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ds_flashfictionAuthor: Salieri (aka ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
troyswann)
Challenge: Amnesty/Genre
Title: Real Boys (A Chip Off the Old Blog)
Length: ~4900w
Characters: RayK and Fraser and Dief (sort of)
Episodes/Spoilers: none
Warnings: Only to Philip K Dick (I'm sorry)
Note: Thanks toraucousraven for the razor-sharp beta and for the title, and to my Sig for the subtitle, and to my Uncle Judd, for reasons obvious only to me and him. Also, while self-contained, this is actually part of a bigger tale, as of yet unwritten, which maybe should remain so. ETA: Sorry about the million typos--they're editing artifacts that were deleted in Word but cropped up on OO. Technology, so not my friend. I think I caught them all, now. *facepalm*
A Chip Off the Old Blog
"Skeeze!" Ray whispered hoarsely. Nothin. Not a damn thing. Skeeze the Sleaze. "Jimbo Jimmy Sczewinszky, show your sorry, sorry self." He leaned down slowly, keeping one eye on the sharp angle of shadow in the doorway under the fire escape and, with the muzzle of his gun, lifted the edge of a crumpled tarp. Still nothin. Well, a couple of rats bellied up to a dead cat buffet, but no Skeeze. "You are so not gettin your bonus, Kowalski," he told himself as he edged around the end of the dumpster and toward the mouth of the alley.
Up in the wedge of sky visible between the 'scrapers, a 'liner was wallowing along, overballasted with the rich and artificially enhanced, the whole boat leaking music and coloured light and and probably some kind of funky radiation, because that's what the rich and artificially enhanced liked to do, which was to shit on the grounders.
Ray was just starting to think about what if 'liner radiation was responsible for Skeezer's brand of ugly when a fist connected with his cheekbone and he ended up spread-eagled on his back in a greasy puddle looking up at the mean end of a two-twenty pulse pistol--with a scope, too. Nice, but kind of overkill at a distance of a half-meter--and then past it at the shadowed face of the guy who owned both the fist and the pistol. Above them, the 'liner's belly flashed the writhing image of some kind of hot girl-on-girl-bot action, and a screamer strip inviting the Rays of the world to CALL NOW!
"Huh," Ray said to the shadow behind the gun, and lifted his empty hand--his own gun was gone, spun off under the dumpster--to point at the 'liner. "First two minutes free."
He couldn't see it in the sickly, slithery light rippling down the ‘scrapers blank glass faces, but he knew from the scrape of a foot on cracked asphalt that the guy was thinking about looking. That was all the chance Ray needed to get his boot planted hard like a piston, right there on the side of the guy's knee.
So he didn't get a new hole in his head convenient for holding pencils, not from the first shot, anyway. The second shot, though, that one fried his jacket--which sucked, because his mom had shipped the damn thing all the way from Cyprian by special packet and he'd only had it for three days--and the third shot would've have left him a corpse with the rakish good looks intact but a pretty humiliating barn door in the middle of his back, except, that is, for divine intervention. Or something.
Ray was too busy scrambling toward the dumpster to see it all clearly, but he was pretty sure the minister of grace or whatever came straight down--from the fire escape, maybe? Hell, maybe from the 'liner or from God herself-- and flattened Ray's attacker like a freebin pile driver. And, when the thug hauled himself up and started to stumble away, the newcomer sort of resolved out of the lurid sex-show-glow into the shape of a low creature making a low sound like Ray remembered from that time at the fair, when he'd wasted a month's allowance to see something he ended up being too scared to actually look at.
Mr. Thug was pretty impressed, too, jerking to a stop in front of Ray, and maybe he'd've turned the pistol on the growling creature except that someone said what sounded like Deef and the creature wound up like a spring and let go, leaping right through the air, planting four feet in the thug's chest and tackling him into the puddle Ray had just vacated.
Ray covered his eyes and expected bloodsplat, sticky down his ruined coat, but the voice said Deef again and it went real quiet in the alley, nothing but the fading thrum of the 'liner and the sound of the thug making little kiddie noises like maybe he was crying.
Ray looked out from between his fingers. The creature was there, on the other side of Mr. Thug, and it had lots of silvery fur and teeth that would be gleaming really nicely if the 'liner hadn't gone and taken most of the light with it. Between Mr. Thug and Ray, there was a pair of tall boots. Tilting his head back, Ray looked up, up past the red jacket all the way to the head, which was wearing a wide-brimmed hat. On the face under the hat there was a small smile.
"What the," Ray said. "Who the."
"Constable Benton Fraser," the guy said, and held out a hand like he was going to help Ray up. Mr. Thug was still crying and the creature was still showing all three hundred of its pearly whites. Ray decided to play nice.
"Constable?" he said.
"Royal Colonial Mounted Police."
Ray declined the hand and instead rolled onto his belly and fished around blindly under the dumpster for his pistol while keeping the circus in the alley in sight. "You're yankin me, right?"
"No, I don't think so."
Ray had to shoo the rats away to get at his gun, which wasn't half so disgusting as what the gun was lying in, which was sticky and warm and just wrong. He pushed himself to his feet and used the gun to point obliquely at the helpful creature with the teeth. "And what's that. Your mount?"
"No. That's Deef. He's a dog."
Ray tried not to let his eyes go wide, but he was pretty sure he didn't succeed, if the Unlikely Constable's quirked-up mouth was any indication.
"A dog? No kiddin." His grin reminded him he'd recently been clocked in the face by the guy currently groveling for his life at their feet, and Ray kicked him in the ribs to even things up a little, and to give them a little quiet because that wailing was pretty grating on the nerves and pain was webbing out from Ray's bruised face and into his brain. The kicking didn't seem to be helping with the wailing, though, which made Ray wonder if maybe he should maybe widen his repertoire a little. He tried ignoration instead and squinted at the dog. "I seen one. A dog, I mean. This one time, at the fair." He shrugged, then, admitting, "Well, I didn't see it, see it on account of how it was... I was.... Never mind. Does it bite?"
