Hopscotch

by Kevin J. Anderson

  At one time, each fresh idea had been filled with possibilities and wonder. Garth had mined those overlapping lifetimes for his artwork. It had been a great ride. He’d been an explorer of the human landscape, pushing onward into new territory—and finally he had no place else to go.

  His whole life had been built on having something to say, a point of view to express through artwork. But how could anyone be profound and moving every time, piece after piece after piece?

  What does an artist do after he has already completed his masterpiece?

  The cream swirled in his cup, mixing slowly. Garth usually drank his coffee black, but Pashnak insisted he needed to mellow out. At this point, he was ready to try just about anything.

  The two of them sat in a cozy kitchen nook where sunlight streamed through the lattice windows. After his increasingly successful shows, Garth had recently bought an extravagant home, complete with security systems and privacy screens, and he still had more credits than he could spend.

  Generous by nature, he gave Teresa more than enough money to get by so she could devote herself full time to her search. He even gave her the first drawing of her face from the portrait spectrum, the original features she had worn for most of her life. If he ever heard from Eduard again, he would offer his friend whatever he needed without the slightest hesitation.

  Now Pashnak poured another cup of coffee. He powered on his schedule and called up the notes for the day, scanning appointments and upcoming events. “Don’t forget, I set up a hopscotch opportunity for you this Thursday.”

  Garth looked up with only feigned interest. “What is it?”

  Day after day, the assistant sat with him, pointing to item after item on the ever-diminishing List. At last the few minor things left had seemed frivolous: blue eyes, brown eyes . . . black skin, freckled skin. In some bodies he had enjoyed the taste of broccoli, in others he found it offensive.

  Did he really expect to learn anything new from that? Wasn’t everybody the same, as long as the definition of “humanity” was broad enough? People were people, no matter how profound their external differences.

  “It’s a tough one,” Pashnak said with a smile of anticipation. “You’ll be swapping with a young man who has little muscle control and suffers from seizures. He’s weak, he can’t walk, and his condition is degenerating.” He slid the schedule across the table so Garth could see the image of the sickly young man. “It’ll give you a chance to feel out of control, at the mercy of external forces.”

  Garth shook his head. “Cancel the contract. Helpless and out of control—the idea sounds too much like the way I already feel.”

  The assistant was surprised. “But Garth, it’ll be one more item to check off on your List. There aren’t many left. Look—”

  Garth took the datapad from him, scanned the few topics left on his List, and then deleted them, all at once. “There, I’m done.”

  The assistant stared in horror at the blank, milky-white screen.

  “No more List. All finished.”

  But Garth experienced no sense of accomplishment or rush of victory. He just felt empty.

  55

  The streets were full of people, and Teresa knew that her original body could be anywhere out there—or nowhere at all.

  She had scoured the huge COM databases for a body with her fingerprints, DNA, even scan-matches of her facial features. Nothing. Refusing to give up, Teresa had posted the image of her younger face Garth had drawn. “Have you seen this body?” So far, though, none of the responses had been even close.

  Not even Daragon, with all the resources of the Bureau of Tracing and Locations, had managed to find any useful information, only a few false leads.

  Now, she sat throwing pebbles into the bubbling geometric fountain where she and Arthur used to talk. She had no flowers left, no petals to float on the gentle waves. Teresa felt weary in her mind and in her bones, but at least Eduard’s body had survived the Rush-X withdrawal. Physically, she grew stronger every day, no longer afraid of falling apart with each uncertain step.

  But this still wasn’t the place where Teresa belonged. She missed her home-body. It had been a long time since she’d been a woman. Had she lost that part of her identity, too? She seemed farther from her goal than ever before.

  Wistfully, she thought about the monastery. As a curious teenager, even before she or her friends had learned how to hopscotch, Teresa had studied the changes puberty brought upon her flesh, her chemistry, her attitudes. She had explored her body and how it worked, making love to Eduard and Garth, and even Daragon, sharing warmth and caring. Her friendships were her world.

  Teresa had felt whole then.

