Soulminder (33 page)

He found a convenient section of alley wall and slumped down onto the broken pavement, gazing at the brilliance of the cloudy sky and the glorious music of the traffic passing by forty feet away. The glow, the fire, the pure mind-swelling pleasure …

He had no idea afterward how long he sat there. All he knew was that when he suddenly came to himself the streetlights had come on, a light rain was falling, the alley’s odors were curling his nostrils, and he felt like complete and violent hell.

He also didn’t have the faintest idea where he was.

Luckily, the Walkabout people had supplied his borrowed body with a GPS set for backtrack. Plodding down the street, forcing one foot in front of the other through the pain and utter despair throbbing through his head, he finally made it.

Leaving the World Cup skier’s highly disciplined body for his own had triggered something of a letdown. Leaving the junkie’s was like stripping off a three-day-dead animal that had somehow fused itself to his skin. He left the Soulminder office feeling like he’d died and then been given a new chance at life.

But though the headache and body sores were gone, the memory of that last bitter withdrawal depression lingered.

As, indeed, did the memory of the incredible high that had gone before it.

The morning phone call to Dr. Blanchard lasted about fifteen minutes. After that, following Blanchard’s instructions, Nic and Rosabel again spent the day in their hotel room.

The hours dragged on, a strange mixture of boredom and tension that reminded Nic of his days in the Army. Between room-service meals, Rosabel pretended to be interested in one of the old movie channels. Nic pretended to catch up on his sleep.

The sun had set, the city’s buildings disappearing into sparkling lights, when Blanchard finally called.

The car was waiting at a side door when they emerged from the hotel. Nic had expected Blanchard to be alone, and he was wrong. “This is Frank Everly,” Blanchard introduced the driver as they pulled back into the street. “He’s head of overall Soulminder security.”

“Oh?” Nic asked, studying the man’s profile in the glow of headlights coming through the windshield. “I didn’t realize we were that dangerous.”

“You’re not the ones I’m worried about,” Everly said. “Did you have dinner yet?”

“No,” Nic said. “But we had a late lunch.”

“There are some snack bars and water bottles back there if you get hungry,” Everly said. “Might as well settle in—it’s going to be a bit of a drive.”

The bit of a drive turned out to be nearly two hours long, taking them from D.C. through northeastern Maryland to somewhere in northern Delaware. The house Everly finally pulled up in front of was an old one, Nic noted as they walked toward it, eighty years old at least. “Who are we meeting?” he asked.

“A family of refugees,” Blanchard said, her voice grimmer than he’d ever heard it. “They’re from—”

“Somewhere else,” Everly cut her off. “Sorry, Doctor, but that’s a need-to-know.”

“I suppose,” Blanchard said reluctantly.

The door was answered by a young man about Nic’s age, his face showing the same dark skin and eyes as Nic’s own new body. “I’m Dr. Blanchard,” Blanchard introduced herself. “This is the man I spoke to your father about.”

The young man gave Nic a long, penetrating look. Then, without a word, he stepped aside and gestured the group to enter. Closing the door behind them, he slipped past them and led the way into a brightly lit living room.

Where, Nic noted uneasily, more than just a single family was waiting. Thirty people more than a single family, in fact. They were everywhere, filling all the available chairs and couches and lined up two deep in the back and sides of the room.

And all of them had similar Middle Eastern faces.

He felt Rosabel tense up beside him. “Doctor?” he murmured, gripping his wife’s hand.

“Sorry—this was my idea,” Everly murmured before Blanchard could answer. “I told Anwarr he might want to invite everyone in the area who knew Ishaq.”

Nic felt a shiver run up his back. Who knew
who
? “You should have warned me,” he said quietly. “I don’t do too well with crowds. Not anymore.”

“It’ll be all right.” Everly tapped him reassuringly on the shoulder, then eased forward past the young man. “Anwarr?” he called.

“I am Anwarr,” an old man said, rising from one of the couches in the front of the group where he’d been sitting with a tight-faced woman about his same age. “This is the man?”

“It is,” Everly confirmed. “Nic, would you step forward, please?”

Nic looked over the silent group. For the most part, their faces were unreadable.

“It’s all right, Nic,” Blanchard said. “Go ahead.”

Swallowing, Nic released Rosabel’s hand and moved up beside Everly.

“May I?” Anwarr asked.

Everly gestured permission. Slowly, like he was approaching a potentially dangerous animal, the old man walked forward until he was about three feet from Nic. There he stopped, his eyes studying every square inch of Nic’s face. “He is close,” he said uncertainly. “But … ”

“I told you there was some plastic surgery,” Blanchard said.

“Yes.” Anwarr hesitated. “May he speak?”

“Of course,” Blanchard said. “What would you like him to say?”

Anwarr visibly braced himself. “The war will not be won by matching the regime’s brutality,” he said, as if reading from a mental script. “It will be won by capturing, not towns, but the hearts of the people.”

“Nic?” Blanchard murmured.

Nic grimaced. “The war will not be won by matching the regime’s brutality—”

And on the couch, the old woman abruptly put her hands to her face, slumped forward at the waist, and burst into tears.

Nic turned to look at Blanchard. But the doctor only had eyes for Anwarr.

And Anwarr seemed to have eyes for no one. “Yes,” he said, the word almost inaudible over the woman’s sobbing and the murmurs of the rest of the people as they moved forward en masse to comfort her. “This is our son.” His gaze flicked briefly to Nic’s face, then dropped away again. “This
was
our son,” he amended in a voice of infinite sadness.

And suddenly Nic felt like he was going to be sick. “Doctor?” he said urgently.

“Yes,” Blanchard said. Nic could hear an edge of Anwarr’s grief in her voice, and a tinge of Nic’s own nausea.

But mostly what was there was anger. Cold, dark, simmering anger. “Yes, we’re done,” she confirmed.

“Come on,” Everly said, stepping back and taking Nic’s upper arm. “Anwarr, I’m so very sorry.”

“A moment,” Anwarr said.

Nic froze. The man was staring at him again, a dullness in his eyes. “Yes?” Everly asked.

“I want you to know,” Anwarr said, his eyes still on Nic, “that this is not your fault. You are not to blame. Promise me you’ll remember that.”

Nic swallowed. “I’ll remember,” he said.

Anwarr bowed his head. “Then farewell. Live your life unfettered. Ishaq would have wished that for you.”

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.”