The Android's Dream

by John Scalzi

  Robin looked back at Agent Dwight. “So, what happens if I call the FBI?” she asked.

  Agent Dwight didn’t answer; he was holding his hand to his ear as if listening to something. Creek saw him glance upwards as he did so; Creek turned around and looked up in the direction Dwight had glanced. He saw someone on the second floor of the mall, standing at the rail of the atrium.

  “Robin,” Creek said, and pointed. “Look up there.”

  Robin looked up and squinted.

  “Hey,” she said. “Isn’t that the gecko dude?”

  Creek turned and saw Agent Dwight reaching for something inside his coat.

  Rod Acuna knew taking the girl at the mall was going to be trouble. “Just let me take her at home,” he’d said to Phipps, over the communicator. “It’ll be quicker and safer for my men.”

  “But then we’d still have this Creek character to worry about,” Phipps said. “The girl goes missing while he’s still free and you know he’s going to go looking for her. That’s eventually going to lead back to us.”

  “We can take him, too,” Acuna said.

  “There’s not enough time to grab her and him separately,” Phipps said.

  “Then let me just grab him,” Acuna said. “Without him, the girl’s not a problem.”

  “See, this is why you’re not paid to think,” Phipps said. “He goes missing, and Ben Javna’s going to notice, quick. Since Creek’s undoubtedly already briefed Javna, any random disappearance will bring down most of the State Department to hustle the girl to safety before you can get to her.”

  “I can get them both before that happened,” Acuna said.

  “Or you can get them both at the same time, which solves a lot of practical issues,” Phipps said.

  “There’s a lot to go wrong grabbing two people in a mall,” Acuna said. “For one, there are a lot of people around.”

  “Which will work to your advantage when you’re dealing with them both,” Phipps said. “You’ll be able to get her to go with you willingly because you’re in a public place. And when he puts up a fight, it looks like resisting arrest.”

  “It still has problems,” Acuna said.

  “Then minimize the problems,” Phipps said. “That’s what you get paid to do. Now let me speak to the computer geek I sent you. I have something I need him to do.” Acuna swore under his breath and shoved the communicator at Archie.

  After the geek was done with the communicator, Acuna contacted Jean Schroeder, who was not sympathetic. “What do you want me to do?” Schroeder said. “Phipps is paying you.”

  “You’re paying me too,” Acuna reminded Schroeder.

  “So I am,” Schroeder said. “But in my case I’m paying you to tell me the things Phipps doesn’t, not to contravene his orders. Which reminds me. Are you going to do what I suspect you’re going to do once you get the two of them?”

  “We can’t really let them go,” Acuna said, dryly.

  “I’m going to need the girl,” Schroeder said.

  “So you are paying me to disobey orders,” Acuna said.

  “I suppose I am. Just not the ones you want to disobey,” Schroeder said.

  “Takk can take care of Creek, but Phipps is going to want proof about the girl,” Acuna said.

  “I don’t need the whole girl,” Schroeder said. “I just need the part I get to be alive.”

  Shortly thereafter Acuna had the geek pull up the plans for the Arlington Mall and hack the security to find where they’d positioned cameras. The plan was simple enough; they’d wait for Creek and the girl to park themselves somewhere, after which Ed would come up with his FBI gear and escort the girl out. As he was doing that, a second team would converge on Creek and hustle him out of the mall. Creek would meet Takk, who would dispose of him in his own special way, and Acuna would deal with the girl. Mall security was understaffed and unarmed, so they wouldn’t represent much of an issue. Acuna had the geek go down to his storage unit in the apartment complex basement to bring up a few keyfob-sized signal disrupters, which would be powerful enough to knock out the security cameras and whatever personal cameras were present. This wasn’t the first time Acuna had had to snatch someone in public.

  Acuna had to admit Phipps was right—this would leave fewer holes than a typical snatch from home. But he never liked public grabs, and this one, with two targets, one of them former military and cop, he liked even less.

  Normally Acuna would take the lead in grabbing the girl, but he’d already blown his identity wad posing as a customer in the woman’s pet store. Acuna was getting some old friends to handle the secondary jobs of grabbing Creek and acting as goalie in case one or both of the targets decided to run, but they wouldn’t be much good for talking. It’d have to be someone in his current crew: Ed, Takk, or the geek.

