Soulminder

by Timothy Zahn

  But in its place was an unnaturally dry mouth and a sense of impending doom. Did he really want to do this? Did he really?

  He squared his shoulders, feeling them rub against the soft back of his wheelchair. Damn right he did. Not just for him, but also for Rosabel.

  He just wished she could be here beside him instead of being stuck away in a reception room somewhere. It would have been nice to have her hold his hand through the procedure.

  Though that hand wouldn’t be his much longer. On second thought, that would probably be a little creepy. Best to leave her where she was.

  Susan had promised thirty minutes. Nic wasn’t sure how long it actually took, but it seemed much faster than that. One minute he was lying on a gurney, staring up at a white ceiling and feeling himself drifting off to sleep. The next minute he was opening his eyes, to an entirely different ceiling.

  The follow-up medical checklist and the purging of the various drugs from his new body took somewhat longer. But finally, Susan declared him to be ready. Walking carefully with the cane she’d given him—she’d warned he would be a little wobbly for another few minutes—he followed her to the reception room where they’d left Rosabel.

  His wife was waiting there, pacing the floor as he’d known she would be. She spun around at the sound of the opening door. A dozen emotions flicked across her face— “Nic?” she asked hesitantly.

  “Here in the flesh and fit as a fiddler crab,” he assured her. His voice sounded odd in his ears, and the words didn’t seem to fit his mouth quite the way they used to.

  Some of the tension went out of her face. “You’re crabby?” she prompted.

  “Dungeness crab, with butter and baked cheese, all soaked in special shallot sauce,” he said, reeling off the second part of the code signal they’d worked out between them. The words still sounded odd, but his mouth seemed to be working better. “How do I look?”

  “You—they haven’t shown you?”

  “No,” Nic said, feeling his throat tighten. “How bad is it?”

  “Oh, it’s not bad,” Rosabel assured him hastily. “You’re just a little … Middle Eastern?”

  Nic looked at Susan. “Middle Eastern?” he echoed.

  “Or Spanish or Moroccan or Greek,” she said. “A lot of the Mediterranean peoples look similar.”

  “You could be Greek,” Rosabel agreed, eyeing him closely. “Either way—I’m just so glad to see you alive and all right.”

  “It’s good to see you, too,” Nic said. “Especially from this height. How about seeing me from a little closer?”

  Rosabel looked at Susan, her face reddening a little. “I don’t know—”

  “Go ahead,” Susan said with a broad smile. “I promise I won’t look.”

  Rosabel’s hug was tentative, the hug of a woman embracing a long-lost relative instead of a husband of three years. Her kiss was just as tentative. “I’m sorry,” she said as she eased away. “It’s just … ”

  “It’ll take some getting used to,” Susan said. “That’s all right. The important thing is not to push it. You’re going to be in town the rest of the week anyway for the follow-up tests, so pretend it’s a vacation. Take your time, see the sights, get reacquainted with each other. It’s still your husband in there, Rosabel—it really will be easier than you think.” Her lips puckered impishly. “And if I may suggest … keep the lights off tonight.”

  Rosabel looked at Nic, her face flushing again. According to her Midwest upbringing, things like that weren’t supposed to be talked about in public.

  Though in private …

  “We will,” Nic said. “Are we done?”

  “For now,” Susan said, nodding. “Don’t forget you need to come in tomorrow afternoon for the first of your post-transfer checkups—all very routine. Now, go on, get out of here. Go back to the hotel, talk, have a good dinner, and—” She held her arms out wide. “Live.”

  “Thank you,” Nic said, holding out his hand. Rosabel took it, and this time her touch was a bit more assured. “So,” he said as he led her toward the door. “What do you think of us dark, Latin types?”

  “Well,” she said thoughtfully. “I do like a good Antonio Banderas movie every now and then … ”

  The former World Cup Ski Team member, somewhat to Lydekker’s surprise, turned out to be Japanese. Or maybe Korean. Or possibly something else.

