Soulminder

by Timothy Zahn

  Two minutes later, they were once again driving through the Delaware night.

  “I don’t understand,” Rosabel said into the stiff silence filling the car. “Who are they? What happened to … to their son?”

  “Sorry,” Everly said. “The less you know, the better.”

  “No,” Nic said flatly. “You dragged us all the way out here. You owe us some answers.”

  “I’m sorry,” Everly said again. “But—”

  “No, he’s right, Frank,” Blanchard said. “But not tonight. There’s been enough pain for one day.”

  “Then when?” Nic asked. “And don’t tell me to call back in a month. I know that game.”

  “No game,” Blanchard assured him. “Come by tomorrow afternoon at two. I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”

  She paused. “Just be warned: it may be more than you want to know.”

  Lydekker’s day was filled with the usual busyness, from catching up on email, to calling his agent and other contacts, to lining up a trip up the coast for the weekend.

  But lurking at the back of his mind, never far below the surface, was the memory of those glorious hours spent in the Los Angeles alley. In the embrace of that incredible drug.

  By the middle of the afternoon, he couldn’t stand it any longer.

  The guy down the street who peddled weed didn’t have the stuff. Neither did the coke and meth dealer he sent Lydekker to. Finally, four dealers down the line, he got an address where it was rumored someone might have the designer high Lydekker was looking for.

  It was after sundown by the time he reached the man, a scruffy Rastafarian type sitting in a bar just off the Santa Monica Freeway.

  “Yeah, I might be able to get you some of that,” the Rasta said obliquely, his voice slurred with evidence that the rum and Coke on the table in front of him wasn’t his first of the day. “Expensive stuff. You got money?”

  “I’ve got money,” Lydekker assured him, wondering distantly how he was going to categorize this one when he hit up his father for more cash. Research, he decided. He would list it as research. “The question is, when can you get it?”

  “Hey, mon, it’s right out in the car,” the Rasta said, showing a grin full of uneven teeth. “You got the money, we go right out.”

  Lydekker hesitated, wondering if he should instead insist the Rasta bring the stuff in here for an exchange in a more public setting.

  But, really, that would be stupid. Besides, the Rasta was surely too smart a businessman to try to rob a brand-new customer. For starters, the man was half drunk. For finishers, Lydekker was carrying a 9mm Colt in his waistband. “Fine,” he said, standing up. “Lead the way.”

  The Rasta’s car was exactly what Lydekker expected: a beat-up Chevy that no one on the LA streets would look at twice, let alone think might be owned by a salesman making ten thousand percent profit on his merchandise. The trunk was likewise not a surprise: a couple of scattered blankets, tools, and containers of motor oil and window washer fluid covering up the collection of illicit drugs hidden beneath them. “You wanted a dose of Lady Dainty, right?” the Rasta asked, rummaging through the packages.

  “Yeah,” Lydekker confirmed. At least, that was what the man at Walkabout had called it. “How much?”

  “Five”—the Rasta paused, throwing him an appraising look—“hundred,” he continued, apparently sizing up Lydekker as someone unfamiliar with current street slang. “Cash,” he added, as if Lydekker might try to put it on a Macy’s card.

  “Yeah, I know,” Lydekker said, pulling five bills from his pocket. This was something of a deal, really—the Walkabout man had mentioned the stuff usually went for seven hundred a pop. He was probably getting some sort of first-timer’s discount.

  Even at full price it was a hell of a lot cheaper than what Walkabout charged for this kind of experience. He handed over the money, received an unmarked prescription pill bottle with a childproof cap in return, and turned away.

  “One more thing, mon?”

  Steeling himself, moving his right hand casually to the grip of his gun, Lydekker turned around. If the Rasta was holding a weapon …

  He wasn’t. He was holding something far worse.

  A shiny badge.

  “LAPD,” the Rasta said, his accent and fake drunkenness gone. “You’re under arrest.”

