Trilogy

Frick, Grant thinks, what was I supposed to say? Yes, of course, pass the tea? It wasn’t fair. He stuck his hands deeply into his jacket, and hunched his shoulders, angrily. Damn her. But it had still felt like a betrayal, those words, the ones he had spoken in response. It’s hard . . . When, he thought, when have I ever had a friendship that wasn’t hard? When are friendships easy? Strangely, Owly springs into his mind. Would I say she was hard to have? He knows that the answer would always be no. It had been cowardly to give the answer he gave to the android, but it had also been true, a splinter of truth that he had chosen, instead of the splinters that said he liked the other man, that it wasn’t hard to be friends with him.

Umber is sitting on the dock behind the grand building, legs swinging absently under the wooden structure, looking out over the quiet sea. Grant can see even now, from the curve of the other man’s shoulders, that he is troubled.

“I don’t know how she knows,” Umber says, without turning around. “But she always does. Somehow. It’s like she has a network of spies even I don’t know about. Which is crazy, but still. Like Saturday night; ‘there’s an android down at that club, go kill it for me, won’t you, love?’”

He stares back over the ocean, which licks submissively at the base of the dock like a fawning dog. Grant hears him mutter ‘fuck’ under his breath.

Grant sits down beside him, pulling one leg up, resting his chin on his knee.

“Have you ever been to that club?”

“No,” he lies. He thinks of Owly, cheerfully ignoring him that morning, intent on the train set in the cloudy room above the club. He’d kissed her on the top of her head, and she’d pretending not to feel it, letting him know she disapproved of him leaving. Next year, school, he’d promised himself as he’d left the club. May was spoiling her.

“I went, a few weeks ago,” says Umber, and Grant nods. He knew; May had told him, about how the other man had simply been there, that one moment he had not and the next . . . ‘Like a ghost’ May had said. ‘He just stood there, looking around, with this terribly mild expression on his face . . .’

He does that when he’s curious, Grant had thought, and had been unsettled. He disliked Umber’s curiosity in the club. It was too close to Owly. Too close to himself, to the other part of himself, that did not belong to the massive building and the Company. It was too close to the other Grant, the one who talked with an illegal being, and traded information in exchange for the safety of his child. He often wondered if Umber knew. If he knew of this other Grant, and chose to ignore it. Sometimes he thought yes, he must know Oh god he must as Umber’s blue butcher’s eyes settled on him, calm, calculating, stripping at his defenses, looking into the other Grant, the one he desperately hid. Then, that was what he must have meant to the android, about the friendship being hard. But that was his fault, his, Grant’s, not the other man’s. Grant hid things. Umber did not.

‘Alistaire got mad at him, then,’ May had said. ‘Told him to leave. Something about the Company, and abuse of human rights, and how dare he show his face in the only remaining democratic spot in the entire City.’

Grant almost laughed. It was like Alistaire to be lunatically self-righteous.

‘You don’t tell Umber to leave.’

‘No,’ May said, ‘I was afraid at first. Alistaire’s half his size. Umber could’ve killed him. There were all these people watching too, clubbers, neon everywhere, just watching like jackals, and I was so afraid, because you know how men get when there’s a crowd. They can’t back down.’ She made a face, and Grant chose to let the slur slide. He knew she did not apply the words to him.

“You’re quiet today,” Umber observes.

“Sorry. Tired. Yesterday was a bitch.”

***

During sunlight hours there is no glamour at the Edge. The neon lights are stilled, their brilliant eyes closed, waiting for the inevitable creep of night. The glasses are steamed and tamed, no longer full of glowing liquid, placed carefully in an ordered row, waiting. Virgin glasses, ready to be filled and sullied and whored to the coming business that night.

There is a bar within the bar. Originally, May had hung her coat on it, and when she had felt lighthearted or drunk, she had grasped its smooth curve and swung herself, giggling, from it. She had done this in a show of self-conscious freedom, a display of overt immaturity that was so trained, so obviously fake it charmed all those around her. Now, Max hangs on the smooth bar by her knees, like a kid in a jungle gym, upside down, frowning. However, because she is upside down it is as though the edges of her mouth are turned up; it is an upside down frown, a misleading smile.

