Hopscotch

by Kevin J. Anderson

  Intimidated and confused, workers trotted toward the front doors, yanking off protective gloves and goggles. But Teresa elbowed past them, fighting her way against the flow. Her new legs were long, her muscles tight and resilient. “Eduard!” she called, looking everywhere for his big blond form.

  Daragon’s voice came over the BTL loudspeakers. “Teresa, come out of there. Let me handle this!”

  Eduard ran between banks of thermal etchers, vacuum chambers, and sealed presses. Hot IR ovens throbbed, baking and pre-etching sapphire-coated silicon composites. Gas hissed, and ventilation hoods whistled as toxic vapors flowed through scrubbers.

  He ducked low, nearly deafened by the hydraulics in a multiple-strike micropress. Jumpsuited workers hustled to evacuate, and he could smell the heavy claustrophobic fear mixed with processed industrial smells. People shouted or whispered as they filed toward the exit through a gauntlet of Beetles.

  Eduard could never mix in with them and get out that way, not while Daragon watched with his eerie second-sight. Right now he could hear the chopters, gruff orders transmitted from Beetle to Beetle, the rumble of heavy feet on the roof. The side door slammed open and more armored apprehension specialists entered. Eduard glided to deeper shadows near another piece of heavy machinery. He had no place else to go.

  Daragon marched through the front door, directing the assault. He instructed guards to remain among the evacuated workers milling about outside. “We might need to interrogate them later.”

  An officer looked at him. “There’s no way he can get out of this, Inspector.”

  Daragon brushed him aside. “I’ll believe that when we have him in custody—alive—and not before.”

  Inside, Teresa scuttled into the equipment area, reaching the lunchroom. She kept herself low, taking advantage of whatever cover she could find. She used tables and plastic chairs as camouflage, though none of it would protect her from direct gunfire. She searched for Eduard on the garishly lit industrial floor. “Eduard, oh give yourself up before you get killed!”

  As soon as she spoke, the Beetles turned toward her voice, and Teresa dove under a table. Keyed up, two startled guards opened fire in a reflexive action. The synthetic wood laminate and brightly colored plastic table became a porcupine of stun darts.

  Enraged, Eduard popped out of his refuge. “Don’t shoot at her, you stupid bastards!” More shots rang out, targeting him this time.

  Using a voice enhancer at his collar, Daragon bellowed into the ringing background noise. “Eduard, give yourself up—please don’t let this go any further. You’ll only make it harder.” He gestured for backup troops to fan out, scuttling across the floor.

  “I’m sorry, Daragon, but your past behavior doesn’t inspire much confidence,” Eduard called with a cynical laugh. “I’ve seen you gun down at least two innocent people while you were trying to catch me. Two people who had nothing to do with the crime you want me for.” He paused a beat, knowing the Inspector must be wrestling with a response. He said, taunting, “Who exactly is the murderer around here? Or are there different standards for BTL troops?”

  In response, several hot-blooded apprehension specialists opened fire again. Stun pellets pinged off the machinery that shielded him. Silver starburst scratches blossomed on painted housings; nicks appeared in thick glass containment ports.

  Both Daragon and Teresa screamed for the shooting to stop. Whining ricochets sang through the air, chipping more glass.

  “This is Garth’s body, Daragon,” Eduard shouted. “I’ve got to make sure he gets it back. You have to promise me that.”

  Another Beetle answered in a gruff voice, “That body is confiscated property, by law. The BTL does not make deals with—”

  “Shut up!” Daragon said, then lowered his voice. “Not now.”

  From where she crouched under the shelter of an administrative desk, Teresa could see Eduard slip toward curling acid-brown vapors that leaked from a breached containment chamber. He coughed while running for cover, using the thick fumes as a smokescreen.

  Teresa knocked a broken table aside. She saw warning labels on the equipment—TOXIC HAZARDS, HIGHLY CORROSIVE CHEMICALS—and remembered what had happened to her original body. She had no time to think, no time to plan. Moving as fast as her new athletic legs could piston, she launched across the open space toward him.

