“Yes I have.”
Bracknell stared at the face on the screen.
“The most difficult part of this process,” Takeo explained, with illconcealed annoyance, “is programming the nanomachines. They’ve got to alter your face, your skin, your bone structure. Once I’ve got them programmed, the rest is easy.”
It wasn’t easy.
One ordinary morning, as Bracknell flicked from one news channel to another, thinking that even being arrested again would be better than this utter boredom, a young Asian nurse entered his sitting room bearing a silver tray with a single glass of what looked like orange juice.
“This is your first treatment, sir.”
“This?” Bracknell asked dubiously as he picked up the glass.
“You should go to bed for a nap as soon as you drink it,” the nurse said. “It contains a sedative.”
“And nanomachines?”
She nodded solemnly. “Oh, yes, sir. Many nanomachines. Hundreds of millions of them.”
“Good,” said Bracknell. He drained the glass, then put it back on her tray with a clink.
“You should go to bed now, sir.”
Bracknell thought of asking her if she would accompany him, but decided against it. She left the suite and he walked into his bedroom. The bed was still unmade from the previous night’s sleep.
This is ridiculous, he thought. I’m not sleepy and there’s no—
A wave of giddiness made his knees sag. He plopped onto the bed, heart thumping. His face tingled, itched. He felt as if something was crawling under his skin. It’s only psychosomatic, he told himself. But as he stretched out on the rumpled bed he felt as if some alien parasites had invaded his body. He wanted to scratch his face, his ribs, everywhere. He writhed on the bed, filled with blind dread, moaning in his terror. He squeezed his eyes shut and hoped that sleep would come before he began screaming like a lunatic.
Each morning for six days, the same nurse brought him a glass filled with fruit juice. And nanomachines. For six mornings Bracknell took it with a trembling hand, then went to bed and waited for the sedative to knock him out while his body twitched and writhed. Each day the pain grew sharper, deeper. It was as if his bones were being sawn apart, the flesh of his face and body flayed by a sadistic torturer. He thought of insects infected with the eggs of parasitic wasps that ate out their host’s insides. He lived in writhing agony and horror as the nanomachines did their work inside his body.
But he saw no difference in his face. Every morning he staggered to the lavatory and studied himself in the mirror above the sink. He looked the same, except that his beard did not grow. After three days of the nanotherapy he stopped shaving altogether. There was no need. Besides, his frightened hands shook too much.
He phoned Takeo every day, and received only a computer’s synthesized, “Dr. Koga will return your call at the appropriate time.”
Maybe he’s killing me, Bracknell thought. Using nanomachines to eat out my guts and get rid of me. Still, despite his fears each morning he swallowed down the juice and the invisible devices swarming in it. And suffered the agonies of hell until he passed thankfully into unconsciousness.
One week to the day after Bracknell had started taking the nanotherapy, Koga showed up in his suite.
“How do you feel?” the physician asked, peering at Bracknell intently.
“Like I’m being eaten inside,” Bracknell snapped.
Takeo tilted his head slightly. “Can’t be helped. Normally we go more slowly, but both of us are in a hurry so I’ve given you some pretty heavy dosages.”
“I don’t see any change,” said Bracknell.
“Don’t you?” Takeo smiled condescendingly. “I do.”
“My face is the same.”
Walking over to the desktop phone, Takeo said, “The day-to-day change is minuscule, true enough.” He spoke a command in Japanese to the phone. “But a week’s worth of change is significant.”
Bracknell saw his own image on the phone’s display.
“Take a look in the mirror,” said Takeo.
Bracknell went to the bathroom. He stared, then ducked back into the living room. The difference was subtle, but clear.
Takeo smiled at his handiwork. “In another week not even United Life and Accident Assurance will be able to tell you from the original Dante Alexios.”
“It’s painful,” Bracknell said.
“Having your bones remolded involves some discomfort,” Takeo replied, unconcerned. “But you’re getting a side benefit: you’ll never have to shave again. I’ve eliminated the hair follicles on your face.”
“It still hurts like hell.”
Takeo shrugged. “That’s the price you must pay.”
Another week, thought Bracknell. I can put up with this for another week.
DANTE ALEXIOS
Marvin Pratt frowned at the dark-haired man sitting in front of his desk. The expression on the stranger’s face was utterly serious, determined.
“You’re not the man I saw in the hospital,” he said.
“I am Dante Alexios,” said Bracknell. “I’ve come to claim my money as the sole beneficiary of the Alhambra’s accident policy.”
“Then who was the man in the hospital?” Pratt demanded.
Alexios shrugged his shoulders. They were slimmer than Bracknell’s had been. “Some derelict, I suppose.”
“He disappeared,” Pratt said, suspicion etched onto his face. “Walked out of the hospital and disappeared.”
“As I said, a derelict. I understand there’s an underground community of sorts here in Selene. Criminals, homeless people, all sorts of oddballs hiding away in the tunnels.”
Pratt leaned back in his swivel chair and let air whistle softly between his teeth as he compared the face of the man sitting before him with the image of Dante Alexios on his desktop screen. Both had pale skin and dark hair; the image on the screen had a shadow of stubble along his jaw while the man facing him was perfectly clean-shaven. His face seemed just a trifle out of kilter, as if the two halves of it did not quite match. His smile seemed forced, twisted. But the retinal patterns of his dark brown eyes matched those on file in the computer. So did his fingerprints and the convolutions of his ears.
“How did you survive the explosion?” Pratt asked, trying to keep his tone neutral, nonaccusative.
Smoothly, Alexios replied, “I was outside doing routine maintenance on the attitude thrusters when the two ships blew up. I went spinning off into space for several days. I nearly died.”
“Someone picked you up?”
“Another freighter, the Dubai, outbound for the Belt. After eight days they transferred me to an inbound ship, the Seitz, and I arrived here in Selene yesterday. That’s when I called your office.”
Pratt looked as if he didn’t believe a word of it, but he went through the motions of checking Alexios’s story. Alexios had paid the captains of the two vessels handsomely for their little lies, using Takeo’s money on the promise that he’d repay the physician once he got the insurance payout into his hands.
“This other man, the amnesiac,” said Pratt warily. “He was rescued from the Alhambra also.”
Smoothly, Bracknell answered, “Then he must have been a convict. Captain Farad had the pleasant little trick of putting troublemakers outside, in spacesuits, until they learned to behave themselves.”
“I see.” At last Pratt said, “You’re a very fortunate man, Mr. Alexios.”
“Don’t I know it!”
With a look of utter distaste, Pratt commanded his phone to authorize payment to Dante Alexios.
Alexios asked, “May I ask, how much is the, uh, benefit?”