Dead Man on the Moon by Steven Harper Page A

sun shone overhead, and Linus imagined it looked warmer than it felt. Even as he watched, an athletic-looking woman trotted down the sidewalk in front of the house. She had short honey-blond hair, and was jogging behind a large-wheeled stroller. Linus's words trailed off. The woman parked the jogging stroller on the front porch, lifted a baby from the inside, and disappeared into the house.
    "Do you wish to save, continue, or delete?" asked the computer.
    Linus didn't answer, and the computer repeated the question with perfect patience. "Continue," he said, and tapped the window twice. It morphed back into the mountain stream, and he finished the report in a firm, no-nonsense voice. Then, with firm, no-nonsense steps, he left his office, strode past the two clerks and one deputy in the common area of the security office, and began walking. He was standing outside the studio of Julia Espinoza before he realized exactly where had been walking. Linus knocked on the door as if he had intended to come here from the beginning.
    The door jerked open and Dr. Espinoza glared out at him. The smell of coffee wafted through the hall. "Good. You got my message. Come in."
    Message? Linus checked his wristwatch display. It was flashing that he had missed a call from Julia Espinoza and that he had a message from her. It had probably come in while Linus was dictating the report. He had been so preoccupied, he hadn't noticed the incoming message alert.
    "Yes," he said, easing into the white studio beyond. "Your message. What have you got for me, Dr. Espinoza?"
    "A better piece of work than anything Hector Valdez could have done."
    The white scanning table sitting in the center of the white room was just as Linus had remembered it, except this time the brown skull of the victim sat in the center. The box was nowhere in sight. Linus continued to smell coffee, but he saw no signs of it anywhere. Espinoza moved to the other side of the table, and Linus was reminded of being in the morgue with Karen. He saw no controls or projectors at all, but Espinoza moved her hands and suddenly a human head replaced the skull on the table. Linus felt there should be some kind of sound effect, a pop or a ping. But there was nothing.
    "It was good you brought this to me instead of . . . him," Espinoza said. "I have studied anatomy extensively, including bone structure and facial features. I immediately recognized the skull as Caucasoid, of course, but I could not determine everything. Skulls do not indicate hair and eye color, for example. But I called Dr. Fang, and she told me she had found traces of wavy black hair on the victim's head. Most people with black hair have brown eyes, so that it was I gave him. The bones showed attachment of ligaments and gave hints about how deep the tissue that lay on them was. He looked Spanish or Italian to me, so I gave him that coloring. You can, of course, make him paler or darker as you like."
    Linus circled the table, studying the head. It was of a man in his mid- to late twenties—grad student age, no surprise. As Espinoza reported, he had black, wavy hair, brown eyes, and skin that was either naturally dark or given to easy tanning. Strong jaw, flat cheekbones. Nose a bit too big to be attractive. An average, see-it-and-forget-it face. To Linus's disappointment, the young man didn't look even vaguely familiar.
    "Wonderful, Dr. Espinoza," Linus said. "This is perfect. I can—"
    "It is not perfect yet," Espinoza interrupted. "It looks dull and lifeless, which will make him harder to recognize. So I added this."
    Her hands moved again, and the head turned. Linus jerked away from the table. The lips parted as if to take a breath, and the eyes blinked. Espinoza gave a small smile, and Linus recovered himself. He studied the head further, trying to keep thoughts of John the Baptist out of his own head. Despite his initial reaction, Linus had to admit the movement added quite a lot. Holographic muscles moved beneath