The constable now known as Benton Fraser of the no-yankin-me Royal Colonial Mounted Police shook his head once. "Not generally. Unless you've committed a crime." He tugged at his earlobe. "Or you've been impolite."
Note to self, Ray thought: Please and thank you. "Shut up," he said to the Wailer, cuffed him, and stepped closer to the mouth of the alley to see if there were any Blues nearby. There weren't, of course, because hey, it's only gunfire, so he keyed his comm and subvocalized his call code to bring in a mop-up crew.
When he turned back, the constable and the dog were gone.
^^^
The Wailer was not a follow-through kind of guy. He left off wailing and got lock-jaw the second his butt hit the seat of the blue-and-white, and then lawyered up faster than Zip Halloway pulled a 180 on a skinny orbit (Ray took a half-second to be pissed about the Zip Halloway thing, because Ray kinda needed the cash he lost on that race for his mom's birthday present and now he was gonna have to come up with something creative and personal like a macaroni sculpture or something, and all because Zip Halloway was an artificially enhanced freakazoid who could stand up to a gazillion g's hard thrust without his guts oozing out his nose). "There oughtta be a law," Ray said to nobody in particular and nobody in particular paid him any mind.
He was reading the Wailer's file and no-look sidestepping because he didn't need to see where he was going. There was always a wino slouched on the bench outside Interview Two with his legs sticking out into traffic. There was always some rumpled, bruised guy gripping the edge of the high intake counter talking a streak about how he got rolled half a block from his hotel, and there were always at least two girl-bots and maybe a real live girl leaning against the wall next to the break room door like it was the corner of Massey and Fitch on Welfare Wednesday. The winos and the rumpled guys and the hookers changed faces (the girl-bots literally) but they were always winos and rumpled guys and hookers. His feet knew their way around the obstacles.
That's why it was a bit of a surprise when he tripped over something low and furry and ended up head-first in the trash-can by his desk.
"I'm terribly sorry," a voice said from outside the trash-can. The voice went on but Ray didn't hear it because as he rolled over to avoid the helping hands on his shoulders he whacked the trash-can into the metal side of the desk so that his skull, which was already not so good, rang like the bells of St. Mary's in the old flick only without the Bing Crosby.
"--deaf."
Ray yanked the can off his head, sending it ricocheting off of a tech-bot and through the Lieutenant's open office door. "What?"
"Deaf," Constable Benton Fraser of the Royal Colonial Mounted Police said again, speaking loudly like maybe he thought Ray was. Deaf, that is.
"Who?"
"Deef."
"Deef?"
The Mountie aimed his hat at the dog, who was currently engaged in a felonious act, namely very skillfully sliding a Little May Coconut Cake out of Dewey's take-out bag.
Ray sat on the corner of his desk and gave his head a shake. Then he regretted that a lot, and blinked his eyes hard to clear the spots. "Deef's deaf?"
"Yes. He didn't hear you coming, and I was, well, unforgivably inattentive myself, and so I feel it's really my fault and on behalf of both of us I offer sincere--" The Mountie stopped talking, apparently taking it as a bad sign that Ray had his hands over his ears and his eyes screwed shut against the assault of politeness. He waited patiently until Ray lowered his hands and then added, mostly under his breath, "--apologies."
"Yeah, whatever."
There were a lot of people looking at them now, not for the hijinx with the trash-can, which was pretty much situation normal, but because of the dog, who had polished off the Coconut Cake and was eating the protein out of Dewey's sandwich. Dewey was hitched up in his chair with his feet on the seat and not looking too tough just then. Ray decided to accept the Mountie's apology and maybe buy him a beer for good measure.
"It's only a dog, Dewey," Ray said with a small, superior sneer as he got up and went around his desk to boot up the dino. "What, you never seen a dog before?"
"Sure," Dewey said. He put one toe gingerly down on the floor and then snatched it up again when Deef looked at him, because, you never know, maybe protein was protein and maybe Deweys were delicious, on account of how they came marinated in yesterday's eau de bacon. "Sure, I saw them, when I was a kid. There was one next door. Only it was... it was, you know, smaller. Like this big." He held his hands up to illustrate. Ray'd seen rats twice that size.
"Yeah, whatever." The dino's screen flickered and wavered in the space over Ray's desk as he unrolled the keypad and started typing. "So Constable Mountie, good thing you decided to materialize here because my Lieutenant's got a bet going with the Cap that you were in fact quote the hallucinatory product of my mild-to-moderate concussion unquote, and also I need your particulars for the report." Ray scanned the floor around his desk for the Wailer's file which he'd dropped during that little demonstration of his superior agility and reflexes and said, "Oh, yeah, thanks," when the Mountie handed it to him. The screen was still flickering, so he had to bend down to jiggle a few connections. When he straightened, the Mountie was sitting in the chair across from him, looking at him through the data flow.
"You don't have an implant?" the Mountie asked. He shifted in his seat a little to look around the room. Pretty much everyone else was sitting at a desk with the near-stare of implant data retrieval. Even some of the perps were cruising the net behind their eyeballs, which was a definite against-regs but it was hard to jam the feed and perps were good at finding leaks. Ray's was the only external in the room, a dinosaur clicking and whirring and loading data-packs like each one was a thirty-tonne weight on the end of a slow-swinging boom.
Ray drummed his fingers on the mouse and clicked his way into the Wailer's file. "Nope. No implants. I'm queer."
"I'm sorry?"
"You know, funky physiology." He waved his free hand beside his temple. "Implants don't take."
The Mountie nodded, his mouth going sort of soft and downturned in that way that made Ray want to simultaneously kick someone in the head and disappear under his desk. "I'm sorry," the Mountie said.
Ray shrugged and bounced his knee to dissipate the kicking-in-the-head energy. "I'm not. I got enough voices in my head as it is."
"Ah. I understand." He actually looked like he did.
Ray scrubbed at the prickle on the back of his neck and then started filling in the boxes on the display. "So, what were you doing in that alley, anyway? Besides saving my ass, I mean."
"I was looking for a man named Skeezer."
His fingers stumbling to a stop, Ray looked up sharply and squinted through the data flow. "Skeezer? What do you want with Skeezer?"
