CrossTown

by Loren W. Cooper

  When I ate that night, I explored the selection available in Duncan’s stores. I had broken into my third sealed box of rations when I realized that I felt physically as tight as a drum, stretched and bloated and hot and sweating, and yet I still could not assuage the gnawing hunger at my core. I worried then, remembering that the power of the Shadow Hound had carried with it a hunger as well. I put down the rations and retired, turning the lights of the bedroom up to full brightness. I could afford no distractions. I would grapple with the hunger of the Shadow another time, but first I would wear down its power. Trying to sleep in bright light left me nervous and irritable, but the hunger did diminish. It didn’t fade entirely, but it became something I could ignore. I wasn’t sure what it would take to assuage that new appetite. I didn’t really want to find out. I had enough bad habits as it was.

  Of course, given the weakening of the Legion and the absence of my Tindalan insurance, a fallback couldn’t be entirely bad. After all, my head had become a popular commodity in recent times. I wouldn’t turn away from the prospect of using the power of the Shadow Hound, but I didn’t need to embrace it and all it carried with it too eagerly, either.

  On the third day, Duncan came for me and told me that his machine had completed the accelerated growth of my clone. I followed him back to his medical facilities. The machine had opened to a featureless, white table, revealing a recumbent form lying as if in deep sleep.

  I felt an eerie sensation as I looked down at my doppelgänger, but there were obvious differences between it and the body I wore. The skin of the clone had the pink, soft, new texture of a newborn baby. None of my wrinkles or blemishes existed on that blank parchment. Fortunately, I wasn’t known for having large identifying marks, but everyone picks up a few white lines of scar tissue over the years, even if they’re minuscule. The clone had none. It breathed evenly, but of course the eyes were empty when I raised an eyelid. That new brain, neurons unwired by experience, would be a tabula rasa on which I could write enough basic controls and commands to make this body give a good enough performance to get killed for my sake. Considering my empty twin, I smiled.

  I’ve always thought highly of family loyalty, particularly when I reap the benefits.

  CHAPTER XX

  DYING DIDN’T seem like a habit I wanted to acquire.

  It had taken us a week to set everything in motion. Duncan spent his time tracking down Harvest and establishing his movements. I worked on my doppelgänger. The White Rose provided tremendous help, offering a purely technical and encyclopedic knowledge of all things living. In the end, though, I decided to do the deed by direct control.

  It proved to be more of a task than I had thought, making the body respond robotically to programming. After a while, I reconsidered my original plan to provide set instructions for the clone. At the White Rose’s suggestion, I prepared the brain of my clone as a vessel. I took enough time to strengthen the paths of the central nervous system to the point that walking the body around didn’t make me look like a bad imitation of The Night of the Living Dead. Possessing my clone proved remarkably easy, particularly with the assistance of the White Rose. After all, she knew my body from the inside better than I did. I only used it; she kept it running in spite of the hazards of my lifestyle.

  I started slow. While the clone bathed in ultraviolet to give his skin a weathered look that at least approached my own, I sat next to the machine, closed my eyes, detached myself from my physical form, and reattached myself to the clone’s physical form. As I thrashed the body of the clone around in a bed of light, the White Rose busily mapped nerve clusters to my attempts to control the body. The ether grew heavy with floral sweetness, until I finally asked the White Rose to tone it down. She did what she could to moderate the intrusive byproduct of her power, but she could not stop and I needed the power she provided. The cloying sweetness clogged my mind until I began to wonder if I could develop a psychic head cold to escape the impression of working in a flower shop.

  The process of mapping the nerve clusters in my clone resembled the thrashing of a newborn who flails wildly in that initial attempt to gain control over his or her new limbs. With the aid of the Legion, I could accelerate this process considerably. In the meantime, Blade practiced concealing all signs of my remote consciousness, while the White Wolf and his forces guarded my original body.

