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By Root 1274 0

chief executive, who wants her for his harem, and is willing to trade her life for her hand in concubinage and a major Antarctic concession, and her father’s personal and fanatically loyal Chechen guards are fighting their way through the chief executive’s rings of brutish defenders while she stands, sheathed in silks and clouded in perfumes on the balcony of a Kuomintang drug-lord’s skyscraper in the heart of Old New York watching the tanks battle it out in the streets below and waiting for the hard-pressed Chechens to raise reinforcements from the desperate tribes of the South Bronx with the promise of plunder, and she hears a stealthy step behind her and the chief executive – whose face, if truth be told, looks uncannily like her owner’s – falls on his knees before her and tells her he really, truly, loves her and he’s consumed with remorse and he’ll set her free, if only…

And so on.

This is what androids – or rather, gynoids – dream.

A knock on the door. She’s back to full awareness in an instant, her internal clock telling her it’s early morning.

‘Just a moment,’ she says.

The little cleaner-vermin have removed every speck of organic dirt from her clothes. She shakes them out without thinking and dresses in a blur of motion (a useful Soldier skill that she’s cut-and-pasted to Self) and calls out,

‘Come in.’

The boy who comes in carrying a tray with a mug of coffee and a bowl of cereal looks about twelve years old, at first glance. He’s Black, with slight build and delicate features and a shock of black hair. As Dee scans him up and down, all the while smiling and saying ‘hello’, she realises that he’s much older than he looks. There’s no way so much experience could have made its subtle imprint in the muscle-tone of his face, the look in his eye, in just twelve years. Not here, not in Ship City. They have laws against that sort of thing.

‘You must be Ax,’ she says, taking the tray. ‘Thanks.’ She waves him to the chair. ‘Tamara mentioned you.’

‘Likewise,’ the boy says, sitting back with one foot on the opposite knee. ‘So you’re Dee Model, huh? Big boss Reid’s main squeeze.’

Dee’s facing him, her knees primly together, the tray balanced on them, the spoon almost at her mouth. She puts it back, making a tinny rattle against the side of the bowl. She steadies the tray, and her voice.

‘How do you know that?’

Ax flashes white teeth. ‘You’re famous.’ His grin becomes wicked, then relents to a reassuring smile. ‘Not really. Your master had you on his arm at a party last year, pic made its way onto the gossip chats.’ His eyes unfocus for a moment. ‘Quite a dress,’ he says.

‘I didn’t think so,’ Dee says. She resumes eating. ‘I had to stay in Sex most of the time to make wearing it bearable.’

Ax snorts.

‘Anyway.’ Dee blushes. Spy’s routines keep her voice level and flat. ‘Are there searches out for me? Rewards posted?’

Again the off-line gaze – he’s got a cortical downlink, Dee realises, not a common feature around here; the most intimate interface with the nets that most people will tolerate is contacts, the little round screens that you slip over your eyes.

‘None so far,’ Ax says, attention snapping back. ‘Reckon he’s embarrassed. I mean, your walking doll walks out on you, can’t be like having your car nicked, know what I mean?’

‘Yes,’ Dee says. The thought of her owner’s probable rage and humiliation makes her knees, despite everything, quiver. She puts the tray down and reaches for her purse.

‘Smoke?’

‘Anything,’ says Ax. He has a lighter on a chain around his neck, and moves swiftly to light up for her, then settles back, dragging on his own.

‘So why did you walk out?’ he asks. His tone is neither friendly nor prurient; it’s like a professional question, the tone of a physician or an engineer with a patient.

‘He doesn’t mistreat me,’ she says. ‘I don’t mind the service, or the sex. I mind being a slave.’

‘You’re supposed to like it,’ Ax says. ‘It’s hard-wired.’

‘I know,’ Dee says. She glances around for an ashtray, sighs and mentally over-rides her Servant routines and taps the ash onto the empty,