Starfish (9 page)

For the first time she wonders at their actions. It doesn't make sense; eyecaps compensate automatically for changes in ambient light, always serve up the same optimum intensity to the retina. Why choose to live in a darkness you don't even perceive?

She nudges the lights up a bit; the cubby brightens. Bright colors jar the eye against a background of gray on gray. The hydrox tank reflects fluorescent orange; readouts wink red and blue and green; the handle on the bulkhead locker is a small exclamation of yellow. She can't remember the last time she noticed color; eyecaps draw the faintest images from darkness, but most of the spectrum gets lost in the process. Only now, when the lights are up, can color reassert itself.

She doesn't like it. It seems raw and out of place down here. Clarke puts her eyecaps back in, dims the lights to their usual minimal glow. The bulkhead fades to a comforting wash of blue pastels.

Just as well. Shouldn't get too careless anyway.

In a couple of days Beebe will be crawling with a full staff. She doesn't want to get used to exposing herself.

It didn't look human at first. It didn't even look alive. It looked like a pile of dirty rags someone had thrown against the base of the Cambie pylon. Gerry Fischer wouldn't have looked twice if the skytrain hadn't hissed overhead at exactly the right moment, strobing the ground with segmented strips of light.

He stared. Eyes, flashing in and out of shadow, stared back.

He didn't move until the train had slid away along its overhead track. The world fell back into muddy low contrast. The sidewalk. The strip of kudzu
₄
below the track, gray and suffocating under countless drizzlings of concrete dust. Feeble cloudbank reflections of neon and laser from Commercial.

And this thing with the eyes, this rag-pile against the pylon. A boy.

A young boy.

This is what you do when you really love someone
, Shadow always said. After all, the kid could
die
out here.

"Are you okay?" he said at last.

The pile of rags shifted a little, and whimpered.

"It's okay. I won't hurt you."

"I'm lost," it said, in a very strange voice.

Fischer took a step forward. “You a ref?” The nearest refugee strip was over a hundred kilometers away, and well guarded, but sometimes someone would get out.

The eyes swung from side to side:
no.

But then,
Fischer thought,
what else would he say? Maybe he’s afraid I’ll turn him in.

"Where do you live?" he asked, and listened closely to the answer:

"Orlando."

No hint of Asian or Hindian in that voice. Back when Fischer was a kid his mom would always tell him that disasters were color-blind, but he knew better now. The kid sounded N’Am; not a ref, then. Which meant there would probably be people looking for him.

Which, in a way, was too—

Stop it.

"Orlando,” he repeated aloud. “You
are
lost. Where's your mom and dad?"

"Hotel." The rag pile detached itself from the pylon and shuffled closer. "Vanceattle." The words came out half-whistled, as though the kid was speaking through his sinuses. Maybe he had one of those, those — Fischer groped for the words — cleft palates, or something.

"Vanceattle? Which one?"

Shrug.

"Don't you have a watch?"

"Lost it."

You've got to help him, Shadow said.

"Well, um, look." Fischer rubbed at his temples. "I live close by. We can call from there."

There weren't that many Vanceattles in the lower mainland. The police wouldn't have to find out. And even if they did, they wouldn't charge him. Not for this. What was he supposed to do, leave the kid for body parts?

"I'm Gerry," Fischer said.

"Kevin."

Kevin looked about nine or ten. Old enough that he should know how to use a public terminal, anyway. But there was something wrong with him. He was too tall and skinny, and his limbs tangled up in themselves when he walked. Maybe he was brain damaged. Maybe one of those nanotech babies that went bad. Or maybe his mother just spent too much time outdoors when she was pregnant.

Fischer led Kevin up to his two-room timeshare. Kevin dropped onto the couch without asking. Fischer checked the fridge: root beer. The boy took it with a nervous smile. Fischer sat down beside him and put a reassuring hand on Kevin's lap.

The expression drained from Kevin's face as though someone had pulled a plug.

Go
on
, Shadow said. He's not complaining, is he?

Kevin's clothes were filthy. Caked mud clung to his pants. Fischer reached over and began picking it off. "We should get you out of these clothes. Get you cleaned up. We can only take showers on even days here, but you could always take a sponge bath..."

Kevin just sat there. One hand gripped his drink, bony fingers denting the plastic; the other rested motionless on the couch.

Fischer smiled. "It's okay. This is what you do when you really—"

Kevin stared at the floor, trembling.

Fischer found a zipper, pulled. Pressed, gently. "It's okay. It's okay. Don't worry."

Kevin stopped shaking. Kevin looked up.

