The Body Scout: A Novel Read online

  “Now they are in game seven of the World Series.”

  “It speaks to the resiliency of this team. They have the heart, and the hunger, and the drive.”

  “And the best upgrades on the market. Don’t forget that.”

  “How could I? I’m chewing Mets MegaMouth Energy Gum right now to keep up with these fans.”

  There was a guard at the mag lift, watching the pregame show on his implanted wrist screen. I tried to clock him on the back of the head, but I wasn’t used to hitting with my left hand. The butt of my gun glanced off his helmet and hit the wall with dull thunk.

  “What the fuck?” He grabbed me and pushed me into the wall. Some of the Zunz goo splattered back on him. His nose wrinkled. “Did you crawl out of the sewer?”

  He was holding on to my prosthetic arm. I jerked it loose from my stump, pulled away while he still held on to the plastic. He made a disgusted yelp. I pressed my armless shoulder into him, pushed him against the wall. With my other hand, I pulled out a knockout shot. Jabbed the needle into his neck.

  “Shit.”

  He slapped stupidly at his neck. Then he slunk against the wall, sliding to the floor. My plastic arm clattered on the grating.

  His veins were a dark yellow and his eyes became so bloodshot they were almost red. I scanned one anyway, as best I could.

  The kid would wake up in a few hours with a headache that would make him want to go right back to sleep. I hoped he’d get injury comp for his bad luck.

  As I rose up the stadium, I remembered the first time Zunz and I ever went to a real ball game. Got the tickets from a scalper in the parking lot. He claimed they were half price and “any less and I’m giving away grocery money from the mouths of my own children.” The Mets versus the Cubs. Back end of the season. Both teams out of playoff contention, but that didn’t matter to us. It was the original teams, before Monsanto and Chi-Labs purchased the names.

  Citi Field was half the size of the smallest FLB stadium today and the stadium was rusting from the storms and rising sea level. But to us, back then, it was a wonder. It seemed massive enough to house an entire civilization. The air was ripe with the smell of belches and condiments. Our seats were way up, and we could see the massive expanse of cheering fans all around the stadium. Zunz ran up the steep stairs, laughing. Hopped in the seat like it was his bed. As for me, I felt a little sick. I was afraid I’d topple over, roll down the dozens of staircases, my body breaking apart with each step I hit. Zunz threw his arm around my shoulder to calm me. “Someday that will be us down there,” he said. “You and me.”

  The lift went up the outside of the stadium, and I could see the streamer birds flying around with their long orange-and-blue tails. And below, the crowds of people shrinking into balls of color: Edenists in their gray robes, police in their black armor, and the fans colored blue and orange. The Edenists were trapped in the quarantine netting. The black dots were hauling the other colors into waiting vans.

  “Folks, we have good news to report,” one of the announcers said. “The violent Edenist terrorists have been subdued. I know that was scary for a while, but the Mets security personnel have it under control.”

  “They claimed to be protesting Zunz, but how can anyone protest an American hero?”

  “I bet someone was funding them. Did you see the expensive zootech they unleashed? We’re hearing reports of over a hundred injuries and infections. I wouldn’t put anything past the Sphinxes.”

  “Wait, Skip, do you hear that sound?”

  “That’s President Newman, folks, flying here to help us celebrate game seven of this remarkable, astounding, and indubitably historical series.”

  The smog was thin, and I saw a fleet of helicopters coming toward the stadium. The big black one in the middle was carrying an American flag that hung as tall as a building.

  The lift doors opened, and I stepped into an empty, quiet hallway. The noises of the two hundred thousand fans below were muffled by the sound-absorbing bricks.

  I walked slowly down the hallway, waiting for someone to grab me. Sure that at any second Coppelius would rise from the grave or some security guard would tackle me to the cold, hard floor.

  The Mouth’s suite was up ahead. The doors had a handle shaped like a large golden set of lips giving a kiss. Specks of gold flakes flew into the hallway, only to be vacuumed back up by a tube that shot out of the wall every few seconds to collect the glittering dust.