  It took a certain amount of time and effort, but after a few days of neural mapping, I had the body doing laps around the station in a loose suit of clothing laid out for me by Duncan. The muscles, even with everything sorcery and technology combined had managed to accomplish, were pathetically flaccid compared to my own battered vehicle. On the other hand, all this body had to do was simulate me long enough to die. How many muscles did that take? The White Rose worked constantly all this time, refining the physical processes of the new body to match the old one.

  An interesting thought struck me while we engaged in all this preparation. A more permanent link would provide a cumbersome method for pursuing longevity. I’d have to be sure that I had plenty of bodies available. An active lifestyle probably wouldn’t be recommended unless I became quite a bit better at possession. But obviously transfer after transfer could be made. Using the next clone as a replacement when the first one wore out could keep a man going for a long, long time. I hadn’t felt any soul in the body to displace, so I didn’t have any nasty ethical conundrums. Still, I did have an emotional attachment to my old flesh, but as an alternative to dying, body jumping could be something to keep in mind. I wondered idly how much Duncan’s equipment would cost to acquire.

  I felt confident that after a few more days the clone would perform well enough. I had no fears about jumping back to my old body from a distance, though I didn’t want to keep my original body in the orbital. I wanted to be close to a Way in the event that I struggled more than I expected to return to my original body. I hadn’t had any trouble transferring between the two on practice runs. The distance didn’t concern me too much, since I did exercise a similar skill every time I looked ahead on a WanderWay, pushing my awareness out through varying possibilities to seek my path.

  When I had a Way to work with, I felt much more secure.

  When Duncan’s shuttle docked, I met him in the clone. “Find him?”

  “Harvest is always easy to find,” Duncan said contemptuously. “He leaves a trail of blood wherever he goes. He has this particular bar he likes in the underbelly of TechTown called the One Shot. He’s there now. That would be the place, I think. Plenty of witnesses who’ll talk only for money. Well outside your usual haunts.”

  “And do I have a reason for showing up there?”

  He grinned. “Several information brokers work out of there. I’d suggest that you approach one of them. Ask for information about the Whitesnakes. That ought to get Harvest’s attention. If he doesn’t take you out before that.”

  I raised a skeptical eyebrow. “He’s already looking for me?”

  “You’re on his list. I don’t like him much, but he is a competent bastard. And the changes in you that can be seen in the clone look like you’ve been hitting the rejuve again. Your habits are well known enough that it’ll be consistent with past behavior.”

  I resisted a flash of irritation. “I thought the clone looked pretty close.”

  “Close enough. But still younger. The skin is the biggest reason. It’s a tough one to get around, but in your case it’ll be to our advantage. I also recommend you take another step. Take a pigmentation treatment from the machines. Take advantage of a couple of other cosmetic changes I have available up here. If you’ve disguised yourself, so much the better. It adds the right touch.” He examined the clone critically. “You’ve been doing a good job with it, looks like. Add the disguises, and it should pass muster. Any incidental differences will simply add to the impression that you’ve been keeping a low profile.”

  “When do you want to set this in motion?”

  “As soon as you’re don
e with the treatments, and I get some rest. Tomorrow, probably.”

  “Sounds good. You program the machines.” I fell in beside him as he began walking back toward the medical facilities. “I want my original body down out of the orbital for this.”

  “Why?”

  “Insurance,” I told him bluntly. “I want to be close to an available Way. This bar, it’s not on an anchored Way, is it?”

  He rubbed one hand across his chin. “Yes, it is. But it has an unanchored back alley. Good enough?”

  “Good enough.”

  I laid the clone back down in the machines, retreated to my own body, and met Duncan coming through the door. “I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to this witchery,” he said when he saw me. I could see a shimmer of uneasiness surface in his eyes for an instant.

  I grinned at him. “Don’t think about it too much, Jack. Are you still planning to contest Harvest’s right to the reward on the basis that he doesn’t have the right man?”