  Acuna didn’t waste any time considering the geek; he wasn’t experienced with felonious activity of a nondigital kind and anyway, Archie was working for Phipps, not for him. Takk was likewise out. The FBI like any federal agency was committed to affirmative action when it came to nonhuman agents, but Takk was simply too damn big not to be noticed. Takk was also needed to deal with Creek once Creek was out of the mall.

  This left Ed, which was not an optimal situation. Ed was about as bright as a night-light. But there wasn’t enough time for anyone else at this point. And Ed had done this thing before; so long as he had a script to stick to he’d be fine. Acuna walked Ed through the scenario a couple of times and gave him his FBI ID and an earpiece into which Acuna could issue commands if necessary.

  Acuna’s backup boys arrived shortly thereafter; Rod went over the plan and gave everyone their roles. Everyone piled into two vans equipped with fake tags and anonymous credit toll passes and went to the mall. Acuna stressed the nonlethality of the mission but he knew all of them, including Ed, were carrying slug throwers. He couldn’t complain; he had one of his own nestled in a shoulder holster. In this line of work, guns were an occupational hazard.

  At the mall, everyone took their positions, and waited for Creek and the girl. They weren’t long in arriving, and headed into the mall atrium to play a game.

  Acuna wasn’t very pleased with that. The atrium was large, with traffic from all four directions as well as escalators feeding traffic to and from the upper level. And on top of that there was this big goddamn plastic cube in the middle of it. Acuna had five guys on the ground, which was just enough to cover the atrium ground floor; he placed himself between the escalator banks to present an obstacle if Creek or the girl decided to head up that way. Acuna got on his headset, activated the signal disruptors they were all carrying in their pockets, and told Ed to get going.

  Acuna had expected Creek to put up a fight; he hoped he would, since it would give Ed’s story more credibility and make it easier for Ed to hustle the woman off while the other team grabbed Creek like a fugitive criminal. Acuna hadn’t expected the girl to be the skeptical one; the story he’d fed Ed wasn’t strong enough to stand up to scrutiny, and Ed wasn’t exactly a world-class improviser. The girl had him on the spot before Acuna could feed him something reasonable, and then shut him down to talk to Creek.

  “Jesus fucking Christ, Ed,” Acuna muttered under his breath. “Just get the fucking woman already.” Ed put his hand to his ear, as if listening, and glanced up at Acuna. Acuna realized he’d muttered loud enough for the microphone to pick up. Then he saw Creek turn around and look directly at him.

  “Fuck me,” Acuna said. By now Creek had pointed him out to the girl. The jig was up. “Fuck me running,” he said, and then yelled in his headset microphone to his entire crew. “Get them,” he said. “Get them both now.”

  Acuna saw Ed reach into his coat to get his pistol. So much for the nonlethal operation, Acuna thought, and moved to pull out his own gun. Things were getting bad, fast, just as Acuna figured. He was okay with it. He was expecting he’d get to this. Then something happened he didn’t expect.

  Creek hooked an arm around the la
mppost he’d been leaning against, squished his big toe against the top of his shoe, and then kicked Agent Dwight square in the sternum. Dwight sailed backwards like a plush monkey launched by a Pro Bowl kicker, exhaling mightily all the way. Dwight’s trajectory intersected with a large mall planter; Dwight hit it coccyx first, radically altering the speed and direction of his movement. At this point, Dwight’s hand jerked free of his coat, taking the pistol he’d gripped with it. Dwight’s trigger finger twitched involuntarily as his arm described a wild arc; the pistol, set for automatic fire (Ed believed in quantity of bullets over quality of aiming), burped out a volley of special load explosive-tipped ordnance, emptying the pistol’s 15-round clip.

  Three of these bullets rammed into the side of the WallBall cube, slagging the Plexiglas a fraction of a second before one of the players (the former Maryland star, as it happened) kicked the wall to launch himself toward the hoop. The Terrapin never made it to the basket; the wall, weakened by the bullet impact and the pressure of the powered shoes, fragmented at shoe impact and gave way, torquing the athlete’s body until it faced downward and driving the player’s leg through the cube wall to mid-shin. He screamed as skin was peeled off his shin by the Plexiglas and then passed out in shock as his tibia and fibula snapped with a pop like a cork off a spumanti bottle. The weight of his body pulled the leg out and dropped him to the ground.