"He was going to sell me some information regarding the murder of my father."
The Mountie's face was as placid as his tone was mild, but there was something under that surface, something dark, like a bruise that hadn't quite bloomed in the flesh. The prickle got worse. "Your dad was murdered."
"Yes."
With a low whistle, Ray backed out of the Wailer's file and opened a new, blank one. "Okay," he said as he started filling in the new form. "Name: Benton Fraser, Constable, RCMP."
"Registry number 02212955BetaFRA2Abbot."
Again, Ray stopped typing and looked at the registry code floating between them. "Abbot."
"Yes."
Things in Ray's head went sideways in that way that made his stomach roll over. He stared at the Mountie for a long moment, then shifted his gaze over his shoulder to pick out the tech-bot coming out of the Lieutenant's office, and then the girl-bots over by Hewey's desk. One of them caught him looking and winked at him, long lashes falling over a blue glass eye. It was sexy in an airbrushed way, and when it laughed it sounded like a real laugh except with all the warmth and edges filed off of it. When it looked at him, Ray knew there was something mechanical behind that blank stare taking his measure. He swallowed hard and shifted his attention back to the Mountie across the desk.
"You're yankin me."
"No."
Ray licked his lips. "You're a bot."
"Yes."
The information slid around on Ray's brain like an egg on teflon. "But. Okay. Hold the parade." The bot was looking at him like he--it--was actually seeing him. Not even Stella looked at Ray like that, with that kind of presence, not even when she was coming or when she was leaving, the two times when Ray was trying hardest to hang on to her and she was trying hardest to kill him with her eyes, first with the beauty and then with the rage. He squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again to watch his fingers twitching over the keys. "But, you said 'father.'"
"Yes."
Okay, okay, so it was just some kind of word thing. He could still feel the bot seeing him and it made all the hairs on his arms stand up. "You mean Geppetto. You're talking about your Geppetto, right?"
The bot frowned and tugged an earlobe. "I'm sorry, ‘Geppetto’?"
"You know, Geppetto. Your Geppetto. The guy who pulls your strings."
Ray watched the bot putting it together. It nodded and the small smile put fine crinkles around his--its--eyes, like it found the slang amusing. "Ah, yes, I see. Well, my--" It opened a hand and gestured graciously toward Ray and his amusing slang. "--Geppetto is Robert Fraser, Registry number 99994221AlphaFRA2Ab--"
"Okay, hold it!" Again, Ray stopped typing and glared through the screen. "You're tellin me--you're gonna sit there and tell me that your Geppetto is an AI?"
"Yes."
"That's not possible. AIs don't make bots--"
The bot tilted its head in some precisely measured imitation of bemusement. "Well, Detective Kowalski, I exist, so it stands to reason--"
"--because it's against regs, big time against big-time regs, like Armistice--"
"Armistice Statute 15: no artificial intelligence shall conceive, design or manufacture--"
"-- a bot."
"--an artificial life-form."
"Right!" Ray shoved his chair away from the desk. He needed a little space. But the distance didn't change much. The bot was still watching him with that... thing, that seeing-ness, and his expression was like a real expression, some mix of apprehension and understanding and stoic resignation and even sympathy, for Jee's sake, sympathy for Ray's discomfort, and it was queer. It was just queer to the power of eleven. "So, they wiped it, the Geppetto, for playing God. That's what they do." Like it was a demonstration, he leaned forward and wiped the screen, which was a mistake, because now there was nothing between him and the bot but air. "Mystery solved."
"My father was wiped, but not by any official regulatory body."
"The penalty for violation of Armistice Statute 15 is erasure. The AI violated and it was wiped. Gone is gone. Wiped is wiped. Makes no difference by who."
"It makes a difference to me." The bot's voice was low and even, but Ray could practically see that bruise now, a real bruise in real skin, and it made things swim a little again, a seasickness that felt a lot like sympathy. The bot lifted his--its--gaze over Ray's head and seemed to collect himself. Then he went on, "And I think it should make a difference to you. Unless the CPD supports the concept of vigilantism."
"No, no the CPD does not support vigilantism. We do not." Ray leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. "Look, here's the deal of the thing. I'm homicide. This, what you're talking about, it's property crime. That's downstairs, level 37."
The Mountie's expression went shuttered, and for a second he actually looked like a bot, but weirdly that wasn't him at all and the change sent Ray's stomach rolling again, this time with guilt, which was like a side order of weird. Then the Mountie studied his boots for awhile and rubbed his thumb across his eyebrow. When he looked up that politely unreadable expression was back in place. "Understood," he said briskly and swiped his hat off of the desk as he got up.
Ray stood up too and hooked a finger in his epaulet. "Whoa, hang on there. You're a bot without a Geppetto. I can't just let you go. There's regs about that. Don't they got retasking stations in the colonies?"
"I'm aware I'm in violation of the regulations governing--" The bot narrowed his eyes like he was looking at something ugly and practically spat out the word, "--bots. I came here in the spirit of professional cooperation because I knew you would be questioned about the incident in the alley and that you would need my particulars. I've given them." He concluded in an even more formal tone, "I know that I'm required to report for retasking, and I fully intend to do so."
Ray felt a stabbing pain somewhere under his ribs, but he said, "Good. Alright then."
"As soon as I find the person or persons responsible for the death of my father." When Ray slumped in frustration and opened his mouth to point out the twenty-five ways that was not going to do at all, the bot continued, "We both know that the death of an AI, especially one from the colonies, isn't going to be a priority case. If I want answers, I'll have to find them myself."
Knowing what was waiting at the retasking station, Ray wondered why a bot would want answers at all. Two minutes in the door and answers would mean squat.
As if he'd heard his thoughts, the Mountie said, "And, there's the question of Deef." They both turned to look at the dog, who was snoring on his back amid the debris of Dewey's lunch. "Once I'm retasked, I won't remember him." Turning the hat around and around in his hands, the Mountie clamped his mouth shut and those under-the-surface bruises started to show a little again before he stood even straighter, as if that were possible, nodded, and spoke. "He won't be allowed to remain with me, and I have to get him situated, somewhere, with someone who understands him." The look in his eyes when he met Ray's made Ray wince, and Ray thought about the fair, and the grimy cage at the back of the grimier tent, and the low, miserable sound that came out of the shadows.
