“But . . . no, no. That’s . . . why, that’s illegal. Bootleg copies of human beings—my God, Lomax, it’s obscene!”
“I’m going to go see if I can find him,” I said.
“It,” said Pickover forcefully.
“What?”
“It. Not him. I’m the only ‘him’—the only real Rory Pickover.” He shuddered. “My God, Lomax, I feel so . . . so violated! A stolen, active copy of my mind! It’s the ultimate invasion of privacy . . .”
“That may be,” I said. “But the bootleg is trying to tell you something. He—it—gave Wilkins the passphrase and then tacked some extra words onto it, in order to get a message to you.”
“But I don’t recognize those extra words,” said Pickover, sounding exasperated.
“Do they mean anything to you? Do they suggest anything?”
Pickover re-read the text on the screen. “I can’t imagine what,” he said, “unless . . . no, no, I’d never think up a code like that.”
“You obviously just did think of it. What’s the code?”
Pickover was quiet for a moment, as if deciding if the thought was worth giving voice. Then: “Well, New Klondike is circular in layout, right? And it consists of concentric rings of buildings. Half past eight—that would be between Eighth and Ninth Avenue, no? And seven courses—in the Seventh Circle out from the center? Maybe the damned bootleg is trying to draw our attention to a location, a specific place here in town.”
“The Seventh Circle, off Eighth Avenue,” I said. “That’s a rough area. I go to a gym near there.”
“The shipyard,” said Pickover. “Isn’t it there, too?”
“Yeah.” Dry-dock work was so much easier in a shirtsleeve environment, and, in the early days, repairing and servicing spaceships had been a major business under the dome. I started walking toward the door. “I’m going to investigate.”
“I’ll go with you,” said Pickover.
I shook my head. He would doubtless be more hindrance than help. “It’s too dangerous. I should go alone.”
Pickover looked for a moment like he was going to protest, but then he nodded. “All right. But if you find another me . . .”
“Yes?” I said. “What would you like me to do?”
Pickover gazed at me with pleading eyes. “Erase it. Destroy it.” He shuddered again. “I never want to see the damned thing.”
EIGHT
Ihad to get some sleep—damn, but sometimes I do wish I were a transfer—so I took the hovertram out to my apartment. My place was on Fifth Avenue, which was a great address in New York but a lousy one in New Klondike, especially out near the rim; it was mostly home to people who had tried and failed at fossil hunting, hence its nickname “Sad Sacks Fifth Avenue.”
I let myself have six hours—Mars hours, admittedly, which were slightly longer than Earth ones—then I headed out to the old shipyard. The sun was just coming up as I arrived there. The sky through the dome was pink in the east and purple in the west.
Some active maintenance and repair work was still done on spaceships here, but most of these hulks were no longer spaceworthy and had been abandoned. Any one of them would make a good hideout, I thought; spaceships were shielded against radiation, making it hard to scan through their hulls to see what was going on inside.
The shipyard was a large field holding vessels of various sizes and shapes. Most were streamlined—even Mars’s tenuous atmosphere required that. Some were squatting on tail fins; some were lying on their bellies; some were supported by articulated legs. I tried every hatch I could see on these craft, but, so far, they all had their airlocks sealed tightly shut.
Finally, I came to a monstrous abandoned spaceliner—a great hull, some three hundred meters long, fifty meters wide, and a dozen meters high. The name Skookum Jim was still visible in chipped paint near the bow, which is the part I came across first, and the slogan “Mars or Bust!” had been splashed across the metal surface in a paint that had survived the elements better than the liner’s name. I walked a little farther alongside the hull, looking for a hatch, until—
Yes! I finally understood what a fossil hunter felt when he at last turned up a perfectly preserved rhizomorph. There was an outer airlock door and it was open. The other door, inside, was open, too. I stepped through the chamber, entering the ship proper. There were stands for holding space suits but the suits themselves were long gone.