The Mocking Program

by Alan Dean Foster

  Standing in the center of the underwater command center, surrounded by dynamic online consoles and multiple readouts burning bright, Cardenas gaped at the custodian. The old man's reply was, to say the least, not what he had expected to hear.

  "What do you mean he's dead? He can't be dead."

  Rodrigo kept working as he spoke. "We can all of us be dead, siryore. I was told about it by Ms. Larrimore, who worked in here. Mr. Mockerkin was coming out of the Brazos Mall in Harlingen after doing some shopping. He was with two other employees when they were hit by a bus that had gone out of control. Mr. Mockerkin and one of the other men were killed immediately. The other went to hospital." The maintenance man scratched at his thinning gray-brown hair. "I think he got out last month, but I am not sure."

  Cardenas's thoughts were churning furiously. "Would Mr. Chanay, the supervisor of the warehouse upstairs, know about this?"

  The custodian shrugged again. "I do not know. You would have to ask him. I never see the people who worked down here and the ones who work in the import-export place mix with each other. I believe they are different businesses. But I do not know. I am only a janitor." He smiled easily, Cardenas noted. "I do the cleaning."

  "What about the other people who do work down here?" The Inspector indicated the empty chairs that faced the multiple consoles.

  "I don't know, siryore. It's not my business. I don't concern myself with such things." He looked contemplative. "I suppose they are working when I am not here. Or maybe they were told to stay away for a while, after Mr. Mockerkin was killed. I really don't know."

  Was killed, Cardenas found himself repeating. Months ago. This was crazy! It made no sense. If Cleator Mockerkin had really perished in an accident on the streets of Harlingen, then who the hell these past several months had been furiously, even ferociously, directing the ongoing effort to abduct Katla Mockerkin, and who had continued the hunt that had resulted in her mother's murder?

  "Might someone besides yourself show up here today?"

  Rodrigo was beginning to sound tired. "Please, siryore. I do not know. You would probably know better than I."

  Cardenas nodded slowly. "All right. I won't bother you anymore, Go ahead and finish your work."

  Rodrigo was patently grateful. Cardenas waited until the janitor had finished sweeping the floor and airdusting the softly humming electronics. As he was preparing to leave, the old man looked back at him from the bottom of the ramp.

  "Are you going to wait here, siryore?"

  "Yes," Cardenas told him. "Yes, I think I'll wait for a while longer, to see if anyone shows up. If you don't mind, that is." He smiled engagingly.

  Rodrigo pushed out his lower lip. "Why should I mind? It's not my business. I'm a custodian, not a watchman." He started up the ramp.

  "One more question," Cardenas called after him. The old man paused and looked back. "If what you're telling me is true, and your employer is dead, then why do you keep coming down here and cleaning this place?"

  The old man eyed him tolerantly, as one would a child. "Because when I access my bank, the money is always there. I keep getting my pay."

  Cardenas could not let it go. "Who pays you? One of the other employees, someone who's not here right now?"

  The aged head swung slowly from side to side. Visibly tiring of the endless string of questions, Rodrigo injected a note of impatience into his reply. "Once again, siryore, I do not know. I just know that when I check my account, my pay is there. As long as that is so, I will keep doing my work. Until someone tells me to stop, or until the money stops being paid. I never thought much about it. I suppose it is a program of some kind, that pays me automatically." He shook his head again. "Often I think some things were better in the old days, when not so many things were automated." He winced slightly. "Do you have any more questions?"

  "Just one." Turning, the Inspector indicated the single remaining door that stood next to the inset of mirror glass at the back of the room. "What's in here? Another storeroom?"

  "I don't know. It is kept locked. I've never been asked to clean in there, if that's what you mean."

  "Ever see anybody go in, or out?"

  "No, siryore. I haven't."

  That, Cardenas reflected, was interesting. In his mind, he had already dismissed the old man. "Thank you for your help."