As the bot was turning away, Ray said, "How do I know you'll do it? Go to the station?"
"Because I give you my word."
And damnit if Ray didn't believe him, and he knew somehow it wasn't a bot anti-duplicity programming thing, but a Mountie thing. So he stood there and watched it—no, him–-watched an AWOL bot walk away in the uniform of a police officer, a deaf dog trailing along behind him, and even though the squad room was packed, they looked alone.
"Crap."
Ray had to dodge the Lieutenant, who stepped out of his office holding Ray's trash-can, the wino, the mark, Dewey returning with a second lunch and finally Hewey and two girl-bots before he caught up with the Mountie in the squad room doorway.
"Look, here's the thing."
Turning, the Mountie waited politely while Ray chased his thoughts around and tried to get them into something like a straight line.
"Okay, the thing is, those guys down on 37, they couldn't find their asses with both hands and an ass-detector, and then there's the dog and who knows what'll happen to him if they decide just to print your cortex and shelve you until they finish eating donuts or until it starts raining pennies, whichever comes first, and that's not going to--" Ray made the mistake of looking at the Mountie's face and the guarded expression of hope there almost knocked his thoughts out of line again, so he aimed his eyes at the middle brass button on the Mountie's tunic and went on. "And you did save my life back there in the alley and, look--"
"The regulations--"
"Screw the regulations. Because... because--" He jabbed the button with a stiff finger and went on a little defensively, "--maybe I got some kind of nostalgic kink left over from my childhood romance with tin soldiers or something and if I were you I wouldn't start trying to guess at motivations here because you guessing leads to me second-guessing and that leads to indecision which leads to re-decision and that is not good for you so let's go before I come to my senses." Ray pushed his way past him and out into the hallway.
"Detective--"
"Don't mention it." At the end of the hall, Ray did an about-face and aimed his best tough-guy look at him. "I mean it, don't mention it. To anybody. And while you're at it, you might want to try a little low-profile on for size, you know? I mean, the red jacket is bad enough, but maybe you can try not telling everyone you meet that you're a b--." He stopped and closed his eyes, "I mean an artificial life-form."
"But--"
"Just act normal. Can you do that?"
The Mountie blinked at him. "I am acting normal."
"I mean normal for a human being."
"Ah. Understood." Neither his expression nor his bizarrely straight posture changed.
Ray rolled his eyes and pushed him toward the elevator.
While they waited and watched the numbers above the doors, Ray said, "What's 123, 920 times 435?"
"Ten million, four hundred and five thousand, two hundred," the Mountie answered immediately.
Ray screwed his eyes up like he was checking. "Yeah, okay." The elevator seemed to be stopping at all the floors. "So, how far could you throw me?"
Without hesitating, the Mountie wrapped his arms around Ray's waist, lifted him off his feet and then put him down. "Between nine and 9.8 meters."
Ray frowned. "Nine and 9.8? That's not very accurate. I thought b-- I mean, I thought artificial life-forms were accurate with that kind of thing."
"We are. In this case the answer depends on whether you land in a heap or splayed out."
"Ah, okay. Okay." Ray said. "Good to know."
He leaned against the wall and watched a lawyer in a shiny suit leading the Wailer down the hall toward them. The Wailer made a kissy face at him and laughed a laugh that showed all of his blackened back teeth.
"Could you break that guy in half?" Ray asked out of the corner of his mouth.
The Mountie sized him up. "Yes. But not without cause."
"Right." Ray aimed a shark grin at the Wailer and followed up with a slightly crazed lunge. "Woof!" he barked, and grinned again when the Wailer jumped behind his lawyer. Deef growled low and scary until the Wailer and his lawyer edged toward the stairwell doors. "Have a nice walk," Ray shouted after them, then turned to the Mountie again. "What if the cause was that this character, who we'll refer to as the Wailer, is the bad-guy accomplice of a badder guy who is currently doing time in the water mines on Europa, except that being ten klicks under the ice-crust don't stop him from reaching out and attempting to make a certain cop, namely me, dead?"
"Oh, well, in that case I would most certainly break him in half," the Mountie answered affably.
"Also good to know." Ray waved his new bodyguard into the elevator and thumbed the button for ground level.
"So," Ray said as the car fell like a dead weight 60 stories from the world of law and order to one of rats and dumpsters and real life, "What exactly do you Mounties mount, anyway?"
"Mostly each other." When Ray snorted a startled laugh, the Mountie added, deadpan, "Well, it is the colonies, Detective."
In the dull chrome of the doors, Ray could see him looking askance. "Waitaminite. Did you just make a joke?"
"If you prefer." After the doors opened directly on to the stench and noise of ground level, the Mountie stepped out and looked both ways along the pedstrip. "Where are we going?"
"We're going to find Skeezer and find out what, if anything, a Europan water-digger has to do with a dead colonial AI."
"Ah, good."
Ray was ten paces away before he realized the Mountie wasn't with him. "What's the hold up?" When the Mountie stood looking at his hat, Ray blew out a resigned breath and came back. "What?"
Again, the Mountie looked at him with that real there-ness. "I--well, we--Deef and myself--we want to thank you, Detective Kowalski. For helping us."
Ray snorted and looked away down the pedstrip toward the stroll. Girl-bots were lined up in micro-skirts and stilettos, and somewhere in an alley somebody was getting rolled, and life crawled along picking through the garbage, and above it all, 'liners full of beautiful people lumbered along, oblivious. He was going to make some smart-assed remark, but somehow when he opened his mouth, he said, "Fraser--can I call you Fraser? Yeah? You can call me Ray."
"Thank you. Ray." Even in the sick light of ground level, Ray could see Fraser smiling, and maybe it was just circuits and gears but it looked realer than anything Ray had seen in a long time.