  The rest of the bullets connected with the mall ceiling and atrium skylight. The five that hit the ceiling made muffled booms; the seven that smashed the skylight cracked like close thunder, followed by the skittering sound of the skylight losing its structural integrity. Heavy sheets of safety glass peeled from the skylight and shattered on the ground floor of the atrium below, flinging shards of glass the size of Elvis rhinestones at hordes of screaming upscale consumers.

  Creek had aimed the kick as well as he could to control the inevitable recoil, but “as well as he could” in this case wasn’t as good as Creek had hoped. Creek spun briefly and violently around the pole before flinging off 270 degrees from where he started and collapsing on the floor. Creek howled and grabbed his right shoulder. He could feel the bone grinding; it’d nearly dislocated out of its socket. Creek gritted his teeth and jammed the shoulder into the ground and howled again as he felt the bone suck back into place. That was going to be painful for about a month. Creek got up just in time to have a sheet of skylight glass erupt on the floor beside him; a thumb-sized fragment went straight for his left cheek and hoed a shallow row into it. Creek shielded his eyes as another mass of skylight glass landed and showered him in chunks.

  Creek uncovered his eyes to look for Robin and found her ten yards away, huddled near a small planter with a miniature palm tree. She had glass in her hair. He lurched in her direction; halfway there he found Dwight’s FBI ID card. He pocketed it and kept going until he reached Robin. She was shivering.

  “This is no longer a fun date,” she said.

  “I’m really sorry about that,” Creek said. Another sheet of glass fell from the skylight; Robin barked an exasperated scream. “Keep your head down,” Creek said.

  “Way ahead of you,” Robin said.

  Creek looked up over the planter at where the gecko man had been standing; he was being pushed this way and that by frantic shoppers trying to get out of the middle of what they figured was a gang war. Creek looked around and saw four other men, one in each direction, fighting the current of panicked bystanders. Agent Dwight lay sprawled 50 feet away, not moving; Creek suspected he wouldn’t be getting up any time soon.

  “I think we should leave,” Robin said.

  “There’s a problem with that,” Creek said.

  “Well, that’s just great,” Robin said.

  “Hold on,” Creek said. He looked up to gauge the distance between the atrium floor and the second level of the mall.

  “Robin,” he said. “We can’t get out through the ground floor right here. We’re blocked in every direction. We’re going to have to go up.”

  “Gecko man is at the top of the escalators,” Robin said.

  “We’re not going that way,” Creek said. “We’ve got the WallBall shoes on. We can jump up.”

  “Are you insane?” Robin asked.

  “Robin, listen,” Creek said, and pointed to a spot by the WallBall cube. “We bounce on the ground there. We hit the WallBall court and then push off and get over the second floor railing.”

  “And then?” Robin asked.

  “Escalators at the far end of the mall. Department stores with elevators. Take your pick. We have to move now. The mall is emptying out.”

  “I don’t think I like you any more,” Robin said.

  “Fair enough,” Creek said. “Are you ready?”

  Robin nodded.

  Acuna’s brain didn’t quite process Ed flying back through the air as if he’d been shoved by a train; it got about as far as what the fuck before Ed’s gun brought down the ceiling and he had to push back shoppers running in every direction and screaming like morons.

  Thanks to that, he lost track of Creek and the girl and found them again only after they popped up, like daisies, from behind one of the atrium planters, and then started moving into the atrium itself. Acuna yelled into his headset for his remaining men to be ready, whatever direction they ended up going. Acuna didn’t think they’d go up the escalators, which were still jammed with bystanders trying to shove their way off. But if they tried it he was at the top and his boys would be at the bottom quickly enough. They’d be trapped.

