"Anderson,_Kevin_J._-_Identity_Crisis" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anderson Kevin J)

When it was all over, after he'd been paid and after they had hopscotched back into their home-bodies, Eduard didn't have the heart to tell Olaf that he hadn't felt a thing. The nerve deadeners had worked perfectly, the surgery had gone as planned, and Olaf still had to endure the miserable throbbing pains as his body healed....
Afterward, Eduard had seen the whole prospect as an interesting opportunity. It was time for him to leave, to change, to do something else with his life. He began reading the want ads, requests for bodies or various partners. From that point, Eduard simply listed himself on the board, and word got around.
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*IV*
Daragon had not set foot on the mainland in six months, and he saw no opportunity in the near future either. The Bureau and its concerns had become his life twenty-four hours a day.
His afternoons were immersed in the nuances of law enforcement, studying old cases, trying to solve forgotten mysteries. Once humans had learned how to hopscotch, many legal precedents had to be set. The law stated unequivocally that the "perpetrator" of a crime was the _person_, the mind rather than the body. Prosecutions involved locating the mind that had been inside a human vehicle when any felony was committed, back-tracking an identity through COM or ID patches, or sheer detective work.
The BTL used technological means to unmask a mental imprint left on the host brain. A person's mind left readily identifiable pathways for a short while, much as a body could be marked by its own unique fingerprints. Unfortunately, such methods were time-consuming and involved excruciating pain for the suspect body, which more often than not turned out to be innocent.
Thus, Bureau Chief Ob had high hopes for Daragon, who could _see_ the identities of people, mark guilty parties at a glance, no matter what bodies they wore. Daragon had the potential to become the greatest Inspector of this age -- if he worked hard enough at it.
And Daragon worked very hard.
Unlike the rest of the undersea headquarters, Ob's office was plush and warm. An ornamental gas fireplace brought a cheery natural light. The Bureau Chief said, "We've survived for over a century on the sharpest razor edge our civilization has ever encountered. Think of the opportunities for total upheaval, the lack of individualism as we have always known it. Without a ready and reliable means for instant identification of a 'person,' society would crumble into chaos. The sheer potential for abuse is awesome."
"Yes, sir. That is why the BTL is so important."
Ob tapped his fingertips together, bemused. "We can't even begin to keep track of everybody, Daragon, unless they themselves cooperate."
"Every person has an implanted ID patch, sir."
"Useless, unless the people synch after swapping. That is why the penalties are so severe. We must not let others discover that they _can_ get away with fooling us."
"Yes, that would be dangerous." Daragon listened, not even thinking of being judgmental.
Ob raised the COM screen on his own desk and punched in a request. He printed out the results, handing the hardcopy across the desk. Daragon's heart pounded as he took the paper and scanned the words.
"Your first legitimate case, tracking down a lost family member. Consider: a woman needs a vital medical treatment, something that can only be cured through parallel DNA-matching therapy. And that can only be done if she's able to find the home-body of her sibling. Unfortunately, he hopscotched out of his original body long ago, sold it in a long-term lease, which was transferred to another person, who died outside of the swapped body, which then went onto the open market."
Daragon read the particulars. He made a special effort not to smile or frown or show any sort of emotion whatsoever. That would be bad form.
"Thus, the family has to track down their son's lost home-body. A matter of life and death, and they came to the BTL. The son himself has kept in touch, but he's hopscotched from body to body as he took job after job."
Daragon pressed his lips together, then folded the printout and stuffed it into one of his pockets. "I'll find him for you."
"Yes, you will," Mordecai Ob said. "I have faith in you, Daragon. But don't find the body for _me_ -- do it for them."
* * * *
In windowless chambers filled with bubbling coolants and life-support systems, the Bureau's mutated Data Hunters hung in limbo, living a surreal life with virtual bodies, lost inside the computer/organic matrix. Data Hunters were more efficient than any "pure" human, but also so far from normal life that sometimes the actual questions eluded their understanding.
Daragon stood inside the dim, dank-smelling room. As his eyes adjusted, he looked up to where the hairless, stunted bodies hung suspended in their harnesses, wired to the vast cosmos of COM. Their flaccid arms had withered through lack of use. Their spines were twisted, their heads over-large, their eyes squeezed shut and blind, seeing only through neural inputs that linked them into the sea of information.