  The etching chamber had been blasted open by stray projectiles, and caustic gas hissed out like a smokescreen. Eduard stumbled toward it, ignorant of the hazard, intent only on escaping.

  Teresa struck him like a cannonball, knocking the big-shouldered man across the syncrete floor. He’d done the same for her, long ago, to save her during a shootout in the flower market.

  “There he is!” a Beetle shouted. She heard weapons clicking, aiming.

  Just above their heads, external paint on the equipment bubbled and peeled from exposure to the thick, deadly vapor.

  Teresa lay across Garth’s blond form, shielding Eduard with her own lithe body. “Don’t shoot! Hold your fire!”

  Eduard writhed on the floor, trying to push her off. “Teresa, get away from me!” He scrambled to his feet as Teresa dove toward him again to protect him, but Eduard held his arms out, totally exposed now. “I won’t let you stand in the crossfire for me. Not you, Teresa.”

  He glared at the armed troops cautiously approaching him. “I surrender.” He raised his hands. “Or do you plan to just shoot me down where I stand?”

  Some Beetles looked as if they might have been tempted, but Daragon drove them back. Eduard stood tall as he glared at his adversary, his friend.

  The look on Daragon’s face was not one of triumph. Far from it.

  62

  With all the love he possessed, Pashnak tended Garth’s ailing body as he dwindled toward death. He dimmed the library lights, turned the laser fireplace on high, knelt beside the sofa. His mind whirled as he tried to make the artist more comfortable, to make him recuperate. Somehow.

  As he had feared, they had heard nothing from Eduard in hours. “He’s run off, Garth. He has your body now, and he won’t come back until it’s too late.”

  “Pashnak, don’t be dense. That’s what I wanted him to do in the first place.” Garth turned his head on the pillow. “We’ll just stay here. That’s the best thing.” Pashnak looked down intently at the shriveled, gray-skinned body of the man he had served so long and so well. “You’re always so good to me.”

  The assistant fought back tears. “I just wish you treated yourself better.”

  With a gnarled hand, he patted Pashnak’s wrist. “This is my decision. Don’t pester me about it.” Garth smiled up at him, and Pashnak saw a bleary haze of contentment he hadn’t seen on the artist in far too long. “I can’t think of any better way to top off my career than to help my friend. A crowning achievement.”

  Pashnak bit his lower lip, holding back a moan. “How can you say that?” He wished he had never let Eduard inside the house, never even answered the door call. If only he had turned away the sick old fugitive, that would have been the end of the matter. “Think of all the ideas you can still have, the exhibitions, the—” His voice cracked. “All the books we still have to read out loud to each other!”

  Lying back, propped on the pillows, Garth studied the syn-oak moldings on the ceiling. “Ah, let’s leave it at that. I did some great work, didn’t I?” He closed his eyes and let his wrinkled face settle into a sigh. “As long as I saved Eduard, it was worth it.”

  He shifted on the pillows, drawing a breath that felt like shrapnel in his chest. Pashnak still hovered beside him, as if wondering whether he should make more coffee. Garth said, “Now here’s a new experience I never managed before—heroism and self-sacrifice. Probably the noblest part of being human.”

  Pashnak’s lips trembled. “Sure, but now that you understand it, you won’t live to express it as art. Garth, you have to stay alive!” He nearly shouted the last sentence. For a long time, wrapped up in business matters, h
e had tried to ignore Garth’s growing malaise, chalking it up to another mood swing, an oscillation of the artistic temperament. Now, though, his eyes flashing with anger and dismay, Pashnak paced the library. “You’ve always been selfless and giving, generous with your money. You experienced everything, suffered all the foibles and problems people can have, shouldered that burden just so you could contribute back to humanity through your art.”

  “Yeah, but this time I did it for a friend.” Garth’s eyes shone. “That’s even better.”

  Suddenly, the library’s filmscreen burned bright as a transmission came in. A selectively highlighted COMnews broadcast, sorted by Garth’s priority filters. Annoyed, Pashnak got up to blank it, not wanting to lose one of his precious moments with Garth, but the artist raised a trembling hand. “Wait.”