  Acuna’s brain was consequently not prepared for Creek and the girl hurling themselves at the big plastic cube in the middle of the atrium and then bouncing up off of it like they were doing hurdles on the moon. Acuna stood slack-jawed as the two sprang off the cube and launched themselves at the second floor railing, 90 degrees from where he was standing. Creek cleared it; the woman, who had jumped badly, slammed into the railing, screamed in pain, and scrabbled to grab hold of the top of the railing before she dropped. She was dangling and in too much pain to do anything else.

  Acuna’s brain snapped back into real time and decided it would figure out the jumping thing later. Now he needed to get the girl and take care of Creek. Acuna wasn’t worried about making things look reasonable anymore; the need for that went out the window less than a minute ago when Ed shot out the mall roof. He needed Creek dead and the girl out of here, in that order. Acuna informed his men that Creek and the girl were on the second level, drew his gun, maneuvered through the remaining frantic shoppers, and came in close enough to Creek not to miss the shot.

  Acuna saw Creek glance in his direction; his brain estimated where Creek would move next and tracked to that point. This is where Acuna’s not factoring in Creek’s jumping ability got him in trouble, because Acuna was entirely unprepared for Creek launching himself at Acuna like a rocket.

  Creek made it over the railing but landed awkwardly and fell, banging his right knee on the second level floor and cracking the funny bone on his right elbow. He grunted in pain and annoyance; this wasn’t a great day for his right arm. Creek heard Robin scream and turned to see her hanging onto the railing; he heaved himself off the floor and lurched toward her to help her when he saw the gecko man heading toward him, gun drawn. Creek flicked the top of his shoe and launched himself at the gecko man in a quick lateral movement without breaking his stride.

  Gecko man was clearly not prepared for this; he squeezed off a shot but it went far and wide, shattering a window display at a candle store on the other side of the atrium and causing the dawdling spectators there to get the hell out of Dodge. Creek smacked into the gecko man off center, spinning the both of them around and smashing them both onto the floor, five feet from each other.

  Gecko man’s pistol had launched itself out of his hand and nestled at the base of the Kleinman’s Sports window display (Nike Multi-Sport Trainers 30% Off); Creek saw gecko man prop himself up in order to get up and get the gun. Creek lunged forward, grabbed gecko
man’s right ankle as he was pushing off, and yanked hard. Gecko man’s chin made an audible crack as he came down hard, but he rotated around before Creek could capitalize on his move and planted his left boot squarely into Creek’s forehead. Creek’s head snapped up, jolting a clear stream of pain up and down his spine.

  Creek let go of the gecko man and retreated toward the railing. Gecko man scrambled away toward his gun, got to it, and brought it to bear on Creek, who flicked his shoes back on, kicked hard at the railing, and bearhugged gecko man as he flung into him, knocking the two of them into the Kleinman’s Sports window display.

  The window glass almost appeared to think about the matter before breaking, nestling the two men in a fighting men–shaped cradle of fragmented glass a few hundredths of a second before shattering completely and underlining both men’s exposed surfaces with small red streaks. Creek pulled himself off gecko man just in time for a clumsy left hook to the right cheek. Gecko man had a small glass fragment wedged between the knuckles of his middle and ring finger. Both of them yelled at the hit, Creek at the fragment bloodying his check, and gecko man from the fragment being driven further into his hand.

  Creek fell back and knocked over a small display of varied sports equipment, designed to highlight the versatility of the Nike Multi-Sport Trainer. Gecko man, who managed to keep hold of his gun this time, brought it back to Creek’s general direction; Creek grabbed at the basketball which had fallen from the display and hurled it hard and square into gecko man’s face. Blood flushed out of gecko man’s nose; he gasped and reflexively brought his right hand to his face to inspect the damage, which was enough time for Creek to grab the baseball bat. Gecko man brought the gun up again and then screamed in pain as Creek brought the bat down and broke his wrist.

  Gecko man dropped the gun and made to grab it with his left hand; Creek heaved the bat clumsily back in the other direction and knocked it away and then clocked the gecko man hard in the chin. There was a sharp clack as gecko man’s jaw was driven at high speed into the rest of his skull. The lights went out in gecko man’s eyes; Creek made sure he stayed down by tapping him not entirely gently in the left temple. Creek was pretty sure gecko man wasn’t dead, but he wasn’t going to cry if he was.