The Mocking Program

by Alan Dean Foster

  "Need a hand?"

  The sergeant did not smile. "I'm not overweight—I'm just like the coffee I drink. Papua Robusta." Behind him a cheery, by-now familiar voice piped up clearly, "I'm ready—thanks for waiting for me!"

  Then the house blew up.

  The central dome that roofed the den vomited vertically, a half hemisphere of composite and wood and metal building materials erupting skyward. Shattered fragments of 482236 West Minero rained down on desert landscaping, empty street, and stunned neighbors alike. The force of the blast blew the struggling Hyaki through the gap in the front door, and carried the damaged door along with him. It knocked Cardenas two meters backward and half out of his shoes. Shaking off the effects of the concussion, he climbed to his feet and staggered over to where his partner lay, shell-shocked and bleeding, on the decorative decomposed granite that in the Southwest often took the place of grass. Absently he noted that the back of the sergeant's jacket and most of his trousers had been blown away. Only the lightweight but virtually impenetrable forcewear he wore underneath had saved him from being torn to shreds by fragments of suburban house that had been unexpectedly transformed into lethal shrapnel.

  "Get up." Reaching down, he got both hands under his partner's right arm and heaved. The mountain stirred. "Vamos your overpaid ass, Fredoso!"

  With a tremendous effort of will, the wounded sergeant heaved himself to his knees. "I'm okay, Angel." Reaching up and around, he felt of the back of his neck. A callused palm came away syrupy with blood. "Maybe a little banged up."

  "It's verdad, compadre? Shunt—now!" Leaning backward, Cardenas used his weight to drag his partner in the direction of the street. Behind them, neighbors were gathering outside the fencewall. They wore the vacant, bewildered expressions of lemmings who suddenly found themselves adrift in a sea of mayhem they could not comprehend. From somewhere within the collapsed, smoking center of the house, the voice of Surtsey Anderson cried out.

  "Help me, please! I'm hurt! Can't somebody help me?"

  Hyaki hesitated, rendering futile the effort of the worried Cardenas to keep moving his mountainous companion toward the street. "We've got to go back. The woman, she's—"

  "Not there," Cardenas snapped at him. "It's a recording. Keep moving!" With one hand, he continued to tug on Hyaki's right arm, hoping the rest of the sergeant would follow. Using the other, he flipped open his spinner.

  "I have a Red eight-two-four at four-eight-two-two-three-six West Minero Place, Olmec inurb!" he barked at the vorec. "Officer down. Repeat, officer is down—requesting airmed!"

  Still dazed, his head wobbling slightly, Hyaki was gazing back in the direction of the slumping structure. From damaged, hidden depths, a female voice continued to plead with any listeners. Hyaki frowned uncertainly.

  "A recording? Angel, are you sur—?"

  They had almost made it to the sidewalk when the house blew up all over again. This time there were multiple explosions. The gathering crowd of rubbernecking neighbors screamed. Those who were not knocked down, fled. Cardenas felt the heavy hand of the blast wave slam him to the hard ground. When the rain of debris finally ceased, he struggled to free himself from chunks of building material and shards of shattered window. Hyaki was unconscious and bleeding badly from the back of his skull. Shoving the insensible bulk of his partner to one side, the Inspector sat up, dug dust from his eyes, and stared.

  The serpentine walkway that had previously led to the front door of the comfortable suburban home now led to a smoking hole in the ground. Overhead, the heavy hum of approaching chopters was beginning to mask the ongoing screams and shouts of stunned and injured onlookers.

  He would not have expected so unassuming a residence to be equipped with so advanced a kamikaze security system. Instead of keeping trespassers out, the idea was to let them in, and then liquidate them. One also lost one's home and possessions in the process. As a security measure, the technique was devastatingly effective. Of course, it could be used only once. What had the recently deceased George Anderson-Brummel feared badly enough to induce him to turn his own home into the explosive equivalent of a low-grade munitions dump? Why had he gone to elaborate and expensive lengths to try to trap and kill?

