Hopscotch

by Kevin J. Anderson

  “Still, it seems impossible to control, sir, considering all the potential.”

  Ob smiled as if Daragon had finally reached some sort of breakthrough. “Absolutely impossible. But that doesn’t prevent the Bureau from fostering the impression. Think of art—sometimes subtle strokes accomplish more, have a greater impact, than blatant messages.”

  The Bureau Chief was like a father to Daragon, who had never known one. Daragon wondered if one day he’d be able to find out the identity of his biological parents. Perhaps he could use the resources of the BTL to do it. . . .

  Now, taking a rare break up in the open air at the offshore Headquarters platform, he climbed to the top of the derrick superstructure. Sitting high on the derrick, Daragon breathed the salty air and gazed across to the shoreline. The tall rectangular buildings stood like glittering blocks crowded to the edge of the water, on the verge of tumbling like dominoes into the sea.

  He thought of his companions from the Falling Leaves. Daragon hadn’t had contact with them in more than a year, but he often took advantage of the Bureau’s network to keep an eye on them. He tracked Teresa through her succession of dead-end jobs. Garth ran about trying to become an artist. Then there was Eduard, leasing himself for whatever demeaning activities other people wanted to avoid. . . . He missed them very much.

  Once he became a full-fledged Inspector, resplendent in his new uniform, Daragon decided he would show them what he had made of his life.

  But not yet. He still had work to do.

  As kids, he and Eduard had loved to explore the old brick monastery. Attic room, dusty shadows, the scent of mildewed rafters. With a grunt, Eduard forced the crank on an old half-circle window. Fresh, damp wind gusted through the opening. “Come on, let’s slip outside. Soft Stone will never know.” He thrust his face into the breeze. “We can hop on the roof, make our way over the eaves to the tube walkway next door.”

  Eduard was like a big brother to him, someone who had the brashness to attempt the things Daragon secretly wanted to do. His almond eyes flicked back and forth, searching for excuses. “But what if we’re caught?”

  “Then we’ll get sent back here. And if we don’t go, we’ll be stuck here anyway.” Eduard flashed his charming grin. “Friends do things together, you know. Besides, I want to get something special for Teresa. Don’t you want to help me? For her?”

  And with that, Daragon was helpless. “All right, but we need to be careful.”

  Keeping low, they climbed an access ladder onto a connective walkway, then scampered to the neighboring high-rise. Down at street level, Daragon stared at the towering buildings, a forest of mirrored glass, polished stone, gleaming metal. Walls were colored with finger paintings of chameleon pigment. Elevators like deep-sea diving bells rode on the outsides of skyscrapers.

  Grinning, Eduard pointed to a lonely-looking military recruiting station. He nudged Daragon in the ribs. “What do you think, should we join the Defense Forces?”

  They had recently watched a heart-wrenching story about brave soldiers during a major mid-twentieth-century conflict. Daragon didn’t find the entertainment cycle nearly as engaging as the Dickens novels Garth read aloud to him and another boy, Pashnak. A great general had been mortally wounded during the height of a battle. Knowing the fate of his comrades was at stake, a quiet infantryman (who had been a coward for most of the story) selflessly sacrificed himself by hopscotching with his general, dying in his place so that the military leader could lead the troops to a spectacular victory. Eduard insisted that the twentieth-century wars had occurred long before anyone knew how to swap bodies.

  They sat on a sun-warmed flowstone bench to watch the world. Shadows strobed across the sunlight from the row of hovercars humming overhead. Eduard studied people passing through doorways, suspicious shapes slipping quickly from beneath one awning to another. He pointed out a well-dressed man who edged along a building wall.

  “Hey, have you ever heard of the Phantoms, people who hopscotch bodies again and again so they can outrun death?” Eduard asked, his eyes full of wonder. “Trading themselves into younger bodies, healthy physiques, doing whatever it takes to stay alive. Imagine, some of the Phantoms are supposed to be five and six hundred years old!”

