Hopscotch

by Kevin J. Anderson

  Dangling on the autoscaffold, Olaf blinked in disbelief. Watching Eduard approach in his sexy body, the gangly man looked as if he might panic and zip upward a few levels. Eduard paused and flashed a sensuous smile, then strutted forward again. Olaf froze, and stared.

  Eduard stepped right up to the windowpane, pressed Teresa’s body against the smooth surface as if he desperately wanted to get closer. He touched his lips against the glass in a big, moist kiss. “I’ve always wanted to do it on the roof of a skyscraper. . . .” Eduard raised his delicate eyebrows. “Think you could help me out?”

  “On—on the rooftop?” Olaf grabbed his mag-lock harness to keep his balance. “Hey, I’ve got access!”

  Eduard blew Olaf another kiss and pointed upward. “Meet me up there. I’ll take the lifter, but you’ll have to open the main door.” Olaf swallowed visibly and nodded. The autoscaffolding hummed, carrying him up and out of reach.

  Slightly queasy at what he was doing, Eduard took a fast lifter to the top level and made his way to the locked access door in the maintenance shaft. Normally, no one would come up this high except under special circumstances. Eduard checked his skimpy clothes, shivered, then used another light mist of pheromone spray. It felt oily on his skin, like old sweat. He hoped Olaf hadn’t lost his nerve.

  He didn’t consider Olaf the least bit attractive, or even interesting. But he had endured dental surgery for this man—he doubted sex with him could be much worse.

  Eduard heard a fumbling on the other side of the lock. Lights blinked green on the panel, and the rooftop door opened, spilling sunshine into the stairwell.

  “You’re here!” Olaf said in disbelief. “You’re really here.”

  Eduard climbed the remaining steps. “I’d rather be . . . out there. Alone with you. Don’t you get a thrill out of having sex with perfect strangers?” He smiled, trying to make his body relax, to feel some sort of arousal. “I’ve always wanted to do it up here, so high, under the open sky.”

  Olaf gulped. He closed the door behind him, and the keypad automatically locked it. Then he followed the petite woman’s body as Eduard walked across the open rooftop.

  Eduard stripped off the oil-slick tube top, but held it coyly in front of him, covering his small breasts. He concentrated on his crotch, trying to feel a need there, trying to get wet, to be aroused. He felt no anticipation, though . . . only determination.

  “Just one condition.” Eduard delicately licked his lips with the tip of his tongue. “I want the . . . full experience. We have to do it twice, once in each body. Get undressed.”

  Olaf was only too eager to agree. He fumbled with his work coveralls, trying to undo the fastenings. His hands shook. Eduard felt guilty for using the gangly man so blatantly, but despite the inconvenience, this would probably be the high point of Olaf’s life.

  He let the oil-slick top fall from his hands and gave Olaf time to gawk at the small, perfect breasts. Cool breezes chilled Eduard’s skin, made his nipples harden. “If I’m distracting you, Olaf, I can find a more private place to undress.”

  Olaf swallowed hard again, and went back to undressing. “No, no—that’s just fine. Hey, how did you know my name?”

  Instead of answering, Eduard wasted no time stripping off Teresa’s sexy new skirt and dropping the panties. He twirled around naked, pretending to revel in the open air. He found a smooth, sunny spot on the concrete rooftop and lay back, beckoning Olaf.

  Sex with this nervous, middle-aged window maintainer was demeaning, but no worse than all the other things he had done in his life. In the end, he found he could tolerate it better if he closed his eyes. No problem. Olaf couldn’t contain himself and was quick enough to finish—embarrassingly quick. At least Eduard managed to avoid much kissing during the ordeal.

  He slid out from under Olaf, who was panting and grinning. “Now for part two of the bargain.” Eduard reached toward him. The gangly man leaned back, looking frightened—but the two of them swapped before Olaf could think of any excuses. They synched the ID patches; if he stole Olaf’s identity outright, he would be too easy to trace.

  With different eyes, Eduard looked down at the naked woman, seeing her petite form, the smooth skin he had learned to know so well, both when it was his own flesh and when it was Teresa’s. As he looked through the eyes of a man again, Eduard saw only a reflection of Teresa lying flushed from the hurried sex.