Owly is sitting on one of the bar’s vacant stools, thoughtfully sucking on her drink box straw. Her elbows are propped on the countertop; she is too small to see properly over the bar, and May had placed a thick phone book on the stool beneath her. She regards the android with careful precision, regards the woman’s smile-frown with calculated discernment. Max stares back, arms folded under her breasts, the edge of her t-shirt flipped up so that a sliver of her stomach peeks out, between shirt and the edge of her jeans. Owly pulls the straw from her mouth, and remarks:

“I can see your belly button.”

“So?” says the android. The child considers the answer, still staring at the woman.

“So you shouldn’t hang like that. It’ll make the blood go to your head and you’ll be sick.” The straw reaches the bottom of the juice box, and slurps noisily.

Max grins. The frown-smile is turned upside down and becomes a smile-frown.

“I don’t think I need to worry about that.”

“Why?” says Owly. Her tone amuses the android, who grins even wider, eyes narrowed in mirth.

“Because I’m special. I don’t get sick.”

“Everyone gets sick.” The child is more than matter of fact: it is a truth she believes in, a fact made ironclad. “Once I was sick and Daddy took me to the hospital. I don’t remember it very much though. I remember that it was all white, like winter. But it wasn’t cold, like winter. I can still see your belly button.”

Max pulls the end of her t-shirt down, tucking it into the beltline of her jeans. The shirt was too small for her frame; it was tight across her chest, making her duck and cross her arms across her imagined exposed front when faced with a member of the opposite sex. You look fine, May had insisted. They knew what they were doing when they made you-- she had frozen when she’d seen the cold look on the android’s face. Sorry. You look fine. We’ll find you some better clothes tomorrow, okay?

“Better?”

“Do you think Adam and Eve had belly buttons?” Owly asks, eyes round. She has heard Alistaire ask this of others, and coveted the laughter that came after.

Max tenses, strangely. Something prickles at her mind, the same ragged thoughts that had infringed upon her when May had said They knew what they were doing . . . She digs her fingers experimentally into her ribs, feeling their round hardness beneath the artificial skin. Yes, they were there, along with the rest of her skeleton. It was all there; mind and body and organs and belief and . . . You forgot something, she thinks, wishing she’d told them off when she finally left. I wish I said it, I wish I had. I wish I looked them in the eye and said “you forgot something, you bastards. You forgot something horribly crucial that comes with a body and a mind. Do you know what it is? I know! Dammit, I KNOW!”

“Max?”

“Mmf?” Max shakes her head, annoyed, then in a single motion grasps the bar and swings herself down. Owly grins.

“Can you do flips? Alistaire says you can do flips.”

She feels vaguely annoyed; others are speaking of her with low voices and upraised hands. Others are whispering about her, about the new girl, the new pretty girl with the pretty voice that Alistaire had placed on the club’s stage on a hunch. Or maybe it was proving a point. Everyone proved points. Everyone but her and . . . she glances sideways at the child, thinking about its parent. He didn’t seem to have any points to prove, just a kind of everyday melancholy. She had thought of him, last night, after she’d left the park and returned to the club. She had thought about him as she’d lain on her mattress, arm across her forehead, unable to sleep. She had thought about his unreal dark eyes, and had wondered how far down his tan went. She wondered if he had thought of her at all.

She bends, places her palms on the floor, and pushes herself effortlessly into a handstand. Upside down again, she peers up at the child, who grins, delighted. She could stand like this for hours, arms locked into position, body perfectly balanced. She could stand upside down, seeing the world as though she was the only one right-side up and everyone else walked on the ceiling, for days and days, just waiting, just watching.

“What the hell’re you doing?” Alistaire says, and there is a peculiar bite to his tone. The android flips backwards, carefully, stretching back into a standing position. The movement makes her hair falls into her face, obscuring it.

