He flipped the retrofile, triggering it to see what calls might have come in while he spoke with Donahy. Risa’s Image appeared. The file told him that she was waiting in London to speak with him.

“Put her on,” he said, transferring the call to the large screen. A moment passed; then Risa appeared, life-size, on the screen. She looked frayed and weary. It was after midnight in London. No doubt this legal business involving her persona was taking a heavy toll of her energy.

“Well?” he said. “How does it go?”

“It’s moving very fast, Mark. The autopsy report on Tandy came in this morning.”

“And?”

“She was almost four weeks pregnant at the time of her death.

That checks with the mindpick information they got out of Claude Villefranche’s dybbuk.”

“I see,” Mark said. “She went to Claude and told him she was pregnant and wanted him to marry her, and he refused, and they had a fight over it and he killed her.”

Risa laughed. “Oh, no! The way you tell it, it’s straight out of one of the old melodramas. Tandy wouldn’t have tried to use a pregnancy to blackmail a man into marrying her. Especially not a man like Claude.”

“What’s the story, then?”

“The gene tests show that she was pregnant by Stig The Swede, her other lover. Sometime between the time Tandy made her last persona recording in June and the time she died in August, she decided that it would be interesting to have a baby, I guess. So she stopped the pill and Stig filled her up. She knew that Stig would be willing to marry her. He’s a decent sort. Claude excited her more, but she didn’t trust him. Then she went off to Switzerland to have her last fling with Claude. At St. Moritz she broke the news to him that this was where he got off. He was furious and told her to have the fetus aborted, to forget about getting mated to Stig.”

“But you said that Claude wasn’t interested in marrying her,” Mark said, puzzled.

“He wasn’t. But he wasn’t about to let Stig have her either. Or put a child in her. He saw that as an attack on his reputation for virility. He was wild with jealousy. So they had a fight, and finally they went out on the ski slope and he took the feeder pin out of her gravity repulsor, and down she went. If he couldn’t run her life, she had to die. It’s all there in the persona he last recorded. He made the recording two months after the killing.”

“Didn’t anyone think of examining her skis after the accident?”

“They were badly damaged, Mark. It was impossible to determine anything.”

“And there was no autopsy?”

Risa shrugged. “When a girl is smashed up in a hundred-meter fall, there’s no real point in an autopsy, is there? No one suspected she might be pregnant.”

“What happens to this dybbuk now?”

“Claude? Well, they’ve got him on a double murder charge. The mindpick evidence shows that he killed Tandy, and there’s also the little matter of what he did to his host. So the quaestorate has requested a complete erasure. They’re going to blot him out entirely. He’s being shipped to New York tomorrow and the job will be done at the Scheffing Institute. They’ll clean him out of his host’s mind and also destroy all his existing persona records.”

“You must feel very proud of yourself, Risa, exposing this criminal.”

“Well, actually, I could never have done it without Tandy. She was the one who guessed she’d been murdered, and she put the finger on Claude as a dybbuk. After that it was just a matter of seeing what was in his mind.”

“And in Tandy’s uterus,” Kaufmann observed. “Yes, that too. Well, now it’s over, anyway.”

“I’m glad. Risa, are you all through playing detective?”

“I think so. Why?”

“It would be nice if you’d stay closer to home for a while, with this business settled.”

“I’ll be home in about a week,” she said. “Is that all right?”

“Fine,” said Kaufmann. “Do you have enough money?”

“I’m drawing on the general family balance. All right?”

“Have mercy,” he told her. “I will. I’ll see you soon.” Out of her tired eyes there twinkled a look of warmth, love, kinship He smiled at her. She was a fine girl, he decided. A credit to their line. She had the promise of true greatness. He blew her a kiss, and the screen darkened.

A pity she was a girl, he thought. Of course, they had had an option to fix that. But Kaufmann’s wife was delicate, and he hadn’t cared to dabble in uterine adjustments. He had taken his chances, and had had a girl, and there had been no more children after that. Risa was masculine enough in her thinking, at any rate. A time would come when she’d enter the family enterprises as a full partner, and Kaufmann knew she’d do well. His only objection to her sex was an esthetic one: a woman in business was in some way an unattractive sight, no matter how beautiful she might be. That was archaic foolishness, he knew, but he could not escape the thought that it was somehow ugly to watch a woman at work in front of a data console, making executive decisions involving millions of dollars. Women should be gentler creatures. But there was nothing gentle about Risa, female or not. It would be interesting to follow her progress down the generations as they leapfrogged from one carnate trip to the next.

He turned back to his ticker. Three quick trades produced a handsome profit for him. A cheerful omen.

By the end of this week he’d have all the shrewdness of Paul Kaufmann to add to his own. At last. At last. Naturally, he’d have to go warily, lest anyone find out that he carried an illegal persona. But Roditis would be perplexed when he discovered that each of his new strategic thrusts, inspired by Paul’s persona, was being countered by strategies just as shrewd. Would he suspect that a second Paul Kaufmann was at work to thwart him? Would it occur to Roditis that such a thing was possible — a duplicated transplant? Few people were even aware that old recordings were preserved. Mark himself had not known it, despite his wide range of information, until Santoliquido had told him. So Roditis, though he was naturally suspicious, would have no inkling of the truth. He would just wonder how it was that his rival stayed abreast of him. Of course, after Mark’s death the next possessor of Mark’s persona would discover the secret when he unexpectedly found Paul in his skull as well. But he was not likely to make the news public. Revelation of the irregularity would most likely bring about the erasure of both Kaufmann personae; the lucky man who had received two Kaufmanns for the price of one would make every effort to hide the fact.

Kaufmann laughed softly. His phone lit up. He keyed in, and the monitor said, “Francesco Santoliquido is calling.”

Surprised, Kaufmann accepted the call at once. “Yes, Frank?” Santoliquido looked younger, more carefree than he had appeared for many weeks. The living jewelry at his throat, the cage of tiny crustaceans, seemed to be leaping about jauntily in reflection of his changed mood. “I’ve reached a decision about your uncle’s persona,” said Santoliquido briskly.

Kaufmann remained calm. Donahy’s assurance of co-operation was his bulwark against any possibility. “Yes?” he said easily. “Who’s the lucky man? Roditis, as expected, eh?”

“No.”

“No?”

“I’ve weighed this a million times, Mark. I’ve come around to your way of thinking: that Roditis has such power already that it would be a grave mistake to let him have Paul. That would set up an extraordinary concentration of ability in one individual, with unpredictable results.”

“Of course.”

“I’ve also taken into account the objections of the Kaufmann family, as voiced through you.”

“Kind of you, Frank. But what will you do with old Paul, then? There can’t be many others around you could safely award him to. I suppose it’s best simply to leave him in storage a few years, until he’s so far out of touch with events that he can be let loose again as someone’s persona. I—”