“Oh, right.” She spoke some commands, and the terminal responded — making me wonder what she'd wanted the keyboard for. But then she used it to type in a long passphrase; presumably she didn't want to say hers aloud in front of me. She frowned as she was typing it in, and backspaced to make a correction; multiword passphrases were easy to say, but hard to type if you weren't adept with a keyboard — and the more security conscious you were, the longer the passphrase you used.

Anyway, she accessed some repository of her personal files, and brought up a photo of Joshua-never-Josh Wilkins. Given how attractive Mrs. Wilkins was, he wasn't what I expected. He had cold, gray eyes, hair buzzed so short as to be nonexistent, and a thin, almost lipless mouth; the overall effect was reptilian. “That's before,” I said. “What about after? What's he look like now that he's transferred?”

“Umm, pretty much the same,” she said.

“Really?” If I'd had that kisser, I'd have modified it for sure. “Do you have pictures taken since he moved his mind?”

“No actual pictures,” said Cassandra. “After all, he and I only just transferred. But I can go into the NewYou database, and show you the plans from which his new face was manufactured.” She spoke to the terminal some more, and then typed in another lengthy passphrase. Soon enough, she had a computer-graphics rendition of Joshua's head on my screen.

“You're right,” I said, surprised. “He didn't change a thing. Can I get copies of all this?”

She nodded, and spoke some more commands, transferring various documents into local storage.

“All right,” I said. “My fee is two hundred solars an hour.”

“That's fine, that's fine, of course! I don't care about the money, Mr. Lomax — not at all. I just want Joshua back. Please tell me you'll find him.”