Hopscotch (16 page)

29

Flowers,
surrounded by beautiful flowers. Glad for her new job, Teresa went on her rounds through office buildings in search of customers for whatever bouquets hadn't been presold.

During her weeks of recovery, Tanu the gardener had contacted a friend and secured Teresa a job from the cavernous central greenhouse hangars. Fully healed now, she found peace in her baskets of colorful blossoms, accompanied by their delicate perfumes, the gentle pastels.

Something that would let her forget the dark times with Rhys.

Since Teresa had little else she could give back to them, she always kept extra blossoms to send to both Eduard and Garth as a special thank-you. The Beetles wouldn't let her send flowers to Daragon. She was starting her life fresh once again, a cleaner beginning than when she had departed from the Falling Leaves. This time she swore it would be different.

At first, Teresa had thought about returning to the monastery as a place to contemplate, despite Soft Stone's admonition to the contrary. She wanted to be safe again, protected behind the walls. But she eventually realized that she had made her own mistakes, and she would make her own solutions. Teresa was determined not to disappoint her mentor.

While she occupied herself selling flowers, Teresa went back to considering the Big Questions that had fascinated her for so many years. She had been fooled into thinking the Sharetakers offered the answers she needed; instead, they had simply taken everything from her. From now on, she had to find the revelations on her own.

Eduard had invited her to stay with him at Ob's mansion for as long as she needed. He even offered to marry her, if that was what she wished. Teresa held him long and hard, feeling his unconditional devotion to her—as always—but she wanted to be by herself, to prove that she could live on her own, without depending on other people. As with Garth, their friendship was deeper than romantic love or sex, and
that
was what she needed most from Eduard.

She made other promises, too. After such a dizzying flow with the Sharetakers, Teresa resigned herself to remain inside this waifish body that was not really her own. She couldn't just toss it aside for another, as the Sharetakers had done. From now on, this slight, large-eyed female would house her identity.

Teresa pushed through the revolving door into an office building, where she arranged roses and carnations in boardrooms and reception areas, brightening the enclosed spaces. Enough bouquets remained in her basket for one more building, then she would return to the central greenhouse hangar for another load. But she was in no hurry and had no real schedule to keep. She did not feel the urge to grab an even larger piece of business than the previous day.

Outside, Teresa walked across the plaza and stopped by a stylized modern-art fountain made of gray and tan stone. Crude flint mirrors protruded at odd angles, distorting reflections. Balancing the flower basket on her lap, she sat on the fountain rim, leaning back on her outspread arms. The COM weather programmers had selected a cool, clear day with a bite of salt breeze from the nearby bay. She took an inventory of her remaining bouquets, inspecting each bloom, plucking wilted petals to keep the flowers looking fresh. Childlike, she tossed petals into the fountain.

“Good thing our fingers and hands don't fall off like that when we get old,” said a man who shuffled up to her. “It would mess up the entire physical system.” Teresa was startled by his appearance, but not frightened. The thin stranger had ice-blue eyes, yellow-gray hair, and an unevenly cut beard. His brow was furrowed, as if frequently creased with deep thought.

“I . . . I don't have any spare credits to give you, if you're panhandling.”

“Panhandling? No, I have all I really need.” His skin pallor and his scrawny physique belied the statement.

“What about your clothes?” Teresa could see he lived on the streets, probably alone. His shirt and pants were out of date, dirty, tattered.

“These?” The man plucked dismissively at his faded sleeves. “Outer coverings. Only a shell. I keep my
body
in good condition. That's what I was born with. Everything else is just . . . adornment.”

She watched the flower petals on the water, thinking again of the Sharetakers and her lost dreams, how so many things had already drifted away from her. “Some people might say hopscotching is like casting off petals from a flower. Discarding an old body once it's fulfilled its purpose.”

The man frowned in sudden distaste. “Who's to say what the body's purpose is and when it's been fulfilled?”

He sat beside her on the edge of the fountain, and she felt sorry for him, decided she could help. “Well, it looks as if you could use a solid meal if you're so concerned about your body, don't you think?”