  Of more immediate interest, Cardenas wondered as he cradled the unconscious Hyaki's bruised, bleeding head in his lap and watched grim-faced airmeds drop from the descending lead diopter, where the hell were Surtsey and Katla Anderson?

  THREE

  ONLY WHEN HE WAS ASSURED THAT HIS PARTNER was going to be okay and Hyaki had been choptered out did he allow the airmeds to clean his own wounds and treat the most seriously damaged areas with sprayskin. He declined to leave the scene, refusing a lift to hospital. As might be expected, media teams were onsite almost as quickly as the airmeds. When a team from Forensics finally arrived, they had to run the usual gauntlet of vitwits who peppered the new arrivals with questions they could not answer. Officers and a pair of department flashmen from Comrel cordoned them off as two squads went to work on the scene.

  The nature of the destruction ruled out natural causes such as a gas explosion even before the studious evaluators had a chance to talk to Cardenas. Ignoring his wounds while trying to keep visions of the battered, unconscious Hyaki from flashing through his mind, the Inspector insisted on joining them in their work.

  "There was an initial detonation that was as much bait as killing charge," he told the male and female officers who confronted him, taking notes, "followed by the added lure of an injured woman crying out for help. Then a whole series of secondary explosions." Angrily, he kicked aside a twisted strip of metal wall cladding. "Whoever cojoned this casa wanted to make sure and kill anyone and everyone who was inside."

  The female Forensics spec was kneeling, passing a scanner over a still-smoking cavity within the greater crater, applying the kind of high-class infosuck for which the department was well-known. "Pretty extreme way of dealing with burglars."

  "Depends on what kind of insurance you have." Having dropped a select handful of dirt and debris into the mouth of a device that resembled a portable sonic oven, her partner waited patiently for it to produce intelligible results. "Some companies will pay full replacement if the homeowner can prove they expiated two or more intruders." He smiled thinly. "That's morally indefensible as well as highly illegal, of course. But try and get a conviction in court against the corporation making the payout. Plenty of cleanies own shady policies that carry evanescent forced-entry extermination riders." Frowning, he gave the oven a firm smack.

  "Here we go," he muttered, staring at the readouts that promptly blinked to life. "Pretty stylish package of ingredients." He glanced meaningfully at the attentive Cardenas. "Where death-dealing is concerned, your suspects show some sophisticated taste. Hellex expanders, Tarifa bursters, and Jaffna jelly. All sequenced and set off with Taichug micros programmed to react in concert with your lady-in-distress reaper." He favored the intuit with a longer look. "I heard the preliminary. Your open spinner forwarded it downtown. How'd you know it was a recording, that there was nobody in the house?"

  Cardenas was following the progress of the other specs. "The anxiety in the voice rang false. She was a good actor; but it's still acting."

  The specialist nodded, gesturing at the inurban devastation through which his colleagues were picking. "Whoever's behind this sure as hell didn't want anybody to get out."

  "Or to find anything." Kneeling, Cardenas pulled something from the rubble. It was the upper half of a doll, the gelatinous simulated eyes still moist. Disconnected, it automatically gazed back up at him out of limpid synthesized oculars.

  The spec blinked as he dumped the contents of the oven into a specimen bag. "Find what?"

  The Inspector did not drop, but instead carefully placed, the piece of homunculus back on the ground. Something in the synthetic eyes made him use a foot to cover it with debris. "If I knew that, I wouldn't have to ask the question. What I do know is that no one turns their home into a bomb
this sophisticated just to muerto a couple of skraggers."

  Despite his injuries, he insisted on joining the assessors who were working the street, questioning stunned residents of the heretofore peaceful neighborhood. The two flashmen from the department were busy massaging the media, doing their best to persuade the skeets that the destruction could not have been prevented.

  The few resident citizens on off-day who came stumbling out of their individually secured abodes wore the dazed expressions typical of cleanies for whom daily existence was a succession of relatively predictable concerns over bills, professional worries, and family. Ordinary, everyday problems that were not a matter of life and death as they were for the underfolk of the Strip.

