Hopscotch

by Kevin J. Anderson

  This wasn’t the way he had imagined life as a Phantom would be.

  In the dead of night, Eduard crept out of a dark doorway from the access tunnels where he’d been lurking. In this quiet and cluttered section of the city, the streets were narrow, the shadows deep, tinged only by reflected lights on the popular boulevards.

  With COM monitoring all travel, he couldn’t leave the city. Even so, the sprawling metropolis contained a million hiding places, but now he was hungry. Hungry enough to venture out again.

  Eduard listened, holding his breath. He glanced both ways, took another step into the open, exposed now but ready to dash back into hiding. Nothing . . . only the night and the distant sounds of traffic.

  The Beetles would never drop the case. Daragon would die before he ceased his search. Eduard had been fleeing, hopscotching from one person to another, scamming, running. He had thought it would get easier, but guilt made each swap as distasteful as the first. He had hated Mordecai Ob for using people, and now with each snatched body Eduard was himself doing a similar thing to escape prosecution. But fear kept him on the run.

  Eduard didn’t know where he was anymore, or even what he looked like. Before long he’d traded Olaf’s mediocre physique plus some of his precious unmarked credits to a dumpy-looking woman. No questions asked.

  Because of his dire straits, Eduard had been unable to check her health beforehand. He should have been suspicious when she’d agreed so readily to take Olaf’s uninteresting body, without requiring a medical scan. Only after he’d run off, with no way to trace her again, did Eduard realize that something was terribly wrong. The dumpy woman suffered from a degenerative muscular condition, and Eduard was stuck with it until he could trick someone else into swapping.

  From there, he’d hopscotched into a swarthy, ugly parolee who’d been sentenced to live in a brutish Quasimodo body for a year. The parolee willingly accepted the overweight woman’s body, degenerative condition or not, though he would suffer a stiff fine at the end of his term. Still, he could at least go about his business without being bombarded by scornful expressions and glares and insults, and he’d get his original form back at the end of his sentence anyway.

  After a while Eduard traded the muscular parolee for a rail-thin underground worker, a weakling often tormented by fellow employees in the subsurface tunnels. To the worker, the parolee’s ugliness didn’t matter—only the sheer brawn did. Down in the dirty tunnels, no one could see what he looked like anyway. . . .

  Eduard took one crisis at a time. He did not worry about slippage, the ever-present chance that he might lose himself in a swap. That was the least of his concerns. He was forced to hopscotch for keeps, in a hurry and without a record of the transaction, without any legal contract or medical scans. Therefore, he had to keep swapping into less desirable bodies as his resources ran out. He always got the worse end of the deal—older, uglier, more decrepit.

  He’d done his best to cover his tracks. With all of his precautions, everything he had done—backtracking, hopscotching, hiding—he should have slipped through the Beetles’ net, but they maintained a tight, nearly invisible cordon at all routes out of the city. Thanks to public COM reports, Eduard knew that Daragon remained hot on his trail. Each time he hopscotched, he left a vital clue or loose thread.

  After Olaf had gotten himself rescued from his embarrassing rooftop predicament, he’d reported the body theft to the Bureau of Tracing and Locations. Before long, Olaf had gladly traded back to his original lanky form, offering Teresa’s waifish body to the delighted woman who had suffered from the degenerative disease. Not long afterward, the parolee had sought medical treatment for his new dumpy female body, which had then placed that transfer on record.

  Thus, Daragon followed Eduard step by step.

  Now, Eduard stood in the dark streets, shivering in his rail-thin form. He had few clothes, few resources left. He began to walk toward the boulevard, to see what food he could find or scam.

  The business district beyond the darkened fringe glistened with holographic advertisements. Eduard could be anonymous among the shops and restaurants and mingling groups of people. The boulevard seemed a long way to walk, beyond a greenway and darkened park. He didn’t have many unmarked credits left, but he needed a decent meal. . . .

  As he crept toward the central business district, Eduard looked up to see a shadow eclipsing the faded starlight: a surveillance chopter, completely black except for the white BTL logo on the side.

