—16—
When joining the Sharetakers, Teresa was asked to donate all her worldly possessions—which, in her case, were little enough. Happy with her new sensation of total belonging, she presented Rhys with the credits remaining from her Falling Leaves stipend, plus a little of the money Eduard had given her from one of his body-trade jobs.
Each month Rhys leveraged the Sharetakers’ assets to purchase larger and larger sections of their building. Under his guidance, the size of their “togetherment” increased. From talking with him in private, Teresa knew the (usually) redheaded man had dreams of eventually commanding the whole building as his fortress. He was very goal-oriented, a good thing for the leader of so many people.
Today Teresa knelt on the floor using a pointed sledge hammer to pound out the separating wallboard. Her arms ached from the constant effort. Rhys would probably ask her to hopscotch into a fresh, rested body so she could finish the job. She didn’t mind. It made her happy to feel so useful.
Finally, she broke through into the adjacent two-room condominium newly annexed to the togetherment. After ripping out the walls, the Sharetakers would add firepoles for fun sliding down to other levels and new lifters to take them up through the ceilings. They installed new light tiles to eliminate any concealing shadows. Rhys insisted that there be no private places, because “hiding” ran contrary to the Sharetaker philosophy of openness.
Oddly, the enclave held no COM terminals at all, unlike most dwellings Teresa had ever seen. When she asked him about it, Rhys had glared, “Sharetakers want no interference from a Big Brother network. We create our own universe.”
Teresa went through a dizzying succession of bodies. At times it gave her a disjointed feeling to see her familiar body doing tasks that she was not aware of, while she was stuck in a different form on a manual labor assignment. It was like a shell game with human forms, and she never knew at any given time who was wearing a specific body. She often had to be reminded to synch her ID patch immediately after a swap.
But she had also heard about the dangers of too much hopscotching, the minuscule but not nonexistent danger each time a person detached herself and relocated into a new brain. Finally she asked one of her coworkers, “Aren’t you worried about slippage? I mean, with all the hopscotching we do, there’s always a chance one of us will get … lost, don’t you think? I’ve read COM reports—”
“Rhys says we shouldn’t be concerned about it,” the coworker said, and that ended the discussion.
More than any other assignment, Teresa enjoyed working in the rooftop gardens, growing fresh food in the high-density agricultural area. She could smell the plants, listen to breezes rustling leaves together. It reminded her of the most peaceful times in the monastery, and she felt content.
Teresa carried heavy bags of chemical fertilizers and mulch; she bent over for hours, straining among bean plants to pluck the camouflaged pods. Her body’s shoulders ached, her back hurt. After picking a basket of beans and selecting two perfect zucchinis, she went over to study the ornamental zinnias and asters, grown without genetic modification.
She took a deep breath, sniffing their mingled perfumes. She had been working constantly since dawn, and it was now late afternoon. Her borrowed body was bone weary, her skin was raw from dried salty sweat and sunburn.
After smelling the flowers, Teresa turned around to see Rhys standing there, regarding her. In a low, husky voice he said, “You’ve been very productive today, Teresa. It’s time for your reward. Let’s find you another body so that we can make love.” His eyes sparkled with an animal intensity.
But Teresa was so tired that she didn’t want to do anything but shower and sleep. “Oh, can’t you find someone else, Rhys? It’s been a long time since I had even an hour to myself.”
“I thought you’d be pleased that I’ve gone out of my way to choose you for sex.” He frowned at her, and she could feel his disappointment like a crushing weight. “It’s all about sharing, Teresa. I don’t ask too much, do I? Just get a fresh body. You’ll feel better.” He turned away, expecting her to follow.
She bit her lip, thinking it wasn’t really fair for her to trade out of this exhausted form into someone else. Weighed down by the scorn in his voice, Teresa did as she was told.
Back inside the building, Rhys selected the body that most interested him and commanded Teresa to hopscotch with her. The other woman willingly did as she was told, no questions asked. It seemed important to him that he knew it was Teresa, regardless of what body she brought to him.
Teresa swapped without thinking, a completely natural process now, though she remembered how difficult it had been the first time. Following Rhys, knowing something was wrong, Teresa focused on more pleasant memories.
Not long after Soft Stone had uploaded herself into COM, the Splinter monks who took over Teresa’s mental instruction were clumsy and unimaginative, repeating rote lessons without engaging their intellect. Garth and Eduard did no better.
Alone, Teresa found the most peace and concentration out in the monastery’s garden. She worked there even when she wasn’t assigned the duties; dour old Hickory seemed perfectly glad to leave her to it. She stared at the plants, but her mind drifted far away, as if she could let it detach itself and travel elsewhere.
Once she, Garth, and Eduard proved themselves capable of swapping bodies, the Splinter monks would consider them adults, and the three of them would be sent out into the world. Daragon was already gone, as was Garth’s friend Pashnak, who had loved to read stories aloud. Of the three remaining companions, Teresa was best at introspection. She knew she could figure out the technique of hopscotching, then she could show Garth and Eduard, since they already had a rapport so close it seemed to border on telepathy.
Working in the monastery garden, Teresa felt the warm sun on her back and tried to imagine what it would be like if she could work in another, stronger body. External appearances wouldn’t matter—male or female, old or young, large or small, weak or strong—because it would still be her inside, her essence, her spirit.
