“You may find yourself slightly impotent tonight,” Santoliquido was saying. “I suppose I should have warned you. There’s a kind of sexual confusion that sets in after you’ve done some transsexual sampling. But it wears off in a day or so. How did you find it, being female?”
“Interesting. Not very appealing, though.”
“Well, of course, these were young, shallow girls. I could find you female personae that would give you a real jolt of character. But the outward manifestations are unusual, aren’t they? You never dreamed it was like that, so different, to belong to the other sex?”
“I’m glad to have had the opportunity. I can’t say I’m impressed by any of my daughter’s choices.”
“Which would you prefer her to take? She’s going to pick one, you know.”
Kaufmann nodded. “Z was nothing but a cow. Risa would be as bored with her company as I was. Y was neutral, good-natured, most likely fun in bed. And X was utterly hateful. Vicious, nasty, selfish, hardly human. Risa wouldn’t want a bitch like that in her head. I suppose that Y is the least of the three evils.”
“She’s going to pick X,” said Santoliquido. “Did she tell you that?”
“She didn’t. But X is the obvious one. She’s got the right combination for Risa — strength of character and voluptuousness. Why did you hate her so?”
“I don’t know. I can’t find any particular reason. Just an absence of sympathy. Looking back, I can’t pinpoint any single ugly thought from her, but yet I know I loathed her.”
“A pity,” said Santoliquido. “From Tuesday on, she’ll be living in Risa, unless I miss my guess. Do you want to withdraw your consent for the transplant?”
Kaufmann thought it over. It was within his power to prevent Risa from taking this persona on; but he saw the futility of the attempt at once. If thwarted, Risa would merely apply more pressure, and she was an expert at getting her way. He knew he had to adjust to the changed Risa that would come forth, that it was idle to try to block and control her.
He waved his hand. “Let her do as she likes. But I hope she’ll take Y.”
“Your hope will he disappointed,” said Santoliquido. He looked at his watch. “I’m afraid I must leave you now, Mark. I’ll turn you over to a technician who’ll see to it that your new persona recording gets made right away. That is why you came here today, I’m sure you remember.”
“Yes,” Kaufmann said dryly. “All this spying was only the appetizer. Now for the main course.” Santoliquido produced a young, earnest technician named Donahy, with black hair so dark it seemed to have purple highlights, and startling, bushy eyebrows slashing across his too white forehead. Kaufmann bade Santoliquido farewell, thanked him for his favors, looked forward to his presence on Dominica the next day.
“If you’ll come this way—” said Donahy.
Shortly Kaufmann was out of the storage section of the building and back on familiar ground, in the public area where persona recordings were made. Here there was none of the carefully cultivated gloom of that great central vault. Everything was bright, glowing, radiant; the tiles gleamed, the air had a vibrant tingle. This was the place where one came to purchase one’s claim to immortality, and its gaiety mirrored the moods of those wealthy enough and determined enough to preserve their personae for future transplants.
He had been here many times. He had left a trail of recordings stretching back to the youthfully restless, ambitious Mark Kaufmann of twenty. And, he now knew, all those recordings still existed in some remote but accessible archive. A biographer, given the right influence, could trace the unfolding of his development from youth to decisive manhood, stage by stage. Now the latest Mark Kaufmann would be added to the cache. Since he had been neglectful about reporting to be taped, nearly a full year’s experiences were to be incorporated in the file now. It had been a more eventful year than usual, marked by his uncle’s death, by his own increasingly complex relationship with his daughter, by several turns of his dealings with Elena Volterra, and now — in the final hours of the record — by this quartet of new experiences, his moment of entry into his uncle’s persona and the three samplings of female personae. Those most recent events had left their imprint on him most clearly, and they would now become the potential property of the future recipient of his persona.
“Will you lie down here?” Donahy asked. Kaufmann reclined. The Scheffing process had two phasesrecord and transplant — and the recording phase was the essence of simplicity. The sum of a human soul — hopes and strivings, rebuffs, triumphs, pains, pleasures — is nothing more than a series of magnetic impulses, some shadowed by noise, others clear and easily accessible. The beautiful Scheffing process provided instant mechanical duplication of that web of magnetic impulses. A spark leaping across a gap, so to speak: the quick flight of a persona from mind to tape. A lifetime’s experience transformed into information that can be transcribed, billions of bits to the square millimeter, on magnetic tape; and then, to play safe and provide an extra dimension of realism, the same information translated and inscribed on data flakes as well. There was nothing to it. A transplant, involving the imprinting of all this material on a living human brain, was much more difficult, requiring special chemical preparation of the recipient.
The telemetering devices went into position. Kaufmann looked up into a tangle of gleaming coils and struts. Sensors checked his physical well-being, monitored the flow of blood through the capillaries of his brain, peered through the irises of his eyes, noted his respiration, digestive processes, tactile responses, and vascular dilation.
“You haven’t been with us for a while,” observed Donahy, making an entry in his dossier. “No, I haven’t. I suppose I’ve been too busy.” The technician shook his head. “Too busy to preserve your own persona! You must have really been busy, then. You know, you never would forgive yourself if you suddenly woke up as a transplant and found a year-long chunk of your life missing from your package of experience.”
“Absolutely right,” Kaufmann said. “It’s unutterably stupid to neglect this obligation.”
“Well, now, at least you’ll be up to date again. But we hope you’ll come to see us more regularly in the future. Here we go, now — lift your head a little — fine, fine—”
The helmet was in place. Kaufmann waited, seeking as always to determine the precise moment at which his soul leaped from his brain, impressed a replica of itself on the tape, and hurried back into its proper house. But as ever, the moment was imperceptible. His concentration was broken by the voice of the technician, saying, “There we are, Mr. Kaufmann. Your central will be billed, as usual. Thank you for coming, and I hope we have the pleasure of recording you many more times in years to come.”
Kaufmann left the building and entered his hopter. According to the ticker, the market had risen sharply; he had profited not a little while wandering within the maze of the Scheffing Institute. And he had fulfilled his obligation to his future recipient by extending the unique and irreplaceable record of his life. Complete with a trifle of Uncle Paul’s persona, and minute slices of the lives of three unknown girls.
Within his mind his own resident personae made their presence felt. They reminded him of other duties of this day, still undone. Planning for the party; a realty closing; a conference in Washington. Busy, busy, busy. But at least his conscience was clear for the moment. And tomorrow he could relax.