  Olaf seemed withdrawn and frightened behind Teresa’s big eyes. Eduard guessed the window maintainer had never before experienced intercourse as a female, outside of his fantasies. “Don’t worry,” he said consolingly. “I’ll make it easy for you.”

  Eduard strutted around in Olaf’s lanky body, stretching, feeling the muscles. “Let me get accustomed to this, so I can perform better.” He glanced at the waifish body sitting naked on the rooftop. “You’ll see how easy it is.” He strolled around the perimeter of the building, peering over the edge to the streets far below.

  “Okay, I . . . I think I’m ready now,” Olaf said, shivering in the tiny female form. “But it’s getting cold up here.”

  Eduard reached the spot where he had dropped his sexy new clothes. He picked up the scarlet skirt and oil-slick tube top, removed the last of the unmarked credits Garth had given him—then tossed the garments over the edge, where breezes yanked at them and carried the clothes away.

  “Hey!” Olaf scrambled to his bare feet, disoriented in her small body. “Those are your clothes.”

  Eduard quickly grabbed Olaf’s coveralls. “No—they’re yours now.” He fumbled in the pocket for the access card and ran toward the locked rooftop door.

  “What are you doing?” Olaf said in complete disbelief, his voice a pale reflection of Teresa’s. Eduard hated that he needed to do this. It wasn’t fair. But then, life wasn’t fair—especially not lately.

  He swiped the keycard, unlocked the access door, and tugged it open, dragging Olaf’s clothes along with him. He would get dressed in the stairwell, after the door was safely locked behind him.

  Olaf stumbled after him in Teresa’s petite body, but Eduard pulled the access door shut before he could reach it. In the dim stairwell the reader panel blinked green, then red, automatically slamming dead bolts into place. The hapless maintenance man now found himself stranded on the roof, without clothes, in a strange woman’s body. Muffled pounding came through the door.

  After he climbed into the worn coveralls, Eduard pocketed the keycard, but then decided he had no use for it. Instead, he set it on the top stair, where someone would find it. Olaf shouldn’t have to pay a fine for losing that, at least.

  Eduard finished dressing. His clumsy fingers had difficulty with the seam-sealing tape, but at last he felt comfortable in his new identity. He could easily fake being a building maintenance man. After all, he’d been one.

  As he trotted down the stairs, already tired, he realized how out of shape Olaf was—especially in comparison to Mordecai Ob’s physique. Even as the victim of a scam, Olaf had gotten the better end of the deal. He’d probably be too embarrassed to report it anytime soon. Eduard certainly hoped so.

  Meanwhile, Eduard had what he needed: a new, unrecognizable face and form. Now he could run.

  48

  Lights flashed, media spotlights dazzled the audience . . . but this time the attention wasn’t for Garth.

  Pashnak accompanied him to see the debut of Juanita Cole, an innovative new creator whose work had been billed as “the most intriguing, most breathtaking to hit the art world in decades.” Garth heard this with a bemused smile, because the same hyperbole had been used to describe him not long ago. JOY and several other “panorama experience” art exhibitions had been raging successes for Garth. In only a year, Stradley had made him a star.

  Now, the hype-meister had presented them with two VIP invitations, encouraging Garth to see Juanita’s astonishing accomplishments (not surprisingly, she was another one of Stradley’s “projects”). It was always good to study the work of anoth
er groundbreaking artist.

  “Juanita’s doing innovative things with aerogel sculpture,” Pashnak said as they wove their way through the well-dressed crowds. Tuxedoed security guards scrutinized each special invitation. “I could quote you some of Juanita’s preliminary reviews, if you want more background.”

  “I’ve seen the reviews.” Garth studied the trappings of the exhibition: the laser rainbows and media scancopters, familiar from his own FRUSTRATION show, followed by JOY. Back then, he’d been swept up in the excitement, but this spectacle made him feel oddly uncomfortable. Perhaps a twinge of jealousy? “Maybe we shouldn’t have come on opening night. We’ll be lost in the noise, and we won’t get a chance to have a good look. Let’s come back in a week, when there’s more elbow room.”