“Alistaire said a bad word!” shrieks Owly, grinning. He reaches out and roughly ruffles her shock of dark hair affectionately.

“Hell isn’t a bad word, munchkin. It’s a place. Like the City. Who told you it was a bad word?”

“Daddy.”

“He would,” Alistaire sighs, and rolls his eyes. Max watches him, under the sheet of hair. The words are biting, frustrated. It must be the choosing, she imagines and remembers again for perhaps the millionth time, Grant, who she knew had not quite chosen sides. Behind the shock of hair, Max blinks her beautiful brown eyes deliberately. Blinking, the solid closing and opening of a lid, re-assures her. It is a mechanical, calculated movement, a trained movement, but, she thinks, it’s a human movement, a human action. They do it too. Some parts of them are machines, are automatic, yet they don’t realize it. She pushes back the hair from her eyes, and watches as May joins the child and Alistaire, sweeping the little girl into her arms: “Shall we go to the park, now Owly? Shall we go? What do you think?”

Alistaire watches them walk away, watches May pull Owly’s coat on over her chubby arms, watches her tie the string from the child’s hood under her chin. Then he turns to the android, stabbing a finger at the bar stool.

“Sit.”

She sits, pulling her knees up to her chin, and hugging them for a little comfort. He places his palms on the bartop, and frowns down at them, staring over his black-rimmed glasses, at nothing.

“You lied to me, Max,” he says.

“No, I didn’t,” she replies, and a thought leaps into her mind: Did I lie? I’m not sure anymore. I feel as though I’m chased by half-truths, but they aren’t really lies, are they? A half-truth ate my heart. It nibbled at my mind, and made off with my underwear.

“You didn’t tell us you were a runaway--”

“I’m not,” says the android, softly. She pulls her legs tighter to her chest, clutching them. But it is almost as though she is detached, watching from outside her mechanical, charming body, watching the other man’s gaze rise to meet hers, angrily.

“Look, we’re here to help. It’s all about proving that you’re not really a violent race, that all the propaganda that’s been passed down from the company is merely that: propaganda. It’s all about bringing down something that’s rotten and corrupt, the Company, the system, it’s all about rebellion--”

His voice dances off into the corners of the building and disturbs a sparrow tucked in the rafters. How can people believe so much? Max thinks, and she rocks back, then forwards, only once, on her barstool.

Her head jerks up as she realizes Alistaire has stopped speaking, and is now staring at her with a fixed expression.

“This,” he says, and slaps a piece of printout on the bartop. It is ragged and well-loved, chipped edges and blurred words. She squints at it, embarrassed.

“Can’t you read it?” he asks, genuine surprise creeping into his voice. She nods. Of course she can read it, and reaches for the paper, just as the words scream and tumble in her mind. It was so hard to control them then, so hard not to get swallowed whole by the shocking bits of type. It was so hard, and she squeezes her eyes closed, shoving the paper away.

“They’re lying,” she says, “not me. It’s a lie. I didn’t run. I did everything they told me to, until they told me to do something I didn’t want to. Don’t you understand that?”

Alistaire frowns. Free will is always taken for granted, Max thinks dryly. How stupid of me to actually think they’d understand that sometimes you don’t have a choice.

She reaches out suddenly, her hand a flashing blur, and stops her palm equal with his ear. His eyes lock on her, not frightened, he has seen too much to be frightened by the artificial palm of a slender artificial girl. When she speaks, her voice is low, and venomous.

“They understand,” she says, and it comes out between her teeth, the way a snake flicks its tongue from its mouth. “They understand the threat the Company is to every company that ever existed. They understand the threat to their money and their economies. I am the response to that threat.”

“You can’t be,” Alistaire says, his eyes bewildered behind the square glasses. “You’re . . .” He doesn’t say ‘a girl’ or ‘an android.’ Max tilts her head, waiting.

“. . . not violent . . .” he finishes lamely.

