"I thought it might be like that. Julius, you are many things, but hard
to figure out you are not. I have something to say that might help you
make the decision. If you want to hear it, that is."
What could he have to say? "Sure," I said. "Sure." In my mind, I was on
a shuttle headed for orbit, away from all of this.
"I had you killed," he said. "Debra asked me to, and I set it up. You
were right all along."
The shuttle exploded in silent, slow moving space, and I spun away from
it. I opened and shut my mouth.
It was Dan's turn to look away. "Debra proposed it. We were talking
about the people I'd met when I was doing my missionary work, the stone
crazies who I'd have to chase away after they'd rejoined the Bitchun
Society. One of them, a girl from Cheyenne Mountain, she followed me
down here, kept leaving me messages. I told Debra, and that's when she
got the idea.
"I'd get the girl to shoot you and disappear. Debra would give me
Whuffie -- piles of it, and her team would follow suit. I'd be months
closer to my goal. That was all I could think about back then, you
remember."
"I remember." The smell of rejuve and desperation in our little cottage,
and Dan plotting my death.
"We planned it, then Debra had herself refreshed from a backup -- no
memory of the event, just the Whuffie for me."
"Yes," I said. That would work. Plan a murder, kill yourself, have
yourself refreshed from a backup made before the plan. How many times
had Debra done terrible things and erased their memories that way?
"Yes," he agreed. "We did it, I'm ashamed to say. I can prove it, too --
I have my backup, and I can get Jeanine to tell it, too." He drained his
beer. "That's my plan. Tomorrow. I'll tell Lil and her folks, Kim and
her people, the whole ad-hoc. A going-away present from a shitty
friend."
My throat was dry and tight. I drank more beer. "You knew all along," I
said. "You could have proved it at any time."