  I moved down the circle of the stadium, passing various offices and closets. I got to the first of the smaller suites and tried the guard’s eye scan. A red light flashed above the knob. I cursed, quietly. I put a fresh eraser in my mouth and gave Coppelius’s eye scan a try.

  The lock whirred. The door clicked open.

  I pulled out my gun and went inside.

  It was a clean, well-lit room. No bars or guards in sight. The furniture was sleek and expensive looking. Yet nothing quite matched. The walls were adorned with static paintings. Large colorful portraits of woolly mammoths and saber-toothed tigers. It smelled like the remains of a bonfire.

  “Why, Kobo, don’t you know how to knock?”

  47

  THE FIRST ROOM

  Natasha was naked, her pale prehistoric skin dappled with shower water. Her hair flowed down past her collarbone. She was muscular and wide, shoulders like a linebacker. She walked across the room and stepped inside an air dryer. Didn’t seem to mind my presence one bit. The strawberry blonde hairs across her body blew in the artificial wind.

  “We’re not going to mate.”

  “I didn’t think we were,” I said. I still had my gun in my remaining hand.

  “Normally when you barge in on a naked person, you are hoping to mate with them. At least as I understand your customs.” She stepped out of the dryer and into a blue dress with a belt made of interlocking reptile skulls.

  “I was looking for my brother. Not you.”

  Natasha laughed as she pulled on her shoes. A low, smooth laugh like fresh oil being poured into an engine. “After the wild goose chase, you still want the goose?”

  I stepped around the apartment, making sure no one was hiding out of sight. There were a lot of places to hide. The rooms were packed with animal skin rugs and enough plants to feel like a jungle. But I didn’t detect anyone else.

  Natasha picked up a makeup mask from the table. Punched in a code and then pressed it to her face.

  “You’re down to one arm?” Her voice was muffled.

  “Your boyfriend got ahold of the other one.”

  She pulled her face out of the mask. “Coppelius? He’s not my boyfriend. He’s more of an extended family member. We Neanderthals are all one family. Few as we are.”

  I sneered. “He’s dead.”

  This caused Natasha to skip a beat, her face twisted below the brow. But she regained her cool and sat down in a chair. She placed one leg over the other and her hands atop the knees. “That’s unfortunate,” she said.

  There was an orange scarf on an arm of the chair. She picked it up and wrapped it tightly around her throat. The gun felt tiny and pathetic in my hand. Still, I pointed it at her heart.

  “Well?”

  “Well what, Mr. Kobo?”

  “I know everything,” I spat out. “I know about the brainless clones. I know that Zunz was a test subject. I know about the Astral system and the whole fucking plan.”

  She drummed her fingers on her knee. “And what is our fucking plan?”

  “You’ll be able to clone the best players at every position. Never have to worry about their injury or decline.”

  Natasha cocked her head, a sad smile on her face. “Oh, Kobo. You don’t even try to see the big picture, do you? You think we’re spending so many resources to clone a handful of jocks?”

  I balked. She was right. That could only be the start of things. They’d sell the technology to the highest bidder, the mega-rich with incomes greater than the GDP of most countries. “You’ll sell the clones
to the rich, so they can have unlimited pristine bodies while the rest of us schmucks can’t even get one healthy one,” I offered. “And I’m sure President Newman is drooling at the prospect of using remote controlled soldiers in the next invasion.”

  “Sure, those are a couple applications. And I’m flattered that you’re spending this time spelling out your theories,” Natasha said. Her smile was tiny. “But the game is about to start. How about we go downstairs and watch from the owner’s box.”

  “I can’t let you do that.”

  She clasped her wrists together. Held them up for me like a gift-wrapped present waiting for a bow. “I suppose you want to tie me up, then? If you can do it with one hand. There’s time-release handcuffs in my bedside table.”

  “You’re taking this well.” I asked her to move to a different chair beside a steel support beam. She let me link her arms around it and cuff.

  “I’m merely amused. And curious.”

  “About?”