Kevin smiled.

"I'm not the one who should be worried here, asshole," he said in his whistling child's voice.

The jolt threw Fischer to the floor. Suddenly he was staring at the ceiling, fingers twitching at the ends of arms that had turned, magically, into dead weights. His whole nervous system sang like a tracery of high-tension wires embedded in flesh.

His bladder let go. Wet warmth spread out from his crotch.

Kevin stepped over him and looked down, all trace of awkwardness gone from his movements. One hand still held the plastic cup. The other held a shockprod.

Very deliberately, Kevin upended his drink. Fischer watched the liquid snake down, almost casually, and splash across his face. His eyes stung; Kevin was a spindly blur in a wash of weak acid. Fischer tried to blink, tried again, finally succeeded.

One of Kevin's legs was swinging back at the knee.

"Gerald Fischer, you are under arrest—"

It swung forward. Pain erupted in Fischer's side.

"—for indecent assault of a minor—"

Back. Forward. Pain.

"—under sections 151 and 152 of the N'Am Pacific Criminal Code."

The child knelt down and glared into his face. Up close the telltales were obvious; the depth of the eyes, the size of the pores in the skin, the plastic resilience of adult flesh soaked in androgen suppressants.

"Not to mention violation of yet
another
restraining order," Kevin added.

How long,
Fischer wondered absently. Neural aftershock draped the whole world in gauze. How many months did it take to stunt back down from man to child?

"You have the right to— ah, fuck."

And how long to reverse the reversal? Could Kevin ever grow up again?

"You know your fucking rights better than I do."

This wasn't happening. The police wouldn't go this far, they didn't have the money, and anyway, why? How could anyone be willing to
change
themselves like that? Just to get Gerry Fischer? Why?

"I suppose I should call you in, shouldn't I? Then again, maybe I'll just let you lie here in your own piss for a while..."

Somehow, he got the feeling that Kevin was hurting more than he was. It didn't make sense.

It's okay, Shadow told him softly. It's not your fault. They just don't understand.

Kevin was kicking him again, but Fischer could hardly feel it. He tried to say something, anything, that would make his tormentor feel a little better, but his motor nerves were still fried.

He could still cry, though. Different wiring.

* * *

It was different this time. It started out the same, the scans and the samples and the beatings, but then they took him out of the line and cleaned him up, and put him in a side room. Two guards sat him down at a table, across from a dumpy little man with brown moles all over his face.

"Hello, Gerry," he said, pretending not to notice Fischer's injuries. "I'm Dr. Scanlon."

"You're a shrink."

"Actually, I'm more of a mechanic." He smiled, a prissy little smile that said
I've just been very clever but you're probably too stupid to get the joke.
Fischer decided he didn't like Scanlon much.

Still, his type had been useful before, with all their talk about
competence
and
criminal responsibility
. It's not so much what you did, Fischer had learned, as why you did it. If you did things because you were evil, you were in real trouble. If you did the same things because you were sick, though, the doctors would sometimes cover for you. Fischer had learned to be sick.

Scanlon pulled a headband out of his breast pocket. "I'd like to talk to you for a little while, Gerry. Would you mind putting this on for me?"

The inside of the band was studded with sensor pads. It felt cool across his forehead. Fischer looked around the room, but he couldn't see any monitors or readouts.

"Great." Scanlon nodded to the guards. He waited until they'd left before he spoke again.

"You're a strange one, Gerry Fischer. We don't run into too many like you."

"That's not what the other doctors said."

"Oh? What did they say?"

"They said I was typical. They said, they said lots of the one-fifty-one's used the same
rationale
."

Scanlon leaned forward. "Well you know, that's true. It's a classic line: 'I was teaching her about her awakening sexuality, doctor.' 'It's the parents' job to instruct their children, doctor.' 'They don't like school either, but it's for their own good.'"

"I never said those things. I don't even have kids."

"No you don't. But the point is, pedophiles often claim to be acting in the best interests of the children. They turn sexual abuse into an act of altruism, if you will."

"It's
not
abuse. It's what you do if you really love someone."

Scanlon leaned back in his chair and studied Fischer for a few moments.

"That's what's so interesting about you, Gerry."

"What?"

"Everyone
uses
that line. You're the only person I've met who might actually
believe
it."

* * *

In the end, they said they could take care of the charges. He knew there had to be more to it than that, of course; they'd make him volunteer for some sort of experiment, or donate some of his organs, or submit to voluntary castration first. But the catch, when it came, wasn't any of those things. He almost couldn't believe it.