Martian Knightlife Read online

  "Love will find a way, Leo," Kieran sighed.

  * * *

  Sarda called from his office the first thing next morning, while Kieran and June were finishing breakfast. "I got a message from Elaine!" he announced. "She called my administrative assistant at home—either she knew the name already, or she tracked it down since last night. She wants to know how to contact Mr. Troon."

  "Now do you believe in instinct and the arcane arts of divining human nature?" Kieran asked him.

  "Okay, yeah, yeah. You were right; I was wrong . . . maybe. So what do I do?"

  "Give your assistant my number and tell her to relay it back," Kieran replied.

  Elaine was through in less than fifteen minutes. "I'm sorry about last night," she said, when Kieran answered. "I was confused and upset—but I think you knew that. I've been thinking about things, and I'd like to talk. It needs to be as soon as possible. Where can we meet?"

  17

  Elaine was noticeably red around the eyes and yawned intermittently—no doubt the result of a lot of thinking and not too much sleep. They met on a bench in a secluded corner of a leafy square on the administrative side of the Trapezium, facing a sculpture depicting a group of Lowell's space-suited founders from the early days. Events, it turned out, had followed roughly the lines that June and Kieran had surmised.

  "I met Leo casually not all that long ago. It was at one of those dinner parties where everyone tries to impress everyone else with how much they're making. We were both bored and a bit repulsed by it all, and got to talking between ourselves about . . . well, the things Leo talks about. Interesting things, exciting things—things that have imagination and vision. I was captivated. We clicked, arranged to meet again . . . You know the kind of thing."

  Kieran nodded. "This was how long before the experiment?"

  "A couple of months, maybe. As we got to know each other, he told me more about his research and its implications. I was blown away. He was right on the cutting edge of this speed-of-light travel anywhere in the Solar System that people have been hearing about for years—and outside it too, one day, I guess." Elaine drew a long breath and exhaled. "He told me about the experiments they did with animals and things. Then, one day he told me he was scheduled to be the first human to try it. I started to get nervous, asking him how sure they could be that things mightn't be happening in animals that it wasn't easy to know about. . . . And eventually, I guess to try and be reassuring, he confided that it isn't quite the way everyone thinks—you know, that you disappear from one place and reassemble in another. What it actually does is make a copy. Did you know that? And so for things not to get completely crazy, you've got to get rid of the original. Once the process is running commercially, it'll be so fast that nobody will know the difference. But for the first experiment that Leo was going to be involved in, they kept the original in a suspended state—for a few days, until they could be sure. That was why he said I shouldn't worry."

  "Yes, I do know that," Kieran answered. He looked at her curiously. "So did you worry?"

  "Not at first. Leo had this line that said switching the personality to the duplicate was really no different from what happens naturally in the course of years . . ."

  "Yes, I've heard it. Leo told me."

  "He made it sound believable, and I accepted it. . . . But as the time got nearer, he started to act less sure. It got to be as if he were trying to sell himself more. But inside, I could tell: he was scared."

  "I would be too," Kieran said.

  Elaine seemed relieved at not having to go into details. "Well, when he came up with this idea of switching bodies so he wouldn't really have to go through with it, I was more than just willing to help. It was after I told him I worked with a medical hypnotist. Obviously, a plan like that couldn't work if the copy came out knowing everything that had happened."

  "You're saying that's all it was to begin with?" Kieran checked. "You just wanted to help the Leo that you knew stay around—and to keep him yourself. It didn't matter what he or anyone else said about this copy who was supposed to be identical."

  Elaine nodded, brushing her eye with a knuckle. "That's it, exactly. I loved him. How could anyone not sympathize with his situation? As you just said, it was to keep him. That was all we wanted. We were just going to disappear and find a spot somewhere. The copy could get rich and famous—do whatever he liked."

  "So when did the notion of cleaning out his bank start?" Kieran asked.