  Though in retrospect he didn’t know why that should have surprised him. There were mountains and snow all over East Asia, after all, and people always said that the world was a global village now. In fact, now that he thought about it, he vaguely remembered that parts of Nine Days to Live were scheduled to be shot in China.

  But really, none of that mattered. What mattered was that he was going skiing.

  The drive to Breckenridge was quiet. The contract had expressly forbidden Lydekker himself to drive, and the man that Walkabout had contracted for the job was the quiet sort who probably said five words during the entire hour and a half trip.

  Which was fine with Lydekker. His mouth felt funny anyway.

  The doubts began on the way up to the slope, his legs dangling from the T-bar over the snow and trees, the rocks, and the lines of graceful, presumably happy skiers. The run he’d picked wasn’t the most challenging of Breckenridge’s slopes, but it wasn’t the easiest, either. The Walkabout people had assured him that his body could handle anything Colorado had to offer, but the Walkabout people weren’t here. He, Daniel Lydekker, was, and all their learned talk about brain stem and cerebellum modularity and muscle memory didn’t mean a damn if he was about to fall straight off a mountain.

  The doubts ended when he actually pushed off and found himself gliding like a low-flying eagle down the face of the mountain.

  It was like nothing else he’d ever done. Like nothing else he’d ever imagined. He’d done a lot of motocross and once taken flying lessons, though he hadn’t stuck with it long enough to get his license. But while those activities offered some of the same freedom, both also came with raucous, throbbing engines.

  Here, there was nothing. Nothing but the hiss of his skis against the snow, the whistling of the wind in his ears, and the occasional distant shout or laugh from one of his fellow skiers.

  It was faster than motocross. It was more like flying than even flying.

  It was magic.

  He tried half a dozen different slopes throughout that glorious day, daring late in the afternoon to challenge one of the more advanced ones. He fell twice, both times when he tried to take control of his skis and poles instead of relaxing and letting his body’s reflexes do their job.

  Finally, to his regret, it was time to go back.

  His muscles stiffened up a little during the long drive back—apparently, he’d put the body through more than even a World Cup expert was used to. But he didn’t care. The aches and fatigue would stay with the body. He wouldn’t.

  What he hadn’t expected was just how loose and flabby his own body felt as he walked down the Soulminder office corridor. He’d always considered himself to be in pretty good shape, but clearly he wasn’t as buff and toned as he’d thought.

  Still, that didn’t matter. What mattered was that he now had some of the experience the casting director was going to be looking for. What mattered was that the part was as good as his.

  And what really mattered was that he’d just had one hell of a good day.

  “Nic!”

  With a start, Nic came awake. “What?” he whispered tautly.

  “You were having a nightmare,” the voice said, and this time, Nic recognized it as Rosabel’s. “A bad one.”

  Nic frowned in the darkness. The lighting wasn’t right, and the bed felt odd beneath him. Where the hell was he?

  And then, abruptly, it all came back. Soulminder, his new body, his fully functional legs and … other important
equipment. Also fully functional. “It’s okay,” he said. “I’ve had plenty of nightmares before.” Especially since his return from overseas, he carefully refrained from pointing out. Rosabel knew about those nightmares even better than he did.

  “Not like this,” Rosabel said, her voice still tense. “You’ve never had three in the same night before.”

  Nic stared at the faint silhouette just visible against the muted glow from the bedside clock. “Three?”

  “Maybe more,” Rosabel said. “Those are just the ones I woke up for.”

  “I’m so sorry, Rosabel,” Nic said, rubbing the stubble on his cheeks to try to shake off the rest of the sleepiness. The stubble felt odd, thicker than his usual morning shrubbery.

  An instant later, he squeezed his eyes shut as she fumbled on the bedside light and the room lit up violently around him. “I’m calling Soulminder,” Rosabel said, picking up her phone and the stack of paper they’d been given before Nic was discharged.

  “You don’t have to do that,” Nic protested. “I’ve had a lot of bad dreams.”