  She trailed her fingers in the fountain. She pictured old Arthur’s worn-leather face, thought of the things she had learned from him. You always told me I should welcome challenges.

  Teresa brushed stray droplets from her hands and marched over to a public COM terminal. She would try again, and again if necessary. But if Daragon and the BTL couldn’t find anything, how could she hope to be successful? She had already searched in every way she could imagine.

  Nevertheless, she refused to stop looking.

  As she stood in a sheltered alcove where a smoked-plastic panel shaded the COM filmscreen from sun glare, an image formed there. She hadn’t even entered a command. But it was a face . . . a familiar face.

  Soft Stone!

  A superstitious thrill ran like a centipede down Teresa’s spine. She recalled the dull day at her dead-end job when she had seen her teacher’s image among the datanets. But the bald monk had vanished that time, leaving Teresa to convince herself it was only her imagination or wishful thinking. But not now.

  Soft Stone appeared with crystal clarity, projected three-dimensionally on the filmscreen. “Hello, little Swan.” Her voice was so familiar, so rich.

  Tears sprang to Teresa’s eyes. “What are you doing here? How? Why—?”

  “I’ve watched over you for a long time. You and Garth and Eduard. Even poor dedicated Daragon, though he would never dare to ask me for help. I’ve tried to help you, when I could.”

  “You’re inside COM?”

  “I have many eyes and many thoughts. I helped save Garth from drowning in Hawaii. I sent Eduard a message to rescue you from the Sharetakers. And I continue to keep an eye on Eduard, when I can. He’s very careful.”

  Teresa took a deep breath. “Eduard’s all right, then?”

  “He’s alive, and very clever. But then again, so is Daragon.”

  Teresa moved closer to the wavering screen, as if she could reach out and embrace the virtual image. Soft Stone’s pale lips curved in a smile. “I understand your quest, child, and your anguish—I offer what little assistance I can.”

  “Do you know where my original body is?” Teresa trembled again, but this time it had nothing to do with Rush-X withdrawal pains. “Oh, how I want to be myself again.”

  Soft Stone’s disembodied head bobbed up and down in a quiet nod. “I am a luminous being now. I’ve soared through the databases . . . so much to explore, and so many of us here. Each new mind makes COM a vaster universe.”

  Teresa held her breath.

  “I’ve put together fragments of long-lost records that no normal human could have found. Perhaps you’ll find the clue you need in them. I have finally discovered where Jennika went after the Sharetaker enclave. Try there.”

  Soft Stone flashed the address of a business, and Teresa twirled, giddy with relief. When she leaned closer to the screen to thank Soft Stone, though, the female monk was no longer there.

  56

  Under a starlit sky, Eduard followed Artemis to one of his other bolt-holes in the rooftop greenhouse above a conjoined apartment complex. People lived and cooked and slept in the bustling hive below, but the roof acreage was privately owned by an urban agricultural firm. Artemis had no trouble bypassing the security.

  Accompanied by a crisp evening breeze, they walked along crowded rows of co
rn and wheat and vegetables. Peas and carrots and green beans grew under rippling sunplastic awnings. “At least we’ll have something to eat,” Eduard said.

  “Got a fake gardener’s shed where we can hide,” Artemis said, leading the way. “Set it up a long time ago. In a greenhouse this big, people are less likely to notice an extra little structure. Haven’t been here in quite a while, though.”

  “No problem. As long as there’s a place to sleep.”

  Artemis cocked an eyebrow. “Single cot—and a floor.” Eduard knew which one he’d get.

  He felt strong again in Artemis’s former body, and the older man now looked like the hapless inspec-tech, though he claimed he would shave the distinctive mustache soon.

  Now the evening skyglow silhouetted a small shack. Artemis stood by the corrugated door, tugging at a lock clipped to the latch. “Whoa, what gives ’em the right to do that? This is my place.” He scanned the rooftop with narrowed eyes, alert and nervous.

  “Some worker probably didn’t know the difference.” Eduard reached into his pocket to withdraw a stolen laser cutter Artemis had given him, with which he made short work of the hasp.

