"I haven't seen him for * God, it's been thirty years. Not since his mother died.

She'd been very good to me, and we'd kept in touch, even after Daron and I divorced. I went to her funeral." Karen paused for a moment, then said decisively, "And I want to go to Daron's funeral."

"When is it?"

She looked down at her datapad. "The day after tomorrow. In Atlanta."

"Do * do you want me to go with you?"

Karen considered this, then: "Yes. If you wouldn't mind."

Actually, I hated funerals * but had never been to one of somebody I didn't know; maybe that wouldn't be so bad. "Um, sure. Sure, I'd be" * happy to didn't seem the right way to end that sentence, and for once I caught my first thought before it got out into the air * "willing to."

Karen nodded decisively. "It's settled, then."

I had to do something about Clamhead. She needed human companionship, and apparently no matter how hard I tried, she wasn't going to accept me * or Karen, as it turned out * in that capacity. Plus, Karen and I were going away to Georgia, and had decided to stop at her place in Detroit on the way back. It wasn't fair to Clammy to leave her with just a robokitchen for an extended period.

And, well, damn it all, but I'm an idiot. I can't leave well enough alone; I can't resist trying one more time, testing the waters yet again. And so I called Rebecca Chong.

I thought maybe if I selected audio only on the phone, things might go better. She'd hear my voice, hear its warmth, hear the affection in it * but not see my plastic face.

She knew it was me calling, of course; the phone would have told her. And so, the mere fact that she answered a "Hello," came her voice, formal and stiff. I had that purely mental sensation that used to accompany my heart sinking. "Hi, Becks," I said, trying to sound cheerful, chipper.

"Hello," she said again, still not using my name. It was right there in front of her, a string of pixels on her call-display unit, an electronic identification, but she wouldn't use it.

"Becks," I said, "it's about Clamhead. Can you * would you be willing to look after her for a while? I'm* she*"

Rebecca was brilliant; that was one of the reasons I loved her. "She doesn't recognize you, does she?"

I was quiet for longer than you're supposed to be in phone conversations, then: "No.

No, she doesn't." I paused again, then: "I know you've always loved Clamhead.

Does your building allow pets?"

"Yeah," she said. "And, yeah, I'd be happy to look after Clamhead."

"Thanks," I said.

Maybe all this talk about a dog had moved her to throw me a bone. "What are friends for?"

I was sitting in the living room of my lunar apartment, reading news on my datapad.

Of course, the selection of stories displayed was based on my keywords, and*

Jesus.

Jesus Christ.

Could it be true?

I thumbed the article open and read it * then read it again.

Chandragupta. That was a name I hadn't heard before; this couldn't really be his area, or else*

Hyperlinks; his bio. No, no, he's the real deal, all right. And so*

My heart was pounding and my vision was blurring.

Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

Maybe I should email him, but*

But, God damn it, I couldn't. We were allowed to monitor Earth news here * I never would have come if I couldn't have continued to follow the Blue Jays * but we weren't permitted any form of communication with people back on Earth.

Christ, why couldn't this have happened a few weeks ago, before I spent all this money on the Mindscan process and on coming here to the moon? What a waste!

But that was beside the point, really. It was only money. This was way more important.

This was huge.

This changed everything.

I re-read the news to be sure I wasn't mistaken. And I wasn't. It was real.

I was excited and elated and thrilled. I left my apartment, practically bouncing over to the Immortex offices.

The chief administrator at High Eden was a man named Brian Hades: tall, early fifties, light-colored eyes, silver-gray hair gathered into a ponytail, white beard. We'd all met him upon our arrival; I'd quipped that he had a hell of a name * and although his tone never veered from its habitual the-customer-is-always-right smoothness, his bearded jaw clenched in a way that suggested I'd not been the first one to make that joke. Anyway, there wasn't much bureaucracy here; I just walked through his office door and said hello.

"Mr. Sullivan," he said at once, rising from behind his kidney-shaped desk; there weren't so many of us skins yet that he couldn't keep track of us all. "What can I do for you?"

"I have to return to Earth."

Hades raised his eyebrows. "We can't allow that. You know the rules."

"You don't understand," I said. "They've found a cure for my problem."

"What problem is that?"

"Katerinsky's syndrome. A kind of arteriovenous malformation in the brain. It's why I'm here. But there's a new technique that can cure it."

"Really?" said Hades. "That's wonderful news. What's the cure?"

I had the vocabulary of all this down pat; I'd lived with it so long. "Using nanotechnology, they endovascularly introduce particles into the AVM to clog off its nidus; that shuts the AVM down completely. Because the particles use carbon-based nanofibers, the body doesn't reject, or even really notice, them."

"And that means a what? That you'd live a normal lifespan?"

"Yes! Yes! So, you see*"

"That's terrific. Where do they do the procedure?"

"Johns Hopkins."

"Ah. Well, you can't go there, but*"

"What do you mean, I can't go there? We're talking about saving my life! I know you've got rules, buta"

Hades held up a hand. "And they can't be broken. But don't worry. We'll contact people there on your behalf, and bring an appropriate doctor to our facility here.

You've got an unlimited medical benefit, althougha"

I knew what he was thinking. That my accountant * good old Larry Hancock * would certainly notice the a what? Millions? The million this would cost.