  "That came later," Elaine said. "Something started to change in Leo. He became envious, malicious, saying that he had earned the money and taken all the risks; why should the other one walk away with the proceeds? I wasn't so happy about the idea. But I couldn't help feeling for him in some ways. I attributed it to the strain he was under, and let myself be drawn into it."

  Kieran waited. Elaine sat staring at the sculptures a short distance away. Her manner signaled that there was more, but she wasn't sure how to broach it. "Was it really worth it?" he asked, helping her a little. "I mean, okay, a third of five million isn't exactly peanuts, I know. . . ." He watched her as he spoke. She nodded an unconscious confirmation, her eyes still on the figures. That told Kieran that only the three people were involved. "But for established professionals like you and Henry? It wouldn't justify all the complications and risks."

  Elaine sighed and turned her head, finally. "Once Balmer got involved, everything was moved up to higher stakes." She gestured appealingly, as if some defense or justification were called for. "He's one of those high-pressure, over-assertive people who will always take over something like that to get whatever they can. He persuaded us that we could go for much bigger money than what Leo was talking about. Leo was interested straightaway. . . . And I was so far into it by then, I just saw no alternative but to go along."

  "There was no question of setting Leo up, then?" Kieran said. "Nothing `personal' with Balmer—on your part?"

  Elaine looked horrified. "God, no! Everything with Leo had been genuine. My relationship with Balmer was just professional . . . even a bit opportunist, I guess you could say. He knew all the right people, had the contacts. He was the perfect ticket to success and career advancement—if you could put up with the rest of him."

  Kieran nodded. It was as he'd thought, but he'd needed to be sure. "So how did Balmer decide to up the stakes?" he asked.

  "By doing an end run around Quantonix and the client they've got lined up, and selling the TX technology elsewhere. We're talking maybe a billion here, not five million." Elaine looked at Kieran, giving him a moment to think about it. "And with Leo handling the negotiations—the one who isn't supposed to exist—you've got the perfect front man."

  Kieran had already seen where she was going. "The only person the customer deals with directly is Sarda-One," he said, voicing his thoughts as they fell into line. "Not you or Balmer. Sarda does all the talking because he has the technical expertise—it's his creation. And then he vanishes. If Quantonix realizes later that it's been sold out, and if it or its client starts proceedings, any pointers that they dig up incriminating Sarda will be taken as meaning Sarda-Two—because he's the only one who officially exists. And the beauty of it is that he won't be able to help them no matter what they try, because he doesn't know anything. His memory of it has been wiped." Kieran stared at her, his eyes shining with honest admiration. It was so ingenious that it felt almost a shame to have to spoil it. "Well, you've got to hand it to Brother Henry for originality, Elaine. I'll give him that."

  Elaine threw out a hand wearily. "That's it. There's nothing else to say."

  "So which outfit is Quantonix finalizing the deal with?" Kieran asked.

  Elaine hesitated, then replied, "Three Cs. Both the Morches and the Leo who's getting all the attention stand to clear a billion each out of it." Kieran nodded. He already knew that, of course; but Elaine's answer provided a useful check on her believability.

  Which brought them to the key question that Kieran had been leading u
p to. He made it sound easy and natural. "So who's Balmer setting this other deal up with?" he asked.

  Elaine sighed as if asking, now that she was forced to spell it out, how she could have gotten drawn in to something like this. "Some people are here in Lowell who arrived in the last few days. Leo is due to meet with them later today at the Zodiac Commercial Bank to finalize the first phase of the deal. I don't know who they represent. Balmer handled that side of things himself. But the money's coming from some shady underside of the business."

  "What's the first phase of the deal?" Kieran asked.

  "It's set up as a series of progress payments," Elaine replied. "A testable portion of the technology to be supplied for a quarter-billion advance. The rest payable in stages as the previously-supplied parts are verified."

  "And you're saying that Leo will be handing over the first batch of information today, in exchange for a quarter-billion up-front."

  "That's right."

