The redhead screamed.
Eduard yanked the heavy hammer from the man's grip. Rhys's wrist now had the flexibility of a licorice whip.
Seeing a bloodred haze, Eduard raised the hammer. He thought of how Rhys had broken Teresa's collarbone with a similar tool, how he had kicked her, cracked her ribs, snapped her wrist. His muscles tensed.
Rhys looked up at him with the wide eyes of a sheep in a slaughterhouse. One blow to the head with the pointed end of the sledge—
“You're not worth the effort. Not in the least.” Instead, Eduard threw the heavy tool across the room, where it left a gouge in the fresh wallboard. He had already won his victory. The great cult leader had been laid bare before his followers, naked in his impotence—and none of the other Sharetakers had bothered to help him. How could the group ever be the same? “If your life was so bad, Robertha, you should have learned to be more compassionate.” Eduard turned his back. “Not how to be a better bully.”
With bloody fists and the crunch of bone still ringing in his ears, he went back to Teresa, satisfied at last.
27
As usual,
Garth arrived first at Club Masquerade, newly returned from Hawaii and still shaken from his near-death experience. He had already made an appointment to see his patron, Mordecai Ob, the following day, to describe some of the new plans he'd made, the new inspiration he had found.
Explosively eager to talk to somebody while he waited for Teresa and Eduard, he told the Club's cybernetic bartender how he had nearly drowned, and how he had found a new quest to experience everybody and everything.
“Aren't you being overly ambitious, Garth?” Bernard Rovin's face asked from the tablescreen.
“It's doable.” He wandered over to stare at the Hopscotch Board, which made him dizzy with its possibilities. So many choices! The complex listing of swapportunities and “experiences wanted” gave him a broad starting point for everything he had to do.
Not long afterward, Eduard came in, leading a bruised and fragile-looking young woman. Garth ran over to greet the two of them, astonished. “Eduard! Teresa? What happened?”
The injured woman raised a cautioning hand as Garth leaned forward to give her a welcoming hug.
“I'm
Eduard.”
Eduard's home-body spoke up. “And I'm Teresa, for now. We're taking turns in his body while I heal. We're splitting the pain between us. It's really kind of Eduard, don't you think?”
Without a moment's hesitation, Garth reached out to the hurt woman's form. “Here, swap with me. You can rest inside my body, if you need to.”
In a normal situation, Eduard might have brushed aside the offer, but he knew Garth's gesture came from the heart, and he did not hesitate. They touched temples . . . and Garth suddenly felt every injury Teresa had endured, the contusions, the snapped bones, the bruises. Even with the pain-blocking medication that fuzzed the details, it was all he could do to lift his mending wrist to synch ID patches.
In the fragile, injured body Garth stumbled over to the nearest table. “All right, Teresa, but if I'm sharing the pain with you—and Eduard—you'd better tell me what happened.”
Comfortable in the artist's blond physique, Eduard helped to settle the aching form onto a levitating stool. Teresa propped sharp elbows on the table. Eduard had to do most of the talking, his voice cold, and Garth could see the anger and hurt reflected on Teresa's face. Every time she heard Rhys's name mentioned, she flinched as if at the sound of a distant gunshot.
Garth remembered the BTL raid on the anti-COM terrorists, how he had frozen in panic when young Teresa needed to be rescued. Eduard had saved her that time as well, without thinking, throwing himself into the line of fire to protect her. “Sorry I wasn't here when you needed me,” Garth said.
Again.
The bartender's scarred and image-processed face popped up on their tablescreen. “Sounds like you three could use a good drink.”
Eduard, in Garth's home-body, sat up, indignant. “Bernard, this was a private conversation.”
Rovin's image smiled placatingly. “Part of my job is to listen to the customers' problems.”
Eduard marched up to the main bar, behind which the bartender's organic remnants hid. Garth winced in his chair and mumbled to Teresa, “I don't know why he thinks he's going to have a better conversation down there than right here from the screen.”
“Neither do I,” Rovin's image said from the table.
