simon_doctor | (no subject)

(no subject)

The weather's good this morning; the air's chilly but the sun's bright and warm, and the sky is a clear translucent blue with no hint of rain.

The major marketplace of Logan City is spread out ahead of them, a thousand bright colors and a cacophony of voices, swarming and busy and alive. It doesn't feel like starting over, because you can't start over, but it's good enough for now. And they have things to accomplish.

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This time Kaylee gets to haggle.

By the time she's done and coin has changed hands, Simon's already looking ahead at the next stall, which is piled with incredibly old-looking paper books.

Uh oh, Kaylee's expression says by the time she wanders over.

"You're carrying anything comes from here," she warns.

"I don't mind," he says, half-absently, looking over the titles.

"Just so long as we're on the same page."

While Simon is distracted, she pulls the hat out of the bag and dons it, and looks very pleased with herself.

One of the titles makes him blink, and he reaches to pick up the book. Very carefully.

The elderly man at the stall gives him a glance, then goes back to the book he's reading.

Even better: she turns the hat around.

That way when she looks at books at the front of the stall, to passersby, it looks like she has eyes in the back of her head.

There's got to be a subtitle, this is probably an academic treatise about the notorious banned satire --

No; there's the author's pseudonym on the cover, right under the words Rama Ascendant, and Simon starts to grin in disbelief.

Kaylee tilts her head back and forth so it looks like the eyes are dancing.

Too bad there's not a way to make them blink, she thinks.

Simon turns around, holding the book ... and looks at the head-tilting Kaylee, faintly bemused.

She makes a face at him.

"What?" he says, innocent.

She takes the hat off, a little sulkily, and puts it back in the bag. "You ready?"

"To buy something? I think so."

There's no sign of the amazed delight that was on his face a moment ago as he approaches the proprietor and asks for the price of the book.

Kaylee glances down at the hat in the bag, a little wistfully, but waits without saying anything.

Everything at this stall, unusually, is at a fixed price. This is possibly what motivates Simon to lean in and murmur a few words to the proprietor in an earnest undertone, gesturing at the book in his hand.

The old man smiles, shrugs, shakes his head.

Simon doesn't argue any further, but he does buy a woven plastic-lanyard bookmark he doesn't need, along with the book.

Kaylee watches the exchange with a minor amount of curiosity. When Simon's done and they're heading down the thoroughfare, she says, "Well?"

"Here," he says, and holds out the book for her to see. "Rama Ascendant. It was written during the major period of expansion about fifty years before Unification, and it was banned almost everywhere as subversive. Nobody's ever been able to find out the author's real name."

Kaylee blinks, and flips through it as they walk. "So it's rare?"

"Well, in a sense. Digital copies are easy to find on the Cortex, and it's public domain. Printed copies are rare, especially copies that date back that far, which this one seems to."

Kaylee's starting to smile faintly. She looks up at Simon, sidelong. "So this means you did real good."

Simon grins back at her. "The best part, though? It's satire. Very, very pointed sociopolitical satire. Jordie loves this kind of thing, and especially this period."

He reaches to take the book back. "Did you know he almost went into political science instead of medicine, the year we met?"

"...I don't think I'm too surprised by that." She shakes her head a little. "Well. Good. How hard's it gonna be to send this to him?"

"Probably not very," he says. "They don't really enforce the ban anymore, but ... I might put a false cover on it, just to be on the safe side."

A beat.

"Also because he'll think it's funnier, if I do that."

"Make it about monkeys," she says, laughing.

"Yes." He's starting to laugh too. "...But not cyborg monkeys."