Elaine was noticeably red around the eyes and yawned intermittentlyno doubt the result of a lot of thinking and not too much sleep. They met on a bench in a secluded corner of a leafy square on the administrative side of the Trapezium, facing a sculpture depicting a group of Lowell's space-suited founders from the early days. Events, it turned out, had followed roughly the lines that June and Kieran had surmised.
"I met Leo casually not all that long ago. It was at one of those dinner parties where everyone tries to impress everyone else with how much they're making. We were both bored and a bit repulsed by it all, and got to talking between ourselves about . . . well, the things Leo talks about. Interesting things, exciting thingsthings that have imagination and vision. I was captivated. We clicked, arranged to meet again . . . You know the kind of thing."
Kieran nodded. "This was how long before the experiment?"
"A couple of months, maybe. As we got to know each other, he told me more about his research and its implications. I was blown away. He was right on the cutting edge of this speed-of-light travel anywhere in the Solar System that people have been hearing about for yearsand outside it too, one day, I guess." Elaine drew a long breath and exhaled. "He told me about the experiments they did with animals and things. Then, one day he told me he was scheduled to be the first human to try it. I started to get nervous, asking him how sure they could be that things mightn't be happening in animals that it wasn't easy to know about. . . . And eventually, I guess to try and be reassuring, he confided that it isn't quite the way everyone thinksyou know, that you disappear from one place and reassemble in another. What it actually does is make a copy. Did you know that? And so for things not to get completely crazy, you've got to get rid of the original. Once the process is running commercially, it'll be so fast that nobody will know the difference. But for the first experiment that Leo was going to be involved in, they kept the original in a suspended statefor a few days, until they could be sure. That was why he said I shouldn't worry."
"Yes, I do know that," Kieran answered. He looked at her curiously. "So did you worry?"
"Not at first. Leo had this line that said switching the personality to the duplicate was really no different from what happens naturally in the course of years . . ."
"Yes, I've heard it. Leo told me."
"He made it sound believable, and I accepted it. . . . But as the time got nearer, he started to act less sure. It got to be as if he were trying to sell himself more. But inside, I could tell: he was scared."
"I would be too," Kieran said.
Elaine seemed relieved at not having to go into details. "Well, when he came up with this idea of switching bodies so he wouldn't really have to go through with it, I was more than just willing to help. It was after I told him I worked with a medical hypnotist. Obviously, a plan like that couldn't work if the copy came out knowing everything that had happened."
"You're saying that's all it was to begin with?" Kieran checked. "You just wanted to help the Leo that you knew stay aroundand to keep him yourself. It didn't matter what he or anyone else said about this copy who was supposed to be identical."
Elaine nodded, brushing her eye with a knuckle. "That's it, exactly. I loved him. How could anyone not sympathize with his situation? As you just said, it was to keep him. That was all we wanted. We were just going to disappear and find a spot somewhere. The copy could get rich and famousdo whatever he liked."
"So when did the notion of cleaning out his bank start?" Kieran asked.
"That came later," Elaine said. "Something started to change in Leo. He became envious, malicious, saying that he had earned the money and taken all the risks; why should the other one walk away with the proceeds? I wasn't so happy about the idea. But I couldn't help feeling for him in some ways. I attributed it to the strain he was under, and let myself be drawn into it."
Kieran waited. Elaine sat staring at the sculptures a short distance away. Her manner signaled that there was more, but she wasn't sure how to broach it. "Was it really worth it?" he asked, helping her a little. "I mean, okay, a third of five million isn't exactly peanuts, I know. . . ." He watched her as he spoke. She nodded an unconscious confirmation, her eyes still on the figures. That told Kieran that only the three people were involved. "But for established professionals like you and Henry? It wouldn't justify all the complications and risks."
Elaine sighed and turned her head, finally. "Once Balmer got involved, everything was moved up to higher stakes." She gestured appealingly, as if some defense or justification were called for. "He's one of those high-pressure, over-assertive people who will always take over something like that to get whatever they can. He persuaded us that we could go for much bigger money than what Leo was talking about. Leo was interested straightaway. . . . And I was so far into it by then, I just saw no alternative but to go along."
"There was no question of setting Leo up, then?" Kieran said. "Nothing `personal' with Balmeron your part?"
Elaine looked horrified. "God, no! Everything with Leo had been genuine. My relationship with Balmer was just professional . . . even a bit opportunist, I guess you could say. He knew all the right people, had the contacts. He was the perfect ticket to success and career advancementif you could put up with the rest of him."
Kieran nodded. It was as he'd thought, but he'd needed to be sure. "So how did Balmer decide to up the stakes?" he asked.
"By doing an end run around Quantonix and the client they've got lined up, and selling the TX technology elsewhere. We're talking maybe a billion here, not five million." Elaine looked at Kieran, giving him a moment to think about it. "And with Leo handling the negotiationsthe one who isn't supposed to existyou've got the perfect front man."