--The End--
Alternative title, cf Raucousraven: "Do Androids Dream of Eclectic Deefs?"
troyswann)Challenge: Amnesty/Genre
Title: Real Boys (A Chip Off the Old Blog)
Length: ~4900w
Characters: RayK and Fraser and Dief (sort of)
Episodes/Spoilers: none
Warnings: Only to Philip K Dick (I'm sorry)
Note: Thanks to
raucousraven for the razor-sharp beta and for the title, and to my Sig for the subtitle, and to my Uncle Judd, for reasons obvious only to me and him. Also, while self-contained, this is actually part of a bigger tale, as of yet unwritten, which maybe should remain so. ETA: Sorry about the million typos--they're editing artifacts that were deleted in Word but cropped up on OO. Technology, so not my friend. I think I caught them all, now. *facepalm*A Chip Off the Old Blog
"Skeeze!" Ray whispered hoarsely. Nothin. Not a damn thing. Skeeze the Sleaze. "Jimbo Jimmy Sczewinszky, show your sorry, sorry self." He leaned down slowly, keeping one eye on the sharp angle of shadow in the doorway under the fire escape and, with the muzzle of his gun, lifted the edge of a crumpled tarp. Still nothin. Well, a couple of rats bellied up to a dead cat buffet, but no Skeeze. "You are so not gettin your bonus, Kowalski," he told himself as he edged around the end of the dumpster and toward the mouth of the alley.
Up in the wedge of sky visible between the 'scrapers, a 'liner was wallowing along, overballasted with the rich and artificially enhanced, the whole boat leaking music and coloured light and and probably some kind of funky radiation, because that's what the rich and artificially enhanced liked to do, which was to shit on the grounders.
Ray was just starting to think about what if 'liner radiation was responsible for Skeezer's brand of ugly when a fist connected with his cheekbone and he ended up spread-eagled on his back in a greasy puddle looking up at the mean end of a two-twenty pulse pistol--with a scope, too. Nice, but kind of overkill at a distance of a half-meter--and then past it at the shadowed face of the guy who owned both the fist and the pistol. Above them, the 'liner's belly flashed the writhing image of some kind of hot girl-on-girl-bot action, and a screamer strip inviting the Rays of the world to CALL NOW!
"Huh," Ray said to the shadow behind the gun, and lifted his empty hand--his own gun was gone, spun off under the dumpster--to point at the 'liner. "First two minutes free."
He couldn't see it in the sickly, slithery light rippling down the ‘scrapers blank glass faces, but he knew from the scrape of a foot on cracked asphalt that the guy was thinking about looking. That was all the chance Ray needed to get his boot planted hard like a piston, right there on the side of the guy's knee.
So he didn't get a new hole in his head convenient for holding pencils, not from the first shot, anyway. The second shot, though, that one fried his jacket--which sucked, because his mom had shipped the damn thing all the way from Cyprian by special packet and he'd only had it for three days--and the third shot would've have left him a corpse with the rakish good looks intact but a pretty humiliating barn door in the middle of his back, except, that is, for divine intervention. Or something.
Ray was too busy scrambling toward the dumpster to see it all clearly, but he was pretty sure the minister of grace or whatever came straight down--from the fire escape, maybe? Hell, maybe from the 'liner or from God herself-- and flattened Ray's attacker like a freebin pile driver. And, when the thug hauled himself up and started to stumble away, the newcomer sort of resolved out of the lurid sex-show-glow into the shape of a low creature making a low sound like Ray remembered from that time at the fair, when he'd wasted a month's allowance to see something he ended up being too scared to actually look at.
Mr. Thug was pretty impressed, too, jerking to a stop in front of Ray, and maybe he'd've turned the pistol on the growling creature except that someone said what sounded like Deef and the creature wound up like a spring and let go, leaping right through the air, planting four feet in the thug's chest and tackling him into the puddle Ray had just vacated.
Ray covered his eyes and expected bloodsplat, sticky down his ruined coat, but the voice said Deef again and it went real quiet in the alley, nothing but the fading thrum of the 'liner and the sound of the thug making little kiddie noises like maybe he was crying.
Ray looked out from between his fingers. The creature was there, on the other side of Mr. Thug, and it had lots of silvery fur and teeth that would be gleaming really nicely if the 'liner hadn't gone and taken most of the light with it. Between Mr. Thug and Ray, there was a pair of tall boots. Tilting his head back, Ray looked up, up past the red jacket all the way to the head, which was wearing a wide-brimmed hat. On the face under the hat there was a small smile.
"What the," Ray said. "Who the."
"Constable Benton Fraser," the guy said, and held out a hand like he was going to help Ray up. Mr. Thug was still crying and the creature was still showing all three hundred of its pearly whites. Ray decided to play nice.
"Constable?" he said.
"Royal Colonial Mounted Police."
Ray declined the hand and instead rolled onto his belly and fished around blindly under the dumpster for his pistol while keeping the circus in the alley in sight. "You're yankin me, right?"
"No, I don't think so."
Ray had to shoo the rats away to get at his gun, which wasn't half so disgusting as what the gun was lying in, which was sticky and warm and just wrong. He pushed himself to his feet and used the gun to point obliquely at the helpful creature with the teeth. "And what's that. Your mount?"
"No. That's Deef. He's a dog."
Ray tried not to let his eyes go wide, but he was pretty sure he didn't succeed, if the Unlikely Constable's quirked-up mouth was any indication.
"A dog? No kiddin." His grin reminded him he'd recently been clocked in the face by the guy currently groveling for his life at their feet, and Ray kicked him in the ribs to even things up a little, and to give them a little quiet because that wailing was pretty grating on the nerves and pain was webbing out from Ray's bruised face and into his brain. The kicking didn't seem to be helping with the wailing, though, which made Ray wonder if maybe he should maybe widen his repertoire a little. He tried ignoration instead and squinted at the dog. "I seen one. A dog, I mean. This one time, at the fair." He shrugged, then, admitting, "Well, I didn't see it, see it on account of how it was... I was.... Never mind. Does it bite?"