  “He was an advocate for freedom,” Blanchard said. “In—I’m sorry; I still can’t tell you which country. He became enough of a headache for his government that they had him snatched.”

  “And then tortured him,” Nic said quietly, his body once again feeling all prickly. “To death.”

  “Eventually, yes,” Blanchard said. “But they did far more than that. The neuropreservative residue in your tissues show that they actually tortured him to death five times.”

  “Five times?” Rosabel asked, her eyes wide. “But how—” She inhaled sharply. “Oh, no. God. No.”

  “Yes,” Blanchard confirmed with a sort of quiet bitterness. “Thanks to Soulminder, they were able to kill him, store his soul while they repaired his body, then bring him back and do it all over again.”

  “Until they got tired of the game,” Nic said, anger starting to simmer inside him. “And you didn’t stop them?”

  “We had no say in the matter,” Blanchard said. “Each Soulminder office operates at the pleasure of the local government. Besides, up until now we had no proof that this was going on.”

  “And now that you do?” Rosabel challenged.

  “I’ve brought it to the attention of Directors Sommer and Sands,” Blanchard said. “I’m sure they’ll do what they can to stop it. Especially Dr. Sommer.” Her lips compressed. “What you have to understand is that we’re also swimming upstream against our own government. Since the passage of the body-sharing laws, we really can’t stop this sort of thing from happening.”

  “What are you talking about?” Nic demanded. “How in hell does this come under the heading of recreational?”

  “It’s multiple soul transfer,” Blanchard said. “The fact that it’s multiple transfers into the same body doesn’t matter. Call it an unintended consequence of a hastily- and poorly-written law.”

  “Can’t they rewrite it?” Rosabel asked.

  “Of course they could,” Blanchard said. “But even if they did it would only apply to Soulminder offices here. Other countries could still use the current statutes, or any statutes they like.” She sighed. “But it’s even worse than that. No government is going to rewrite the laws because no government wants to.”

  “Not even ours?” Rosabel asked.

  “Maybe even especially not ours,” Blanchard said. “Every soul transfer is taxed. Taxed a lot, at both the Federal and state level. Recreational body-sharing generates a lot of revenue, and no one wants to kill this latest incarnation of the golden goose.”

  “So it all boils down to money,” Nic said. “That’s all. Just money.”

  “Yes,” Blanchard said. “Which is also the only reason you have that body in the first place. Once the torturers were done with Ishaq, they patched him up one last time … and sold his body to the U.S.”

  “So they could earn some brownie points by giving it to a vet who’d lost his legs,” Nic rumbled, the nausea threatening to overwhelm him again. “Nice little surprise bonus for someone.”

  “It wasn’t a surprise, Nic,” Rosabel murmured. “The plastic surgery—it predated the torture, remember? They planned to sell his body from the very beginning.”

  “She’s right,” Blanchard said, nodding. “They did just enough work on the face to keep anyone who’d known him from recognizing him if they saw him on the street.”

  “And our government’s just going along with this?” Nic asked.

  “There are a lot of injured vets,” Blanchard said. “As you said: political brownie p
oints.”

  “So what if I refuse to play the game?”

  Blanchard looked him straight in the eye. “Then you die,” she said bluntly. “Your old body’s long since gone. If you decline this one, it’ll be given to someone else.”

  “Nic, please,” Rosabel said, her hand wrapping around his in a death grip. “You can’t … you just can’t.”

  “Take it easy, Hon,” Nic said, squeezing her hand reassuringly. “I’m not talking about dying just to make some kind of useless statement. I’m talking about the whole game. This whole damn body-switching, body-stealing game.”

  Abruptly, he stood up. “Fair warning, Dr. Blanchard,” he said. “I appreciate what you did for me. But it’s over now. I’m going to fight you on this one, just as hard as I can.”

  Blanchard shook her head. “No, I don’t think so.”

  “And you think that why?”

  “Because,” Blanchard said calmly, “I’m on your side.”

  Nic blinked. “What?” he asked cautiously.

