“We’ve got no proof.” — Don’t you think I know Claude? His way of speaking, his movements, his facial expressions? He can fool the whole world, but he can’t fool me. He’s done a countererasure on his host and taken over. First he murdered me, then he murdered Martin St. John. And if you give him a chance tonight, you’ll be taking a new carnate trip too. Get out of here!
St. John was returning from the billing plate now. Abruptly, Risa scrambled to her feet.
She rushed from the coffee shop. St. John came after her, calling her name. But he did not pursue her beyond the front of the building. A thin, acrid smell was in her nostrils: fear. Risa rushed to the corner, shouldering past pedestrians uncaringly. Time seemed to accelerate oddly for her, so that she was unaware of individual moments. In a blur of panic she came to a message box on the corner and opened the speaker hood.
“Quaestor!” she blurted. “I want to report a dybbuk!” It took only an instant for the robots of the quaestorate to get a fix on the street. Two personnel hopters appeared, and gleaming figures dropped from them. Risa pointed tack toward the coffee shop. “Martin St. John,” she said. “There he goes!”
The robots surrounded him. Risa saw the man struggling in vain.
—They’ve got him, Tandy cried. Come on! We’ll have to testify. “I’d better call my father first. I’m in this too deep.” — All right. Get him to ship a lawyer over. We’ll post the challenge and demand a mindpick with me as the — injured party. And I want an autopsy report on my body, too. I’m beginning to figure this business out, Risa.
“What if we’re wrong? What if it’s all a mistake?” — Then he’ll sue you for false arrest and it’ll cost your father some money. It’s worth the risk. Do you want dybbuks walking around free?
“Of course not,” Risa said softly. She began to walk like a figure in a dream toward the middle of the block. “Of course not. I’ll call my father. He’ll know what to do.”
Chapter 11
“Send in Donahy,” Mark Kaufmann said. The door of his inner office flickered open, and the Scheffingprocess technician stumbled in. He looked awed to the point of collapse. His huge bushy eyebrows were thrust up to the top of his wide pale forehead, and his hands plucked tensely at the fringes of his tunic. Within the confines of the Scheffing Institute building, men like Donahy taped the personae of the rich and mighty with little deference, blandly relying on their array of intricate equipment to give them the upper hand. But here, on the home ground of so potent a person as Mark Kaufmann, Donahy was devoid of confidence, a cipher, a twitching pleb smitten with terror, wholly unable to imagine why he had been singled out and summoned here.
Kaufmann said, “We’re all alone in here, Donahy. There’s no one with us, no one watching us, no mini-viewers, no monitor of any kind. Whatever’s said in here remains absolutely private, between the two of us. Sit down.”
Donahy remained standing. He shifted his weight from leg to leg.
“You don’t trust me?” Kaufmann asked. He opened a panel on his desk and unclipped a microspool monad. “Do you see this? It’s a spy detector. It’s programed to set off an alarm if any outside entity taps into this room. So long as it quietly glows green like this, we can say what we please, we can plot to blow up the universe, and no one will know. So relax. Sit down and have a drink. I don’t bite.”
“I can’t understand why you’ve asked me to come here.”
“Because I want you to do something for me, obviously,” Kaufmann said. He extended the tray of drinks as Donahy nervously lowered himself into the chair at last. Silently they went through the ritual of the drink. By every motion Donahy showed his fear and uncertainty. He’ll be tugging at his forelock next, Kaufmann thought.
On Kaufmann’s desk sat a small portrait of Uncle Paul, one of the many in his possession. He thrust it forward and let Donahy contemplate the patrician features, the sly, veiled eyes, the magnificent chin.
“Do you know this man, Donahy?” A nod. “It’s Paul Kaufmann, isn’t it?”
“Yes. My late uncle. He’ll soon be back in carnate form, I believe.”
“I don’t know anything about that, sir.”
“The information I have is that Administrator Santoliquido intends shortly to approve the transplant of my uncle’s persona to John Roditis.”
Donahy looked blank. Kaufmann realized that he was speaking beyond the technician’s comprehension; Roditis and Santoliquido and old Paul were simply not part of Donahy’s world except as friezes on some titanic facade far overhead. They were demigods, and Donahy did not concern himself with their wishes, conflicts, or plans.
Kaufmann said, “How would you like to be earning twenty thousand bucks fish a year, Donahy?”
“Sir?”
“I need a favor. You’re in a position to grant it. I could have picked any one of a hundred technicians to handle the job for me, but I’ve dealt with you before and I know you’re capable and trustworthy. And I assume you could always use more money. What do you get paid, anyway?”
“Seven thousand, sir. With an annual increment of two hundred fifty.”
“Which means that if you stick to your job and don’t make any conspicuous mistakes, you’re likely to be making as much as ten thousand by the time you’re middle-aged, right? And there you stick until you retire and die. Well, I’m offering you an extra twenty thousand, on a lifetime annuity. Out of that you should be able to put aside enough money to make the down payment on a Scheffing persona recording. Would you like to live again, Donahy?”
The man looked utterly sick now. Rivulets of perspiration streamed down his face. He reached impulsively toward the tray of drinks, and then, as if deciding that it was impolite to serve himself without being asked, drew back, his fingers quivering.
Kaufmann smiled. “Go on. Have another. Have two. If you’re tense, why not?”
Donahy jabbed the snout of a drink tube against his arm. When he spoke, he had difficulty framing his words.
“Could-could you be more specific, Mr. Kaufmann?”
“Certainly. I’m sure you know that the Scheffing Institute retains all persona recordings it makes, storing them in various depots around the world. For example, John Roditis is shortly going to receive a transplant of my uncle’s persona recorded last December, but there’s also a Paul Kaufmann persona that was recorded last spring, and one made the year before that, and so on over quite a span of time. And these previous recordings remain in dead storage. Are you aware of that?”
“Yes.”
“Now, then, suppose you were to locate the whereabouts of my uncle’s last-but-one recording, which shouldn’t be too difficult for you to find, and remove it from storage. Then, suppose you were to bring this recording with you to a certain lamasery in San Francisco which is in the process of setting up its own soul bank. They’ve already installed enough equipment to do transplants and make recordings. What if you were to supervise the transplant of this borrowed persona at the lamasery? And then you’d undergo a blanking that would wipe all this incriminating evidence from your mind, so that no one could possibly prove that you had done any of these things. When you came to, you wouldn’t know what you had been up to, but you’d discover you had suddenly become the recipient of an annuity which automatically transferred twenty thousand bucks fish into your credit balance each year. That’s the equivalent of half a million dollars invested at four percent which is considerable capital. With that kind of stake, you’d be able to buy yourself onto the wheel of rebirth. The risk is very small and the reward is infinite. What do you say, Donahy?”
“I’ve always been a law-abiding man, Mr. Kaufmann.”