Dinosaurs and Rapists

I’M LOOKING STRAIGHT at the same stubby bristle-cone-headed cylindrical furry critter that was going through my things back in the gambling den on Venus. The same one who watched me struggle on the line as Cinnabar rolled squealing and rasping toward me, and who left me alone. He’s sitting patiently in front of my spider — the hatch gapes open — watching me as I stand in the doorway of the museum, his head cocked to one side.

Part of me recognizes him from elsewhen and wants to squeal with glee. It’s outvoted by the rest. “You!” I snarl via electrospeak, taking a step forward.

“Get down!” Daks yelps as he blasts off on a plume of cold gas and charges toward me at kneecap height.

I cringe and duck instinctively as he piles toward me — and that’s what saves my life.

A lot of stuff comes crystal-clear as the monofilament cable scythes toward me like a flickering vision of reptilian pink goo death (and where did that come from?) and slams overhead, stinging the steel of the museum’s facade and leaving a dent the color of lightning. I roll sideways, turning my face to the wall as my spider collapses with a shriek and a gush of fluid from its severed knees. All sounds here are ghostly and attenuated (we’re above 90 percent of the gaspingly thin Martian atmosphere), but some noises still carry: like the solid thud of Daks bouncing off the door and landing on me with all six feet.

The déjà vu is choking, intrusive. I force myself to speak despite it. “Hey, what’s going—”

“Stay down!” He scrambles off me, and I realize he’ll be checking the area for threats, ready to put himself between them and me. “Up, quick! Around the shed!” He means the museum. “Keep low!” He weaves around my legs anxiously, herding me toward the side of the container stack. There’s an unfinished ditch here, raw foamy pumice scooped to either side and just dumped, and he nudges me into it.

“Who—”

“Two of Her goons. Lucky for you I was tailing them, huh?” His posterior sensor array twitches. “Trouble is, they brought friends. We’re in a box. I’m going to try to break a corner, babe. Wait here.” He zips on ahead up the trench.

“I don’t need this,” I mutter to myself as I chase after Daks, trying to keep my head below the top of the trench (in case our pursuers have prepared an extra spring surprise for us), and struggling to keep my sense of self separate from Juliette’s.

There’s a scooped-out hole at the end of the trench, full of discarded packaging and assorted junk. Daks has disappeared somewhere. I arrive at its rim and look down. There’s a service hatch sunk in a concrete plinth at the bottom, and it’s gaping open on a dark tunnel below. As I stop to look, something cold touches me on the back of the head.

“Been a long time coming, robot.”

I freeze. I know what the muzzle of a gun feels like, and the voice is familiar, echoing out of my least restful dreams like a whisper of malice. “What do you want?” I ask. Where’s Daks?

“The bird. Where is it?”

“Bird?” I’m confused. A bird is an avian, a flying animal distantly related to Ivan the Allosaurus, isn’t it? Extinct, like all fleshy replicators…

“Don’t get cute.” He grinds the gun barrel against the back of my neck. “The encapsulated bird your conspirators sent you to fetch. The sterilized male chicken with the Creator DNA sequences. The plot capon. Where is it?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about!” I snap. And the thing is, I’m telling the truth. Even though I know damn well that if I did know the whereabouts of this bird he’s looking for and I was stupid enough to tell him, he’d execute me on the spot, the truth is, I haven’t seen anything remotely like Ivan the Allosaur outside this museum. Nothing four or five meters high and covered with feathers, red in tooth and claw. I think I’d have noticed if Bill and Ben had put one in my luggage.

“We’ve got your minions,” my captor snarls. “Tell me where it is, or we’ll send them back to you one shard at a time.” It’s such a transparently bogus threat that I don’t even dignify it with a reply. He shoves his gun at the base of my neck. “Think about it, Juliette, don’t make me do this the hard way.”

Juliette? I’d laugh if I wasn’t frightened out of my wits. “I’m — I’m not Juliette,” I stutter. “She’s my s-s-s—” I mean to say “sib,” but the word is trapped in a loop in my head; it simply won’t come out. Where’s Daks? I wonder. Then, What makes me so sure he’d get me out of this mess?

That draws a muttered curse from my captor; I tense, but he’s one jump ahead of me. “Don’t move, manikin.” I can feel him shifting around on the rim of the hole, above me (he’s short, another poisonous dwarf ) but the gun barrel behind my head tells me—

“Who are you working for?” one of me asks rashly. “Can we cut a deal?” He doesn’t answer. Instead, I feel a hand tugging at my hair. Fingers close on my sockets. My vision flickers and I totter, unable to help myself as he clumsily yanks one of the soul chips. I fall over backward and he jumps aside, swearing. I have a momentary taste of horror, a scent of hydrogen fluoride, involuntary synaesthesia as he de-chips me in preparation for rape. Because that’s what this has turned into — he’s going to shove a slave chip in, turn me into a puppetized body who’ll answer all his questions without asking questions back, do anything he wants while he’s at it. It won’t be the first time I’ve been raped that way, but this is Mars — the wild high frontier — not like Earth, back in the old days. It would be so easy for me to disappear afterward. I’ll be another warm body to be pithed and sold to the gangmasters for forced arbeiter labor or worse, no questions asked. Maybe he’ll destroy my mind, subject me to personality ablation — if I’m lucky. Some aristos like owning slaves who know what’s been done to them.

My left arm twists around behind me. The ball joint buried in my shoulder grates appallingly as a contracting motor group in my back tears. I’m not in control of my own limbs, it seems. “Sorry,” I say involuntarily. Instinctive politeness trumps even imminent mindrape. I feel something in the palm of my hand as my shoulder joint tries to click back into place.

He tries to pull the trigger, but his gun doesn’t go off. Someone shouts, and someone kicks me in the small of the back, hard. But I don’t let go. My hand is locked in a death grip, and I pirouette slowly, turning myself around as I drag my assailant into view, punching and struggling. Then I begin to twist. I’m holding him up by his own antique revolver, I see, metal the color of pewter just visible between my fingers. I’m gripping the cylinder, the web of skin between thumb and index finger trapped under the hammer. Stupid of him, one of me thinks absently as my hand twists farther, and there’s a splintering noise and a shriek. I’m beginning to feel the pain from my shoulder now, a solid bar of agony from spine to elbow, echoed by the hot bite of the hammer — but he’s not letting go. “Stone, who sent you?”

“Fuck you, manikin!” He gasps reflexively, even though there’s no air here. A stubby hand stabs for my eyes, fingers extended stiffly. I catch it in my fist and squeeze. I have small, perfectly proportioned, feminine hands; just five sizes larger than his. The snapping noise brings me no joy. Stone — or his sib — squalls. “I’ll kill you, meatfucker!”

“I’m sure you will,” I soothe him. “Eventually.” I shift my grip to his throat and remove the pistol from his broken fingers. “Why do you want Juliette dead? Why are you hunting her?” They always work in pairs, I remember — no, Juliette remembers. I’ve still got her soul chip in place, it’s mine that he pulled — which triggers another thought: Daks must be in trouble! I’d be alarmed if I wasn’t already overloaded. Stone is glaring at me with an expression that takes me a moment to recognize as disbelief. I shake him. “Answer, damn you!”