She parted the velvety leaves and plucked a ripe tomato, feeling the stem snap free along an invisible but natural line. She focused on the tomato as it came loose—and felt a similar snap in her mind, as if something inside her was also ready to separate. Her vision reeled, and she blinked several times. She picked up the tomato. The stem was broken on top, severed cleanly. Teresa let her mind open, let her thoughts flow and wander … and separate.
No one else was with her in the garden, so she couldn’t test her attempt to hopscotch, but she felt the change, the realization. She knew she could swap her mind. Leaving the rest of the tomatoes behind, unpicked, Teresa ran back to find Garth and Eduard.…
Taking them by the arms, she led them into the basement to the forgotten storeroom where Garth had once painted his mural. The soft glowplates shone on the brick walls, illuminating ghosts of Garth’s painstakingly drawn scene, barely visible behind the beige mask. Here they would be left alone for as many hours as it might take.
“If we all learn this at the same time, then we can leave the monastery together.” Her face was happy, her eyes warm with excitement. Teresa gave a sad smile. “I don’t want to lose you two, like Daragon.” She closed her eyes and reached out with both hands, one touching blond Garth, the other touching dark-haired Eduard.
“This is going to be strange, at first, I think.” Her voice was husky with fear and uncertainty. “Here, let me teach you.”
Later, Garth stood naked in Eduard’s body, staring at himself, at his two friends who appeared the same to him, but different behind their eyes. The three of them had spent their lives leaning on each other; they had learned to depend on their mutual skills. Teresa loved Garth and Eduard wholeheartedly and equally.
And this was so much more. Now they were thrust together in an entirely different way. They were each other.
Garth flexed Eduard’s wiry arms, blinked his eyes. “This feels weird, familiar but … not. I’m stronger in some ways, unsteady in others. I—”
Standing inside Teresa’s female body, Eduard kept touching his skin, running his palms over his new breasts, tweaking his nipples. “Wait until you try this, Garth. She’s got nerve clusters all over her body!” He stroked the patch of hair between his legs, startling himself. “It feels tingly in places that were never sensitive before. And empty in others.”
Teresa wore Garth’s home-body like a baggy uniform. “It’s like I’m in a big suit of armor.” She touched her rough face, fondled her new penis, which seemed to have a mind of its own and defied conscious muscle control. “And this—it’s like an appendage, but I can’t do anything with it.”
“Yes you can,” Eduard said with a sly grin on her face. “I think you’ll figure it out.”
A look of consternation filled Garth’s face, a puzzled expression that was very much like Teresa. “But it doesn’t move like any of my other body parts. I can’t control the reactions—oh!” Garth and Eduard both laughed.
“I never thought it’d be this strange,” Teresa said, listening to the deeper voice in her head, touching the male muscles, the fine curly hair on her chest. “So many things are the same, fundamentally equal, whether I’m in my own body, or Garth’s. But it’s different, too.”
“Not so different,” Eduard said. “It’s what you do with the body that matters.” He looked at Garth through Teresa’s eyes, while Teresa looked down at her own hands, at Garth’s hands.
“Then let’s … do something,” Garth said, using Eduard’s vocal cords.
They began to explore each other in new ways. Three people, three different bodies. The Splinters had never been sexually repressive, had been frank with their explanations. Their young wards, Teresa included, had experimented, more out of curiosity than passion. But never like this.
The boundaries between friendship and sexual love and physical differences blurred, then vanished. Their shadows merged on the walls, becoming indistinguishable. It was a strange and wondrous sacrament, the three of them being in their friends’ bodies, looking at each other through new eyes.
Eduard made love to Garth, who was in Teresa’s home-body, while Teresa herself stood by, wearing the blond-haired male form she had known as Garth all her life. Suddenly, they were inexperienced again, embarrassingly so. But they experimented without shame.
They swapped again. And again.
Teresa coached Garth and Eduard, instructing them in techniques and responses she had learned by exploring her own body. She helped, she touched, she participated.
In a woman’s body now, Garth was uncertain, but curious, trying to cope with a radically altered perspective. Making love to a man, he had to be aroused by a man, though he had never thought in such a way before. The mind had to adjust to a new reality, while the body’s hormones and natural responses remained the same, assisting.
This was Eduard, his friend, his comrade … but when Teresa (in what had been his own body) helped him to touch the ultra-sensitive areas on his breasts, his skin, his clitoris—a vastly new sensation—he began to understand what he needed to do. The sensations became overwhelming. The physical body knew what to do, and did it well.…
When Eduard was finished, Garth came forward in Teresa’s body, sweating and drained but tingling all over. He gracefully touched what had once been his own buttocks, the backs of his thighs. “Here, Teresa, let me show you something. I know you’ll like this.…”
The monks had no idea where to find them, and the three had hours to talk with each other, touch each other, swap again and again. They described and demonstrated the way their own bodies worked.
The lovemaking was satisfying, and erotic, and exhausting—but in the end they realized that for such deep friends, the very act of hopscotching into each other’s bodies was vastly more intimate than sex.…
Now, among the Sharetakers, Rhys made love to her in an open room with others watching. He seemed even more anxious than usual, and Teresa held him and tried to respond.
But it was very different.