  Inside, the narrow cot had been propped against the wall, the floor strewn with gardening tools, sacks of fertilizers, and damp packages of forgotten seeds. Artemis huffed. “They’re usin’ this as a gardening shed! Some people have no respect for privacy.”

  Once they redistributed the equipment, the two of them rested in safe privacy, though Artemis grumbled that he would have to put a new, impregnable lock on the door. They slept, so weary of each other’s company that they had no need for conversation.

  With his team of interrogators, Daragon interviewed the assaulted inspec-tech even before he had recovered from the Scramble dose. BTL professionals combed the cavernous warehouse, scouring for fingerprints, skin flakes, even dried saliva. The evidence technicians were the Bureau’s best, but all their efforts couldn’t help Daragon. He wasn’t interested in identifying the body, but the person inside it. He suspected Eduard had done this.

  “Tell me once more what happened,” he said, standing tall in his uniform.

  The inspec-tech occupied a scrawny, pallid body that Daragon was sure Eduard must have worn not long ago. He leaned against the manual control housing that ran the facility’s distribution lines and code-scanning eyes.

  “I was just going about my rounds, checking everything, when a guy sprayed me in the face with some kind of drug. It hit me fast—I couldn’t see, couldn’t think. Then I was in a different body, and somebody else hit me with a stunner. I woke up with a splitting headache, in a head that isn’t even my own.” He groaned. “I don’t have any idea what I look like anymore.” The tech touched his cheeks, his clean-shaven upper lip. “My wife’s going to be pissed. It took me a year to grow that mustache.”

  Even without a chemical analysis, Daragon knew what the drug must have been, but he didn’t know how Eduard had gotten his hands on it. The Bureau of Incarceration and Executions kept Scramble under tight control. Maybe he had obtained it from the same people who had provided him with the Rush-X he’d used to kill Mordecai Ob. Or was that yet another coincidence? Unlikely. Garth and Teresa might be gullible enough to believe Eduard’s preposterous story, but Daragon was a BTL Inspector. He had already heard it all.

  One of the evidence technicians came down from the destroyed overhead room, obviously a hideout for whoever had jumped the tech. She held a handful of mulched cellulose strips and shredded fabric fiber. “Looks like there were two people using that room, sir.” Daragon surveyed the mangled mouse-nest of evidence, but had no idea how she had drawn that conclusion. He didn’t ask.

  “Right, two guys, I think,” said the inspec-tech. “And now one of them looks like me.” He squeezed his bicep. “Man, I’ve got to put some meat on these bones.” He turned to a smooth plate on one of the computer scanners, polished the reflective surface with his sleeve, and peered down at his own face. “Hey, this isn’t the guy who jumped me first. It was dark, but I did get a good look at him—this face is somebody else.” He grumbled. “The first guy was better looking. Great, now I’m stuck with this one.”

  Daragon studied the slight body and tried to imagine vibrant and energetic Eduard as such a person. On the run, Eduard would have had to trade down every time he swapped. Except when he tricked himself into a new body—like this man’s.

  Using his lapel communicator, Daragon called for the medical analyzer. “And bring your equipment with you.” He turned to the still-confused inspec-tech. “Sir, we’ll need to do a deep-level residual scan on your brain. I already suspect who did this to you, but we need hard evidence.”

  “All right, I guess.” The tech and Daragon both looked up as the medical analyzer found her way around the conveyor belts, past other BTL professionals dusting and illuminating the scene. Unslinging her pack, she withdrew the portable apparatus, one piece at a time.

  “Through high-level analysis of your brain pattern, we can identify leftover mindprints from the swap,” Daragon explained. “But we’ve got to hurry to get a recording before your own persona obliterates all trace evidence.”

  The med analyzer showed a brief glint of compassion as she removed electrodes and probes. “This is going to hurt.”

  Though the inspec-tech hissed and whined, glaring at the BTL investigators with tear-filled eyes, Daragon had attention only for the results.

  The med analyzer pointed to a sublimated trace, called up a reference pattern, and overlaid it. “There! Perfect match.” She withdrew the scan equipment and let the poor tech slump to the floor, cradling his skull in his hands. “It’s your friend Eduard Swan, all right. He was the last one in this body.”

