The Android's Dream

Chapter 9

"Tell me what you need," Fixer said.

"We need new identities," Creek said. "We need off the planet. We need it fast."

"How fast?" Fixer asked.

"The next couple of hours would be nice," Creek said.

"Oh, okay," Fixer said. "Because for a minute there I thought you might want something impossible."

"I know it's a lot to ask," Creek said.

"Any extenuating circumstances I should know about that might make this even more difficult?" Fixer said.

"People just tried to kill us. And there's an APB out for our arrest," Creek said.

Fixer arched his eyebrow at Creek. "This wouldn't have anything to do with what just went on at the Arlington Mall, would it?"

"It might," Creek admitted.

"Well, aren't you just a bundle of fun," Fixer said.

"Can you help us?" Creek said.

"For what you're asking, I don't think you can afford me," Fixer said.

Creek reached into his wallet and pulled out the anonymous credit card Javna had given him.

"Try me," Creek said.

Archie stood in front of the vending machine, steeling himself.

"Just do it," Archie said to himself. He'd already fed the credit card into the machine; all he had to do was press the B4 button and have done with it.

He was having a hard time doing it. After three previous sessions with the vending machine ripping the information out of his head like a jaguar raking his optic nerves with its claws, he was not exactly brimming with enthusiasm for session number four.

Not only that, but the B4 slot of the vending machine was now empty—he was now spending money to get a migraine and getting nothing for it.

Actually, though, Archie was okay with that. The pain induced with each packet of white chocolate M&Ms was great enough to make Archie physically ill at the thought of ingesting another single piece of candy. This state of affairs no doubt would have pleased Ivan Pavlov immensely.

"Just do it," he said again, and leaned his head on the Plexiglass, and attempted to will himself to press the button. Acuna had divulged the likely whereabouts of Creek and Baker and was busily medicating himself enough to be able to head out and get them; it was information Archie was certain Sam and the others would want to know. And yet there he was, busily not pressing the button. What he was doing, forehead pressed against the Plexiglas, finger hovering over the B4 button, was thinking of new and innovative ways to strangle Sam for doing this to him.

One should expect one's partner in all things domestic and carnal to have just a lime bit more sympathy.

"Hey, geek!"

Archie jerked his head up with a start and moved his body fractionally, enough that the finger hovering over the B4 button jammed into it. Archie gasped as the blinding pain ripped through his head for the fourth time that day and struggled mightily to remain standing. Archie became aware he was suddenly drooling; he desperately tried to suck it back into his mouth and to keep from vomiting all over the front of the vending machine. He closed his eyes and waited for the nausea to pass. When he opened them, Acuna was standing next him.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" Acuna asked.

"Headache," Archie said, wetly. "I get them pretty bad. It's an allergy thing."

Acuna looked Archie up and down for a moment, sizing him up. "Yeah, well, look. You're coming with us. Schroeder says that guy Creek and the girl are going to visit has a lot of computer and technical shit at his place. If Creek and the girl aren't there, and the guy isn't useful, we might be able to get something out of his computers."

Archie nodded, eyes still closed. "Okay," he said. "I'm going to need a couple of minutes, though. I need to do a couple of things before we go. I need to set some drillers to get into Creek's computer system."

"You're still not in that yet?" Acuna asked.

Archie shook his head—slowly. "The got some unbelievable defensive software on his system. It's military grade at least."

"Fine," Acuna said. "I have to numb myself a little more anyway. But make it fast." Acuna looked over to the vending machine and frowned. "What did you get?"

"What?" Archie asked.

"You pressed a button but I don't see anything at the bottom."

"I accidentally pressed B4," Archie said. "It's empty. I meant to press B5, but you startled me."

Acuna snorted. "Try G2," he said. "It's got aspirin in it." He walked off. Archie stood there for a few more seconds, then dully pulled out his credit card, slipped it into the vending machine, pressed "G2", and retrieved his packet of pain reliever.

Back at his computer, Archie considered the problem of Creek's computer system, which was, he had to admit, just a fucking masterpiece of defensive security. Archie had been flinging driller after driller at the thing, each of the autonomous programs designed to hunt out specific areas of weakness in the system's security, drill into them, and then hold the door open for other programs to extract data.

Your average home system would fall in about 15 seconds with a minimally complex driller that was essentially a password generator, with a spoofer to fool the system into thinking each password entered was the first attempt. Small business systems and home systems of people who worked in the computer industry or who were simply paranoid about their home systems required a more specialized driller, with more subtle ways of getting in.

On this medium level of complexity, Archie liked a driller that mimicked the information retrieval protocol used across the network—the driller would fool the system into thinking it had requested information and stream a self-extracting program into the system, which would root around and send data back out, piggybacking on the system's legitimate outward bound traffic.