  “Yes,” Blanchard confirmed. “So is Frank Everly. And so is Director Sommer.”

  Nic looked at Rosabel. “The guy who invented Soulminder?”

  “The very same,” Blanchard said. “He’s just as angry as you and I are about what his creation has been turned into. And he’s promised to stop it.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know,” Blanchard said. “I don’t think he does, either. Not yet.” She cocked her head, studying him. “I understand you’re still looking for a job. You want to work for us?”

  “Doing what?” Nic asked.

  “I don’t know that yet, either,” Blanchard said. “Let’s figure it out together.”

  Nic looked at Rosabel. Then, slowly, he sat down again. “Yes,” he said. “Let’s.”

  “The purpose of this meeting,” the Assistant District Attorney said briskly, peering at his tablet, “is to ascertain the parameters of a plea bargain between the State of California and Daniel Reginald Lydekker, of the city of Los Angeles.”

  Lydekker squeezed his hands into fists under the table. His lawyer had assured him that a first-time offense like this would probably result in nothing worse than probation.

  But his lawyer had apparently missed the latest statutes on the class of drugs Lydekker had been caught buying. Those particular drugs were chewing a swath through the sons and daughters of the elite, and the State of California had apparently decided that was where they would draw a line in the long-neglected sand.

  A line that was now positioned directly beneath Lydekker’s feet.

  “A conviction on all counts could bring a sentence of five to seven years in prison,” the ADA read from his tablet. “Our offer, in exchange for a guilty plea, is six months, plus five years’ probation.”

  Lydekker tightened his fists even harder. Six months. Six months.

  He couldn’t do six months. He’d barely survived the twenty hours he’d been in the county lockup before his lawyer had been maneuvered through the legal hoops and gotten him bailed out.

  Six months would kill him. It would absolutely kill him.

  “Or,” the ADA continued, “the State is prepared to offer one year of being on call to a licensed office for recreational body-sharing.”

  Lydekker stared at him. “What was that?” he asked carefully.

  “One year of being on call for recreational body-sharing,” the other repeated, looking at Lydekker with an odd expression on his face. “It’s considered a form of high-level probation these days. Tell me, do you have any sports abilities? A lot of people are looking for that. Or artistic expertise, or anything else someone might want to experience?”

  “You’re joking,” Lydekker said, the words coming out like pieces of sandpaper. In his mind’s eye he saw himself racing down that snow-covered hill … saw the blazingly beautiful alleyway … felt the hammering agony of the drug withdrawal …

  “It’s perfectly safe,” the ADA assured him. “The contract provides for the client to pay any medical bills should there be an injury—”

  “Yes, I read the damn contract,” Lydekker gritted out. “This is insane.”

  The ADA shrugged. “As I said, it’s just an offer,” he said, closing down his tablet and putting it back in its case. “Feel free to discuss it with your attorney. If you decide not to deal, contact my office and we’ll set a court date.”

  He stood up and headed for the door. “Wait,” Lydekker said.

  The ADA turned back. “Yes?”

  Lydekker took a deep breath. Six months. Maybe even seven years … “Motocross,” he said bitterly. “I can do motocross.”

  CHAPTER 7

  End Game

  It wasn’t the biggest fraud trial in New York history. Bernie Madoff still held the record on that one. It wasn’t the most notorious, either. There were a goodly number of high-profile murder, terrorist, and crime boss cases that future chroniclers would have to choose among for that dubious honor.

  But Marvin Chernov had duped his clients of over twenty billion dollars, and many of those clients had been Manhattan’s most powerful, famous, and supposedly sophisticated movers and shakers.

  Those embarrassed movers and shakers wanted his head on a platter. Figuratively, literally, or some combination of the two.

  That was where Adam Jacobi came in.

  And where Marvin Chernov went out.