  Cardenas approached a wide-eyed older woman clad only in swimsuit and throwover. Evidently, she had been relaxing in a backyard pool when the Anderson home had tried its best to exterminate the two visiting federales. A few lingering beads of water still clung to her lower legs, fighting evaporation. She flinched slightly when the Inspector drew near.

  "Nothing to be afraid of," he reassured her. "You don't need to run."

  "I wasn't going to—well, maybe I was," she mumbled. No maybe about it, Cardenas knew. He did not explain to her that the subtle movements of her body and face revealed her intentions to him as clearly as if she had loudly declaimed them.

  He flashed his ident, saw her relax slightly. "I won't involve you, I promise." He indicated the smoking ruins of the house in front of them, now smothered in flame suppressant from the hovering fire department chopter. "Did you know the occupants? A Mr. George Anderson and..."

  "Surtsey," the woman stammered. "Her name is Surtsey. They had a daughter." Her eyes were pools of concern. Not for potentially extirpated neighbors, but for herself and her own kin. "What happened?"

  "Too soon to tell." Cardenas felt no compunction about comforting her with a lie. "Maybe a gas line explosion. Maybe something volatile in the house." He did his best to make it sound as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. "Happens all the time."

  "But you're here." She gestured past him. "There seem to be a lot of police."

  "Routine," he confided casually. "Just depends on who happens to be in the area when the emergency happens. There was no one at home, so nobody got muertoed. You knew the Andersons?"

  "Very casually. A 'hello, good morning, how are you?' kind of knowing. People here in Olmec value their privacy." And pay for it, she didn't have to add. "They seemed nice enough."

  "Did Ms. Anderson have a job?"

  Showing signs of relaxation, the woman turned thoughtful. "If she did, it was in-house. I didn't see her go out much. And she always seemed to be at home when her husband arrived. She drove the girl to soche, though. Every day. And brought her home. Not that I paid any attention, really."

  Cardenas nodded, conveying the impression that she had provided valuable information. "Any idea which soche the daughter attended?"

  The neighbor shook her head and tugged the throwover tighter around her bare, wrinkled shoulders. "No. My own children are grown." Glancing to her right, she pointed out a boy and girl standing in front of two younger citizens. All four were staring at the incomprehensible wreckage that had suddenly and explosively materialized in the middle of their quiet neighborhood. The parents said little, but their offspring were chattering away animatedly.

  "You might ask the Martinez family. Their boy is about the same age as the Anderson child, and I seem to remember hearing that they went to the same soche."

  So they did, the boy confirmed to Cardenas, although he was in a younger soche group than Katla Anderson. Thanking them, Cardenas turned to leave, only to find himself confronted by a pair of vitwits. He stalled the chattering skeets until Morgan from Comrel could intervene, pattering the pair away despite their persistent efforts to challenge the Inspector. By the time they succeeded in breaking free of the flashman, Cardenas was tucked into a cruiser and humming swiftly away from the site. Have to mess the flashgal a gracias, he told himself as the scene of suburban devastation receded behind him. He was not comfortable dealing with the media, especially those who recognized or knew him as an intuit.

  The cruiser's spinner traced Hyaki's ambulance and the obedient car conveyed the Inspector to Nogales Central, the Department's hospital of choice for officers injured in the line of duty. The medico flashman who intercepted him in the fourteenth-floor hallway informed him that the sergeant was still in surgery. Cardenas did not press the earnest young man for details. His tone was sufficient to assure the Inspector that the big sergeant was going to be all right, because Cardenas could tell that the man was speaking the truth and not concocting a convenient professional lie. Nevertheless, he spent the rest of the afternoon there, staying on well into evening, until he was finally allowed a look into Recovery.

  Eyes closed, facedown, Hyaki floated swathed in freshly adhering epispray. The pinkish, artificial epidermis was slowly blending with the sergeant's own skin, sealing and healing the horrific charring that covered most of his broad, naked back. It was impossible to tell how much of his own epidermis remained. As with any severe burn victim, he drifted in suspension above the bed, hovering in a magnetic field designed to keep his severely damaged skin from coming in contact with any solid surface. Even the finest, softest bedsheets could multiply the trauma of an acute burn victim. The diamagnetic properties of the human body that allowed it to oppose the magnetic field applied by the hospital Perkins projector had only been properly and practically realized in the last thirty years.

