Hopscotch

by Kevin J. Anderson

He could have hurried faster in his own young physique, but this guy had trouble just moving about, and the flu didn’t make it any easier. If the man who owned this body had kept himself healthier, he might not have been so susceptible to getting sick in the first place.

  The man was a busy executive, with more credits in his account than he could spend. Such an important person couldn’t afford to be laid up for days. He had board meetings to attend, fund-raisers to throw, decisions to make. After only one day of the flu, the exec had become desperate.

  So he’d hired Eduard, who would be sick for him.

  For an exorbitant fee, Eduard agreed to inhabit the exec’s body until he recovered. In return, the exec lived in the young man’s body, doing his business as usual. His wife probably didn’t mind him coming home to her in a virile physique, either. . . .

  In the exec’s ailing body, Eduard staggered into the bathroom and splashed water on his face. The cheeks and skin felt oily, soft from the extra fat padding his jowls. He looked in the mirror and saw a stranger staring back at him.

  It was only pain and physical discomfort, after all. With the amount of money he’d get paid for this, Eduard wouldn’t have to work a real job for weeks, perhaps even months, if he scrimped. He loved the freedom and independence. He could endure it. No problem.

  Eduard’s stomach clenched, and he vomited into the sink. Holding himself and shaking to get over the wave of nausea, he splashed more water, rinsed the facilities, then lumbered back to bed, breathing shallowly.

  Only a few more days, then he could be back to normal once more. It was just a minor nuisance, hardly worse than a bad cold. He took another full dose of medications, waited for them to take effect.

  He slumped onto the sheets, tossing and turning feverishly for hours as this weak body struggled to fight off the illness. Eduard muttered to himself, all alone in the small, stifling room—glad it wasn’t his day to meet at Club Masquerade, since he didn’t want to see Teresa or Garth like this.

  Even after drinking copious electrolyte-enriched fluids, he vomited twice more that night, then eventually fell into a deep sleep. By morning the fever had broken.

  He showered twice, trying to overcome the unwashed feeling in this body. He took appropriate medications, rested, recovered as quickly as possible. . . .

  The following day he swapped back with the body’s original owner. After synching ID patches on their hands, Eduard drew a deep breath, flexed his arms, and looked out the office window.

  The exec was glad to have the flu over with, though he did seem a bit reluctant to give Eduard his young body back. Without potent, and illegal, drugs, it was impossible to force an unwilling person to swap, but Eduard wouldn’t need to take such drastic measures. He looked at the exec sternly. “Our contract has been consummated, the appropriate waivers signed, and I take it both parties are satisfied?”

  The exec had relinquished his hold, and the two men hopscotched. Eduard took a deep breath into his own lungs, glad to be home again. . . .

  Grinning, he walked out into the streets, his credit account fat now. He decided to pick up a small bunch of flowers that he would deliver to Teresa in her dwelling. She would like that.

  5

  Beneath the ocean on the once-abandoned offshore drilling rig, Bureau Chief Mordecai Ob leaned across his desk toward Daragon. Overhead, thick windows looked out on an underwater world of fish and waving kelp. The young man had been assigned to BTL Headquarters for several weeks now, and Ob had taken him under his wing, grooming him.

  “From here, we’re linked to the mainland through computer and energy conduits,” Ob said. “And that’s how we do our work. Unobtrusively, if possible.” He flexed his thick arms, as if relishing the feel of his own muscles.

  “COM infiltrates every aspect of our lives from finances to entertainment to the national infrastructure. Therefore, information about everyone’s daily activities can be found somewhere in all of those databases. You need only look for it.” Unlike the rest of the undersea facility, Ob’s office was plush and warm. An ornamental gas fireplace shed a cheery, natural light.

  Daragon stood completely rigid in front of the Chief, impeccably dressed in his new uniform. “COM is a vast place to search, sir.”

  The other man smiled at Daragon. “Ah, now you begin to see!”

