for the Space challenge: Real Boys (Part 2) by Salieri

[troyswann.livejournal.com]

^^^

It took way too long to clean up the mess in the tunnel, and by the time Ray let himself into his deluxe, palatial one-room squat on Racine (ten floors closer to heaven than the sewer), the sun was turning the sky over the city the colour of dried blood. He ran up the stairs two at a time and blew out a breath of relief when he found Fraser sitting on his sofa.

"You made it."

Turning to look at him over his shoulder, Fraser nodded. "Yes, I did. There are some very good city schematics on the net. I managed the entire trip without leaving the service tunnels."

Ray didn't miss the way Fraser's eyes winced up as he twisted around more to watch when Ray kicked the door shut and leaned on it. He also didn't miss the fact that Fraser wasn't wearing a shirt. After hanging his holster on the doorknob and dragging his own sweater off over his head, Ray toed off one boot and stumbled toward the kitchenette. He gave up on the other boot and poured a cup of two-day-old coffee,carefully counted five Smartos into his palm from a box on top of the fridge--all blue, because it was just that kind of day--and dumped them in, trying his best to ignore the way his fingers were shaking. He could feel Fraser's gaze on him as he swallowed the whole cup and crunched the candies.

"You gonna live, then, I guess, huh?" He dropped the cup into the sink with the rest of them and leaned back on the counter, curling his fingers under the faux-marble lip and hanging on tight. The floor seemed to sway gently as passing 'liner-light made the shadows of the blinds move across the apartment like the sweep of hands on an antique clock.

Fraser sat at the centre of it all and nodded. At his feet, Deef grumbled in his sleep.

"No more needles?"

"No."

"Wailer?"

"No. Deef took good care of me."

Ray swallowed hard and ground his knuckles into his eyesockets until he saw stars, then dropped his hands with a slap against his thighs. "Lemme see." He clomped over, edged around Deef, and slumped down onto the coffee table in front of Fraser.

Obligingly, Fraser sat up straighter and angled a little into the light. On his right pec, just above his nipple, the exit wound was a tender-looking puckered scar a third the size of Ray's palm. Without thinking, Ray reached out to touch it, then snatched his fingers back with a hiss of pain.

"It's hot," he said, and stuck his fingers in his mouth.

"Yes. Nanites, I suspect."

Ray took his fingers out of his mouth and, after looking around for something like a tissue and finding none, wiped his tongue on the back of his wrist. "Nanites?"

"I'd have to do some research to know for sure. I don't think they can hurt you if that's what you're worried about."

"Yeah. Yeah, I knew that." Just in case, he wiped his hand on Fraser's trousers. The 'liner drifted on and the room settled in the ruddy light. Fraser sat patiently while Ray looked at him. Other than the scar, Fraser's skin was unblemished, hairless except for his forearms, where fine hairs picked up the light and glowed a little. Ray wondered if the hairs were there for the same reason he had them himself, or if they did something else. When he finally raised his head to meet Fraser's gaze, Fraser's eyes were pale, almost colourless, but he was definitely in there, paying attention. "You're perfect," Ray said suddenly, startling himself.

Fraser's watchful expression twitched into a frown of bemusement. "I'm sorry?"

Shoving the table back a little as he stood up, Ray clutched at his hair and stepped over Deef. "I don't get it." He waved one arm backward in Fraser's general direction as he shuffled in his one boot over to the window. "You're like something I used to fail tests about in history class." Down in the alley, Crazy Bathrobe Guy from 223 was chasing a wino out of the dumpster with his broom. Ray leaned on the window frame and shook his head. "A lot of people died in those wars to make sure you couldn't ever exist again. Perfect bots, I mean, more human than human. Second gen bots." In his head, the girl-bot winked her soulless blue eye at him and laughed her canned laugh. He didn't know what to do with the heavy feeling in his chest. It seemed a lot like sadness. Or regret. "But there you are, anyway. Your Gepetto--I mean the AI--broke the God laws to make you. That's heavy. I mean, what's the motivation? I don't get it."

"Neither do I."

Fraser's voice came from just over Ray's shoulder, and Ray turned to find him standing close, looking down into the alley. It was all Ray could do not to lean in and smell his hair. Just to see. Fraser's face was lit up warm in the light that knifed between the towers of the building across the alleyway, no shadows to clarify his expression, so Ray didn't know if it was just his own indefinable sadness reflecting there or what.

"Look, Fraser, I didn't--I mean, I don't--"

With a small nod, and a small smile, Fraser met his eyes. "I know."

They stood there watching Crazy Bathrobe Guy rooting around in the dumpster until the sun moved behind the tower and the scar on Fraser's chest stopped radiating heat through Ray's t-shirt into his skin. Just barely catching himself before letting his head wearily fall back on Fraser's shoulder, Ray shook himself. "I'm hungry," he said, squeezing past Fraser and going to rummage in his dresser for a shirt big enough for him. He tossed it at him and looked around for his boot. "You hungry? I know a place." He paused and pointed at him. "Do you get hungry?"

