when he tried to explain it to me.”
The woman’s gaze shifted to Blanche, and made eye contact. “I’d be upset, too, if someone tried to charge me with murder.”
“This is a hearing, and no formal charges have been filed against anyone, Ms.—ah—” Maxwell paused.
The apparition laughed, a deep-throated laugh that Blanche remembered well. It had turned men’s heads at gatherings large and small for years, without promising anything but her presence. “You don’t know what to call me,” she said. “If you say Helen, you acknowledge my transfiguration and oh, my goodness, what a precedent that would set!”
She laughed again. Maxwell grinned.
“Call me Annie, then, but remember who I really am when you hear what I have to say. This whole mess is partly my fault, anyway, and I intend to clean it up.”
“Very well—Annie,” said Maxwell, and turned to look at several anxiously waiting people in the room. “We’re open for questions, gentlemen. Counselor Haug, would you like to begin?”
“Randal, this is absurd,” whispered Blanche, as Randal stood up.
“Are we to consider this—Annie as a viable witness, Your Honor?” asked Randal.
“You wanted to know about the AINI system,” said Maxwell, eyes twinkling in amusement. “Well, here she is.”
“I really don’t think a machine can be—”
“This will go nowhere, Your Honor,” said Annie. “I never could talk sense to lawyers, even you, Randal, and it won’t be any different now. This is all between two sisters, anyway. It’s all about the money, and everything else is smoke. Talk to me, Blanche. We can settle this in a few minutes, if you’ll let it happen.”
“I doubt that very much,” said Arthur, and frowned at Blanche.
“Now Arthur,” said Annie, “you promised me you’d go along with whatever I agreed to today. No pouting. Just do what mother says. Sit down with your lawyers, and let me handle this.”
“I will not talk with this—this thing,” said Blanche.
“Your Honor, this is a sham,” said Randal Haug. “Mister Winslow has obviously programmed the machine for this performance, and I must—”
“May I please be allowed to do something useful here?” said Annie. As she said it, a man appeared in the doorway behind her and said something softly. He wore a white bathrobe, and had a toothbrush in one hand. Annie turned, and said quite audibly, “Later, hon. I’m just getting warmed up here.” The man looked disappointed, and went away from view.
Blanche’s face flushed hotly. The man was Fred, Helen’s late husband, only he looked to be in his forties or early fifties. The shock of recognition must have shown on her face, for the apparition called Annie smiled at her.
“He’s such a dear, but so impatient, and I have a lot of fleshing out to do on him. So many of my memories are from when he was sick. You remember how hard that was, don’t you, Blanche?”
“Yes,” said Blanche, and caught her self. “I mean—”
“I know, I know,” said Annie. “It’s all so real for me, but not for you. It seems like yesterday I was old, and my joints were hurting, and I kept having these little blackouts, and then I can remember Arthur bending over me, screaming hysterically, and then—well, then there was nothing. No tunnel of light, no angels for old Helen. I was just suddenly here, still old at first, but no pain, and everything I thought, everything I remembered and wanted from the past—it just happened, when I wanted it to. Of course I also remembered all the downloading; my God, I wore that brain-sucking cap of theirs to bed for over five years! But there was no way I could really predict what it would be like until I got here.”
Annie’s eyes glistened wetly. “It was lonely here at first. Believe it or not, Tickle, I missed you. I knew you were mad at me, and I didn’t make it up to you before I left. I’m sorry.”
Blanche felt something catch in her throat. She hadn’t been called Tickle since the age of seven. It even softened her heart for one instant, and then she turned it into stone again. “You’ve been doing some research, Arthur,” she said. “It’s not going to work with me.”
Arthur lunged from his chair, but Camus grabbed him around the chest and held him tightly.
“Stop it, Arthur! If you want to speak to me again, you’ll sit right down and be quiet. Tantrums are not excusable for a man your age. Do you want me to be ashamed?”
Arthur sat down as if struck. A tear rolled down one cheek.
Annie glared at Blanche. “You always were good at goading people, but you were a coward when it came to standing up to me, so don’t try it. Yes, I want to convince you I’m what’s left of Helen; I’m most of her, in fact, if you take away the physical form. I could spend hours reciting things only you and I would know, like the time you bit me when I wouldn’t let you play with my dolls. We didn’t even tell Mother about that. And then there was the time I caught you and your weird friend Ellen doing some interesting things with the little Waltham boy in our garage. I bet the details of that would perk things up in this hearing.”
“You wouldn’t dare!” shouted Blanche, standing, and shaking a fist.
“I would dare, but I won’t, so sit down, Blanche,” said Annie. She stood up, stepped forward and leaned over, as if peering into a camera lens. “It would be fun to watch you squirm again. Without me around, I bet you’ve been running roughshod over everyone. Want to hear something funny? I’m enjoying myself right now. I’ve missed our fights; they’re stimulating.
Blanche’s eyes filled with tears. “I haven’t missed them at all. I haven’t missed you at all.”
“Oh, that was supposed to hurt, but it didn’t. You miss me plenty, Tickle. Sisters know. It’s one of the reasons you’re so angry. Wow, the memories are still coming. I bet I could synthesize a somewhat younger version of you, and we could fight all the time right in my living room. Fred wouldn’t mind. He got used to it a long time—”
“Ladies, ladies, please!” said Judge Maxwell. “There are important questions to be answered here, and you’re not answering them.”
Maxwell wasn’t smiling this time. Blanche wondered if he saw through the sham of what Arthur was doing with his machine, the way his creature was making her look like a vicious, old fool. Her hands were shaking. It was just like her fights with Helen over all those years. So real, so real....
“Question one,” said Maxwell. “How did Helen Winslow die?”
“A blackout, like I said, only this one brought me here. I’m told there was massive bleeding in my brain,” said Annie. She sat down on her couch again, and crossed her legs.
“All right. Question two: why was Helen’s head preserved by freezing, and the rest of her body separated from it?”
Annie thought for a moment. “Well, I remember it said in the contract my body could be used in any way to help the AINI project. Only the head was important, really; there was some data downloaded right after I—I should say Helen—died. Helen’s last
