Hopscotch

by Kevin J. Anderson

  “Depends on how many clients I get.”

  “Aren’t you worried about slippage? Too much swapping with too many different people, and you could end up . . . gone.”

  Eduard shrugged, a marionette movement of his bony shoulders. “I’ve heard talk about it, but never anything but secondhand rumors. There’s no proof, no medical evidence.”

  “So it can’t affect you?”

  “Not if I don’t let it.”

  “You’re whistling past the graveyard.” Daragon leaned forward conspiratorially. “Listen, I’ve got something much better for you.”

  Eduard crossed liver-spotted arms over a sunken chest, annoyed at his friend’s scolding. “You mean, turn me into some kind of experimental subject for the Beetles?”

  Daragon stiffened. “Why do you assume only bad things about the Bureau? If you only knew how much time I spend looking out for you and Garth, and even Teresa, whenever she leaves the Sharetakers’ enclave. We watch out for abuses of power and spotlight the dangers inherent in unregulated hopscotching.” Even to him, it sounded like rehearsed propaganda. “People are too tempted to sell their bodies, their lives.”

  “Like me, you mean?”

  Eduard gave him a teasing smile, but Daragon responded with a hard look. “You were glad enough for my help with Madame Ruxton’s lawyers.”

  Eduard pursed his wrinkled lips, softening his voice. “Granted. I appreciate that. Sorry if I insulted you.” His sagging old face gave a very youthful-looking smile and he tried to salvage the mood. “Hey, this isn’t a conversation that friends have. I haven’t seen you in months.”

  Daragon nodded apologetically. “Please let me make you an offer. It’s an opportunity I think you’ll like.”

  While Daragon outlined his plan with a rising voice and enthusiasm, Eduard watched his friend skeptically. The waiter came with their drinks, and Eduard picked up his tea with shaking hands and took a quick gulp. “The whole thing sounds . . . interesting, but I’ve got some reservations. Remember how your precious Bureau tried to take over the Falling Leaves? They aren’t always shining knights on white horses.”

  Taking this as a veiled criticism, Daragon shifted uncomfortably, very conscious of his own uniform. “Eduard, wouldn’t it be a better job than being sick in someone else’s body? Undergoing surgery for a coward?”

  Eduard sipped his herb tea, trying not to show how much this crumbling body pained him. “All right, I’ll go and meet this Mordecai Ob. If he’s done so much for you, and for Garth, he must be a good man. I’ll hear what he has to say.” He pressed a hand to the small of his back as he stood up. “Doing this crap is getting to be a pain.”

  They took a hydro-skimmer out to the BTL Headquarters. Back in his home-body again, Eduard looked around in the sunlight on the refurbished oil-drilling platform. The salt wind ruffled his hair. “Nice place. Not much of a tourist attraction, is it?”

  “The Bureau rarely allows outside visitors. I had to get special permission for you.” Eduard pretended to be impressed, but Daragon wasn’t fooled. He just hoped his cocky friend would make a good impression on Mordecai Ob.

  Down in the richly decorated office, the Bureau Chief had cleared his desk, turned on the fireplace, and set out an extra seat for Eduard’s benefit. Daragon spotted the subtle differences, pleased that his mentor was trying to make a good show.

  Ob extended a large hand and took Eduard’s in his grip. “Very pleased to meet you, Eduard.” He gestured for the guest to sit in the new chair. “Daragon tells me I should hire you as my new personal caretaker, and so far, I have found his advice to be invaluable.”

  Daragon’s heart warmed.

  Eduard made himself comfortable in the formal chair. He crossed one leg over his knee, brushed the smooth armrest. “So tell me what this position entails, Mr. Ob. It sounds interesting from the way my friend describes it.”

  Ob put his elbows on his desk. “I insist on remaining in shape, but I don’t have the time or the inclination to put in the necessary effort. Your sole job will be to exercise my body. That’s all. Several times a week, we will swap bodies for a few hours and you will go jogging and swimming. You’ll do calisthenics, you’ll eat healthy food while you’re in my body. Meanwhile, I’ll do my business in your body and take care of my obligations without wasting time for a workout.”