Now, larger business and government systems, heavily protected as they were, required awesomely designed drillers capable of multidimensional, simultaneous system attacks. Corporate-grade drillers were the state of the art; the hack who coded one that laid into a well-defended system would be king among the hack geeks for at least six hours, which was typically the amount of time it took IT to dislodge the driller and backhoe the hole in the system's security.

Archie had done Creek and his system the professional courtesy of assuming a low-level driller wouldn't cut it, and had begun probing his system with mid-level drillers, all of which reported back failure. Archie only had one high-level driller in his archive, but it was a doozy; it had famously drilled open the USDA system and ferreted out the crop forecasts for the year, leading to a collapse in the agricultural futures market. Archie hadn't written the driller, but he respected the hell out of the coding skills of the hack who had; the driller was elegantly designed. The USDA driller would be useless for any major corporate or government target, of course—on that level, a driller only works once—but it should have been more than enough for any home system on the planet. It wasn't.

If Archie had six weeks and nothing else to do, he might have been able to whip up a new driller of similar quality as the USDA one; as it was he had six minutes. So he elected to take another tack. He fired up a new window and logged into Basher's Dungeon, a hack forum, and posted a message as Creek taunting the hacks therein and proclaiming his system as hackproof. Such a taunt wouldn't dislodge serious hacks, but it would get some of the less skilled and more excitable hacks moving, and once their attacks starting bouncing off Creek's system, some of the more competent would sense the system as a legitimate challenge. To sweeten the deal Archie wrote that inside Creek's system was the long-rumored, never-seen video of a famous pop star going down on her not-famous-but-equally-hot identical twin sister.

That should work, Archie thought, and sent off the message. Then he reached into his archives and pulled out a monitor program and a retrieval program. The monitor program would observe the various attacks on Creek's system from the outside by tagging drillers and other programs as they reached Creek's system and then tracking their progress against it. When one of them cracked the system, the monitor program would alert the retrieval program, which would enter and grab information.

Archie was obviously no longer looking for Robin Baker's identity, but if Creek and the girl slipped away again, the information they found could help track them down. Archie directed the retrieval program to focus on personal information documents and all activity within the last couple of weeks. That was bound to be a lot of material but Archie could trim it down once he had it, and it was better than trying to download every file in the system.

Acuna stepped into the room. "Time to go," he said. "Wrap it up."

"Already wrapped," Archie said, and closed his computer. Let's see you handle this, Creek, he thought.

Brian noticed the hack drillers plinking at Creek's system the same way a musk ox notes a swarm of flies buzzing around its nose. He warded off earlier attacks from what he assumed was a single anonymous source, but he noticed that these new drillers were born substantially less sophisticated than the previous attacks and coming from multiple, non anonymous sources. So whoever was bothering him now was both stupid and clumsy. Brian left the diggers to their futile work and sent scouts of his own back down the pipe to the originators' systems (unsurprisingly easy to crack) and looked through their logs to find what they all had in common. What they had in common was a recent visit to Basher's Dungeon. Brian appropriated one of their identities, signed on, and found the post claiming to be from Creek.

That's sneaky, Brian thought. While he didn't approve of the attack on Creek's system (which was, in a manner of speaking, an attack on Brian himself), Brian could appreciate whomever it was trying to get other people to do his dirty work for him.

Brian's attention came back to the attacks on Creek's system; more complex diggers were arriving now, these from anonymous sources. The smarter kids had arrived, with their shiny toys. Brian wasn't concerned that they would drill the system, but if too many drillers arrived, defending the system would eventually and inevitably tax its resources, and Brian had other things to do today than play with the hacks.

Brian reached out and grabbed one of the simpler drillers, generating a trapping program on the fly to do so. He cracked it open and spilled the code; it was nothing special, but it featured what Brian was looking for—the hacksig of its maker, one OHN-SYAS69, more prosaically known as Peter Nguyen of Irvine, California. Brian learned with one sweep through Nguyen's system that Peter Nguyen was 15, had an extensive collection of busty porn, and was a budding if clearly not gifted hack; his driller was all off-the-shelf code, jammed together inelegantly into a barely functional program.

Peter Nguyen, I'm going to make you a star, Brian thought, and from the inelegant mess that was young master Nguyen's drilling program, crafted something new under the virtual sun: A metadriller, designed to latch onto other drilling programs, crack them open, find the hacksig of their makers, and then re-program the drillers to head home to their maker's system. After drilling the system open, they would broadcast the availability of its contents onto the world network for anyone to see and sample. A few hours later, the driller would initiate a system crash that included the driller program itself, leaving only Peter Nguyen's hacksig behind.