  “Eduard’s not my friend,” Daragon said too quickly.

  “Just a figure of speech.”

  Daragon was both exhilarated and dismayed to have his suspicions confirmed. Eduard now had a partner in crime, someone who had incapacitated this innocent man so that the fugitive could steal his body.

  “So close to catching him.” Daragon clenched a fist. “Now we’re back at the start again.”

  “That’s no big deal. I know how to find my body.” The inspec-tech leaned against the machinery, holding his aching head and blinking up at the harsh lights. “I just want the Bureau to get it back from the jerk who stole it.” He looked forlornly at his stick-thin arms.

  Daragon whirled. “What do you mean, you know how to find it? Where did he go?”

  “Ow! Not so loud.” The inspec-tech wrinkled his forehead and let out a long, quiet breath. “I work freelance as a roving inspector technician for seven different mechanical assembly lines. You never know when something’s going to go wrong, but the managers sure as hell want it fixed pronto. By contract, I’m not allowed to hopscotch unless I’m on vacation—and then I can never lose sight of my home-body. My employers want to be absolutely certain they can find me anytime, anywhere.”

  “How?” Daragon demanded.

  “I’ve been implanted with a locator. My home-body was, I mean. We can track it down anytime we want.”

  Loaded with energy and weapons, the Beetles converged on the rooftop greenhouse. They soared overhead with chopters and assault hovercraft. Bright lights stabbed across the dense rows of engineered crops, reflecting off transparent sunplastic. They stormed up narrow stairwells, combat boots pounding in the enclosed spaces. They burst through sealed access doors and blasted their way through security systems.

  Express lifters carried reinforcements onto the roof. A gruff apprehension commander bellowed through a loudspeaker. His words ricocheted from the barricades in the sprawling gardens. “Surrender yourselves immediately or risk severe injury!”

  Artemis was awake and at the shed’s door in a flash, moving before Eduard even managed to sit up. “We’re screwed, rabbit!” He bolted out of the doorway.

  Eduard was up and running, scrambling to fasten his shirt, abandoning his shoes. He ducked low, hurry
ing past rows of genetically modified corn. Spotlights crackled toward the movement.

  “Eduard, I know you’re there.” Daragon’s voice. His chest clenched.

  The rooftop was empty of innocent bystanders, and the Beetles would not be overly cautious. Since they already believed him guilty, the BTL troops were all too anxious to use their firepower. Eduard had seen what they’d done to the poor old man on the park bench. He knew there could be no surrender, even if he wanted to. He couldn’t trust anything that Daragon promised.

  Apprehension specialists tromped under the overhanging transparent awnings, pushing aside dwarf lemon and orange trees, searching the plant-tangled shadows for the concealed fugitives. The Beetle uniforms were so dark that they melted into the shadows.

  Artemis didn’t spare a glance at Eduard. “You’re on your own, rabbit.” The Phantom scuttled away, keeping low among the plants and equipment.

  Despite the vast and cluttered space, the BTL troops would cover the broad rooftop area in no time. Gunfire erupted with bright flashes, spitting stun projectiles at imaginary targets. A rain of needles clinked off the walls and sheds.

  “Eduard, you’ve got to surrender!” Daragon called again. “Please!”

  Eduard ran bent-legged away from the voice. On the other side of the roof, Artemis crept through a covered area and emerged twenty meters from a back door. Eduard recalled a small, half-forgotten maintenance stairway; no doubt the old Phantom would try to use that for his escape.

  The apprehension team spread out in their relentless search. Moving as quietly as he could, Eduard backed toward the roof’s edge—nearly a hundred stories up—hoping the troops had no clear idea of where he was.

  He stumbled over a pile of stored equipment at the edge of the dropoff. Reaching down to touch it, he was delighted to recognize a mag-lock harness, the same kind he had used while maintaining the windows and skyscraper walls. Now if he only had time to hook up the harness, strap himself in, and attach it to the guidepaths that lined the outer walls. . . .