The constable now known as Benton Fraser of the no-yankin-me Royal Colonial Mounted Police shook his head once. "Not generally. Unless you've committed a crime." He tugged at his earlobe. "Or you've been impolite."
Note to self, Ray thought: Please and thank you. "Shut up," he said to the Wailer, cuffed him, and stepped closer to the mouth of the alley to see if there were any Blues nearby. There weren't, of course, because hey, it's only gunfire, so he keyed his comm and subvocalized his call code to bring in a mop-up crew.
When he turned back, the constable and the dog were gone.
^^^
The Wailer was not a follow-through kind of guy. He left off wailing and got lock-jaw the second his butt hit the seat of the blue-and-white, and then lawyered up faster than Zip Halloway pulled a 180 on a skinny orbit (Ray took a half-second to be pissed about the Zip Halloway thing, because Ray kinda needed the cash he lost on that race for his mom's birthday present and now he was gonna have to come up with something creative and personal like a macaroni sculpture or something, and all because Zip Halloway was an artificially enhanced freakazoid who could stand up to a gazillion g's hard thrust without his guts oozing out his nose). "There oughtta be a law," Ray said to nobody in particular and nobody in particular paid him any mind.
He was reading the Wailer's file and no-look sidestepping because he didn't need to see where he was going. There was always a wino slouched on the bench outside Interview Two with his legs sticking out into traffic. There was always some rumpled, bruised guy gripping the edge of the high intake counter talking a streak about how he got rolled half a block from his hotel, and there were always at least two girl-bots and maybe a real live girl leaning against the wall next to the break room door like it was the corner of Massey and Fitch on Welfare Wednesday. The winos and the rumpled guys and the hookers changed faces (the girl-bots literally) but they were always winos and rumpled guys and hookers. His feet knew their way around the obstacles.
That's why it was a bit of a surprise when he tripped over something low and furry and ended up head-first in the trash-can by his desk.
"I'm terribly sorry," a voice said from outside the trash-can. The voice went on but Ray didn't hear it because as he rolled over to avoid the helping hands on his shoulders he whacked the trash-can into the metal side of the desk so that his skull, which was already not so good, rang like the bells of St. Mary's in the old flick only without the Bing Crosby.
"--deaf."
Ray yanked the can off his head, sending it ricocheting off of a tech-bot and through the Lieutenant's open office door. "What?"
"Deaf," Constable Benton Fraser of the Royal Colonial Mounted Police said again, speaking loudly like maybe he thought Ray was. Deaf, that is.
"Who?"
"Deef."
"Deef?"
The Mountie aimed his hat at the dog, who was currently engaged in a felonious act, namely very skillfully sliding a Little May Coconut Cake out of Dewey's take-out bag.
Ray sat on the corner of his desk and gave his head a shake. Then he regretted that a lot, and blinked his eyes hard to clear the spots. "Deef's deaf?"
"Yes. He didn't hear you coming, and I was, well, unforgivably inattentive myself, and so I feel it's really my fault and on behalf of both of us I offer sincere--" The Mountie stopped talking, apparently taking it as a bad sign that Ray had his hands over his ears and his eyes screwed shut against the assault of politeness. He waited patiently until Ray lowered his hands and then added, mostly under his breath, "--apologies."
"Yeah, whatever."
There were a lot of people looking at them now, not for the hijinx with the trash-can, which was pretty much situation normal, but because of the dog, who had polished off the Coconut Cake and was eating the protein out of Dewey's sandwich. Dewey was hitched up in his chair with his feet on the seat and not looking too tough just then. Ray decided to accept the Mountie's apology and maybe buy him a beer for good measure.
"It's only a dog, Dewey," Ray said with a small, superior sneer as he got up and went around his desk to boot up the dino. "What, you never seen a dog before?"
"Sure," Dewey said. He put one toe gingerly down on the floor and then snatched it up again when Deef looked at him, because, you never know, maybe protein was protein and maybe Deweys were delicious, on account of how they came marinated in yesterday's eau de bacon. "Sure, I saw them, when I was a kid. There was one next door. Only it was... it was, you know, smaller. Like this big." He held his hands up to illustrate. Ray'd seen rats twice that size.
"Yeah, whatever." The dino's screen flickered and wavered in the space over Ray's desk as he unrolled the keypad and started typing. "So Constable Mountie, good thing you decided to materialize here because my Lieutenant's got a bet going with the Cap that you were in fact quote the hallucinatory product of my mild-to-moderate concussion unquote, and also I need your particulars for the report." Ray scanned the floor around his desk for the Wailer's file which he'd dropped during that little demonstration of his superior agility and reflexes and said, "Oh, yeah, thanks," when the Mountie handed it to him. The screen was still flickering, so he had to bend down to jiggle a few connections. When he straightened, the Mountie was sitting in the chair across from him, looking at him through the data flow.
"You don't have an implant?" the Mountie asked. He shifted in his seat a little to look around the room. Pretty much everyone else was sitting at a desk with the near-stare of implant data retrieval. Even some of the perps were cruising the net behind their eyeballs, which was a definite against-regs but it was hard to jam the feed and perps were good at finding leaks. Ray's was the only external in the room, a dinosaur clicking and whirring and loading data-packs like each one was a thirty-tonne weight on the end of a slow-swinging boom.
Ray drummed his fingers on the mouse and clicked his way into the Wailer's file. "Nope. No implants. I'm queer."
"I'm sorry?"
"You know, funky physiology." He waved his free hand beside his temple. "Implants don't take."
The Mountie nodded, his mouth going sort of soft and downturned in that way that made Ray want to simultaneously kick someone in the head and disappear under his desk. "I'm sorry," the Mountie said.
Ray shrugged and bounced his knee to dissipate the kicking-in-the-head energy. "I'm not. I got enough voices in my head as it is."
"Ah. I understand." He actually looked like he did.
Ray scrubbed at the prickle on the back of his neck and then started filling in the boxes on the display. "So, what were you doing in that alley, anyway? Besides saving my ass, I mean."
"I was looking for a man named Skeezer."
His fingers stumbling to a stop, Ray looked up sharply and squinted through the data flow. "Skeezer? What do you want with Skeezer?"
