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Authors: John Scalzi

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BOOK: Agent to the Stars
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“Because he doesn't know I'm going to ask him to do it,” I said. “This isn't his idea, Miranda. It's mine.”
Miranda slumped back down onto the tub and pressed both hands against her head, as if to keep it from exploding. “I think I'm in shock,” she said. “I can't feel anything. I don't know what to make of what you're saying to me.”
I knelt down until I was at her level and took her hand. “If you were in shock, you wouldn't know you were in shock, Miranda,” I said. “I think you're going to be just fine. Listen, I know how sudden this feels. When Carl introduced me to Joshua, it was the same thing—just threw me right into the deep end. He trusted me to be able to swim. I trust you to be able to swim, Miranda. And I'm going to need you to help me from here on out. I've had to deal with this thing by myself—Carl gave it to me because he couldn't be seen handling it, and I couldn't get help from anyone else. Now you know. I need you to help me. I need you, Miranda. Okay?”
“Oh, God, Tom,” Miranda said. “If I knew the job was going to be this tough, I would have asked for more up front.”
“Hey,” I said. “I already got you two raises in the last few weeks. Don't push it.”
Miranda laughed that time. She had a very nice laugh.
 
“
Good
to see you're both alive,” Joshua said, as we returned to the bed. “I was worried there for a while. It sounded like a cat got caught in a dryer.”
“We got it worked out,” I said.
“Good thing, too,” Joshua said. “Because from the look of it, Tom, she kicked your ass.”
“I pulled my punches,” I said.
“I'm sure you did,” Joshua said, dryly. “Hello, Miranda. Sorry about the surprise. I'm afraid you're not seeing me at my best. I really do look nicer with a head. But then, really, don't we all.”
“Hello, Joshua,” Miranda said. “I hope you don't mind if it takes me a little while to get used to this all.”
“No problem,” Joshua said. “Personally, I'm glad you're in on the secret. Tom could use a better brain than the one he's got.”
“Enough with the insults,” I said. “Have you found anything?”
“I'm afraid I have,” Joshua said. “I have bad news and worse news. Do you have a preference for which you want to hear first?”
My heart sank. Miranda reached over and took my hand. “Might as well tell me the worse news,” I said.
“She's gone, Tom,” Joshua said, bluntly. “From what I can tell, large chunks of her brain had already died before Miranda got to her. She was down a long time. It's pretty obvious, actually; I'm surprised that the doctors here haven't already told you. They probably want to do a couple more CAT scans to be sure. But
I'm
sure. It's a mess in here. I'm sorry, Tom. I really am.”
“Isn't there anything you can do?” Miranda said. “Tom said that you have the experience of doctors and scientists. Can't you do anything?”
“It's not a question of expertise, it's a question of raw materials,” Joshua said. “Michelle's brain is severely damaged, and the damage affects a wide range of functions. It's not like a stroke, where the damage is localized, and the brain might find some way to route around the damage. Here, if I was to try to route around damage, I'd only come across more damage. They're never going to get her lungs pumping again on their
own, and from where I'm at, most of the parts of the brain that control things like her liver and kidneys look to be nonfunctioning. I'd expect that in another day or so, you'll be told they expect liver and renal failure within a few days. I'm sorry, Miranda. If I could do something, I would. But there's nothing
to
do.”
“What parts of her brain
do
work?” I asked.
“Well, her heart's still pumping, so that tells you something,” Joshua said. “Her digestive tract is fine, not counting the liver or kidneys, which I've already spoken about. Her auditory centers are working—”
“She can hear?” I asked.
“That's not what I said,” Joshua said. “The parts of her brain that process sound are still doing that. But the parts of the brain that
interpret
sound aren't. Sound is going into the microphone, but it's not being recorded, if you know what I mean.”
“What about
her
?” Miranda said. “You're talking about her body processes. What about her? Her personality? Her memories? Those things?”
“Like everything else,” Joshua said. “Some parts are there, some aren't. Most of her recent memories are here; I'd say the last couple of weeks for sure. After that, it gets spotty. Of course, that could just have been the way her mind worked, anyway. You humans remember some things better than others. But as to her personality—well, let's just say that if we managed to somehow get the rest of her brain working, and she came out of it, she wouldn't be the Michelle you remember.”
“What would she be?” I asked.
“Psychotic,” Joshua said. “Frankly I doubt that she would comprehend the world anymore. It would just be some terrifying blur to her.”
“So she's dead,” I said.
“She—Michelle—is dead
now
,” Joshua said. “This body, on a respirator, will last about another week. Best estimate. I'm going to disconnect from her now, Tom, if you don't mind. The scenery in here is starting to make me depressed.”