  Kieran eased himself back on the bench and let his eyes wander idly over the square and small park to one side as he digested the information. It was along the same general lines that he'd come across before. Even if the technology eventually found its way back to one of the major communications providers, outfits like that wouldn't involve themselves directly in a flagrant ripping off of property that a rival was buying legitimately. They would deal through some nebulous intermediary, possibly created for the purpose and then liquidated to erase the trail. A bogus research program would be invented as having been conducted secretly somewhere, uncannily close to what Sarda had done at Quantonix, and the alleged results of it would duly become the possession of the highest bidder in some netherworld transactions. Tough luck for Three Cs—but they were in business and knew the risks. When time is ripe for such breakthroughs, these coincidences will happen.

  And then, again, the client might not be a communications carrier at all, but somebody else with other interests entirely. Such as what? Kieran had to remind himself that what they were talking about here wasn't, first and foremost, the people-transmitter that the carriers were popularizing and scrambling to acquire first, but a people-duplicator. He was only beginning to reflect on the possible ramifications, when Elaine spoke again. Evidently, she had more to get out, now that she was able to talk.

  "Leo changed in the time all this was developing. I watched him become a different person—hard, vengeful. When Balmer urged upping the ante and going for really big money, he was all for it. But when the other Leo called last night, it was like listening to the person I remembered. Even in those few moments, I could sense the difference. It was as if . . . as if opposite aspects of him polarized into two different people." She turned to look at Kieran. "He doesn't deserve any of this. I can't let it go through—what we planned for today. That's why I wanted to talk to you."

  Kieran promptly forgot the line his mind had been turning to. His brow furrowed. "What are you saying? That you're giving up the chance to walk away with a third of the loot, and are prepared to take the consequences, just to straighten this out?"

  Elaine nodded resolutely; but she was barely holding back tears. "It's what's right. . . . Deep down, I guess I never was the right material for this kind of thing." She shrugged. "That's all there is to it."

  Kieran turned to stare at her. A faint smile puckered his mouth as he sensed a situation of opportunity beckoning. It was exactly the kind of people that Elaine had described, whose unenlightened existence he felt it his mission to better through a little moral guidance and introduction to the virtues of munificence and austerity. "Maybe we don't have to let you go through anything quite as bad as that, Elaine," he said softly.

  She produced a handkerchief to stifle back sniffles. "What other way is there?"

  "I presume the initial transfer will be made into an account in Sarda's name," Kieran said. "That way, he can vanish when the time's right, and there'll be no trail back to you or Balmer for the banking authorities to follow."

  Elaine nodded. "You obviously know your way around these things."

  "Do you still have the graphic that was inside the chamber door?" Kieran asked. "The pattern that triggered the posthypnotic command."

  "No . . . But the image is stored. I could make a copy. Why?"

  Kieran felt rising excitement at the glimmering of an idea that was forming. The original Sarda would obviously have been through the same conditioning too! "Tell me more about this meeting that Leo's attending at the Zodiac bank," he said. "What time is it scheduled to take place?"

  18

  In the lodging at the outer end of Gorky Avenue where he had been hiding since his unscheduled resuscitation, Leo Sarda checked through the collection of documents and data cartridges making up the phase-one delivery, and arranged them in his briefcase along with the downloaded papers from the bank. The room around him was cramped, cheaply furnished, and felt squalid—construction workers' accommodations just inside one of the main locks out to the surface. He would be glad to get out of it. But he'd had to stay away from places where he might be recognized.

  "Lousy five million," he snarled as he clicked the lid of the briefcase shut. Balmer was right. He would have been insane to settle for that, while his other preening, celebrity self, along with Herbert and Max Morch, and their financial backers were getting set up to share out billions. Well, he would be putting that little item right very shortly now.

  He zipped up his jacket, checked one last time over the oddments strewn on the steel-frame bed and side table that he had been using as a desk to be sure he'd forgotten nothing, and let himself out into the stairwell. Two flights down, he came to a gray-walled passage flanked by entrance doors to other units, which took him out onto the shallow-stepped walkway leading down to the concourse where the maglev line ended. As he approached the terminal, a tall, athletic-looking man in a dark business suit and tie with tan topcoat—conspicuously unusual attire for that part of town—stepped forward from where he had been standing by the entrance to the boarding platform. He was smiling cheerfully and carrying a brown document folder under one arm.

