TekLab

by William Shatner

  “I’m trim actually. And that’s expensive ale, consumed purely and strictly in the line of business.”

  “You still a dick?” She tipped her head and smiled at him.

  “I am, private now.” He nodded at the arch across the way, which had the words metro estates written large on it in old-fashioned neon tubing. “Fact is, I’m planning on dropping in on our mutual chum, Limehouse.”

  Marie grunted. “That halfwit.”

  “Well-informed halfwit. He still living down in the estates?”

  “Oui, he’s down there, moldering away.”

  Gomez patted Marie on her broad back. “It’s truly warmed my heart, chiquita, especially at this sentimental time of year, to encounter you once again.” After slipping her a $10 Banx note, he went trotting across the street.

  The arch rose up over a large hole in the sidewalk. Two flashing arrows pointed at the broad stairway leading below.

  Gomez paused to take a slow, careful look around, then headed underground.

  Jake, meantime, dropped in at a Left Bank establishment known as the Hot Club. The club specialized in hologram and android re-creations of American jazz music of the twentieth century. On the ground level tonight Jelly Roll Morton and His Red Hot Peppers appeared to be playing on the small floating bandstand. There were less than ten patrons sitting at the small tables amidst the simulated smoke.

  On the second level of the Hot Club Jake made his way through another artificially smoky room that held about fifteen customers. Art Tatum seemed to be playing an ivory piano in one shadowy corner.

  Jake went through an arched doorway, climbed a curving ramp up to a heavy door marked control. He knocked twice.

  Nothing happened.

  He knocked again.

  This time the thick metal door eased open a few inches. “Oui?” whispered a thin voice.

  “It’s Jake, Pepe.”

  “Jake who?”

  “Jake Cardigan. We talked on the vidphone ten minutes ago.”

  The door opened a bit wider. “It does look like you, mon ami.”

  “Well, that makes sense, Pepe. Since it is me. C’mon, let me in so we can talk.”

  The door opened even wider, enough to allow Jake to squeeze into the chill, dim-lit control room of the Hot Club.

  Pepe Nerveux was a small, thin man, hollow-eyed and sharp-nosed. He had a tiny moustache that resembled a dab of lint and tight-curling gray hair. “Shut the door, please, quickly,” he requested, rushing back to drop into his high, padded chair at his control boards. On the rows of monitor screens that rose up in front of Pepe Nerveux were dozens of images of what was going on in the five separate levels of the jazz club. Grabbing up an earphone, he tuned in on what Jelly Roll Morton’s group was playing. “Merde, the trumpet’s a shade sour.” Anxiously, he reached up to twist a dial. “What do you think—is it better?” He held out the earphone toward Jake.

  Ignoring it, Jake asked, “You implied on the phone that you’re still in the information business.”

  “I am, oui, I am.” Pepe Nerveux dropped the earphone, yanked a plyochief out of his trouser pocket, wiped sweat off his forehead, picked up another earphone. “No, non, mon dieu! They sent us a defective Cootie Williams for the Duke Ellington orchestra. Just listen to that dreadful mute work.”

  “You seem uneasy tonight,” mentioned Jake, leaning against the wall.

  “Supervising five jazz attractions, each of which has to be perfect, is stressful.” He jabbed at a button on a control board at his right. “I’ll have to dub in a new trumpet for the Ellington aggregation.”

  “Much more nervous than the last time we met.”

  “That was years ago, mon ami,” reminded the small, narrow man, glancing briefly over his shoulder at Jake. “Keep in mind, too, that they call me Pepe Nerveux. That is not, obviously, my true name. No, it’s a nickname, bestowed on me because I’m always very nervous. Nervous all the time, in fact. Ah, what’s this?” He jumped up, gesturing unhappily at a row of monitor screens. “Bud Powell’s fallen off his piano bench.”

  “I’m wondering, Pepe,” said Jake, “maybe you’re too busy to do business with me tonight.”

  “Wait, wait.” He made a quick, shaky stay-put gesture with one hand while fooling with dials, buttons, switches. “Bon, he’s back in place and playing ‘Un Poco Loco.’ ” Sighing, Pepe Nerveux sank deeper into his chair.

  “What about the background information on Zack Rolfe?” Cardigan persisted calmly.

  “While his reputation isn’t spotless, I haven’t heard anything especially damaging about him. Since you called, I’ve instigated a further probe into his background.” He tugged out his plyo-chief again, mopping fresh perspiration from his face. “This evening, I just learned, Rolfe is visiting the Grand Illusion. That’s a very swank electronic bordello not far from here. A favorite spot of his.” Pepe wiped his forehead yet again. “Were you to drop in there tonight, you might find out more about him. Tell Madame Nana I sent you.”

  Jake said, “I’ll maybe do that.”

  “My current fee for this sort of information is $500.”

  “My current payout for this kind of information is $200.”

  “That is far, mon ami, from a fair price.”

  Jake handed him two $100 Banx notes. “You want to be careful not to price yourself right out of business.”

  “Very well.” Pepe Nerveux gave a nervous shrug. “Since we’re old friends, I’ll accept what from another would be an insulting fee.” He snatched the bills. “Should you require ... Merde! Why isn’t Jelly Roll on the stand? He’s not due to take a break yet.”

  “Thanks for your help.” Jake left the control room, walked back down through two levels of the club and into the street. He’d gone less than fifty feet from the doorway of the Hot Club when all hell broke loose.

