Hopscotch

by Kevin J. Anderson

  The guard fought back, delving into his own reserves, possibly for the first time. Their elbows ground against the sticky tabletop. Her forearm wavered from vertical as she lost ground. Sweat trickled down her cheek. She drew a deep, cold breath, and resisted with even more strength.

  Meroni fought for his pride in front of his friends, but she was fighting for something much more important. She envisioned Eduard, helpless, captured after all this time. He had sacrificed so much for her, for Garth, for himself. Eduard. She pushed harder.

  The guard’s elbow slipped, and she pushed his forearm toward him. As he began to waver, his dismay increased, his confidence waned. Teresa saw the chink in his armor and pressed harder, gaining leverage. She winked at him.

  The back of his fist slammed onto the tabletop, and she released her grip, standing as the spectators tittered nervously. They’d never seen Meroni lose, especially not like this. Teresa flexed her fingers to loosen them. “The gentleman here is buying us all drinks, I believe.” She met the guard’s gaze, saw his wounded pride.

  “A fluke!” he said, because he didn’t know what else to say. He challenged her to a rematch, but his confidence was already crumbling.

  So she defeated him again.

  “Now’s your big chance,” she said, while some of the patrons chuckled, others sat astonished. “The chance to prove yourself.”

  Teresa flirted with Meroni, stroking his sweaty cheek with her long fingers. His voice was gruff, on the edge of surly. “What do we do now?”

  “Now we swap. Do it again.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Let me prove I can beat you in your body, too.” She didn’t want the man for his muscles—she just needed his uniform, his identity, and his access to the termination facility.

  José Meroni blinked in surprise, assessing her lean female form. “What’ll that do? I can’t possibly win if I—”

  “Oh, really?” She raised her eyebrows. “I just proved that this female body is strong enough to beat yours. It should be a sure thing for you. Muscles are muscles—see if you can do it yourself.” Teresa continued, as haughty as she could manage. “It’s all in the mind, total self-confidence . . . or are you afraid you don’t have enough confidence?” She waited a beat. “You can just surrender now, if you like.”

  “What are the stakes this time?” he growled.

  She gave another sexually charged smile. Rhys had trained her how to do it. “It’s just a matter of whether I get to be in the male body first later on tonight, or you.”

  The spectators gave appreciative whistles and catcalls, tinged with envy, and that was enough to puff Meroni’s confidence again. “Sounds good to me.” He rubbed his sweaty palms together with a whickering sound. The bar attendant brought the round of drinks, and each of the spectators grabbed a fresh glass. No one ventured a toast on Teresa’s behalf.

  The guard leaned across the table, nostrils flaring. They hopscotched, then placed their elbows on the table again. The spectators hooted, urging Meroni to win back his honor.

  But Teresa knew this time would be easy. The guard had more brawn, heavier weight—and inside her already tired body, he would have no idea how to tap her deep reserves of strength. And he had already been beaten, his confidence shattered, his embarrassment crippling him. The first two times, Teresa had been somewhat outmatched, but had still managed to turn the tables on him. For this rematch, Teresa started out with a decided advantage, not just in weight and musculature, but in attitude—and easily trounced him.

  Head low, still in a female body, the guard stood up. Leaving his fresh drink unfinished, he grabbed Teresa’s arm—his own arm. “Let’s get out of here, then. Synch your ID patch with mine.”

  “Oh, no hurry for that.” Smiling warmly, Teresa and Meroni sauntered out arm in arm. “We’ll be swapping a few more times before the night is done.” The bar patrons hooted or applauded, and the shamed Meroni added a little more strut to his step.

  Outside, she walked with him on the night streets, trying to pick up the pace. While still wearing Jennika’s shape, she had swallowed a powerful, timed tranquilizer before entering the neo-pub. She hoped they would get to Meroni’s place before the drug kicked in. She didn’t want to drag him all the way home.

