The casket was open. Even from this distance, I could see the corpse, trying to feign the look of life.

Right. Like I should talk.

Of course, all eyes were soon on us. A woman who must have been in her eighties * the same age that Karen herself still was * rose from a pew and came over to us. "Who are you?" she said, looking at me. Her voice was reedy, and her eyes were red.

The question, of course, occupied a lot of my thoughts these days. Before I could reply, though, Karen said, "He's with me."

The crab-apple head before us turned to face Karen. "And who are you?"

"I'm Karen," she said.

"Yes?" prodded the woman, the single syllable dry, demanding.

Karen seemed reluctant to use her last name. Here, surrounded by real Bessarians * Bessarians by birth, and by enduring marriages * perhaps she didn't feel entitled to it. But at last she spoke again. "I'm Karen Bessarian."

"My a God," said the woman, her eyes narrowing as she studied Karen's youthful, synthetic face.

"And you area?" asked Karen.

"Julie. Julie Bessarian."

I didn't know if she was Daron's sister or another of Daron's widows, although Karen presumably did; she'd certainly remember the names of her ex-sisters-in-law, if any.

Karen held out her hands, as if to take Julie's in sympathy, but Julie just looked at them. "I always wondered what you looked like," Julie said, returning her gaze to Karen's face.

Another widow, then. Karen tilted her head back slightly, defiantly. "Now you know," she replied. "In fact, this isn't all that far off what I was like back when Daron and I were together."

"I * I'm sorry," said Julie. "Forgive me." She looked over at her dead husband, then back at Karen. "I want you to know, in the fifty-two years we were married, Daron never said a bad word about you."

Karen smiled at that.

"And he was so very happy for all your success."

Karen's head nodded a bit. "Thank you. Who's here from Daron's family?"

"Our children," said Julie, "but you wouldn't know them, I don't think. We had two daughters. They'll be back shortly."

"What about his brother? His sister?

"Grigor died two years ago. That's Narine over there."

Karen's head swiveled to have a look at another old woman, supported by a walker, chatting with a middle-aged man. "I'd * I'd like to say hello," Karen said. "Offer my condolences."

"Of course," said Julie. The two of them moved away, and I found myself walking forward, to the front of the room, looking down on the face of the dead man. I hadn't consciously thought about doing that * but when it became apparent what my body was up to, I didn't veto the action, either.

I don't say all my thoughts are charitable or appropriate, and I often enough wish they had never occurred to me in the first place. But they do, and I must acknowledge them. That man, there, in the coffin, had done what I would never do: feel Karen's flesh, join with her in real, animal passion. Yes, it had been sixty years ago a long before I was born. And I didn't resent him for it; I envied him.

He seemed calm, lying there, arms crossing his chest. Calm * and old, wrinkled, face deeply lined, head almost entirely bald. I tried to regress his countenance, to see if he'd been handsome in his youth, wondering if such ephemeral concerns had ever mattered to Karen. But I really couldn't tell what he'd looked like at twenty-one, the age he'd been when he'd married her. Ah, well; perhaps it was best not to know.

Still, I couldn't take my eyes off his face, the sort of face I'd never have now. But more than appearance separated us, for this man * this Daron Bessarian * was dead, and a I was still trying to make sense of it a I likely would never be.

"Jake?"

I looked up from my reverie. Karen was approaching in a series of very small steps; Julie had taken Karen's artificial arm for support, seemingly now at ease with being in contact with it.

"Jake," repeated Karen, as she drew nearer, "forgive me for not introducing you earlier. This is Julie, Daron's wife" * a small kindness, that, not to say "second wife."

"I'm terribly sorry for your loss," I said.

"He was a good man," said Julie.

"I'm sure he was."

Julie was silent for a moment, then: "Karen has told me about what's been done to the two of you." She gestured with a thin, gnarled hand at my body. "I'd heard a little about such things, of course * I still watch the news, although it mostly depresses me. But, well, I never thought I'd ever meet anyone who had enough money toa"

She trailed off, and I had nothing to say in response, so I just waited for her to go on, which, at last, she did.