  “People haven’t even known how to hopscotch for that long.” Daragon wasn’t so credulous. For a Phantom to stay alive for centuries, he would have to maintain an extremely low profile, a quiet existence, leaving no trail and attracting no attention. “Besides, the Beetles would know about it, wouldn’t they? Nobody has any proof.”

  Eduard watched the stranger until he passed around a corner and was lost in the crowd. “Well, I believe it.” He pointed to a man haggling with a food vendor across the street. “If they found a way to doctor their ID patches, how would you ever know? That man there could be a Phantom.” He indicated a woman climbing into a hovercar parked at a charging terminal. “Or she could be one. Or that old couple, with their heads down—they could be waiting for their chance to steal young and healthy bodies.”

  Daragon was more concerned about the people whose bodies they stole, rather than the Phantoms themselves. He shook his head each time. “They’ve all got ID patches. Besides, can’t you just . . . see inside to who they really are?”

  Eduard looked at him strangely. “Even the Beetles need scanners and equipment to figure that out.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Yeah, right.” Restless, Eduard got up from the bench. “Well, I want to become a Phantom. Like a candle flame passed from wick to wick, never burning out.”

  Wandering farther, Eduard and Daragon saw the open-air flower market at the same time, a profusion of colors and scents: bouquets of pink and yellow carnations, long-stemmed roses as red as blood, genetically modified exotics in a garish profusion of neon or metallic colors, with selective scents ranging from peppermint to sandalwood. Some blooms had been silica-enhanced so they would never wilt.

  Teresa loved flowers.

  “But we don’t have any money,” Daragon whispered. In the monastery, they had no need for credits.

  Eduard grinned, good-natured. “We just wait for an opportunity. Maybe somebody will . . . drop something. Be flexible.”

  They walked among the flowers, sniffing some, fingering others. A midnight-blue orchid opened from a perfect bud to full bloom, then collapsed back into a bud again, cycling in a single minute.

  Suddenly, the COM traffic-control substation across the street exploded, two stories up. The blast tore a hole through the side of the building. Chunks of stone, glass, and hot metal rained down as screaming bystanders scrambled for safety. A restaurant’s striped awning caught on fire.

  Thinking fast, Eduard snatched a mixed bouquet of color-coded carnations, rainbow-petaled daisies, and talking daffodils. He grinned as if it were a game. “Come on, let’s go!”

  Daragon gaped at him. “You didn’t say we were going to steal anything.”

  “It’s not hurting anybody. Here, I’ll let you give half of them to Teresa.”

  With the disruption of COM, the interleaved skylanes of hovercars swirled like a stirred anthill before the backup safety systems kicked in and vehicles automatically landed in rapid succession, filling the crowded streets.

  The safety systems lost only one hovercar, a topaz-blue single-passenger model. Directly above the wrecked substation, the vehicle veered from its impedance path, slipped through the protective electronic net, and plummeted into a bistro across the street.

  Inside the flaming hulk of the crashed hovercar, Daragon could see a mangled driver trying to free himself. Some people ran toward the scene and some fled, while others remained frozen, watching. “We’ve got to help. Can’t we do something?”

  Eduard looked at him in astonishment. “Are you better trained than all those people? Ambulance crews will be here in a minute, and the Beetles, too.”

  Daragon swallowed hard, still reluctant about breaking the law, but took the flowers from Eduard. With
their prized bouquet in hand, the two young men raced back to the monastery. . . .

  Now behind the heavy desk in his office, Mordecai Ob steepled his fingers like a lobster trap. “Daragon, you must not operate under the misconception that the only reason our BTL exists is to capture criminals. That function often falls under the purview of other Bureaus.”

  “But sir, I’ve found a lead on one of our most wanted fugitives. The terrorist behind the bombings that caused such turmoil in COM several years ago.” He’d wanted so badly to make Mordecai Ob proud of him.