  69

  The upload chamber looked like an industrial hell—intentionally so, Eduard figured. It made for better broadcasts, a more ominous lesson. The Bureau certainly wouldn’t want the public to watch executions in a soothing, pleasant setting, as when Soft Stone had uploaded herself from the Falling Leaves library.

  Two restraint chairs were bolted to the floor at the center of a room lined with metal plating. Obvious rivets looked like bullets stitching the steel wall sheets together. Cables and electrodes stretched like squid tentacles from consoles that occupied one full corner. Like something out of a mad scientist’s lab, the left chair was rigged with conduits that led directly into the computer/ organic matrix.

  “What is this, BIE budget cuts?” Eduard said.

  The guards, ignoring Eduard’s wisecrack, directed him toward the second restraint chair, the one without direct COM connections. Before long, his mind would be dragged over into the auction-winner’s body in the other seat.

  A few interested spectators already clustered behind a transparent wall, peering at him like visitors to an aquarium. “The better to see you with, my dear,” Eduard said. He yanked his arm away from the escort guards and shuffled to the indicated chair without being told twice.

  The bristling glassy camera lenses of a holocapture apparatus looked like the compound eye of an insect. COMnews would transmit the spectacle onto public channels. Only a few privileged Beetles, guards, and enforcement personnel would be allowed to watch his upload live and personal. And of course the ghoulish old Madame Ruxton—who had spent much of her wealth to buy the body right out from under him—got a ringside seat.

  He wondered if Daragon would have the guts to come and watch, or if he would wallow in guilt and stay hidden until it was all over. Eduard couldn’t decide whether or not he wanted to see his former friend.

  In the corridor behind the transparent screen he noticed one burly, squarish escort guard paying particular attention to him, like a hyena. Eduard made a twisted face at him, and the blocky guard turned away with an expression of shock and surprising dismay.

  A booming voice poured from the speakers as his sentence was read aloud. The narrator, a professional dramatist, spoke with grim authority. The world was watching. “Eduard Swan, you have been convicted of the murder of Mordecai Ob, Chief of the Bureau of Tracing and Locations.”

  A looming PR hologram of Ob shimmered in the air like an accusing ghost, looking brave and handsome and paternal. They had used one of the smiling press images from Garth’s FRUSTRATION debut exhibition.

  Eduard saw only the form he had worn so many times, the physique he had kept healthy while the Chief wasted his borrowed body on drugs. At least, he had prevented the similar destruction of who knew how many future physical trainers. Eduard’s would-be replacement, Candace Chu, would never know that he had saved her life.

  Unfortunately, he had mucked everything else up.

  By stopping to see Garth one last time, by letting himself be talked into trading bodies just long enough to say goodbye to Teresa, he had led to his friend’s certain death—and then Eduard had wrecked his chance to get away.

  Ob’s hologram hovered in front of him, silent and accusing, as the mellifluous voice continued from the speakers. “Eduard Swan, you attempted to escape justice and committed numerous other crimes during your flight, any one of which would justify your sentence of upload termination.”

  Another string of holographic images paraded in front of him: the blood-flecked face of the slain Artemis, the murdered old man who had been feeding bats from his park bench . . . a rapid succession of faces, bodies he had stolen.

  Indignant, Eduard wanted to shout that Daragon’s overzealous Beetles had been responsible for most of t
he death and destruction—but he was cynical enough to know it would do no good. He was supposed to carry all the crimes on his conscience. The Bureau wrote its own history, and COM promulgated it.

  “You will, therefore, surrender your life for the greater good of society and in modest reparation for the crimes you have committed. Your strong body will be given to another person in need, and your consciousness will be erased, your mental abilities uploaded into COM, where all minds work together to process data for the benefit of humanity.”

  He remembered Soft Stone’s shining lights, the beautiful images, the quiet music—it had to be for show, something the Splinter monks had concocted to comfort themselves. “How can you be so sure I’m not going to come back out and get you?” he muttered. But he knew that would never happen; despite numerous vengeful vows by criminals facing upload, COM had swallowed them all without the slightest bit of indigestion.