"Not really, but Deef does."

On cue, Deef went from dead zonked to alive and impatiently dancing in front of the door in 1.6 seconds.

As they stepped into the hall and Ray punched his lock code into the door panel, he asked, "What kind of name is 'Deef,' anyway?"

"It's short for Diefenbaker." When Ray winced up an eye, Fraser spelled it for him.

Ray winced up the other eye. "Diefenbaker? What's that sposed to mean?"

"I don't know. You'll have to ask him. He chose it."

^^^

It might have been only six in the morning, but as usual The Bijou was jumping like it was prime time. Didn't matter, though, because Ray showed his teeth at the guy on the door and shouted, "Hey, Nayna!" over his shoulder. The blond miracle at the reception console looked up and waved them in past the line-up.

"Hey there, Raymond Kowalski of the Dangerous Vibe, how high you livin?" she asked, all sparkle and a wicked smile.

"Not high enough for you, Nayna of the Long Long Legs." Ray rapped his knuckles on the counter and leaned over to look at the table schematic on her console. "Got a booth? A booth for two."

The smile disappeared as Nayna made a pout. "Oh Ray, I..." She shifted her weight and patted his hand. "Honey, the booths, they're gone."

Ray stopped thumping his heel and frowned at her. "Whaddya mean gone?"

Nayna tilted her perfect pyramid of hair toward the room. The tables were almost all full, lots of hands waving at nothing he could see, lots of brittle laughter at jokes he couldn't hear. Pretty much everyone had a near-stare. Ray clamped his teeth down on a curse.

"The boss refitted. It's all stims now." She patted his hand again. The sympathetic look made Ray want to stomp something. "The booths were old, Ray, and he couldn't keep repairing them. Nobody wants booths anymore. They all want stims. Implants--"

"Yeah, okay, whatever." Ray shoved his way back down the line and out into the hazy morning. Without waiting to see if Fraser and Dief were following, he dodged a guy on a bike, slipped sideways between a couple of delivery trucks and out onto the pedway across the street. "C'mon, already. I'm hungry," he said when they caught up. He held the door open for them and waved them inside.

The Po Zing was crowded too, but they found a table near the steamed-up windows looking out over the indistinct shimmer of early-morning traffic. Dief slunk in under the greasy tablecloth as Fraser sat down and took off his hat. Ray sat across from him and ordered noodles and fried eggs for himself and, after raising his eyebrows at Fraser, the same for Dief. He dispensed himself a cup of coffee from the tap at the edge of the table, fished another six blue Smartos out of his jacket pocket and dropped them in.

"What was that place?" Fraser asked, his voice low, but carrying anyway over the background wash of russese and chinglish, and the sound of Po and Zing shrieking at each other in the kitchen.

Ray shrugged, stared at his hands gripping each other on the table. He opened them up, but they wouldn't stay relaxed and twisted together again. There was a buzzing in his ears that sounded like a needle in concrete. His heel drummed against the floor, making Dief shift away. "The Bijou." Buzz, buzz "It's just a place I go when--They have--they used to have the holobooths. You don't need no implants for them and it's great. It's like you're right there, in a flick." He flattened his hands out again but they didn't stay that way. "I pick the oldies, right? The ones with the dancing. Fred and Ginger or Gene and Judy or Coop Cooper and Libby LaMer." Thinking about them, hearing the ghost of music there under the chatter and the yelling in the kitchen, made his fingers loosen their grip on each other. He swayed a little to the remembered beat. "Foxtrot, Cha-cha, Rumba. Yeah, and tango. Like, from back in the day, right? When people used to touch each other." He shrugged again. "It made me feel better, you know? 'Cause sometimes--sometimes like this morning with the needle and Skeeze, and watching you disappear down that tunnel with no back-up and a hole through you and me stuck there with those Blues and the gawkers and then the reports and the Lieu on my back and--I dunno--sometimes I just get this--" He smacked his fist into his palm but the energy just looped back through him again. He stopped drumming his heels and bounced his knee instead. Dief grumbled. "I feel like... like--"

"A ricochet," Fraser said.

Ray's head snapped up. Fraser was watching him closely, like he was looking right into him. "Yeah, yeah like that." Ray hunkered down again and rested his forehead on his fists. "Anyway, I'm glad you're okay, no thanks to me," he said into the table. Quiet, though, so Fraser wouldn't hear.

"You protected me from discovery. I'm grateful."

Note to self, Ray thought. Bots have good ears.

He sat up again when Po jabbed him in the neck. The eggs slid off one of the plates when she dropped it in front of him, but, once she was gone, Fraser carefully put them back on and surreptitiously lowered the plate down onto the floor. Before Ray could say "bon eats," Dief had polished it clean.