  “I can waste time for you,” Eduard said with what he hoped was a winning smile. “Anything else?”

  “I may need your body in other, rare circumstances. Sometimes, because I am so recognizable as the Bureau Chief, I prefer to go out in public looking a little more anonymous.”

  “Anonymous, that’s me. No problem.” Eduard folded his arms over his chest, playing the tough negotiator now. “And the pay will be . . . ?”

  “Substantial. I’ll also arrange for guest quarters so you can live on my estate, in case I need you at an odd hour.”

  “That’s a tall order,” Eduard said, covering his excitement. He couldn’t believe the opportunity. It sounded too good to be true.

  Impatient, Daragon reproved his friend. “Eduard, you couldn’t get a better job than this.”

  Eduard took a deep breath, clearly pleased with how his own body felt. He gazed across the polished desk, noting Mordecai Ob’s muscular physique. “Yeah, I wouldn’t mind doing my job in someone else’s healthy body for a change, instead of just gritting my teeth until it’s time to swap back.”

  “Absolutely,” Daragon said, very pleased to be the mediator. “This is a great deal for all concerned.”

  Eduard and Mordecai Ob shook hands, making the arrangement official.

  20

  Delighted with what he had done for Eduard, Daragon headed for the BTL computer center. His heels rang on the metal walkways and his heart beat rapidly, but he straightened his back in an effort to dampen his excitement. He couldn’t invest too much hope.

  Also pleased with his new personal caretaker, Chief Ob had given Daragon an opportunity that was meant to be a reward. An opportunity he couldn’t pass up . . .

  “Inspector Swan, today I am offering you an assignment,” the Chief had said. “Let’s call it a graduation present for several months of excellent success.”

  Daragon suppressed a warm grin. “What kind of assignment, sir?”

  “Now it’s time to put your knowledge to work, in a practical manner.” Ob locked his hands behind the small of his back. “Why don’t you tell me what kind of assignment—what would you like to do?”

  Daragon’s brow furrowed. After waiting a beat, Ob leaned back against his desk, relishing the moment. “Come now, is there anything you’d like to know? Any mystery you’d like solved? A particular obsession you’ve had? I’m giving you the full resources of the Bureau to take on a pet project. Think about it.”

  The artificial fireplace hissed and crackled with sound effects. Daragon stared at his mentor, mulling over the question, but the answer was immediately clear to him. “I would like to locate my mother or father, sir. They gave me to the Splinter monks when I was an infant, and I’ve never known who they were.”

  Ob let out a quiet laugh. Ostensibly, this project would hone Daragon’s BTL skills, but the Bureau Chief did it because he liked his student. He could see the passion in the young man’s heart. He waved Daragon toward the door. “Go ahead, then—indulge yourself.”

  Without taking much time to formulate a plan, Daragon made his way into the isolated rooms where he could pore over scraps of data. But with a question this large and with a trail this old, he knew he couldn’t do it alone.

  Now, Daragon stood inside the humid chamber, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dim light the grotesquely stunted Data Hunters preferred. He heard the recirculators, the air-conditioning fans, the bubbles of life-support fluid. “Jax? Jax, are you there?” He looked up at the pale-skinned, wormlike creatures that had once been human but now lived their lives through COM.

  One of the blind embryos stirred in its harness. Cables trail
ed from his eye sockets, connecting the creature’s optic nerves directly to the computer/organic matrix. “Ahh, Inspector Daragon Swan! And I’m glad to see that it is Inspector now, Grade II even. A promotion due, no doubt, to my brilliant assistance?”

  “In part.”

  “A large part, I suspect.” The stunted body swayed in the air, its rubbery limbs useless, but the voice that came from the speaker was animated, jovial, and good-humored. “Oh well, whatever it takes to get you to come in and chat.”

  “How good are you at finding missing parents?” Daragon asked.

  The Data Hunter groaned. “Oh, not that tedious question again! Let me guess—Chief Ob gave you your first independent assignment?”

  Daragon flushed. “I take it you’ve done this kind of search before?”