  “I don’t want to be tied to this,” he said, shaking his head. “I know I won’t see any direct return that way, but Harvest will have to pay when you show back up again. You know he won’t be happy with you.”

  “One more cross to bear,” I said with a shrug. “If I live that long, I’ll worry about it.”

  “You could always move out of CrossTown. Give up the life.” He watched me out of the corner of his eye.

  “Would you?”

  “Nope.”

  “Exactly.”

  I spent the night sleeping and dreaming. My mind needed the rest even if my body didn’t. My dreams were wistful things, running across the darkness of my mind like thin clouds racing before the wind. In the darkness, I felt a hunger growing. One thing that had disturbed me about transferring between bodies was the fact that the power of my shadow dweller followed me wherever my consciousness went.

  I woke from a troubled sleep, brought both bodies to the ship, and left the clone comatose and strapped down in a berth. I took the copilot’s seat again in my old body. The cosmetic treatments had changed the clone’s appearance considerably, but not enough to pass more than a casual inspection. If Harvest had any sophisticated analytical equipment, he’d have my DNA fingerprint faster than you could say Crick and Watson.

  Once we landed I roused the clone and rose from the ship in my borrowed body. As we had practiced, the White Rose managed the connection to the clone, Blade concealed the connection, and the White Wolf guarded my body, while Bright Angel continued to hold the fortress of my spirit. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Jack Duncan. It was simpler than that. I didn’t really have much trust left for anyone.

  I followed Jack’s directions, taking a straightforward Way for a while, and then angled off, following back trails until I found the alley stretching behind the One Shot. Jack had been correct. It was an unanchored Way. Good.

  Social strata in TechTown were reflected in the architecture of the towers: the closer to the level of the street you were, the lower on the social ladder you had to be. The One Shot turned out to be little more than a shack, a motley collection of various alloy plates salvaged from the nearest available junk pile and riveted to a metal frame, all done up in late rust and early decay. The people in that neighborhood didn’t so much walk as skulk, and they didn’t do that without someone to watch their backs. Even the rats scurried about their business in groups of three or more.

  I found that this body responded much the same as my old one when it came to nervousness and fear. After all, I planned to walk in there and get myself killed. The plan was to travel back down the conduit provided by the White Rose and the connection to the rest of the Legion. Even with the distance involved, given the presence of an anchored Way and my time spent practicing, I had every confidence that I could do this. It wasn’t an idea that my less than rational side agreed with in the slightest.

  On the positive side, things went much more quickly than I expected.

  I opened the door, strolled in, and looked around. The harsh and naked light bulbs hanging from the rough, uncovered rafters above my head lit the room far too brightly for a comfortable bar. I didn’t see any information brokers off hand, but I figured that Harvest must have been the slight man in loose clothing who rose from his table and hurled something at me as I walked through the door. I had just registered that the object looked like the illegitimate child of a Klein bottle and a Möbius strip, and that it had a negative spiritual presence, when it struck me lightly in the chest. Abruptly, the White Rose and the link tying me back to my body vanished.

  At the same time, Harvest leveled two excessively large caliber pistols at me and fired. I didn’t have time to see much more than the flash, but I was already frantically trying to extricate myself from the body when Harvest blew my head clean off.

  CHAPTER XXI

  DON’T LISTEN to what any optimist tells you. Dying hurts. It’s painful. All those nerve endings slowly and randomly firing during the eternal moment when the body hasn’t yet settled into the idea of death create a uniquely tortuous experience. Then you feel gravity and entropy and the other natural forces that you’ve been denying all the days of your life begin to step in and take over.

  Not an experience I wanted to have even once. Certainly not more than once.

  I couldn’t jump free. That was the worst of it. Harvest had cut all of my ties and effectively blocked me in the body with a Spirit Tap. I hadn’t expected that. The damned things weren’t easy to acquire, and had much the same effect on the spiritual and psychic phenomena as an EMP wave had on unshielded solid-state electronics.