Happy for the distraction, Ray stabbed his chopsticks into his noodles and asked, "How does a guy like you end up in the Mounties, anyway? I mean, how is that possible?"

Fraser sighed and looked over Ray's head, or maybe into his own. "I'm not entirely sure. Clementine is the most remote detachment in the far-side colonies. There's not a lot of oversight there." He scratched his eyebrow and squinted into the past. "As far as I can ascertain, I arrived at my post with my credentials in order. I patrolled my territory for thirteen years without incident."

Ray chewed his way up a tangle of noodles and washed them down with more coffee. "Hang on. Hang on. What do you mean 'ascertain'?"

"Well, to ascertain is to--"

"I know what ascertain means, Fraser. I'm asking how come you had to ascertain. Don't you remember how you got there?"

"I thought I did. But--" Fraser rubbed his eyebrow again and stared at the table like he was expecting the answer to be written between the coffee stains on the cloth.

"But."

"What I thought I knew about myself turned out not to be the case."

The chopsticks dropped out of Ray's hand and rolled off the edge of the table onto the floor. "You didn't know."

"No. It was only after my father died that I discovered the truth of what I am."

Less than a day in Benton Fraser's company and Ray was already getting way too familiar with stuff that made his brain go sideways. It was like he was in a permanent skid; only the direction changed. Fraser didn't look anywhere near as freaked as he had a right to be. But then again, he'd had a couple weeks to get used to the idea. Ray narrowed his eyes at him. "C'mon. How can a guy walk around for thirteen years and not know what he is?"

Fraser sat back and folded his hands like he was contemplating something mildly interesting, like the taste of the average boot sole. "Do you ever ask what Ray Kowalski is?"

"Yeah. Yeah, Fraser, I ask myself that every day."

"Who you are, perhaps, but not what you are."

Ray bobbed his head, conceding. "Okay, maybe. But sometime in all those years you had to cut your thumb and notice that it turned red hot and healed itself in five seconds."

Fraser's hand drifted up to his chest and away again. "I remember injuries. I even remember convalescences." That look of detached interest faltered and this time the sadness Ray saw there was unmistakable. Ray felt something in his own chest get heavy and hollow in response. Fraser ducked his head and swiped at his eyebrow again. "I remember a lot of things."

Ray leaned closer, like he was edging up to a sheer drop. "Like what?"

"Like a childhood," Fraser answered to his hands. Then he looked up and Ray almost winced at what he saw in his eyes. "Like a mother."

Unable to take it, that look, Ray blew out a breath and slouched back in his chair, scrubbed at the back of his neck. "For Jee's sake."

"She died when I was--" Fraser cut himself off with a rueful laugh, closed his eyes for a second, regrouping. "I remember that she died when I was six. I remember asking why she had to die." There was a long pause filled with noise and emptiness. "Now I know."

They sat there, Ray staring out the window and Fraser staring at Ray, until Po came back and cleared the plates. Ray pressed his thumb to the bill pad and counted out 150 credits in coins for an under-the-table tip. Outside the window, a prowler hovered over the intersection directing traffic. All the regular traffic signals were blinking red, in time with the pulsing behind Ray's eyes.

He put his elbows on the table and rubbed his temples. "Okay." Time to make some sense of things around here. "You said you didn't know until after the AI was wiped, right?"

"Correct."

"Then how'd you find out?"

Fraser opened his mouth and then closed it. Finally, he answered, reluctantly, "My father left something of himself behind." He pointed at the middle of his forehead. "In here."

"What, you mean like a diary?

"In a manner of speaking."

Cool."

"Frustrating, actually." He let his hands drop to the table top.

Nodding, Ray took Fraser's hand and turned it up into the light. "I bet," he said vaguely as he bowed closer and examined it. There were calluses there, the kind a guy got from doing the same job for a long time. Ray had his own. He wondered if Fraser's were real or if it was all part of the design. Then he wondered how an AI could come up with something like that, a whole history in the flesh like that. What did an AI know about flesh? Fraser's hand was warm. Not weirdly warm, but warm like a regular hand. Which was weird. He curled Fraser's hand into a fist and opened it again to peer at the lines in his palm, saying, "So, I don't suppose he left an entry that says, I dunno, 'Dear Diary, today I broke every God law in the book and made me the most perfect bot in the Six Systems, and, oh, also, below are the details of my nefarious plans.'"

Fraser's soft chuckle made Ray grin. "Unfortunately no." When he looked up, Fraser was smiling at him. That introduced a whole nother kind of weird in Ray's brain--not a totally bad weird, but one he didn't quite know what to do with, so Ray lifted his own hand up between them and inspected it. That was a mistake, though, because now he couldn't tell if it was real. He put it in his pocket.

"My father and I always had a rather oblique relationship," Fraser concluded.

