The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy: 2014 Edition

by Rich Horton

  The muscle frowned. “We’re getting a taxi,” the tall one said. “Keep quiet.”

  Hands gripped his arms. He glanced down the street and saw a pair of taxis waiting for the next light.

  He let himself sag at the knees as he made the swap. He looked out of the muscle’s eyes and saw his own body drooping, He had a clear shot at the Anglo-Saxon’s face and he took it.

  The muscle would have put more power into it if he had been controlling his own body but Gerdon had the element of surprise in his favor. The muscle’s right fist connected with a target that was totally unprepared.

  He jumped back to his own body and found himself kneeling on the curb with his head slumped. Above him, he could hear both of them grunting and swearing. He backed up in a crouch and hurried toward the corner. He had made a dangerous miscalculation. The muscle was not stupid. He had only been inside his head for a moment but it had been obvious the muscle was the leader. He couldn’t assume he could creep out of sight while they wasted time trying to figure out what had happened.

  So why were they watching her? Why were they combining physical surveillance with a probe of her bank accounts?

  Why did they even need him? They knew where she lived. They knew where she worked. They had an organization that could keep two hooligans busy just watching her. Couldn’t they break into her apartment and look through her files?

  The whole incident looked weird. They had come up to him on a busy street, without knowing who he was, and tried to force him into a taxi. What kind of an organization did stuff like that?

  He could always just ask them why they’d hired him, of course. Leave a message on the phone drop. Listen, I’ve got those numbers you wanted. But I’d like to know what you’re up to before I give them to you. Just in case it might be something—

  Something what? Something that might harm a nice looking woman with a stylish walk and a taste for Jane Austen novels?

  He couldn’t even claim he liked Jane Austen. He had read Pride and Prejudice twice. It was funny. It passed the time. But he had never been able to read any of the others. He had to work just to get through the first two chapters.

  He shouldn’t have panicked. He had let them see something odd was happening.

  The Jane Austen movies had been good. He’d liked all the film versions.

  He bought a black coat in a department store and switched coats in his hotel room. The price tag had made him pause, but who knew? He liked this city. He had been thinking about staying for a while when he got off the ship.

  He timed it so he would be approaching Dr. Shen’s building just before five. He could have timed it more precisely if he had waited until morning. He knew what time she arrived. But he didn’t want to wait. His new finery would help him evade the watchers if they were still around.

  As it was, she stepped onto the sidewalk just a minute after he paused at a spot half a block from her door, on the other side of the street. He took two steps, as he had planned, and settled into a chair outside a pizza place.

  And found himself staring at her back, through the eyes of some hapless passerby, probably male.

  He jumped back to his own body and stood up. The passerby was standing in the middle of the sidewalk, irritating the people maneuvering around him.

  He had known he was taking a chance trying to make a swap at that distance. Normally he stayed within a few steps of the target, with a firm line of sight.

  He closed in on her while she waited for the light at a corner near her apartment. There was a restaurant with sidewalk tables and tall outdoor heaters near the end of the next block. He hurried around her and grabbed a vacant chair two steps before she passed.

  This time he kept her body under control. He recovered from a stumble and steered her toward a store window.

  Stand still. Stare at the window. Focus on the fear. What is the fear linked to?

  He had never done anything like this. He was riffling through her memories with all the frenzy of a burglar who knew the night watchman was coming down the hall. Facts raced at him like a cloud of buzzing insects. Associations that looked relevant led him into amorphous bogs.

  He was still sitting in the chair when he reestablished contact with his body. His head had turned to the left. He was staring at Arly Morse’s back.

  Arly was still facing the store window. Exactly where he had left her. Left hand in coat pocket. Back straight. He hadn’t noticed the hand in the pocket when he’d been inside her. Some part of him must have been looking after her body.

  She turned around. Her free hand jumped to her mouth.

  He stared at her. Should he hop up and get away from her? Had she really figured it out that fast? And adjusted emotionally?

  How long had they been swapped?

  A hand settled on his shoulder. The muscle stepped past him and hurried toward Arly.

  “It’s a nice evening, isn’t it?” the man behind him said.

  They had brought a friend this time—a plump cheery face who had decked out the standard uniform with an orange bow tie. He stepped in front of Gerdon’s chair, close enough to force a pin, and Gerdon looked back and verified the hand on his shoulder belonged to the tall guy who’d taken the punch the last time they’d met.

  The tall guy was bawling their location into a phone. The muscle had started maneuvering Arly toward the table, one hand gripping her wrist, his other arm wrapped around her shoulder in a friendly looking embrace. People glanced at them as they went by but nobody stopped. It was hurry-home time. Let somebody else worry about it.

  The car met them at the corner, a few steps from the restaurant. It was an SUV, with seats for six, and that created an awkwardness. Muscle finally decided Arly should sit in front, next to the driver, and Gerdon should sit behind her, with the muscle beside him and the other two watching his back.

  Arly had stared at him the whole time she was being pushed toward the table. She had told them she was willing to see “Freddy” anytime he wanted to talk to her, but that had been the only thing she had said so far.