  A story about Eduard. A news-download, a special report, a breaking story. He knew it even before the details scrolled across the screen. “Oh no.”

  Sharp video images showed a BTL action, some kind of crackdown at a local expansion-chip facility. Stun pellets peppered the walls of the building. Uniformed Bureau troops ran about, heads down, smashing glass and marching inside. Garth saw the neon-etched name on the front of the facility. Precision Chaos. Where Eduard had gone to find Teresa.

  A spear of pain ripped through his lungs, his heart. He coughed, and tasted blood deep in his throat. The simulated announcer pattered his report, firing words like BTL gunshots. “The Bureau officers managed to take the target alive, with only minor injuries among their own ranks, thus marking the end to a long and bloody chase.” The reporter appeared suitably grim, his expression stern.

  On the library screen, he and Pashnak stared as a stun-shackled Eduard, wearing Garth’s familiar home-body, was hauled toward an armored hovervan, apprehended after a “flawless Bureau operation.” COMnews reporters clustered around BTL Inspector Daragon Swan, the person in charge of the long manhunt, but Daragon brushed them aside, ignoring the attention, and staggered to his private vehicle. He looked sick.

  All available evidence had already been submitted before an “impartial” jury panel, and in the face of such overwhelming evidence they’d had no choice but to find Eduard guilty. Once apprehended, the prisoner was currently being interviewed behind closed doors, and the BTL had already denied appeals. Months ago, Eduard Swan had been sentenced to COM upload by the Bureau of Incarceration and Executions.

  Weak-kneed with despair, Pashnak leaned against the sofa. “Ah, no. This can’t be! Now what is it for? You’ve sacrificed yourself for nothing, Garth. Eduard’s going to be executed—we’ve got to get your home-body back.”

  The artist lay back, stunned and speechless in his failing body. He felt no strength at all now.

  The COM screens faded to gray-black static. Behind the nothingness a face resolved itself, the weathered but compassionate face of a bald woman. She gazed out from the depths of the computer/organic matrix as if it were a window. She spoke directly to the dying form sprawled on the sofa. “Garth, little Swan, I can do nothing to help him.” Then the image faded completely into static.

  Garth had witnessed a terrorist’s execution many years earlier, back at the artists’ bazaar. Was COM really a “sweatshop of souls,” as the justice system insisted? The Splinters hadn’t thought so. He remembered Soft Stone’s wondrous “death” when she had voluntarily uploaded herself from the Falling Leaves library. And now she was here.

  Garth tore the silkweave afghan away from his skeletal body. Startled, Pashnak bent over, attempting to mother him. “Garth, you’ve got to lie down! Don’t exert yourself.”

  Instead, Garth pushed him away and placed his feet on the floor, wobbling, as if his legs were splintered chunks of wood. He could barely stand, maintaining his balance as he feebly pushed the assistant away.

  “No, I’ve got to do something.” Garth wheezed, then coughed a splash of blood, but he swore that he wouldn’t let himself die yet. “I’ve got a little more life left, even in this body.”

  He held out a trembling hand, insisted that Pashnak help him across the room. “You won’t make it down the sidewalk, let alone to Eduard! Please let me call a medical center now—your identity doesn’t matter anymore.” Pashnak wrung his hands, unable to stifle his despair. “Eduard’s already caught!”

  “Yes, Eduard’s caught. That’s the only thing that matters. I’ve got to go to him, make some sort of plan.”

  “Maybe you’ll get your body back. The BTL will return it to you, won’t they? Daragon knows it’s yours.”

  “And he also knows I’m an accomplice, then. They’ll impound it, go through the standard routine. I won’t last long enough for all the red tape.”

  Then, realizing what he could do, he decided upon it immediately. He wiped a bony wrist across his chapped, blood-flecked lips. He would give one last thing to his friend.

  Soon, Eduard would be on the auction block in Garth’s strong, blond-haired body. Convicted criminals had to sacrifice their physiques as well as their lives. People would bid to hopscotch into his body permanently, leaving Eduard to die in a weak, used-up form. Garth had enough credits to outbid anyone else at the auction. If he could just make it there in time.