  After thinking about the explosion in the flower market, Daragon had checked on the status of the anti-COM fugitives. When he learned that the leader, a woman named Robertha Chambers, remained at large, Daragon applied his imagination. He followed unlikely leads, vague aliases, until he located her. He covered his exuberance when he brought the news to Ob, but now even his hidden smile began to falter.

  “I know you’ve put a lot of energy into this, Daragon, but we’ve already captured the rest of her anti-COM band. The last one is due to be uploaded and executed tomorrow. The problem has been eliminated. Robertha Chambers poses no threat.”

  “But why don’t we wrap up the case, sir?” Daragon did not want to reveal his personal connection to the matter. “There’s no statute of limitations. We could take Robertha out. Think of what a coup that would be.”

  Under Ob’s olive-brown gaze, Daragon felt that he still had much more to learn. “There are second- and third-order effects of what the Bureau does. Have you considered that perhaps I’ve known about her all along? Robertha Chambers believes she has a clever disguise, living out in the open where no one will suspect her.” He looked hard at the young Inspector. “The simple fact is, the BTL isn’t interested in apprehending her.”

  Daragon sat down in the guest chair. He stared at the blue-orange flames in Ob’s gas fireplace, wrestling with the concept. “I don’t understand, sir.”

  The Chief was a model of patience. “Seems our ringleader has no stomach for a full-fledged revolution. Robertha gathered a band of big talkers and pushed them into violence. She relished the power, enjoyed being in charge. Now that her group is gone and she almost lost her life, Robertha’s found a safer way to get her thrills. The BTL considers her effectively impotent where she is.”

  “But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t capture her. She can still hurt people. What if she takes advantage—”

  “Daragon, think, please.” Ob’s voice had a sharper edge to it. “With this supposedly dangerous person at large, the BTL can maintain stepped-up surveillance and an obvious presence in places where we have no legitimate reason to be. We can always apprehend Robertha later, if we so desire. But she won’t cause us any more problems.”

  Daragon nodded solemnly. “I hadn’t thought of those things, sir.” He needed to put the needs of the Bureau above his own wishes.

  9

  After seeing Soft Stone’s image in the COM terminal, Teresa roamed the streets, full of questions. She did not know where to go or how to focus her quest. What did her teacher want her to do? Had the apparition been only her imagination? She knew that wasn’t true. The old monk had always encouraged her to seek answers within herself and outside in the world.

  Eduard and Garth had never been much interested in philosophy, but Daragon had often listened to Teresa work through her thoughts. Now she went to a BTL subdistrict office and asked how she might go about seeing Daragon, but the attendant gave her only a gruff reply. “We are unable to divulge the whereabouts of any particular officer.”

  “Oh, but he’s a friend of mine. This is a personal matter.” She smiled at the attendant, who did not smile back.

  “The Bureau frowns on its officers having ‘personal matters.’ ” Teresa insisted on leaving a message, which the attendant grudgingly accepted, though he gave no assurances as to whether it would ever find its way to Daragon.

  Teresa wandered from place to place, confident that when the answer came, she would see it plainly. “If you want lightning to strike, child, you cannot hide in a cave,” Soft Stone had taught her. “You must plant a lot of lightning rods.”

  As she searched the streets, Teresa didn’t even know what she was looking for—until she saw the religious group in the square. They called themselves Sharetakers. The cluster of converts wore colorful clothes to attract attention. They had no actual rented stall—the five volunteers just staked out their territory at an intersection of byways and talked to people who happened to walk by, trying to interest them in the Sharetaker way of life. They tried to sell secondhand possessions to raise money, liquidating worldly goods to scrape up enough credits so they could print more leaflets.

  Teresa’s chest tightened. Their devotion and passion fascinated her, and she wondered if this could be the lightning bolt she had been hoping for. Her own meditations always raised more queries about the nature of existence than they answered. Hard facts on the subject eluded her. “Questions are more important than answers, little Swan,” Soft Stone had been fond of saying.