The android smiles, but the smile is cold, and does not reach her mouth. Alistaire recognizes the smile. He has seen it on Arkady’s face, so many times. He has seen it on Umber’s a thousand more.

“People will always recognize a threat to money,” she says. “Back at the lab, they called her a whore. A red-haired slut who’d slept her way into power, using the brawn of her bodyguard to subdue those she couldn’t fuck. But...” and the brown eyes grow even harsher, even angrier, the fury of a creature who understood double standards. He had seen the look spark a little in May’s eyes, but it had always been a so-brief moment. But this . . . He stares into the android’s riveted eyes, watching the scales of innocence fall from them, melt away, leaving nothing but the stark fury.

“ . . . but I know differently. I know differently from them, from them at the lab,” she continues. Her palm is still next to his ear. It does not quiver, or jump. He imagines she could hold it there for hours, without strain.

“I know that she, the woman in red (that is what we call her, we who live in the lab, you see. We cannot give her a real name. She said we should die) isn’t a slut. She loves and is loved, and the names they gave her are simply matters of control.”

She smiles, sadly, and the scales slip back into place and he cannot imagine that there was ever such fury in her eyes.

“I know she loves him, and even though she said we should not exist, I could not go through with it. I can’t kill someone who loves another. It would be like killing myself.”

A thousand warning bells chime in Alistaire’s head, and he pulls back. She retracts her palm as well, tucking it into the crook of her arm. He stares at her in a new light.

“You’re an assassin. You were sent here. I thought you just ran ….”

Max shrugs, ducking her chin to her chest. The sheet of brown hair falls over her eyes then, and he cannot see her expression.

“I’ve never killed anyone. That’s what assassins do. So I’m not one. But I was supposed to be.”

He sags back into the barstool, pushing the cowlick of black hair from his eyes. He is mortally shocked, the young woman before him irreversibly changed. It is as though she shimmers, her shape twisting and congealing, reforming itself into something far sharper.

She laughs, bitterly.

“It’s kinda hard when reality slaps you upside the head, isn’t it?”

He frowns.

“Max, I . . . None of the others were . . .”

“What, killers?” The android eyes him. “I’m not either, technically.”

And she bends her head to rub her cheek sadly against the smooth skin of her forearm. Something had changed for her too. The light outside, falling rapidly into darkness, has changed its shape as well. It reaches for her, and it no longer something to be feared and sheltered from. It is a tantalizing darkness, surprisingly velvety.

She stands, stretching, pulling at every nerve of her slender body, and says “I’m going out. I’ll be back for opening the club, if you still want me.”

***

The van glides through the City, its motor purring like a contented cat.

I cannot describe who I am, Grant thinks as the City swirls by. Buildings, half glass, half concrete, soar up and around them, bending artificial arms in a continual ring around the rosy. I couldn’t stand it if Owly grew up and asked me what I did for a living.

It had almost been more straightforward when he’d lived on the streets. Before the Company, before order and Arkady roared throughout the City, before the buildings joined hands and sang loudly their continual, taunting song. Before humming wires and shelters for undesirables, before economic gold struck the City like a giant yellow wave, covering everything with gilded wetness. Before all that, it had all been so simple. They were wrong, I was right. That was all there was to it, the simple thought of belief in oneself, that despite everything, you could still trust yourself.

Now I don’t know anymore, he thinks, parking the black van in front of the grand, historical building that allowed roses to creep up its ancient bricked walls. He’d thought it was beautiful when Umber had first took him there, and had stood in awe, trying not to stare too much, trying and failing miserably to keep his jaw from dropping to his chest. It had been so beautiful then. The roses were just blooming, and for the first time it seemed that things were going to be fine, things were going to be okay, and he wouldn’t have to fight anymore, or worry about waking up with his throat cut. For a moment, the roses wrapped around the building had not seemed like the voyeuristic heads of miniature cameras, but instead looked like they should: as flowers, innocent and speckled with dew.

“You actually live here?” the Grant from another time had asked the other man. Umber had grinned. They had liked each other from the start. Perhaps it was the common miserable childhoods, perhaps it was the history of violence, perhaps it was the frustration both felt when looking evil in the face. Perhaps they just hit it off.

