“You’re Sonny Boy?” He frowned at the android and remained standing.
“His idea, not mine. Sit, please,” said the simulacrum. “Actually I’m smarter than Herr Gewitter—and I don’t have an ulcer.”
“Even so, I’d prefer—”
“He’s out of town,” explained the android. “An accounting job for a bunch of swindlers in Salzburg.”
“I can’t wait.”
“Let me assure you that I’m equipped to handle this.” He held up his right hand. “Besides which, I’ve been especially designed to interface with all this first-rate equipment.” He gestured at the computer terminals and infoscreens built into two of the white walls.
Jake sat, tentatively, in the stiff white chair. “I have to contact—and question—a gent named D. E. Nister,” he said, mentioning the name he’d persuaded Inspector Spellman to pass along. “He’s a professor of Technobiology at the Austrian Academic Network.”
“And also connected with the largest Tek cartel in Europe.” The Gewitter android tapped a sheaf of papers atop the desk. “I did some backgrounding soon as Timecheck contacted me.”
“From what I learned in Berlin, I suspected as much.” Jake leaned forward. “By now it’s possible that Professor Nister suspects I’m interested in him. I need a reliable informant, which Timecheck assured me you are, to help me find out where the prof might hole up.”
“That’s a challenging problem,” said the android. “Nister doesn’t broadcast from the regular AAN studios. In addition, his lectures for the past two days have been repeats.”
“Where do they originate?”
“From a private studio in his home near the Riesenrad.”
“But he’s not at home?”
Tapping the report, the sim answered, “Not according to my sources.”
“Then we have to find out where he is.”
“Exactly, mein herr.” The android left his chair to walk to the nearest wall. “Earlier I sent out some discreet queries.” He inserted his forefinger into a socket beneath one of the infoscreens. “Any news that’s come in during the past few minutes will automatically be transferred from here to my brain. Then I can tell you what—”
“Wouldn’t it be simpler for me just to read it off—”
“Nein, this particular capacity cost a great deal. Not to make use of it would ... Gott!”
Suddenly the screen turned bright red. The socket crackled and sputtered, the android’s hand began to glow and throw off an impressive shower of gold and yellow sparks. His entire body stiffened as he rose up on his toes and commenced howling.
His eyeballs melted and went splashing down his cheeks. His blond hair stood straight up and then burned swiftly away to soot. He was flung back from the wall.
The burned-out android fell back onto his desk, dropped to the floor and lay on his side, twitching and kicking.
His mouth snapped open and he started spewing out twists of bright-colored wire, tiny coppery cogs and steaming spurts of greenish oil.
Jake grabbed the report up off the desk and thrust it into a pocket. Pivoting, he ran to the door and into the hall. “Looks like it’s going to be tougher than I thought to arrange a chat with the professor,” he reflected as he hurried for the stairs.
The Neptune Cafe was built out over the Pacific Ocean and the night surf hit low at its tinted plastiglass walls. Dan had left Molly in a booth in the central dining area and made his way to a vidphone booth.
He called the offices of the Cosmos Detective Agency. When a robot showed on the screen, Jake’s son said, “I want to leave a message for Walt Bascom. Ask him if—”
“Don’t be shy, lad.” Bascom appeared on the phonescreen. “Ask me directly.”
Dan asked, “Do you have somebody watching me?”
“What makes you ask?”
“Do you? Because if you don’t, then somebody—”
“Describe this alleged tail.”
“Well, actually I haven’t seen him myself. But a friend of mine—not a friend exactly, somebody from the academy, a fellow student—spotted him near the condo, keeping an eye on the place,” explained Dan. “A slim man, about thirty, shortcropped blond hair. He one of yours?”
“Yep, that’s McCay,” admitted Bascom. “Who’s the young lady who noticed him?”
“Oh, Molly Fine. Basically she’s a nuisance.”
“But perceptive.”