  A blaze of lights pounded around him. Eduard knew better than to ask questions or concoct explanations. He bolted back into the shadowy alleys where the buildings pressed close together. Debris was piled around the collapsed entrances.

  With warbling alarms, BTL hovercars streaked into position. In the buildings around him, lights winked on, then went dark as people opaqued their windows, barricaded their doors.

  And Eduard ran.

  He raced for the nearest doorway with his head bent low, lungs already burning, heart pounding. This rail-thin body was weak and tired, never meant for such sudden turmoil.

  Over the thunder of booted feet across street stones, loudspeakers bellowed his name. “Eduard Swan, we know you’re down there. Surrender yourself immediately.”

  The voice changed as another person picked up the transmitter. “Eduard—it’s Daragon. I’m here. I won’t let anyone kill you. Stop and give yourself up. This is foolish.”

  Eduard didn’t answer. That would take too much breath. He ducked into the sagging doorway and plunged down a metal staircase into tunnels beneath the old buildings. He had lived here for weeks and knew his way around better than any of the Beetles did—he hoped.

  But his pursuers had computer-guided maps and infrared detectors that could sense the residual heat of his every footstep. Eduard didn’t have the energy to outsmart them. He just had to get away.

  Inside the tunnels, homeless refugees scrambled out of his way, faces he had seen but not spoken to in the shadows. Everyone down here was hiding from something, and though he wished he could have done something to help them all, Eduard had no time or resources to solve anyone else’s problems.

  He heard a door crash open far behind and above him. Armored feet pounded down the stairs. Lights blazed into the murky darkness, making everyone shield their eyes. Two brief bursts of gunfire rang out, but Eduard didn’t slow for a second.

  He found a ladder up to an access hatch. He scrambled up, hand over hand, gripping the cold rungs. His hands and legs shuddered from exhaustion, stretched taut. He climbed into the night, letting the hatch slam behind him. He cursed the noise, which would surely give away his position.

  He bypassed the densest alleys and rundown buildings and found himself on the periphery of a large sprawling park that bordered the business district. He fled, leaving footprints on the damp grass. Firefly lights hung from cables strung from tree to tree, enough illumination to deter criminals but not so much that it ruined the serenity of the park. Insects swirled around the globes.

  Eduard kept to the shadows, but he didn’t know how much farther he could go. He passed a nighttime jogger and a couple cuddling on a bench, but he kept running. They had seen him and would report his position. The Beetles couldn’t be far behind.

  Ahead he saw an old man sitting on a park bench with a sack cradled in his lap. He reached in with a gnarled hand and tossed phosphorescent crumbs like lightning bugs into the air. Dark shapes swooped around—trained bats that gulped the bread crumbs out of the air. The old man dipped into the bag again and tossed another glittering handful. The dive-bombing bats snatched the morsels before they could fall to the ground.

  Eduard skidded to a halt, panting. The old man looked at him with a pleasant smile, unperturbed by his urgency. “Good evening.”

  “Please,” Eduard gasped. “I know this is a crazy request, but would you swap with me? Take this body. Keep it. It’s younger than yours and healthy enough. Good trade.”

  The old man rai
sed a set of thin eyebrows, and Eduard backed off. He had to keep running if this man wouldn’t agree. “I have nothing to offer you. No money. No reason to convince you. It’s just that I’m desperate, and I need to get away. This could confuse them for hours.”

  The old man rolled up the sack, though the phosphorescent bread crumbs continued to shine through the paper bag like a Japanese lantern. “That body of yours might have a few more miles left on it than mine does. You sure you want to do this?”

  Eduard paused, one foot raised, ready to run again. “Yes! Completely sure!” He touched the old man’s temples, looked into his tired eyes and felt the rushing and drowning sensation as their personalities switched. He stood up from the bench, orienting himself to the new physique.

  He could feel arthritis and sore muscles, but that didn’t concern him. This body felt no worse than the other one had, not stressed to its limits by terror and exhaustion. He turned, anxious to get away.

