Hopscotch

by Kevin J. Anderson

  Eduard staggered over to the window and shifted the polarized curtain film. Below, Tanu worked shirtless in a petunia bed. The gardener bent over, sweat trickling like oil down his bronzed back. He dug up old flowers, making room for the new flats of hyper-phlox stacked on the lawn near the walkway.

  Sensing Eduard’s scrutiny, Tanu looked up, blinking in the afternoon sunshine. Eduard stared through the window, seeing his ghost reflection and noting the surprise on the gardener’s face, as well. His own eyes were sunken and shadowed with pain, his cheeks gaunt. He tried to find a glimmer of humor. “Hey, I didn’t know working with flowers could be so loud.”

  Tanu looked at him, then hung his head. He set down the trowel and gathered an armful of uprooted petunias, looking like a large child embracing a Christmas tree.

  Eduard leaned out the window, but the smell of the fresh air and dirt made him queasy. As if fleeing, the Samoan gardener trudged away toward a mulch-processing enclosure.

  “Hey, Tanu!” The desperate sound in Eduard’s voice must have struck a chord, because the gardener slowly turned. “What happened to Ob’s other physical trainers? Why did they quit this job?”

  The Samoan shook his head. The rustling petunias quivered in his arms.

  “At least tell me who the last one was. What was his name?”

  “Sandor, his name was Sandor Perun. But he never took the time to talk to me like you do.” Intent on his gardening, Tanu refused to give further details.

  At least now Eduard had a name to track down, a place to start. Maybe he could talk to this Sandor Perun. He took several potent painkillers left over from Teresa’s recovery, stood under a gushing hot shower, and finally felt refreshed enough to tackle his questions at a COM terminal while the Chief was away at BTL Headquarters.

  On the interactive filmscreen he searched through a jungle of data, trying to track down Mordecai Ob’s previous body-caretakers. Any information about BTL business was naturally restricted, but the workings of a private estate should be subject to the same COM-accessibility requirements as any other piece of public information.

  Sandor Perun. Eduard found a subset of data behind several pseudonyms and translucent filenames, but he could find no record of Perun’s current status, where he lived. Next, backtracking through the man’s name, he bumped into the relevant fields of employment at Ob’s estate, searching for hiring histories.

  He uncovered previous employment listings—his own file, first, and then Sandor Perun, a thin man with a bushy dark mustache. But there had also been two others: Janine Kuritz, and before her, Benjamin Padwa.

  At that point, their files grew thin. Eduard’s brow furrowed with suspicion and concern. When he tried to uncover details about the former employees, he found no further record. No information at all. COM had no listings of what they had done after leaving service here.

  Trying numerous tactics, Eduard hacked away, approaching the names from the rear, using any peripheral connection . . . with little success. Even their medical records had been entirely cleansed.

  He supposed a person could live on the fringes of society, avoid using the computer/organic matrix—just like the immortal Phantoms he had once wanted to emulate—though that seemed highly unlikely. Where were they?

  Didn’t it make more sense that the head of the Bureau of Tracing and Locations could also make people disappear?

  He didn’t know how long it would be until Ob returned home. Uneasy, his fingers stabbing at the keys like knives, Eduard erased his search.

  Suddenly everything about this too-good-to-be-true job, everything about this estate, seemed like a trap. He dared not trust anyone but himself until he found some answers. Not even Daragon.

  35

  Months passed in a heady waterfall of artistic experiences. Garth journeyed through the spectrum of human life, from power to weakness, glamour to pain. He checked off each item on the List, like an explorer planting a flag.

  Garth became a weight lifter, then a gymnast. He spent a day being blind, and then deaf. He lived half-paralyzed by a stroke, his mind trapped within the prison of an uncooperative body. He experienced perceptions through the brain of a schizophrenic as if it were a cracked mirror. He jogged for three miles in the body of a runner and never tired.

