Mindscan

Hades looked totally furious, and his pony tail was whipping out horizontally behind his head in the breeze. He still wanted to keep me pinned, but he knew if he didn't do something soon, we'd all die. With a frustrated shout of "Damn it!" he let go of me and called to the women, "Hurry! Find stuff to cover the window with!"

The vinyl shade was visibly tearing at its edges, and air was pouring out even more rapidly. Chloe, momentarily hesitating between beating me to death with the metal box she was holding and saving herself, dropped the box, which obligingly fell in slo-mo before clanking against the floor and bouncing up half a meter, then falling again. She moved over to the nearest chair, and tried pulling up the seat cushion — but, of course, moonbuses never flew over water; their cushions weren't removable flotation devices.

Akiko, meanwhile, had gone for the first-aid kit, hanging on the wall next to the entrance to the cockpit. She scrambled to get it open, and found a package of gauze.

It was doubtless less solid than she'd have liked, but she rammed some of it into the hole in the vinyl shield.

But, although the roar of escaping air diminished somewhat, that didn't do anything for the fact that the vinyl was still tearing loose at its edges. I thought about getting everybody to cram into the cockpit; the door to it looked air-tight. Indeed, Hades had already gone in there. For a moment. I was afraid he was going to lock the door shut behind him. saving himself while leaving us to suffocate. But he emerged a moment later — with a large, laminated moon map! He rushed to the window, and — just as the vinyl blind blew out — spread out the map, and held it as tightly as he could against the curving bulkhead. It was being sucked up against the wall, but the fit wasn't exact; air kept hissing out.

Akiko found adhesive tape in the first-aid kit, and started sealing the edges around the map. Meanwhile, I got all the tubes of suit-repair goop, and tossed them to Chloe, who started squirting that around the map's edges, too. Hades still had his arms spread out, holding the map.

The videophone was signaling an incoming call. God knows how long it had been doing that; until the roar of escaping atmosphere abated, we couldn't have heard it.

Keeping the piton gun leveled at Hades's back, I moved over and accepted the call. "Sullivan."

"Mr. Sullivan, my God, is everyone all right?" It was Smythe's voice, panic edging the cultured tones.

Chloe had almost finished sealing the edges of the map. Hades relaxed his crucifixion pose, and turned around to face me. His gray eyebrows went up as he saw the gun aimed directly at his heart.

"Yes," I said. "Everything's fine … for the moment. We, ah, sprung a leak."

Another voice — one I knew — came on. "Jacob, this Quentin Ashburn. You're still plugged into High Eden's life-support system. It's not designed to rapidly repressurize a moonbus, but your air pressure should return to normal in about an hour, assuming the leak is contained.

I looked past Hades. Chloe had finished, and the map seemed to be holding in place.

"It is," I said.

I heard Quentin exhaling noisily. "Good."

Smythe came back on the line. "What in God's name happened?"

"Your Mr. Hades tried to rush me, and I had to fire my gun."

There was silence for a time. "Oh," said Smythe at last. "Is— is Brian all right?"

"Yes, yes, everyone's fine. But I hope you know now that I do mean business. What the hell's happening with getting the other me up here?"

"We're still trying to reach him. He's not at his home in Toronto."

"He's got a cell phone, for Christ's sake. The number is—" and I recited it.

"We'll try that," said Smythe.

"Do that," I said, rubbing my temples. "The clock is ticking."

35

Maria Lopez rose to give the defendant's closing argument a behalf of Tyler Horowitz. She bowed politely to Judge Herrington, then turned to face the six jurors and the alternate.

"The question here, ladies and gentlemen, is simple: what constitutes personal identity? There's clearly more to it than mere biometrics. We've seen that anyone can impersonate someone else, with the appropriate technology. But we understand in our beating hearts that there's something ineffable about being a person, something that goes beyond physical measurement, something that makes each of us uniquely ourselves." She pointed with an outstretched arm at Karen, dressed today in a gray pantsuit. "This robot — this thing! — would have us believe that just because it mimics certain physical parameters of the dear, departed Karer Bessarian, that it is in fact Ms. Bessarian.

"But it isn't. Through her writing, the real Karen Bessarian gave joy to hundreds of millions of people so, of course, we don't want to see that beloved storyteller go.