  “Not like these, I tell you,” Rosabel insisted. “Do you remember anything about them?”

  “Not really,” Nic admitted. This latest nightmare had faded almost instantly as he awoke, though he could vaguely remember seeing a couple of men shouting at him. “Probably another flashback to that IED.”

  “I don’t think so,” she said, finding the right paper and shuffling it to the top of the stack. “I’ve seen that one before, and you always shout during it.” She gave him a dark, worried look. “But you always shout in English. This time, it was something different.”

  Nic stared at her, freshly aware of his new, foreign-born body. “How different? Could you tell what language it was?”

  “Not really,” Rosabel said. “There seemed to be a lot of wordless screaming in there, too.”

  Nic shivered. In his flashback dreams, at least, he was always shouting orders and trying to get his unit on top of the situation. Wordless screaming was a new one. “We still should probably wait until morning before we call,” he said.

  Rosabel shook her head. “Susan said that if anything strange happened I was supposed to call this number right away. I think this qualifies.”

  She punched in the number, shifted the phone to speaker, and set it down on the bed between them. “Hello,” a woman’s voice came. “You’ve reached the voicemail of Dr. Carolyn Blanchard. Please leave a message.”

  Nic looked up in time to see a look of frustration flick across Rosabel’s face. But really, what had she expected at four o’clock in the morning? “This is Rosabel Robertson,” she said. “My husband, Sergeant Nicholas Robertson, was transferred into a new body yesterday at the Washington D.C. office. He’s having nightmares—at least three tonight—and calling out in some foreign language. I wondered if that’s normal, or if—”

  There was a sudden click from the phone. “Ms. Robertson, this is Dr. Blanchard,” the same woman’s voice came. “Can you identify the language he was speaking?”

  Nic looked at Rosabel again, saw his own surprise mirrored in her face. And at four o’-fricking-clock, too. “No,” she told Blanchard. “But I don’t think it was Spanish or Italian.”

  “Can he remember the dreams? Any details that stand out? Any details at all, really?”

  “No, nothing,” Nic called toward the phone. “I didn’t even know I was having them until Rosabel woke me up.”

  “I see,” Blanchard said, sounding a little distracted. “Can you come to the Soulminder office tomorrow—well, today, technically—at ten o’clock?”

  “Yes, of course,” Rosabel said, frowning. “He’s already scheduled for a checkup at two.”

  “I’ll leave a note that he’s coming in earlier,” Blanchard said. “Try to get back to sleep. We’ll take a look and see if we can get you some answers.”

  “Thank you, Doctor,” Rosabel said. “Good-bye.”

  “Good-bye.”

  Rosabel picked up the phone, disconnected, and put it and the papers back on the nightstand. “Well,” she said. “That was quick.”

  “Very quick,” Nic agreed, not sure whether to be relieved or worried. It was gratifying that Soulminder was on top of this. But in the Army, at least, the only things that got quick attention were sudden brush fires that needed to be stomped out. “I guess we should go back to sleep.”

  “Probably.” She raised her eyebrows slightly. “Unless you’re not sleepy.”

  “Not really,” Nic agreed, the last hint of the nightmare’s uneasiness fading away. “Go ahead and turn off the light. Let’s see what develops.”

  It was one of the rare occasions when Lydekker was sleeping alone. But that was fine. A woman would just have distracted him from his dreams.

  And his dreams were magnificent.

  It was like an instant replay of his skiing adventure, an adventure that moreover had been recorded by multiple cameras so as to capture every nuance. The swooshing sound was there, as was the wind and sunlight on his face. His knees bent and flexed with perfect skill and timing, turning his downhill race from mere here-to-there transport into a thing of grace and beauty.

  And with some of the dreams he ended up bouncing off a small slope to find himself soaring over the mountains, the trees, and the other skiers far below.

  It was a terrible letdown when the final dream dissolved into the melodious nagging of his alarm.

  The sense of loss lasted through his shower and to the middle of his second cup of coffee. But then the memory faded, and the real world once again asserted itself.