“I suppose so. Why do you—”
“Your father’s concerned, Dan. So am I. That’s why I have operatives—”
“If it’s all the same to you, I can take care of myself,” Dan assured him. “So you can retire McCay and whoever else you assigned to babysit.”
“It’d be smarter to keep—”
“Isn’t necessary.”
“Very well.” Bascom nodded amiably. “From now on you’re on your own. Okay?”
“Thanks, yeah.”
Back at the booth Dan said, “It was one of the Cosmos operatives. Sort of a nursemaid that my dad thought I needed.”
“And?” asked Molly.
“Bascom’s calling him off,” he said. “He also suggested that we quit playing detective.”
“How’d he find out about that?”
“He’s a detective, too,” reminded Dan. “Anyway, I think I will give this up. Too dangerous and I ought to be concentrating on my academy work. So from now on, Molly, I won’t be needing your help.”
Molly smiled. “Neither you or Bascom are especially good liars,” she pointed out. “He’s not going to call off the surveillance—and you aren’t really planning to quit investigating Knerr.” Her smile widened. “You’ll have to do better than this if you want to ditch me.”
35
THE FIRST ONE WHO came charging into the back room of the SnoHound shop was a chrome-plated robot wearing a knitcap and a crimson parka. He held a lazgun in each gloved hand.
Gomez was ducked behind a clutter of Helmut Kolb, Jr.’s, gadgets. Helmut, a considerable portion of him still visible, was crouched to the rear of a stack of databoxes.
The robot spotted him, aimed twin guns at his backside as he ordered, “On your feet, fatass.”
Gomez popped up, firing his stungun at the intruding robot.
The beam proved sufficient to disable the mechanical man and he tumbled over into the chair Helmut had recently occupied.
A booted foot stepped across the threshold and Gomez kicked out at it.
Someone yelled, then a bald youth in a black jacket came stumbling in.
Gomez fired his stungun again. Scooping up the unconscious youth, he used him as a shield and went rushing out into the showroom.
He tripped over the sprawled proprietor, let go of the bald young man just as the other two intruders fired their lazguns in his direction.
The youth was sliced in half and then in quarters, but by that time Gomez was sheltered behind the metal counter.
He scuttled along the floor, reached one of the barking robot dogs on its pedestal. Swiftly he punched out instructions on the hound’s control panel. “Sic ’em,” he ordered.
Growling ferociously, the big metallic dog leaped from his pedestal and straight at the bearded man who was in the act of swinging his ebony lazgun toward the scurrying Gomez.
The hound hit the big man full in the chest with both metal forepaws, knocking him off balance. The lazgun crackled, digging a deep zigzag rut in the ceiling.
The final intruder was a copperplated robot who stood near the door to the street.
By the time the bearded gunman hit the floor, Gomez had successfully programmed two more of the SnoHounds to go into action.
They both charged the robot, knocking him to the floor before he could get his gun trained on the dodging detective.
Gomez bounded across the floor, kneeled next to the fallen bot and fired his stungun at him.
Then, retrieving the bearded man’s dropped lazgun, he squatted beside him. The robot hound was still holding him down with
his metal paws.
“Okay, hombre, who sent you?”
All the other robot hounds were barking enthusiastically and the bearded man asked, “What did you say, asshole?”
Gomez shouted, “Who hired you?”
“Up your gazoo, greaseball.”
Gomez jabbed the barrel of the lazgun into the downed man’s side. “Here’s how I see your immediate future, cabrón,” he told him. “After you get out of the hospital, you’ll—”
“Bullshit, you won’t use that lazgun on me. You’re a cop and your code of—”
“Por favor, allow me to conclude my dire prediction,” requested Gomez, shoving the gun deeper into his side. “You’ll be heading for the hospital not because of me, but because this enormous perro is going to chomp some extremely essential parts of your anatomy. I can program him to—”
At that point another of the dogs jumped from his perch, galloped over and sank his teeth into Gomez’s thigh.
He gave a yell of pain, distracted.
The bearded man took advantage of that, kicking him in the midsection and then rolling free of the other robot dog. He ran for the door, pushed his way out into the street.