Eduard leaned over the bar to get as close as he could to the sealed door of the control room. Behind there, what remained of the man sat implanted in a mobile life-support system. “All right, Bernard, quid pro quo. Let's hear
your
story. How did you get to be this multiplexed, cybernetic hodgepodge?”
Rovin chuckled from one of the screens in the bar surface. “All right, my friend—it's a deal. But you head on back to your table, so I can tell you all at the same time . . . and we can have some measure of privacy.”
When Eduard returned, his small lilt of a smile suggested that his indignation had mostly been an act. Rovin's image paused as his other “parts” continued to cater to various customers. As soon as he had the multiprocessing sorted out, he began to tell his tale.
“When I was younger, I used to come in here as a customer, wild in the body-swapping scene. Hopscotching from body to body, having a grand old time. Wasn't worried about slippage in the least. Never thought anything bad could happen to me.
“Then, a few years ago I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, flying too close to a terrorist bombing near the flower market. My hovercar crashed in a truly spectacular wreck—or so they tell me. I was unconscious at the time. Some people called me a lucky survivor.”
“It was spectacular, all right,” Eduard said with a gasp. “A topaz-blue hovercar? I used the distraction to steal a bouquet for Teresa. Daragon felt guilty about it for a month.”
“Well, I'm glad somebody benefited from my accident.”
Rovin's duplicate images on other tablescreens continued talking with customers, taking their orders, making parallel chitchat. His cybernetic arms and hands worked busily mixing drinks.
“The crash left me a mangled lump. I'd spent all my credits on fast living, and I didn't have any resources left to lease myself a new body . . . not that I was likely to find anyone willing to swap with me at any price.”
Eduard brooded, squeezing his fists tighter. “Score another victim for Robertha Chambers, or Rhys. If it's any consolation, Bernard—” He told Rovin how he had pummeled the renegade terrorist into a bloody lump, since the BTL didn't seem to care about finding her. “Sometimes you can't wait for the law. Not when somebody's hurting you.”
As he sat at the table, Garth felt the bruises in Teresa's slender body, the knitting bones, the deep soreness. He couldn't imagine the flaming agony Rovin had endured. “So what did you do after the accident, Bernard?”
“Well, I'd known the owner of Club Masquerade, and he made me a proposal, not that I had any choice at that point. I came here to be
installed—
literally—as the Club's permanent bartender, linked up to these prosthetics. With multiple arms and eyes, and a lot of concentration, I could watch over the entire Club and all its different rooms, all by myself. Not only did that save the salaries of numerous employees, it also added one more gimmick to this place. You wouldn't believe how many people come here just to watch me work.”
“Don't you feel exploited?” Teresa asked.
“Exploited? I'm fully recovered, healed inside and out, and content with the fact. Where else would I get an opportunity like this?”
“Do you ever leave here?” Garth asked. “Ever go outside to see what you're missing?”
“I'm not missing anything. I've had plenty of experiences already. Here, I can observe a thousand lives from the safety of my own.” Rovin's image smiled. “I delight in watching other people—like you three.”
Teresa sat stiffly in Eduard's body, frowning. “I'd rather have watched a few things, instead of experiencing them myself.”
“We'll help you, Teresa.” Garth focused on her again. “Any way we can.”
She reached over to touch the bruised, waifish body. It would have to be her home-body from now on, since she had lost her original form and had no idea where to look for it. “Oh, I know. And thank you. But sometimes I need to do things for myself.”
She and Garth and Eduard swapped and swapped again until they were in their own forms once more. Garth felt a pang watching her wince, faced again with her slow-healing pain. Teresa was strong inside, but she wouldn't hesitate to ask for assistance, if she genuinely needed it. Not from them.
Eduard stood. “Come on, Teresa. Let's get you back to my place so you can rest.”
“I'm tired of being a burden, even on you, Eduard. The sooner I'm on my feet again—and
independent—
the happier I'll be.”