  In this place, he expected no cathedrals of data, no shimmering angels to lead him down a golden path. Similarly, Eduard thought the ominous “sweatshop of souls” idea was just another ridiculous fantasy, no more likely than Soft Stone’s cybernetic heaven or somebody else’s hell.

  “The final preparations will now commence,” the voice boomed.

  No matter what, Eduard was going to be dead in a few moments. That was real, without question.

  70

  In full dress uniform, Daragon headed toward his position in the termination facility, avoiding everyone.

  He had been “rewarded” with diminished duties, and some BTL bureaucrats were muttering with displeasure about his personal connection to the Eduard Swan case, his obsession that had caused his other workload to suffer. They didn’t want him making any public statement, but as head of the apprehension team that had captured Eduard, he was expected to be an important observer at the execution. It was his duty. It was his curse.

  Eduard’s fate was already out of his hands, placed under the jurisdiction of a different Bureau. Holding himself rigid and grim, Daragon wanted nothing more than to leave. He was just a showpiece here, and he hated every minute of it. He would rather go back to the underwater BTL Headquarters, sit in the Chief’s former office and remember Mordecai Ob. He would watch schools of fish swim through the kelp forest as distant sunlight sliced through the water.

  And he would try to forget about Eduard.

  This case had thrown Inspector Daragon Swan into a whirlpool of unwanted attention. Before long, some investigative journalist was sure to learn that Daragon himself had gotten Eduard the job working for Mordecai Ob. Therefore, the BTL officials had to make sure everything went by the book, with no deviations, no mistakes.

  But Daragon couldn’t leave it at that. Quietly, using every favor, every manipulation skill he knew, he had already quashed the accomplice charges leveled against Garth and Teresa, but he could do no more. Garth’s mansion was shut down and silent, and since he could not find the artist, he had no chance to return the blond home-body to him. After the execution, Daragon was sure he could place some injunction against the vile Madame Ruxton—that would be as satisfying to him as when he’d quietly ruined Rhys and the Sharetakers. It wouldn’t be difficult to confiscate Garth’s home-body and give it back to him.

  The opportunities for scandal were myriad, but he didn’t care.

  Now, he marched down the austere halls of the well-guarded facility. The BIE personnel showed Daragon deference, congratulated him formally. He accepted their kindness politely, then turned down another corridor as rapidly as possible. He concentrated on attending to every little thing. An Inspector was good at the details. He would get through this one minute at a time, until it was finally over.

  Guards were escorting old Madame Ruxton toward the holding room, and Daragon found a reason to turn in the opposite direction. A long time ago he had protected Eduard from the rich crone’s greed, and he didn’t want to face her vindictiveness now—to see her gloat. With clicking bootheels, he hurried to a different control center, refusing even to look at her.

  He tried to hold on to thoughts of how Chief Ob had given him such a remarkable opportunity with the BTL. Because of his inability to hopscotch, he’d been different from everybody else. Even among his friends in the monastery, he had always been an outsider. But the Bureau had accepted him. Ob’s faith in Daragon’s special abilities had turned him into someone powerful and impressive.

  And then Eduard had killed the man who had been the closest thing to a father to him. Daragon focused on that.

  Once captured, Eduard hadn’t even tried to defend himself—he seemed already defeated by the fact that his former friend had turned against him. “You’re all about justice, Daragon. But you can’t have justice without truth.”

  The BTL had done its thorough investigation, and they had found no concrete evidence to confirm Eduard’s story. Even Daragon had not been able to convince himself of what Teresa and Garth believed. What other choice did an Inspector have? It was his duty.

  As he tried to convince himself, the face of happy-go-lucky young Eduard, the daredevil and scamp who ran across slick rooftops to explore the city, kept haunting him. A cocky boy who stole flowers for Teresa, who threw himself into danger to save his friends. The man Daragon could never be.

