The Peacock Cloak

the Greenland visas, those were the important things as far as I was concerned. Who cares about their research?”
    “I certainly don’t,” said Suzanne. “But I expect your copy will.”
    “How do you mean?”
    “Well, they don’t just copy the body do they? They copy the brain and the thoughts and everything. So if the copy is viable, even for a short time, it will have thoughts and feelings. And I guess it will have quite strong feelings about being trapped in a space station and used as a guinea pig for research. You should know better than me about that, though, Juan, because it’s you they will be making a copy of. The thing will feel whatever you’d feel in the same circumstances.”
    This shook me a little.
    “Will it really have my memories and my feelings and everything?” I asked after a pause.
    “Well yes. That’s the whole idea isn’t it? So people can project themselves out across space.”
    “I suppose so.”
    I considered this for some time.
    “I wonder how that will feel,” I said at length. “Not being a real person at all but having someone else’s memories?”
    “I suppose they don’t feel like someone else’s memories. After all, they’re the only memories it has.”
    “So that would mean… That would mean the copy would think it was me, wouldn’t it? When it wakes up on that satellite it will think it is me, waking up in hospital after the anaesthetic, and then it’ll find out that…”
    I broke off.
    “I wonder what they’ll do with it?” I said.
    Suzanne shrugged. “Test reactions, nerves, biochemistry? Cut it up? See if its organs are working properly? I’ve really no idea.”
    “Will it be able to feel pain and fear do you think?”
    “Why not? Assuming that it’s one of their successful attempts, it’ll be alive. It will have a body. It will have a brain.”
    “ Madre de Dios , what have I done? It’ll live and feel just as I do, and yet I’m going to send it up there and let it be cut in pieces. I can’t do that, can I??”
    “ What? And miss a chance of getting out of lousy England, and giving Maria a new life in a country where there is still grass and cool air and space? You must be joking.”
    “Yes but…”
    “Oh for goodness sake, Juan, bad things happen all the time. Real people are tortured every day, real people are killed. All over the world real people in their thousands starve and drown and die of thirst. What concern is it of ours what happens to one stupid copy on some old satellite in space? It’s not as if we’ll have to see the thing. It’s not as if we’ll ever know what happened to it. That stupid copy might as well be in a different universe altogether, for all it concerns us.”
    I thought for maybe three seconds, then laughed.
    “You’re right. Who cares? What business is it of ours?”
    And with that I raised my glass and proposed a toast to the three of us and our future.
    “To Greenland! To Greenland and a new life.”
    As I drained my wine I glanced across the room, and saw that Maria was fast asleep. I winked at Suzanne.
    “Hey look darling. She’s going to be out of it for a while. How about we really celebrate?”

    I lay there strapped down on that bed for a long time, taking in what Toussaint, in his irritation, had told me.
    “So you didn’t trick the real Juan Fernandez?” I finally said. “He really did get the five thousand dollars and the visas?”
    Your two delightful technicians ignored my question as you might ignore a buzzing fly.
    “He really is on his way to Greenland?” I persisted.
    I had grasped my situation intellectually now, but emotionally I was light years away from getting hold of it. I had no other identity but that of Juan Fernandez, no other memories but Juan’s, no other perspective but Juan’s way of seeing the world. It was simply not psychologically possible to think of myself as being anyone other than Juan, even though Juan was actually a man who cared nothing for me, a man who had dismissed any sense of responsibility for my well-being after only a few moments of thought.
    “So this body here, this body never existed on Earth?”
    Toussaint picked up the phone.
    “What’s keeping you guys?” he complained. “When are you going to take 8856 off our hands? We finished all the routine stuff half an hour ago and it’s driving us nuts with its babbling. Plus Abdul and I want to get our hands on some of that new batch of liquor before it all goes.”
    Your voice in the