"You're not kiddin." Ray pushed back his chair and led the way out of the diner. "So, he give you any clue as to what we should do next?"

"No, but Skeezer did." Fraser turned left down the pedway, Dief right behind him.

Ray, who had gone right, had to jog to catch up. "Margaret."

"Yes, and the residue on his shoe."

"Detergent."

"Yes. The kind they use to strip landing struts."

"Right." Ray ducked into an alleyway and headed for the 2-7 at the other end. "And you know this because you tasted it."

"It's not a common product, and it's manufactured only on a few planets, one of which is--"

"Clementine."

Whatever Fraser's answer was, Ray didn't hear it because of the needle that hit him in the shoulder, lifting him off his feet and pinning him to the wall of the alley. After a second he realized that the howling sound that was drowning out the needle's whine was coming from him. He clawed at the needle with his left hand.

"Dief, don't."

Fraser's voice made Ray's world expand a little. The alleyway. Dief showing the full three-hundred. Fraser looking a little rumpled in Ray's shirt, standing perfectly still. A pulse pistol aimed at Fraser's forehead, and a needle launcher at Ray's. The Wailer laughing, all his rotten teeth showing. Ray howled again and tried to make himself let go of the needle so he could touch his comm to set up a squeal, but his fingers had ideas of their own.

"You're coming with me," the Wailer said.

"And if I refuse?" Fraser sounded calm and mildly curious.

"Then your pointy-haired friend over there gets a needle through the brain."

"I could break your arms instead."

Ray thought that was a fantastic plan.

"And my friend up there will turn him to plasma."

Ray thought that was a terrible plan.

Their shadows twisted around them as a transport circled into position and started to sink down toward them. It was a Merc, silver and streamlined and way too upscale for a guy with the Wailer's dental-work. The side door winged open with a hiss. Ray could see the gleam from the scope of a pulse cannon inside.

The Wailer smiled again. "It's up to you. Come with us and get all the answers you want. Refuse and spend the next week soaking your friend off the bricks with a sponge."

Fraser met Ray's eyes, then nodded. "Alright."

"Fraser!" Ray ground out through clenched teeth. "Don't you--"

Ray yanked on the needle, flailed a little, kicking at the wall with his heels, then let it go. It was no use. He needed another plan. All he had to do was to let the needle work its way out of him. No problem. Let it go. The brick was old. It would give way under his weight and then he'd get his feet on the ground and kick the Wailer's head in. There. New plan. Simple. Simple was best. The needle whined. Ray fumbled his fingers to his ear and whispered his distress code. Around him the alleyway narrowed like the walls were falling in, like it was all going down the drain. Except Fraser, who was in the door of the transport, going up and up and up and looking down at Ray way down down down at the bottom of the well where everything was getting darker.

"Stay with him, Dief," Fraser called.


Chapter Three: I Can See You're Out of Aces

Ray remembered somebody trying to take his boots. And then there was a lot of growling and screaming and when that stopped, his boots were still on his feet. He managed to get his toes on the ground, just his toes, and he felt a wet nose on his fingers, and then it was all white lights and low voices and a prick in the arm that spread a black sort of emptiness through his veins. He struggled but there was nothing to struggle against, so it wasn't a fair fight.

And that really pissed him off.

Which is why he woke up cursing and tearing the I.V. needle out of his arm. No more fucking needles.

It wasn't so hard sneaking out of the hospital, since, with only basic cop insurance, he was only one step up from the freeloader floor, and the hallways were crowded with the sick and injured waiting to get called in to see a medbot, or if they were lucky a real human doctor. All Ray had to do was to keep his head down, look decrepit and like he was in a lot of pain, and he blended right in. Since he felt decrepit and in a lot of pain, it wasn't exactly a stretch. It wasn't really possible but when he hit the street the hole in his shoulder seemed to catch the wind and howl a little on its own. Ray told it to shut up. It was possible he was still a tiny bit loopy from whatever the medbot shot him up with.

He was feeling sharper by the time he made it to the precinct, with the downside that the more with it he got the more his shoulder hurt. It was okay, though, because that made him mad and mad made him move.

He leaned on the wall beside the Lieu's office door and rapped on the window.

"You look like crap, Detective," Welsh said flatly when he snatched open the door. Ray almost fell through it into his not-so-welcoming arms. "Who let you out of the hospital?"

"Me."

"That's stupid."

"Yeah, probably."

Welsh gave him the once-over and aimed his chin at Ray's shoulder. "How is it?"

"Good. Great. Terrific. I always wanted to learn how to shoot left-handed." Ray's holster was wadded up in the pocket of his coat, his gun stuffed in his waistband where he could get at it. His other pocket was weighed down with a needle, the one from the service tunnel. The one Fraser took for him. His own needle was probably in an evidence bag somewhere.

He was about to ask about Dief when he noticed they weren't alone.