“Okay, I admit malnutrition is sometimes a problem.” The ragged man dipped his hand in the fountain and self-consciously rubbed water to rinse his arm. “Gotta watch for any cuts to make sure they don't get infected. I exercise to keep my body functioning smoothly.” He squeezed his bicep with mock seriousness.

Teresa looked down at her waifish body. The flowers in her lap smelled sweet and warm. “I have a friend who maintains his boss's body, exercising for hours each day.”

The stranger laughed, a braying chuckle so loud it caused other pedestrians to look at him. “Exercising for somebody else? You think that would help anyone understand how a body works?”

His ice-blue eyes became suddenly intense, and he blinked repeatedly. He reached out to take Teresa's hand and thrust her own palm in front of her face. “Once you know the details, you can't help but worship the complexity. This delicate and intricate machine is far superior to any mechanism human beings have managed to devise. Okay, just look at your fingerprints, at the blood vessels beneath the skin. See your pores.” He bent two of her fingers down. “See the way the tendons move in your wrist. Magnificent, isn't it?”

“Oh—I never really thought about it before.”

“No one should take the human machine for granted. No one should ignore it or treat it badly, discard it like a bad card in a hand of poker.” He let out a shuddering sigh. “And all this hopscotching, one person to another to another! You shouldn't change bodies like you change a set of clothes.”

Teresa looked at him, thinking of the special times she had swapped with Garth and Eduard, and how often she had hopped from member to member in the Sharetaker enclave. “You have a very odd way of thinking, sir,” she said.

“Please call me Arthur.”

“All right. You have a very odd way of thinking, Arthur.”

“Okay, but it's my own philosophy, and I'm proud of it.”

Smiling curiously, Teresa stood up. “I've got more flowers to deliver.”

He shook her hand again, then gazed into her large eyes. “I'll be around. I hope I recognize you again.”

Since she didn't plan to do any hopscotching in the near future, Teresa knew that wouldn't be a problem. “You will.”

For the rest of that day, Teresa pondered her conversation with the shabby old man. Everybody hopscotched—it was only natural to switch bodies if you needed to, though some people were frightened by the occasional stories about slippage. When Daragon had proven unable to swap, the Splinters had considered it a tragic flaw.

Now Arthur's ideas intrigued her. From that point on, she sought out the old man as she went on her delivery rounds. He wasn't hard to find: he sat on benches in the sunlight or in secluded spots in the shade, reading through an ancient book he carried.

When she sat next to him, sharing her meager lunch, he paid her back by letting her look at his precious book. “Found it in a dump behind a museum.” Arthur showed her the cover, then some of the text and the illustrations. Obviously, he revered the volume as if it were a religious artifact. “It's a facsimile of the original
Gray's Anatomy,
annotated with medical commentary and updated drawings.”

As he flipped from page to page, Teresa stared at meticulous drawings: the circulatory system, musculature, tendons, glands, bones, the central nervous system. Arthur became so absorbed in the book that he seemed not to notice her. He ran his fingertips over a diagram of the heart's chambers, and his voice held a quiet awe. “Okay, I've read this book from front to back at least six times, and I still don't understand how my body works.”

“Arthur, if you're interested in this stuff, why don't you just get a data uplink from COM? The latest medical studies, detailed electron microscope holographs, even interactive—”

Arthur slammed the book shut and tapped hard on the cover. “I'm not interested in sheer quantity of information, but in the best
quality
information. I want the right reference, rather than every single reference. And this one has stood the test of time.” He regarded her with his eyebrows cocked. “Look.”

As Teresa listened to him, the old man showed her his hands, his fingers, the veins beneath the skin, the calluses built up from a life of hard work. He pushed his fingers so close to her face that she had to squint before she could focus on the whorls and lines of his fingerprints.

Teresa had never before thought about the minutiae, the clockwork mechanisms of her human form. “I don't have my original body anymore. I haven't even seen it for a year. It . . . got lost somewhere along the way.”

Arthur pursed his lips. “I'm sorry to hear that. You've lost an opportunity to . . . to get to know yourself, as it were.”