  “About you. About sapiens. Your behavior constantly surprises me, and yet your behavior is also all I know. Isn’t that odd? I’m a Neanderthal, yes. I was raised in Siberia with a dozen of my brothers and sisters. Our own little family brought back by science. We were Neanderthals, but we were attended to by sapien scientists. Taught by sapien teachers. Watched streams with sapien actors, listened to sapien musicians. You get the picture, I’m sure.”

  “Yeah, you stood out like a sore thumb. And you’ve got pretty notable thumbs.”

  While she talked, I looked through the one-way glass to the stadium stands. Tiny blue-and-orange figures were filling in the seemingly endless rows of seats. Drones carrying hot dogs, pretzels, and sodas floated among them. The game would start soon.

  “Quite, Kobo. The point is the sapien gaze is all I’ve seen. Your kind killed mine. Genocide. Buried us in history. You left nothing for me and my siblings to teach ourselves about ourselves. How do we figure out who we are when all that remains is a few cave paintings? While I find sapiens perplexing, evolutionary abnormalities who should have been stamped out when nature had the chance so Neanderthals could have bloomed in peace, I also recognize this is something of a lie. I don’t know what a ‘pure’ Neanderthal would feel, how they would act. I’m constantly playing at a version of Neanderthalism I invented in my head. It’s a costume I’ve been wearing my whole life.”

  “That’s a tough break.”

  She narrowed her giant eyes and pulled her lips back in an expression that was unreadable to me. She looked away. “You know the Russian government sterilizes the few of us that exist? We can’t even try to re-create our slaughtered civilization.”

  “How did you end up here? I never asked you that.”

  “President Petrov took a liking to me. Pulled me out of the mines, let me work as a secretary in the halls of power. Something sexual I assume, but thankfully only in his mind. Anyway, the Russian sapiens never accepted us, though they created us. I guess all parents end up despising their children? During the anti-Neanderthal riots, Petrov sent me to the Mouth as a gift, knowing I’d be safe here. Or safer at least.”

  “That’s a pretty story. I don’t believe it for a second.”

  Natasha shrugged her giant shoulders. “The story worked well enough on the Mouth. That’s all that matters. You, I’m afraid, don’t.”

  “He knows you’re spying on him?”

  “He must suspect I’m back-channeling data to Putingrad. Formulas. Schematics. But so what? The Mouth is a businessman after all. He cares about currency, not country. I provide him with the former.”

  Even restrained, Natasha looked like she could break out of the chair and snap my neck at any second. Her brow made her expressions unreadable to me.

  “What does any of that have to do with me?”

  “Baseball bores me, Kobo. Win. Lose. Win. Bats, balls, and fouls. Who cares? I’m a lot more interested in what you will do.”

  “Save Zunz.”

  “Save?” Her laughter was sharp and loud. She shook her head at me. “Well, you can save him, I suppose. He’s right next door. But where’s the girl?”

  “The girl?”

  “Yes, the girl. Lila is her name, I believe.”

  I felt the jagged metal thing twist in my stomach again. “Where is she?”

  Natasha raised her wrists. “Unlock me, and I’ll take you to her. I’d like to watch how it all plays out.”

  I raised the gun to her head. It was trembling in my hand.

  “Where?”

  “She’s with Dr. Setek. Aren’t you proud of him and his research? He puts on a good show with all his crazy legs. But there’s a great sadness inside him. Deep as oceans. He’s desperate to have his actual legs back. To walk like you or me. And soon he will. If we go to him, perhaps he can affix a new arm to that empty shoulder of yours. It’s a shame to see you with only one. Actually, why don’t we do you one better. Let’s get you a new body, arm and all. When we grow one of these clones, they don’t have injuries. They’re the pure you. The way your genes want to be. I can offer you one, but only if you come with me.”

  The image of my possible self appeared in my mind, complete and gleaming. No crushed arm. No out-of-date bionics. The version of myself I’d imagined almost every day for my entire life. I wanted it desperately.

  “Shut up,” I said.

  “We can get your new body upgraded. We have everything here at the Meadows. All the serums and boosts you could want. Every upgrade your heart desires.”

  “Quiet.”

  “Your face gets red when you’re confused. Do you know that?”

