Starfish

Kevin's clothes were filthy. Caked mud clung to his pants. Fischer reached over and began picking it off. "We should get you out of these clothes. Get you cleaned up. We can only take showers on even days here, but you could always take a sponge bath…"

Kevin just sat there. One hand gripped his drink, bony fingers denting the plastic; the other rested motionless on the couch.

Fischer smiled. "It's okay. This is what you do when you really —»

Kevin stared at the floor, trembling.

Fischer found a zipper, pulled. Pressed, gently. "It's okay. It's okay. Don't worry."

Kevin stopped shaking. Kevin looked up.

Kevin smiled.

"I'm not the one who should be worried here, asshole," he said in his whistling child's voice.

The jolt threw Fischer to the floor. Suddenly he was staring at the ceiling, fingers twitching at the ends of arms that had turned, magically, into dead weights. His whole nervous system sang like a tracery of high-tension wires embedded in flesh.

His bladder let go. Wet warmth spread out from his crotch.

Kevin stepped over him and looked down, all trace of awkwardness gone from his movements. One hand still held the plastic cup. The other held a shockprod.

Very deliberately, Kevin upended his drink. Fischer watched the liquid snake down, almost casually, and splash across his face. His eyes stung; Kevin was a spindly blur in a wash of weak acid. Fischer tried to blink, tried again, finally succeeded.

One of Kevin's legs was swinging back at the knee.

"Gerald Fischer, you are under arrest —»

It swung forward. Pain erupted in Fischer's side.

" — for indecent assault of a minor —»

Back. Forward. Pain.

" — under sections 151 and 152 of the N'Am Pacific Criminal Code."

The child knelt down and glared into his face. Up close the telltales were obvious; the depth of the eyes, the size of the pores in the skin, the plastic resilience of adult flesh soaked in androgen suppressants.

"Not to mention violation of yet another restraining order," Kevin added.

How long, Fischer wondered absently. Neural aftershock draped the whole world in gauze. How many months did it take to stunt back down from man to child?

"You have the right to — ah, fuck."

And how long to reverse the reversal? Could Kevin ever grow up again?

"You know your fucking rights better than I do."

This wasn't happening. The police wouldn't go this far, they didn't have the money, and anyway, why? How could anyone be willing to change themselves like that? Just to get Gerry Fischer? Why?

"I suppose I should call you in, shouldn't I? Then again, maybe I'll just let you lie here in your own piss for a while…"

Somehow, he got the feeling that Kevin was hurting more than he was. It didn't make sense.

It's okay, Shadow told him softly. It's not your fault. They just don't understand.

Kevin was kicking him again, but Fischer could hardly feel it. He tried to say something, anything, that would make his tormentor feel a little better, but his motor nerves were still fried.

He could still cry, though. Different wiring.

* * *

It was different this time. It started out the same, the scans and the samples and the beatings, but then they took him out of the line and cleaned him up, and put him in a side room. Two guards sat him down at a table, across from a dumpy little man with brown moles all over his face.

"Hello, Gerry," he said, pretending not to notice Fischer's injuries. "I'm Dr. Scanlon."

"You're a shrink."

"Actually, I'm more of a mechanic." He smiled, a prissy little smile that said I've just been very clever but you're probably too stupid to get the joke. Fischer decided he didn't like Scanlon much.

Still, his type had been useful before, with all their talk about competence and criminal responsibility. It's not so much what you did, Fischer had learned, as why you did it. If you did things because you were evil, you were in real trouble. If you did the same things because you were sick, though, the doctors would sometimes cover for you. Fischer had learned to be sick.

Scanlon pulled a headband out of his breast pocket. "I'd like to talk to you for a little while, Gerry. Would you mind putting this on for me?"

The inside of the band was studded with sensor pads. It felt cool across his forehead. Fischer looked around the room, but he couldn't see any monitors or readouts.

"Great." Scanlon nodded to the guards. He waited until they'd left before he spoke again.

"You're a strange one, Gerry Fischer. We don't run into too many like you."

"That's not what the other doctors said."

"Oh? What did they say?"

"They said I was typical. They said, they said lots of the one-fifty-one's used the same rationale."

Scanlon leaned forward. "Well you know, that's true. It's a classic line: 'I was teaching her about her awakening sexuality, doctor. 'It's the parents' job to instruct their children, doctor. 'They don't like school either, but it's for their own good.»