  No wonder he’d never experienced the same depth of friendship with Teresa, or Garth, or even Eduard. What had he done differently?

  Garth’s career had been launched by Mordecai Ob, who had given him the money and freedom to follow his dream. And yet, the moment Eduard came in with his wild story about the Bureau Chief’s abuse, Garth had never doubted him, never hesitated before offering to help a known fugitive and probable murderer. Because they were friends.

  Years ago, Eduard had thrown himself against an armed terrorist to save Teresa in the flower market. He had rescued her from the Sharetakers when Rhys had beaten her, and he had swapped into her wounded body so she could heal more peacefully. In return, Teresa had begged him to trade bodies with her when he’d gone on the run, knowing that Eduard’s body was strung out and addicted to Rush-X. She hadn’t doubted him, either, not for a second.

  Daragon still considered them his closest friends, yet he was sure they would not have made similar selfless sacrifices for him. His throat went dry and his heart grew heavy as he realized the corollary. Would I have done it for them?

  He had never been willing to take chances, to open himself. Yes, he had watched over them, using his BTL resources, and he had saved them from problems and embarrassing situations. But he had never done any selfless act that required him to take an actual risk on their behalf. He could almost hear Teresa scolding him: “You don’t get closer by doing things for us, Daragon. You get closer just by being a friend.”

  It sounded so simple, but he wasn’t sure he could accomplish that.

  Nauseated by himself, and by what he was about to witness, Daragon could think of nothing he could do—for anyone. He would just have to endure, and try to heal afterward.

  He went to his position with the witnesses for the execution: Olaf Pitervald the window-maintenance engineer, the woman suffering from a muscular disease who now lived in Teresa’s waifish body, the hirsute parolee, the scrawny underground worker, the inspec-tech who would never be able to recover his own body.

  Behind a wide observation window laced with fiberoptic recording blips, the metal-walled chamber was ready, the COM-upload hardware prepared to drain Eduard. Daragon looked at the clock, counting down the minutes. After so long, so much work, so much anguish . . . it would all be over soon.

  Prowling up and down the corridors, Daragon went about his rounds again, checking and double-checking. Nothing must go wrong.

  He drew a deep, heavy breath. He didn’t know whether to be glad it was almost finished, or sad for the loss of his friends. All of them.

  71

  The BIE escort guard’s uniform felt bulky and uncomfortable, but José Meroni’s body wore it naturally.

  Tere
sa had left the man trussed up and snoring back at his apartment; she wished she could have at least given him some memorable sex first to assuage her guilt for taking advantage of him, but Meroni had fallen comatose in Jennika’s body as soon as they’d passed through the door. Early the next morning she had used his badge, ID patch, and passcode to enter the incarceration and execution facility.

  Now she didn’t know what to do next.

  Feeling inept, she did her best to assess the building and avoid Meroni’s coworkers. The story about his embarrassing arm-wrestling defeat had already spread among the other guards, though, and they made teasing comments just within earshot. It gave Teresa an excuse to pretend sulkiness, which allowed her to avoid them further.

  She strolled through the corridors pretending to be a real guard, checking locked doors, nodding to BIE personnel, glaring at prisoners. She went from place to place scouting for her chance, but she understood little of what she saw or encountered. Wall diagrams helped a little, but not enough.

  If Daragon came to the ceremony—and he almost certainly would—he would recognize her true identity with just a glance, regardless of what her stolen ID patch displayed.

  There was no way she could get away with this. Absolutely no way. It was a ridiculous idea, impossible to plan. Oh, how she wished she’d been able to reach Garth!

  She had no choice . . . only hope. She felt stronger than she ever had before, with an inner reservoir of confidence that far surpassed any muscular capabilities. And at least she had made it inside the BIE facility, though so far it hadn’t done her much good.

  She needed to find the control chamber, the room from which Eduard would be uploaded into COM. Attendants would force him to swap into the body of the old woman who had bought him, using the Scramble drug if necessary to break down his resistance.