  “Wait,” the old man said, sitting down in Eduard’s rail-thin former body, suddenly trying to catch his breath. “Hand me my bugcrumbs, please.” He took the glowing bag while Eduard tottered off. “Hey, we didn’t synch our ID patches.”

  Eduard froze for a terrified instant of indecision, then heard the Beetles coming. The old man didn’t seem bothered. “Never mind, I’ll be here. Just circle around and come back later.”

  Eduard bolted, ducking low to slip into the hedge shadows. He heard shouts behind him in the park. Spotlights from cruising shapes in the sky skewered anyone moving in the park. Eduard pushed through the thick boughs until he reached an open street and lights and other pedestrians. He tried not to look as if he were running. It would take a while for them to figure it out.

  He heard gunshots and shouts, then Daragon’s booming voice. Eduard hoped the old man would be all right as he vanished into the swirl of the street.

  Rushing forward, his breath short and sharp, Daragon raced to accompany the squad. Though the apprehension specialists had been armed only with stun pellets, he wanted to be there when they captured Eduard. Overhead, surveillance chopters blasted lights down, set off their sirens. They had found him! BTL shock troops swarmed into the park, converging near a pond.

  Hearing shouts, Daragon ran faster. “Eduard!” he called, without a loudspeaker this time. “Don’t let this go on—give up now!”

  Anxious, the Beetles charged toward the park bench where a rail-thin man sat alone, looking surprised and confused. He tossed a handful of sparkling crumbs into the air.

  “Look out!” one of the officers shouted, and opened fire.

  A cloud of stun pellets rained all around the man. The ensuing spatter of shots threw him backward over the bench. A spray of phosphorescent morsels flew into the air. The weapons fire continued, as if each BTL pursuer wanted to put a dozen darts into the fugitive.

  Daragon shouted in dismay. He dropped to his knees beside the body they had pegged as Eduard. The man had become a pincushion, peppered with a hundred times the lethal number of stun pellets.

  “Look at the ID patch,” one trooper said, grabbing the victim’s spasming hand. “It’s Eduard, all right.”

  Daragon stared at the contorted face, his wide eyes, his quivering lips. He looked and looked, but saw the wrong persona.

  “This isn’t him. You shot the wrong man, idiots! This isn’t Eduard!” He cradled the dying bystander, who surrendered a few last gasps, but managed no words.

  Daragon continued to gaze deep into the old man’s soul as it faded into darkness. Then he looked up and stared at the night shadows and the silent, sprawling park all around them, but Eduard was already gone.

  Sickened and terrified, Eduard realized what had happened behind him. He hadn’t intended for the old man to come to any harm, hadn’t believed the Beetles would be so bloodthirsty. They should have talked with the old man, perhaps detained him briefly, and then learned their mistake. They weren’t supposed to use deadly force! Hadn’t they been charged with apprehending him, not just slaughtering anyone who stood in their way?

  Daragon had promised him safety—even as they opened fire. So much for any lingering hopes of trusting his former friend. All bets were off.

  Eduard slunk away into the night. Now, he didn’t even have his ID patch anymore, but he could use the old man’s COM access to get more money, until Daragon picked up the trail again. It wouldn’t take him long.

  The next day Eduard traded down again into another body and escaped. One more time.

  50

  After seeing Juanita Cole’s debut exhibition, Garth felt another extremely talented artist breathing down his neck. It reminded him that he wouldn’t be on top forever, jolted him with a sudden drive. He didn’t want to lose a valuable moment. “Pashnak! It’s time to reclaim some lost glory. Enough sitting around.”

  The assistant loved to see the renewed enthusiasm after Garth’s recent malaise. The artist had rushed through LOSS, put it into the exhibition hall that had contracted for his next work, then plunged into a new project. Garth bustled out of the studio, his hands scrubbed and wet.

  “Set up a meeting with Stradley—he needs to start earning his commissions again.” Though still a commercial success, LOSS had drawn smaller crowds than the previous three works, and it had turned the artist’s attention to composing a biting commentary on another side of human nature, APATHY. “He’s been resting on our laurels for too damned long.”