  The rooftop Jacobi had chosen for the job was a long block away from the courthouse where Chernov was currently basting the judge and jury in his oh-so-sincere smile and probably not sweating in the slightest. Certainly not visibly. The man hadn’t convinced all those investors that he was as pure as Vermont maple syrup by showing the slightest molecule of doubt or hesitation.

  But for all of Chernov’s external confidence, Jacobi had no doubt that the jury would hang him out to dry.

  Leaning forward, Jacobi peered through the scope attached to his FN Special Police sniper rifle, resting on its bipod at the edge of the roof. Briefly, he wondered if he should double-check his ranging calculations, then dismissed the thought. He’d run all the distance, drop, and windage numbers and zeroed the crosshairs for those stats, and he never made mistakes. All the hard work was done, and all that was left was to line up the crosshairs on Chernov’s forehead. The .300 Winchester short magnum round and the laws of physics would do the rest.

  He was wondering idly how long the sunlight would last before the afternoon clouds that had been forecast rolled in when there was a sudden flurry of activity on the courthouse steps. A single glance through the scope at the shirtsleeved cameramen and overpolished and microphone-laden news babes was all he needed.

  The trial was over for the day, and Marvin Chernov was about to head back to his temporary quarters on Rikers Island.

  Setting the butt of the rifle stock against his shoulder, Jacobi set his eye to the scope, and his finger against the trigger guard, and waited.

  The wait wasn’t long. Three minutes later, surrounded by a phalanx of cops and lawyers, Chernov walked through the doors and headed for the mob of reporters.

  Jacobi shifted his finger from the guard to the trigger.

  The past four sessions of the trial had established a pattern. Each time Chernov emerged from the courthouse he would stop on the top step, deliver a short harangue on the eminent unfairness of the charges and his total innocence, then take a few questions.

  Today was no exception. The silver-haired man stopped at his usual place, his entourage stopping more or less patiently with him, and through his scope Jacobi saw his mouth begin moving as he launched into today’s speech.

  He was just getting warmed up when Jacobi’s .300 magnum blew out the back of his head.

  He’d had another name once, the name his mother had given him and, he assumed, the blurry succession of foster parents had u
sed when yelling at him. But it had been years since he’d left the last of those hellholes, enough years that he’d stopped even bothering to remember it. Shrill was what the other street people called him, and Shrill was who he was. He was Shrill the street person, the meth addict, the one you didn’t pick on if you didn’t want your ears turned inside out.

  But even more important, he was Shrill the guy with a secret.

  Sometimes one of the others asked how he got by without hitting up the tourists and bleeding hearts for loose change. Sometimes, when he was feeling good and on a hit, he would drop hints about a relative who kept him in food and drugs. Other times, when he wasn’t feeling so good, he would drop even bigger hints that he took the money from those same tourists directly, without asking, leaving them bleeding in some alley. That usually shut off the questions and gained him a little space.

  Which was how he liked it. The last thing he wanted them to know was that he was renting out his body. Not like a hooker rented just the fun parts, but literally renting his whole body.

  Thank God for Soulminder. And thank God, too, that more of the druggies didn’t know about it. If they did, they’d all want a piece of the gold mine, and he would have to shake down the tourists.

  He was in the first stages of withdrawal as he slipped inside the special side entrance that Soulminder had set up for this sort of transaction. He stopped at the desk, gave his name—the people here only knew him as Shrill, too—and was led back to a small room that was nothing but a hospital bed and a buttload of fancy gadgets with wires, tubes, and shiny lights.

  And, of course, there was the helmet.

  The tech got him settled on the bed and adjusted the helmet around his head. Sometimes the techs asked if he was on something, but this one didn’t. Probably he could tell just by looking that Shrill was coming down.

  That was how it was supposed to be. No one borrowed a druggie’s body just to feel the middle of a high. They borrowed it because they wanted the whole package, from the first whiff of smoke or tingle of the needle, right through the high and to the start of the crash.

  Only the start, of course. At the first hint the stuff was wearing off, they scurried back to Soulminder and got their own bodies back.