After a few hours' sleep, Aristide went to a pool of life. Unlike the pool he'd visited in Midgarth, this was in a clinician's office.
There were a number of options for those who wanted to insure against death. There was a simple backup, in which a quantum interference device—in the shape of a cap—was placed on the subject's head, and his brain structure, memories, and personalities were recorded in order to provide the basis for an eventual resurrection. Aristide had done this as soon as he'd left Midgarth, in order to make sure that the knowledge of the Priests of the Venger wouldn't die with him in the event of accident or assassination.
More elaborate than a simple backup was a pool of life filled with nano assemblers—in this case something the size of a bathtub rather than a large common pool. Not only would this record the contents of the brain, the pool would also heal the body of anything from an amputated arm to the common cold. In addition, it could be programmed to alter the body to one of a different appearance, or—given the right minerals and nutrients—could create a new body from scratch and endow it with life and with a pre-recorded personality.
Before entering the pool of life, Aristide was required to answer a number of questions concerning when and under what circumstances his backup would be used. If the current personality were to die as the result of an accident, resurrection was normally immediate. But if the personality were to be murdered, should the resurrection wait until the killer was apprehended, or even convicted? Many people felt safer waiting.
Familiar with the formalities from long use, Aristide quickly ticked off his choices, specifying that he would have a total resurrection if he were subject to even a small amount of brain damage affecting memory or intelligence, and reporting that he wished immediate resurrection even in the event of massive environmental damage, cosmic catastrophe, or war.
He was also asked to decide how soon he should be resurrected in the event he was reported missing. "Immediately," he answered. An unusual answer, and the AI attendant pointed this out. Aristide repeated his answer.
These various options did not exist in Midgarth. It was felt by the scholars and re-creationists who founded the pocket universe that their partners, the fantasy gamers, might tip the entire population into chaos through their inclination for adventure, war, and violence. Therefore a penalty was exacted for a disappearance or a violent death—the victim would spend five years in limbo. Though the individual could be resurrected outside Midgarth during that time, he could not return to the pocket until his term had expired. In the meantime, his property would be inherited by his nearest relative, an heir specified in a will, or by the state; and all obligations, marriages, and legal contracts were terminated. When he returned to life, it would be with nothing, and he would reappear in a random pool of life somewhere in the pocket's inhabited area.
"Starting over with zero points," as the gamers had it.
In no other pocket were the rules quite so draconian. Though recreationists had areas in other universes where they refought the Second World War, the conquests of Alexander, the American and English Civil Wars, civic life in the Roman Republic, the expansion of the Arab Caliphate, the empire of the Mongolian Khans, or the Warring States of both China and Japan, these areas were more clearly intended as giant theme parks. People did not spend their entire lifetimes in these zones, no citizens were born there, and no one's death was prolonged by the length of more than a single battle.
No one, it was noted, tried to re-create the Control-Alt-Delete War. It was pure chance who fell victim to the Seraphim, and who survived: a war in which the entire population was innocent civilians under attack was too frightening to be any fun. Rerunning that war was the grim job of the security services, whose task was to prevent such a thing from happening ever again.
At the pool of life Aristide took the opportunity to change his appearance, becoming shorter, stockier, and fair-haired. He rose from the coffin-sized pool, let the silver nanomachines flow off his body, and looked at himself in the mirror. He took a few experimental steps, backward and forward. His center of gravity had changed.
He had equipped the new body with a cerebral implant. He turned it on, and was immediately informed of all the messages he'd been ignoring since his return, as well as a weather report coupled with advertisements for Larry's Life and Trapped in HappyVirt, the new Anglo Jones action-comedy.
He turned the implant off.
Aristide accepted his belongings from the attendant, hitched Tecmessa over his shoulder on its strap, and returned to his hotel. There he took the sword from its case along with a special toolkit.
To provide sufficient light, he called the lamp to him on its automated boom. With a few taps of a hammer, he removed the pins that fixed the hilt to the tang of the blade. He put on a glove and pulled the sword blade from the hilt, and returned the blade to the case. From the case he drew out a matte-black wand on which there was a flatscreen display: he slotted this into the hilt and reset the pins to hold it in place.
Swords were eccentric items for immigrants to carry to a high-tech world. An antique sword hilt carrying an AI assistant, while unusual, would attract less notice.
Aristide told the assistant to awaken, then turned on his implant and told the two to talk to each other. Protocols and information were exchanged. Aristide paid no attention to the back-and-forth.
