ROBIN AURELIAN

PROXIES


I BLINKED SIX TIMES AND checked the big liquid-crystal chrono that faced the
hopchairs in the recovery room. I had been gone for three days, which pissed me
off right from the start. Headhopper had only contracted for two.

When I looked down at the body I got mad all over again. Bruises around the
wrists, ankles; infected bite marks on the shoulders and breasts. Sick soreness
between the legs. Pisswa! I lunged to my feet and then fell back again into the
squish-gel cushions of my hopchair. The dark fuzzy cushions molded to cradle the
body. I gripped the chair armsupports until cushion stuff oozed up between the
fingers. Dumb hopper hadn't fed the body properly.

Those are the worst renters of all, the ones who have no manners and no sense of
future. I spend half my waking time working to buff up the bod so someone else
can enjoy it, and this is what I come home to? I had Things to Say to that
permo-twitch in screening. But first I needed to suck down a gallon of
totalnute, and disinfect and treat the wounds. Who knew what other nasty
surprises the hophead had left?

The room still smelled of hopjuice and ozone and transfer jitters, and of the
body, unpleasantly. Not even a shower before the hop? Damned hopper!

I looked around. Soft illumination came from a light ring near the conical apex
of the room. Consoles and check-screens in the curved dark walls flickered and
blinked and uttered small beeps, alive but unattended. Both the flush-mounted
doors, one to the corridor and one to a closet, were closed. Footprints hashed
the short dark fuzzcarpet on the floor.

The brain imprinter stood like a hunched black metal person behind the
hopchairs, its tentacles dangling and its screens blank. The other hopchair was
empty. It looked like a dark shiny egg cut in half with an scurve, the surface
of the cut all squish-gel cushioning. Most of the monitoring and invasive
equipment was hidden under the cushions.

How come the hophead was gone and I was still here? Not that I wanted to see him
or her. But we should be processing simultaneously.

"Hey! Permo-tweak! Where's my rations?" I yelled.

Getting mad is a bad idea when you're a sharebody. I knew that. There were a few
minutes either side of a hop when nobody was home in the body, and when nobody
was home, burglars and vandals could get in and mess things up. Treat your
service people like the tweaks they were, and they could get nasty. And you
could never pin it on them. There were always two or more administering hopjuice
and catering to the imprinter and the monitors; nothing ever stuck to them.

But when you're an omnimatch and you keep in shape and ask for top megadollar,
you don't expect low-class hopheads. I was a top of the line Type O, at least
before this hopper messed me up. I could tell illegal mones or stroids had been
involved, the way my anger kept cycling and building.

Nobody answered me. Damned tweaks.

I monitored my breathing and did some mind exercises to control spoilspurts and
spillers, hophead legacies one often came home to. The anger died down a little.
I stretched while sitting, testing all the muscles. Weak and abused. Breathe.
Deal with it. Move on.

My attorney was going to squeeze this last hopper, oh yes.

"Hello?" I said, toning the voice down. "Hello? Sorry about that last yell.
Leftover mones. I'm not myself yet."

No one came. Violation of procedure. When one is in recovery there are supposed
to be service people present until a complete recovery is achieved, proved by
matching a brain-wave profile with the original pattern, either the sharebody's
or the hopper's.

I'd never come home to such a bad place, not even when I first started out
sharing the body and had no idea of what kind of contracts to sign. The recovery
room looked like the one I usually woke up in at Class Acts, but a room was
nothing. The body was everything. It took caregivers to get you back to
yourself. Damned tweaks.

I looked at the equipment embedded in the dark walls. There was a dispenser over
there that would give me totalnute and whatever else I needed, if I could get
that far, and if I could figure out the programming. I'd never tried to run a
Class Acts dispenser before. I wasn't sure using a home dispenser qualified me.

I tried standing again, then sat down. Not yet.

I felt the input on the back of the neck to reassure myself that whoever had
hopped me had pulled the plug, unhooked me from the imprinter. Someone had been
here to return me to the body. Where had they gone?

The door opened. Someone edged in, his back to me.

"Where've you been?" I demanded, then took a couple breaths to moderate my
anger. "I need totalnute. Please. What's going on?"

He turned around and I saw he was wearing a headcam, the zoom lens sticking out
in front of his right eye. It focused on me.

"Who are you? What are you doing here?"

"Press," he said. "You the sharebody hosted Livida?"

