Mindscan

More silence, while radio waves bridged worlds, then, even though I hadn't properly terminated my last sentence, the cultured British voice came on again. "Surely — if we can get him into treatment, he'll be fine. But right now, as I said, he's holding three people hostage in a moonbus. And he's demanding his rights of personhood back. Of course, we—"

"He's what?"

"—explained to him why that was impossible. There's simply no legal procedure to allow… repatriation I suppose would be the word … to allow repatriation of personhood. Anyway, we need your help, Mr. Sullivan. We need you to come here, to Heaviside, to parlay with him. Over."

"Come to the moon? I've never even been to Europe, for God's sake, and you want me to come to the moon? Uh, over."

The maddening delay, then: "Yes. Right away. You're the only one he'll talk to.

There's far more than just the three lives at stake; if he explodes the moonbus's fuel, he'll kill almost everyone here at High Eden. Over."

"Well, put him on the phone. There's no need for me to go all the way to the moon. Over."

There was silence even longer than the speed of light required. "Umm, we, ah — we tried a deception earlier, in hopes of expeditiously resolving matters. It didn't work.

He won't believe he's talking to the real you unless he can see you face to face and speak to you directly. Over."

"Christ. I — I have no idea how to go about arranging such a trip. Over."

"We'll take care of all of that. You are in Toronto, right? We can have—"

"No, no. I'm in Detroit, not Toronto."

"—a driver at your door, and — oh. Detroit. Okay, we can still do this. We'll have a driver at your door within the hour to take you to Metropolitan Airport. From there, we'll fly you to Orlando, and from Orlando we'll have a small jet standing by to transfer you directly to the Kennedy Space Center. We can get you on a cargo rocket — by luck, one's scheduled for launch six hours from now to bring medical supplies to High Eden. That's not unusual; there are a lot of complex, perishable pharmaceuticals that the residents here rely on, and that are only manufactured on Earth. Anyway, there's lots of residual cargo capacity that they were going to fill with gourmet foodstuffs, but we can get that off-loaded to make room for you. Over."

"Um, I've got to think about this. Let me call you back. Over."

A pause, then: "It's complex ringing the moon. Please—"

"Then you call me back in thirty minutes. I need to think. Over — and out."

I'd had to let my … my guests … aboard the moonbus go to the washroom. I'd worried the first two times that they might get up to something in there, but it didn't seem there was anything that could be used to their advantage. The mirror above the small sink, for instance, was polished stainless steel, rather than glass. Still, I made them keep the door open while they used the facilities.

But soon enough I myself would have to go. There was no way I would back myself into a stall, but I'd also never been good at peeing in public. I guess I'd have to get them all to turn their backs while I did it into a jar or something … if I could find a jar. Of course, it would be even worse when I eventually had to defecate, since that was an exceedingly vulnerable posture. If only I—

The videophone bleeped. I went over to answer it.

"We've established contact with the other you," said Smythe, appearing on the small screen. "He's in Detroit."

"Detroit?" I said. I had the piton gun in my right hand. and gently swung it back and forth between Chloe, Akiko. and Hades … although Akiko was currently napping, so she probably didn't pose much of a threat. "What the hell would he be doing in Detroit?" And then it hit me. The trial — he must have been curious enough, for some reason, to go watch it. "Anyway," I said, before Smythe could reply, "what's he say?"

"He says we have to call him back in thirty minutes."

"Damn it, Smythe, if you're stalling—"

"We're not stalling. We should have an answer for you soon. So, please, please, for the love of God, don't do anything desperate."

Karen and I looked at each other. She was still holding her paper book aloft; it was effortless to do so, and unless she actually told her arm to drop down, it wouldn't.

For my part, I was sitting on the La-Z-Boy, but with it upright, the mechanisms within it and the mechanisms within me both tense.

"You've got to go," Karen said. "You've got to go to the moon."

"They don't need me. They need a professional. A hostage negotiator, or a…"

"Or a what? A sniper? Because that's what they'll send: not someone who can talk him out of it, but someone who can take him out."

Damn. All I'd ever wanted was what everyone else gets: a normal life — just a normal fucking life. "All right," I said at last. "I'll go."

"And I'm going, too," said Karen.

"Where?" I replied. "To Florida?"

Karen shook her head. "To the moon."

"I'm, ah, not sure they'd pay for that."

"I can afford it."