Drilling the drillers would be simple, for the simple reason that no one had ever done it before, so no one had thought to protect the drillers from being drilled. This is what Brian loved about hacks. They were smart, but they didn't like to think about things not directly in front of them.

Brian finalized the code (making sure the metadriller would self-wipe if drilled itself; wouldn't do to fall into the same trap as the hacks) and then fed it into an autonomous replicator program that would spit out a metadriller each time Creek's system registered an attack. Native system resources spent on dealing with the attacks would now be limited to pinging the replicator program after each attempt. As a bonus, the hack world would fall into chaos and ruin for a certain amount of time while the geeks tried to figure out what the hell was going on.

That was just fine with Brian. He might be a disembodied virtual consciousness, but at least he wasn't some fucking geek. Maybe deprived of their systems, some of these geeks might go out and get some sun or meet people or something. It couldn't hurt. In any event, the hacks might learn a little humility, which they were sorely lacking despite the fact they couldn't be relied upon to shower more than one day out of three.

As Brian contemplated the enforced socialization of the geek set, he noticed two programs—not drillers—hanging about his system's periphery. The first flitted from driller to driller, marking each with a tiny autonomous program; Brian recognized it as a monitor program. The other program hung there, unpacked. Brian reached out, grabbed it, cracked it open. It was a retrieval program, waiting for a driller to finish its work before entering Creek's system. Brian read the code and discovered who was trying to get inside of him.

"Well, hello there, Mr. Archie McClellan, whoever you are," Brian said. "I think it's time we got better acquainted."

Fixer opened a freezer in his basement and pulled out an economy-sized Popsicle box, like you'd buy in a warehouse store, and held it for Creek and Robin to examine. "Here it is," he said.

"Here is what?" said Robin.

"Your new identity," Fixer said.

"We're going to be Popsicles?" Robin said.

Fixer grinned. He set the box down on the table and slid out a plastic tray from its inside; on it was what looked to be extremely thin, arm length gloves. "I don't want you to think I'm glad you came to me," Fixer said. "Because, truly, I am not. However, your decision was either smart or lucky for you. From time to time the Malloy family has the need to get someone past the authorities quickly and get them offworld for a nice, long, relaxing vacation. And when they do, they come to me, because I have this"—he pointed to the gloves—"a new identity in a box."

Creek reached over and picked up one of the gloves. "It looks like skin," he said. "Did this come from someone?"

"I didn't flay someone, if that's what you mean," Fixer said, and pointed at the glove. "Human skin cells grown from a culture, suspended in a nutrient base to keep them alive. Fingerprints, palm prints, and skin texture are laser-etched. Refrigeration makes them last for about six weeks. Unrefrigerated, they last for about two days. They'll get you off planet, and that's about it"

"Where do you get something like this?" Robin asked.

"One of the Malloys' legitimate businesses is a chain of nursing homes," Fixer said, and went back to the freezer to pull out another box. "I get skin samples and identities from the residents. They're good to use because they're alive but they're not going anywhere. As long as you've got a breathing body, DNA, and fingerprints, everything else is just paperwork. The gloves themselves I make on medical apparatus I modified myself."

"You're pretty handy," Robin said.

"Thanks," Fixer said. "It's nice that my college education is not completely wasted." He handed the second box to Robin, who stared at it, and back at Fixer.

"Women's DNA in those," Fixer said. "Because, genetically speaking, one size does not fit all."

Fixer helped Creek and Robin with the gloves and trimmed off excess material, so that the gloves went midway between the elbow and the shoulder. Fixer had both of them bend their arms and put their palms up; he tugged at their gloves to line up the fingerprints and then brought out what looked like a pair of calipers and placed them on either side of Creek's upper arm and pressed a button. Creek felt a mild thrum of electricity and then the constriction of the glove adhering tightly to his arms.

"Ow," Creek said.

"Relax," Fixer said, doing the same to Robin. "They'll give a bit in a few minutes. But better too tight than too loose. Now, let's deal with your heads." Fixer went away and returned a few minutes later with another box. "High-tech," he said, reaching into the box and handing a small plastic container of tiny circular tabs to Creek. "I apply these tabs to particular points on your face and head, and they tighten or relax the muscle groups underneath to alter your appearance. You'll look different enough from yourself that you'll get past facial-recognition scanners. Another short-term solution. The power on the tabs works for about six hours."

To Robin, he handed a pair of scissors and some hair dye. "Low-tech," he said. "You have great hair, my dear. But it's far too obvious." Robin took the scissors and dye and looked like she had just been told to cut her own throat. Fixer guided her to a bathroom and then came back to Creek. "I need to make a few calls," he said. "I need to call in a few favors."