  I shouldn’t have had the sorcerous strength to even remain in the body. I should have been dead, finished, complete, worm food—and the body was, no doubt about that—but my consciousness still survived, trapped in that useless slab of meat. I had become a ghost without a place to go. I could feel the dark roots of the Shadow Hound’s power twining through my consciousness. It had stayed with me. And apparently it had some resistance to the Spirit Tap’s effects. Even the little while I remained caught in that dying body, like a wolf in a trap, nearly drove me mad. Some would say I wasn’t entirely sane when Edward Harvest made his first mistake.

  He had been cautious, staying well away from the body while it dropped to the ground, twitching, voiding its bladder and bowels. He stayed away far enough to make no physical contact with the body, but as he reached across my leg to retrieve his Spirit Tap, his arm blocked the light.

  I felt that shadow cross me like a sinner feels the doorway to salvation open. More darkly, through that shadow I felt the essence of Edward Harvest. I raced through that open doorway and into the soul of the man who had killed me. I took him so fast I didn’t even have time to consciously absorb his memories.

  The gnawing hunger that had been with me since I had opened the Ways of Shadow in the station abated.

  I didn’t really need Harvest’s memories, though. I already knew that Jack Duncan had betrayed me. Harvest had been too prepared.

  As I pulled Harvest down into the darkness, his body stood, having picked up the Spirit Tap reflexively. The presence of it didn’t drive me out of my newest body. The Spirit Tap dangled absently from one hand as I looked out through Harvest’s eyes. His body had a different feel from my own: much more powerful, poised as if ready to dance, a coiled spring awaiting the release of killing. Harvest had a wiry strength far above that portion natural to a man, and his reflexes were apparently the finest TechTown could manufacture. I seemed out of phase with the world around me. A nearly dressed catbreed waitress seemed to float from step to step as she backed away from my still-leaking corpse. In Harvest’s body, I found myself looking up at the world, which seemed just a little larger, as Harvest had been physically shorter than my original body as well as that of my clone. With great deliberation I crushed the Spirit Tap in my fist and walked out the back door, the ruin still in my hand. No one tried to stop me. I imagine they were too confused.

  At
first I found myself staggering like a drunken wastrel. It took some time to acclimatize myself to Harvest’s body, particularly with the augments, but I found it an easier process than I should have. I had the echoes of Harvest’s recent occupancy to guide my possession.

  Not that Harvest himself remained. The hunger of the darkness and the desperate rage of my betrayal had consumed his personality and self in the first flash of contact. I did have most of his memories left, though.

  I hit the alley moving fast, reached for the Way, and felt it respond sluggishly to my touch. I didn’t know if that sluggishness came from some remaining backlash from the Spirit Tap or the adjustment period for my possession of Harvest’s body. I didn’t really care. I threw myself into the effort of using the Way, casting myself on a long route back to Duncan’s ship. I wanted to walk long enough to become accustomed to Harvest’s body. Accustomed enough, at least, to pass for Harvest long enough to get close to Jack.

  The path I took paralleled the darkness in my heart. I shambled through visions of blasted earths filled only with ruins, desolate wastelands, barren plains, and shattered mountains empty of life—all monuments to the folly and stupid, bloody-minded ignorance of mankind. As my control of Harvest’s body firmed, his/my spine straightening, his/my steps becoming sure and quick, I turned my attention to the stolen memories so I could look out through his eyes into his recent past.

  Jack had come to him/me with the proposal while I had been gaining control over my cloned body. Harvest had been surprised to see him enter the One Shot and settle directly into the seat across the table. “Jack Duncan. What do you want?”

  Jack had smiled. “Harvest. Pleasant as ever. How would you like to make twenty-five gold for five minutes work?”

  Harvest cocked his head. “Stupid question. What’s the catch?”

  Jack leaned back in the chair. “You’ve heard of Zethus the sorcerer? Apprentice to the late Corvinus the Raven?”