chair in my office, the wallpaper displaying the alternating green and caramel stripes of our house from all those years ago, and I straightened my collar, patted down my hair, cleared my throat, activated my camera, and spoke to it. “Hello, sis . . .”
FORTY-SEVEN
Diana, with her gorgeous new body, drove by my place to pick me up in Juan’s buggy.
“How’d seeing Juan go?” I asked.
She smiled, and although it wasn’t the smile of hers I was used to, it was still very pleasant. “He’s such a sweetheart,” she said. “He was so relieved that I was still alive.”
“I bet.”
“But—funny. I knew he liked me; I mean—come on—it was painfully obvious. But he didn’t look at me the same way this time. I know I’m ten times better-looking now than I was before, but . . .” She shrugged a little. “Maybe there is something to be said for people who like you just the way you are . . . or were.”
“Maybe,” I said softly.
We drove to NewYou and collected the dead transfer body that had housed the bootleg Rory. Horatio Fernandez, per my instructions, had put the fried brain of the legitimate Pickover into the empty skull. In good mobster fashion, Diana and I stuffed the cybercorpse into the trunk. We then headed to the western airlock and drove through the tunnel there and out onto the surface.
I’d said before that newcomers to Mars sometimes hurt themselves because they feel invincible in the low gravity. I imagined something similar could happen with transfers: the combination of enhanced strength and feeble gravity makes them feel like comic-book superheroes. And Joshua Wilkins—poor, grieving Joshua Wilkins, who had recently lost his doting wife Cassandra—would quite plausibly have felt more reckless than most.
There were amazing places on Mars, and if a tourist industry ever develops here, I’m sure the brochures will feature Valles Marineris and Olympus Mons—respectively, the solar system’s longest canyon and its largest volcano. Either of those would have done well for our purpose, but unfortunately they were both clear around the globe from Isidis Planitia. But Rory—who, of course, knew his geology—suggested a suitable spot closer to home. There was a dried lava flow extending thirteen kilometers from a mountain peak in Nili Patera. The sides of the flow were steep, and in some places featured an eighty-meter sheer drop.
Diana and I had brought along some climbing gear—carbon-fiber rope, a piton gun, and so forth—to make it look like old Joshua-never-Josh had decided to try his luck rappelling down the lava flow. We found the steepest edge we could along its length, opened the trunk, and carried the body to the precipice. I took one leg, Diana took the other, and we dangled it headfirst over the edge. “Count of three,” I said. “One, two, three.”
We let it go and watched it fall in that wonderful Martian slow motion, down, down, down, descending a height equal to that of a twenty-seven-story office tower. Mars, being Mars, served up a Wile E. Coyote falling-off-the-cliff-style puff of dust when the body hit.
It might be years or mears, or decades or mecades, until the body was found, but, when it was, I’m sure the coroner’s report will read “death by misadventure.” If my time ever comes, I’d like the same thing, I think—beats all hell out of being gunned down by an ex-wife, strangled by a creditor, or knifed by a disgruntled client.
The trip back to the dome took the better part of a day, and that gave Diana and me plenty of time to talk. And, after several hours, with the sun low behind us and the sky ahead purpling, I decided to pop the question—the one that had been swirling at the back of my mind ever since I discovered that she was still alive. But getting to it required some setup, so, as we continued east, I said, “I think it’s time to change things around a little.”
“Oh?” replied Diana, turning her lovely head to look at me.
“Yeah. I’m tired of being the only private detective on Mars.”
“What would you do instead?”
“No, no, no. I’m not talking about quitting. I love my work; to quote one of my predecessors, this is my métier. But I’m thinking about taking on a partner.”
“Maybe Dougal McCrae would like to join you,” Diana offered. “I imagine he gets tired of all the paperwork that goes with being a cop.”
“No, not him.” I took one hand off the steering wheel and swept it back