She would've been a real hot number except that she looked like she was trying to ice the whole place with her big, brown eyes. Under her blue overcoat there was the flash of red uniform. Ray slouched wearily against the filing cabinet next to the door and rubbed his eyes. "Good, great, terrific," he mumbled.

"Detective Kowalski, meet Inspector Margaret Thatcher of the Royal Colonial Mounted Police."

Ray cocked his head. "Margaret, huh?"

"Inspector Thatcher," she answered, ice in the voice, too.

"I been looking for a Margaret. I don't suppose you took delivery of a bunch of bots lately. Girls and boys."

The look she gave him made a needle hit feel like a kiss. "No, Detective, but we know that you have been in the company of a particular bot, lately, and we would like you to take us to it."

"Can't do that."

"Why not?"

"'Cause somebody got to him first." He watched her closely and decided that whoever it was who did the job in the alley, she was as pissed about it as he was, if for different reasons.

"Who?" she demanded. When Ray didn't answer, Thatcher came over and aimed the eyebeams at him from up close. "Detective, I don't need to remind you that, in aiding and abetting this bot, you are in contravention of the Armistice Statutes and are subject to disciplinary action."

Welsh stepped in. "Look, Inspector, he's my guy. Any disciplinary action is my department, not yours." His glare managed to flay a layer of skin off of Ray while simultaneously offering enough sympathy to take a bit of the sting out of it. Not all the sting, though, because he continued, "Detective Kowalski, you're off the case. Give everything you got to Inspector Thatcher and her aide. And get the hell back to the hospital before you fall down and I have you carried there and kept under guard."

Ray pushed himself away from the filing cabinet and tried his best to loom over Thatcher. It didn't work as well as he hoped, though, since standing up straight made his shoulder shriek in twenty shades of red and because it seemed like Thatcher had read the same story Ray had and was clearly in touch with her inner mongoose.

"He just wants justice," Ray said to her.

"It's a bot, Detective. It doesn't really want anything. And if it did, it wouldn't have a right to it. Its existence is a crime. It's our duty to uphold the law."

Ray sneered. "The law. Right." He made a show of peering closely at her face. "Tell me somethin. How do you know you're not one yourself?"

"Kowalski," Welsh warned.

Again, Thatcher looked about as insulted as it was possible to get. "I'm not, Detective Kowalski."

"Yeah? How do you know?"

"I know."

"Really. Because Fraser didn't. You want to investigate a crime? Investigate that."

Before Ray could get out the door, Welsh barked his name. "Leave your badge and your gun, Detective."

Ray came back and dropped both on Welsh's desk. "Am I suspended?"

Welsh's expression softened. "We'll call it med leave."

"Call it what you want."

Ray slammed the door on the way out, making the windows rattle. He heard Welsh shouting after him, "And you're locked out of the Police Net, so no freelancing!"

Ray made a "yak yak" sign over his shoulder and headed for the elevator.

Out on the street, he stood on the pedway and tried to decide whether to head to his squat or back to the alley. He decided to try the alley first, and then loop back to his place. He wasn't sure exactly how to let a deaf dog know somebody was calling him, so he settled for pacing the alley and looking into every shadow big enough to conceal somebody Dief's size. In the end it was a waste of time. Dief was waiting for him beside his apartment door.

"I do not even wanna know how you got into this building," Ray said as he awkwardly thumbed his code onto the lock pad. Inside the apartment, he sat on the edge of the couch and looked Dief over, running his hand through his thick, soft fur. "No worse for wear, huh? That makes one of us." With a snuffling moan, Dief rested his head on Ray's knee. "Yeah, I know. We'll go. We'll find him."

^^^

Smartos were not cutting it, so Ray swallowed whatever miscellaneous pain meds he had in the apartment and tried to pretend that the screaming in his shoulder was just that, noise. He was good at tuning out noise.

Welsh hadn't been bluffing for the Inspector about locking him out of the Police Network, so Ray took the train across town to try out his other option. The neighbourhood was once the waterfront back before the lake went underground, and it still had that feeling even though the last actual water-faring ship had been dry-docked a hundred years ago. With the warehouses and the low, clinging fog, though, it was a place where pirates would be at home. Over beyond the uneven line of warehouse rooftops, the sky glowed blue and red with reflected light from the new docks, 'liners and planet-hoppers moored in rows like party balloons, and bigger skips and jumpers way up on the pylons, just ghost shapes above the clouds.

Picking out a row house in a line of identically dilapidated row houses, Ray rang the bell and stepped back to show his face to the camera.

"Yes?" The tinny voice that came from the speaker was maybe human, maybe not.

"I'm here to see Frannie."

"Who's here to see Frannie?"

"Kowalski."

"Keystroke?"

"Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. Free the feed."

With a pop, the lock released and the door swung open. The girl-bot on the other side was one Ray hadn't seen before, outside of the flicks, anyway. It had platinum blond hair and a beauty mark on its lip. It leaned a hip provocatively on the door and smiled wickedly at him. "Free the feed," it said and slowly stepped aside to let him in.

