Analog Science Fiction and Fact Kindle Edition, 2016 © Penny Publications The Soul Behind the Face Adam-Troy Castro | 17711 words The woman in the pod has just asked him: “How long do you need me to have been your wife?” Draiken considers the contorted syntax. Not how long would you like to be married, or how long are we supposed to have been married, but how long do you need me to have been your wife, a construction that only fits this one situation, a contract to lie. In a sense, it’s like coming home to a place he always hated but still suited him: the country of deceit and deception. Still, the standards for such things have changed in his recent years of relative inactivity, and he is unused to some of the new methods. In his day, people in this profession had names. They might have been aliases, and they might have been cover identities, but they were names, convenient handles to be used in conversation. It therefore irritates him to have to accept that the presence before him has no name and no past and is referred to only as “the woman,” as her contact people had specified. “The woman” might be any age, from adolescence to dotage. The availability of rejuvenation treatments, for those who can afford that, renders any educated estimate from physical appearance a near impossibility. Her features are smooth, sculpted, and neutral, bereft of easy indicators like laugh lines. She wears no makeup, keeps her black hair at a length just long enough to establish, from the shadow of the stubble on her scalp, that she’s capable of growing some if some is necessary. She is Caucasian, more or less—more, given how pale she is—but with a few adjustments she could be any race; she is smoothfaced, but with few adjustments could be ancient; her physique is lithe to the point of near- emaciation, but gives the impression that she could wear fat. Right now, she’s a blank. But none of this places her vintage or her background, not in any manner he can discern. In normal circumstances, there would be other indicators. Even in young bodies, the old move with a precision, and sometimes a wariness, that comes from long practice. The young, even in old bodies, tend to move with heedless abandon, as if nothing in the Universe can destroy them. But the woman is immobile, and those clues are unavailable. It is not any easier to discern her character from her surroundings. She does not waste her available wealth on elbow room. Between contracts, she lives sealed in a pod no larger than a coffin, the health needs of her life, from elimination to physical conditioning, tended to by mechs and nanites. From time to time the pod swivels, vertically when she wants to stand, horizontally when she wants to lie down. It is standing open now, the top half having retracted to reveal her for the meeting. The half of her body that he can see is naked and so pale that little blue blood vessels stand in sharp contrast against her skin. There is nothing at all erotic about her nudity, which is little more than a wan demonstration of her disregard for his presence. She’s a woman. The woman, as she styles herself. But a generic blank. Before his recent decades of hiding on a planet called Greeve, Draiken once spent half a year huddled in a pod like hers, which, like hers, occupied a slot in a dirtside warehouse lined with uncounted hundreds of others; and he knows that when she shuts off the external feeds, the ivory internal walls can become holo screens. The interior can be rendered as large, to her senses, as she desires: a palace, a garden, a landscape out of any fantasy she wishes. Depending on her ability to accept those sights and sounds and the tactile sensations, the pod is equipped to feed her, it might even be a perfect existence. But she is so persuasively blank, right now, that he has trouble believing she summons forth any of these things. Somehow he believes that when the screen goes blank she lets her surroundings do the same, taking comfort in the void. For some reason, she prefers the nothingness. He is fine with that. Her default lifestyle strikes him as an even more extreme version of the isolation he has taken comfort in, over the decades of his own exile: a time that was almost friendless, almost loveless, and almost without purpose, existing from day to day while trying to avoid ever becoming an actual person at all. But all those years he’d lived in relative freedom, fishing from his little skiff, feeling the sun on his back, interacting with locals he permitted himself to almost know. This woman has somehow arranged an existence for herself even more anonymous than his own. She’s familiar to him. She horrifies him. She is exactly what he needs. The woman in the pod asks, “Do you understand what I ask?” Draiken responds, “Yes.” “And yet you don’t answer. Is this the first time you’ve hired an enhanced imposter?” “I’ve been an imposter, of one kind or another, most of my life.” “You have traveled under false identities.” “And lived under them, sometimes at length.” “I presume this was a matter of self-preservation.” “Yes.” “I won’t ask whether you were a criminal, or terrorist, or some kind of covert operative.” “Thank you. I wouldn’t answer you, in any event.” “I don’t need you to. It’s the way you carry yourself. You have the look of a man who was trained to defend himself on a moment’s notice.” “It’s gratifying to know that it still shows.” “As you are contacting me instead of going through the resources of an organization, I further suspect that you are on your own, pursuing an agenda that is not supported by any established power. But it was always that way, yes? At least once, you worked for powerful people.” “That’s fair.” “When you operated undercover before, you were always aware of who you were.” “Yes.” “Have you ever traveled with a woman pretending to be your wife?” “A few times.” “These women: were they colleagues? Partners in crime, as it were?” “Not in crime. Not as I would define it. But yes.” “Then it must have been enough, on those occasions, for them to be as capable as living the pretense as yourself. Did they also always know that the relationship the two of you pretended at was a lie? Did they let the mask slip, in unguarded moments?” “They were professionals. They didn’t break cover, even when we were