  He looked at the bookshelf in the library, the treasured tomes resting on a broad oak shelf just above the laser fireplace. He ran his gaze along the spines of the Dickens titles, and smiled wistfully.

  “Garth, what are you thinking?” Pashnak sounded concerned and suspicious. “I don’t like the look in your eyes.”

  Garth smiled at his assistant, content. As soon as the artist spoke, Pashnak’s eyes went wide in horror. He understood exactly what Garth planned to do, how he would save Eduard.

  “It is a far, far better thing I do . . .”

  63

  Stunned by what had happened to Eduard and feeling completely helpless, Teresa went to the one place that had offered her consistent comfort in the past. In despair, she made her way to the Falling Leaves.

  In one brief and tragic morning, the foundations of her world had been torn from her. After such a long search, she had discovered that her original body no longer existed. Worse, because she had asked for Daragon’s help in her quest, she had unwittingly led him to Eduard. She had tried to defend her friend, but she had ultimately failed. The Beetles had swallowed him up. Daragon had turned against her, and now Eduard was lost.

  “Your priorities are all screwed up, don’t you think?” she said to herself.

  Not anymore. She would acquire a clearer focus. She had to.

  So she walked along the streets, unable to take pleasure in her rangy body. Her new skin was dark, her eyesight sharp, her senses tingling. How had everything gotten so mixed up? She staggered ahead, finding her way. Teresa had always had trouble finding her own way.

  The monastery’s massive wooden door stood shut in front of her, ornately carved and impenetrable. Her loud knock reverberated through the remodeled brewery. Each pounding knock released warm childhood memories and nostalgic times. Teresa longed for those days. But everything was different now.

  Finally, the heavy door opened to reveal an unfamiliar young face. “I’m Teresa Swan. I used to live here,” she said. “I need to see the administrator. Can you take me to Chocolate, do you think?”

  Inside the archway, she noticed black streamers and crepe hung from the lintel. She reached up to touch the dark fabric, running her fingertips along the weave. The streamers signified mourning.

  The young man’s eyes widened. “You’d better follow me. Come this way.” He turned his back and hurried down the corridor. She remembered the courtyard garden, the sleeping quarters, and the marvelous library filled with artwork, books, and COM terminals.

  Inside, additional black banners hung from alcoves. Many of the beeswax candles had gone out; the floors looked as if they hadn’t been scrubbed in days. Soft Stone would never have allowed anything like that to happen. . . .

  She found the administrator’s office
empty, the COM screen switched off, papers and notes in disarray. Chocolate’s desk and chair looked as if they hadn’t been used in days. “Wait here,” the young man said. “I need to fetch him from the garden. Your name is Teresa, you said?”

  She nodded and continued to stare into the office, a feeling of dread taking hold of her. “Can you tell me what’s wrong? Why are you grieving? Where are all the Splinters?”

  The young monk looked at her, his expression lost. “They’re all at the funeral preparations for Chocolate. We’ve got . . . we’ve got plenty to do that we weren’t expecting.” Preoccupied, he fled back down the hall in tears.

  Teresa put a hand to her mouth. “Chocolate is dead?” Her voice was husky with disbelief.

  Finally, the young man returned with stern Hickory in his wake. Seeing the familiar, if unwelcoming, face, Teresa took a step toward him. Hickory assessed her new, athletic form with an expression of clear disapproval—but then, he disapproved of almost everything. “You’re Teresa?” His pinched face loosened into an expression that, though not an outright smile, was at least less stern. “Not many people come back, but frankly I’m surprised it took you so long.”

  Teresa still couldn’t get used to the surprising news about the roly-poly administrator. “Did Chocolate upload himself into COM? Like Soft Stone did?” She didn’t understand the black banners, the dark crepe of mourning. “Why is everyone so sad?”

  Hickory scowled. “No, Chocolate died in his sleep, before he could schedule his upload ceremony. We didn’t expect that, and now he’s gone.” Hickory crossed his arms over his chest, glaring at her for a moment. Then his expression fell. Tears sparkled in his eyes. “His soul is lost. He’ll never be able to sail the data streams with his brothers and sisters. He . . . we waited too long.”