Strangely enough, Teresa got the sneaking suspicion that this ragged man understood more about reality than she did. And she had promised Soft Stone she would never stop looking.

“I like talking with you, Arthur,” she said.

“Likewise,” he said.

30

The man was
so incredibly obese he could barely walk. His girth was enormous, his garments made from acres of cloth. He took each plodding step with care and intense concentration, like a captain guiding an oil tanker through treacherous reefs. He overheated easily, sweating from the simple effort of moving his own mass across the street.

As soon as Garth spotted him, he knew that this must be one of the first targets on his List. With no inhibition whatsoever, he jogged up to the puffing man who stood on the street corner. “Excuse me! This is . . . this is amazing.” Garth took a deep breath. “Sir, I'd like to swap with you, live in your body for an hour or so. Would that be possible?”

The man looked at him with suspicion. “What do you want?”

“I want to hopscotch into your body. If I paid you . . . uh, fifty credits, would that be enough?” Garth blinked at him like an optimistic puppy. “I don't have a lot of money to spare.”

Looking at the artist's healthy body, the obese man reacted to the offer with astonishment, then with even greater suspicion. Breathlessly, his words tumbling together, Garth explained his creative quest to experience different aspects of being human. The man cautiously agreed, still suspecting some kind of practical joke. “No paperwork? Nothing?”

He quickly transferred the credits directly from Garth's card onto his own. His massive ham-hands touched Garth's face, thick fingers resting against his temples. They switched, then synched ID patches to legally complete the identity transfer.

Dizzy and overwhelmed, Garth stood motionless, needing the time to settle into the enormous new body with its heavy burden of flesh. He flexed his pudgy fingers. This physique seemed so clumsy, so unwieldy—like an overloaded truck rather than a sporty hovercar. When he inhaled, his lungs didn't seem to have enough capacity.

“This is amazing,” Garth said. “I've never felt anything like this before.” The spaces around him seemed closer, smaller. Fascinating. His agility was affected, but not his reflexes. The body itself adapted to balancing the weight.

The other man, delighted with the resilience of Garth's slender and healthy body, seemed to burst with energy. He laughed out loud.

And then bolted.

Garth couldn't believe what he was seeing. Inside Garth's body, the stranger ran harder, crossing the street, ducking under low-flying hovercars, through a disorganized farmer's market full of fruits and vegetables. Garth realized with a start that they hadn't arranged a meeting point. “Wait!”

The man sped away with Garth's blond, muscular physique, moving nimbly as he dashed down the street. He didn't know the man's name; worse, he didn't know how to find him ever again.

Puffing and lumbering, Garth tried to pursue the body-snatcher, but his overburdened leg muscles wouldn't cooperate. Simple movement seemed to require an effort equivalent to that needed for construction machinery, and within moments he was exhausted.

His face flushed with the effort, Garth staggered to a halt on the next corner. Winded, he tried to get the attention of other pedestrians, but he could not raise his voice.

Meanwhile, the man wearing Garth's body fled through a skyscraper doorway and disappeared into a crowded building.

The body-snatcher sprinted up the escalator stairs. His muscles felt electrified, his body so responsive, his footsteps light, as if he were running in reduced gravity. He pushed his way across the slide tube, deeper into the building complex . . . trying to get away. And succeeding.

He couldn't believe the stupid innocence of the artist, but couldn't let an opportunity like this go to waste. After a lifetime of hormonal imbalances, of enduring extreme obesity, he had never imagined that such a ridiculous chance would simply be thrust into his arms. After a clean transfer, he retained his identity. The patsy had no idea who he was, or how to track him down. The obese man would never go back to his clumsy, worthless form.

On a higher level, he reached a glass-walled mezzanine that contained a suite of clothes stores. From this vantage he looked down into the street and saw, far below, his lumbering body, unmistakable in the crowd. The guy was hopelessly lost. What a fool!

