The Jumper (SF Mystery)

The Jumper 16: Complications

Jeff was finding it almost impossible to disbelieve her, even though what she was saying was simply unbelievable.

As she looked through a porthole, across the dark ocean, he sensed a sadness in her that was older and deeper than anything he'd imagined. He barely resisted the urge to put his arms around her.

Then another thought occurred to him, and the resisting was easier. "What happened to the original spirit, the body's owner? Can't you just give the body back to them?"

She looked up at him, and there were tears in her eyes. "No, Jeff," she said, "I can't. When I join with a new body, I join with the spirit already in that body. I am Rachel Cortez. I'm not someone pretending to be her, using her body and memories. Adolfus Crane is still in here, too, as is Gilbert Stevens. Once we are joined, we can never be separated. We leave a body together or not at all."

Jeff's mouth was open, but he had no idea what to think of this.

Rachel wasn't done. "That's not the worst of it, Jeff. I share all the needs and desires of the body and spirit I inhabit." She shuddered, and said, "I'll leave that for later, but if I make a bad choice as to the character of a host, I'm stuck with it forever.

"Anyway, when I take a new body, I make sure the old one dies. It's just an empty shell, by that time, and leaving it alive causes it pain, and anyone who cared about me/it, more grief. Another reason to kill it off, is that it keeps me from being burned as a witch."

"Couldn't you avoid that, by jumping again?"

She looked at him, with furious eyes. "Oh, sure! Just kill another innocent person! Great idea, Jeff."

She saw the shock on his face, and calmed down. "I don't want to hurt anyone, Jeff; I just can't avoid taking a body to live, any more than a mountain lion can avoid hunting to live."

Jeff tried to think this through, but got nowhere. "Okay, okay, tell me this. How long are you usually in one body?"

"That's a much better question," she smiled. "How much looking into Mr. Crane's life did you do, Jeff?"

"Just his financials. I knew he was old."

"Did you find out how old?"

"I think he was almost a hundred. Ninety eight, or something like that."

"Did the coroner examine the body?"

Jeff thought. "You know, he did, but I don't remember him talking about him as an old man."

"Medically, he wasn't."

"What?"

"If you ask your coroner how old the body was he examined, he will probably come up with an age in the late thirties or early forties, but with some unusual degenerative issues. In other words, the coroner would say he is probably only thirty-eight to forty-two, but looks prematurely aged, as if he were in his eighties."

"I don't understand."

"Mr. Crane was a recluse. A few years ago, he could have passed for thirty, and did, regularly."

Jeff stared. "How old was Mr. Crane?"

"I never found that one out, since he didn't know his own age, but I'd say he was in his forties when I took him. Special circumstances."

"What kind of circumstances?"

"He was under sentence of death, and I was already dying, so there wasn't much time to fool around. An opportunity came to make the switch, so I grabbed it."

"And no one noticed, when you collapsed on the floor for a week?"

"Rats," she said with a shudder. When he realized what she meant, Jeff shuddered even worse than she did. Then he got hold of himself.

"Come on," he said, "no one leaves inmates unwatched for that long."

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