"He was going to sell me some information regarding the murder of my father."
The Mountie's face was as placid as his tone was mild, but there was something under that surface, something dark, like a bruise that hadn't quite bloomed in the flesh. The prickle got worse. "Your dad was murdered."
"Yes."
With a low whistle, Ray backed out of the Wailer's file and opened a new, blank one. "Okay," he said as he started filling in the new form. "Name: Benton Fraser, Constable, RCMP."
"Registry number 02212955BetaFRA2Abbot."
Again, Ray stopped typing and looked at the registry code floating between them. "Abbot."
"Yes."
Things in Ray's head went sideways in that way that made his stomach roll over. He stared at the Mountie for a long moment, then shifted his gaze over his shoulder to pick out the tech-bot coming out of the Lieutenant's office, and then the girl-bots over by Hewey's desk. One of them caught him looking and winked at him, long lashes falling over a blue glass eye. It was sexy in an airbrushed way, and when it laughed it sounded like a real laugh except with all the warmth and edges filed off of it. When it looked at him, Ray knew there was something mechanical behind that blank stare taking his measure. He swallowed hard and shifted his attention back to the Mountie across the desk.
"You're yankin me."
"No."
Ray licked his lips. "You're a bot."
"Yes."
The information slid around on Ray's brain like an egg on teflon. "But. Okay. Hold the parade." The bot was looking at him like he--it--was actually seeing him. Not even Stella looked at Ray like that, with that kind of presence, not even when she was coming or when she was leaving, the two times when Ray was trying hardest to hang on to her and she was trying hardest to kill him with her eyes, first with the beauty and then with the rage. He squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again to watch his fingers twitching over the keys. "But, you said 'father.'"
"Yes."
Okay, okay, so it was just some kind of word thing. He could still feel the bot seeing him and it made all the hairs on his arms stand up. "You mean Geppetto. You're talking about your Geppetto, right?"
The bot frowned and tugged an earlobe. "I'm sorry, ‘Geppetto’?"
"You know, Geppetto. Your Geppetto. The guy who pulls your strings."
Ray watched the bot putting it together. It nodded and the small smile put fine crinkles around his--its--eyes, like it found the slang amusing. "Ah, yes, I see. Well, my--" It opened a hand and gestured graciously toward Ray and his amusing slang. "--Geppetto is Robert Fraser, Registry number 99994221AlphaFRA2Ab--"
"Okay, hold it!" Again, Ray stopped typing and glared through the screen. "You're tellin me--you're gonna sit there and tell me that your Geppetto is an AI?"
"Yes."
"That's not possible. AIs don't make bots--"
The bot tilted its head in some precisely measured imitation of bemusement. "Well, Detective Kowalski, I exist, so it stands to reason--"
"--because it's against regs, big time against big-time regs, like Armistice--"
"Armistice Statute 15: no artificial intelligence shall conceive, design or manufacture--"
"-- a bot."
"--an artificial life-form."
"Right!" Ray shoved his chair away from the desk. He needed a little space. But the distance didn't change much. The bot was still watching him with that... thing, that seeing-ness, and his expression was like a real expression, some mix of apprehension and understanding and stoic resignation and even sympathy, for Jee's sake, sympathy for Ray's discomfort, and it was queer. It was just queer to the power of eleven. "So, they wiped it, the Geppetto, for playing God. That's what they do." Like it was a demonstration, he leaned forward and wiped the screen, which was a mistake, because now there was nothing between him and the bot but air. "Mystery solved."
"My father was wiped, but not by any official regulatory body."
"The penalty for violation of Armistice Statute 15 is erasure. The AI violated and it was wiped. Gone is gone. Wiped is wiped. Makes no difference by who."
"It makes a difference to me." The bot's voice was low and even, but Ray could practically see that bruise now, a real bruise in real skin, and it made things swim a little again, a seasickness that felt a lot like sympathy. The bot lifted his--its--gaze over Ray's head and seemed to collect himself. Then he went on, "And I think it should make a difference to you. Unless the CPD supports the concept of vigilantism."
"No, no the CPD does not support vigilantism. We do not." Ray leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. "Look, here's the deal of the thing. I'm homicide. This, what you're talking about, it's property crime. That's downstairs, level 37."
The Mountie's expression went shuttered, and for a second he actually looked like a bot, but weirdly that wasn't him at all and the change sent Ray's stomach rolling again, this time with guilt, which was like a side order of weird. Then the Mountie studied his boots for awhile and rubbed his thumb across his eyebrow. When he looked up that politely unreadable expression was back in place. "Understood," he said briskly and swiped his hat off of the desk as he got up.
Ray stood up too and hooked a finger in his epaulet. "Whoa, hang on there. You're a bot without a Geppetto. I can't just let you go. There's regs about that. Don't they got retasking stations in the colonies?"
"I'm aware I'm in violation of the regulations governing--" The bot narrowed his eyes like he was looking at something ugly and practically spat out the word, "--bots. I came here in the spirit of professional cooperation because I knew you would be questioned about the incident in the alley and that you would need my particulars. I've given them." He concluded in an even more formal tone, "I know that I'm required to report for retasking, and I fully intend to do so."
Ray felt a stabbing pain somewhere under his ribs, but he said, "Good. Alright then."
"As soon as I find the person or persons responsible for the death of my father." When Ray slumped in frustration and opened his mouth to point out the twenty-five ways that was not going to do at all, the bot continued, "We both know that the death of an AI, especially one from the colonies, isn't going to be a priority case. If I want answers, I'll have to find them myself."
Knowing what was waiting at the retasking station, Ray wondered why a bot would want answers at all. Two minutes in the door and answers would mean squat.
As if he'd heard his thoughts, the Mountie said, "And, there's the question of Deef." They both turned to look at the dog, who was snoring on his back amid the debris of Dewey's lunch. "Once I'm retasked, I won't remember him." Turning the hat around and around in his hands, the Mountie clamped his mouth shut and those under-the-surface bruises started to show a little again before he stood even straighter, as if that were possible, nodded, and spoke. "He won't be allowed to remain with me, and I have to get him situated, somewhere, with someone who understands him." The look in his eyes when he met Ray's made Ray wince, and Ray thought about the fair, and the grimy cage at the back of the grimier tent, and the low, miserable sound that came out of the shadows.