"I need some help," Daragon said in a loud, firm voice. Bubbles continued to jet into the coolant and recirculation tubes. He saw no motion, no reaction.
One of the embryos drifted in its restraints and turned a sightless face toward him. A voice came out of a small speaker in the wall. "Ah, somebody's come to give me a purpose in life! What is it you seek? Wait, forgive my lack of social graces ... we get no practice whatsoever in here." The body stirred faintly, as if a breeze had bumped its way through the room. Now, the voice came from a different place, disorienting Daragon.
"My name is Jax, and you must introduce yourself properly before you make your request. I'm not just a genie in a bottle who's required to give you three wishes, you know."
He was taken aback. He had anticipated Data Hunters to be alien and incomprehensible, not talkative. "My name is Daragon. Can I call your attention to a case file? If we locate an original body, we may be able to help a person who needs medical treatment."
"Ah, Daragon -- a humanitarian gesture. How wonderful!" The hovering Data Hunter scanned the file in less than a millisecond. "Shouldn't be too difficult. It'll keep me occupied for awhile. That's what we're here for, you know."
Daragon nodded, not knowing what to say. He had never made polite conversation with a mutated husk before.
"But first, you must promise to meet my payment request," Jax said.
Daragon brushed down the front of his trainee Inspector uniform. "But you work for the Bureau. We're part of the same team. This is your job."
"Do you want me to help you or not?" Jax's body did not stir, but the voice coming from the speaker had an interesting lilt to it.
"What is your price?"
"I want you to come and talk to me," Jax said. "We don't get much company, and I can do everything else through COM. But the network can't provide plain, faulty human companionship."
"If that's all you want, then I agree to your terms."
"Good," Jax said. "Come back in an hour and I'll have the information you need. After that, I want you to come and tell me what you did."
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*V*
Wearing his best suit of clothes, Eduard took the lift-tube to the plush upper levels of offices that were inhabited by lawyers of all kinds. He made a cursory check of his appearance, brushed down the front of his clothes, straightened his dark hair, and walked into the meeting with a stern, tough expression on his face. When the negotiations started, he had to make sure he got off on the right foot.
A crowd of expensive suits waited for him in the boardroom -- representatives of the client, family members, and legal counsel. No face bore the slightest glimmer of warmth.
Seeing this, Eduard wondered if _he_ should have bothered to contract his own legal advocate. But the bargain was fundamentally simple, after all, and he understood all the issues. He'd done many such agreements before, but never with such formality.
Behind the boardroom table hovered several go-fers, lower-echelon employees anxious for any job in a big firm. Their sole purpose was to be on call during long and excruciating deliberations. Any time one of the executives had a full bladder, a go-fer would swap bodies and walk out of the room to relieve him or herself. No need to put an important meeting on hold for such irrelevant interruptions.
At the end of the long table a cadaverous old woman sat propped. She leaned forward, bracing herself on shriveled arms. Her skin hung like loose fabric on her bones, tinted a grayish-green from the bizarre medical treatments she had already endured. Her eyes were sharp and reptilian, her nose pinched. Eduard had never before met a person who seemed so altogether unpleasant.
"I am very pleased to meet you, Madame Ruxton," Eduard said, pumping forced charm into his voice. Her lips compressed like a purse-string drawn tight.
The tallest lawyer stepped up, and others withdrew various documents from folders, spreading them out on the table. "You are aware of the risks, Eduard -- uh, there's no last name listed."
"Don't have one." He waved the comment aside. "I was raised in an orphanage."
Flustered, the lawyer continued. "Madame Ruxton's surgery is serious, and you are being asked to endure it for her. Your survival is not guaranteed. We estimate a twenty percent probability that you won't live through the operation."
"I'll survive, no problem," Eduard said. "I'm strong, and I'll help the body through it."
"Nevertheless, we must face reality," another lawyer said. "You have been offered a very large sum of money in order to do this job. Madame Ruxton has guaranteed that such payment will be made -- unless, of course, you don't survive the surgery."