He could barely restrain himself. He touched his new body with delight. It had been so easy, so fun. He hadn't paused to think about what he was doing. He had just run. Now he dashed up a staircase, bounding two steps at a time—and he didn't even get short of breath!

A moment later he ran into a stern-eyed man wearing a dark Beetle uniform. Weapons drawn, the BTL Inspector stood directly in his way, blocking his escape.

“I don't take kindly to people who hurt my friends,” Daragon said.

Daragon led the prisoner to where Garth stood hopeless, helpless, and confused on the street. Barely able to move in his overexerted body, Garth just hung his head, enduring Daragon's disappointment and fury.

“If I hadn't already been here, Garth—if I hadn't been watching you, because Chief Ob wanted to protect his investment—” He raised his voice, letting anger cut like a knife. “You didn't even know his
name?
Didn't check his ID? Didn't set up an irrevocable exchange clause? No contract whatsoever? That was stupid! Every formal hopscotch must have a time limit assigned and provide an avenue for resolving disputes.”

Still wearing the enormously overweight body, Garth cringed, as if trying to shrink to a much smaller size. His chins jiggled. “It was only going to be for a few minutes.”

“Even an artist has to take simple precautions, Garth—whether the swap is for five minutes or five months. Don't leave yourself so vulnerable. You're in the real world now, not inside the monastery walls.”

“I never realized that what I was doing could be so . . . dangerous. I thought I could trust people.” Garth wished he didn't have to feel so ashamed for making that assumption.

“You should know better, Garth—especially after what happened to both Eduard and Teresa.” He shook his head, as if disgusted.

Summoned by Daragon, BTL reinforcements arrived in insectile hovercars. The terrified body-snatcher babbled excuses that no one wanted to hear. Daragon gestured with his weapon, supervising while Garth and the fat man hopscotched back into their own bodies.

Once returned to his obese home-body, the stranger wept and stammered more explanations, more pleas. After BTL apprehension specialists took the man away, Garth tried to explain what he'd been doing, why he needed to share the experiences and perspectives of other people, but Daragon was unimpressed. Since he could never hopscotch at all, he didn't know what to make of Garth's quest to “be” everybody and everything.

Daragon sighed and took his friend's arm. “You'll have to be careful if you plan to hopscotch so often. I can draw up a standard, simple contract template for you.” They stopped by a tree. Seeing the BTL Inspector's uniform, another pedestrian quickly left a nearby bench and went on his own way.

“That would be great.” Garth sat on the bench as if all the strength had gone out of him. Daragon remained standing, pacing back and forth in front of him.

“You didn't think this through, Garth. What do you know about this stranger you just swapped with? What if he had used that disguise to commit a terrible crime, and
you
were positively identified? Without legal proof of a swap, you might find yourself convicted.”

Garth shuddered suddenly, uncontrollably, as he recalled the COM-upload execution he had witnessed in the open-air bazaar. Daragon saw the extreme reaction and felt ashamed. “Okay, I wouldn't let that happen to you. The Bureau has techniques for picking up residual brain imprints. I was just trying to spook you into being more careful.”

“I'm spooked, all right, and I . . . appreciate it.” Garth's smile was forced, but the gratitude in his eyes was real. “First you saved Eduard, and now me. Thank you, Daragon.”

As Daragon climbed aboard a BTL transport and streaked away, Garth remained seated on the bench. He had a lot of thinking to do. He had learned something about human nature he hadn't even intended to.

From now on, he needed to take precautions, especially in wildly unequal exchanges, such as with the obese man. This insight into human nature—and the realization of his own naïveté—enriched Garth even as it saddened him. How could such a miserable person
not
be tempted to run off?

As he hurried back to his makeshift studio, he promised himself he would establish rules for working his way through the List. In fact, he needed to find an assistant, someone who could watch over him and attend to the business details of daily life, while handling the stipend Ob gave him.

When he got home, however, Garth's first priority was to rush to his datapad. He powered it up and opened new files. For the next two hours, he diligently recorded all his impressions of being in such an enormous body: the sensations, the emotions, other people's reactions to him.

Then, feeling triumphant, he crossed off the first item on his List.