Identity Theft Read Online Free PDF Page B

townhouses off Fifth Avenue, in the fifth ring. I pushed his door buzzer, and waited impatiently for a response. At last he appeared. If I wasn’t so famous for my poker face, I’d have done a double take. The man who greeted me was a dead ringer for Krikor Ajemian, the holovid star — the same gaunt features and intense eyes, the same mane of dark hair, the same tightly trimmed beard and mustache. I guess not everyone wanted to keep even a semblance of their original appearance.
    “Hello,” I said. “My name is Alexander Lomax. Are you Stuart Berling?”
    The artificial face in front of me surely was capable of smiling, but choose not to. “Yes. What do you want?”
    “I understand you only recently transferred your consciousness into this body.”
    A nod. “So?”
    “So, I work for the NewYou — the head office on Earth. I’m here to check up on the quality of the work done by our franchise here on Mars.” Normally, this was a good technique. If Berling was who he said he was, the question wouldn’t faze him. But if we was really Joshua Wilkins, he’d know I was lying, and his expression might betray this. But transfers didn’t have faces that were as malleable; if this person was startled or suspicious, nothing in his plastic features indicated it.
    “So?” Berling said again.
    “So I’m wondering if you were satisfied by the work done for you?”
    “It cost a lot,” said Berling.
    I smiled. “Yes, it does. May I come in?”
    He considered this for a few moments, then shrugged. “Sure, why not?” He stepped aside.
    His living room was full of work tables, covered with reddish rocks from outside the dome. A giant lens on an articulated arm was attached to one of the work tables, and various geologist’s tools were scattered about.
    “Finding anything interesting?” I asked, gesturing at the rocks.
    “If I was, I certainly wouldn’t tell you,” said Berling, looking at me sideways in the typical paranoid-prospector’s way.
    “Right,” I said. “Of course. So, are you satisfied with the NewYou process?”
    “Sure, yeah. It’s everything they said it would be. All the parts work.”
    “Thanks for your help,” I said, pulling out my PDA to make a few notes, and then frowning at its blank screen. “Oh, damn,” I said. “The silly thing has a loose fusion pack. I’ve got to open it up and reseat it.” I showed him the back of the unit’s case. “Do you have a little screwdriver that will fit that?”
    Everybody owned some screwdrivers, even though most people rarely needed them, and they were the sort of thing that had no standard storage location. Some people kept them in kitchen drawers, others kept them in tool chests, still others kept them under the bathroom sink. Only a person who had lived in this home for a while would know where they were.
    Berling peered at the little slot-headed screw, then nodded. “Sure,” he said. “Hang on.”
    He made an unerring beeline for the far-side of the living room, going to a cabinet that had glass doors on its top half, but solid metal ones on its bottom. He bent over, opened one of the metal doors, reached in, rummaged for a bit, and emerged with the appropriate screwdriver.
    “Thanks,” I said, opening the case in such a way that he couldn’t see inside. I then surreptitiously removed the little bit of plastic I’d used to insulate the fusion battery from the contact it was supposed to touch. Meanwhile, without looking up, I said, “Are you married, Mr. Berling?” Of course, I already knew the answer was yes; that fact was in his NewYou file.
    He nodded.
    “Is your wife home?”
    His artificial eyelids closed a bit. “Why?”
    I told him the honest truth, since it fit well with my cover story: “I’d like to ask her whether she can perceive any differences between the new you and the old.”
    Again, I watched his expression, but it didn’t change. “Sure, I guess that’d be okay.” He turned and called over his shoulder,