  Tubes ran from the sergeant's nose and pelvis. Scanners focused on his torso monitored readings from nanosurges that had been inserted into his body at strategic points. Cardenas had spent enough time (too much time, he reflected calmly) in hospitals and seen enough apparatus in action to allow him to interpret many of the instrument readings. Overall, they were stable, if not cause for celebration.

  A dark, quiet anger had been building in him ever since he had left the crime scene. The fact that the ordinary, unremarkable house in the inurbs had tried to kill him and his partner was reason enough for fury. That it had been indiscriminate in its murderous automaturgy only rendered the attempt that much more deserving of denunciation. That it had not been conceived to dissuade everyday crime such as burglary was self-evident. Not only was the system far too elaborate and expensive, it hardly succeeded in preserving the owner's household goods. It was designed to welcome intruders—and then slaughter them, to the extent that the owner of the system was prepared to sacrifice the entire dwelling in the effort.

  If not thieves, and in all likelihood not visiting federales, then who? Rage was the rationale for most home security systems. Fear was the foundation of the much more sophisticated setup that had nearly killed him and his partner. Who, or what, did an apparently ordinary inurban family like the Andersons have to fear to the extent that they were willing to turn their own residence into as elaborate a booby-trap as Cardenas had ever encountered? Of one thing he was already certain: it was tied to the reason the deceased George Anderson needed two identities.

  The floating body in IC Recovery stirred ever so slightly. Cardenas's expression did not change. He could not intuit the unconscious. He did not have to. The sight of his friend's hovering torso was enough. Endorphin drip or not, Hyaki had to be suffering. It would worsen when the sergeant awoke and was once more able to feel. There was nothing Cardenas could do about that.

  But he could damn well do something else. For a start, he very badly wanted to have a chat with the erstwhile Ms. George Anderson.

  His fury at the indifferent instrumentation that had nearly robbed him of his friend and partner did not begin to ebb until that night, as he sat in his codo, overlooking the landscaped and artfully contoured channel of the Santa Rita River. Drip-watered vegetation softened the harsh terrain on either side of the waterway. A single nocturnal jogger, her shoes and cap suffused with glowing pale blue quantum dots, was all that moved beneat
h the half-moon. Her belt pulsed rhythmically, warning potential muggers that her outfit was fully charged and ready to stun any attacker foolish enough to make a grab for her.

  Beyond the river stretched the lights of the Strip, running all the way to the Golfo California. The previous night's downpour had cleansed the air, revealing stars that were wholly indifferent to the insignificant alternations mankind had wrought on the ancient Sonoran terrain. The tranquil vista helped to ease his troubled thoughts. So did the chilled Dos Equis in his hand.

  Downing the last of it, he set the empty bottle down alongside its three empty siblings. Evacuated of beer, the disposable induction coil that was woven into the glass promptly shut down. The glass began to warm immediately. Swiveling in the chair, Cardenas muttered at his vit. The wall unit blinked to life and offered up a selection of suggested inanities for casual viewing. Sprawled in a chair, clad only in his underwear, he stared at the slowly scrolling readout without seeing it.

  The medical portents were fine, but as long as he was stuck in IC, Hyaki could not be regarded as being out of danger. If the big fat slotho died...

  Ignoring the proffered offerings of laughter and documentary, he opted for a snooze soother. As he had done on innumerable other nights, he fell asleep in the chair.

  Tucked into a quiet cul-de-sac, the Mary Anson Carter Soche was a neat, self-contained complex designed to instruct children ages four to thirteen in all aspects of Real Life. Pre-university academics, of course, had not been taught in schools since the middle of the century. Those subjects were far better mastered in the peace and privacy of a child's residence, with the aid of home boxes and away from the distractions of one's age peers. At fourteen, a child entered into two years of analytical studies and advanced soche, and at sixteen, choices were made between higher education, vocational apprenticeship programs, public service, and a plethora of less-defining adult options such as the military.