"Thank you," Creek said. "I really appreciate it."

"They're not favors for you," Fixer said. "I can get you off planet under my own steam. But I have a feeling you've just qualified me for a long, necessary, and possibly permanent vacation. That's going to require calling in some markers."

"Sorry about that," Creek said.

"Don't be too sorry," Fixer said. He dug out Creek's anonymous credit card and handed it back to him. "You're paying for it. And I don't mind telling you I'm putting a hell of a markup on my services tonight." Fixer headed up the stairs; Creek pulled out his communicator and made a call of his own to Brian.

"You're very popular," Brian said, again without preamble. "In the last hour or so there's been about 2,000 attempts to hack your system, some of them actually pretty good."

"The fact you're here to tell me about it suggests you have it under control," Creek said.

"That's one way of putting it," Brian said. "Another way of putting would be to say that in about ninety minutes, a couple thousand elite and not-so-elite hacks are going to howl in terror when their little worlds implode. However, I'm less worried about them than I am about the fact that a judge has just authorized a warrant to search your premises and the chattels within, namely, your computer system in an attempt to figure out just where you are at the moment. The cops aren't going to be any more successful in getting information out of your system than the hacks, but if I'm disconnected from the network I'm not going to be much use to you."

"Can you leave the system?" Creek asked.

"I don't think so," Brian said. "The network allows for small autonomous programs, like the drillers I'm currently swatting away, but I'm a little large not to be noticed just floating there in the aether."

Creek thought for a moment. "The IBM at NOAA," he said, finally. "It should still be accessible. You could go there."

"Oh, very nice," Brian said. "Back to the womb."

"It's better than nothing," Creek said.

"I'm not complaining, Harry," Brian said. "I like the IBM. It's roomy. And it's also connected to the government network, which makes my accessing it rather less obtrusive. Hold on, I've begun my transfer. Do I sound farther away?"

"Not really," Creek said.

"And as I'm backing out of your system I'm formatting it and ordering it to disconnect from the network," Brian said. "I don't know what the cops are going to find in the rest of your house but your computer, at least, will be clean in just a few minutes."

"What else have you got for me?" Creek asked.

"Tons," Brian said. "First: The mall security cameras weren't working—the police pulled some disrupters off your new friends—but you and Miss Baker were recorded by the Metro video cameras. That's the bad news. The good news is that I managed to disconnect the feed from your train once I located you. The bad news is that I wasn't able to disconnect the video feed from the Benning Road stop, so eventually they'll figure out where you got off. But it still gives you a little bit of time. If you're not already hurrying to do whatever you're doing, it's time to start."

"We're hurrying," Creek said.

"Good to hear," Brain said. "Second: Your Agent Reginald Dwight is actually Edward Baer, who appears to be your average low-grade flunky type. Served a couple years for extortion and racketeering about a decade ago and got an extra six months tacked on to his sentence for assaulting another prisoner while in the pen. His official job is as a security specialist, which is some irony for you. Quite obviously an associate of Mr. Acuna, who has been signing checks to this guy for a couple of years now."

"Is he dead?" Creek asked.

"No, he's not," Brian said. "He's not exactly skipping through the daisies, either. He was admitted to Mount Vernon Hospital with multiple internal and external injuries, including a broken back and severed spinal cord. He's in surgery now. There are two confirmed dead, one from massive head trauma and another from a gunshot wound, and two others wounded. One of those is unconscious, but one is conscious and being grilled by the police as we speak."

"That's five," Creek said. "Where's Acuna?"

"He's not at the scene," Brian said. "At the very least, there's no word of his arrest or his being sent to the hospital."

"That's no good," Creek said.

"Third," Brian continued, "I figured out who it was who's been trying to dig into your system for the last day or so: A guy named Archie McClellan. He's a contractor for the Department of Defense. Have you heard of him?"

"No," Creek said.

"Well, he's definitely heard of you," Brian said, "and since his attempts to hack into your system correspond almost exactly with your attempts to find your lost sheep, I don't think his visits are coincidental."

"Does this McClellan guy have any connection to Jean Schroeder or the AIC?" Creek asked.

"There's nothing in his banking history that would say so. He mostly works for the US and UNE governments. His contract information says he primarily works with legacy systems. He's got no axe to grind. Apparently, he's just a geek. I'm crawling up his computer's tailpipe as we speak. I expect to learn more any second now. But in the meantime I'd like to suggest to you that, yeah, we should assume whatever Jean Schroeder and his merry band of xenophobic freaks are up to, our friend Archie and the Defense Department are along for the ride."