  Pashnak grabbed his arm. “It’s not the same as opening night. Besides, you should get out more, keep in contact with your audience, understand what they want. How else can you connect with them?”

  Garth gave a reluctant sigh. “Even when you’re pestering me, you’re right.” He remembered how he had wandered among the innovative craftsmen at the open-air bazaar, searching for inspiration, studying techniques. Now that he was a success on his own, was he afraid to see what miracles another hot new talent could produce?

  He had increased his audience with each subsequent offering: FRUSTRATION, then JOY, then TRIUMPH. Thanks to the springboard Mordecai Ob had given him—despite what the dead Bureau Chief had done to Eduard—Garth was a bona fide sensation, a feeling both new and refreshing after so much obscurity.

  Still, as Pashnak led him into Juanita Cole’s splashy debut, he felt the uneasiness return. Right now, he would rather have been visiting the baby—Emily—again, though that was impossible. Even after months, some part of him still responded to the psychological bond he had formed with the baby girl during pregnancy and childbirth. Sometimes, when his longing got bad enough, Garth wanted to hold Emily, touch her, but the mother seemed uncomfortable with his continued interest. She had fulfilled their contract, she said, and he’d gotten his birth experience. She asked him not to come again.

  With no other place to direct his emotions, Garth had incorporated those feelings into a new project. Maybe he’d send the curly-haired mother a free pass.

  Passing through the sparkling door arch, they were welcomed by professional greeters. Some of the smiling attendees even knew Garth’s name, and Pashnak automatically made the appropriate acknowledgments for him.

  Garth walked through Juanita’s wilderness of art. The hall had been made into a labyrinth of eerie, alien sculptures, free-form moldings of translucent aerogels, ultralightweight foams that were little more than solidified air. Juanita had concocted impossible geometries, overbalanced and distorted forms that gravity would never have allowed. The phantom material flexed and contracted with temperature variations, pulsing like something organic and alive.

  “It’s a fairyland,” Pashnak said.

  “Or a nightmare.” But Garth’s face held a flickering fascination.

  In the surreal multicolored forest, spangles of fiberoptics bristled through the aerogels. Mood lights shifted spectrum from red to blue; some of the sculptures were photoreactive, emitting time-delayed photons in different colors.

  They walked through the twisted, flexible forms and colors, ducking low and squeezing between. Spectators chattered excitedly among themselves. On their faces Garth saw childlike delight.

  Sensing his mood, Pashnak said, “This is totally different from your panorama experiences, Garth. You’ve got nothing to worry about.”

  He looked up at the ceiling, where aerogel clouds hung like frozen smoke. “Of course not. Who said I was worried?” His denial rang hollow, though. He had never been able to hide his feelings from his perceptive assistant.

  Working feverishly and never slowing down, Garth had achieved more fame than he had ever dreamed. Stradley had set him up for exhibition after exhibition. Everything ran like clockwork.

  In quiet moments of taking pleasure in his accomplishments, Garth usually turned his thoughts to Eduard and his plight. Pondering his friend’s downfall and continuing ordeal, Garth was exploring darker territory in his next work—LOSS, a counterpoint to TRIUMPH. In LOSS, he examined broken dreams, failed attempts at finding happiness, the cruel emptiness after death, discord, or circumstance. He wove in subtle emotional threads, from profound grief to simple bittersweet regret, a mother’s separation from her child. Life went out of control sometimes and crashed into a wall. Like Eduard had.

  Garth had not heard from his friend since the final night in Club Masquerade. Eduard was still on the run, still a fugitive, while Daragon and the BTL continued to pursue him. Garth wanted to help, but didn’t know how. So he had created his new masterpiece in honor of Eduard . . . though he doubted his friend would ever see it. He intended to make LOSS his best work ever.

  Stradley had openly expressed skepticism about the work in progress, though. “Garth, you did your brash debut with FRUSTRATION. That’s okay. It was an ‘angry young man’ piece—not pleasant but profoundly moving. Everybody’s entitled to one of those. The critics loved it, you got plenty of attention, and you made your audience. But nobody wants to pay credits for a show that’ll depress them. LOSS? Who the hell wants to see that?”