  The Splinters had coalesced from believers who no longer knew what to believe. Body-swapping and the all-pervasive computer/organic matrix had changed humankind more than anything in the past several thousand years—yet none of the great religious texts addressed the issue. How could any prophet worth his salt miss something that important? Impossible. Doubts had cast many former zealots adrift. Over the course of two centuries, numerous fusion religions had sprung up as people sought new answers. . . .

  Teresa found her feet dragging her across the street toward the Sharetakers. The group consisted of two young men and three women, facing outward with their backs to each other. Flashing smiles, they talked and talked, their words overlapping in resonant syllables.

  “We offer a sense of community and acceptance. We welcome newcomers with open arms,” one woman said, utterly convinced of her message.

  “Nobody needs to be alone in this world, if only you join us,” said a man. Each spoke a memorized part of the speech, like a rotating information loop.

  A second woman looked directly into Teresa’s eyes. Though the words could well have been part of the carefully practiced routine, they seemed to be directed specifically at her. “Are you searching for something? Are you lost? Then come and find us.”

  Pedestrians bustled around her, ignoring the proselytizers. The message droned past them, just part of the white noise of the city. But Teresa heard.

  “We believe in mutual sharing, bodies and minds, lives and experiences. What is a home without love? What is a society without cooperation? Only by combining our efforts, by building upon each other’s thoughts and sweat, can we rise higher. The Sharetakers are stronger than the sum of our parts.”

  When the first woman noticed her interest, she signaled her fellow Sharetakers, who turned from their positions to focus on Teresa. They all came forward, accepting her like a hive organism swallowing her in its welcoming embrace.

  Since the loss of Soft Stone, since leaving the monastery, Teresa had felt alone and disconnected in the world. She’d kept in touch with Garth and Eduard, meeting them regularly at Club Masquerade, but still she felt adrift.

  “Would you like to hear more?” one of the Sharetaker women said.

  Teresa couldn’t stop herself from nodding. . . .

  For an hour, standing among the Sharetakers, she listened to them disseminate their message. When they encountered no other potential converts like herself, the outreach spokesman led her back to their enclave.

  Out in front of a nondescript dwelling complex, a square-jawed man greeted the returning missionaries. With flashing eyes and a shock of bristly reddish hair, he carried a passion about him, a more intense focus than Teresa was accustomed to seeing.

  “That’s our leader, Rhys,” the spokesman said to her, nodding toward the man. “He joined us from a different enclave in another city. We’ve never seen such all-consuming enthusiasm for our cause. Rhys truly unde
rstands what the Sharetakers are all about, how to focus us into a stronger whole.”

  The redheaded leader’s presence captivated Teresa. He welcomed the groups back home, asking each Sharetaker what he or she had seen, how many trinkets they had sold, how many new members they had found.

  Teresa took a step closer, glad to see a man whose course seemed so clear to him, whose life had a clear-cut path—all the things she was missing in herself.

  Rhys’s gaze locked with hers, and she stood like a rabbit afraid of being flushed from the underbrush. It was as if he managed to peel away all of the masks that hid her inner strength from the world. He could look through her, into her mind and heart, and see the hunger and vulnerability in her eyes.

  “The Sharetakers are not a free ride for lazy people,” Rhys said with a stern edge. “We believe that humans can be complete if they share everything, share their lives, their muscles, their labor. We all work hard so that we can live peacefully together, the way people were meant to exist. One heart, one mind, many bodies. If you join us, you must join us wholeheartedly. Hold back nothing—neither your possessions nor yourself. In return, you will receive all that we have, every person, every body, free for the taking.”

  Then Rhys smiled, and his expression softened. He reached toward Teresa and grasped her small hands in his, squeezing tightly. He stepped back from the press of people and opened the doors to the building. “Come inside, Teresa, and we’ll help you settle in.”

  The other Sharetakers focused on the newcomer who had caught their leader’s attention. Then they all came forward, welcoming her, introducing themselves.