alone.” “But in quiet moments you could make eye contact and share the knowledge that everything you did together was in service of the fiction.” “Yes.” Immobile, the woman cannot shrug, but she communicates her scorn with a twitch of one thin eyebrow. “If that were sufficient for whatever you have planned, you could find yourself another woman with such talents. You come to me because you need a partner who will not be merely pretending; one who will believe every lie she speaks and who will remember the past you only pretend at. You need someone to become the fictional person you need. That’s the service I offer. So I ask: How long do you need me to have been your wife? What serves your purpose most efficiently?” Again, he hesitates. The woman does not smile but gives the impression of amusement, which for all he knows might be as much a put-on as everything else she does to put a potential client at his ease. “Perhaps if I ask some leading questions. Do you intend to keep the personal appearance you wear now? In particular, your apparent age?” “Perhaps ten or fifteen years younger. But softer. Paler. More prosperous.” “Prosperous. Not wealthy?” “Comfortable.” “Complacent, even?” “I’d be willing to go so far as vapid.” “I can do vapid. Will you be expecting sex?” “It’s not necessary.” “It means nothing to me. I take it as neither pleasure nor violation. It’s included in the fee.” “I’m not against the idea, but it’s not necessary.” “I assure you that you do not need to be gallant or concerned about my virtue. Unless we are to be a couple who hate one another, or who have become strangers to one another, it’s best for there to be some physical affection. It maintains the illusion of a connection. We can make it rote, more comfortable than passionate; two people who know each other and have exhausted their mutual supply of surprises. An erotic handshake. I can modulate it accordingly.” “You don’t have to.” “Again, there’s no need to spare me. It isn’t important. Final question: will you need me by your side every moment, wherever we’re going? Or will you wish to leave me behind for extended periods, while you do whatever it is you’re using my company to cover?” “The latter. What I need to do I’ll need to do alone.” “So you need me for travel, only. Let me suggest: we will be an old but not decrepit couple wed for thirty—no, round numbers raise flags—thirtytwo years, comfortable around each other, affectionate, in a union driven by familiarity that has long since been drained of all but the most perfunctory passion. She will have a history of accompanying her husband about, only to fall back on her own resources as he disappears for days at a time, dealing with local business; we’ll make her a reader and sampler of local color, a woman with no occupation of her own who wishes she could see her husband more but is resigned to the habitual distance between them. You will have to spend some time with her, making conversation, but you can let her carry the weight of the relationship; the lonely tend to prattle. People will feel a little sorry for her and will wish you were nicer, but they will not feel they’re watching anything inauthentic, and that’s the chief concern, is it not?” “Yes.” “This is how it’s done. Upon the release of the necessary funds to my account, you also provide me with your specific requirements, including our full itinerary and any specifics that must be included in our cover story. I produce a life that includes shared referents that support a past spent together—personal secrets I never bothered to share with you, things I resent about your behavior that I’ve somehow never worked up enough vehemence to mention. I undergo the physical and mental conditioning that make it more than a fiction. I can have the personality in place within days. By the time we connect, I will be who I need to pretend to be and will remain that person for the duration of our contract.” “And after that contract?” “Without timely payment to the account I provide, I revert to the person you see before you. I promise you, you will not want this to happen while anything still depends on the fiction remaining intact. My emotional investment in your well-being will be nil, or possibly—depending on how I’ve been treated while being the person you want me to be— even negative. In such an event, I will expose you without hesitation, regardless of the risk to myself.” “Understood.” “We can meet and coordinate specifics after you make the necessary transfer.” Curiosity overcomes him before he leaves the room. “Two questions, if you don’t mind.” “Ask.” “First, does my agenda matter? Will you raise any moral reasons if it involves criminality?” “I assume that’s one question, not two.” “Yes.” “Despite your protestations, I know your mission involves criminality, even if undertaken for the most noble reasons. That’s presumably why you hope to travel under an alias and use me as cover. But you are not asking me to participate in whatever you have planned. I don’t want the details and will cancel the contract and keep the retainer if you offer them. If we go ahead, I will document my lack of involvement and worry about the legal repercussions for myself, if we are apprehended. What is your other question?” “It won’t happen, I assure you, but what if I were of a mind to extend our contract indefinitely? What protects you from a client who just wants a tailor- made person, to provide companionship indefinitely? Or someone who wants to use whatever bonds of love you simulate to abuse you? How do you stop that from happening?” “Why do you want to know?” “Call it the curiosity of a man who spent too many years trafficking in lies himself, over the practical concerns ruling a business that seems to operate by many of the same parameters.” “Very well. First: this is not just a business. This is also a lifestyle. My greatest ambition is to live an existence as free of interpersonal connections, or identity, or association with other human beings, as I can afford. I want this for reasons compelling to me that are none of your business and are thus not open to discussion. If I were independently wealthy I would remain in this pod, without suffering connection to others, until I died of natural causes. I agree to take on temporary identities because it is