  “I need to do it. It’s the piece that . . . that wants to come out next.”

  Rolling his eyes, Stradley had muttered about crazy artists with no business sense. “All right, but I advise you that it won’t be good for your career. Something called LOSS will be tough for me to push in a big way. You understand that?”

  “I understand. But I have to do it.” His work would speak for itself.

  In the wake of his successes, Garth had watched many people imitating his “panorama experience” technique. He had broken new ground, and now others trampled the same path, making it wider. Garth had been a pioneer, and a successful one at that . . . which placed him one step away from being passé in the fickle world of critics.

  Tonight, though, he found a new pioneer blazing a new trail. Juanita Cole’s remarkable aerogel work dazzled him. These bizarre sculptures evoked primal reactions, a flowing feminine sensuousness, a powerful male rigidity. Her creations appealed to more than just his eyes and mind; they appealed to his instincts, as well. Young and angry, brash in her own way, she would make her mark, too.

  Garth stopped to contemplate a swirling mass of blue-green aerogel, a foaming circular funnel called Descent into the Maelstrom that seemed to draw him into its center. Fiberoptics cascaded in a descending ellipse, and his stomach twisted. He was forcefully reminded of the ocean in Hawaii, the clutching water and the undertow, the sensation of drowning. . . .

  Dizzy, he reached out for Pashnak. Once he regained his balance, he touched the sculpture’s outer edge, pressed down on the ethereal material.

  “Please do not touch, sir.” A strident, automatic voice buzzed close to his ear as protective systems activated. “If you persist, security will be notified.”

  Garth stepped away, embarrassed.

  On their way back to the studio, Pashnak marveled at what Juanita had created. Garth, though, found it difficult to concentrate, and his reactions disturbed him. He wished it didn’t bother him that Juanita Cole had begun to garner the same kind of attention he himself used to get. It seemed petty. I should be happy for her. I really should. But the paparazzi already considered him old news. Would the fickle public soon stop enjoying his exhibitions, quickly tiring of the “same old thing”?

  Pashnak looked at him with compassionate eyes. Attuned to Garth’s thoughts and moods, the assistant understood what had triggered his funk. “Don’t worry, Garth. You aren’t one to rely on your past triumphs. Complacency leads to stagnation, after all. You have to keep pushing the envelope to redefine the boundaries. It’s part of who you are.”

  “If you say so,” Garth said as they approached the door to the studio.

  “Yes, I do say so. A
nd you’d better listen to me,” Pashnak said. “I’ll make you some coffee. Then you’ll feel better.”

  Garth slumped down on the sofa and thought about Juanita Cole. Before going to the exhibition he had checked on her background, learning who she was, where she’d come from. He imagined her to be a person filled with enthusiasm and drive, someone who had recovered from remarkable adversity, used her inner agony for artistic inspiration. She intrigued him.

  Instead of an anguished upbringing, though, Juanita actually knew her parents, had even grown up with her mother. They lived a comfortable, uninteresting, middle-class existence. She hadn’t endured any tragedies, any hardships. She’d lived a bland, quiet, normal life.

  He couldn’t figure out where Juanita got the power to put into her work. In order to achieve such pathos, wasn’t an artist required to experience flaming emotions, highs and lows, the proverbial agony and ecstasy? Like he had endured with each item on his List?

  Somehow, though, Juanita Cole had found the flame within herself.

  Pashnak brought him a steaming cup of coffee. Garth took a sip and burned his tongue. The assistant hovered for a moment, before realizing that Garth wanted to be left alone. He touched the artist’s shoulder compassionately, then quietly departed to his rooms.

  Alone, Garth contemplated in silence. He needed to regain his inspiration.

  Inspiration.

  Setting the coffee aside, Garth picked up his datapad and switched it on. Scrolling through the files, he scanned to see if there was anything worthwhile left on his List.

  49

  Eduard had managed to survive for months—that was something, at least. But with each passing day, the prospect of safety became slimmer and slimmer. He found himself at the ragged limits of what he could do.