John Scalzi - The Android's Dream

"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.