  The custodian nodded. "You are welcome, siryore. If you will excuse me, this is my last work of the day, and I want to go home now." Turning, he climbed slowly up the ramp. In his wake, the entryway remained open and clear.

  If The Mock was dead, Cardenas reasoned restively, then someone else must have taken up his work. Some trusted lieutenant, or second-in-command. But who? He could understand an underling being intensely interested in the quantum theft project, however ephemeral its prospects, not to mention the complete records of The Mock's organization—either of which would explain the ongoing effort to abduct Katla. But why follow through with the obviously Mock-ordered revenge killing of Surtsey Mockerkin? The Montezuma Strip was not ancient Calabria, or Sicily, or even Moscow. Modern-day criminals were interested in vacuuming crunch and credit, not in pursuing another individual's personal vendettas. No matter how loyal a second-in-command might be to his former master The Mock, Cardenas could not see any reason for a subordinate to pursue a contract murder that he or she had no personal interest in seeing carried to fruition.

  Unless, perhaps, Surtsey Mockerkin had covered her bets by dallying with another of The Mock's minions besides the unfortunate Wayne Brummel, and had then left them in the lurch along with her late husband.

  It still didn't add up. Every time he pieced together a new scenario based on the facts as he knew them, it immediately fell victim to conspicuous flaws of internal logic. The obvious fix for the irritating conundrum lay in the acquisition of additional facts. The room in which he presently found himself was clearly the place to start searching for them.

  While he pondered how and where best to begin, he kept a circumspect eye on the exit. Unless the old man was the greatest actor Cardenas had yet encountered in his long years on the force, the custodian was nothing more than the simple maintenance worker he claimed to be. Nevertheless, on the off chance the senior had patiently waited out the intruder's questions only to sound the alarm elsewhere, Cardenas periodically walked over to the bottom of the ramp to check the approach through the storage closet.

  When not occupied in making sure his escape route remained clear, he contemplated the multiple work stations that lined the walls of the underwater chamber. Which mollysphere was most likely to be susceptible to a probe? What sort of booby-traps might he reasonably expect to encounter? He had done this sort of thing before, most recently when he had been assigned to probe the dangerously compromised corporate box at GenDyne's main research tank in Agua Pri. Invasive box sorties were inevitably fraught with treacherous surprises. The possibility that any of the mollys or the main box in a place like this would operate without some kind of integrated protection never once crossed his mind.

  Eventually, as he had suspected they would, his thoughts returned once more to the door at the back of the room, and to what might lie behind it and the pane of thick mirror glass. If it was nothing more than a simple storeroom, why prohibit entry to the custodian already entrusted with the key code to this secluded chamber?

  It would probably take only a few seconds of his time to check out. Alongside the door handle was a small vertical slot designed to accept a simple, straightforward coded key. From his belt he once more pulled out the sesame, slapped it over the slot, flicked it to life, and waited. In less than thirty seconds the device ascertained the combination and applied it. There was a click. Trying the handle a second time, he found that the door opened easily toward him.

  Too easily.

  He found himself looking into a small antechamber perhaps two meters square. There were a pair of storage cabinets, a small office-sized refrigerator, and on the wall a small holovit showing a pink tile-roofed h
ouse in a tropical setting. Within the holovit, the moon was slowly rising, casting golden glimmers on the stream that ran left to right in front of the house. To Cardenas's immediate right, another door beckoned, temptingly ajar. Twisting and bending while remaining outside the antechamber, he found he could not see very much of the room beyond through the limited gap thus presented.

  Worms and artful lures were designed to attract fish. Open doors invariably drew curious people. He had no intention of ending up gaffed and gutted in the presence of an obvious hook.

  There appeared to be nothing to hinder his entry, which was exactly why he held back. After studying the antechamber for several minutes, he turned and strode back through the larger outer workplace and up the ramp. Seizing on the pair of old-fashioned mops he had seen during his earlier sojourn in the bathroom storage closet, he returned with them to stand once more before the door he had just unlocked. It stood ajar, exactly as he had left it.

