Hopscotch (37 page)

EPILOGUE

Later, much later,
Teresa went to Club Masquerade, alone.

The three of them had always gathered here. With youthful optimism, she and Garth and Eduard had promised never to miss a meeting . . . but all that had changed. No one here would recognize her in Jennika's physique, not even the bartender.

She was back in her athletic female body again. It had taken her two days of sweet-talking and lovemaking to convince José Meroni not to report her unauthorized switch. Though incensed, he was even more mortally afraid that his buddies would learn how easily she had duped him even after the arm-wrestling defeat. He couldn't stand that humiliation.

In the aftermath of Eduard's upload execution, Teresa had been willing to face the consequences of her attempted sabotage, but Daragon had intervened again. He kept her involvement quiet, saying the right words and using his remaining connections in the BTL to “take care of things.”

She was now free, and by herself. Back to normal, but she would never be the same.

Ducking through one of the Club's myriad doorways, Teresa passed under the arch into the exotic, synthetic environments. Without consciously choosing where she went, she found herself inside the Sequoia Room, its floor strewn with dried needles and tiny fir cones. The recorded birdsong, the smells of pitch and sun-warmed evergreens, made her sigh.

Long ago, this was the first room she and her friends had entered. Away from the Falling Leaves, they had dared each other to slip into the Club. Maybe she could find peace and calm here for a while.

Sitting alone in the main bar area, she listened to the ever-present music, elbows on the table, face averted. This would have been their regular meeting date. She remembered the last time they had followed their routine, the last normal moment, when Eduard had rushed in, fleeing for his life.

From then on, everything had changed.

Signaling the tablescreen, she ordered a drink—Eduard's slushy blue concoction—and when she paid for it with her credit chip, Bernard Rovin's beaming face appeared in front of her. “Teresa! I haven't seen you in ages.” He smiled at her. “New body, I see. Looks nice.”

She sank her chin in her hands. “A lot of things have changed, Bernard.”

His expression grew serious. “I may be stuck here in the Club, but I can still read COM reports. My sympathies to you.”

“Thanks. I really want to have some time to be by myself and think.”

“Gotcha.” When her blue drink appeared, the first sour sip stung her tongue and nostrils. After that, she didn't taste it at all. Teresa was drowning in thoughts. All her life she had ineffectively tackled unanswerable questions, but found no answers.
Why are we here?

Each person had a different answer to that question, and Teresa needed to find her own. Instead of searching for someone to hand her the solutions, she should have been searching inside herself.

Could it possibly be as simple as “To do the best we can”? The things a person left behind, her friends, her accomplishments, the marks she made on the future, were the reasons to be alive in the first place.

The meaning of life is to make life have a meaning.
. . .

She took another drink, savoring it this time, experiencing the sensations, letting the taste affect her. Unfortunately, she didn't have her friends here to share this new insight, simple as it might sound.

Teresa stared across the shifting floor toward the Club entrances. To her astonishment, she saw a broad-shouldered, blond-haired man walk in, the form she had known as Garth for so many years, the face Eduard had worn when he was captured by the Beetles, the body he had swapped with Madame Ruxton on his execution day.

Teresa felt a wash of resentment at the vindictive rich woman for having the gall to wear it in here, their special place. When she looked at those features, Teresa could only see Garth, and Eduard. But now she knew it was a stranger inside.

However, the blond-haired man walked up to the main bar, spoke into a screen and chatted with the bartender's image. He turned to look toward the cluster of isolated tables where Teresa sat. One of the cybernetic, mechanical arms rose up above the lip of the bar to point at her.
At her.

Teresa sat rigid and uneasy as he worked his way past shifting, dancing bodies, climbing the two steps. He came straight toward her. She couldn't believe it. “Are you Teresa?” he asked, looking at her high-cheekboned face, her dark eyes and smooth ebony skin.