Twisting, Gomez used his own stungun again and managed to disable the dog that was chomping on him. “You picked a dandy time to go berserk,” he told the now immobile robot.
“They’re all like that. You can’t trust a damned one of them.” Helmut Kolb, Sr., was sitting up, touching carefully at the bloody lump on his forehead. “Who did these hoodlums come here to rough up—you or my worthless son?”
“Me.” Gomez got shakily to his feet. “I’ll turn the remains over to the law, but the only human left who can talk is the one who scooted away while Fido here was sinking his tusks into me.”
Accepting Gomez’s assistance in rising off the floor, the senior Kolb asked, “Are you planning to visit us regularly, mein herr?”
“If all goes well,” Gomez assured him, “neither you nor Switzerland will ever see the likes of me again.”
36
GOMEZ GAVE A HOBBLING jump to one side as a thickset man with a spiky red beard came stumbling backwards across the main concourse of the’ Vienna Skyport toward him.
The man missed colliding with him and went tottering by, tripped over somebody else’s sitting suitcase and fell on his backside with a smacking thump.
A husky blonde woman of forty ran up, dealt the fallen man a disabling chop to the neck. She clamped a set of electrocuffs on him, gave a satisfied nod and walked over to Gomez. “How come you’re so gimpy, Sid?” she inquired as she held out her hand.
“I was recently bitten by a robot,” he explained, shaking hands. “Why’d you toss that hombre, Eva?”
“The walleyed sap tried to snatch my purse,” explained Eva Kraft, waving at the robot security cop who was hurrying over. “Another one for you, Hans.”
The chromeplated robot tipped his police cap, gave an appreciative chuckle and gathered up the pursesnatcher. “Wunderbar,” he commented.
Gomez rested his suitcase and coughed into his hand. “You are, as you know, one of my favorite private operatives in all the world,” he assured the husky blonde woman, “and the Cosmos Detective Agency has long relied on—”
“Don’t go acting like a gaptoothed ninny, Sid,” she advised him. “Come right out and say that I embarrass you.”
“It’s only that I was hoping, chiquita, to make an unobtrusive entrance into your fair city.” He picked up his suitcase. “Having enormous louts flung at my feet, I’ve found, tends to attract attention.”
“It couldn’t be helped,” the detective told him. “I was standing there, blending artfully in with the hundreds of ninnies and simps who clutter up” the skyport when that crosseyed sappo made a try for my—”
“I appreciate your coming down to meet me.” He started to limp toward an exit ramp. “Have you found out anything about the activities of Jenny Keaton?”
“I started work on the project soon as you phoned from that dinky tourist trap in Switzerland.”
“And what have you—”
“I picked up the little ninny’s trail. It wasn’t all that difficult,” said Eva. “She checked into the Hotel Freundlich on the Augustinerstrasse. She’s currently using the moniker Jolline Kurtzman.”
“Bueno. Let’s get over there.”
“That won’t do you any good, liebling.” They stepped out onto a skycar parking lot. The day was fading and a sharp wind blew across the dusky area.
“Why not, Evita?”
“Because your friend Jenny—my car’s the purple one over there—left her hotel after only fifteen minutes and took a landcab to the Dings Flohmarkt near the Kettenbrückengasse Maglev Station. That’s a—”
“Gadget fleamarket. And?”
Eva slowed, scowling. “Well, then something odd took place, Sid,” she replied, sounding both annoyed and perplexed. “The lady flung a wingding.”
“Be a mite more specific.”
“She went bonkers, had a fit, acted in a highly irrational manner. She ended up being hauled off by the medics.”
Gomez halted, asking, “Where is she now?”
“They took the poor woman to the Berggasse Foundation, which is a privately owned loony bin, for observation,” said the investigator. “I have some connections, so we may be able to spring her from—”
“Nix. A little observation will do Jenny good. We’ll get around to her later,” said Gomez. “What I want to do, muy pronto, is get to that fleamarket. We have to find out whom she was trying to contact there.”