  Like a computerized sympathetic nervous system, the computer/organic matrix performed the functions that everyone saw and used but never noticed: turning on streetlights, circulating the air in buildings, monitoring impedance paths through the airways so that traffic flowed smoothly and safely, maintaining stable weather patterns via climate-control systems.

  With each mental engram added, COM had grown geometrically in processing power, designing new additions to itself. No one understood the entire network; no complete map had ever existed. The computerized matrix did not spy on people, but the Bureau of Tracing and Locations knew how to use the network to monitor anyone they chose.

  Daragon nodded dutifully. “In the past year, sir, I’ve been taught how to take advantage of COM, but there’s so much available data that finding anything in particular is like finding a needle in a world full of haystacks.”

  Smiling, Ob stood from his desk and led him into a metal-walled corridor. “Yes, and our people are those most adept at searching for needles.”

  The Bureau Chief took him through humid biological reconstruction labs, frigid computer galleries, humming offices, dazzling map rooms, image libraries bursting with information.

  Inspectors, guards, tacticians, apprehension specialists, saboteurs, data archaeologists . . . rank after specialized rank. Some operatives, skilled in evidence analysis, could detect infrared footprints or pick up DNA tracings, compiling physical clues to build a trail for Inspectors to follow. Medical technicians could unravel brain scans, the mental fingerprints of a specific person regardless of the physical body it inhabited.

  Finally, his mind numb with everything he was seeing, Daragon turned to Ob. “Can I inquire which section I’ll be working for, sir?”

  The Chief’s olive-brown eyes shone. “With your gift for inner recognition, you are a true wild card. If you can see people’s personas just by looking at them, without consulting an ID patch, without using special scanning and analysis techniques, you’ll perform a function none of these others can, despite all our technology.”

  Daragon’s heart fluttered. When all of Soft Stone’s mental training had failed, leaving the boy unable to hopscotch, he had felt worthless, a freak. He didn’t know who his parents were, or why he had turned out this way.

  But because of his special ability, the BTL had considered him valuable enough to make a deal with the Splinter monks. Daragon alone had saved the monastery from ruin.

  A long time ago, the day it had all changed, Daragon remembered looking up into Soft Stone’s concerned face, seeing an intensity that frightened him. She was sinewy and bald, with blunt features and a large heart. “Look at me, child. Through my eyes, into my mind. Imagine yourself here.” She tapped her forehead. “Forget your body. For a person your age, hopscotching should come easily and naturally. I’m willing and ready to swap with you. It can’t be completed without mutual consent, but you have that now.”

  Daragon tried, as he had tried for years. Others described it as a floating sensation, shucking ethereal chains to the body, exchanging yourself with another. Touching foreheads, an exchange of souls. He waited for the drifting sensation, the disconnection. Nothing.

  “I can see you. I can watch your . . . aura when you swap with someone else,” he said, tears brimming in his dark eyes. “But I can’t do it myself.”

  She looked at him abruptly, a different set of thoughts plain on her face. “You can see me? How?”

  “It’s obvious, your individual persona. I don’t know how to describe it.” He shrugged. “Can’t everybody?”

  She held up the back of her hand, showing her personal code number on the tiny swatch of polymer film.
“You mean my ID patch?”

  “Isn’t it just . . . obvious? I never need to see an ID patch.”

  When Soft Stone touched Daragon’s head, her fingers trembled. “I had begun to suspect as much. Wait here, little Swan.”

  She marched out the door with a swish of sky-blue robes, intent on an experiment. The first monk she found was dour Hickory, in the garden. He sweated in the sun, hacking at the ground with his hoe. He bent over a tomato plant and plucked off a fat green hornworm.

  As she approached, Hickory scrutinized the caterpillar, then crushed its head between his fingers. “All things must fertilize the earth.” He cast the dead worm onto the ground and rubbed his hand on the front of his work robe.

  “Swap with me,” Soft Stone said without preamble.