About a minute later Joshua was completely reconstituted as a dog. He leapt down from the chair and padded over to us.
“Is anyone else hungry?” he said. “I don't know what it is, but ever since I melded with Ralph, every time I'm depressed I just want to eat.”
“Hold that thought for a second, Joshua,” I said. “I have a question for you.”
Joshua sat. “All right, what is it?”
“You're positive that Michelle is gone and that the body will be dead within a week.”
“Pretty much,” he said. “I'm sorry about that for you.”
“Joshua, why don't you use her body?” I said.
Joshua looked perplexed. “Come again?”
“She's dead,” I said. “And you could use her body. You would finally be able to walk around and interact with humans. Michelle was famous. You'd already have a high profile. You could finally be a true intermediary between our species. Michelle's gone, we know that. But here's an opportunity.”
“Tom,” Joshua said, slowly. “I know you think that what you're suggesting is a good idea. From where you're standing, maybe it looks that way. But it's not. I can't take Michelle's body.”
Beside me, I could feel Miranda nearly collapse with relief. Despite what I told her, she must have still harbored the worry that Joshua was simply waiting to snatch Michelle's body. Now that he was rejecting the offer, Miranda could believe that he was genuine and honest in his intentions. I, however, was merely confused.
“I don't follow,” I said. “
Can't
take Michelle's body? Or
won't
take Michelle's body?”
“Either,” Joshua said. “Both. Can't and won't.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Tom, Michelle is brain-damaged. Even if I could inhabit her body, I couldn't control it or keep it alive. I need an at least nominally functioning brain to do that. Michelle doesn't have that any more. It'd be like trying to drive a car without a steering wheel.”
“But that's just temporary,” I said. “You have Ralph's appearance now, but there's none of Ralph's body in you anymore.”
“That's true,” Joshua said. “But Ralph's brain was in one piece when I inhabited him. I had time to learn how to be a dog. I don't have that here.”
“That's the
can't,
” I said. “And maybe we can find some way around that. What's the
won't
?”
“The
won't
is that Michelle didn't give me permission to inhabit her body or transfer her personality,” Joshua said. “That's incredibly important, Tom. Otherwise it's tantamount to causing soul death. I won't do that. It goes against everything that a Yherajk stands for, ethically.”
“You didn't get explicit go-ahead from Ralph, and yet you inhabited his body,” I said.
“But I
felt
that Ralph wanted me to,” Joshua said. “It's hard to explain. And at the very least, Ralph was my friend, my very good friend. I knew better what he wanted than I would Michelle, who I didn't know at all.”
“It's what
I
want,” I said. “And Michelle gave me permission to make decisions on her behalf.”
“Not this decision,” Joshua said.
“You don't know that,” I said, almost accusingly.
Joshua sighed. “Actually, Tom, yes, I do.”
“What do you mean?” I said.
“Remember when I asked you if you wanted the bad news or the worse news?” Joshua said. “Well, the worse news is that she's gone. But the bad news was, she did it to herself.”
“What?” Miranda asked.
“I saw it,” Joshua said, turning to Miranda “Her last memory. After you left, Miranda. Michelle pulled the breathing straws out and closed the latex over her nostrils. Then she waited to suffocate. She committed suicide.”
Joshua turned back to me. “Right or wrong, Michelle chose to end her life, Tom. And that's why I can't take her body, no matter what you say. Her decision was to die. And I can't take that decision away from her. Neither can you. No one can.”
Carl
opened his door and squinted out at us. “This had better be good,” he said.
It was not quite 4 a.m.
“It is,” I assured him.
Carl tightened his bathrobe and turned away from the door. “Fine. Stop hanging around on my doorstep, then. The cops around here arrest anyone who's not in a house or in a car.”
Joshua, Miranda and I walked into the house. Carl had lumbered off towards his kitchen. When we caught up to him, he was stuffing coffee into a filter.
“All I can say is that you're lucky Elise is in Sacramento,” he said. “She would have pepper-sprayed first, asked questions later.” He shoved the filter into the coffee maker and flipped the
switch to start brewing. He turned around, and finally got a good look at me.
“God, Tom,” he said. “Who did that to you?”
“I did,” Miranda said.
“That was quick,” Carl said. “Most couples don't get to the hitting stage until after the wedding.”
“Carl,” I said.
“All right,” he said. “What is it?”
“We need some moral guidance,” I said.
Carl laughed. “Tom, I'm an
agent
,” he said. He stopped laughing when he realized that no one else was. “Go on,” he said, grumpily.