“Sort of,” he’d said, and raised a cunning finger to his lips. “Shh. Don’t tell anyone. She hates for the word to get out.”

But it hadn’t been innocence then. How could it have been innocence? How could he have seen as much as he had, and feel now a strange betrayal as he approached the building? How could he berate himself for believing that the building and its owner would bring about a new renaissance when he had never believed in the first place? Not even Umber had believed.

He remembers again, unwillingly. He remembers the dripping rain from that night, the haggard face of the other man leaning against the stacked crates. The rain fell and fell and wouldn’t stop, even when he raised his head and screamed at it. No, it had been Umber that had yelled, golden head sodden in the dim half light, howling at the sky to stop stop stop so he could see dammit! There had been no lightening, no thunder, the sky remained silent, and Grant had curled into a ball at the other man’s feet, miserable, feeling the rain and blood trickle down his back, feeling nothing but the wracking pain and the misery of being a fool a goddamn fool why had he run out just then why had he thought there was no one watching them why hadn’t he been quicker and them all regrets were rendered moot as the bullet drilled into him.

“Don’t fucking die on me,” said the man to the rain, and Grant shook his fogged head, trying to remember what he was remembering.

“Don’t fucking die on me or I’ll kill you.” There was despair in the man’s voice. Grant could not imagine why.

“I’m so tired of being alone. I’m so tired of fighting with her. Why can’t we just love each other and let it be? Why isn’t it ever enough? When is it enough? God, I’m so tired.”

Grant sighed, and pulled his arms tighter around himself. Was the man talking to him, or someone else? Was he talking to the rain? Was he talking to the men who were shooting at them? Was he talking to the handful of bodies littering the road? He couldn’t imagine, he couldn’t think . . .

“What does she want?” Grant finally whispered.

The man was silent. In the dripping rain, Grant could just see the dim outline of the other man, the gun pressed to his forehead, not in suicide, but in contemplation.

“I don’t know anymore. At first I did everything because I loved her . . . but it almost isn’t enough anymore. I’m going mad. When is there enough power? She has the City. I gave her the City. She has the City.”

Now, remembering grows dim as the building swallows him.

***

In the park, there are roses everywhere. Red were Arkady’s favorite, of course, a deep rich blood red, so dark the petals were almost black, and in the private garden behind her building, there was a thicket of only red roses. Grant had always thought it was remarkably exclusionary of her, and thus appreciated the sunbursts of decidedly non-red roses that dotted the park bushes. But they are still roses, and he eyes them with no small measure of suspicion, the flower forever spoiled in his mind.

The men and women in short, dark jackets stand in a ring around Umber. Their young smooth faces are lit with quiet adoration as he speaks, their mouths hanging on his every word. He does not seem to notice, blue eyes intent on the paper in his hand.

Grant wonders why they are there. It has been this way for ages, him and Umber, unofficially partners. Back, ages back, he had wondered if it was because Umber had the tendency to be an asshole, or any other bossman traits, but ... Grant glances at the glowing young faces of the men and women around them. No, even if Umber had proven to be thus, they still would have fought to be at his side, fought to drive the black van now parked carefully beside a random rosebed ... It was the power, Grant had first supposed, but now knew otherwise, when he looked into the faces of those around him. It wasn’t power. Umber without power would still be Umber; still followed, still worshipped, still adored.

It has always been this way, though. The two of them, Grant and Umber. Always, even though Grant could never quite remember why. And the thought that it had always been this way, and always would, suddenly made him ashamed.

Umber laughs, turns away from the dark coated men and women, and walks over to Grant. I wonder why I feel so bloody guilty today, Grant thinks, finding he cannot look at the other man.

“Oh,” says Umber suddenly, and Grant glances up, but the word was not for him. “I didn’t know she had a kid . . .” He is looking out over the park, the orange-plastic and wood play gym, where adults and children intermingled in some strange microcosmic imitation of the larger City.