Creek open his mouth to answer when the door to the basement opened and Fixer stepped a few steps down the stairs. "I've got a ride for you two," he said. "The Neverland cruise ship. The entire boat has been rented out to a group of Veterans of Foreign and Extraterrestrial Wars. It's hitting some of the usual stops but then it's going to some battle sites. So you're going to have to pretend to be a veteran."

"I am a veteran," Creek said.

"Well, good. Then things just got easier for a change," Fixer said. "The last shuttle up to the Neverland leaves from BWI in about two hours, so let's get you two moving. Tell your friend to hurry up in the bathroom; I need to make passport pictures for the two of you in the next fifteen minutes." Fixer went back up the stairs.

"Going somewhere?" Brian said.

"That"s the plan," Creek said.

"You'll recall that starships, even the comfy cruise liners, are totally out of communication when they jump into null space," Brian said. "You can send messages through n-space, but you can't send or receive messages while you're in it. You're going to be out of reach most of the time."

"At this point I'm hard-pressed to see that as a bad thing," Creek said. "Look, it's a cruise liner. It makes stops every couple of days. As soon as we're back in real space, the data feeds are open again."

"Do you think when Ben told you to get lost he meant for you to actually leave the planet?" Brian asked. "If he needs you, even if you're in real space you'll be several light-years away. It won't be that easy to hitch a ride back."

"If Ben's trying to call us back, it means that he's figured out what the hell is going on, which means he's going to have the resources of the State Department to retrieve us," Creek said. "So I don't think bringing us back is going to be that much of a problem. But in the meantime I'm not going to sit around trying to lay low on this planet and waiting for people to shoot our heads off."

"What do I do while you're away?" Brian said.

"I need information," Creek said. "There are too many things I don't understand, and too many connections I'm not making, and the lack of information is going to get me and Robin killed. I need you to find out all you can about what's going on, who is connected to whom, and how it relates to the Nidu coronation. Most of all, find out everything you can about the Nidu coronation itself. People are trying to murder this poor woman because of it, for one thing, and for another thing, I want to make sure her taking part in it isn't going to leave her dead at the end."

"So, you want me to find out everything about everything," Brian said.

"Yeah," Creek said.

"That's a lot," Brian said.

"I've been asking the impossible of a lot of people recently," Creek said. "Don't see why you should be any different. Find out as much as you can, as fast as you can. Let me know as soon as you know it."

"Will do," Brian said. "As a bon voyage gift, allow me to do you a little favor. I've just put in a very credible tip that you and Miss Baker have been spotted at Dulles International, trying to get on a shuttle to Miami. I'm working on getting into the video camera system and popping up your images here and there. They'll eventually figure they've been hoaxed, but by that time your shuttle will be off and you'll be away. Oh, and look, the cops just busted down your door. I really should be going."

"Thank you, Brian," Creek said.

"De nada," Brian said. "Just make sure you bring me back something nice from your vacation."

"Let's hope that what I bring back is me," Creek said.

Creek found Robin Baker seated on the edge of Fixer's bathtub with the scissors in one hand and a hunk of hair in the other, morose. She looked at him as he came through the door.

"The last time I cut my hair was six years ago, you know," she said. "I mean, not counting trimming off split ends. Now I have to hack it all off. And I can't even see what I'm doing."

Creek took the scissors from Robin and sat down next to her on the tub. "Let me do it," he said.

"Can you cut hair?" Robin asked.

"Not really," Creek said. "But at least I can see what I'm cutting." The two of them were silent for a while as Creek cut her hair as quickly and straightly as he could.

"There," he said.

Robin stood up and looked in the mirror. "Well, it's different," she said.

Creek laughed. "I appreciate the diplomacy," he said. "But I know it's a really bad haircut. I don't expect you to keep it. I'm pretty sure the cruise ship will have a beauty shop."

"Cruise ship?" Robin asked. "As in boat or starship?"

"Starship," Creek said.

"How long are we going to be gone?" Robin asked.

"I didn't think to ask," Creek said. "Why?"

"I have pets," Robin said. "And I have animals in the shop. I don't want them to starve. I should call someone."

"There's an APB out for us," Creek said, as gently as possible. "I'm sure your parents and friends will know you'll be away. I'm sure your animals will be fine."

"If the police allow people in to feed them," Robin said.

"There is that," Creek agreed. "I'm sorry, Robin. There's nothing to do about it right now." He reached over and picked up the hair dye. "You want some help with this?"

"No," Robin said, and turned on the water in the sink. "I can do this. Not that I would use this, normally"—she pointed to the dye—"this stuff is crap."

"I don't think the guys Fixer usually has use this stuff care too much," Creek said.