I explained the events of the evening; discovering Michelle's condition, my body-switching suggestion, Joshua's refusal. Joshua and I had argued about it for another hour after that point, stopping just long enough to be booted out of the room by the nurse, who gave me a lecture for bringing a dog into the ICU. Joshua and I continued the argument in the parking lot, neither of us giving any ground to the other, before Miranda suggested that we bring Carl into the discussion. Miranda had meant for us to bring it up in the morning, but Joshua and I decided it needed to be dealt with at that moment. We drove to Carl's place, Joshua riding with Miranda to keep us from killing each other.
By the end of the recount, the coffee was ready. Carl got down three cups, poured, and gave me and Miranda both a cup. After a moment's reflection, he pulled down a bowl, filled it with coffee, and set it down in front of Joshua.
“This is an interesting philosophical debate,” Carl said. “But I'm still not sure what you want out of me.”
“Easy,” Joshua said. “We want you to pick a side. I'd prefer you pick mine.”
“Joshua, this isn't a bar bet,” Carl said, irritably. “It's not a matter of choosing sides. And if I sided with Tom, I doubt you'd do what he's asking of you, anyway.”
“You're right,” Joshua said. “I guess we woke you up for nothing. We should be leaving. Thanks for the coffee.”
“Sit, Joshua,” Carl said.
“Hey,” Joshua said. “That's not funny.”
“Tom,” he said, turning to me. “You realize if Joshua is right about how Michelle died, he's also right in his position of not bringing her back.”
“Why?” I said. “Carl, Michelle is gone. She doesn't need the body any more. And we can use it. You know this makes sense.”
Beside me, Miranda gave a shudder and set her coffee down on the countertop.
“Something wrong?” Carl said.
“I'm sorry,” Miranda said. “I understand where Tom's coming from, but the thought of having Joshua inside Michelle's body gives me the creeps. All I can see in my head is Michelle as a zombie. It just feels wrong in my gut.” She glanced at me, then glanced away. “I'm sorry, Tom. But that's the way I feel.”
“Go with that feeling,” Joshua said.
“Oh, shut up,” I said to Joshua.
“Christ,” Carl said. “You two are worse than kids in a back seat. Tom, if Michelle wanted to die, then let her die. All of her. Michelle's body
is
Michelle. Unlike Joshua's people, our souls, if we have them, appear permanently attached to our body. Michelle has her right to die, not to be shuffled around like a puppet.”
“Yes. Right. Thank you,” Joshua said.
“You're welcome,” Carl said, and then slurped at his coffee. “But I'm not on your side, either.”
“What do you mean?” Joshua said.
“Joshua, let me ask you a question,” Carl said. “What would you do if you discovered that Michelle had actually wanted to live?”
“She didn't,” Joshua said. “I saw the memory of her pulling the tubes out myself. It was a conscious, active act. It couldn't have happened by accident.”
“That may be,” Carl said. “But that's not relevant to the question I'm asking.”
“Sure it is,” Joshua said. “Because that's what happened.”
“Fine,” Carl said. “Hypothetically, then. If you were to come across a situation that was a near duplicate of our Michelle's situation, with the only variation being that the person in the coma had wanted to live, would you inhabit her body, if asked by someone in Tom's situation?”
“No,” Joshua said, “because that hypothetical person would still have severe brain damage, which would mean I could never control that body.”
“Let's take as a given that some way could be found around that.”
“That's a mighty big given,” Joshua said.
“That's the magic of hypotheticals, Joshua,” Carl said. “You can make the givens as big as you need them. Now stop stalling and answer the question.”
“I don't know what I'd do,” Joshua said. “Even if the situation fulfilled all the conditions you described, there's still this huge grayness to it. There's no way I could make the decision and feel absolutely sure I was morally in the right. If I was wrong, I'd be branded a murderer by the Yherajk.”
“Even if we had urged you to do it?” Carl said.
“Carl, with all due respect, you're not a Yherajk,” Joshua said. “You don't fully understand the implications of what you'd be asking. It's just not in your frame of reference.”
“But you have my thoughts and memories in you,” Carl said. “They're human thoughts. You should be able to know whether or not I, at least, understand the implications.”
“Yes, but
I'm
not human,” Joshua said. “There's a chance I could misread what's there, just as much as you could misread us.”
“You'll admit to the potential for error?” Carl said.
“Well, shucks, Carl,” Joshua said. “Nobody's perfect.”
“So, theoretically, if there was some way that you could know that it was morally kosher, that you could somehow control the body and that Michelle had actually wanted to live, you could inhabit the body.”
“Yes,” Joshua said. “Throw me a sparkler and a kazoo, and I'd sing ‘Yankee Doodle' while I was doing it, too.”
“Well, then,” Carl said. “Your problems are solved.”
Joshua turned to me. “Tom, did you just follow that last turn of logic?”
