As he looked at her from behind what had been her wide eyes, Eduard's expression changed to guilt and dismay. But Teresa, seeing him inside the waifish body she'd worn for so long, didn't even feel a sense of loss. She only hoped her friend could get away.
Knowing this might be the last time she ever saw him, she embraced Eduard gently, wetting his bony shoulder with her tears. She knew how fragile this slight female form was. Rhys had already broken it once.
Garth also hugged Eduard, pulling him against his swollen belly. “You stay well, Eduard. Stay alive.”
“That's what I intend to do,” he answered. “And no matter where I am, no matter how far down I fall, I will always remember that I have friends like you.”
Saying goodbye for what might well be forever, Eduard fled in his new identity across the crowded dance floor and ducked through one of the Club's random exit arches.
45
On the windswept platform out at sea, BTL investigators and apprehension specialists gathered for their orders. Down in womblike chambers, teams of Data Hunters scoured COM for any trace of Eduard. Every person in the Bureau knew how important this manhunt was.
Chief Mordecai Ob had been assassinated, and the killer was on the loose.
The killer was my friend! Daragon thought.
Choppy water foamed against the derrick's broad steel supports. The cold sky hung slate-gray around them. Daragon stepped into the salty breeze and inspected the assembled troops. Though he hated it, this responsibility had fallen to him.
A thorough search had uncovered Rush-X paraphernalia cleverly hidden in Eduard's quarters. An autopsy verified that Rush-X had killed Ob, though the Chief's body showed no evidence of previous exposure to the drug. Daragon recalled the many times Ob had mentioned Eduard's deteriorating physical condition; now, in hindsight, the signs of addiction should have been obvious.
The answer was painfully clear, and Daragon had no trouble thinking the worst of him. Eduard had always made excuses, taken shortcuts, looked for fast answers and avoided blame. It would have been just like him to seek the thrills of Rush-X, disdaining the damage it was doing to his body—after all, he had put himself through far worse plenty of times.
When Eduard took the drug in Ob's healthy body, though, it had been unable to tolerate the exposure. The coward had somehow tricked the Chief into swapping with him at the last moment. Daragon's thoughts returned to the unforgettable sight of his mentor lying on the floor, his mind already destroyed by the overdose . . . and Eduard fleeing out the broken window.
Why would you do this, Eduard? And how can I see it through? How could he defend his one-time friend?
“Attention!” Daragon shouted into the wind. The BTL specialists snapped into formation. He scanned the rows of trackers, enforcers, and interrogators assigned to the elite teams. “You all know the crime that's been committed, and the fugitive must be brought to justice. We know the identity of the perpetrator, but we do not know his current location. He has been on the run since yesterday.” He stared at the stony, attentive faces. “But we are the Bureau of Tracing and Locations, and we will find him.”
Gruff acknowledgments and brisk nods—no wild cheering. These people were too professional for such theatrics.
“The suspect is smart and he is desperate. We have no reason to believe he has remained in his home-body, so we must look elsewhere, as well.”
COM transaction spotters, evidence techs, and Data Hunters like Jax would scour the ocean of available information for any indication of Eduard's body, any access of his credit accounts, use of mass-transportation systems for local or especially long-distance travel. Blockers and surveillance systems would spot him if he tried to go to another country. If nothing else, the BTL would keep him bottled within the city limits.
Daragon could not do less than his utmost. Love and hatred had become a blur in him. From now on, his friendship with Eduard no longer existed. He had once admired the young man, even wanted to be like him, but Eduard had burned every bridge that joined them, permanently separating them.
Daragon watched the teams disperse to Bureau hovercars parked in the holding area. He stood waiting as the vehicles shot off toward the skyline, following COM-specified search patterns. With his special skill to see a person's true identity, Daragon's own eyes were the greatest weapon in such a manhunt. He needed only to glimpse the real Eduard, no matter what body he wore.
Daragon would search the city, person by person if necessary, monitoring a thousand COM surveillance screens, until he spotted his former friend. He would catch Eduard, sooner or later.