She didn't invite him to sit, keeping her barriers up. He grinned with an open, wonder-filled expression that looked so familiar, especially on that face. He gave her a bearlike hug. “It's me
—Garth!”

“What? Who?”

“Garth. In my old body again.” He pulled up a floating chair.

Speechless, Teresa listened as he leaned across the table and jabbered out his story. “Then, after I told Eduard who I was, when we had a chance to exchange a few words, things were different. When the power went out—”

“I did that.”

“I thought that was too much of a coincidence.” Garth gave her a faint smile. “In the darkness, for just a minute, we had a chance to talk. Eduard and I. It was a good talk.”

Teresa swallowed hard and listened.

During that final moment, Eduard had spoken to him in an urgent whisper, figuring out exactly why Garth was trying to sacrifice himself. But Eduard had refused to allow it. “Garth, I don't buy your claim that you have nothing left to live for, nowhere else to go. Look at you—you can always make more and better art. Who's to say any artist is entitled to only
one
masterpiece?”

“But Eduard, I want to help you. I've already accomplished everything I expected to.”

“Then do more!” Eduard had practically shouted. “You can always learn new things. There is no stopping point. Surrender is for cowards and fools.”

Now, in the Club, while dance music droned in the background, Teresa listened with tears of amazement in her eyes.

“Eduard insisted on completing the hopscotch, the way we were supposed to.” Garth's blue eyes held a sheen of tears. “He said it was high time for him to do a selfless act of his own. I think . . . I think I felt Soft Stone there for a moment, at the end.”

“She was,” Teresa said. “I know it.”

Heads turned in the Club as a uniformed BTL Inspector strode across the floor, looking for someone. He came toward Garth and Teresa, as if it required all the courage he possessed.

“I hoped you two would be here.” Daragon raised his eyebrows.

“Still spying on us, I see.” Teresa didn't know how to react, but Garth automatically offered him a seat, looking confused.

Daragon flashed him an uncertain smile. “Yes, I know it's you, Garth. You don't think your little scam with Madame Ruxton could stay hidden from me?”

Abashed, Garth looked at Daragon. “I think I'm going to need a bit of help from the Bureau to get my identity straightened out again.”

“Consider it done . . . my friend.” Daragon leaned toward Teresa, his face more open and anguished than she had ever seen it. “I know you won't believe me . . . in fact, I know you probably hate me. But I miss Eduard, too.”

Teresa drew a deep breath. “He accepted death and gave life back to his friend—exactly the same thing Garth was trying to do for him.”

Garth swallowed hard. “Yes, but he didn't need to. I owed him so much already. I wanted . . . wanted to pay something back.”

“You've been doing that sort of thing all the time, Garth, without realizing it. Don't you think?”

He looked up at her, distant and disbelieving, then turned to Daragon. “Eduard helped me figure out how to be alive again. It was the last thing he ever said. He gave me a new window on human nature and on love. I guess no one can ever completely understand every side of humanity.”

“Giving up is the worst possible thing,” Daragon said. “A waste.”

Garth's lips formed a wan smile. “One of these days I may even contact Juanita Cole, to see what insights she might be willing to share. Maybe I can learn from her.”

Teresa reached over to grasp Garth's hand. “I'm looking forward to all the new works of art you're going to create.”

Garth had decided he would dedicate his new panorama experience to Eduard. And Pashnak. Already in his mind he planned an ambitious new display of images and experiences, a complex and heartfelt work depicting the things that had meant the most to him all through his life.

He would call it F
RIENDSHIP
.

CODA

The walls around him shone
with crystal data, passages and alternatives spread out with a complexity no single human mind could ever comprehend, not in a million years.

Now, though, Eduard might actually have that much time.

He found himself unfolding, flowing, exploring. COM must have its limits—somewhere—but it seemed to him that all of infinity awaited him, now that he was
inside.

Her form shimmering and indistinct, yet still perfectly recognizable, Soft Stone came to greet him as soon as the upload was completed. “Welcome, Eduard. Join me, join us—all of us.”