The implant gave a soft chime to attract Aristide's attention, and informed him that a pair of deliveries had just been made to the hotel. Aristide told the hotel to bring the deliveries to his room.
One delivery was a new identity card listing him as one Franz Sandow, the seventy-nine-year-old owner of a bakery supply company who had just sold his business and embarked in a new, young body on what was probably a first retirement. Franz was unmarried, rootless, and financially independent—just the sort of person that an evil god might consider a useful recruit.
Aristide called the automated lamp over on its boom, and in its light contemplated the pocket-sized card. Information being so readily available, the demise of the physical identity card had been predicted for centuries, but somehow the objects had proved durable. It was simply convenient to have everything handy in one place—the new card contained Franz Sandow's whole legal and medical history, birth and education, fingerprints and retina prints, and—just for color's sake—the record of a couple juvenile arrests for flying his glider low over traffic.
The second package contained Franz's new wardrobe, tailored to the new body and more in the current mode than Aristide's clothes had been. Also more colorful—Franz was clearly the sort of person who enjoyed wearing autumn golds and reds. Aristide put on the new clothing and through his implant gave the clothes a few last instructions, to assure fit and comfort.
Bitsy had arranged Aristide's new identity while Aristide slept and paid his visit to the pool of life. She had not simply created the identity, but was now busy retroactively inserting the relevant facts into appropriate public databases on the Eleven, Luna, and the Earth, all the locations through the reconstructed solar system where data was secured against some catastrophe, so that no vital information would be lost and every individual could be guaranteed an eventual resurrection.
The false identity wouldn't stand up to a thorough background search, but then no false identity would. It was hoped that the Priests of the Venger—or whoever was doing the kidnaping on Hawaiki—would do no more than a quick check on a potential victim before trying to drag him through a wormhole to his fate.
While Aristide donned his new wardrobe and twitched it into place, Bitsy crouched motionless on a chair while, in many other locations in the humming electronic world, carefully entering pieces of Franz Sandow's history into the record.
It wasn't a job that a human could do. Because one of the Eleven was required to authenticate all such information, only one of the Eleven could give a human a false identity. Which, under the Asimovian Protocols, was only permitted under very limited circumstances.
"Message from Miss Daljit," the cat reported without moving. Bitsy—or rather Endora—was handling the massively cyphered communications among the various counter-conspirators.
"Send it to the new assistant."
Aristide held Tecmessa's hilt before him, the assistant uppermost. Daljit's face appeared blinking on the screen.
"Did the gin work?" Aristide asked.
Daljit frowned as she tried to focus at the image that had appeared before her.
"You're the new Pablo?" she asked.
"I'm the new Franz."
Daljit looked at him. "The gin made me morose. I kept wandering around the apartment thinking I should be saying goodbye to things. I think I prefer Aristide."
"Frankly, so do I."
She passed a hand across her forehead. "I didn't sleep. I haven't been concentrating on my work. I'm trying to act normally, but I can't believe in normality anymore."
He smiled. "I think you're doing fine."
"I envy you." Her expression was serious. "You can do something. You can swash buckles and bash bad guys and root out evil gods."
"Let's hope so," he murmured.
"I have to sit here and try to remember what normal is so that I can behave that way."
"If you want to get away," Aristide said, "you're welcome to use my cabin on Tremaine Island."
"Really?" Daljit's eyes softened. "Thank you."
"Contact Bitsy when you want to go there. She'll tell you how to find it, and open the house for you."
"Thank you."
"Try not to overdose on gin once you get there."
She made an effort to laugh. "I won't try the gin again. Not when it just makes me sad." Her look turned accusatory. "You're not sad, are you?"
"Sad? No. I'm all sorts of things, but sad hasn't hit me yet."
"You're probably happy that you've got something important to do. You've probably even made a poem about it."
"A poem?" His brows arched. "No, I haven't had time. Or the inclination, for that matter."
"Oh." She seemed disappointed. "I was hoping you could recite it for me."
He thought for a moment. "If you don't mind my being unoriginal," he said, and began the old poem of Li Shangyin.
"You ask when I will return.
The time is not yet known.
Night rain overspills the autumn pools
on Ba Shan Mountain.
When shall we trim a candle at the western window
And speak of this night's mountain rain?"
There was a moment's silence.
"You're sad, too," Daljit said.
"Yes," he said. "I suppose I am."