  And the most important bit of that real world was the audition for Nine Days to Live. An audition he was going to nail like an Olympic gymnast.

  Or, more appropriately, like an Olympic skier.

  He smiled his toothy smile at the mirror as he brushed his teeth. This was going to be a great day.

  “The good news first,” the Soulminder doctor, a woman named Woods, said as she peered at her computer screen. “There’s no indication of a problem in your brain chemistry. The computer’s still checking through the numbers, but all the major indicators are well within proper parameters.”

  “Okay,” Nic said cautiously. He hated the good news/bad news game. “What’s the bad news?”

  “It looks like you might have had some physical traumas in your past,” Woods said, scrolling to another page and swiveling the screen around toward him. “A couple of serious breaks in your arms—one each in left and right—plus a lot of smaller fractures in your fingers.”

  Nic glanced at Dr. Blanchard, sitting quietly beside Rosabel across the room. “So, what, I got run over by a bus or something?” he asked.

  “If you were, you walked in front of at least three different busses,” Woods said. “It looks like the injuries extend over at least a couple of weeks. Possibly longer.”

  “What about soft tissue?” Blanchard asked. “Any scars or torn muscle fibers?”

  “I haven’t checked that yet,” Woods said. “I only spotted the breaks because they’re obvious on the CT scan.”

  “Let’s check now,” Blanchard said, standing up. “Is the exam room still available?”

  “I think so,” Woods said, frowning. “Protocol is to finish the biochem analysis before we move on to a full physical.”

  “I’m aware of that,” Blanchard said. “We can do the physical while the computer chews through the biochem data.”

  “I’m not sure I’m authorized to do that.”

  “You are now,” Blanchard said firmly. “I suggest you check my status.”

  “All right, but the protocol standard is pretty high-level,” Woods warned, punching some keys. “I don’t know anyone who can—” She broke off, her eyes widening. “Yes, ma’am,” she said in a suddenly subdued voice.

  “Come with me, Se
rgeant,” Blanchard said, gesturing to Nic. “Dr. Woods, please set the biochem scan for a Level Two analysis, and then join us.”

  “Thank you,” the disembodied voice came from behind the glare of the audition room lights. “We’ll be in touch. Next?”

  And with that, it was over.

  Lydekker felt numb as he walked through the lot toward his car. So that was it. Thirty seconds’ worth of reading, and then they’d tossed him out like some amateur from Bakersfield summer stock. They hadn’t asked him to do a second passage, hadn’t asked him to stick around—and he knew for a fact that at least two of the hopefuls had been asked to stay—hadn’t even asked him to read opposite one of the other actors or staff. A single, thirty-second monologue, and it was over.

  And from the highs of yesterday’s skiing adventure and his early morning dreams, the world had dropped straight into the tank.

  For a while he just drove aimlessly, too depressed and listless even to bother cursing out all the idiots on the road. The sky was covered with gray clouds, the perfect background for his mood, and the city seemed even dirtier than usual. Finally, for no particular reason, and with no particular purpose, he pulled over and parked.

  To his surprise, he found himself half a block from the Walkabout USA office.

  The same woman was manning the front desk. “Good morning, Mr. Lydekker,” she greeted him. “How was your ski trip?”

  “Fine,” Lydekker said, forcing himself to be polite despite the woman’s gratingly cheerful smile. “What else have you got?”

  She took the abruptness in stride. “Most anything you want,” she said, keying her computer. “We have motocross, waterskiing—”

  “I just did skiing, and I can do motocross on my own,” Lydekker cut her off. “What else?”

  She studied his face. “Most anything you want,” she repeated, reaching past her computer and doing something out of his view. “The only question is how exciting you want the experience to be. And how dangerous.”

  Lydekker frowned. Dangerous? Someone else was providing the body for these little stunts, after all, bodies whose owners knew that some total stranger would be running them. Just how much risk were these people willing to take for whatever Walkabout paid them?