"Probably not," Robin said, sighed, and took the hair dye from Creek. She bent over and dunked her head in the sink to wet her hair. "How do you know this guy, anyway?"

"I don't," Creek said. "I only met him a couple of days ago."

"How do you know you can trust him?" Robin said. She squeezed out some dye and started working it through her hair. "You're only entrusting him with our lives."

"I kept a secret for him, and I just paid him a lot of money," Creek said. "I think it should be enough. You missed a spot in the back."

Robin reached a hand back. "Be honest with me, now, Harry," she said, glancing at Creek in the mirror. "Do you do this a lot? Involve innocent women in bizarre plots of espionage and assassination? Or is this a first for you, too?"

"It's pretty much a first," Creek said. "Is that the right answer?"

"Well, you know," Robin said. "A girl does like to be treated special." She dunked her head, rinsed out the dye, and held out a hand. "Towel," she said. Creek grabbed one off the rack and handed it to her. Robin toweled off her head and then looked over to Creek. "How does it look?" she said.

"Black," Creek said.

Robin glanced at herself in the mirror. "Ugh. I tried black once in high school. Didn't work then. Doesn't work now."

"It's not so bad," Creek said. "It distracts from the haircut."

"Harry, what's in my DNA?" Robin asked. "You said there's something in my DNA that makes me different, and that everyone else with my DNA is dead. What is it?"

Creek stood up. "I don't know that this is the best time to get into it," he said. "We have to get to our shuttle if we're going to get on the cruise ship." He moved toward the door.

Robin walked over and interposed herself between Creek and the doorknob. "I think this is an excellent time to get into it," she said. "People are trying to kill me because of my DNA. I think I deserve the right to know why. I think you need to tell me right now, Harry."

Creek looked at her. "You remember what I was looking for when I came into your shop," he said.

"You were looking for a sheep," Robin said.

"Right," Creek said.

"Right, what?" Robin said.

"I was looking for a particular breed of genetically modified sheep. At least I thought I was. But it turns out I was looking for you."

Robin stared up at Creek for a few seconds before she slugged him in the jaw. "Goddamn it!" she said, retreating into the bathroom.

Creek massaged his jaw. "I really wish you would stop hitting me," he said.

"I am not a goddamn sheep, Harry!" Robin yelled.

"I didn't say you were a sheep, Robin," Creek said. "I said I thought I was looking for a sheep. But you have some of the same DNA as the kind of sheep I'm looking for."

"Do I look like I have sheep DNA?" Robin asked. "Do I look especially woolly to you?"

"No," Creek said. "All the sheep DNA you have is switched off. It's junk DNA. It doesn't do anything. But it doesn't mean it's not there, Robin. It's there. Just a little under twenty percent of your DNA is taken from breed."

"You're lying," Robin said.

Creek sighed, and crouched down, resting his back on the bathroom door. "I saw pictures of your mother, Robin. Your biological mother. She was a genetically engineered hybrid between human and animal. She was one of several hybrids some sick bastard created to blackmail people. This man let your mother get pregnant, and he modified your embryo in utero—designed you to be a viable birth. She wasn't fully human, Robin. I'm sorry."

"That not what my parents told me," Robin said. "They said she was homeless and died giving birth to me."

"I don't think they knew the details," Creek said. "But she did die giving birth to you."

Robin grabbed the edge of the sink and collapsed onto the toilet, sobbing. Creek went over to her and held her.

There was a knock on the bathroom door. Fixer poked his head in. "Everything all right?" He said.

"Everything's fine," Creek said. "It's just been a busy day."

"We're not done being busy," Fixer said. "We need to get those pictures taken, so I can make your passports. Are you ready?"

"A couple more minutes," Creek said.

"No," Robin said, and grabbed onto the sink again, this time to pull herself up. "We're ready. We're ready now."

"Okay," Fixer said, and looked at her hair. "After we take these pictures, I've got a hat you can use." He left.

"There goes his tip," Robin said, and smiled weakly at Creek.

"You okay, then?" Creek asked.

"Oh, sure," Robin said. "Today, people have tried to kill me, the police are looking for me, and I've just discovered every Easter of my childhood, I ate one of my relatives with mint jelly. I'm just fine."

"Well, is a very rare breed," Creek said.

"So?" Robin said.

"So they probably weren't close relatives," Creek said.

Robin stared at up at Creek for a few seconds. Then she laughed.

Where's Chuckie? Fixer thought as he fell backward down his basement stairs. Where the hell is my dog?