  Setting one of the mops aside, he grasped the other with one hand at the top and the other near the bottom. Holding it vertically, he pitched it into the antechamber.

  There was a sudden flash of light that left multiple afterimages dancing on his retinas. Instantly and effortlessly sliced into sections, four pieces of mop clattered metallically to the floor.

  Had he stepped unthinkingly into the alcove, there would just as efficiently, but considerably more messily, have been four pieces of him.

  SIXTEEN

  THUS STARKLY ENLIGHTENED, CARDENAS proceeded to reinspect the seemingly innocuous alcove.

  He found two of what he was looking for concealed in the pair of cabinets, one hiding in the front door of the refrigerator, and the other artfully concealed behind the window of the house depicted in the holovit. Normally a brilliant crimson, the industrial lasers that had rendered the mop into instant scrap had been customized with canceling optics that nullified their conventional color without affecting their potency. Peering into the antechamber, a visitor saw nothing but empty air; stepping in, he would find himself sliced and diced without ever getting a chance to ascertain the cause.

  There was no visible controlling switch, either for the harmless overhead lights or the rather less inoffensive optical sentinels that guarded the entrance to the room behind the inner portal. Intended to liberate him from minor inconveniences and allow him to enter locked rooms and boxes, his service belt offered nothing designed to cope with a sentry system quite this elaborate—or lethal.

  After contemplating the unoccupied but deadly alcove, he turned and once more made his way back through the outer room and up the ramp. This time he did not stop in the bathroom storage closet. Selecting one of the two large wall mirrors that were installed above the bathroom's double sinks and utilizing the tools on his belt, he soon had it pried loose from the industrial adhesive that kept it fastened to the wall. Retracing his steps, he carefully set the mirror aside and picked up the remaining mop. Following the first into the antechamber, it suffered the same fate as its sacrificial predecessor.

  Turning the mirror on its end yielded a reflective shield that was nearly, but not quite, as tall as Cardenas. Sacrificing the second mop had allowed him to memorize, albeit hastily and imperfectly, the angles at which the beams of the colorless lasers crisscrossed the alcove. Hunching down to keep as much of himself as possible behind the mirror, he carefully and slowly edged forward into the antechamber.

  There was a single bang, followed by a strong smell of burnt paneling. Advancing at a snail's pace, he worked his way through the alcove, past the softly humming refrigerator and beneath the deceptively soothing holovit. Feeling the freely swinging lure of the inner door against his back, he pushed it open, stumbling slightly as he duck-walked through the now-unobstructed portal.

  When he was as confident as he could be that he was beyond range of the invisible sentinels, he stood up and set the providential mirror aside. Deflected and reflected by the glass, the lasers had burned a pair of thumbnail-sized holes in the far wall of the antechamber and another two in the ceiling. The tiny black cavities smoked slightly and stank mightily, but he saw no flames, and no fire-detection alarms were sounding. This was not unexpected. Any place as important as this underwater redoubt would have been fabricated of fireproof and fire-retardant construction materials. It would take more than a little smoke to set off any integrated fire alarm system.

  The room in which he found himself was dimly but adequately lit. To his left, a single holovit of open desert filled the entire wall. As he looked on, a three-dimensional Gila monster scuttled out from behind a woolly bear cactus to disappear behind a rock. Soaring from right to left, a Swainson's hawk cried out, its screech muted. Looking to his right, the Inspector saw the outer room, with its empty workstations and the bathroom closet ramp beyond, clearly through the high-quality one-way glass.