"What?" Livida, the biggest sensie-star on the continent? Why would she need a
sharebody? She looked better on a bad day than I had ever looked.

He came closer. His lens scoped me up and down, focusing on the bruises, the
bite marks. Finally he zoomed in on the face.

"Cut it out!" I said, lifting the hands to shield the face, peeking at him
between the fingers. Anonymity was in my contract. I appreciated it when I was
home, and my hoppers liked it when they were visiting.

"What's the story?" he said, reaching for the hands.

"The story is I can kick you in the nuts and break your headcam if you don't
start being polite."

He took two steps back. He flipped the lens up and looked at me with his own
eyes. "Come on," he said. "You must have a story to tell. Do you remember any of
what happened?"

"Bud, I just got back. All I know is I'm injured, my service people aren't here,
and I need rations and healing. You tell me what's the Story."

He elevated his eyebrows. "Don't want to pollute a possible source," he said.
"C'mon. How'd you get those marks?"

"How should I know? I wasn't here."

"How could you be anywhere else?"

"That's what a sharebody does. Gets out of the body while someone else uses it.
You sure are ignorant. What newsource do you work for, anyway ?"

"The Tell-All," he said, and I flinched. Dumb-ass news channel, first on the
spot with fake facts and harmful speculations. They'd done a piece on
sharebodies not too long ago that made us sound like instruments of the Devil,
implied that anyone who wanted to keep their souls safe should stay away from
us. The story did cause an upsurge in customers, but it scared my sister too. I
hated anything that tweaked April's stability. It was all she could do in that
broken-up body of hers to maintain her sanity while she waited for her clone to
ripen.

"So tell me again, for the record, your side of this whole thing," he said.

"Forget it! And give me that tape you got when you first came in or I'll see you
in court!"

"Tape? Shows what you know. My link feeds directly back to the station."

"Tell them they better not use any of that or they'll be in lawsuit hell."

He shrugged and flipped his lens back over his eye. "They're always in lawsuit
hell. They live for lawsuit hell. What's your name?"

"None of your damned business! Get out of here! Help, someone!" I looked around
for a call button. Seemed to me there should be one around here, even though I'd
never had to use one; service people had always been present when I needed them.
I spotted a red button on the outside of the hopchair's arm-support and pressed
it hard three times.

Finally a big dark man in Class Act blues came in. "Help, please!" I yelped,
pointing at the reporter, and the service guy grabbed him and kicked him out.

"Thank you. Thank you," I said.

"You the one all the shouting's about?" asked the orderly.

"I don't know. I haven't heard any shouting, except from that Tell-All guy.
What's going on?"

He looked me over, frowned, and went to the wall dispenser. "You haven't had
follow-up, have you?"

"Worst wakeup so far. Dumb hophead left me all messed up, moning and nobody
around to give me nute," I agreed.

He brought me a big frosty glass of tickleberry totalnute with a straw in it. I
didn't like that flavor. I sucked it up anyway and felt better right away.
"Thanks," I said, when I'd finished. I could feel all those nutrients seeping
into the system, strengthening me. "Thanks." I flexed the wrists and ankles.
Already the hurt was less.

"Better start you on antibiotics," he said, and gave me a shot.

"My savior," I said to this guy. Then: "Is it true, about Livida?"

"Seems likely."

"Livida was in my body? Why? What happened?"

"Nearest I can tell, she just wanted to walk around and not be recognized. She's
hopped before, I guess. But somebody squatched. She had a stalker. He found her
while she was in your body, kidnapped her, tortured her. Another nute?"

"Yes, please. Vanilla?"

"Sure." He fetched me another. "Weird kind of crime. Now she's back in her own
body, feeling no pain, and giving a press conference. And here you are without
even a follow-up. Sucks."

"So right." I closed the eyes and drank totalnute, feeling at last a certain
peace as systems stabilized. "Hope she doesn't skreek me for the extra day." I
could use the money. I was already buying April the best clone you could get,
but it didn't hurt to have some bucks put away in case they came up with more
and better mods, which they often did. Sometimes I let April headhop into me,
but it was expensive-- I could skip my own fee, but I had to pay prep, transfer,
and follow-up fees, and every time I did it I was losing income I might
otherwise have made. April understood. Every once in a while, she needed a hop,
though.

"An interesting problem," said the service guy. "Livida didn't stay away on
purpose, unless this was a publicity stunt. Who's dabie?"