  Pashnak contacted the hype-meister’s offices, requesting a conference. When his image sprang into focus, Stradley spoke without even taking a breath. “Is Garth finished with it yet? Please tell me that’s what you’re calling about. We’ve got people already waiting.”

  “He’s working like a maniac, Mr. Stradley. He asked me to set up an appointment with you. He wants to discuss some of the promotional efforts.”

  Stradley frowned. “I hate it when creative types worry about business matters.” He glanced off to the side of the screen, already distracted by another emergency, another opportunity. “All right, send him around this afternoon. Three o’clock.”

  “He’ll appreciate this, Mr. Stradley.”

  “Well, I’d appreciate it more if he spent his time working on his exhibition instead of talking with me. I’m the one who’s supposed to be doing the talking.”

  Ideas bubbled in Garth’s head as he waited in the lobby while the hype-meister finished last-minute arrangements for another client. The receptionist gave him a fizzy orange drink without being asked.

  Stradley finally gestured for him to enter. Garth plopped into the self-form chair in front of the desk. Message lights blinked; handwritten notes lay draped on image cubes or tacked to the wall next to gaudy tropical images. Three COM filmscreens blazed at the same time, chewing through different subject-searches.

  Garth rubbed his hands together. “After LOSS, I think we need to figure out a different strategy to make more waves when the new work comes out—”

  “Garth, I should warn you I’ve got a busy afternoon.” Stradley looked pointedly at the chaos of ongoing plans scattered about his office. “You should remember too that Mr. Ob is no longer footing the bill for my services, nor is he able to apply BTL pressure on me.”

  “Excuse me?” He stiffened. “I know Mr. Ob’s patronage might have helped me get attention at first, but my exhibitions have been successful enough to line a lot of pockets. After all the commissions I’ve given you, I’d think you could spare a few minutes to talk about my career, my comeback.”

  “Comeback? I didn’t know you ever left the limelight. Sure, the LOSS numbers dipped a bit, but so what? You’re on solid enough ground.”

  “But I want to keep building, not take a step backward. We’re going to have to continue pushing the envelope.”

  The hype-meister sighed, as if perfectly familiar with the way this conversation was going to go. “Look, Garth, you’re not the only client I have, and you’re not the only client who makes me money. Right now, I just land
ed a hot follow-up contract for Juanita Cole that’s going to require most of my resources. I don’t have a whole lot of extra energy at this time.”

  Garth reeled as if a bomb had just dropped on him. Folding his hands across his desk, shoving notes aside, Stradley explained in an oh-so-sincere voice, “I know what you’re thinking, what you’re feeling. I’ve seen a lot of careers.”

  “Including mine.”

  “Including yours. Every client is a challenge, every prospect a conquest to be made. But once the conquest is over, I’ve got to move on to take the next hill, develop a new property, make a new star.”

  Garth frowned at him. “So, since my works are already sought after, you’re no longer interested in hyping me?”

  Stradley forcibly kept his hands folded in front of him so he wouldn’t fidget or sort through unwanted messages. “It’s already done, the battle won. I don’t want to sit around and milk past accomplishments. What’s the challenge? That isn’t what I do.”

  The receptionist popped her head through the doorway, signaling Stradley, but he waved her off. Garth wondered if the interruption had been staged. Give me ten minutes, then tell me I’ve got an important call. . . . “What more do you want, Garth? You’re already on top of the world.”

  “But I’m not done.” He thumped the heel of his palm on the free-form chair to keep it from making him too comfortable. “We’ve already got the public’s attention, and we have to punch them in the gut harder than ever before!”

  “And how are you going to make yourself interesting? Forgive the joke, my friend, but do you really expect the consumer base to be interested in a work called APATHY?” Stradley looked at him as if he were incredibly dense. “You’re famous, Garth—get that through your head! Your work will never be ignored. Critics and viewers will come without being dragged. Publicity runs on autopilot for you. Juanita Cole is the one who needs my help right now. She’s the skyrocket.”