Scratch Monkey Read Online Free PDF Page B

lurch. I'm in for a rough ride ahead.
    They take me to a small, whitewashed room that smells of disinfectant and fear. They search me and find my body-belt. They go through it looking for incriminating objects and they're not disappointed -- a small comms booster and some coins that belong in a museum judging by their reaction. "Smuggling contraband?" asks the short one with the piggy eyes who's been elected to play Bad Cop; "or spying?" His eyes glisten wetly as he back-hands me across the face. My cheek and left shoulder go numb as pain-supressants cut in, but I can feel the trickle of blood as they pull me off the floor. They take my ring when they strip-search me. Then they tie me to a chair. I feel dizzy and breathless, high on endorphins from my metabolic controller. They don't seem very satisfied.
    "Who sent you?" spits piggy-face, glaring at me.
    "There must have been some mix-up," I mumble through lips like putty. "The records --"
    He hits me again. Good Cop -- who has not yet spoken -- is looking at the comms booster closely.
    "What language is this?" he asks idly, and I tense myself. There's one way to get what I want, I realise; it's kind of risky, but --
    "Standard," I say, in Standard. "I wouldn't open that if I were you."
    "What does it mean?" he asks idly; "speak alpagian." Bad Cop gives himself away by staying silent.
    "Contains no user-servicable parts," I say. "What are you going to do with me now?"
    Bad Cop looks as if he's about to hit me again but holds himself back. "What now?" asks Good Cop; "well, it looks like we were wrong, doesn't it? You're not a spy -- you're a lunatic." He smiles at me then looks at his colleague. "Chuck her in the pen for processing," he says casually.
    Bad Cop pauses. "Not yet," he says. "What was that memo?"
    Good Cop snorts. "Other worlds my arse," he says; "there's no such thing."
    My mouth is wet and salty with blood. "Oh yes there are," I say. Bad Cop hits me again, but with no real force.
    "She's mad," remarks Good Cop. "Tell you what, though, let's sort her out before we send her over to HQ. They'd do it on retrieval anyway, so --"
    "Okay."
    My heart is suddenly in my throat: there's an acrid taste in my mouth as my guts loosen in fear. They pick me up by the chair and carry me through the door, and breathing heavily, drop me down in front of some kind of bulky metal-box contraption and turn their backs. I try to look away but the box glares at me with two huge, violet laser eyes that suddenly grow brighter and brighter. I hear a sickening popping noise through the bones of my skull and --
    I'm a child again.
    When I was three years old my uncle cut out my eyes. I remember the raw, shrieking pain, the burning fire beneath my eyelids that wouldn't go away: the total red-hot darkness that dawned that morning and didn't set for ten years.
    The reason he did it was to make me a more successful beggar. We were extremely poor, and after my father died he had his sister -- my mother -- to look after, as well as his own family. So he blinded me, and stationed me on the streets of the bazaar.
    I was successful at my trade, and even more successful at another; people do not expect a blind beggar child to be a pickpocket. I wasn't a very good pick-pocket, but if they caught me they usually did no worse than slap me hard; my mutilation was a passport to security, at least in public. In private, in the shack that passed for a home for us, it merely made me more vulnerable to his cruelties. Escape was impossible: where was there for me to go? My mother never seemed to care much, and cared even less for me after he beat her and forced her to watch him pay his attentions to me. They were invariably conceived of as mercies, for some reason: everything had to be good . He thought of it as a kindness, the way he introduced me to my profession: and that I should be grateful, and that such gratitude should extend to the kind of sexual favours that only a blind person can provide. He kissed