Garth didn't know what to do. Seeing Teresa's loss of innocence and good cheer made him want to cry. He had felt her deep bodily ache, but could not so easily feel her heart's anguish, the dark shame of what had befallen her.
But he
needed
to feel it somehow, for the good of his artwork.
Arms linked, the three friends prepared to leave. For just a moment, in a pause between fixing drinks and making conversation, the cybernetic bartender lifted every one of his mechanical arms around the Club to wave goodbye.
28
The very idea
of life and all its unexplored terrain unfolded before him like a treasure map. Garth needed to understand so many obvious things he had never thought about before. Sitting alone in a retro coffee shop and drinking strong espresso, he figured that the best thing would be to compile a list of experiences he wanted to acquire. A formal plan for his artistic growth.
The List.
A month earlier, using a frugal amount of the credits Mordecai Ob had given him, Garth had purchased an inexpensive used datapad from a group of Sharetakers selling odds and ends on the street corner. He had gone to visit Teresa, and at the time he'd been hoping to help her, but now he felt guilty about it. The abusive group didn't deserve his support in any way.
He sat under the coffee shop's green awning, sipping from a tiny porcelain cup. He let his thoughts wander, mulling over new ideas, the breadth of what he needed to learn. Possibilities and possibilities.
Through hopscotching, Garth could actually
be
different people, from the ugly to the sublime. It was an opportunity the great classical artists had never had. His art had to speak to each man and woman, to all of humanity. Therefore, he must experience every facet of the human condition from the point of view of each individual, not just as an outside observer.
Nursing his espresso, Garth recorded ideas on the datapad. The magnitude of the task gave him a headache, but he scribed so quickly, adding new ideas, that his fingers were a blur. It was both exciting and overwhelming.
He would slog through his List one item at a time. He had to comprehend being a man, being a woman. Was there any difference inside, in the heart and the soul, or just societal training from childhood in his home-body? If he could swap genders at will, was he still somehow fundamentally
male,
or did all the differences ride on the chromosomes and hormone cocktails of the cells?
He had to know what it was to be old and frail, and to be young and athletic. He needed to be exhausted to the core from a lifetime of hard work . . . and filled with manic unreleased energy, never able to sleep.
He would be muscular and he would be obese. As a woman, he could be flat chested or well endowed. He would be short, and tall; he could wear different colors of skin. He wanted to be pregnant and give birth to a child. In one deformed body he'd be looked upon with disgust; in another, he'd be stunningly beautiful, stimulating the glands of every person who looked at him. And he would do it both from the male side and from the female side.
Garth had to experience everything.
He finished his tiny cup, the caffeine singing through his system, but he felt more energized than even the espresso could account for. He scanned the List and knew he had written barely half of the things that would occur to him. But he could keep adding ideas even as he removed completed ones.
He had a mission now. Life itself would be his full-time job.
After the new painting was hung in a well-lit hallway in Mordecai Ob's house, the only thing that looked out of place was the Bureau Chief himself. Garth just couldn't get used to seeing the man wearing Eduard's body.
Without speaking to the blond artist, Ob appraised the eerie painting of glitter-oils that gradually flowed across preprogrammed paths. Garth had re-created the tumbling breakers from Waimea Beach, but replaced the frothing wavetops with a scatter of stars that spilled into a black universe, showering upon a vague luminous representation of a human form, a soul.
“It's very compelling, Garth.” Ob at last turned to look at him with a very un-Eduard-like expression. “Hypnotic, but disturbing. I'm glad you're not painting flowers or puppy dogs.”
Garth had told him about his trip to Hawaii, about his near-death experience. Then he told his patron about the List. “It's like a quest, Mr. Ob. A specific catalogue of things I want to do and experience.”
“Such enthusiasm! I truly envy you your ambition and your inspiration. I just wish I could capture some of that for myself. Does this mean you'll be wanting additional money?”
Garth felt embarrassed. The thought hadn't even occurred to him. “No, sir. I just wanted to tell you what I intended to do. I thought you should know.”