  Faithful Pashnak stood on the sidelines, making the opportunities possible, drawing secondhand joy from seeing the artist’s accomplishments. He sent regular reports and summaries to Mordecai Ob, who continued to marvel at Garth’s ambition.

  It was a collection of snapshots, not a deep understanding. The brevity of his visits prevented Garth from experiencing the full differences, but he didn’t have time to spend months or years on each one. The List was too long, too daunting.

  Perhaps the most important thing he learned was that these people did not consider their lives to be defined entirely by physical shortcomings, or even by extraordinary skills or abilities. Though he chose each body to match a particular criterion on his List, Garth found that the candidates considered any disability or enhancement only one aspect of their individuality. As a transient visitor, though, he found it hard to concentrate on anything else.

  Throughout the journey, Garth gathered ingredients, storing details to use in his art and enriching himself as a person. Yet he had barely begun to make headway. The tapestry of humanity held so many different threads. The more experiences he completed, the more he thought of. The List grew longer and longer.

  Pashnak bustled about, setting up appointments, seeking out contacts, negotiating terms—and, of course, brewing coffee. He had no aggressive tendencies of his own, but when acting on Garth’s behalf, Pashnak became a veritable bulldog. He knew in his heart that Garth would be a great artist.

  Garth spent hours locked in his new studio to make that dream come true. He dabbled with form and raw materials as well as artistic substance. He would not be satisfied until he developed something wholly new. He had no desire to imitate classical works. Instead, he assessed the tools available to him, then started from his own heart.

  When Garth finally emerged from the studio after dark, Pashnak had a light meal ready for him. The artist’s clothes smelled of paints and solvents, his fingers ached from twisting raw materials, hooking up electrical connections, focusing holo-lasers. Pashnak asked, “So, have you finally created your masterpiece? Is this it?”

  Ravenous, Garth dug through the bubbly cheese shell of his baked onion soup, slurping and talking at the same time, barely tasting his food. “You know the original meaning of the word masterpiece? Traditionally, a journeyman had to complete a single outstanding work to earn the title of master craftsman. That work was his ‘master piece.’ But a real master went on to produce many more remarkable works. His ‘masterpiece’ was just the first one.”

  Pashnak hadn’t touched his food. “You’ll be a master, no doubt about it.”

  Garth’s eyes twinkled. “What I’ve got in there is an extension of something I’ve done before, but truly groundbreaking. I finally figured out how to do it right. After I’m done, I just might step up from being a journeyman to a master.” He looked down at his spoon, finally tasting his dinner. “Good soup.”

  In the grip of his ambitious project, Garth worked obsessively to drag out the memories and sensations he had compiled during months of hopscotching.

  Though the artist had never prevented him from looking at a work in progress, Pashnak displayed a superstitious fear of going inside the studio. “It’s enough of an honor just to know I’ll be the first to see it . . . when you’re ready.”

  He hovered outside the studio with fresh coffee, wishing Garth would get some sleep. When the artist finally emerged, surprised to find his diligent assistant waiting there, Pashnak pleaded with him. “Don’t burn out on this first big project. You need a break. Why don’t you take time off, just a little? Get some rest, a long night of sleep—”

  Garth downed half a cup of coffee in a big gulp and shook his head, looking longingly throug
h the doorway. “Not now. I can’t risk losing my inspiration—it won’t let go of me.” He sighed, grinning like an idiot. “If only you could sleep for me, then I wouldn’t have to interrupt my work.” His voice trailed off.

  Pashnak blinked in surprise. “Why not? If that’s what you need me to do.”

  So the assistant hopscotched into Garth’s exhausted body. Pashnak practically collapsed onto a sofa as the weariness overwhelmed him.

  Then, alone in the quiet studio, Garth worked far into the night. . . .

  He swapped back as soon as his home-body was sufficiently rested. Pashnak then dropped off to sleep once more in his own body, which was itself exhausted. “I can work nonstop like this for days,” Garth said, elated.