"Insurance, maybe. Don't know whose, though. They caught the stalker?"

"Nope. He kept her and played with her for a day, then wrapped her up in orange
parachute silk, taped her mouth and eyes -- sorry, your mouth and eyes, there's
still some adhesive; let me clean that up -- and dropped her off in the
Dumpmaster out back, where one of the cooks found you about half an hour ago."
He dampened a rag with some sort of cleanser and wiped it gently over the eyes
and mouth. With all the other disturbances in the body, I hadn't even noticed
how sticky the face felt.

I licked my lip. "They collect any evidence?"

"Yeah," he said. "He washed you off pretty good, but not completely. Genemap
should be ready sometime soon. They'll catch him. How you feeling?"

"Much better. Thanks again."

"Good. You're welcome."

"I was hyped on mones, or maybe stroids, when I woke up. Could you check my
balance, please?"

"Sure," he said, and pressed a scanner against my arm. "Mones, huh? True what
they say about you shades, you can taste your own blood without biting
yourself?"

"Not exactly," I said. "I just have a real good sense of what I should feel
like, and this isn't it." I did some stretching exercises. Strength was flowing
back into the muscles. I did some stretching exercises in my mind too. I'd never
had a conversation like this with a service person. "This stalker guy, he hurt
the body, and he didn't feed it. Wasn't a nice place to wake up in."

He studied the read-out on the scanner. "Hmm. Not mones. Some new kind of
crystal. Better get you an evener." He went back to the wall dispenser and keyed
in a request, came back with a hypo, sent its contents into the bloodstream.

"Thanks," I said for about the thirtieth time. I could feel the anger dying
down. Yes! Body was more and more mine again. "What's your name?" I couldn't
remember the number of hops I'd made. I couldn't remember a service person who'd
been so nice to me before.

"Patrick. what's yours?"

"Marlena when I'm home. Sharebody 209 when I'm not."

"Nice to meet you," he said.

We shook hands. I felt extremely peculiar. I had two friends; both of them had
started sharebodying about the same time I did. I had my sister. The rest of the
world was full of people who might or might not use my services, might or might
not do something for me -- training medical care, hopjuicing, whatever, mostly
depending on whether I had credit or not.

Two friends, a sister, now Patrick.

I flexed things, testing, and found that my coordination and strength were at
about two thirds normal. "I feel much better," I said. I got to my feet.

"Must be weird, stuff happens to you, you don't even remember it," he said.

I shrugged. What I really wanted was a shower, but that would have to wait. I
got my yellow coverall from the closet. I was glad it had long sleeves and
ankle-length legs. I pulled it on, took a tie-back from the pocket, and tied my
hair into a tail. "It's just...what happens," I told him. "Sometimes I'm walking
down the street and someone recognizes me. Talks to me. Reminds me about that
night we spent together, or something." I glanced clown at the chip implanted on
the inside of my right wrist. SB2090 it said, in tiny letters. "Then I show them
this. Instant deep freeze." I smiled at him. I didn't know why. I made more
money in two days than he could make in two months, and I didn't even have to be
awake while I did it. Sure, I put in the work: I kept the body up. Exercise,
nutrition, medcare, dental work, skin care, spa care, hair styling. Left me a
lot of time to do whatever else I wanted, though.

Mostly sitting with April, plugging in to media, seeing what I had missed while
someone else was walking around in the body.

Watching Livida in the sensics, as she romanced, danced, and found pleasures, as
she went on adventures and stirred up intrigues. She was always so cool. She was
always thinking. She was always beautiful. Never at a loss in a social
situation.

When I met people on the street who had known not-me, I wondered how the
headhoppers had gotten them to talk to the body. Some of these strangers were
beautiful, even. When I was home in the body I would never have approached
people who looked like that. I mean, I knew I'd done a lot for my physique, but
my face, well, it was just plain. I never had paid for any facesculpting;
sometimes people like plain -- if it's a visit, not a lifetime.

Once a man came up to me and kissed me. "Gabrielle!" he said, touching my face
and smiling down at me.

I wanted to smile back and pretend. But I knew if I did, things would be worse
as soon as he figured it out. So I gave him my half-smile, and showed him my
wrist. His eyes went wide. He stepped back from me, red staining his face. He
turned and stumbled away.

Such little broken dreams, half started, never finding their close because I was
not the sum body they had met.