No problem.
Trying to predict what the fugitive would do, Daragon immediately went to see Garth, hoping the artist could offer some insight into where Eduard might have fled. He doubted, though, that Garth would volunteer anything that might result in his friend's arrest.
He rang insistently outside the elaborate studio, growing suspicious at the silence, until finally a harried-looking Pashnak threw open the door seal. His hair was tousled, his skin flushed, but he was too flustered to pay much attention to the visitor. “We don't have time for this, Daragon. Garth's in the medical center.” He turned to grab a duffel, which he had carefully packed weeks earlier. “I just rushed him to the hospital an hour ago.”
“The hospital! What? Oh—the baby! Is it due?”
Pashnak hustled out the door, carrying the duffel. “They say there's no need to rush but . . . come on, you can take me there in your official vehicle! I presume with Bureau authorization you can get us traffic overrides?”
Once they were at the medical center, Garth had sent Pashnak racing back home to pick up a batch of unnecessary items. The doctors insisted everything was normal, but Pashnak seemed to operate better in a panic. Garth was even more concerned, refusing to heed the calming advice of the surgical professionals.
All the muscles in his abdomen squeezed like an angry fist. The skin on his distended stomach hardened like the rind of a melon. The contraction built as a wave, more and more intense, like a leg cramp that involved his entire body, instead of a sharp squeeze as he had expected. He barely had time to catch his breath before the next one hit.
Then warm salty water gushed out of him in a completely involuntary stream. It felt like gallons and gallons, making an outrageous mess that didn't seem to bother the medical center personnel at all. “Is this it?” he gasped, just as another contraction hit.
“Nah, this is just the beginning,” said the head midwife, a lean woman with thick, dark eyebrows.
Garth had gotten accustomed to the active baby inside him, the secondary life attached to his own. Totally out of his control, he felt the infant girl moving, twisting, turning. She would kick out, pressing one tiny foot against his ribs like an archer trying to string a bow. The strangest part had been a jarring rhythm when the unborn baby battled a bout of hiccoughs.
Now, during the actual labor and the delivery, the avalanche of experiences came much too fast for Garth to do more than ride them. How foolish he had been to expect that he'd be able to take notes!
When Pashnak returned with Daragon in tow, rushing to the calm lights and music of the delivery crèche, the attendants would let only Pashnak in. He hovered about like a proud but nervous father.
“Hey, you,” the lead midwife said to him, “make her more comfortable by massaging her back and legs.”
“It's a him,” Pashnak corrected.
“Sorry, but any person giving birth in my ward is a female, as far as I'm concerned.”
Pashnak dutifully rubbed Garth's legs and swollen ankles through another wave of labor pains. “It's like an out-of-body experience,” Garth gasped, trying to put his feelings into words. “It's happening to me, inside of me, but I have no control over what's going on here. Like someone else is running the show.”
Then he could form no more words as his whole body felt ready to explode, full of extreme pressure everywhere. His tissues stretched far beyond the lim
its of anything he had ever imagined. The pain made his focus fade into a red blur. “Maybe I need painkillers after all, a lot of them. I don't know how much—”
“Garth, we agreed this would be natural childbirth, so you could get the full range of—” Pashnak dodged as Garth reached up in a sincere attempt to strangle him. From a distance, the assistant continued to urge him to concentrate on breathing and think of his artwork. Finally, Garth relented as the contractions gave him a brief respite. Very brief.
After an eternity he transitioned into hard labor, and at last the contractions seemed to have a purpose, slamming him with an irresistible urge to push. He felt so full inside as the baby positioned herself, then began to move down the birth canal.
Sweat ran off him in rivulets. Pashnak wiped Garth's face and neck with a cool, damp cloth, keeping up a stream of encouragement like a cheerleader and blithely ignoring any callous insults Garth spat out. When the baby's head finally emerged, then the shoulders with even greater pain, the rest came easily, and the slick body slid out. The attendants placed the newborn, still connected by the umbilical cord, onto Garth's semideflated stomach.