Fixer was worried about his dog because when he opened the door of the basement into the ground floor of his shop, there were two men and a very large thing waiting for him on the other side. This simply shouldn't have been; Chuckie was an Akita, and while the breed was silent enough near family or friends, they bark like mad when strangers invade their personal turf. Chuckie was so good at alerting Fixer to people in the store that for the last five years Fixer hadn't bothered with a door alarm; there was no need. Fixer had been in the basement, loudly destroying incriminating evidence and preparing for his departure, so he may not have heard Chuckie bark when people came into the store. But Chuckie wouldn't have stopped barking until Fixer heard him, came up the stairs, and told him to settle down. Ergo, something was wrong with Chuckie.

Fixer would have asked the men in the store about it at the top of the stairs, but the one closest to him punched him viciously in the face, staggering Fixer backward and down the stairs. All thoughts of his dog left Fixer's mind as his head connected with the concrete floor at the bottom of the stair with a retina-whitening crack; when Fixer recovered his eyesight, the man who had slugged him was standing over him, gun in his face. The man looked like hell.

"Where's my dog?" Fixer asked.

The man cracked a lopsided grin. "Well, isn't that sweet," he said. "Takk!"

A high-pitched voice responded from the top of the stairs, out of Fixer's sightline. "Yeah?"

"Give the man his dog," the man said.

About 30 seconds later Chuckie came tumbling down the stairs, landing with a thump next to his master. His tongue, purplish-black, lolled from the side of his mouth. Fixer reached over to stroke Chuckie's fur; it was damp and matted.

"Oh, Chuckie," Fixer said.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," said the man. "Very fucking sad. Now get up."

Fixer got up. "What do you want?"

"You had a couple of visitors today," the man said. "I want to know where they went."

"I have a lot of visitors," Fixer said. "I have a very successful repair shop."

The man took his gun off Fixer and fired at Chuckie, mashing brains and the top of the dog's skull into the stairwell.

"Jesus Christ!" Fixer said, and held his ears. "What did you do that for?"

"Because you're pissing me off," the man said. "And just because your dog's dead doesn't mean I can't make a mess with his fucking corpse. So let's stop being coy, if you don't mind, and we can all get through this with a minimum of drama. What do you say?"

Takk wedged his monstrous body into the doorframe at the top of the stairs. "Everything okay?" he asked.

"Everything is fine," the man said. "Come down here, Takk, and tell the geek to get his ass down here, too. He's got work to do."

Takk called back to the other guy and started walking down the stairs. Fixer gaped at him. The man holding a gun at him grinned. "He's a big one, isn't he," the man said. "He's a Nagch, and you wouldn't know it, but he's kind of runty for his species. But he's big enough for what I need him for."

"What do you need him for?" Fixed asked.

"For starters, to beat the crap out of people who piss me off by not answering my questions," the man said.

Takk came down off the stairs and stood next to Fixer, which to Fixer felt vaguely like standing next to a Kodiak bear.

"Hi," Takk said. His voice came, not from a mouth—the Nagch didn't appear to have one—but from a diaphragm like patch where his neck joined his body.

"Hello," Fixer said.

Another human came down the stairs. "There's nothing in the computer upstairs," this other human said. "It's connected to a network but the only thing on it is invoices and business-related files. Are there computers down here?"

The man with the gun turned to Fixer. "Well?" he said. Fixer gestured in the direction of his computers and machines, which he'd already covered up. "Get to it, geek," the man said.

"He's not going to find anything," Fixer said. "I don't keep records of anything I do down here."

"Well, I appreciate the heads-up," the man said, "but he's going to give it the old college try anyway. Now. Back to our two friends. A man and a woman. I have it on good authority they were here."

"They were here," Fixer said.

"Excellent," the man said, and smiled. "See? Now we're getting somewhere. What did you do for them?"

"I gave them new identities and got them passage off the planet," Fixer said. "They apparently had some sort of run-in at the Arlington Mall that required a quick exit. You know anything about that?"

"Fucker broke my wrist," the man said, and Fixer was suddenly aware the man had indeed slugged him with his left hand and was holding the gun in the same hand.

"Looks like he broke your nose, too," Fixer said.

"Thanks for the diagnosis, asshole," the man said. "Where are they now?"

Before Fixer could answer the other human came up to the gunman. "There's nothing here. The computer's wiped and the memory's been reformatted. Whatever was there is gone for good."

"I told you," Fixer said.

"Shut up," the gunman said. "It doesn't matter. I specialize in extracting information the old-fashioned way, anyway. Tell me what I want to know, or I kill you. So: Where are my two friends now?"

Fixer smiled. "You know what," Fixer said. "I know you. I work for the Malloy family. I see your type in here all the time. They come in for me to fix them up, or help them hide, or whatever. And after I'm done with them, every single one of them would kill me just because I saw them. The only thing that kept me alive was the fact that the Malloy family would have killed them for killing me. You don't work for the Malloy family. You're not going to leave me alive. And you killed my dog. So fuck you. I'm not telling you anything else. Shoot me and get it over with."