  I had to see Zunz. I’d never get the chance again.

  “No,” I said. “I’m not uncuffing you. You’re staying here until I get Zunz. Then we’re all going to Lila together.”

  “If you say so,” Natasha said. She settled into her chair, her extra-large eyes watching me from the shadow of her brow as I backed out of the door.

  48

  THE SECOND ROOM

  Zunz,” I shouted, staggering into the large, open room. My heart felt like a crumpled-up ball of paper. I stopped a few feet inside.

  I’m not sure what I had been expecting.

  Zunz stood at the far end of the room, looking out of a one-way glass wall, alive and whole. He had a beer in one hand. His other was encased in another medical glove. This one was sleeker and smaller than the one I’d seen at my apartment, when he took me to visit Setek. He remained at the window, his wide back facing me. He took a sip of beer. Then he turned around.

  “Kobo. All right!”

  He smiled that familiar smile, his lips pushing up into his baseball-glove birthmark. He walked toward me. It all happened very fast and impossibly slow at the same time. I kept waiting for him to blink out of existence. To be a hologram or a hallucination. Another fake.

  But it was Zunz. His birthmark was in the correct orientation and his grin the right degree of lopsided. It was the real Zunz. The one I’d grown up with. The one I knew.

  “Wow, Kobo. Natasha told me you might come, but I didn’t believe her.” He spread out his arms. He was wearing a pair of jeans and a shirt that said New Man for Newman. A Monsanto Mets baseball cap sat high on his head.

  He swung his arms around me. Hugged me. Slapped my back.

  Other than the apparatus around his hand and a few scattered wrinkles on his face, he could have stepped out of our high school locker room.

  “It’s terrific to see you. I didn’t know when we’d get to hang again,” Zunz said.

  “I thought you were never going to be again.”

  My gun was still in my hand, held limply at my side. I lifted it, swung it through the room. I didn’t see anyone else.

  “Hey, can you put that thing away? It’s me and you. Like old times.”

  I lowered the gun, kept it at my side.

  Zunz noticed the empty space where my arm used to be. “Wow. What happened to your arm?”

  “Natasha’s brother rippe
d it off.”

  “Natasha has a brother? Oh, that big guy with the weird face. I thought they were lovers.” He laughed, held up his injured hand. “Me and you, same problem. Only one working hand apiece. How did you get used to it when we were kids? Your arm, I mean.”

  “I never did,” I said.

  Zunz’s smile flatlined. He nodded solemnly. “Hey, are you thirsty? You want a beer?”

  “A beer? No. What? I came to break you out.”

  “Break me what?” he said, then seemed to hear a noise. He jogged back to the window and looked down at the field.

  “You think we can win?” he said, still looking out the window. “I feel good. We’re starting Woods today. They’re unstoppable. They have a cutter that no one can hit. It’ll be three up, three down. Boom, boom, boom.”

  “JJ. We have to get out of here.”

  His eyebrows arched and his lips curled in a way that was part frown and part smirk. “Hey, have a seat, man. Let’s talk it out. Maybe you don’t know everything, you know?”

  He gestured toward the sharkskin couch along one wall. The glass table in front of it was laser cut with a mural of Zunz himself hitting a home run. A freezer drone bobbed around, a cold beer popping out of the hole.

  I was bewildered enough to sit down, thirsty enough to drink. It tasted bitter and cold.

  Zunz sat across from me, propped his shoeless feet on the table. His skin was paler than I’d remembered. A slight bit of gut rolled over his jeans. “Listen, I’m sorry I wasn’t able to tell you about all this. God, I wanted to. I bet you were worried sick. And you don’t know how much I’ve missed you.”

  “Why couldn’t you?”

  “Management put it in the contract. Nondisclosure and all that. Not negotiable.”

  “Contract?”

  “Wait, before we get to that I want to show you something.” He hopped up and walked down the hall. I followed him a couple steps behind. “God, do you ever miss the old days? When it was just us and the gang. Me, you, Okafor, and all the rest? Life was so much simpler then.”

  “Yeah,” I admitted. “I miss those days.”