“Sorry. I didn’t know you wanted me to.”
“Well, I wouldn’t want you to stare, but it would be nice if you noticed them.”
“I have. Who is ‘they’?”
“People from the company that brought me back, from the Reanimation Corporation.”
“Do they have a good reason to want you dead? What is it?”
“You haven’t been making the payments. You told me you haven’t. Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Lots of reasons.” Skip wanted to pace and did, only slightly impeded by the roll of the ship. “In the first place, I didn’t tell you I hadn’t been making the payments. I said I was going to stop.”
He pressed a button to light the dial of his watch. “Today is Tuesday. When were you stabbed?”
“It was a Wednesday, I think.”
“A week ago? This is important. Wednesday of last week?”
“Don’t be silly, we sailed the next day. It was two weeks ago.”
“You spent Wednesday night in the hospital. What about Thursday?”
“That,” Vanessa said primly, “is none of your affair.”
“Friday? Will you tell me that?”
“Certainly. In my cabin on this ship. The social director doesn’t wait until the passengers come to get on board. There were all sorts of things I had to do to get ready. My assistant had never done this before. Neither had I, but I told her I had and that gave her confidence. Confidence is very important.”
“Go on.”
“After that I taught her all about dances and balls and dress codes, and we talked about shuffleboard and badminton tournaments. She’s a good diver, so we decided to have diving contests, too, and a putting tournament. You need things for people of all ages, but especially for older people because there are more of them. Then there’s dress-up night every Friday. We’ve a man who takes your picture, and dress-up night is good for his business. He pays, naturally, and he’s got to—”
Skip said, “I understand, and I won’t ask any more questions about your sleeping arrangements.”
“Well, I wish you would. Because after we made our plans my assistant’s Girl Friday came and we had to start all over with her. And I wanted to say that two of the officers are very nice, but they are—you know—taken. My little cabin isn’t as comfortable as yours, but it’s not too bad. Would you like to see it?”
“No.”
“Well, it’s ten ninety-one J. I know you think you and Chelle will make it up, and I hope you’re right. But until you do?”
“No,” Skip repeated.
“Besides, a little variety can be quite nice. You’ll see. You know, I thought of taking you there straightaway when we left my office. I ought to have, but you’d have worried about people listening, and this is more romantic anyway.”
“You didn’t think your office had been bugged.”
Vanessa shook her head. “Why should they? They’d just try to kill me, wouldn’t they?”
“I don’t know.” Skip paused, considering. “In the first place, the time line is all wrong. On Friday, two days after you were stabbed, I called Reanimation and told them I might take them to court. It got me an appointment just before lunch with a vice president named Feuer. I went straight back to the building, and your apartment had been thoroughly searched.”
“How did they know I lived there?”
“That’s just it. Suppose they had begun to act when they got my call—which they did, come to think of it. Feuer told me my payment had been refused. Even so, they would have had to learn your address, get one or two security agents into my building, and search. A search like that would take one person at least an hour. Probably more.”
“What were they looking for?”
“I’d love to know. I don’t. Let’s get back to what we do know, which is that it wasn’t Reanimation’s security goons who stabbed you, and it wasn’t their security who searched your apartment. The timing is wrong for both.”
“I liked it better when you had your arm around me,” Vanessa said.
“Besides all that, Reanimation’s a business. It’s got to act sensibly for the most part, or go under. They want that pretty body of yours back alive.”
“Well, they don’t act like it!”
“We don’t know how they act. Listen to me. The mind of a Reanimation employee has been wiped and your own mind uploaded into her brain—the brain that you call yours for the time being. It means they had a nice-looking woman of thirty-five or forty in their database who resembled you and would consent to being used like this. She must be very valuable to them. Injuring her or killing her would be the last thing they’d want to do. Kidnap you, wipe the brain and reinsert her mind, and they’d have a strong case. ‘There she stands, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. That is her body, the body she was born with. And as you have heard, she consents to everything we’ve done.’ ”
“I see.”
“Kill you, and it’s murder. Not some two-bit hate-speech charge but real murder. This country has far too many people, or thinks it does. The result is that the government kills as many as the politicians can justify. Murder means execution, and quickly. The murderer dies; so does everybody they can convict as an accessory.”
Vanessa said, “Well, somebody wanted to kill me.”
“I agree, and we need to find out who and why. What were they looking for in your apartment?”
“I haven’t the least idea.”
“Think!”
“Skip…”
“Yes?”
“Do you remember when we met at the railroad station?”
He nodded.
“It was one of the very first things since I’ve been back. I don’t remember dying. I know I must have, but I don’t remember it.”
“Of course not. You can’t be scanned after death.”
“The last thing I remember is going to Saint Andrew Kim’s for a transplant. After that, I was lying on a gurney in a different room. I got up and a woman helped me dress and drove me to the station. She told me a lot about you on the way and gave me a little money. Well, of course I wanted to see Chelle, so I did what she’d said to. I had nothing then. A few clothes in a little bag.”
“I remember.”
“Everything I had after that, I bought with money you gave me. I don’t steal, Skip. It’s so, well, déclassé.”
He had stopped pacing to stare out a porthole.
“I never hid anything there. Not a thing. Tim gave me a little money. For these shipboard clothes, you know.” Vanessa held up the white blouse. “If they were looking for some sort of treasure that would be very funny.”
“I’ve been trying to convince myself that they were looking for something that would tell them where you’d gone.”
She shook her head vigorously. “After I was stabbed, I went back there to pack, but I had no idea where I was going afterward, and I was in and out in ten minutes.”
“They cut open sofa cushions, so they were looking for something you would’ve hidden.” Skip paused, and snapped his fingers.
“You’ve thought of something. What is it?”
“Your face, basically. It’s a very pretty face. Delicate features, sharp chin, perfect nose.”
Vanessa’s smile flashed in the dim light. “Why, thank you!”
“Big eyes, with a tiny upward tilt. Most of all the vivacity. Chelle didn’t recognize me at Canam, but she knew you at once.”
“Well, naturally she would.”
Skip shook his head. “Not naturally at all, because that’s not really Chelle’s mother’s face. It’s the face of the Reanimation employee, an attractive woman about thirty-five whose name we don’t know.”
“It’s mine now!”
“You’re right, it is. And because it’s animated by your personality, it exhibits your characteristic facial expressions.” Skip paused, scanning the empty chairs as though gauging the reactions of a jury. “But suppose the woman you saw at that restaurant—the woman you didn’t recognize—didn’t recognize you at all, never having seen you. Suppose she recognized the face, a face she had seen on another woman last hundred-day or last year, a woman whom she and her male friend had been searching for.” He returned to his seat.