Mindscan

Gabriel Smythe turned out to be a compact man of perhaps sixty, with white-blond hair and a florid complexion. He had taken up residence in High Eden's transit-control room, which was a cramped space, dimly lit, full of monitor screens and glowing control panels. Through a wide window, we could see the moonbus, just twenty meters away, attached to the Jetway. It had coverings over all the windows I could see, preventing us from looking inside.

"Thank you for coming," Smythe said, pumping my hand. "Thank you."

I nodded. I didn't want to be here — at least not under these circumstances. But I felt a moral responsibility, I guess — although I hadn't done anything.

"And I see you brought the newspaper," continued Smythe. "Excellent! All right, there's a videophone connection between here and the moonbus. That's the microphone, and that's the camera pickup. He's covered all the security cameras inside the bus, but we can still see him through the phone's camera, when he deigns to transmit video, and he can see us. I'm going to call him now, and let him know you're here. He's being at least partially reasonable — he let one of the hostages go. Chandragupta says—"

"Chandragupta?" I repeated, startled. "Pandit Chandragupta?"

"Yes. Why?"

"What's he got to do with this?"

"He's the one who cured the other you," said Smythe.

I felt like slapping my forehead, but that would have been too theatrical. "Christ, of course! He's also the one who started this whole damn mess with the lawsuit. He issued a death certificate for the Karen Bessarian who died up here."

"Yes, yes. We saw. We've been watching the trial coverage, of course. Needless to say, we're not pleased. Anyway, he says your, um…"

"Skin," I said. "I know the slang. My shed skin."

"Right. He says your skin will have wildly fluctuating neurotransmitter levels in his brain for perhaps another couple of days. Sometimes he'll be quite rational, and sometimes he'll have a hair-trigger temper, or be totally paranoid."

"Christ," I said.

Smythe nodded. "Who'd have thought it'd be easier to copy a mind than to cure one? Anyway, remember, he's armed, and—"

"Armed?" Karen and I said in unison.

"Yes, yes. He's got a piton gun — it's for mountain climbing, and it shoots metal spikes. He could easily kill someone with it."

"My God…" I said.

"Indeed," said Smythe. "I'll get him on the phone. Don't promise him anything we can't deliver, and do your best not to upset him. Okay?"

I nodded.

"Here goes." Smythe tapped some keys on a small keypad.

The phone bleeped a few times, then: "It better be good news, Gabe."

The picture on the screen showed the old me, all right: I'd forgotten how much gray I'd had in my hair. There was a wild look in his eyes that I don't think I'd ever seen before.

"It is, Jake," Gabe said. It was strange hearing him use my name but not be addressing me. "It's very good news indeed. Your — the other you is here, with me now, here, in the transit-control room at High Eden." He gestured for me to come into the camera's field of view, and I did so.

"Hello," I said, and my voice sounded mechanical, even to me. I'd forgotten how rich my real — my original — voice had been.

"Hmmph," said the other me. "Did you bring the newspaper?"

"Yes," I said. Karen, standing out of view, handed it to me. I held it up to the phone's lens, so he could read the date and see the main headline.

"I'll want to examine that later, of course, but for now, all right: I'll accept that a rocket really came from Earth today, and you might have been on it."

"Uncover the windows on the moonbus, and you'll see the rocket," I said. "It's about a hundred meters away, and — let's see — it should be visible off your left side."

"And you've got a sniper, just waiting to pick me off if my face appears in the window."

Gabe loomed in. "Honestly, Jake," he said, "there are no snipers on the moon."

"Not unless one came with him," the other Jake said, gesturing at me. I had never heard myself sounding paranoid before. I didn't like it.

Gabe looked at me. He lifted his shoulders and white-blond eyebrows slightly.

"Jake," I said, gently, "you wanted to see me?"

The me on the monitor nodded. "But how do I know it's really you?"

"It's me."

"No. At best, it's one of us. But it could be any consciousness loaded into that body; just because the exterior looks like me doesn't mean that it's my Mindscan inside."

"So ask me a question," I said.

There were endless numbers of things he could have asked me, things only one of us could possibly know. The name of the imaginary friend I had when I was a kid, the one I never told anyone about. The one and only item I'd ever shoplifted, as a teenager — a handheld gaming unit I really wanted.