May’s green hair is out of place next to the other parents and their children, a strange rebellious, almost un-motherly figure. She holds Owly’s hand as the child glides, giggling, down the long orange jungle gym slide.

A thousand thoughts dart viciously into Grant’s mind. Would she see him? Would Owly see him? Would she come running, suddenly, with the zipper of her jacket jingling, arms wide, yelling ‘Daddy’? Would he brush her off, embarrassed that she had mistaken him for another man? Or would he take her into his arms and face Umber, the split mask of his two lives coming together in a violent whole? A thousand thoughts, ringing, chiming, screaming. A thousand thoughts, no answers, a million thoughts, no answers, a trillion, all stretching on and on with only horrible, devastating solutions . . .

“Let’s go say hi,” says Umber, meaning it as a joke, but he still started in the direction of May and the child--

Then--

Then she darts into their path, whirling to face them. She is wearing jeans and a tanktop, and Grant stares at the brown (it matched her hair) number ‘13' tattooed on her shoulder, and thought for a fleeting second that it had only been bad luck that caused her to be there, at that instant. But as she turned the dark eyes narrowed, and all the rage and hate in the world suddenly came to an awesome head and found its voice in the twin pupils. It was no accident, no unlucky mistake. She ran deliberately in front of them, and turned to stare at the blond man in the long dark coat.

He knew . . . of course, he would know, he would recognize her, without the hints she’d given to Grant just before. He would recognize what she was and where she came from even before she turned her head . . . It was what he did, after all. A direct response to whatever threat Arkady thought the City should be protected from . . . but no, it wasn’t merely that. How can we say it is that, when there always was a choice? How can you even think he was the victim? How can you even think she led him to this, by whispering in his ear or placing her hand on his chest? No, he chose it. He chose it looking directly into the slitted eyes of violence and choosing yes, I will follow you, not for any one cause, not for the love of a woman, not for the safety of a City, but because I am what I am, and I am bound to follow what I believe and what is in my nature. But even that is too simple. We cannot reduce it to merely that.

There was another choice too, made by another man, standing beside the tall blond one, another man whose soul was considered . . . what? Guarded? Shall we feel in some ways a sympathy for him? Because of the child, and because he refuses to choose? The blond man (we know his name, but we cannot say it) is braver. He chose, and the responsibility landed square on his shoulders, to haunt him in some unearthly fashion. Perhaps when he lies in bed with Arkady in his arms, he will think back, and regret his choice. But at least he chose.

And now the second man will choose. He will choose in a blaze of sudden defiance as he recognizes the deliberateness of the android’s actions. They connect her to him through the child, and all suddenly square themselves on the checkered black and white board, in a scattered, uncontrolled defense.

Grant staggers into Umber, even as the other man slips his hand into his coat to pull out the gun, its muzzle blazing, the bullet going wild. Around them people scream and dive for the ground, spreading out on all sides like a carpet of humanity. Only the android remains upright, tensed, her slender mechanical body a strung bowstring, ready to flee at the slightest inclination. Yet she remained. Standing there, with her burning brown eyes, in complete self-sacrifice.

Grant too had dropped to the ground, but it had been a follow through from the stumble, not because of the gunshot. He remained there, though, crouching next to the other man, who stood with arms extended, the black muzzle of the gun pointing death at the woman in front of them.

“Shoot someone in cold blood?” the android says. “Bad press, don’t you think?”

Umber is silent. He has not looked at Grant, and instead stares at the android. She half turns, to face the two men, and sadness sparks in her gaze.

The blond man shakes his head, as though cobwebs have caught at his mind.

“On the ground, hands behind your back! Now!” he snarls, as though finally finding his voice.

“Don’t you know,” she says, and he is shocked to see a tear run absently down her cheek. “Don’t you know, they sent me to kill you.”