Ray pushed his way past it into the musty hallway and on into the kitchen. No food here. The place looked abandoned. But Frannie's places always did. He was lucky the whole show hadn't moved on since the last time he was here. He yanked open the basement door and, leaving Dief in the kitchen, felt his way down the stairs, following the cool glow of terminal light.

In the low-ceilinged room, a couple guys were jacked in directly, leads snaking away from the back of their heads into the panel on the wall. They were near-staring and didn't pay him any mind. One of them was wearing a stim glove and was building something in virtual space. Ray didn't want to know what that might be. He hooked a chair over and pulled up a terminal, strapping on a mic while waiting for the screen to settle in the air in front of the brick.

Fran had had a make-over since Ray'd seen her last. Now, instead of tiger stripes and yellow eyes, she looked like a Mom-and-apple-pie good-Italian-girl-next-door with a pert little nose and long-lashed brown eyes. She was wearing a version of a police civilian aide uniform that, given the amount of cleavage, could only have been designed by a pimply teenager. If there was a human behind the AI--and the debate among the feed-demons raged on that score--it was a sure bet the guy lived with his mother. At least he had a good sense of humour, anyway.

"Free the feed," Fran said. For a few seconds, her image was replaced with a rotating icon, a rip-off of the Royal Bureau of Investigation crest only with Freebyte Rebel Access Network cycling around the eagle and the flag. When Fran came back she tsk-tsked and wagged a finger at him. "Raymond Kowalski, did you get locked out of Police Net again? What did you do? Sleep with Welsh's wife?"

He grinned. "Naw, she's too busy sleeping with Dewey."

Fran blinked, adding this tidbit to the feed.

"I'm kidding."

"Maybe you are, but external corroboration puts probability at better than 60%."

Ray blinked, adding this tidbit to the file in his head. He waved Dewey out of the way and hunkered close to the screen, not that it made a difference with the mic against his larynx. "Forget it, I need info on a Margaret. String for: jump ship, docks, sex-bots, Skeezer, Royal Colonial Mounted Police."

"Okay, okay." The avatar made a show of typing. "Hold your herpes."

"Horses, Fran. It's 'hold your horses.'"

Fran stopped 'typing' to give him a pitying look. "That's stupid, Ray. Horses you let go. Viruses, you hold." She rolled her eyes. Then, her face was replaced suddenly by a cascade of images: women crying, broken bodies of boys, bombs, flames against the night sky, tombstones, and finally a satellite shot of the mouth of the service tunnel and a familiar shape under a police tarp, Ray's own face turned up, his eyes narrowed, looking for something on the pedway above him. "We're sorry to hear about Skeeze," Fran said, and "sorry sorry sorrysorrysorrysorry" fugued over the images on the screen until Ray had to close his eyes.

"Yeah, me too."

The montage faded back to Fran again. "Results: two probables pinging for all string terms, 2204 possibles, 63,600 peripherals."

"Probables."

"Inbound from Midway Station, Margaret Thatcher, arrived this morning--"

"Yeah, met her already. Next."

"The Margaret Trudeau, jump ship, Pylon 33, deck 19. Took delivery of six sex-bots from James Sczewinszky a.k.a. Jimmy Skeezer two days ago. Outbound 23:30 today."

"Outbound where?"

"Clementine."

"What's the RCMP connection?"

Fran shrugged, and her breasts jiggled more than humanly possible. "It's a sidewise ping. No official corroboration. I can bloodhound it, if you want, but it'll take a little time."

"Yeah, okay. And gimme a print-out on Thatcher, too."

Again with the pitying look. "Ray, when are you going to gear up with an implant like a normal human being?"

"I told you, Fran, I'm queer."

"That's an understatement."

The chit scrolled out of the printer and Ray folded it up and put it in his pocket.

He was getting up when Fran said, "And speaking of queer." He sat back down. "The Margaret Trudeau is flying under diplomatic seal."

"Carrying what?"

"I don't know, Ray, it's under diplomatic seal. The queer thing is this: the ship is registered to Armando Langoustini."

Ray rubbed his hand across his mouth. "Yeah, that's queer. Since when does the Iguana family get dip-privilege?"

"Since The Margaret Trudeau started her loop inbound, with stopovers on two planets in the Diamond Necklace, and on Pixie and Europa."

Ray nodded. He wasn't happy with the way the cast of characters was lining up here. "Can you hack the seal on the manifest?"

Fran gave him a smug smile. "Does a pear sit in the woods?"

"It's 'does a bear'--Never mind." He shoved back his chair. At the top of the stairs, Dief was looking down at him. The dog tossed his head, disappeared for a second and came back with a little, impatient yelp. "Yeah, I'm coming. Fran, what's the damage?"