  Pashnak’s gaunt body did not have the innate artistic ability Garth was accustomed to, but he still had the vision and drive. He could do prep work, broad-strokes development, and save the fine detail for his skilled hands.

  “Plenty of people would love to get paid just to sleep,” Garth said to him jokingly, then added in a more serious tone, “You’re a good assistant, Pashnak. I couldn’t do it without you.”

  Beaming, Pashnak shuffled back to bed after they had swapped yet again. “Just don’t forget that your mind needs sleep just as much as your body does.”

  “Not now.”

  Inside the studio, using every artistic resource from high-tech holograms and reflected chromatographs to stubby lumps of charcoal, Garth brought forth the art of experience, using emotions as his canvas.

  When people went to see an exhibition they generally applied only one, perhaps two, of their senses. They listened to a symphony with their ears, or scrutinized a painting with their eyes. But Garth attempted to paint with multiple stimuli that evoked emotions, using the full palette of the senses to forge a tactile and experiential weapon that would strike the heart of any viewer.

  And he was almost finished.

  Garth built upon what he had attempted during his first art show, when he’d tried to create the full sensory impression of being at the artists’ bazaar. Now he had to be even more ambitious.

  His new work was incredibly vast in scope. He explored a single human emotion in all its facets, conveying it through every mode: music, colors, holo-images, paintings, smells, neural stimulation, even videoclips and sound recordings. He used mud and stones and bricks; he used magnetic fields and pheromones, static inducers and ultralow frequency thrummers. He wove a complete fabric that showed how different people with different backgrounds and problems experienced the same emotion.

  He called the piece FRUSTRATION.

  Working for days without a mental break, Garth portrayed the obese man attempting to move in a lumbering form, seeing every physical obstacle as a challenge. Gravity conspired to fill every day with difficulties. He showed the old woman with a body frail and in pain, knowing that her life was near its end, wishing she had done more. He included the blind man and his desperate dreams to see, the stroke-paralyzed woman shouting inside her mind to express simple thoughts, the deaf man trapped in a world of smothering silence, the retarded man frustrated by trying to understand so much of the world around him, the ups and downs of the schizophrenic. . . .

  Garth added snippets of his own inability to convey the images that screamed inside his head, and the despair it caused him. He composed a scene of his younger self painting over a mural in the monastery basement.

  All together, the experience packed a profound emotional punch. FRUSTRATION. When he finished, his imagination and creativity worn ragged, Garth sat in the middle of the studio and wept.

  Every human was familiar with frustration in its many forms, but this work laid it out, raw and powerful. He found common ground in all walks of life and forced his audience to see the similarities with everyone else. Any person could experience the same emotion through different eyes, and see how they were all the same. All human.

  When he finally showed it to Pashnak, the wide-eyed assistant stepped inside the studio as if approaching a minefield. He could tell the gaunt young man feared he wouldn’t like it and knew he would have to tell Garth the truth.

  But Pashnak remained in awe for half an hour until he finally staggered back out, face tracked with tears. His mouth worked without uttering words, then he hugged Garth. “I can’t thank you enough for that.”

  He composed himself and got down to business. “Now our real work starts. This piece is something that must be seen by as many people as possible. Your message and your art must be witnessed.”

  Garth sighed, excited but weary, as if he had suddenly realized the major effort that lay ahead. Then he brightened. “I think it’s time to call Mr. Ob.”

  The Bureau Chief responded to the request to visit the artist’s studio, polite but cool, and could not find a spot in his schedule for two days. Garth waited in an agony of impatience, riding a pendulum between optimism and dismay. He tinkered with the exhibit, tweaking images, rearranging sounds and impressions, making so many minor adjustments back and forth that the end result was indistinguishable from where it had started.

  When Ob finally arrived, escorted in a BTL hovercar and flanked by two unfamiliar Beetles, he seemed distracted and impatient. At least he came in his own body, not in Eduard’s borrowed one.