Perhaps a commonality passed between man and woman just then. Perhaps the barriers of gender and species dropped for just a moment, and pristine reason flooded both minds at the same time. Perhaps a second of insight pricked at both’s souls, for we must imagine that this near-human creature before us has a soul. She is too much like us to think otherwise. It is terrifying to consider the other option: that a creature like this, that walks our walk and speaks our language does not have any grasp on our eternity. We see ourselves in her manufactured eyes, we see our loved ones reflected in the human tear on her manufactured cheek.

For Umber it all collides in a horrific train wreck of emotion, the thoughts that we debated just before splintering into his mind. We have known them all along, but he has not read the story, and does not know her. He does not know of Grant’s conversation with her the other day (though now, with the stumble, so carelessly deliberate and desperate, he suspects), but some other method of truth, gained through the violence of the moment, and the vicious, spinning bullet, rises in his eyes. He stares at the android, anew.

She does not recognize the moment of change in him, and cannot exploit it. She is human, but humans have years of practice in coyness and exploitation. She has nothing but the manufactured worlds of books, and what Alistaire has told her. So instead of speaking, she simply stands, and waits, far too trusting to be anything human, far too wary to be anything artificial.

He pulls the trigger a second time. The deafening noise screams throughout the silent park.

(Did you even suspect he would not? Did you think there would be some resolution here, some method to the madness of Arkady’s order and demands? Did you think he would forget he loves her and throw away years of this? Did you think he would forget himself for a single human tear trickling down the cheek of an artificial girl?)

The android barely flinches, but she does so with a speed that is shocking. The bullet slips by her, ripping time in its quest for her body. Then she moves again, and it is a movement of incredible violence. Her mechanical legs open and close like a steel trap, and she closes the distance between them before he can blink. Her knee hits him on the chest, toppling them backwards, her slicing hand catching his wrist and the gun cartwheels up, and she plucks it from the sky.

The black muzzle of the gun finds itself pointed between his eyes, and he looks up at it, almost cross-eyed. Her knee is still on his chest, he can feel her weight boring into him, an artificially light weight, stripped down for maximum performance.

Grant feels ice water trickle down his back, and wonders if he should move, try to intervene, something, anything. But the gun was pressed to the other man’s head, the distance between death and life so close that the two were now intertwined, unwilling bedfellows. He cannot imagine her pulling the trigger. It is a future which is impossible. But there the gun is, smelling so very loudly of death, and there she is, holding it.

The android’s hands do not shake, and her gaze is direct on his face. He looks up just then, from the gun to her.

“How many dreams should I dream before I am human?” whispers the girl. “A thousand? A million? Will you tell me?”

Her face is reflected in his blue butcher’s eyes. He waits. It was always best to let them talk. Especially when they were holding a gun.

“I dreamed,” she says softly. “I dreamed you weren’t what they say you are. I dreamed I sat on the railing of your balcony and watched you sleep with your wife, and I dreamed that there was something good in the world, because of what I had seen. And as I dreamed I watched you kill my friends, one by one, I watched them die and I dreamed that . . .”

She stops, swallowing, as though there is a lump in her throat. But her eyes are clear, and do not flinch from his.

“And you know what?” she says, and turns the edges of her mouth up, in a private joke. “All the dreams, power and love in the world won’t change the fact that you’re both murdering sons of bitches.”

Then she turns the black muzzle of the gun and fires the remaining clip into the earth by his head.

Policemen will always carry a backup piece, a tradition that reached back over the strings of history, when the first soldier placed a sword on his back, and a knife in his boot. It was ingrained into the minds of those who upheld the law, of those who knew the rules of violence, and even as Max sprung away from Umber, she saw his hand dart behind his back, for the second gun tucked in his belt. Moments split between them, and she remembered the first picture they’d given her, a black and white shot of him, turning and looking away, grinning lopsidedly at someone off camera. Sam had been standing behind her, and stood on her toes to peer over the other android’s shoulder. Both had smirked at each other, and Sam laughed. “He’s handsome, isn’t he?”

“Yeah.”

“You get to go after him?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re lucky.”

“Yeah.”

