Read Online Chicken Little by Cory Doctorow - Free Book Online Page A

scar, in the nose and ear. The hairless head was pushed in on one side, like a pumpkin that hasn't been turned as it grew in the patch, and there was no skin on the flat piece, only white bone and a fine metallic mesh and more ragged, curdled scar tissue.
    The eyes were hidden behind a slim set of goggles that irised open when they neared him, and beneath the goggles they were preternaturally bright, bright as marbles, set deep in bruised-looking sockets. The mouth beneath the nostril-tubes parted in a smile, revealing teeth as neat and white as a toothpaste advertisement, and Buhle spoke.
    "Welcome to the liver. Or the heart."
    Leon choked on whatever words he'd prepared. The voice was the same one he'd heard in the outer room, warm and friendly, the voice of a man whom you could trust, who would take care of you. He fumbled around his suit, patting it. "I brought you a doorknob," he said, "but I can't reach it just now."
    Buhle laughed, not the chuckle he'd heard before, but an actual, barked Ha! that made the tubes heave and the fiber optics writhe. "Fantastic," he said. "Ria, he's fantastic."
    The compliment made the tips of Leon's ears grow warm.
    "He's a good one," she said. "And he's come a long way at your request."
    "You hear how she reminds me of my responsibilities? Sit down, both of you." Ria rolled over two chairs, and Leon settled into one, feeling it noiselessly adjust to take his weight. A small mirror unfolded itself and then two more, angled beneath it, and he found himself looking into Buhle's eyes, looking at his face, reflected in the mirrors.
    "Leon," Buhle said, "tell me about your final project, the one that got you the top grade in your class."
    Leon's fragile calm vanished, and he began to sweat. "I don't like to talk about it," he said.
    "Makes you vulnerable, I know. But vulnerable isn't so bad. Take me. I thought I was invincible. I thought that I could make and unmake the world to my liking. I thought I understood how the human mind worked -- and how it broke.
    "And then one day in Madrid, as I was sitting in my suite's breakfast room, talking with an old friend while I ate my porridge oats, my old friend picked up the heavy silver coffee jug, leaped on my chest, smashed me to the floor, and methodically attempted to beat the brains out of my head with it. It weighed about three pounds, not counting the coffee, which was scalding, and she only got in three licks before they pulled her off of me, took her away. Those three licks though --" He looked intently at them. "I'm an old man," he said. "Old bones, old tissues. The first blow cracked my skull. The second one broke it. The third one forced fragments into my brain. By the time the medics arrived, I'd been technically dead for about 174 seconds, give or take a second or two."
    Leon wasn't sure the old thing in the vat had finished speaking, but that seemed to be the whole story. "Why?" he said, picking the word that was uppermost in his mind.
    "Why did I tell you this?"
    "No," Leon said. "Why did your old friend try to kill you?"
    Buhle grinned. "Oh, I expect I deserved it," he said.
    "Are you going to tell me why?" Leon said.
    Buhle's cozy grin disappeared. "I don't think I will."
    Leon found he was breathing so hard that he was fogging up his faceplate, despite the air-jets that worked to clear it. "Buhle," he said, "the point of that story was to tell me how vulnerable you are so that I'd tell you my story, but that story doesn't make you vulnerable. You were beaten to death and yet you survived, grew stronger, changed into this --" He waved his hands around. "This body, this monstrous, town-sized giant. You're about as vulnerable as fucking Zeus."
    Ria laughed softly but unmistakably. "Told you so," she said to Buhle. "He's a good one."
    The exposed lower part of Buhle's face clenched like a fist and the pitch of the machine noises around them shifted a half-tone. Then he smiled a smile that was visibly forced, obviously artificial even in