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.Variousother people were here on their respective business.Somebody was waiting for us.A thin woman in her earlytwenties with a tough, pinched face under straggle-raggedhair, dressed in a voluminous coat of tissue-thin leather oversomething skin-tight, black and shiny.I recognized herinstantly. Morning, Mira, I said as she stalked over to us in amanner that might seem actively furious if one was unawareof her innately spiky nature.I ve never learnt any other name she might have other than Mira.I think she might be one ofthose people who don t have other names.I d met her back when I was working on the job thateventually brought me into contact with Bernice.The bodyunder the black polypropylene was packed with so manysuperconductive sensors and mind scanners, hooked directlyto her brain, that she was the nearest thing you could haveto the old sci-fi idea of a telepath in a universe where the oldideas of telepathic powers simply don t exist.If Mira washere, I thought, then certain other contacts couldn t be faraway.I looked around again with the idea of locating Benny sex-husband, and drew a complete blank.The idea thatsomeone can disguise himself when someone is activelylooking is complete holomovie bollocks in any case - andthere was nobody, here who could possibly be him, howeverhe might be disguised.Mira gave an absent little hiya-wave to me, then turned toBernice. Lovely to see you again, darling. The zero-kelvinway she said it, and the way she fingered Benny s borrowedjacket like she was going to have to wipe her handafterwards, told me that there were other things going onhere than simple innate spikiness.There had been a shifting,if not a fundamental change, in their relationship since thelast time we d all met. That s a little bit of a young look for you, isn t it? Mira said. You carry it off very well, though, for a woman your age. Why, thank you, sweetheart, said Benny. Tell me, haveyou grown hair you can sit on yet? Pleasantries out of the way, Mira explained matters to me,while Bernice cleared, claimed and ID d things with thereceptionist: I m gonna go in and do a deep scan - not just the braincore but the vestigial traces of nerve impulse, factor in theexternal data, that sort of thing.See if I can t construct anintegrated real-time model of what was going on in her headwhen she died.Face-of-the-killer stuff, you know? I recalled the old myth about the last thing one sees beforedying being etched into the eyes.I looked at her dubiously. You can really do something like that? I m one of the few people who can.That s why I make thebig shillings. Mira waggled a hand. Twenty-five to thirty-fiveper cent probability, though.Maybe on the upper end of thatsince we re dealing with an APE subject.The dendriticpathways are physically stronger, the pattern morepronounced.At the very least it helps to eliminate theextraneous factors. Benny finished working out the access privileges and weheaded off down guide-lit corridors for the viewing roomwhere Kara s body was laid out.Mira s scan wouldapparently take some time but, as for myself, I went in, had alook and came out again.I had to see the body for myself, of course, just to makesure that there were no clues associated with it that only Icould pick up on, that the identifying of it hadn t just beensome ghastly case of mistaken identity - and even to makesure that the whole thing hadn t been some carefullycontrived hoax, on any number of levels and from anynumber of directions, with no body actually there at all.Theshort answers to these questions were respectively that thereweren t, it hadn t been and it hadn t - and after I d got them Ididn t feel the need to stick around.Anything else I might or might not have been feeling has noreal place here, not having any effect on the facts of matterseither way, and I don t really want to talk about it.Extract from the.diary of Bernice Summerfield:After [section deliberately defaced on source material] had leftus alone with the body, I turned to Mira. So what do youthink. Well. Mira did a thoughtful little teeth-sucking, tuttingthing that I found incredibly irritating on the spot. He schanged since the last time I met him.He s going through a bit of an identity crisis, for one thing - focusing on the factthat he s technically an APE even in the face of his trueimpulses.The problem is that his life memories and identityare real, if you get me: fully formed and complete, and notsome cobbled-together back-story with the holes you canstick a fist through like your average Artificial.He has all thesame little insecurities, ambiguities and conflicts as you orme, but channelled through a physical neurotechture thatamplifies them, jacks them to a point that we - you inparticular, that is - can t properly imagine.He s stuckbetween two worlds in an almost literal sense at the moment,holding things together under that carefully maintained,detached and cocky surface that only lets the deep stuff outby implication, and he s not quite sure if he can cope& I was feeling very tired, and I knew that Mira couldcontinue in this quasi-psychobabble vein for an hour if I lether.If you re to have any chance of thinking of yourself asgood and kind and living in a civilized manner then you musttry to have sympathy for others, treat them at least twice aswell as you might privately think they deserve, try to see theother person s point of view and give them the benefit of thedoubt, even in the privacy of your own head.Now, I just gavein to all the confusion and little vaguely hurtful feelings andflashes of anger I tried not to feel when I thought about Mira- for any number of reasons - and I imagined giving her sucha slap.She snapped back as if I d physically done it.Then shelooked at me strangely, focused on me in a way that had mesuddenly trying to think about nothing at all. He didn t do it, she said simply. There s no possibility,even, that he did it in a psychotic episode that he s blanked. She paused, thoughtfully, and then said something elsewith a little edge of wistfulness. Remember how I said he feltthings on a level we can never really understand? Well, quiteapart from anything else, what he felt for her - Mira gesturedto the body on the slab - words can t touch.I can t say theword strong enough to make you feel it. I must admit that I felt a kind of overwhelming relief, as if atruly close friend had narrowly escaped an accident, or hadmiraculously recovered from what was a supposedlyterminal
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