  Pashnak met the Chief at the studio door. “We wanted you to see the work objectively, without Garth breathing down your neck. I think it speaks for itself.” Squaring his shoulders, Mordecai Ob went alone into the exhibit while the Beetles remained outside as sentinels, as if nervous Pashnak might pose some sort of threat.

  Garth waited around the corner in a coffee shop so he wouldn’t be around during this audition, but he stayed close by, wondering, worrying. Steeling himself for disappointment, he returned ten minutes later, just as the Bureau Chief emerged. The vulnerable and amazed expression on Ob’s face told him all he needed to know.

  “Garth! You have created something . . . truly . . . moving.” He chose his words slowly, as if none of them were adequate, then his conversation came out in a rush. “Other artistic types have done this sort of thing before. Writers researching a character, a painter getting into the feel of a type of worker. But this is so much more . . . broad-based. Garth, you’re like a sponge soaking up everything, and then squeezing it all back out onto your audience.”

  Ob’s olive-brown eyes twinkled. “I see I have made a good investment. If I had ever been able to create something so powerful, I never would have joined the Bureau!” The two uniformed officers looked at their Chief in alarm, but Ob kept talking in a commanding tone, assuming a businesslike posture. “On the other hand, I would not then have the resources or the connections to make sure FRUSTRATION gets the right kind of debut. Let me take care of the next step.”

  Working behind the scenes, Mordecai Ob instructed Pashnak to contact a professional publicist, a self-proclaimed “hype-meister” named Stradley. “He has already been instructed to take your call.”

  At first, the busy publicist fended off numerous pleas and pitches for his time . . . but finally agreed to come to the studio and take a look. “Now, I don’t normally have much love for the BTL, but Chief Ob was quite insistent,” Stradley told Pashnak, moving through the doorway. He was a mass of frenetic energy and easily channeled excitement. “All right. Let’s see this FRUSTRATION thing.”

  Pashnak grinned provocatively. “You won’t be disappointed.” Pursing his lips, skeptical already, the hype-meister stepped inside the studio.

  Stradley wasn’t disappointed. Not at all.

  He emerged from the room so shaken that Pashnak could see cracks in his façade of cynicism and bluster. “That’s . . . that’s—” Being at a loss for words seemed a very strange sensation to him.

  Garth tried to control his smile. “Does that mean it’s good?”

  Stradley looked at him as if he’d asked a particularly stupid question. He took a breath, then launched into his immediate thoughts on how he could promote Garth�
�s work.

  “All right. This sort of ‘panorama experience’ art is a combination of low tech and cutting edge, wrapped into a sublime whole that affects every part of the audience. Much, much greater than the sum of its parts.” Stradley’s eyes narrowed wolfishly. “Bring Garth down to my offices—today, if possible. We’ve got to get started.”

  Stradley did no part of any job with less than full energy. Later, sitting at his desk in his offices, the hype-meister talked with his hands and eyes as much as with his mouth. After a few moments of brainstorming, the barrier of the desk was unable to contain him. Stradley stood up to pace the room, circling Garth and Pashnak, who sat awed in their free-form chairs.

  “First, we’ll send listings with a thousand different provocative key words all through COM. After my years in the business, I’ve got a rapport with that old computer matrix. I know how to get postings, how to get ads, how to get attention for my clients where other people can’t seem to hack their way into a simple classified ad.” He grinned, showing plenty of teeth. “And I have special coding that’ll allow our message to get past those signal-to-noise filters people use in their personal services.”

  Garth was unable to get in a word edgewise as Stradley rattled possibilities into the open air. Microphones implanted in the walls recorded everything and organized it with note-taking software. “First, we have to set up a major coming-out exhibition in exactly the right place—not too gaudy, not too exclusive. We need a location that’s widely accessible but still important. Mr. Ob has already given me a budget.” Stradley stared out the half-closed door to his office, then scanned his calendar, then glanced at the tropical wall images. “And we have to pick the proper date, of course. Timing is everything.”