The Bureau Chief gave him a patronizing smile. “Of course. I'll transfer more credits into your account within the hour.” His shoulders sagged, as if Eduard had gotten too little sleep in his own body. He began to lead Garth down the hall toward the exit.
Garth hesitated, looked at his friend's familiar features. “Would it be possible for me to visit Eduard while I'm here? Just to say hello.”
The other man frowned, then slowly shook his head. “I'd rather you didn't, Garth. Eduard will be exercising my body for another hour, and I don't want to distract him.”
Disappointed, Garth agreed. “All right, maybe next time. I'll bring you another work soon.”
No longer spending his weekends among the aspiring artists, Garth returned to the bazaar as an
observer.
Now, as he walked among the stalls and rugs, he gazed upon the marketplace with new eyes. He studied faces and illustration techniques, including sculptures made of colored plasmas, gravity-defying paintings fashioned from 3-D gels, aroma symphonies.
Excited, he took notes, seeing things he had never
seen
before. Some vendors gave him strange looks, suspicious of his questions and scrutiny. One woman even asked if he was working undercover for the Beetles or some other investigatory agency.
With an artist's eye, he jotted down details, questions to ask someday. He noted how the vendors were attentive to well-dressed customers in healthy bodies, while a swarthy, hirsute man had to clamor to get the attention of the person behind a chocolate stand.
The incident piqued Garth's curiosity, and he wondered if this short hairy man had a stunning wife at home, or someone just as lumpish. Perhaps the man was a convict finishing a probationary term in a brutish form, and would not receive his own physique back until his sentence was up.
Over the past century of hopscotching, equality had come with particular force . . . but only in certain areas. Skin color and gender didn't matter much, men and women, blacks and whites, Hispanics, Asians—anyone could be anyone, by choice. On the other hand, different manifestations of discrimination crept in with a vengeance, creating a clear-cut and striking physical class system. Anyone wealthy or powerful enough could lease a young and attractive physique, while poor and downtrodden people were forced to trade away their bodies to make enough money to survive.
Garth wondered how much real variation there was at the ultimate core of a human being. If he could answer that question, he could make the most profound statement any artist had ever produced.
He remembered the amateurish mural he had painted in the basement of the Falling Leaves, how his one small idea had grown to encompass new details, new characters and scenes. Now Garth was attempting a vastly larger task: a mural of all humanity.
The next step would be to figure out how to
implement
that plan.
Club Masquerade provided the most opportunities all in one place. The majority of people didn't hopscotch indiscriminately, too shy or too afraid, viewing the process as more personal than sexual intercourse. But many Club patrons already wanted temporary new bodies, wanted different experiences. Garth saw them as resources for his work.
One heady evening, he picked up an attractive ginger-haired woman for a one-night/two-body stand—no strings attached, no expectations, just hedonistic fun. They danced, and touched . . . then swapped, and danced and touched again. Later, during the hours in her bed, the woman pleasured herself in her own body, and then in Garth's.
The woman played strange mood music and insisted on keeping the bedroom air temperature uncommonly cold. They were forced to keep themselves warm through body heat, which she happily provided.
Garth had been a woman before, and he'd had sex in Teresa's original body, but this time he paid complete attention to how everything
felt,
how everything
fit.
As he touched his soft female skin, her moist openings, Garth wished he had placed his electronic pad within reach. He needed to document his impressions before they faded from memory. In a woman's body, the nerve endings were different, distributed in new patterns. Various movements produced alternate responses.
He wanted to jot down his observations as a man, then as a woman, comparing the differences in intensity and sensation during orgasm in each gender. But the ginger-haired woman kept him too busy with her own agenda. She seemed very familiar with the workings of both types of bodies, but had no particular interest in contributing to the world of art.
When Garth continued to ask questions, the woman was at first delighted but eventually put off. Clearly, she'd never done such internal self-analysis. Before long, Garth knew the answers and the subtleties better than she did herself.
The ginger-haired woman gave him an insincere invitation to look her up again. After he left, Garth realized that of all the questions, he'd forgotten to ask her name. . . .