As he reached out with trembling fingers to touch the stirring infant, Garth forgot about the pain and struggle he had just endured, all the dramatic changes his body had wrestled with. Now that he was done, none of it mattered. He had a newborn daughter in front of him, a new life that had been part of him.
“You may think it's over,” the head midwife said, “but it's not.”
Next, giving birth to the placenta also cost him quite a bit of effort, but that part was much less satisfying.
Afterward, he was more exhausted than he'd ever been in his life. But the birth experience had filled his body with endorphins, released a new hormone in his brain that gave him an emotional rush unequaled in his other experiences. He wanted to feed his baby, get to know her, protect her from the world—he would die for her, if need be. Tears of wonder trickled unheeded from the corners of his eyes. How could he have lived so long without ever realizing that such deep and instinctive emotion existed?
He had no idea how he was ever going to convey these feelings in his artwork. The sum of them went beyond JOY.
Back in his room, Garth settled against crisp pillows, cuddling his baby. This would have been a good time to sort out his thoughts and assimilate the whole experience, but he was too numb to think.
After a light tap on the door, the real mother—still wearing Garth's body—came in to see her child. “Thanks for doing all the work. So, was it worth it?”
“Priceless.” Garth smiled, his expression typically radiant. His eyes had a distant expression, still partly in shock.
By the time Pashnak and Daragon were finally allowed to enter, Garth lay slumped on the sheets, his skin pale, his eyes shadowed with exhaustion. Curly brown hair spread out in a tangled mat on the pillow.
Daragon found it an odd scene, not one he'd ever expected to witness. He recognized Garth's persona in the female body on the bed, while the familiar blond-haired male—inhabited by the conception-mother—sat in a chair close to the bedside, cooing over the rail at the wrapped bundle.
Garth perked up at seeing his two new visitors. “Daragon! I haven't seen you in so long. Not since the night of my FRUSTRATION exhibit.” He reached out a hand. “My new showing of JOY opens in two weeks, as soon as I add the birth experience. No excuses. I want you there.” He lifted a finger to point sternly.
“JOY.” Daragon could only frown. “There's not much joy in my life at the moment, Garth. I've got too much . . . too much on my mind.” He hesitated. “You've seen Eduard, haven't you?”
Garth glanced sharply at Pashnak and handed the baby to her mother. “Leave us alone for a few minutes, you two. Please.” The assistant looked concerned, but the mother was delighted for the opportunity to hold her infant. They left the room.
Daragon bent closer to the bedside. “You've got to help me find him, Garth. Eduard must be held accountable for what he's done.”
“Do you even know what he's done? Exactly?”
Daragon stood stiffly, as if his uniform were a shield. “He murdered a man who was my boss, and my friend.”
“Eduard's your friend, too.”
“Not after this.”
“Daragon—your boss, your friend—was destroying Eduard. Mordecai Ob addicted Eduard's body to Rush-X. It was killing him. Ob intended to use him up, and then hire another personal caretaker.”
Daragon saw black static around the fringes of his vision. “That's ridiculous. Mr. Ob died from an overdose of Rush-X—an overdose Eduard gave to him. I saw him fleeing the scene, and we found incriminating evidence in Eduard's own quarters.”
Garth glared at him with accusing eyes. “A good investigator keeps his mind open to all possibilities.”
“You're talking about the Chief of the Bureau of Tracing and Locations! I can't let friendship twist an interpretation of a crime scene into something absurd.” In disgust, Daragon turned away. “Eduard ran from me that day. If he doesn't turn himself in, he'll be tried anyway, in absentia—and there's no way I can defend him or help him.”
He had given Eduard too many second chances. Ob had already been forced to hire a replacement for him. Perhaps Eduard had learned he was going to be dumped and couldn't abide being kicked out.
“You're wrong about him, Daragon.” Garth sat up in the plush, overly comfortable maternity bed, his expression intense. “You're making a big mistake. Eduard would never do the things you're thinking.”