  “We’re just looking for some information,” the tall guy said when they had all been properly packed into the car. “We’re just trying to find out what this guy is up to.”

  The muscle rolled his eyes. Gerdon had caught glimpses of him when he had been darting through Arly’s memories. Arly had realized he was the smart one, too.

  He studied the controls of the car as they drove through the city. He didn’t drive much, given his predilection for cities, and they kept adding new things between his stints behind the wheel. Could he swap with the driver and open all the doors as he pulled the car to a violent stop? And hop back to his own body and jump out while they were all reacting to total chaos?

  It was a nice fantasy. But what would Arly do?

  They were obviously going to see “Freddy.” Why not wait and see what Freddy wanted?

  Freddy lived in a two-story stone house on a block where all his neighbors lived in two-story stone houses. It didn’t look that impressive to Gerdon, but the tall guy had muttered something about “welcome to the rich people’s world” when they entered the neighborhood.

  They unpacked themselves according to the muscle’s step-by-step instructions. They trudged down the driveway in a tight little formation and the muscle pressed his palm against a plate next to a side door.

  Freddy was sitting in an oversized padded desk chair, in a second floor room furnished with waiting-room armchairs and a desk dominated by an oversized computer monitor. His T-shirt stretched over muscles that indicated his mansion housed an exercise room. He gestured at them with his drink, but he didn’t bother to stand up.

  “You’ve been watching Arly,” Freddy said. “She’s a friend of ours—a very good friend—and we don’t know anything about you.”

  Gerdon had known he could be in serious trouble when they started up the stairs that led to the second floor. He had let himself drift into a situation in which his little trick couldn’
t protect him. There were too many of them and he only had one line of retreat. He couldn’t create a diversion that would keep all of them busy and leap for the first gap that opened up.

  He had let that happen when he had first gone to sea. There were always places on ships where three or four hooligans could crowd a skin-and-bones kid into a corner. There had been nothing he could do about it when they started punching and kicking.

  He had been burning with outrage the first time he had guided a wine-soaked oaf over a rail. He had been savagely aware he didn’t know what would happen. Could he swap back to his own body before his target slammed into the deck machinery thirty meters below the rail? Would he die if his target’s body died while he was inside it? He didn’t care.

  He still didn’t know what would happen if somebody died while he was swapped. Would the other person live out their life in his body? He had always made sure he had time to escape when he killed somebody. Drowning was the safest. Walk them off a bridge into deep water a long way from shore. Zap back to your own body while they were still thrashing around. Go on your way.

  He had never thought of himself as brave. Courage, in his opinion, was an over-rated virtue. Hoodlums liked to strut and act nervy but they always had size and numbers on their side. They had left him alone when they noticed bad things happened to people who attacked him.

  “I’m the person you hired. To get some information you wanted.”

  Freddy scowled. The muscle turned his head and studied Gerdon as if he was looking at an object that had suddenly acquired a new level of interest.

  Freddy gestured at Arly. “I think you and Dan should have a drink in the rec room, Arly.”

  Arly straightened up. “Can’t you tell me what this is all about? You could have just told me you wanted to see me.”

  It was the first time she had said anything since they had arranged themselves in the car. Gerdon had spent most of the ride staring at the back of her neck, as she slumped inside her shoulder belt.

  “I need to talk to this guy,” Freddy said.

  The muscle gripped Arly’s arm and led her toward a side door. She looked back at Gerdon and he turned away from her before she met his eyes.

  He had put her through two swaps. She had looked out of his eyes twice. She had to know something funny had happened.

  “That’s how you do it?” Freddy said. “You follow people around?”

  “I ran into some problems.”

  “You were going to beat it out of her?”

  He couldn’t even tell himself she was some poor little innocent. He hadn’t pinned down all the details when he had rummaged through her head in front of the restaurant, but he understood the general drift. They were working a scheme involving chemotherapy drugs. Arly manipulated the records and delivered the goods to Freddy’s customers. She was supposed to get a percentage of the take on each delivery, but she had been lying about the size of the sales. She was carrying all that fear around because Freddy had warned her he wouldn’t tolerate that kind of behavior.

  She wasn’t even very smart. She’d let Freddy pile the whole thing on her. Freddy set her up with a customer and sat on the sidelines collecting 80 percent of the take. Gerdon had picked up flashes of her after-work life and it looked like she had spent most of her share wandering through stores buying clothes and trinkets like expensive handbags. Freddy had given her a chance to do some extra shopping and she’d lunged at it.

  It was a small time operation. Run by small time people. Milking small time gullibles.

  “It’s her,” the tall guy said. “I saw the way he looked at her.”

  Freddy raised his eyebrows. “Is that it? You like skinny women?”

  “I needed more information.”

  “And you thought you could get it following her around? We hired you because your contact told us you could get the information we needed faster and cheaper than anybody else. With no fuss. You were supposed to phone it in almost twenty-four hours ago.”

  “It’s her,” the tall guy said. “He’s some kind of geek. He likes female geeks.”