  “And succeeded admirably, I might add. But I’ll admit, Inspectors usually do a more thorough job of buttering me up beforehand.”

  “So I take it, then, that success is practically assured?”

  “Not at all,” Jax replied indignantly. “You don’t understand the complexity of your question. Let’s just start with your mother—who is it, exactly, that you want me to find? Do you want to locate the biological body that gave birth to you? The womb inside which you gestated, that is—no matter who’s living inside the head these days?”

  “No, the body won’t tell me anything. I want to meet the person who made the decision to give me up. I want to talk to the woman—”

  “Or man,” Jax interjected, “if they swapped sexes. Never can tell.”

  Daragon sighed. “I just want to have a conversation with the person who decided he or she didn’t want to be my parent, whoever chose to let me grow up in the monastery.”

  “That’s clear enough, I suppose.” The Data Hunter’s body drifted in its harness, turning toward him, though Jax could be watching from any number of optical sensors in the room. “My friend . . . are you certain you want to know?”

  Daragon, the individual, was the result of however many body swaps that had gone on during the pregnancy. He wanted to know the male body, the female body, and whatever two minds had been inside them at the time of conception. No matter what factors had contributed, everything had made him into the person he was today: BTL Inspector, Grade II. Someone a parent might even be proud of.

  “Yes, I’m sure I want to know.”

  “Ahh, very well.” Jax swiveled his eye cables toward the COM nexus in the dim chambers. “Now you must tell me one thing, Inspector Daragon—what’s the big deal? Why do you care so much?”

  “It’s personal,” he answered, his voice quiet and a bit hoarse. All the questions tumbled together in his mind. What secrets did they hide? Did Daragon have brothers and sisters? Were his parents poor? Did they know why he was an anomaly, unable to swap bodies like everyone else? Who were they? Were they different, like him?

  “You realize that this is a discretionary task. You’re asking me to bust my figurative derriere to track down this information—don’t you owe me an explanation?”

  Daragon sighed. “I’ll try.” He worried that the hardest part would be conveying it to someone else, especially to a half-human creature who had no direct experience with the real world. “Back at the monastery, I had some very close friends. One was named Garth—”

  “Of course,” Jax said. “And Teresa and Eduard, even someone named Pashnak. All Swans from the Falling Leaves. I keep tabs on anyone I find remotely interesting, and you seemed fond of those three. It gets dull in here, you know. But what does Garth have to do with finding your mother or father?”

  “Garth always used to read Charles Dickens books aloud to me and Pashnak. Dickens was an old classic author—”

  “I know who he was, Daragon.” Jax’s voice sounded impatient.

  “Of course you would. The tales were about strange people from other times with problems and concerns so different from ours, but still oddly the same. When Garth read aloud, it was a magical experience, like hearing an old storyteller around a campfire. Very primal, what fiction is all about—not fancy language or convoluted metaphors . . . just solid, interesting stories.”

  “And . . . ?”

  Daragon’s brows knitted. “Why the rush? I thought you enjoyed conversation?”

  “Only when it has a point.”

  “Let me tell it in my own way. This is difficult enough.” He pursed his lips, considering. “One of the Dickens novels I enjoyed the most was Oliver Twist. It brought up the question of whether a simple boy, without parents or any bright spot in the world, might be an unrecognized prince. Oliver didn’t know his birthright, thought he was just a poor, unremarkable orphan—and after a series of adventures, he discovered that he was much more than he seemed.”

  Daragon shuffled his feet in embarrassment as a staticky chuckle reverberated through the speakers. “So you think you might be the heir to some great fortune!”

  “I knew you wouldn’t understand.” Now that he heard someone else say it, the thought seemed ridiculous. “I just want to know.”

  “Good enough,” Jax said brightly. “I can always tell honesty when I hear it. Therefore, I agree to search relentlessly for your parents. But on one condition.”

  Daragon groaned. “Not again.”

  “You know we all have our price. Nothing’s free.”

  “What is it this time?”

  “I want you to come in here and read Oliver Twist out loud to me. Just like you said Garth used to do for you and Pashnak.”