Hopheads shrugged into my body like it was a suit of clothes. They looked like
me. They didn't act like me. What was it they did that I didn't?

Livida never had problems like this.

Or maybe she did.

Was her stalker stalking her, or the people she played in the sensics? Did he
even know there was a difference?

Did he realize he had split the hurt he caused in half? Livida would remember
it; I would feel it.

"Doesn't that seem strange to you?" Patrick asked me.

I couldn't remember what we had been talking about.

He picked up on it right away. "People thinking they know you when you don't
know them back. Doesn't that feel weird?"

"This is a big city. It doesn't happen that often." I didn't tell him about
walking into a bar and seeing a 3D postcard hanging on the back wall with other
bright-colored snippets of travels: me and this fat balding guy, standing next
to a strong-up marlin on some fishing boat in the Caribbean. We were both
laughing. Well, whoever had hopped into me was laughing along with the Big
Sportsman, anyway. His wife? His male lover trying a new wrinkle?

I didn't look at the back of the postcard. "Having a wonderful time. Wish you
were here," probably. I found another neighborhood bar instead.

"My face okay?" I asked.

"Clean and no bruises, anyway," said Patrick.

"Thanks," I said to him for the hundredth time. I'd never thanked anybody so
much in my entire life. I wanted to tip him really well, but that seemed rude.
Maybe I could tip him at a credit terminal downstairs. I checked his ID badge.
HURON, it said.

"I better get home," I said. "I hope someone explained things to my sister. But
I bet they didn't." Maybe I should call her. I looked around for a link. Not a
feature of recovery rooms, apparently.

"She watch the news?" asked Patrick.

"Damn!" That stupid reporter and his headcam!

"You didn't sign a release, did you?"

"Nope. Guy didn't care. Works for Tell-Al1. Said they live for lawsuits."

"Damn," said Patrick. "I'11 walk you out."

"Thanks," I said again.

He went through the door first. Then he turned and pushed me back into the room.
Lights shone around his edges: cams aimed our direction. Voices called
questions. He keyed a code into the doorpad, and the door slid shut and locked.
"Press out there like flies on syrup," he said. He lifted his wrist: he had a
comlink on it. He touched a button and spoke. "Security?"

"Chief?"

"What are all these press people doing in the secure area on floor 23?"

"Agel gave them the go-ahead."

"Has she lost her mind? This is not exactly positive publicity. Get them out of
here."

"Will do."

He flipped the cover down on the comlink and glanced at me.

I went and sat down in the hopchair again. "You're not a caregiver."

"Not generally."

"Huh. Can I call my sister on your wristcom?"

He shook his head. "Internal frequency only. Sorry. We'll be out of here in a
few minutes."

We sat quiet for a little while. Presently he said, "Do you know who was
supposed to be on your recovery team?"

I shook my head. "By the time I settled in there was no one here."

"It'll be on record somewhere," he muttered. He shook his head too. "They're all
fired. Just so you know. Tweaks."

"Fired?"

"Not doing their jobs. Omnimatches are rare! What got into them, leaving you
like that?"

"Livida?" I guessed.

"No excuse," he said.

I thought about that. My contract with Class Acts specified certain minimal
care, and they hadn't given it to me, it was true. I could jump to some other
Headhop Emporium. I could even sue if I wanted to, but it would probably poison
the well for me as to future employment. On the other hand, omnimatches were
rare. Most sharebodies could only be used by one or two of the twelve
mind-types. A template like mine didn't happen very often.

April and I were trying to train her clone to be another such, though. April
headhopped into the developing body daily as it lay dormant in a wash of nute
and thought for its brain so that it would be ready to receive her when it
ripened. And I hopped in occasionally and did mind-stretching exercises.

The clonemakers were monitoring everything we did. If we were successful...well,
my attorney had patents pending.

The door beeped. Patrick spoke on his wristcom, then went over and keyed in a
number. The door opened.

Livida came in, and the door shut behind her.

She looked exhausted. Not how you were supposed to look after returning from a
hop. While you were gone your body was resting and being refreshed with the best
nute and electrical stimulation available. If you had medical problems they
could be corrected while you were out enjoying yourself. Cosmetic surgery. Eye
surgery. Mods implanted. Fact, you could wear out your sharebody, if you got
that kind of contract and paid enough, and come home to a really comfortable
place.

