.O.E. Assembly Hall at the terminal was scheduled just before departure. Again Todd had surprisingly little difficulty losing himself in the crowd. “Ed Lutz” was one of forty citizens, computer-selected to be honest and unbiased, a sampling of observers from around the world. Tour guides passed out mini translator-splitters to those who didn’t speak English or Argentine Spanish. Holo-mode presentations, very simplified ones, told the tour members what they would be seeing once they arrived at the Enclave. The ten big shots, as Ed Lutz had tipped Todd, were the only semi-permanent members of the Committee. They held the indoctrinators’ fawning attention, and they did nearly all the talking and questioning for the entire group, suppressing any attempts by the “little fish” to assert themselves. The Committee pecking order was being firmly established before anyone got any pushy ideas.
At the boarding gates, Todd went through the ident check—palm and finger prints, full comp scan. The Enclave personnel assigned to screen the fifty Committee members waved him past without a second glance. Todd held his breath as he walked through the tunnel, half expecting to be called back. Nobody stopped him. They had triplechecked the idents’ authenticity, but had taken him for granted.
He was relieved, and surprised, hardly daring to believe the masquerade would work that well. Dissidents’ and criminals’ relatives had tried to bribe Committee members and Enclave personnel in the past, wanting to smuggle themselves south to see their imprisoned loved ones. None had succeeded. According to the records, Enclave security was reputedly the best in the world. Mari and Kevin said their agents hadn’t been able to get through. Yet they hadn’t spotted a bogus Ed Lutz. Had none of the other attempts involved this form of disguise?
Maybe. And maybe he was reaping benefits from a lifelong situation. Pat had adopted one of Ward’s epithets and flung it at his bodyguards—”wallpaper people.” Ward had told them that phrase when they were kids, then had to explain what “wallpaper” was, and why some people were fated to forever melt into the stuff: ordinary, physically unremarkable, unmemorable people.
Like Ed Lutz. Or like Todd Saunder. Never in his life had Todd been so grateful to be a “wallpaper” person. He had gambled on the fact of his paternal grandmother’s having come out of the Chicago ghettos during the last century, thinking that would give him a genetic advantage in impersonating Ed Lutz. But now it appeared it was important to have an undistinguished, common-man look.
Whatever it took, to get the job done and to survive.
The takeoff was routine. Everyone tried to relax for the first leg of the trip, the jump to Marambio in Antarctica. Two of Todd’s seat neighbors were Committee members from the Maui-Andean Democracies and Nippon-Malaysia. The hard-won truce held, but the two former enemies were stiff with each other, making group socializing difficult. Todd hoped their hostility would keep the rest of the passengers nearby preoccupied and further dampen any curiosity about “Ed Lutz.”
A badly garbled announcement came over the com, and smeary lettering formed on the view screen at the front of the cabin. Todd scowled at the poor workmanship. Around him, other techs echoed his sentiments. “They should endeavor to put their equipment in proper order,” a Sino Committeeman said in carefully correct English.
A European chuckled. “We’d do it for them if they’d pay us . . .”
“I hope they provide warm meals this time. Soon enough to be cold.” The speaker looked like a Polynesian, and Todd smiled at him sympathetically. He himself wasn’t looking forward to the climate, summer at the pole or not.
Some people cracked jokes, trying to ease the mood of a serious mission. The Committee members wouldn’t be here if they hadn’t volunteered out of civic pride for the honor tendered them, as Ed Lutz had. But their attitude toward Antarctica and SE Enclave was mired in apprehension and distaste. The world now accepted the need for the Enclave, to preserve life and to relieve the collapsing capital punishment system. Still, members tried to laugh away the plane ride and the knowledge about where they were going.
In retrospect, SE Antarctic Enclave was a radical concept. It had looked, for years, as if Ward Saunder would never win permission to carry it through. Even after the successful cryo revival of a volunteer, even with the critical loss of lives during the Death Years and the Chaos, mankind had balked. Ironically, it hadn’t been the threat of more human deaths which had swung the vote in Protectors of Earth’s Supreme Council. It had been the extinction of the wild elephants. Science confirmed, in late 2028, that there were no more wild elephants anywhere on Earth. Nor were there any rhinos, big cats, or giraffes. The whales, the Global Science Council decided, had come through centuries of slaughter and toxic pollutants and probably would make it, just barely. But the other exotic wild creatures which had colored man’s wonder and imagination for hundreds of generations were forever gone. The elephant, especially, had provided a rallying symbol for the Cryo Preservement Movement supporting Ward Saunder’s plan to build the Enclave. The powerful beast, the epitome of strength—and man had managed to wipe it out in its natural form. That had happened to thousands of species on Earth, to millions, but never with the impact of the elephant’s extinction. Somehow, that had triggered the change. Votes fell on Cryo Preservement’s side. Antarctic land was donated. Treaty arrangements were made. The Human Rights Committee’s watchdog system was established. The vanished elephant had made it possible to preserve the seeds of Homo sapiens and some of the species’ bodies, hedging against the future. Mari had realized, nearly too late, that he, too, could disappear and leave little trace that he had ever been on Earth.
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