"Sorry," Julie said. She looked over at the coffin, then back at me. "I wouldn't want what you've got, anyway * not without my Daron." She touched my synthetic forearm with her flesh one. "But I do envy you. Daron and I only had fifty years together. But the two of you! To have so much time still to come!" Her eyes grew moist again, and she looked back at her dead husband. "Oh, how I envy youa"

I'd heard someone quip shortly after I arrived on the moon that one advantage of lunar life was that there were no lawyers here. But, of course, that's not entirely true: my newfound friend Malcolm Draper was a lawyer, even if he was now, by his own testimony, a retired one. Still, he was the obvious person to seek out for advice about my predicament. I called him on the internal High Eden phone system * the only one we residents had access to. "Hey, Malcolm," I said, when his distinguished face appeared on the screen. "I need to talk to you. Got a minute?"

He raised his grizzled eyebrows. "What's up?"

"Can we meet somewhere?" I said.

"Sure," said Malcolm. "How about the greenhouse?"

"Perfect."

The greenhouse was a room fifty meters on a side and ten meters tall, full of tropical plants and trees. It was the only place in High Eden where the air was humid. The huge assortment of flowers seemed colorful even to me; I couldn't imagine the riot of hues and shades Malcolm must be seeing. Of course, the plants weren't just here to make residents feel less homesick; they were also an integral part of the air-recycling system.

From my occasional visits to greenhouses in Toronto * Allan Gardens was my favorite * I was used to moving along slowly, quietly, almost like when visiting a museum, going from placard to placard. But walking on the moon was different. I'd seen historical footage of Apollo astronauts bouncing around as they walked * and they'd been wearing spacesuits that massed as much as the astronauts themselves did. Malcolm and I, in gym shorts and loose T-shirts, couldn't help but fly up with each step. It doubtless looked comical, but I wasn't in a fun mood.

"So what's up?" asked Malcolm. "Why the long face?"

"They've found a cure for my condition," I said, looking at a cluster of vines.

"Really? That's wonderful!"

"It is, buta"

"But what? You should be jumping up and down." He smiled. "Well, all right, you do have quite a spring in your step, but you don't sound very happy."

"Oh, I'm happy about the cure. You don't know what it's been like, all these years.

But, well, I spoke to Brian Hades."

"Yes?" said Malcolm. "And what did the pony-tailed one have to say?"

"He won't let me go home, even after I'm cured."

We bounced along for several paces. Malcolm's arms flew out from time to time to steady himself, but his face was drawn, and he was clearly carefully considering what to say next. Finally, he spoke: "You are home, Jake."

"Christ, you too? The conditions under which I agreed to come here have changed. I know contract law isn't your specialty, but there must be something I can do."

"Like what? Like go back to Earth? You're still there; the new version of you is there, living in your house, going on with your life."

"But I'm the original. I'm more important."

Malcolm shook his head. "The Two Jakes," he said.

I looked at him, as he batted some overhanging foliage out of his way. "What?"

"Ever see it? It's the sequel to Chinatown, one of my favorite films. The original was fabulous, but The Two Jakes is a lousy movie."

I didn't hide my irritation. "What are you talking about?"

"Just that there are two Jakes now, see? And maybe you're right: maybe the original is more important than the sequel. But you're going to have a hard time proving it to anyone except you and me."

"Can't you help me * you know, in your professional capacity?"

"A lawyer's only any use within an infrastructure that supports litigation. This is the Old West; this is the frontier. No police, no courts, no judges, no jails. Your replacement down on Earth might be able to change things * not that I can see any reason why he'd want to * but there's nothing you can do up here."

"But I'm going to live for decades now."

Malcolm shrugged. "So am I. We'll have some great times together." He gestured at the garden surrounding us. "It really is a wonderful place, you know."

"But a but there's someone, down on Earth. A woman. Things are different now * or they will be, once I have the operation. I have to get out of here; I have to go home * home to her."

We walked along some more. "Greensboro," said Malcolm, softly, almost to himself.

I was still irritated. "Another movie no one ever saw?"

"Not a movie. History. My people's history. In the southern U.S., it used to be that facilities were segregated, and, of course, the good facilities were for whites only.

