Hopscotch

by Kevin J. Anderson

  Garth and Teresa shifted their chairs closer, like covered wagons circling. Their new positions would keep anyone from spotting Eduard from the door.

  “What happened, Eduard?” Garth said.

  “You know you can tell us anything.” Teresa’s voice overlapped Garth’s.

  Eduard looked at his hands, which clenched into gnarled fists. His hands trembled with inner quakings. “I was too damned impulsive.” Then he frowned more deeply. “The bastard deserved it, but I never meant for this to happen.”

  “Who?” Garth persisted.

  “Ob—I . . . I think I killed him.” As they sat stunned, he explained what the Bureau Chief had been doing to him, addicting him to Rush-X, destroying his body as he had done to his previous three body-caretakers.

  Garth looked as if he couldn’t believe it, nor could he disbelieve anything Eduard said. He gasped as another labor spasm hit him, but he was just as astonished to think of what Mordecai Ob had been doing to his friend, even while he was acting as a patron for Garth’s struggling artistic career.

  Teresa kept her voice low, remembering that she had talked with Eduard about this at the FRUSTRATION debut. “Why didn’t you come to us sooner? Either one of us would have helped you out—”

  “I knew you two would be here. Maybe I’ll be safe for a few minutes, maybe not. It could be my last chance to see you both. From now on, the Beetles will be watching everyone, especially you two, and I don’t want to put you in danger.”

  “Turn yourself in,” Garth said, surprised to find tears pouring down his cheeks. “You can’t just run.”

  Eduard’s haggard face turned hard. “Don’t be ridiculous! I killed the head of the BTL, and then I ran. I couldn’t look more guilty if I tried. Ob wasn’t stupid, and look how he made everybody love him—you included, Garth. He wouldn’t have left any clues, and his previous caretakers have all disappeared. Since he was going to get rid of me, he probably even left evidence to set me up.”

  “But what about Daragon?” Teresa suggested. “Why can’t you just explain what really happened? Talk to him—”

  Eduard hung his head. “After . . . it happened, before I knew what to do, Daragon saw me. He’s probably called in BTL reinforcements by now.” He looked around, haunted. “By now, he believes I betrayed him in the worst possible way. He’ll never let me tarnish the image of his great mentor. None of the fanatical Beetles would. I’ll be ‘accidentally’ killed during my arrest.”

  Teresa said in a firm voice, “Then we’ve got to do something for you—right now.”

  With swollen fingers, Garth grabbed his hand. “If you’ve got the BTL after you, and you can’t use COM, what are you going to do? How are you going to get out of this?”

  “Good question,” Eduard said. “Any ideas?”

  Garth dug into the purse slung over his shoulder and hauled out his account card. He transferred a large balance onto a blank voucher. “Unmarked credits, same as cash, so don’t lose them. You can spend them without leaving a trail. Use them to go far, and be safe. Get away from the city.”

  Eduard’s eyes widened at the amount. “Is this some of Ob’s money?”

  “He cut off my stipend as soon as my first exhibition was successful. And another gallery paid me in advance for the rights to showcase my next work . . . if I ever get it finished, that is.”

  “I can’t repay you.” Eduard’s red-rimmed eyes glistened, and he squeezed Garth’s shoulder with a shaky hand. “I can’t even thank you enough. Not for something like this.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, I can spare it.” Garth’s throat thickened with emotion, and the hormone storm in his pregnant body intensified the response. “You helped me out when I needed it. When I was struggling to be an artist, I survived because of your generosity whenever you got a big payoff. Now it’s my turn. And don’t you dare argue.”

  Teresa fixed her large eyes on Eduard, and he saw something in her expression. “I don’t have any money for you, Eduard, but let me do something else. I’m offering you my body . . . literally. Swap with me, and run. Get away, use me as a disguise. It’ll throw them for a little while.”

  Eduard flinched. “Teresa, you can’t! The Beetles have my ID, my fingerprints, my blood type, my COM accounts.”

  She jabbed a finger toward his chest. “They’re looking for this home-body. For you. You saved me from Rhys and before that you rescued me from that fugitive in the flower market. Don’t argue now.” Arthur had not let her repay him before he died, and she needed to do this for Eduard.

  “Teresa, you don’t want this mess.” Eduard held up a shaking hand. “My body might already be irreparably damaged, thanks to what Ob did to me. Even best-case, you’ll probably go through a horrendous withdrawal.”

  But she would not be swayed. “Oh, this isn’t even my original body, Eduard. This body or that—it doesn’t matter to me, if it’s not the right one. But it may mean the difference between life and death for you. I’ll take care of yours, make it healthy again, if I can.” She grasped his hand with an iron grip. “Hopscotch now, Eduard. I insist.” He tried to back away, but she forced herself upon him. “You don’t have any other options. And you know you’d do it for me if our roles were reversed.”

  They touched. Swapped.

  After synching their ID patches, Teresa stared at herself across the table. She felt his strung-out body, the aches, the drug-induced damage to his nerves and reflexes. She reached for her tart drink, hoping it would burn the awful drug aftertaste from her mouth.

  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 limits 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.”