  In front of him was a small work area dominated by a single comfortable chair and an idling box tunnel. On the otherwise empty desk, a vorec sat waiting in its holder. There was no keyboard for optional manual input. Below the subdued tunnel that appeared to run to a softly glowing infinity, the impassive glass eye of a scanner poked out of the wall. Hefting the bathroom mirror, Cardenas once more held it out in front of him as he approached the station and sat down in the chair. Nothing jumped out at him, and the chair did not blow up beneath his butt. Gratified but still vigilant, he examined the vorec carefully before removing it from its holder. It was a Pelurinho Amado 24. Expensive, multilingual rated, but with relatively straightforward controls, it was intended for a user who wanted the best available voice recognition technology but was not particularly technologically sophisticated. Flicking it active, he brought it to his lips.

  "Open," he murmured softly into the discreetly padded pickup.

  Words emerged from within the box tunnel as a dull inner light animated the scanner eye. "Access denied. Authorization required."

  "Verbal?"

  "Yes," the supple mechanical voice informed him.

  Here was a simpler, and less lethal, problem to deal with than annulled lasers, Cardenas saw. Removing his service belt, he laid it out on the desk so he could more quickly and easily access its contents. While essential industrial mollys and boxes were usually defended by multiple layers of security, physically smaller and less significant ancillary devices—devices like vorecs—generally boasted less elaborate safeguards.

  Removing his spinner from its pouch, he snapped his own vorec into the appropriate receptacle. From onboard storage, he punched up a vorec operations file. Delving into the National NFP tank in Washington in the course of doing research on The Mock, Cardenas had tracked down a voice file of a line tap that included a couple of innocuous sentences uttered by one Cleator Mockerkin in the course of his checking into the Four Seasons Havana some ten years ago. Using the tiny file as an aural template, police techs in Nogales had successfully generated a syntharym that perfectly mimicked the individual sonics.

  As soon as the relevant file had been shunted, he placed the caster node of his own unit against that of the one he had removed from the holder on the desk. Some judicious juggling of the controls, and the syntharym was transferred to the resident vorec. Easing the spinner back into its pouch and returning his own vorec to its holder, he gripped the local and repeated his earlier command.

  "Open," he reiterated. If the syntharym was sufficiently precise, and had made a full transfer, the vorec he was holding should now convince the molly behind the wall and the box it connected to that it was being addressed by, if not Cleator Mockerkin himself, then someone with sufficiently similar speech patterns to satisfy the security gram. Of course, Mockerkin might never have been in this little room, much less utilized its box. It might simply be a protected facility utilized by, say, his chief financial officer. But where this level of carefully thought-out physical artifice and internal security was employed, it seemed reasonable to suppose that the individual at the top of the command chain ought to at least be able
to check on the work of underlings.

  Or not, he realized pessimistically as the box voice replied, "Access denied. Authorization required."

  He tried again, on the off chance that the syntharym had not been transmitted accurately the first time. The result was the same. Lips pursed, brow furrowed, he sought elucidation.

  "Erroneous verbal command entered?"

  The box responded without hesitation, the artificial voice emerging clearly from within the open tunnel. "Verbal command accepted. Visual authorization denied."

  He had suspected from the moment he sat down in the chair that this would not be easy. Muttering under his breath, he set to work yet again removing necessary gear and material from the service belt's pouches. A quick glance showed that the entryway leading to the bathroom storage closet remained blessedly silent and deserted.

  It had been a long time since he had been obliged to make use of a chameleon. Removing the flexible mask from its belt pocket, he unfolded it and spread it out flat on the desktop. When he thumbed the power switch woven into the back, the opaque epidermoid sprang to life. Carefully he slipped it into place over his face and snugged it tight. The familiar tickling sensation that ensued indicated the mask was working, busy molding itself to his features. Wearing the mask made breathing difficult but not impossible. When the chameleon felt it was set and ready, it so informed him by sounding a tiny beep.

  Swiveling in the chair and turning back to face the scanner set in the wall, he addressed the vorec anew. "Open."

  The box replied without hesitation. "Verbal command accepted. Visual authorization denied."

  This time he was not disappointed. He had expected the response. Even the most efficacious chameleon needed time to work its morphing magic. After a moment's pause to allow it to process the information it had received, he repeated the request. Again it was denied. And again.