how I finance living without being forced to do anything that is distasteful to me the rest of the time. Our contract will accordingly include an upper limit on acceptable duration, after which the personality I’ve assumed on your behalf will be erased, without possibility of further extension. At that time, if I find out that you have taken undue advantage of me, you will discover that I am capable of unrestrained vindictiveness. I will destroy you, if I have to. And second: I have other safeguards in place that will protect me from you if your behavior toward me ever extends outside the limited boundaries of our agreement. I am not a robot. I am an imposter. And as much as I seem to be within your power, at all times, there will always be part of me capable of declaring our contract null and void at a moment’s notice. Does that satisfy your curiosity?” “Yes,” he says. “Thank you for being honest with me.” “If I do not hear from you by end of business three days from now I will assume that you have made other arrangements. Good luck, sir.” Back when Draiken was an active participant in the pursuits that have recently come back to haunt him, he learned some special lessons about wealth: among them, how imaginary it is, how easy it is to manipulate, how prudent it can be to spirit some away and leave it in places where it can be retrieved, later. He has left more than enough, in one illicit account or another, to finance a quite comfortable lifestyle for the rest of a normal lifespan; more so because he has gone so long without touching it. His recent life years of beachcombing poverty, on the edges of civilization, had been more anonymous and therefore safer than anything that might raise flags among parties that might still be looking for him. Besides, hidden wealth is mobility. A man with hidden wealth can always flee and be comfortable in poverty somewhere else, in another place where money is of no particular use. Two of the accounts he set up years ago are no longer extant, in one case because the financial institution that housed it is gone, and in another because the entire world that housed it is gone. A third does exist and has done so well, under the investment instructions he left behind, that he suspects it to be a baited trap. He takes a few minutes to set up a small robot account to keep that one busy with small transactions, both deposits and withdrawals, and makes a mental note to examine it with greater care later. A couple of other accounts are unsuitable for other reasons, fortunately temporary. But there are a couple, quite healthy, that he feels safe enough to empty. The first he transfers to the woman in its entirety, both paying the fee for her services and providing a little extra in case an extension is required. The second he empties for his own use. It is not an unlimited amount of money, but it will enable him, and his wife of many years, to travel and live like members of the upper middle class, accustomed to moderate luxuries, for the week or so that he estimates this mission will require. When he is done he treats himself to a rare restaurant meal, using credit in the name he currently wears, Saturnus Horst. It is a fine establishment in the shadow of the local space elevator, with a fine view of the cargo pods going up and down. In the window, the mammoth structure is a gleaming silvery thing, elegant in the purity of its lines, the only sign of a technological civilization in a landscape colored by a cloudless blue sky, a verdant plain, and distant snowcapped mountains. It is an idealized fiction. The window is in fact an enhanced image, polishing a tableau that is the technological world at its ugliest. One step outside and he would see what he knows to be there: mountains with their tops sheared off, a plain cluttered with support systems for the cargo moving to and from the terminus, a sky gray from the incidental gases the thirdrate, lowest-bidder space elevator emits in everyday usage. It is only local damage—the world has mechanisms for filtering out the worst of the worst before it poisons the rest of the continent and the planet-wide ecosystem around it—but functions as a fine reminder that infrastructure is never lovely. He knows that for the diners who eat in this establishment and take in this view, the lie is something to be believed, for as long as it remains comforting and convenient. This is the relationship human beings have with truth. He is not only used to that. He is counting on it. At meal’s end, he provides the server with a tip twice the polite rate and disappears into the crowds outside, taking a zigzag route sufficient to discourage any more inexperienced operatives of the various governments that would find profit in following him. He knows that these measures would only be sufficient to deter the lowest competency percentile. If he ever finds himself faced with savants, he will have a problem. Later that afternoon, he keeps an appointment with one Hawne Redflower, a professional smuggler not of arms or drugs or even people but of certain trade goods subjected to high tariffs whenever shipped offworld: as minor a criminal as Draiken could find, a man who but for a few minor provisions of the export acts would be a perfectly law-abiding citizen. The authorities don’t bother this man much. There’s no point. Draiken can only hope this means they’re not watching. Redflower is a baby-faced man with tiny eyes and a habit of smiling after every sentence, though whether that’s an attempt to be ingratiating or to show his teeth remains open to interpretation. “You’ve bought twenty minutes of my time. Begin.” “I want you to tell me about the orbital terminus.” “It’s like any other orbital anchor point— the same as the other nine we have. Fancy by the standards of some, a rat-hole by the standards of others. Hotels, brothels both virtual and flesh, neurec parlors, corpus storage, lots of transients asking directions of everyone they pass. But you didn’t have to pay me for something you could have gotten from a guidebook, and the clock’s still ticking.” “How’s the security there?” “As always, it depends on the particular offense being planned. You want to set a bomb or something, traffic anything sentient, I’ll turn you in myself.” “Is that often a problem, locally?”