  “I hardly think this is the time or the place. Perhaps tonight?”

  “I need your body for training purposes.” She reached out to take the hoe from him, prepared to let him work in her body. They swapped without synching their ID patches. Hickory seemed nonplussed, but Soft Stone strode off. “I’ll be right back.”

  When she returned to the training room, she smelled of sweat and dirt and warm sunshine. The ache in her male muscles came from exertion rather than age, and Hickory’s eyes were sharper than her own.

  Daragon looked up at her, still dejected. She spoke in Hickory’s gruff voice. “Soft Stone has asked me to continue your training.”

  “But . . . you’re Soft Stone.” Daragon gave her a puzzled frown. “Are you trying to trick me?”

  It was true, then. He did have the ability, an incredibly rare skill. There was something fundamental missing in Daragon, but also something present. “No, little Swan, I was testing you. Come out to the garden and help Hickory. After we swap back, I’m sure he can find more chores for you to do. I need to talk with Chocolate.”

  For weeks, the Falling Leaves had simmered with tension and uneasiness, a battle the Splinter monks could never win. The Bureau of Tracing and Locations wanted to acquire the monastery building for their own operations, and the monks had no way of fighting against the government order, no bargaining chip that would buy their continued existence.

  But the BTL would be desperate to have what this young man could do. Quite desperate. Soft Stone knew they could use Daragon to save the monastery. . . .

  Days later, an anxious Daragon had waited in the Falling Leaves front office. He wished his friend Eduard were here. Eduard was always so cocky, so confident, never bothered.

  “Don’t worry, child. You’ll do fine,” Soft Stone said, trying to comfort him. “It is just a test.” The lie was plain in her voice. The monastery’s corpulent administrator Chocolate paced behind his carved desk.

  Footsteps came down the hall, a soft whicker of sandals and robes as counterpoint to the staccato drumbeat of bootheels. A flushed monk led two BTL officers into Chocolate’s office, an Inspector and a Sergeant. Both wore neat uniforms; their demeanor suggested confidence and efficiency.

  Soft Stone placed her hand on Daragon’s shoulder. “Sirs, we have something you may find interesting. Something we believe the Bureau will value highly.”

  Chocolate bustled forward, grinning with relief. “Yes, he is quite the rarity. While this young man is incapable of swapping bodies, his mental abilities have turned inward. Quite the rarity. But he’s not a throwback—he’s . . . different.”

  “That remains to be seen,” the Inspector said as the Sergeant withdrew several pieces of scanning equipment. . . .

  In the end, after the amazing results of the test, the BTL officers promised to take care of Daragon. He had reached the age of adulthood, but remained young enough to be malleable, to be trained in their ways. The Bureau had a rigorous curriculum already designed for talented people like him.

  Soft Stone hugged Daragon, trying to crush away the young man’s fear and uncertainty. She mouthed the words, telling him that the Bureau did vital work in society. No other person from the Falling Leaves could hope for such a remarkable opportunity, she said; no one else had ever passed the tests.

  Beside him, the Beetles promised similar things. The main difference was that the uniformed men seemed to believe what they said.

  In the monastery the others gathered in shock at his sudden departure. Young Garth, Teresa, and Eduard stood together in the hall, unable to believe what they were seeing, or understand what Daragon had done.

  He pulled away from the grim Beetles standing next to him. “I need to say goodbye to my friends.” Daragon came forward to hug Teresa while the officers looked on in disapproval. Garth and Eduard also embraced him, trying to look excited for him.

  “Enough,” said the BTL commander. “This projects the wrong image.”

  “Consider it your first lesson in the Bureau,” said the Sergeant.

  As young Daragon was led away from the protection of the monastery, Soft Stone watched sadly. She had become accustomed to seeing her children leave, one by one, out to a wider life. But the loss of Daragon was quite different. And she herself felt responsible for it.