I’m going to die, thinks the android as she twists away, seeing the flashing black muzzle of the gun out of the corner of her eye. What possessed me? My god, I ran, I got away, and then... To throw it all away ... why did I think? But she knew. She knew what she’d thought and what she’d hoped he’d do. She’d hoped he’d understand. The moment of crystal understanding would pass into a minute, and become an hour and become days and weeks, and she wouldn’t be an android anymore. She’d be real.

She feels the earth churn beneath her as she runs. She feels the passing shocked stares of those around her. Any minute she will feel the splintering bullet plow through her, any minute now, any second any moment any time any ... The crowd swallows her.

“Shit,” remarks Umber, gun still clasped out in front of him. He bends, picking up the other gun from the ground at his feet, and pulls the empty clip from it. He turns away from Grant without a glance in the other man’s direction, and walks to the black van that stands silent guard beside the rosebed.

“Pretty, wasn’t she?” he says. Grant starts, surprised. He is unsure as to what his response should be, and shrugs, almost helplessly.

“I guess . . .”

“More than that,” says Umber, back still turned, still facing the van’s open door. “I’d say she was incredibly fuckable. They seem to make them better each year.”

He turns. There is nothing on his face. No anger, no hurt, nothing. Nothing but the cold blue eyes framed by the rims of his glasses. Nothingness and nothingness, an expanse of extreme blue, that stretched forever onward, forever and forever, until it all disappeared, and Grant thought, despairing, he does know.

In the distance the sirens scream. It is logical that the Company should be coming now. Logical that they should have heard the whispered dissent of the City when the android darted in front of them, just minutes before (only minutes? Why did it seem like hours ago? Why did it seem like a lifetime ago?). It is logical they should sweep into the park with their black vans and black suits, to interview the witnesses, to track the artificial girl . . . it was so logical, so efficient, so . . . Umber’s blue eyes watch him, the other man’s fingers still twisting around the empty black gun.

“It’s an android,” says Grant, hoping his voice is pitched to the perfect level of disgust.

“I wouldn’t blame you, anyway,” says Umber, looking away at the vans barrelling into the park, lights flashing wildly on their sleek black heads. “It’s easy to get caught up with them. They’re made to be seductive, and pretty. They’re programmable machines, after all.”

Grant laughs, suddenly. Umber looks back at him, then down at the gun in his hands.

“We’ll catch it tomorrow. Take today off.” He turns and walks away, to where a knot of black-coated men and women wait, who turn to watch him approach, eyes wide and adoring.

***

In the moon’s dim reflected light, he collapses on their bed. Arkady goes to him, and curls next to him, her red hair tied back at the nape of her neck. His forearm is over his eyes, so he will not have to look at her. It is a moment of sudden dread between them.

“Grant’s involved.” He says finally.

“I’m so sorry,” she says, and somehow she truly is. She knows what Grant means to him. She knows it is a friendship marred by his need not to be alone, to have someone who is not her understand him. She smoothes the soft curve of her cheek against his chest. “I love you.”

“I know,” he says. The words rattle off distantly into the City night.

“What will happen?” she asks.

“Tomorrow,” he says. “Tomorrow . . . It’ll be done tomorrow.”

. . . and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, she thinks, closing her eyes. All the City’s tomorrows stretched out before her then, stretched out in a long, bloody string, stretched and stretched and reached back and forwards until she couldn’t imagine that it had ever been that there wasn’t such a string, that wrapped around the City like a bleeding snake. The head of the snake, however, remained where it was, tied around her wrist. She stiffens, and curls tighter to him, clutching him, so that the image fragments and flees from her mind.

“I love you,” she says again, sadly. Around them curves the great arms of the City, the towering buildings engulfing them, swallowing them whole. Around them the City joins its mechanical, man-made hands, and its mechanical song rises up in a full-throated wail of mourning. Above it all the moon stares, a wide, unblinking eye, its reflected light softening the towering buildings, until their shapes blur and it is almost as thought there is a great ring of children holding hands by the edge of a deep, dark sea.