  “But you can download the whole text anytime you want to. Isn’t that more efficient?”

  “Downloading isn’t the same . . . experience.”

  “You’re probably right,” Daragon said, and agreed to the terms.

  Days later, Daragon set out, armed with information and a series of thin active-screen images he had acquired from COM surveillance cameras.

  Despite his best efforts, Jax had found no leads to Daragon’s father, but he did identify his mother. Daragon’s mother. For the first time in his life, he knew what she looked like—at least what she looked like today. She lived in a much younger body now and spent a great deal of time in, of all places, Club Masquerade. Jax had told Daragon he would be able to find her there now. He could meet her face-to-face, if he could maintain his nerve.

  As he stood in front of the Club’s myriad arched entrances, Daragon took a moment to check his appearance. He had intentionally worn nondescript clothes—a BTL Inspector’s uniform would never do, not for this. Before heading out to the streets he had spent long minutes looking at himself in a mirror. With such great expectations, he wanted to make a good impression.

  He chose an entrance door and ducked under an arch that led him through a room like an Arabian palace and onto the main floor of Club Masquerade. He scanned his handful of surveillance images again, though he had practically memorized every line in her face. His mother’s face, though she couldn’t possibly bear any physical similarity to him anymore. Maybe with Daragon’s special vision he would see something familiar in her soul, a family resemblance.

  The Club was a sea of people, lights, and music. He couldn’t imagine how he’d ever identify a single person amid such chaos, so many minds and gyrating bodies, swapping at will. But he spotted her almost instantly, as if a telepathic link already existed between them.

  She sat alone, waiting, available. Under the changing bath of lights, his mother looked healthy and sexy, flushed with a sheen of glitter and spray-on pheromones. She nibbled on a stim-stick, legs crossed on a floating stool.

  Daragon stood frozen, watching her for a few moments. He could see her aura, her identity, recognizing a flicker in her persona that bore some connection to his own. He could see details in her self that were obviously related to him.

  This was her, no doubt about it.

  With a bored and somewhat impatient expression, she stared at the Hopscotch Board, scanned the people on the floor, looking for no one in particular—but definitely
looking for someone. Her eyes had a predatory gleam, as if she saw targets painted on every body in the room. She leaned back, tossing ragged ginger hair over her shoulder.

  Daragon marched up to her before his resolve could fail. He drew on all the confidence and firm body language he’d been taught in the BTL. He knew how to confront violent fugitives, but this was far more intimidating to him.

  As he fell speechless with anticipation, his mother’s eyes locked with his. Her mouth tightened, then smiled as she appraised him. “You look like you know what you want.” She flashed a hungry smile at him, then sat straighter, close to where he stood nonplussed. “Not a hint of hesitation.” She wrapped her arms around his neck, trying to draw him down for a kiss.

  “I—I just wanted to find you.” Daragon paused a beat, took a deep breath. “You, you’re my mother.”

  Her amused expression melted into a frown. “What did you say?”

  “I’m your son, but I’ve never met you. You gave me up as an infant to the Splinter monks. I was raised at the Falling Leaves—” His words came in a rush.

  Understanding came to her face, but no particular pleasure or even interest. “That baby? Ah, that was a long time ago.”

  “I’ve always wondered about you. I wanted to know who you were, what you were doing. My own mother. I tracked you down.”

  She was unimpressed. “That was a child that came out of a different body. I wasn’t even there at the time. Some people pay good money to experience childbirth firsthand.” She ran her fingers over his wrist, still trying to grasp his hand. Suddenly, maliciously, she seemed to become more determined than ever. “It shouldn’t matter to the two of us right now.”

  She slid off the floating stool, more aggressive. She kissed him, quickly and passionately, on the mouth. Daragon pulled away. “Stop! I just wanted to talk to you.” He backed toward the dance floor, and she followed.

  “Why? Now you’ve got me intrigued. If you want us to get to know each other, I can think of a lot of better ways. What was your name again?” She drew him close, rubbing her hips against him. “Don’t you think this body is sexy? It’s new, and I paid good money for it.”