She looked tired, and her eyes were puffy, her nose red. Real crying. She came
and stood in front of me, held out hands I had seen in twenty sensics. "I'm so
sorry," said that voice. It had a million layers of extra meaning in it. I
couldn't think of a single way to answer.

She reached for the hands, and I lifted them. She took them and stared at their
backs, stroked a thumb across the knuckle. "These were mine for a little while,"
she said.

I stared at her thumbnail. There was a nick in the edge of it. I'd seen her
hands more times than I could count, felt as close to inside them as I could get
without headhopping, and I'd never seen a nick in one of her nails before.

"Ms. Redmond, how much did you tell the press?" Patrick asked before I could
figure out why it felt so strange to hold hands with someone I'd never met but
thought I knew very well.

"I don't know," Livida said, her voice troubled. "I've never ended a hop the way
this one ended. I don't know what happened. I can't remember what I was telling
them, only they seemed so much more loud than usual. Usually I feel much calmer,
much more ready to face things. Usually my publicist makes sure no one knows
I've hopped at all, and there's no press. I can't remember -- I can't -- I --"

I stood up and steered her into the other hopchair. "It's the crystal," I said.

"But the crystal was in your body," Patrick said. "How would that translate?"

"Disrupted her thinking patterns. Must not have gotten a good brainwave profile
match when they hopped her home. How did they know it was her?"

"I'll have to see the records. There are six toplines that match no matter what
your mental state, though. The other fourteen are usually a little waggy." He
got out a scanner and pressed it to Livida's arm. His eyebrows rose. "Mimics
crystal, all right," he said. He went to the dispenser, got a hypo, injected it
into Livida's arm. "This should make you feel better, Ms. Redmond."

She sniffed, wiped the tears from her cheeks with her fingertips. "It's been so
awful," she said. "All I want to do is go to sleep .... Oh, that is better.
Thank you." She blinked and looked up at me. Her eyes were violet and intense.
"Body," she said. "I'm so sorry this happened. Before he caught me it was the
best hop I ever made. You are so comfortable, and so able. I was thinking I'd
like to use you at least once a month. I'm sorry. I'm sorry he hurt you. I don't
know what to do --"

"I'll be fine," I said. "I'll get better. I don't think there's any permanent
damage. It's not your fault."

"But it is -- if it hadn't been me -- "

"Just because you do something well in public, that's no reason for you to be
punished," I said.

She licked her upper lip. I'd seen that a hundred times too. It could mean any
of six things: an invitation to sex; deep thought; uncertainty; I'm hungry; I
don't know what to say next; my lip is dry. I was so used to watching her,
sensing her, being her, that I forgot we were in the middle of a conversation.
One didn't talk during a sensie; one just sat back and felt, and waited for
whatever would happen next.

Her eyes clouded. "I can't even --" she said. She touched my hand. She reached
out and rolled my coverall sleeve up, stared at the bruises around my wrist.
"That was real," she whispered. She touched it and I winced. She glanced back at
her .own wrist, the same color as the rest of her perfect skin. "But now it's
not." She let go of my arm and covered her eyes with her hands.

Patrick talked to his wristcom some more. Finally he opened the door and there
was no one outside but some security people, and someone Livida called Zachary.
She ran to him, and he embraced her; it looked like what happened at the end of
most of her sensies.

"They've caught him," someone said. "The stalker. They've caught him, Livida."

She wasn't listening, though. She was gripping Zachary's arm. She was walking
away. She never looked back.

I never wanted to go for facesculpting, but after that newsbyte from Tell-All
played on the hour and on the half for a week, people noticed the body on the
street. "Livida! Livida!" they yelled, and I didn't know how to answer. They
asked for autographs.

So I took some of my savings and had the nose thinned and the eyecolor changed,
and I augmented the cheekbones just enough to look like someone else. I kept the
plain, though.

April still watches Livida's sensies, but I take myself out of the net when they
come on.

I know her. I know her better than I know myself. She was inside the body. So
many times I was inside her image, living her manufactured life because it was
better than my real one. I wasn't in the body while she was, but I lived with
the aftereffects of what had happened to her, and that made me feel even more as
though I know her.

I watched a replay of her press conference after the hop, and I knew her mind.
We'd shared the pain and the crystal and the confusion.

Somehow I no longer know who I am. I don't think she knows who she is either.

Oh, I don't want to be her. It's okay if one person at a time wants to be me,
whoever they are when they're being me. But I don't ever want the whole world
wanting me. Not like that.