“He wasn’t a passenger,” Lakshmi said. “He was crew.”
“You mean—you mean he was the monster? The one who thawed out passengers and terrorized them?”
“No, no. He was the backup bowman; the spare. He was supposed to be kept on ice the whole voyage, and only thawed out in an emergency.”
“Ah,” I said. “And do you know what became of him?”
“Of course. I’m covering that in my book.”
I looked at her expectantly. “And?”
She tilted her head and brushed lustrous hair out of her eyes. “I’ll send you an invitation to the book-launch party.”
I smiled my most-charming smile. “Please, Lakshmi. I’d really like to know.”
She considered for a moment, then: “I don’t know how much you know about the history of human space flight.”
“Some. What they taught in school.” Except on Fridays.
“Well, did you know that some space scientists used to say it was impossible for humans to safely come to Mars, or live here?”
“When did they say that?”
“From the 1970s to, oh, say, 2030 or so.”
“Why?”
“Radiation.”
“Really?”
“Yup. Earth’s magnetosphere and atmosphere protect people on Earth’s surface from solar and cosmic radiation. And they argued that without those shields, you’d get too big a dose coming to Mars or staying on its surface.”
I smiled. “Shall we turn off the lights and see if we glow?”
“Exactly. It was a risible contention. The scientists who were making it were either talking outside their field of expertise or were deliberately misleading people.”
I lifted my eyebrows. “Why?”
“A turf war. Sure, here on Mars we get more radiation than people on Earth do—enough for each year living under the dome to increase by a whopping one percent your chance of getting cancer sometime in the next thirty years. The scientists saying cancer was a showstopper were all either in the business of unmanned probes or wanted to spend forever hanging in Low Earth Orbit.” She paused. “You know anyone who smokes tobacco?”
“My grandmother used to.”
“Yeah. Well, if she’d moved to Mars but left her cigarettes behind on Earth, she’d have reduced her chances of getting cancer.”
“Okay,” I said. “So?”
“So, getting cancer via space travel or while living on Mars is a vanishingly slim chance. But, then again, so is striking it rich finding fossils here. That happens, and so does the cancer thing—just very, very rarely. Well, Willem Van Dyke didn’t discover fossil riches—Weingarten and O’Reilly did that, and they just brought him along for the ride. But he did win the other lottery, poor bastard: he’s the one in a thousand who got cancer by traveling in space.”
“And then what?” I asked.
“I’m still trying to find out. There are references thirty years ago to him having a terminal diagnosis, and I haven’t turned up anything after that. Of course, he knew where the Alpha mother lode was, and even though Weingarten and O’Reilly ripped him off, he probably kept a few good fossils. I suspect he’s long dead, but with the money those fossils would have fetched, he probably went out in style.”
“Could he have transferred?”
“He might have possibly had enough money, yeah, but I doubt he’d have done that. This was decades ago, remember. Van Dyke was very religious. He believed he had an immortal soul and didn’t believe that soul could be transferred into an artificial body. There were a lot of people like that back then. Even today, there are still some who want to overturn Durksen v. Hawksworth in the States.”
I’d been all of twelve when that case had begun. A crazed gunman had shot President Vanessa Durksen. There had been no way to save her body, but Howard Slapcoff had successfully urged the president’s chief of staff to have her mind transferred, and have the transfer serve out the rest of her term, instead of having the vice-president, who everyone agreed was a disaster, sworn in as her successor. Durksen had been well into her second term then, so there was no way she could stand for re-election, but a lot of pundits said the transfer could have won if she’d been eligible to run again. It had been a brilliant coup for Howard Slapcoff. Durksen had been scrutinized minutely by the whole planet—her every word, her every decision—to see if she’d changed in the slightest after transferring, and most people (except a few ideologues in the opposing party) agreed that she hadn’t; mainstream acceptance of transfers really still being the same person began with that.
“Okay,” I said. “Thanks. I appreciate the help.”
She unfolded her long legs and rose. “Now, was there anything else? I really do have to get back to my book.”
“No,” I said. “But thank you.” I tipped my nonexistent hat and, with considerable regret, left her and headed out into the dreary world under the dome.
I spent the rest of the day searching for information about Willem Van Dyke. Although the Privacy Revolution of 2034 had made it a lot easier for people to not leave tracks wherever they went, most people still had pretty extensive online presences. But not Willem Van Dyke—or, at least not the Willem Van Dyke in question; it turned out to be an irritatingly common name. He really did seem to go off the grid thirty years ago, just as Rory Pickover and Lakshmi Chatterjee had said. I suppose he could have just headed out into the wilderness to die—but there was no death notice that I could find.
Once night fell, I went to see Rory Pickover at his apartment at the center of the dome. After he’d let me in, and we were seated in his yellow-walled living room, I dove into what I wanted. “You promised to take me to see the Alpha.”
Pickover looked at me unblinkingly. I stared him down as long as I could, but his acrylic peepers weren’t affected even by direct exposure to the desiccated Martian atmosphere, so he won. But I wasn’t going to give up. “Seriously,” I said. “I need to see it.”
“It’s nothing to look at,” he replied.
Pickover himself was nothing to look at either, at the moment; most of the skin was still gone from his face. “I understand that. But I’m having no luck tracing Van Dyke—and there may be a clue to his whereabouts there.”
“All right,” Pickover said, surprising me; I’d expected the argument to last longer. “Let’s go.”
“Now?”
“Sure, now.” He stood up. “It’s dark out—that’s my first line of defense in keeping you from recognizing landmarks. Second line of defense will be having you polarize your surface-suit helmet for the journey, meaning you’ll barely be able to see out of it in the dark. Third line of defense will be my taking a circuitous route to get us there. Fourth line of defense is that by this late you must be tired, meaning you might even fall asleep on the journey—indeed, you’ll want to, since it’ll take hours, and we won’t be able to accomplish much until dawn.”
I’d kind of hoped to make it over to The Bent Chisel tonight to see Diana, but at least he was agreeing to take me. “All right,” I said, getting up as well.
“Great. Bathroom’s down there, old boy—better avail yourself before we head out, and…”
“What?”
“Oh, nothing. Haven’t used it myself in months—not since I transferred. I hope I remembered to flush.”
SEVENTEEN
Since the episode with Joshua Wilkins, I’d researched ways to kill a transfer, just to be on the safe side. Sadly, except for using a broadband disruptor, there didn’t seem to be any reliable method. That made sense, of course: the bodies were designed to cheat death—they were highly durable, with vital components encased in protective armor. I’d tried to find a way, but it seemed kryptonite was hard to come by on Mars.