But Hades wasn't getting the point. "No, no, you don't see. Everything is different now. The conditions under which I agreed to stay here no longer pertain."

Hades's voice was infinitely solicitous. "Sir, I'm sorry. We'll certainly arrange for you to have this cure * and right away, since I understand how precarious your current health is. But you can't leave here."

"You have to let me go," I said, an edge honing my words.

"We can't. You have no home on the outside, no money, no identity * nothing. This is the only place for you."

"No, you don't understanda"

"Oh, but I do. Look * how old are you?"

"Forty-four."

"Think of how lucky you are! I'm fifty-two, and I'll have to work for many more years, but you've gotten to retire a decade or two before most people do, and are enjoying the absolute lap of luxury."

"But*"

"Aren't you? Is there anything you lack here? You know we pride ourselves on our service. If there's something that's not up to your standards, you just have to ask.

You know that."

"No, no a it's all very pleasant, buta"

"Well, then, you see, Mr. Sullivan, there's nothing to worry about. You can have anything here that you can have on the outside."

"Not anything."

"Tell me what you want. I'll do whatever I can to make your stay here happy."

"I want to go home." It sounded so plaintive, so like my early days at summer camp, all those years ago. But it was what I wanted now, more than anything else in the world * in all the worlds. I wanted to go home.

"I'm truly, truly sorry, Mr. Sullivan," said Hades, shaking his head slowly back and forth, the pony tail bouncing as he did so. "There's just no way I can allow that."

17.

You have to clear U.S. customs at Pearson Airport in Toronto before you can even get on a plane bound for the States. I'd been afraid we'd have a hard time doing so, but the biometrics of our new bodies matched those of the old ones in key places, and we made it through automated screening without any difficulty. I'd thought Karen would have trouble because her current face was so much more youthful than the one in her passport photo, but whatever facial-recognition software was being used must have relied on underlying bone structure, or something, because it agreed that the person in the photo was indeed her.

I hadn't flown since I'd been a teenager. My doctors had urged me not to because the pressure changes that accompanied flying could have set off my Katerinsky's.

Now, of course, I felt no pressure changes at all. I wondered whether airline food had improved over the years, but I had no way to find out.

One of the advantages of no longer sweating is that we didn't have to pack many clothes when we traveled; we had only carry-on luggage. Once we arrived in Atlanta, we headed straight to the Hertz counter and got a car * a blue Toyota Deela. Since there was no need to go by the hotel first to freshen up, we drove straight to the funeral home.

Karen still had a valid driver's license, although she said she hadn't driven for years; she was afraid her reflexes had dulled too much. But she was happy to do the driving now. I couldn't remember the last time I'd ridden shotgun, but it did give me a chance to look at the scenery; they really do have a lot of peach trees in Georgia.

As we continued along, Karen told me about Daron. "He was my first love," she said. "And when it's your first, you have nothing to compare it to. I had no idea it wasn't going work out a although I suppose no one ever does in advance."

"Why'd you break up?" It had been the first question that had occurred to me, and I figured I'd now waited long enough to be entitled to give it voice.

"Oh, any number of reasons," said Karen. "Fundamentally, we just wanted different things from life. We were still in university when we got married. He wanted to be a printing salesperson, like his father * that's back when working in printing seemed like a good career choice * and he wanted me to get a job soon, too. But I wanted to stay in university, go to grad school. He wanted the house with the big yard in the suburbs; I wanted to travel and not be tied down. He wanted to start a family right away; I wanted to wait to have kids. In facta"

"What?"

"Nothing."

"No. Tell me."

Karen was quiet for a time as we rolled along. Finally, she said, "I had an abortion.

I'd gotten pregnant * stupid, right? I hadn't been careful about taking my pills.

Anyway, I never even told Daron about it, since he would have insisted we keep it."

I consciously suppressed my natural inclination to blink. They'd been married in the 1980s, and this was the 2040s. If Karen hadn't aborted the child, he or she would be something like sixty now a and that child, too, would likely be en route to the funeral of the man who had been its father.

I could almost feel the swirling of timelines, the fog of lives that might have gone differently. If Karen hadn't ended that pregnancy all those decades ago, she might have stayed with Daron for the good of her child a meaning she'd probably never have written DinoWorld and its sequels; it was her second husband who had encouraged her to write. And that would have meant she'd never have been able to afford Immortex's services. She'd just be an old, old lady, hampered by bad joints.

We pulled into the parking lot of the funeral home. There were lots of empty places; Karen took one of the handicapped spaces.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"What? Oh." She put the car in reverse. "Force of habit. Back when I could drive before, we were entitled to use those spots * my poor Ryan needed a walker." She found another place to park, and we got out. I thought Toronto was hot in August; here, it was like a blast furnace, and drenchingly humid.

Another couple * ah, that loaded word! * was up ahead of us, entering the building.

They clearly heard our footfalls, and the man held the door for us, turning around as he did so.

His jaw dropped. Damn, I was getting tired of being stared at. I forced what I hoped was a particularly theatrical smile and caught the door. Karen and I walked in. There were three grieving families today; a sign in the lobby directed us to the correct room.