Kieran had already seen where she was going. "The only person the customer deals with directly is Sarda-One," he said, voicing his thoughts as they fell into line. "Not you or Balmer. Sarda does all the talking because he has the technical expertiseit's his creation. And then he vanishes. If Quantonix realizes later that it's been sold out, and if it or its client starts proceedings, any pointers that they dig up incriminating Sarda will be taken as meaning Sarda-Twobecause he's the only one who officially exists. And the beauty of it is that he won't be able to help them no matter what they try, because he doesn't know anything. His memory of it has been wiped." Kieran stared at her, his eyes shining with honest admiration. It was so ingenious that it felt almost a shame to have to spoil it. "Well, you've got to hand it to Brother Henry for originality, Elaine. I'll give him that."
Elaine threw out a hand wearily. "That's it. There's nothing else to say."
"So which outfit is Quantonix finalizing the deal with?" Kieran asked.
Elaine hesitated, then replied, "Three Cs. Both the Morches and the Leo who's getting all the attention stand to clear a billion each out of it." Kieran nodded. He already knew that, of course; but Elaine's answer provided a useful check on her believability.
Which brought them to the key question that Kieran had been leading up to. He made it sound easy and natural. "So who's Balmer setting this other deal up with?" he asked.
Elaine sighed as if asking, now that she was forced to spell it out, how she could have gotten drawn in to something like this. "Some people are here in Lowell who arrived in the last few days. Leo is due to meet with them later today at the Zodiac Commercial Bank to finalize the first phase of the deal. I don't know who they represent. Balmer handled that side of things himself. But the money's coming from some shady underside of the business."
"What's the first phase of the deal?" Kieran asked.
"It's set up as a series of progress payments," Elaine replied. "A testable portion of the technology to be supplied for a quarter-billion advance. The rest payable in stages as the previously-supplied parts are verified."
"And you're saying that Leo will be handing over the first batch of information today, in exchange for a quarter-billion up-front."
"That's right."
Kieran eased himself back on the bench and let his eyes wander idly over the square and small park to one side as he digested the information. It was along the same general lines that he'd come across before. Even if the technology eventually found its way back to one of the major communications providers, outfits like that wouldn't involve themselves directly in a flagrant ripping off of property that a rival was buying legitimately. They would deal through some nebulous intermediary, possibly created for the purpose and then liquidated to erase the trail. A bogus research program would be invented as having been conducted secretly somewhere, uncannily close to what Sarda had done at Quantonix, and the alleged results of it would duly become the possession of the highest bidder in some netherworld transactions. Tough luck for Three Csbut they were in business and knew the risks. When time is ripe for such breakthroughs, these coincidences will happen.
And then, again, the client might not be a communications carrier at all, but somebody else with other interests entirely. Such as what? Kieran had to remind himself that what they were talking about here wasn't, first and foremost, the people-transmitter that the carriers were popularizing and scrambling to acquire first, but a people-duplicator. He was only beginning to reflect on the possible ramifications, when Elaine spoke again. Evidently, she had more to get out, now that she was able to talk.
"Leo changed in the time all this was developing. I watched him become a different personhard, vengeful. When Balmer urged upping the ante and going for really big money, he was all for it. But when the other Leo called last night, it was like listening to the person I remembered. Even in those few moments, I could sense the difference. It was as if . . . as if opposite aspects of him polarized into two different people." She turned to look at Kieran. "He doesn't deserve any of this. I can't let it go throughwhat we planned for today. That's why I wanted to talk to you."
Kieran promptly forgot the line his mind had been turning to. His brow furrowed. "What are you saying? That you're giving up the chance to walk away with a third of the loot, and are prepared to take the consequences, just to straighten this out?"
Elaine nodded resolutely; but she was barely holding back tears. "It's what's right. . . . Deep down, I guess I never was the right material for this kind of thing." She shrugged. "That's all there is to it."
Kieran turned to stare at her. A faint smile puckered his mouth as he sensed a situation of opportunity beckoning. It was exactly the kind of people that Elaine had described, whose unenlightened existence he felt it his mission to better through a little moral guidance and introduction to the virtues of munificence and austerity. "Maybe we don't have to let you go through anything quite as bad as that, Elaine," he said softly.
She produced a handkerchief to stifle back sniffles. "What other way is there?"
"I presume the initial transfer will be made into an account in Sarda's name," Kieran said. "That way, he can vanish when the time's right, and there'll be no trail back to you or Balmer for the banking authorities to follow."
Elaine nodded. "You obviously know your way around these things."
"Do you still have the graphic that was inside the chamber door?" Kieran asked. "The pattern that triggered the posthypnotic command."
"No . . . But the image is stored. I could make a copy. Why?"
Kieran felt rising excitement at the glimmering of an idea that was forming. The original Sarda would obviously have been through the same conditioning too! "Tell me more about this meeting that Leo's attending at the Zodiac bank," he said. "What time is it scheduled to take place?"