As the bot was turning away, Ray said, "How do I know you'll do it? Go to the station?"
"Because I give you my word."
And damnit if Ray didn't believe him, and he knew somehow it wasn't a bot anti-duplicity programming thing, but a Mountie thing. So he stood there and watched it—no, him–-watched an AWOL bot walk away in the uniform of a police officer, a deaf dog trailing along behind him, and even though the squad room was packed, they looked alone.
"Crap."
Ray had to dodge the Lieutenant, who stepped out of his office holding Ray's trash-can, the wino, the mark, Dewey returning with a second lunch and finally Hewey and two girl-bots before he caught up with the Mountie in the squad room doorway.
"Look, here's the thing."
Turning, the Mountie waited politely while Ray chased his thoughts around and tried to get them into something like a straight line.
"Okay, the thing is, those guys down on 37, they couldn't find their asses with both hands and an ass-detector, and then there's the dog and who knows what'll happen to him if they decide just to print your cortex and shelve you until they finish eating donuts or until it starts raining pennies, whichever comes first, and that's not going to--" Ray made the mistake of looking at the Mountie's face and the guarded expression of hope there almost knocked his thoughts out of line again, so he aimed his eyes at the middle brass button on the Mountie's tunic and went on. "And you did save my life back there in the alley and, look--"
"The regulations--"
"Screw the regulations. Because... because--" He jabbed the button with a stiff finger and went on a little defensively, "--maybe I got some kind of nostalgic kink left over from my childhood romance with tin soldiers or something and if I were you I wouldn't start trying to guess at motivations here because you guessing leads to me second-guessing and that leads to indecision which leads to re-decision and that is not good for you so let's go before I come to my senses." Ray pushed his way past him and out into the hallway.
"Detective--"
"Don't mention it." At the end of the hall, Ray did an about-face and aimed his best tough-guy look at him. "I mean it, don't mention it. To anybody. And while you're at it, you might want to try a little low-profile on for size, you know? I mean, the red jacket is bad enough, but maybe you can try not telling everyone you meet that you're a b--." He stopped and closed his eyes, "I mean an artificial life-form."
"But--"
"Just act normal. Can you do that?"
The Mountie blinked at him. "I am acting normal."
"I mean normal for a human being."
"Ah. Understood." Neither his expression nor his bizarrely straight posture changed.
Ray rolled his eyes and pushed him toward the elevator.
While they waited and watched the numbers above the doors, Ray said, "What's 123, 920 times 435?"
"Ten million, four hundred and five thousand, two hundred," the Mountie answered immediately.
Ray screwed his eyes up like he was checking. "Yeah, okay." The elevator seemed to be stopping at all the floors. "So, how far could you throw me?"
Without hesitating, the Mountie wrapped his arms around Ray's waist, lifted him off his feet and then put him down. "Between nine and 9.8 meters."
Ray frowned. "Nine and 9.8? That's not very accurate. I thought b-- I mean, I thought artificial life-forms were accurate with that kind of thing."
"We are. In this case the answer depends on whether you land in a heap or splayed out."
"Ah, okay. Okay." Ray said. "Good to know."
He leaned against the wall and watched a lawyer in a shiny suit leading the Wailer down the hall toward them. The Wailer made a kissy face at him and laughed a laugh that showed all of his blackened back teeth.
"Could you break that guy in half?" Ray asked out of the corner of his mouth.
The Mountie sized him up. "Yes. But not without cause."
"Right." Ray aimed a shark grin at the Wailer and followed up with a slightly crazed lunge. "Woof!" he barked, and grinned again when the Wailer jumped behind his lawyer. Deef growled low and scary until the Wailer and his lawyer edged toward the stairwell doors. "Have a nice walk," Ray shouted after them, then turned to the Mountie again. "What if the cause was that this character, who we'll refer to as the Wailer, is the bad-guy accomplice of a badder guy who is currently doing time in the water mines on Europa, except that being ten klicks under the ice-crust don't stop him from reaching out and attempting to make a certain cop, namely me, dead?"
"Oh, well, in that case I would most certainly break him in half," the Mountie answered affably.
"Also good to know." Ray waved his new bodyguard into the elevator and thumbed the button for ground level.
"So," Ray said as the car fell like a dead weight 60 stories from the world of law and order to one of rats and dumpsters and real life, "What exactly do you Mounties mount, anyway?"
"Mostly each other." When Ray snorted a startled laugh, the Mountie added, deadpan, "Well, it is the colonies, Detective."
In the dull chrome of the doors, Ray could see him looking askance. "Waitaminite. Did you just make a joke?"
"If you prefer." After the doors opened directly on to the stench and noise of ground level, the Mountie stepped out and looked both ways along the pedstrip. "Where are we going?"
"We're going to find Skeezer and find out what, if anything, a Europan water-digger has to do with a dead colonial AI."
"Ah, good."
Ray was ten paces away before he realized the Mountie wasn't with him. "What's the hold up?" When the Mountie stood looking at his hat, Ray blew out a resigned breath and came back. "What?"
Again, the Mountie looked at him with that real there-ness. "I--well, we--Deef and myself--we want to thank you, Detective Kowalski. For helping us."
Ray snorted and looked away down the pedstrip toward the stroll. Girl-bots were lined up in micro-skirts and stilettos, and somewhere in an alley somebody was getting rolled, and life crawled along picking through the garbage, and above it all, 'liners full of beautiful people lumbered along, oblivious. He was going to make some smart-assed remark, but somehow when he opened his mouth, he said, "Fraser--can I call you Fraser? Yeah? You can call me Ray."
"Thank you. Ray." Even in the sick light of ground level, Ray could see Fraser smiling, and maybe it was just circuits and gears but it looked realer than anything Ray had seen in a long time.
--The End--
Alternative title, cf Raucousraven: "Do Androids Dream of Eclectic Deefs?"
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