  Bureau Chief Ob beamed at him like a proud father. “In all the years I’ve been in the Bureau, you’re only the second one I’ve found. There are no more than a few known examples in any one generation.” They stood together, deep underwater, surrounded by girders and walls, curved windows that looked out into the sea. Murky sunlight battered its way into the depths. “Having you with us gives the Bureau an extremely valuable tool.”

  Now that he thought about it, Daragon realized just how important it would be for an Inspector to glance over a crowd and spot the mind he was looking for—in the same way anybody else could look at faces and recognize someone.

  “I want you to be my special assistant.” Ob patted him on the shoulder. “The world will be under your watchful eye, young Daragon.”

  6

  When she was a girl at the Falling Leaves, Teresa had been enthralled with delving through COM databases, considering the stored thoughts of humanity. But now, in her day-to-day job in front of the COM gateway, the tasks were pure drudgery.

  The computer/organic matrix was the circulatory system that ran through society, a worldwide database of monitoring routines, financial accounts, personnel records, statistics, and information libraries. But someone had to sift through all that data, make assessments, offer interpretations.

  “Information and knowledge are two different things,” Soft Stone had often told her. In the monastery library, the Splinters had imposed a regimen that for every hour spent exploring COM, students must spend another hour contemplating and digesting the new facts they had learned.

  Now, though, in her drab work environment in front of a milky-white touch screen, Teresa felt like a tired bee in a hive. A few drooping flowers valiantly tried to cheer her, an arrangement Eduard had given her a week ago. She splayed her hands on the induction-pressure input pads that took impulses from her fingers and turned them into commands. The translucent interface shifted to mother-of-pearl, then opened into a complex data/subject map.

  She wished Soft Stone could be there with her, looking over her shoulder. The old monk had been so named because she could be as soft as butter, or hard as granite. “Is your mind ready, little Swan?” she would say. “Ready for more knowledge?”

  “I wish you would help me find some answers, instead of more questions.” Teresa had always been searching, asking, wondering.

  Soft Stone had chuckled. “You’re assuming I have answers to give you.”

  “Can COM give me the answers to why I’m here? What does it all mean? What should I do with my life?”

  With its thinking power equivalent to billions of minds, with eyes that could watch over even the smallest sparrow, the computer/organic matrix was seen by the Splinters as a manifestation of God come to Earth—a neural network peopled by the numerous souls who entered and never came back because it was too tempting to stay there. Even Soft Stone looked at it with awe.

  “O
f course, little Swan. Inside here you can find Heaven.”

  But there was no Heaven in her daily job. Teresa had spent the past two months working for a survey group as an information sifter who dug through daily records of pedestrian traffic patterns and hovercar movements, trying to ferret out nuances of the way people traveled through the city. An advertising firm needed the information to determine where to best place formscreen billboards and public-service information displays.

  Not quite the grand questions that fascinated Teresa . . .

  After the day the Beetles had taken Daragon away, Soft Stone withdrew to her quarters and did not emerge. Under the pretext of searching for advice and guidance, Teresa rapped on the old monk’s door frame, then drew the curtain aside and entered unbidden. Two candles lit the room, shedding warm light.

  Soft Stone was hunched over her cot. “I did not ask to be interrupted.”

  “I’ll meditate with you, then.” Teresa hunkered down beside her, waited a few painfully long moments, then finally ventured, “I’ve been trying to think of what name I should use when I take my own Splinter vows.”

  Soft Stone’s voice held a tone of rebuke. “We fervently hope our trainees will not stay with us. Only our failures remain here, those of us who could not fulfill our life’s work outside. Your goal is to make this life as kind as possible for as many people as you can. And you can’t do that from within these walls.”

  Teresa couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “But you’re not a failure.”

  “I never achieved my potential. I lived outside for years, experimenting, hopscotching. Call it the brashness of youth, the pain of foolish love, but I fled back here, and I’ve felt like a coward ever since. My only success comes from knowing that the students I teach will go out and do greater deeds than I ever managed. I have failed in so many things.”