“Not at all,” I said. “You've managed to lose both me and Joshua, Carl.”
“I got it,” Miranda said.
“Ah,” Carl said. “The smart one finally speaks. Would you please enlighten our little boys, Miranda?”
“Joshua, you just said what you needed in order to feel comfortable with what Tom is asking you to do,” Miranda said. “Now all you have to do is do it.”
“I said nothing of the sort,” Joshua said.
“Yes you did,” Miranda said. “You have three conditions: that you know it's moral, that you know it's technically possible, and that you know Michelle wanted to live.”
“But we were dealing in hypotheticals,” Joshua said. “I don't know why I have to keep bringing this up, but Michelle killed herself. She wanted to die.”
“We don't know that,” Carl said.
“Carl,” Joshua said. “I
saw
the playback.”
“But you said yourself a few moments ago there was a potential for error,” Carl said. “You said that there was a chance you could misinterpret emotions and motivations.”
“Pulling out your air supply is pretty straightforward action, Carl,” Joshua said.
“The
action
is. What I'm interested in here is the emotion behind the action,” Carl said. “Joshua, people act like they're killing themselves all the time around here. But a lot of them don't really want to die. They just like the attention they get afterwards. Or they don't truly comprehend that dying means death. Teenagers try to kill themselves all the time, because they want to see how people will react once they're gone. They don't make the connection that they won't be there to see the reaction.”
“Michelle wasn't a teenager,” Joshua said.
“No, but she was a movie star, which on the maturity scale is pretty close,” Carl said. “She was twenty-five, worth millions, and people never told her no.”
He pointed over to me. “Tom couldn't say no to her. He just tried to get her a part she had no business trying for, because he didn't want to say no to her.”
I took that moment to pay especially close attention to my coffee cup. I could see where Carl was going, but it didn't make that last statement any less painful.
“When someone finally
did
say no to her, she got depressed and moody, and decided to make a statement. But that doesn't
mean she really wanted to die,” Carl said. He set his coffee cup down. “Now, if Michelle wanted to die, then we should let her die. Simple. But if she wanted to
live
, then, in a way, we can make that happen. Point is, we don't
know
what she wanted. We only have your version of the event.”
“Then we have a stalemate,” Joshua said. “Because I'm the only one that can get into her brain.”
“No, you're not,” Carl said. “You're just the only one on this planet.”
Joshua and I exchanged looks again. Carl being inscrutable was really beginning to annoy me.
“What are you saying?” I said to Carl.
“We need a second opinion,” Carl said. “Fortunately, we have a whole spaceship full of them.”
“I don't want to take Joshua's side in this,” I said, “but if we can't trust Joshua's take on Michelle's suicide, I don't see how getting another Yherajk's opinion is going to help anything.”
“We don't need a Yherajk for the opinion,” Carl said. “We need one to act as a conduit. Yherajk can connect into our nervous systems; that much is obvious, since Joshua looked at Michelle's, and my memories were downloaded to the entire ship's community. Now we just need it to go the other way, to let a human look at the memory. And I have just the Yherajk to do it.”
The light suddenly went on in my head. “Gwedif,” I said.
“Bingo,” Carl said. “He's done it before, and, as it happens, he is the only Yherajk around that wasn't one of Joshua's parents. As far as these things go, he's the most objective party.”
“I'm not following any of this anymore,” Miranda said.
“I'll explain it later,” I said. “Promise.”
“I'm waiting to hear how you're going to get an alien through security at Pomona Valley Hospital,” Joshua said. “We're fresh out of dog bodies.”
“If Mohammed can't go to the mountain, the mountain will go to Mohammed,” Carl said. “We can't bring Gwedif to Michelle. So we'll take Michelle to Gwedif.”
“Go to the spaceship?” I asked.
“Of course,” Joshua smirked. “That's
so
much easier.”
“Joshua, it's the only way,” Carl said. “Think about it. Suppose we find that you
were
in error. That solves one of our problems. But then we have two other issues to deal with: trying to find a way you can successfully inhabit Michelle's body, and making sure it's morally right to do it. We need to confer with the other Yherajk on each of these. She has to go to the
Ionar
.”
“How do you suggest we get Michelle there?” Joshua asked. “We won't even be able to get her out of Pomona Valley. They've got tabloid reporters covering all the exits, Carl. They're going to know if we try to move Michelle.”
“Let me worry about getting Michelle out of the hospital,” Carl said. “You worry about arranging the rest of the trip.”
Joshua sat there for a minute, considering. “All right,” he said, finally. “I still have problems with this, but I'll get in touch with the
Ionar
. We'll see what they have to say up there.” He padded off towards Carl's study.
“Where is he going?” Miranda asked.
BOOK: Agent to the Stars
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