Daragon shook his head and turned to leave the hospital room. “Garth, no matter what excuses he might make, no matter how much he means to you, Eduard did murder Mordecai Ob. If there was a problem, why didn't he trust me? If I don't bring him to justice, somebody else will.”
His mind in turmoil, Daragon departed from the medical center, summoned his BTL hovercar, and cruised low over the streets, watching the pedestrians below. He stared at the crowds, remembering when he and young Eduard had gone out in secret, fantasizing about hidden immortals who lived in the shadows of society. “Is that a Phantom?” Eduard would ask. “Is that a Phantom?”
This time, though, Daragon would be able to answer the question. He searched the unfamiliar faces for a flicker of the persona he knew so well. “Is that Eduard?” he thought. “Is that Eduard?”
Daragon vowed to keep looking until he found him.
46
Even with a clearly defined goal for the first time in her life, Teresa still felt lost. Where to find her original female form, her home-body that she hadn't seen in over a year? It seemed an impossible task even before she started. Without Garth's sketch in his portrait spectrum, Teresa wasn't sure she even remembered what she had looked like.
Logging onto COM, she used all the skills Soft Stone had taught her in the monastery library, but she found no trace of the woman named Jennika who had fled the enclave wearing Teresa's home-body. She wondered if “Jennika” had even been the young woman's real name.
As a start to her search, she knew she had to retrace her steps, go back to where her original body had disappeared. But asking the necessary questions meant returning to the Sharetakers. Teresa swallowed hard. It would be the most difficult thing she'd ever done.
With gray clouds blanketing the sky, she stood in Eduard's aching and wasted form. She tried to put aside the discomfort, her reluctant need for more Rush-X, the awful taste in her mouth. For two days she'd been trying to rest, to eat nourishing food, doing what she could to restore her vitality.
Eduard's body was weak and sore, maybe irreparably damaged. Even the fresh air smelled sour in her nostrils, and the constant headache wore her down. During the worst pain of withdrawal, though, she did not regret her choice for Eduard. He was still out there, somewhere. Alive, she hoped.
Now, her stomach in knots, Teresa stood outside the enclave from which she had fled, where Eduard had rescued her. The familiar building looked rundown. Inside, the o
pen area now looked cluttered and unfinished. The Sharetakers had once owned most of the building, but many of the levels had been repossessed and rebuilt. She wondered what had happened here.
Where once she had worked joyously among a bustling crowd of fellow believers, now they all looked uneasy, stressed. Only a few Sharetakers remained, victims of disappointment and confusion. People moved with their heads down, carrying boxes, distraught.
Upon seeing her enter, unrecognizable in Eduard's haggard body, two of the members ran out of the room, as if to fetch someone. “Maybe he wants to join,” suggested one woman, her voice doubtful.
Some doors were sealed, marked with new ownership tags. Construction workers moved about, measuring, marking, pounding. Support struts stood in the open rooms where the Sharetakers had knocked down walls to make their togetherments. Now the communal areas were being subdivided, new walls framed, individual living spaces mapped out once again.
She stepped uncertainly into the dusty open area, at a loss. “I . . . I'm trying to find someone. A person who used to be a member here. Her name was Jennika. Does anybody remember her?”
None of the remaining Sharetakers seemed to care. “Too late. She's probably gone.”
“If she got out of here, then she's definitely in a better place. The Sharetakers are bankrupt,” said a frowning older man. “I lost everything. We all did. We're closing down.”
Teresa held on to a plaswood brace. She vaguely recognized this man's weathered face, had no idea who lived in his body now. Names on ID patches meant nothing to her, and she knew they never kept any records. Steeling her nerves, she asked with dread, “Where's Rhys?”
The middle-aged man sagged. “Who knows?” Then, bitterly, as if he too had been betrayed, “Who cares?”
A woman stopped, setting down a box full of miscellaneous items. “He ran away, actually. The Beetles kept sniffing around here, and one night Rhys just disappeared. He abandoned us, after all his talk about trusting and sharing, his compassion, his promises.” Her weathered face grew ruddy. “We trusted him.”
Hopscotch Page 25