my old biological body into this one. But he also kept a copy of my mind—I’m sure of that.”
“That’s . . .” I shook my head. “I’ve never heard of that being done.”
“Nor had I,” said Pickover. “I mean, I understood from their sales materials that your consciousness sort of, um, hops into the artificial body. Because of that, I didn’t think duplicates were possible at the time I did it, or I never would have undergone the process.”
Kaur was now about thirty meters away, and she had a big rifle aimed at Pickover’s back. I held up a hand, palm out, to get the cop to stand her ground.
“Prove it to me,” I said. “Prove to me you are who you say you are. Tell me something Joshua Wilkins couldn’t know, but a paleontologist would.”
“Oh, for Pete’s—”
“Tell me!”
“Fine, fine. The most-recent fossils here on Mars date from what’s called the Noachian efflorescence, a time of morphological diversification similar to Earth’s Cambrian explosion. So far, twenty-seven distinct genera from then have been identified—well, it was originally twenty-nine but I successfully showed that both Weinbaumia and Gallunia are junior synonyms of Bradburia. Within Bradburia there are six distinct species, the most common of which is B. breviceps, known for its bifurcated pygidia and—”
“Okay!” I said. “Enough.” I held up fingers to show Kaur which radio frequency I was using and watched her tap it into her wrist keypad. “Sorry, Sergeant,” I said. “False alarm.”
The woman nodded. “You owe me one, Lomax.” She lowered her rifle and headed past us toward the airlock.
I didn’t want Kaur listening in, so I changed frequencies again and indicated with hand signs to Pickover which one I’d selected. He didn’t do anything obvious, but I soon heard his voice. “As I said, I think Wilkins made a copy of my mind.”
It was certainly illegal to do that, probably unethical, and perhaps not even technically possible; I’d have to ask Juan. “Why do you think that?”
“It’s the only explanation for how my computer accounts have become compromised. There’s no way anyone but me can get in; I’m the only one who knows the passphrase. But someone has been inside, looking around; I use quantum encryption, so you can tell whenever someone has even looked at a file.” He shook his head. “I don’t know how he did it—there must be some technique I’m unaware of—but somehow Wilkins has been extracting information from a copy of my mind. That’s the only way I can think of that anyone might have learned my passphrase.”
“You think Wilkins did all that to access your bank accounts? Is there really enough money in them to make it worthwhile? It’s gotten too dark to see your clothes but, if I recall correctly, they looked a bit . . . shabby.”
“You’re right. I’m just a poor scientist. But there’s something I know that could make the wrong people rich beyond their wildest dreams.”
“And what’s that?” I said.
He stood there, trying to decide, I suppose, whether to trust me. I let him think about that, and at last Dr. Rory Pickover, who was now just a starless silhouette against a starry sky, said, in a soft, quiet voice, “I know where it is.”
“Where what is?”
“The Alpha Deposit.”
“My God. You’ll be rolling in it.”
Perhaps he shook his head; it was now too dark to tell. “No, sir,” he replied in that cultured British voice. “No, I won’t. I don’t want to sell these fossils. I want to preserve them; I want to protect them from these plunderers, these . . . these thieves. I want to make sure they’re collected properly, scientifically. I want them to end up in the best museums, where they can be studied. There’s so much to be learned, so much to discover!”
“Does Joshua Wilkins now know where the Alpha Deposit is?”
“No—at least, not from accessing my computer files. I didn’t record the location anywhere but up here.” Presumably he was tapping the side of his head.
“But if Wilkins could extract your passphrase from a copy of your mind, why didn’t he just directly extract the location of the Alpha from it?”
“The passphrase is straightforward—just a string of words—but the Alpha’s location, well, it’s not like it has an address, and even I don’t know the longitude and latitude by heart. Rather, I know where it is by reference to certain geological features that would be meaningless to a non-expert; it would take a lot more work to extract that, I’d warrant.