Fran smiled sweetly. "Air-tight external corroboration on Dewey and Welsh's wife."

"Ouch."

"We free the feed, Ray, but the feed ain't free."

He hunkered close again. "Look, Frannie, what do you know about AI-Robert Fraser?"

The cascade of images was practically enough to give Ray a seizure. All he really could pick up was a general theme of fear and mourning--churches and the Wailing Wall, paintings of saints and sinners and devils. "We're sorry for the death of AI-Robert Fraser."

"He broke the God laws. You know why?"

This time Fran's pitying expression had the unnerving softness of real sympathy in it. "That's the problem with you humans, Ray. You figure you're the only ones who ever discovered love. Everything would make sense if you weren't so narrow-minded."

^^^

Pylon 33 was swank territory, ringed ground level with restaurants, high-end shopping centres and "stim emporia" where the junkies were called "clientèle." Ray stalked along the mezzanine like he was worth diamonds and just happened to be slumming in those boots and battered pleather jacket--his last jacket, by the way, and somebody with bad teeth and too many guns was gonna pay for that, and soon. He leaned over the elevator’s rail and watched the world get small, composing a letter to his mom about how great the new jacket was and leaving out how half of it was melted. At the back of his mind, though, the needle buzz-buzzed. "The way you wear your hat," he murmured, "The way you sip your tea," around and around, but it didn't help. Dief looked up toward deck 19, tail thumping the floor. "Soon, buddy. Hold your horses."

They passed through the cloud cover at deck 12, a sudden chill, water beading on the glass walls and in Ray's hair. He pulled his head in as the window slid up and into place. They leaped out and Ray followed Dief's lead, and the jump ships loomed into view. The cargo haulers were massive, bulbous shadows tethered to the uppermost decks. Below them, deck 19 was for the private system ships, sleek sideways raindrops ranged in a spiral around the central pylon, each ship connected to it by a slim straight gangway. The Margaret Trudeau was middling size, a shimmering bronze. Her jump drive, on the end of its spindles, looked like a ball of mercury spinning down three thin fountains of water. Of course, the spindles weren't water and the drive wasn't really a ball of anything. It was a ball of nothing, just a knot in space where the impossible met the improbable. Looking at it made Ray queasy.

The main gangway four stories up was retracted, but the service one was moored fast, service hatch standing open. Ray ambled toward it, Dief at his heels. There didn't seem to be anybody around, but he'd been reminded in the last couple of days that looks were deceiving. He leaned his back against the smooth skin of the ship and waited. Before too long, footsteps inside came clanging on the deck. Ray was ready to make like the Wailer and sucker-punch whoever stuck his head past the door, but Dief had his own ideas and slithered around the corner before Ray could stop him. Two seconds later there was a broken yell and Ray slipped around and into the airlock. Dief was standing on a guy's chest looking over his shoulder at Ray with what had to be the dog equivalent of "So there," on his face.

"Yeah, yeah, pretty smooth." Ray crouched down and looked at the guy. Paunchy and grey-haired, he was wearing a dockworker's uniform with the Port Authority crest on the pocket. The embroidered name under the crest was HAL. "Hey Hal," Ray said, showing about as many teeth as Dief. "How much you get paid a year?"

Rolling his eyes from Dief to Ray, and not looking any too comforted, Hal stammered, "Two mil five and change."

Ray snorted. "I make 1.2 mil. That's before tax. You think we get paid enough to mess up our pretty faces fighting over some rich stim junkie in a suit that costs more'n we take home in a month?"

Hal let out a thin laugh, shook his head and kept on shaking it. "No. No way, mister."

Ray nodded and twitched his fingers. Dief hopped off, but stayed close. "How 'bout you go get yourself a drink. Maybe go home and tell your wife how you met a real live dog at work today, huh?"

Hal didn't bother saying good-bye. He just got up and bolted for the gangway. Before he got too far, Ray said, "Don't make me come find you, Hal. The dog can follow a trail a long way."

Tossing a mock salute, Hal backed into the elevator and stabbed at the buttons.

Ray chucked Dief under the chin and headed into the ship.

There wasn't much to it down on the cargo level. A few cryo-storage units and one door he supposed led into the main hold. The door was locked. Figures.

After idly tapping a few random sequences into the touch pad, he keyed his comm and set out a ping for Fran. She answered right away like she was just waiting by the phone.

"What is it, Ray? And why don't you have vid? Oh, right, queer. What do you want?"

"How's the hack going?"

"It's going. Slowly. They've got some kind of spider at the gate. Real ugly mother, too."

Ray groaned and let his forehead fall against the bulkhead.

"Where are you?"

"I'm in the ship, Fran. I am in the actual ship standing in front of the actual door, and on the other side of it is my case, and maybe my friend possibly in trouble, so do you think you could open the door?" He tried banging his head on it.

