Agent to the Stars Part 24

"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 that I would Mich.e.l.le, who I didn't know at all."

"It's what I want," I said. "And Mich.e.l.le 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. Mich.e.l.le 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, Mich.e.l.le 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."

Chapter Seventeen.

Carl opened his door and squinted out at us. "This had better be good," he said.

It was not quite four am.

"It is," I a.s.sured 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.

"G.o.d, 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 Mich.e.l.le'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 need 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 Mich.e.l.le died, he's also right in his position of not bringing her back."

"Why?" I said. "Carl, Mich.e.l.le 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 Mich.e.l.le's body gives me the creeps. All I can see in my head is Mich.e.l.le 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 Mich.e.l.le wanted to die, then let her die. All of her. Mich.e.l.le's body is Mich.e.l.le. Unlike Joshua's people, our souls, if we have them, appear permanently attached to our body. Mich.e.l.le 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 Mich.e.l.le 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 Mich.e.l.le'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. "n.o.body'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 Mich.e.l.le 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 Mich.e.l.le wanted to live."

"But we were dealing in hypotheticals," Joshua said. "I don't know why I have to keep bringing this up, but Mich.e.l.le 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 they won't be there to see the reaction."

"Mich.e.l.le 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 25, 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 Mich.e.l.le 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 s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p 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 Mich.e.l.le'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 Mich.e.l.le's, and my memories were downloaded to the entire s.h.i.+p'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, 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 Mich.e.l.le. So we'll take Mich.e.l.le to Gwedif."

"Go to the s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p?" 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 Mich.e.l.le'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."