Well, in 1960, four black college students sat down in the whites-only section of the lunch counter at Woolworth's * that was a department store * and asked to be served. They were refused, and told to leave the store. They didn't; they started a sit-in, and it spread to other whites-only lunch counters all over the South."

"And?"

Malcolm sighed, appalled at my ignorance, I guess. "They won through peaceful protest. The lunch counters were de-segregated, and blacks were given the same rights that other people had had all along. The boycotters forced the people in power to recognize that you can't push someone around just because of their skin. Well, you are nothing but a skin, my friend * a shed skin. And maybe you do deserve rights. But, like those brave young men, if you want them, you're going to have to demand them."

"How?"

"Find some place to occupy, and refuse to budge until you get what you want."

"You think that'd work?" I asked.

"It's worked before. Of course, don't do anything violent."

"Me? Never in a million years."

18.

Karen and I spent four days in Georgia, seeing the sights, and then we flew north to Detroit, so that Karen could take care of a few things.

Detroit. Hardly where you'd expect to find a wealthy novelist who could make her home anywhere. In the previous century, most Canadians lived as close as possible to the U.S. border * but it wasn't out of fondness for our American neighbors.

Rather, we simply went as far south into the warmth as we could without leaving our own country. And now the reverse was true. Trying to escape the heat, Americans came as far north as possible without actually departing the land of the free and the home of the brave; that's why Karen lived here.

Of course, she had a fabulous mansion, filled with trophies for her writing, copies of her books in over thirty languages, and even some props and set pieces from the movies made of her work.

It was also filled with things reflective of her last husband, Ryan, who had died two years ago. Ryan had collected fossils. Unlike most nature-based hobbies, that one had actually gotten easier of late: all the extra runoff and erosion caused by the polar caps shrinking apparently exposed lots of new material. Or so Karen told me.

Anyway, Ryan had shelves of trilobites * the only invertebrate fossil I could identify on sight * and many other wonderful things.

The most important reason for stopping in Detroit was so that Karen could see her son Tyler, who also lived in this city. She'd spoken to Tyler several times on the phone since undergoing the Mindscan process, but had opted to do it as voice-only calls. She'd told me she wanted him to see her new face directly, not over some hardware that would make it appear even more cold and remote.

Around 6:00 p.m., Karen's doorbell rang. The living-room wall monitor immediately changed to show the peephole-camera view. "That's Tyler," said Karen, nodding. He was, I knew, forty-six. His hair was light brown, and had receded a fair bit. Karen got up from the couch and headed for the entryway. I followed. The light there was dim. Karen unlocked and opened the front door, and*"Hello," said Tyler, sounding surprised. "My name's Tyler Horowitz. I'm here to see*"

"Tyler, it's me," said Karen.

He froze, his jaw hanging slack. I did some quick math: Tyler was born in 1999; Karen's new face was based on the way she'd appeared when she was thirty, back in 1990. Even as a boy, Tyler would never have seen his mother looking quite like this.

"Mom?" he said, softly, disbelieving.

"Come in, son, come in." She stepped aside, and he entered the house.

Karen turned now to face me. "Jake," she said, "I'd like you to meet my son Tyler.

Tyler, this is the new friend I was telling you about."

Even in the dim light, Tyler must have seen that my body was artificial: he looked at my proffered hand as though I'd extended some hideous mechanical claw. He did finally take my hand, but he shook it with no enthusiasm. "Hello, Tyler," I said, bringing all the warmth I could to my electronic voice.

He was clearly Karen's son, although he looked almost twenty years older than she did now. But his basic facial structure was highly similar to hers: broad, with a smallish nose and widely spaced green eyes. "Hello," he said, his voice ironically sounding flat and mechanical.

I smiled and he looked away. I knew that my smile appeared slightly wrong * but, for Pete's sake, his mother's old smile had been the lopsided smirk of a stroke victim. "I'm glad to meet you," I said. "Karen has told me a lot about you."

A brief wince; maybe he didn't like me calling his mother by her first name.

Karen led us into the living room, and I took a seat on the couch, crossing my legs.

Tyler continued to stand. "Your mother tells me you're a history professor," I said.