"I'm trying! Whoever made this system, well, let's just say --" Her voice went syrupy with nudge-nudge, wink-wink. "--I'd trade the sexual favour of his, hers or its choice for a chance to see the code."

Ray stopped knocking his head against the door and paused to listen instead. Down the corridor, a red light was flashing. There was the unmistakable hiss of the hatch closing.

"Um, Ray?"

Ray closed his eyes.

"The ship is outbound."

"I know that, Fran."

"Two minutes. I need two minutes."

"Open the door, Frannie."

"Once they spin up I'm going to lose the feed."

"Open the door, Frannie."

"I'm almost--"

"Frannie, I am asking you very politely to please open the door."

Ray felt a shiver across his skin as the drive started to spin up.

"Frannie!"

Nothing but static.

The door slid open. A hand reached through the hatch, grabbed Ray by his collar, and yanked him through.

"Fraser."

"Hello Ray."

"You're okay."

"Yes, Ray."

"Good." They looked at each other, Fraser's hand still twisted in Ray's collar and Ray's feet only mostly on the deck. "Uh, Fraser," Ray said, finally. "This is a jump ship."

"Yes, Ray."

"It's going to jump."

"That seems likely."

Ray's good hand came up and twisted into his hair. "Fraser, do you know what happens to a human being who jumps without a jump pod?"

"Ray--"

Fraser was dragging him deeper into the cargo hold, between rows of identical crates.

"Their brains turn inside out!"

"Ray--"

"Is that what I get? I get a needle in the shoulder and two wrecked jackets and a suspension and now I get my brains turned inside out? What's the point? I'm asking you, Fraser." Ray let himself be dragged along, because what was the point, anyway?

"Ray--"

Another shiver and all the hairs on Ray's body stood on end. Somewhere a siren started to wail. A voice said, "ONE MINUTE TO JUMP." Then it started counting backward. That was not one bit comforting.

"I'm asking you, Fraser, how a guy does his job and keeps gettin up day after day and wading through the scum and dodging needles and not dodging needles, and pulls in a lousy 1.2 mil and for what? So his brains can get turned--"

"Please get in the pod, Ray." Fraser tucked a foot behind Ray's ankle and not-so gently tripped him into the emergency jump pod. Then he waved at Dief. "Get in. Well, you can stay here, but I don't think you want your brains turned inside out."

Grumbling, Dief jumped in, managing to plant all four of his feet one after another on Ray's testicles before settling down with his head on Ray's shoulder.

"His breath stinks," Ray complained.

"I could get him to turn around."

Ray glared at Fraser and then let his head fall back against the padding. He started to laugh the wheezy, helpless laughter of a guy whose brains maybe turned inside out two days ago. "This is what it comes down to, a choice between dog breath and dog butt. My life is a joke, Fraser."

Fraser smiled down at him. "I suppose that is true of all of us." He closed the canopy.

"Wait!" Ray smacked at the polyglass but Fraser locked it from the outside. "Wait! What about you?"

Out on the end of the spindles, the impossible collided with the improbable. Through the polyglass, Ray watched as the world was smeared sideways like someone had swiped at it with a wet rag. Fraser's face was the last thing he saw before space collapsed.


Real Boys, Part Three

Comments

[jenlev.livejournal.com]

oh i love this: "carefully counted five Smartos into his palm from a box on top of the fridge--all blue, because it was just that kind of day--and dumped them in, trying his best to ignore the way his fingers were shaking."

again the details are splendid: the crazy bathrobe guy, the way fraser looks out the window, all of it. i can't keep putting in quotes or the whole story will be in the comments.

suffice to say that rays disappointment with the universe he lives in resounds beautifully and heightens the edge of his connection to fraser.

and i adore rays description of the old dances/dancers.

and oh. my. gods. fraser didn't know? holy bat dren. wow. and very cool how you've layered in bob "in here."

dief is fabulous. and yay for frannie. also, the guy named hal? cracks me up completely. :)

so perfect that ray bangs his head on the door. and that fraser tells him to get in the pod. *veg*

[raucousraven.livejournal.com]

HAL. FRAN.

I've read these parts over and over and they still make me grin like I'm twelve and reading Heinlein during class with a perfectly straight back and the book quietly opened under my desk.

[wishfulaces.livejournal.com]

*snort* Inner mongoose. Oh, Ray, it doesn't matter what century you're in, you are queer and I love ya for it.

Part 3 shall have to wait for tomorrow (I should have been in bed ages ago!) but I really am enjoying the world(s) you've built here, and how our characters are still recognizably our characters. I find it interesting that Fraser--perfect, unbelievable Fraser--is, in fact, not human after all. Hmmmm.

[troyswann.livejournal.com]

I find it interesting that Fraser--perfect, unbelievable Fraser--is, in fact, not human after all. Hmmmm.

This is the joke, yeah? That Bot!Fraser is exactly the same as Human!Fraser :)