Very quietly Jake lowered the butler to the floor. The android made a faint thumping noise as Jake arranged him on the thick carpeting of the corridor.
Standing up and away, he glanced down the shadowy hallway. His stungun was held in his right hand. Nodding to himself, he continued deeper into the townhouse. After turning a bend in the hall, he saw a large rectangle of light up ahead on his left.
It was the open doorway of the studio he sought. Jake slowed his pace, listening. Except for the soft hums and purrs of its various mechanisms, the house was quiet.
Jake eased closer to the studio. He became aware now of footfalls on a bare wooden floor and then a chair scraping in there. Halting just short of the doorway, he brought his gun up to chest level.
After listening for another full minute, he stepped carefully into the brightly lighted room. “Good evening, Fräulein Roth,” he said.
The slender blonde woman didn’t flinch. She simply pushed her chair back from the keyboard she’d been working at and turned to look him over. “You must be Jake Cardigan,” said Mina Roth. “I’ve seen photographs of you.”
“I imagine you have.” He was watching her very carefully.
She left her chair, crossing to a large vidscreen on the wall. It showed the glittering unfinished landscape painting she was at work on. “I have a quite expensive security system.” She leaned back against the wall, studying him.
“I have considerable experience in circumventing security systems,” he told her. “And in incapacitating robots, androids and assorted servos.”
“Is there, Herr Cardigan, any special reason why you’ve so rudely intruded into my home?”
He moved closer to the artist. “Earlier today, before he was destroyed, a Johan Gewitter android compiled a report for me on the activities, professional and otherwise, of Professor D. E. Nister.”
She smiled faintly. “Was this late mechanism a scandal columnist, a private investigator or—”
“A supplier of information, stuff he gathered in unorthodox ways,” said Jake. “We’re going to talk about Nister now.”
“He’s not here. I have no idea where he is,” she assured him. “You’ve invaded my privacy for nothing, Herr Cardigan.”
“You happen to be the professor’s current mistress, Fräulein Roth. I want you to tell me where the guy is.”
“Why not contact the real Gewitter, wherever he may b
e, and see if he can help you out?”
“He’s decided to drop from sight.” Jake grinned bleakly at her. “You’re the most likely source of information.”
Mina Roth returned to her chair, sat, rested her right hand on the keyboard. “Nister never comes here,” she said. “He hasn’t contacted me in several days.” She touched a few keys and a cloud was added to the landscape painting. “I do hope that you didn’t pay very much for your information, since it’s far from accurate.”
“Actually, I didn’t pay a damn thing for it. They fried the andy before—”
“Enough!” She’d popped the keyboard open and snatched out a lazgun from a compartment within.
As she spun to fire at him, Jake threw himself to the right.
He squeezed the trigger of his stungun as he fell. The beam hit her just below her left breast.
The blonde gasped, bit her lower lip. Her arms and legs went rigid, her eyes snapped shut.
In falling, she smashed into the keyboard. That modified the painting, causing explosions of scarlet light to appear among the pine trees.
“Damn,” said Jake, walking over and collecting her gun out of her stiffened fingers. “I wanted to question her.”
As he tucked the weapon into his jacket pocket, he scanned the large room. There was a vidphone sitting in an alcove near the doorway.
Jake sat down at the phone. “Let’s see,” he said, “what you can tell me.”
37
THE DINGS FLOHMARKT CONSISTED of a 5-story-high atrium ringed with wide balconies that were trimmed with fat chrome railings and hundreds of plastiglass lightbubbles. The ground level was given over to vendors of math gadgets, nearly fifty of them hawking from booths, kiosks, tables and stools.
“Mathats! Mathats!” cried a thin black man who was perched on a rickety tin stool and holding a chromed derby aloft. “Place it on your coco and in just seconds you’ll be doing algebra or ... ”
“Smallest calculator known to man!” offered a plump woman who was wearing a polka dot scarf. “Size of a flyspeck.”
Tek Vengeance Page 13