He had felt no pain, no sense of dying. It had been just like hopscotching into another body, another mind. A boundless one. Never before had he experienced something so vast.

The monk's luminous shadow reached out, beckoning him. His guide. He didn't see the pastoral images or hear the heavenly chorus he remembered from when she had uploaded herself in the Falling Leaves library. But even without the trappings, he couldn't imagine anything more wondrous.

“There are many inside here, and we're all part of the same overall mind woven through an organic matrix and computer network. At least it started out that way. Now COM has evolved into something else.”

“Am I trapped in this place?” he asked tentatively.

“The same way you're trapped in the whole universe, little Swan.”

COM was like a hive mind filled with people he had known, everything he had imagined learning or experiencing. Another step in evolution, a new group consciousness, which now watched over the childlike remnants of humanity.

“You'll like it here,” Soft Stone said.

Eduard looked around himself with new eyes, absorbing the possibilities, seeing the city, the world, all the lives on the outside from a fresh perspective. He could be like Club Masquerade's cybernetic bartender, except with options and abilities increased a billionfold.

Yes, there would be people to watch out there—people like Garth and Teresa . . . and, yes, Daragon, too. But he also imagined so much more.

It would be easy to get lost here, but Soft Stone took his hand.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kevin J. Anderson
has written twenty-eight national bestsellers and has been nominated for the Nebula Award, the Bram Stoker Award, and the SFX Reader's Choice Award. He also set the Guinness world record for “Largest Single-Author Book Signing.”

For more information, see the websites
www.wordfire.com
or
www.dunenovels.com
.

PRAISE FOR
HOPSCOTCH

A Featured Alternate Selection of
Science Fiction Book Club

“
Hopscotch
is a thought-provoking futuristic look at hedonism taken to the ultimate degree. Anderson's execution is flawless in its delivery of gloom and decaying decadence.”
—
Romantic Times

“At its heart, Anderson's story is a classic tale of struggle and redemption. A novel definitely worth your time.”
—
Tulsa World

“Ingenious SF fantasy about body-swapping.”
—
Kirkus Reviews

“
Hopscotch
is an eerie story that builds nicely. Anderson is not only writing a mystery here, but a paranoia-laced fantasy that occasionally manages to reach in and pluck the well-guarded strings of the reader's mind. Loss of identity is a very real fear, and Anderson plays it here for all it's worth. Add to this a well-crafted setting that heightens the story's tension, and what you're left with is an excellent psychic crime thriller in the tradition of James H. Schmitz, Katherine MacLean and Alfred Bester.”
—
Starlog

“Anderson has always been a more interesting writer when he is creating his own universes. Some interesting speculation about the consequences of his premise and a nicely paced adventure story.”
—
Science Fiction Chronicle

“Anderson delivers a taut, imaginative tale of SF action and intrigue that blends a noir atmosphere with personal heroism and courage.”
—
Library Journal

“As much about identity as about adventure and mystery,
Hopscotch
raises some futuristic anxieties while reassuring that friendship remains constant.”
—
Booklist

“A dizzying, body-swapping plot that interlocks four central characters in a constantly shifting maze of confused identities.”
—
Publishers Weekly

HOPSCOTCH
A Bantam Spectra Book

PUBLISHING HISTORY
Bantam Spectra hardcover edition published February 2002
Bantam Spectra mass market edition / May 2003

Published by Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York

Some substantially revised portions of this novel have been published in
Analog
magazine under the titles “Identity Crisis” and “Club Masquerade.”

All rights reserved
Copyright © 2002 by WordFire, Inc.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2001043264

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law. For information address: Bantam Books, New York, New York.

Visit our website at
www.bantamdell.com

Bantam Books and the rooster colophon and Spectra and the portrayal of a boxed “s” are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Published simultaneously in Canada

eISBN: 978-0-553-89752-4

v3.0