  "Good morning. Dr. Sarda?"

  "Who are you?" Nobody was supposed to know of Sarda's whereabouts except Balmer and Elaine.

  "Kennilworth Troon is the name, from Zodiac Commercial Bank. Henry Balmer wanted to be sure you arrived without mishap, so they sent a car. It's waiting on the lower level."

  Sarda was suspicious. If that were so, why hadn't they called earlier? Because they were afraid he might check? "I think not," he said, moving around the stranger in a wide arc and quickening his pace.

  "Guard!" the man commanded. A large black dog that Sarda hadn't noticed before, sitting on its haunches a few yards farther on in his direct path, stood up and growled. Sarda halted and turned. The stranger shrugged apologetically. "Sorry and all that. But as you see, I must insist."

  Sarda's hand flashed inside his jacket, but even as he drew out the phone, his thumb punching in the emergency code, an arm appeared from behind him, and a black fist the size of a boxing glove plucked the phone from his fingers. He turned to find a beaming giant in a silky green coat, his eyes and teeth standing out against a jet black face, his hair wild and frizzy. "What is this?" Sarda demanded, his gaze alternating nervously between one and the other.

  "Shall we?" the man who had called himself Troon invited, indicating the stairs leading down to the road traffic level.

  Troon led the way down, his manner as breezy as if he were trotting down steps to the beach for a swim. Sarda followed, with the huge black man keeping close behind, the evil-looking dog trailing. Who they were or what could be going on, Sarda couldn't imagine. A rival outfit trying to steal the TX data wouldn't make any sense. The part that Sarda was carrying to exchange for the initial payment wouldn't be any use to them without the rest.

  A car was standing in an open area to one side of the traffic lanes—dark blue, sleek and luxurious compared to the norm on Mars, looking out of place among the utili
ty autos, dump trucks, and surface rovers in this part of town. Sarda didn't recognize the model, but the trunk bore a chrome logo announcing the supplier. A woman—or, at least, a figure that Sarda took to be a woman from the little he could glimpse—wearing dark glasses, head wrapped in a scarf, and a fleece-lined suede jacket with the collar turned up, was at the wheel. Troon opened the rear door for Sarda to enter. The black slid in behind him, while Troon walked around to climb in the other side, and the dog hopped up beside the woman and turned to watch its charge dutifully. "There's nothing to worry about, Dr. Sarda," Troon assured him. "Just a few things we'd like you to identify." He slid a folder out from the document case that he was carrying and passed it across. Sarda took it, opened it . . . and found himself staring at a strangely vivid graphic image which drew his gaze in a way he was incapable of resisting—a purple disk inside a silver outer ring containing a spiral pattern of red, yellow, and aquamarine. It was doing something to his mind; he could sense his thoughts coming apart, being rearranged like the image in a kaleidoscope, pieces of the picture disappearing . . . but he was unable to look away.

  And then whatever had taken hold of him seemed to release its grip. He sat back in the seat, blinking and shaking his head bemusedly.

  "An interesting design, don't you think?" Troon said chattily beside him. "Ever seen it before, out of curiosity?"

  At the sound of Troon's voice, Sarda was able to tear his eyes away. But now his confusion was total and all-immersing. He knew Troon's name, but he wasn't sure why . . . or where he was, or how he had gotten here. The people with him had intercepted him upstairs and said something about going to a bank, but he had no idea why he should be going to a bank. He realized that he wasn't even sure when this was. . . . He knew he had been holed up in a cheap room that he didn't recognize, but didn't know why; and there were disassociated recollections pertaining to the experiment. He could remember the preparations, and being wired up for the scanning procedure in the T-Lab. . . . But why couldn't he remember emerging from the process in the R-Lab? There was nothing coherent after then. How long ago had it been? Did it mean that the experiment had failed, somehow? What had happened to him? Where was he now? Who were these people?