Kaufmann watched, chilled and apprehensive, as Santoliquido adjusted his scanners and placed cold electrodes against his forehead. The plump man looked somber too; he had already tasted this experience, thought Kaufmann, and obviously it had been no pleasure for him. An amber warning light went on. Santoliquido tugged at a knife-switch.
Mark Kaufmann winced as his uncle came flooding into his brain.
It was a torrent, an avalanche, a cascade. Uncle Paul swept through his synapses with violent impact. A tide of raw sensuality came first; then a sudden stab of gastric pain; then a set of precise, instantaneous, all-encompassing calculations for the purchase, lease-back, and depreciation of a four-square-mile area in Shanghai’s northern suburbs. On top of that came an overlay of family scheming, a nest of intricate and poisonous interpretations of taut relationships. In the first ten seconds of contact with his uncle’s soul, Kaufmann thought his mind would burn out. In the second ten seconds he struggled for equilibrium like a man caught in rough surf and dashed again and again to the sand. In the third ten seconds he found that equilibrium, gaining purchase of sorts and discovering a strength within himself that he had not suspected. He realized that he could meet his dead uncle as an equal. The old man had the advantage of greater age, but not really of greater force; the Kaufmann genes had traveled from uncle to nephew in a knight’s move of inheritance, and for all the unshackled power of Paul’s furious mind, Mark knew that he could handle it indefinitely, if he had to.
The contact broke. Kaufmann’s eyes opened. He slipped the electrodes free and put his hands to his temples. Phantom calculations danced through his skull — the old man’s arbitrage schemes, realty enterprises, testamentary codicils, percentage plans, all whirled together in a wild dance of dollars.
“Well?” Santoliquido asked. “Do you know your uncle better now?”
“The ruthless old bastard!” Kaufmann said in admiration. “The wonderful pirate! What a tragedy that he’s gone!”
“He’ll be back.”
“Yes. Yes.” Kaufmann clutched the arms of the chair. “I’d give anything to have him myself,” he said in a low voice. “I’m the one best qualified to have him. Paul and I were a superb team, these last few years. Think how much better we’d be, working together in one mind!”
“I hope you’re joking, Mark.”
“Not really. Paul and I belong together. I know, I know, it’s against the law to transplant a persona to so close a relative.”
“Don’t forget that your uncle directly requested in his will that he not be transplanted to any member of his own family.”
“As though he didn’t know about the law,” said Kaufmann. “Or as though he expected that someone like you would circumvent it.” Kaufmann flushed. “But what are you going to do with him? Give him to Roditis? Put those two together and they’ll steal the universe!”
“Roditis can handle your uncle’s persona,” said Santoliquido. “He’s got the strong personality that’s necessary. What we must guard against is giving Paul to someone who’ll be overwhelmed. The host must always remain in command. Roditis would.”
“But he’s got no scruples. He’s nothing but an unprincipled buccaneer. And Paul was a principled buccaneer. Bring them into harmony and—”
“No decision has been taken,” Santoliquido said brusquely. “Do you wish to inspect the three potential personae your daughter has selected?”
“Yes,” Kaufmann murmured. “I might as well.” Santoliquido opened an information line and uttered a request. Moments later three persona caskets clattered out of a delivery slot. Santoliquido inserted Paul Kaufmann’s casket in the same slot and sent it on its way back to storage. Then, turning, he said, “All these three young women died violently before the age of thirty. All three were quite beautiful, I understand. Risa had certain very specific anatomical and sexual qualifications, which of course we were able to meet, since the range of available personae is so great. To preserve the privacy of the dead, I’ll call these three simply X, Y, and Z. Thirty seconds of each should be enough to gratify your curiosity. Have you ever sampled a female persona before, Mark?”
“You know I’ve never done anything like that.”
“Of course. Of course. Well, it’s an amusing novelty. I often think our prejudice against transsexual transplants is foolish. If a man could incorporate at least one female persona, or a woman at least one male one, there’d be far less anguish in this world. But I suppose we’re not yet ready for that radical a step. And I suppose few people are really eager to allow their personae to come to life in a body of alien sex. Oh, they’d like to try it for a few days, but as for making it permanent—” As he spoke, Santoliquido was deftly inserting one of Risa’s choices into the scanning equipment. Once more the electrodes touched Kaufmann’s skull. He felt vaguely uncertain about doing this, but then he reflected that his exhibitionistic daughter would certainly not mind his peeking into her personae, and also that he had already spied on his daughter in many matters nearly as intimate.
The apparatus hummed. “This is X,” said Santoliquido. “Killed last year in a power-ski accident at St. Moritz, age twenty-four.”
In the thirty seconds that followed, Mark Kaufmann learned a great many surprising things. He discovered what it was like to have breasts; he sampled the sensations of the penetrated instead of those of the penetrator, he felt the ebb and flow of feminine biology impinge on him; he scented a new perfume of flesh; he experienced the texture of his own smooth female body. He also generated an instant and electric dislike for the personality of the unknown X.
Giving him no pause for evaluation, Santoliquido said, “And now Y. Drowned off Macao last summer, age twenty-eight.”
More of the same: the slow throb of the flesh, the lazy tremor of vaginality. In his brief contact with the mind of the dead girl, Kaufmann ran imaginary hands over silken imaginary thighs, yawned, stretched, yearned for pleasure. This was a more relaxed spirit than X’s; in that first persona there had tingled some disturbing undercurrent, some sort of hunger for an unclear vengeance, while in this girl was merely a generalized appetite for gratification, far less intense, far less vivid. Her recorded soul winked and glittered and was gone.
“Z,” said Santoliquido. “Twenty-six years old. Pushed or jumped, eighty stories up.”
Pushed, Kaufmann decided, after only an instant of contact with Z. This girl had not had the vitality to commit suicide. She was placid, passive, soft within and without. Now that the novelty of peering into female souls had worn off, Kaufmann found himself swiftly bored by this one. She was a void, a hollowness, and the thirty seconds dragged abysmally.
“You may find yourself slightly impotent tonight,” Santoliquido was saying. “I suppose I should have warned you. There’s a kind of sexual confusion that sets in after you’ve done some transsexual sampling. But it wears off in a day or so. How did you find it, being female?”
“Interesting. Not very appealing, though.”
“Well, of course, these were young, shallow girls. I could find you female personae that would give you a real jolt of character. But the outward manifestations are unusual, aren’t they? You never dreamed it was like that, so different, to belong to the other sex?”
“I’m glad to have had the opportunity. I can’t say I’m impressed by any of my daughter’s choices.”
“Which would you prefer her to take? She’s going to pick one, you know.”
Kaufmann nodded. “Z was nothing but a cow. Risa would be as bored with her company as I was. Y was neutral, good-natured, most likely fun in bed. And X was utterly hateful. Vicious, nasty, selfish, hardly human. Risa wouldn’t want a bitch like that in her head. I suppose that Y is the least of the three evils.”