Mindscan

With a surface gravity only one-sixth of Earth's, falls that would break a hip or leg here are trivial there. And, again, in that gentle gravity, even weak-ened muscles have plenty of strength. Hoisting oneself in and out of bed or the bath, or walking up stairs, is no longer a struggle — not that there are many stairs on the moon; people are so light on their feet there that ramps are better.

"Yes, being on the moon is wonderful, if you're elderly; the original version of me is, right this very instant, having a grand time at High Eden, believe you me. But getting to the moon — that used to be quite another story. The high acceleration experienced during rocket liftoff from Earth is brutal, although after that, admittedly the rest of the journey, spent in effectively zero g, is a piece of cake. Well, of course, we don't use rockets. That is, we don't go straight up. Rather, we use spaceplanes that take off horizontally and gradually climb to Low Earth Orbit. At no time during the flight do you experience more than 1.4 g, and with our ergo-padded chairs and so forth, we can get even the frailest person to the moon safe and sound. And once there — " he paused dramatically — " paradise."

Sugiyama looked around the room, meeting eyes. "What scares you? Getting sick?

Not likely on the moon; everything is decontaminated as it enters one of the lunar habitats, and germs would have to travel through vacuum and endure harsh radiation to move from one habitat to another. Being mugged? There's never been a mugging — or any other violent crime — on the moon. Those cold Canadian winters?"

He chuckled. "We maintain a constant temperature of twenty-three degrees Celsius.

Water, of course, is precious on the moon, so the humidity is kept low — no more hot muggy summers. You'll feel like you're enjoying a beautiful spring morning in the American Southwest all year round. Trust me: High Eden is the best possible retirement home, a wonderful resort with gravity so gentle that it makes you feel young again. It's a win-win scenario, for the new you down here on Earth and the old one up there on the moon." He smiled broadly. "So, any takers?"

3

My mother was now sixty-six. In the almost three decades since Dad had been institutionalized, she had never remarried. Of course, it wasn't as though Dad was dead.

Or maybe it was.

I saw my mother once a week, on Monday afternoons. Occasionally, I'd see her more often: Mother's Day, her birthday, Christmas. But our regular get-togethers were Mondays at 2:00 p.m.

They were not joyous occasions.

My fingerprint let me into the house I'd grown up in, right on the lake. It had been worth a lot when I was a teenager; now, it was worth a fortune. Toronto was like a black hole, gobbling up everything that fell into its event horizon. It had grown hugely three years before I was born, when five surrounding municipalities had become part of it. Now it had grown even more, swallowing all the other adjoining cities and towns, becoming a behemoth of eight million people. My parents' house wasn't in a suburb anymore; it was in the heart of the continuous downtown that started with the CN Tower and continued along the lakeshore for fifty kilometers in either direction.

It was hard coming through the house's entryway into the marble foyer. The door to my father's den was on the right and my mother, even after all these years, had left it untouched. I always tried not to look through the open door; I always failed. The teak desk was still there; so was the black leather swivel chair.

It wasn't just sadness I felt; it was guilt. I'd never told my mother that Dad and I were arguing when he collapsed. I hadn't actually lied to her — I'm a terrible liar — but she'd assumed I must have heard him fall and come running, and, well, it was not as if he could contradict me. I could have dealt with her anger over the fake ID; I couldn't deal with her looking at me and thinking I'd been responsible for what had happened to the man she was devoted to.

"Hello, Mr. Sullivan," said Hannah, emerging from the kitchen. Hannah, about my own age, was my mother's live-in housekeeper.

"Hi, Hannah," I said. Normally, I told everyone to call me by my first name, but I'd never taken that step with Hannah — because of our similarities in age, she seemed too much like the dutiful sister doing what I should be doing, looking after my mother. "How is she?"

Hannah had soft features and small eyes; she looked like the kind of person who'd have been pleasantly plump in the days before drugs had eliminated obesity — at least there had been some real cures for things in the last twenty-seven years. "Not too bad, Mr. Sullivan. I served her lunch about an hour ago, and she ate most of it."