The gunman looked to the sky, arms imploring. "Jesus. What is it with people today? I can't catch a goddamn break. Everybody wants to do things the hard way. Fine. Have it your way. But you're wrong about one thing. I'm not going to shoot you."

"What are you going to do?" Fixer asked.

"Just you wait," the man said. "Takk. Show the man."

Takk reached out, grabbed Fixer, and spun him around. "I want to say I'm sorry about your dog. I didn't want to kill him. He just kind of rushed at me. I wanted you to know."

"Thanks," Fixer said.

"Don't mention it," Takk said, and split himself open, revealing the immense digestive cavity that allowed Nagch males to consume prey nearly as large as themselves. Fixer was not nearly as large as Takk; there was more than enough room for him. From inside Takk, elastic appendages with thousands of tiny hooks lashed out and adhered themselves to Fixer's body and neck before he could think to move away. In one violent jerk Fixer was yanked into the digestive cavity. Fixer had a quick image of a few mats of Charlie's fur stuck on the inside of Takk's chest before Takk closed up around him and Fixer was enveloped in darkness.

In less than a second, the digestive cavity constricted around Fixer like a glove and began to squeeze. Fixer felt the air involuntarily crushed from his lungs; he struggled to move but was sealed in tight. Across the flesh covered by the appendages that had yanked him in and were still wrapped around him, Fixer felt burning; the appendages had begun secreting hydrochloric acid to begin the digestive process. Fixer was being eaten. In the (very) small part of his brain that was still somewhat rational, Fixer had to admit it was a pretty elegant way to get rid of a body.

There was a muffled, percussive sound—muffled because Fixer heard it through Takk's body. Takk cracked open and Fixer found himself dumped on the floor of his basement. Fixer gasped air, vomited, and became dimly aware of the presence of several new people in his basement, shouting and fighting with the three that had already been there. He looked up in time to see one of the new people jamming some sort of wand into the abdomen of the computer geek, who was already on the floor. Then Fixer was grabbed, hauled up the stairs and out of his shop, and thrown into a waiting van. The van filled up with other people and then peeled away.

"Mr. Young," someone said to him. "How are you feeling?"

"Gaaaaah," Fixer said.

"That sounds about right," the man said.

"Someone just tried to eat me," Fixer said.

"We got in the way of that, I think," the man said. "Once we came through the door, it threw you up. You must have been too heavy to let it fight. It's behind you now. You're safe."

Fixer peered up at him. "All right, I'll bite. Who are you?"

The man held out his hand. "Bishop Francis Hamn, of the Church of the Evolved Lamb. And you, my friend, are in the middle of a very interesting theological development."

"Passports," the cruise line attendant said. Creek and Robin handed them over, and then placed their hands on the DNA scanners molded into the ticket counter. The attendant opened the passports and then looked back to Creek.

"You're Mr. Hiroki Toshima," the attendant said.

"That's right," Creek said.

"Really," the attendant said.

"Adopted," Creek said. "Trust me. I get that all the time."

The attendant glanced down at the monitor; green lights on both passengers. The DNA matched the passports. He shrugged; Mr. Toshima it was, then. "Well, Mr. Toshima and Ms."—the attendant looked down at Robin's passport—"Washington, welcome to the Neverland cruise liner, and our special memorial cruise. In addition to our usual ports of call of Caledonia, Brjnn, Vwanchin, and Phoenix, we'll also be making special visits to Roosevelt Station, off Melbourne Colony, and Chagfun. There will be special observances and tours available at both stops."

Creek looked up at the attendant. "I'm sorry," he said. "Did you say Chagfun?"

"Yes sir. It's all here in the itinerary." The attendant handed them back their passports along with brochures and boarding passes. "The shuttle to the Neverland is just about to leave out of gate C23. I'll let them know you're coming, but if you could make a jog of it, I know our shuttle captain will be grateful. Enjoy your trip."

About 15 minutes into the ascent, Robin tapped Creek on the shoulder. "You've had your nose in that brochure since we got on the shuttle," she said. "What's in there that's so interesting?"

"Fixer said that this cruise was a special cruise for veterans," Creek said, and handed over the brochure. "But it's not just for any veterans. Look. One of our stops is Chagfun. It's the site of one of the biggest battles UNE forces ever fought in. The Battle of Pajmhi."

"Okay," Robin said. "So? Are we the wrong age for this cruise?"

"No," Creek said. "We're exactly the right age. Or at least I am. I was at Pajmhi, Robin. I was there. This is a cruise for vets of that battle."