  “We have a business relationship with Arly,” Freddy said. “We think she may be falsifying the amounts she’s supposed to pay us. We thought we’d run a little audit on her accounts and make sure we’ve been getting the right figures. We have a business relationship with you, too. We gave you half in advance. Up front. On your contact’s recommendation. Give us the information we paid for, you get your other half, we’re done.”

  “What happens to her?”

  The tall guy laughed.

  “We aren’t going to kill her, if that’s what you’re worried about. We’ll just make sure she understands she has to stick to our arrangement. I haven’t thought that through yet, but it probably won’t take much.”

  Gerdon nodded. They wouldn’t need to raise a bruise, given the fear he had detected. They could show her the evidence, have a little fun with her, and send her back to her job knowing she had placed herself in a permanent trap.

  You could even say Freddy was being kind. He was looking for evidence before he locked her in her cage.

  Freddy lowered his head and thought for a moment. “I hired you—whoever you are—so we could get the account numbers without bothering her. Painlessly.”

  “If we can’t do it that way . . . ” the tall guy said.

  “They’re in my inside pocket. In my notebook.”

  Freddy held out his hand. Gerdon ripped the page out of the notebook and Freddy waved at the cheeryface with the bow tie.

  The cheeryface stepped around the desk and bent over the computer. Freddy pushed his chair back and watched Gerdon while he followed the action on the screen.

  “We owe you some money,” Freddy said.

  “You got her?” the tall guy said.

  “I presume you’ll accept dollars. I can throw in a few euros.”

  Gerdon was sitting behind the desk, looking at the startled expression on his own face staring at him across the desktop. He jerked open the drawer on the right side of the desk and saw the gun sitting there, just as he’d expected.

  It was a nine millimeter self-loading pistol—the commonest private firearm in the world. He worked the slide as he pulled it out of the drawer and fired two shots upward, as fast as the gun would operate, at a point on the tall guy’s coat just below his right collarbone.

  He had never been the kind of person who enjoyed shooting. The kick and noise of a gun had felt hard and brutal the first time he pulled a trigger and his feelings hadn’t changed.

  The computer whiz had jerked erect. Gerdon twisted in his chair and fired into a well padded thigh. He was thinking coolly and rapidly, as he always did when these things happened, bolstered by the knowledge he was one step ahead of surprised, confused adversaries who didn’t know what he was doing. He wasn’t trying to kill either of them. He just wanted to put them out of action. There were people who could absorb everything he had done and rip your throat out before they let it stop them. He had watched them ravage his birthland. This crew didn’t look like bonafide human wolves.

  He turned back to the shocked version of himself on the other side of the desk. He placed the gun on the desktop. He pushed against the floor with his legs and rolled backward.

  Then he was inside his own body again. He stumbled as he stepped forward but the confusion only lasted a second. He picked up the gun and aimed it at the man rolling away from him.

  Freddy had good reflexes. He had been through a complete round trip, zip, zap, and he was already twisting like he was getting ready to throw himself to one side.

  This time Gerdon went for the kill. He lined up the sights, elbows locked, and pressed the trigger four times, firing each shot at the standard aiming point in the center of the upper body. One of the bullets went wide but he could see the strikes of the others.

  The computer whiz was staring at the blood on his leg. The tall guy was bending over the desk with his weight resting on his good hand, whe
ezing with pain.

  The side door swung open. Gerdon turned and saw Dan the Muscle crouching on one knee in the doorway, gun in firing position. The gun swung toward him and he put Freddy’s gun on the desk and lifted his hands.

  Dan stood up. He checked out the three casualties and stared at Gerdon with the kind of intense, screwed-up concentration Gerdon had seen on the faces of ship handlers who were steering mammoth vessels through narrow passages with volatile currents.

  “You took that gun from somebody. You didn’t have it when you came here.”

  The computer whiz was sitting on the floor. The tall guy had given up fighting the pain and let himself slump to his knees, with his head resting against the desk. Gerdon wondered if either of them even carried a gun. The only person in this group who looked truly dangerous was pointing a gun at him.

  The computer whiz grunted. “Freddy. Freddy shot us.”

  “Freddy shot himself?”

  “He shot Freddy.”

  Gerdon knew he had to move as soon as he saw Dan’s gun waver. Dan had looked out of his eyes. Dan had punched his partner in the same way Freddy had shot the two men bleeding in front of him.

  He was staring at another jump into unknown territory. Usually he did one swap—two at the most—and stayed locked inside his own head until he got another job weeks later. Now he had done three in the last few hours. One in the last two minutes. Did he know what he was doing? Did he have any idea where this would take him?

  The world trembled. Thunder cracked somewhere—in his mind, or some place in the real world, whatever the real world was. He stared across Dan’s gun at the body the universe had given him—or loaned him, if you wanted to be more accurate.

  Dan was just as fast as Freddy. He started diving behind the desk seconds after Gerdon recovered from his own confusion. Gerdon dropped to his hands and knees and sent the gun sliding across the floor.

  Could he get back to his own body again so fast? Yes, he could. And there was the gun, just two steps to his left. With Dan on his hands and knees staring at the floor.

  He picked up the gun. “Where’s Arly? Stay where you are.”