Free Corrupting Dr. Nice by John Kessel Page B

Grove, in what had been an Indian section of Toronto. Her mother worked a doubles scam above a microrganic cleaners on Bloor Street, selling bereaved people the chance to retrieve their loved ones by stealing their doubles from recent moment universes. Most of their marks were retirees or parents who had lost children. To kidnap a real duplicate required access to a time machine; about the only ones who could do that were the mob. The outfit Ivy Faison worked for had no time machine, so they just sold the promise.
    Ivy didn't seem too worried about crossing the mob, or the cops. At nights she would come home with one or another of her men friends, or lie on the sofa in her VR suit embracing phantom lovers, picking up objects that weren't there. Gen was alone a lot. She got the idea that if they had a dog, it would give her somebody to talk to, and keep her safe. One of her friends at school got her a full-grown German shepherd named Max. Max's right ear had a notch in it from some old fight, and he had fleas and smelled bad. A bath got rid of the fleas, but Max never was much of a watchdog because he never, under any circumstances, would bark. Gen loved him immediately.
    Eventually her mother started coming home later and later. She would wobble into the room after twelve, push some Snooze into her arm to get herself to sleep and some Focus in the morning to get her up. Sometimes she wouldn't come home at all for a day or more. Finally she didn't come back at all. Gen didn't know what to do. She couldn’t call the police. Even if they found Ivy Faison, she would end up in jail, and Gen in some foster home. So Gen kept going to school, hoping each day that her mother would be there when she came back. Instead she had Max. For a month she lived alone in the apartment with her German shepherd, rent unpaid, the bills collecting and the food dwindling.
    One day at recess she saw a man watching her from outside the chain link fence of the school yard. At first she thought it might be a cop or one of her mother's boyfriends, and she tried to ignore him. But there was something familiar about he way he stood, and when he finally called out to her, "Genevieve!" she knew it was her father.
    She had never seen her mother again. Two years and a dozen scams later, Max died.
    Simon had said little to them since they'd left the palace, but Gen caught him giving her an occasional wary look. The awed expression on his face was out of keeping with his brusque manner. Was he attracted to her? But at times he seemed almost afraid. He took them down the street to a shop under a big painted sign:

    Fiery Furnace Sale!
    HONEST ABEDNEGO'S DISCOUNT ANIMALS
    Why waste Time? Why pay more?

    The building was one of the new sandfoam prefabs with a stucco front and a high tin roof that must drum like a demon when it rained. Simon nodded at the entrance but did not follow them inside.
    Both sides of the front room were lined with cages of animals: birds, snakes, lizards, cats, dogs. The place smelled of wood shavings, a trace of urine. Incense burned in an iron lamp stand. The HVAC system hummed above them. An open doorway in back led to a sunlit courtyard and a glimpse of paddocks containing horses, camels, oxen. The rear wall held racks of animal carriers. Most had wire mesh windows, but on display was a pearl gray metal quarantine carrier identical to the one Vannice had brought from the Cretaceous, hermetically sealed with an environmental readout on top.
    On the corner of the service counter rested a green lava lamp and a flatscreen playing the 2062 Sporting News. Though it was turned upside down to her, Gen recognized a clip of Babe Ruth swatting his latest homer for the Vancouver Sea Lions. A clean shaven man in a stained brown tunic came up to speak to them. "Yes, sir?"
    "I would like to purchase a dog," August said.
    August went off with the owner to examine a selection of Egyptian dogs, and Gen went back to where Simon stood under the shadow of