  7

  THE AIRCIRC SYSTEM DOWN in Metro Estates was on the fritz and there was a foul, rancid odor thick in the underground streets. Some of the hologram projectors weren’t functioning properly either. The wooded park on Gomez’s left as he walked toward Limehouse’s cottage on Downlevel 3 clicked off at irregular intervals. The stately trees, pines, and some other kind that Gomez couldn’t identify, would abruptly cease to be. Instead the stark metal walls, smeared with fiery rust and pocked with blistered paint, would appear, along with puddles of scum-topped water.

  When the grass snapped away in the simulated park, the body of a dead dog that had been lying next to a plashing fountain remained, sprawled stiffly on the ribbed metal flooring.

  “Dog must be real,” concluded Gomez. “Stands to reason. Nobody’d consider a canine corpse decorative, not even down here.”

  A handsome Gothic church on his right began to quiver as he was strolling by. Instead of vanishing in an instant, as the grass and trees had, the narrow gray church seemed slowly, gradually, to melt. When it was nearly gone, and the spattered walls behind it were showing distinctly, the cathedral all at once reappeared and was whole again.

  “Hallelujah,” commented Gomez.

  “You can help me, monsieur.” A one-legged man came shuffling toward him, supported by a rough-hewn wooden crutch. He staggered, walking right through the wall of the newly returned cathedral.

  Warily, Gomez slowed. “How?”

  “All I need is skyliner fare to Australia. I got a job waiting there for me, but I’m a little short on my ticket money.”

  “How short?”

  “Only $700, monsieur.”

  Gomez, smiling briefly, handed him a $10 Banx note. “Well, here’s my contribution.”

  “Ten bucks? I sure as hell can’t get to Australia on ten lousy bucks.”

  “It’s a start though.” Shrugging sympathetically, Gomez continued on his way.

  “Jesus, I’m a vet, you know,” called the beggar. “I lost my goddamn leg in Brazil.”

  Gomez kept moving.

  “Looking for fun, curly?”

  Sitting, legs crossed, on the p
orch of a two-story apartment building was a thin girl of about fourteen.

  Gomez stopped. “Whatever you do, don’t tell me a sad story.”

  “Who mentioned sad? Three hundred dollars.” She smiled at him. She had almost all her teeth.

  “For what, chiquita?”

  “A night of fun. With me.”

  “How old are you?”

  “How old do you like ’em?”

  He gazed up at the black, shadowy metal ceiling of the tunnel for about ten seconds. “Waifs and strays,” he muttered. “Especially at Xmas I seem to bump into them.”

  “If you act fast, curly, I’ll drop the price to $200. And that includes a continental breakfast comes the dawn.”

  “Here.” He leaned closer to the girl. “Here’s $50. Now take it, go home, quit hustling for tonight.”

  “You trying to reform me?”

  “A lost cause, huh?” He put the $50 Banx note in her thin, knobby hand. “Well, adiós.”

  Shoulders hunched, he walked on.

  “Too bad, curly,” said the girl to his back. “You’re sort of cute.”

  “She’s right about that,” he said to himself, kicking up his pace.

  Limehouse was out in the small garden in front of his cottage, on hands and knees among the tulip beds. He was a long, thin man, somewhere between thirty and fifty. A cyborg with a right arm of tarnished silver. “Just the ruddy bloke I’m after wantin’,” he said, noticing Gomez stepping over his low white picket fence.

  “Como está?”

  “Can’t complain, m’lad. Now tyke a bloomin’ gander art these ’ere tulips, will yer?”

  “Momentito,” cut in Gomez. “I know full well that you’re a one-time Londoner, Limehouse, and that you’re loyal to the Merrie Old England of bygone days, but, por favor, spare me that godawful stage Brit accent.”

  “Bit much, wouldcher say, gov?”

  “A bit, sí.”

  “It seems to please the tourists, you understand? Especially the ones who drop down here from Great Britain. You really, you know, can’t spread it on too thick for them.”

  “You had a query?”

  Creaking some, Limehouse got up out of the tulip beds. “Take a long appraising look at these tulips if you will. Then tell me if you can tell which ones are the real article and which are simply projections.”

  Gomez scanned the rows of bright flowers. “Red ones are phony.”

  Limehouse sagged. “How’d you bloody tumble to that?”

  “Your projector’s on the blink. The flowers on the end keep fading away until you can see through them.”

  Crouching, he scowled at the red tulips. “Ar, blimey, you’re absolutely right. My eyes aren’t as sharp as they ought to be, and that’s for certain.”

  “Might we step into your parlor for a chat?”

  “Sure thing.” The cyborg led him into a cozy parlor, where a small cheery fire seemed to be blazing in a rustic stone fireplace. “Sit yourself down. Tea?”

  “Not at the moment.”

  Settling into an armchair, Limehouse rubbed at his metal arm with the fingers of his flesh hand. “I’ve been making discreet inquiries since you called me this afternoon.”

  “With what result?”

  Poking his fingers into a pocket of his checkered vest, the cyborg extracted a small vidcaz. “I was able to acquire a copy of this,” he said as he inserted it into a slot in his arm. “It’s not complete, mind you, only about two minutes long. The interesting thing, though, is that this particular bit of footage isn’t in the official autopsy video on your late friend, Joe Bouchon.”

  “Roll it.” Gomez dragged his chair closer to that of his host.

  Limehouse opened his metal hand to reveal a small vidscreen built into the palm. When he twisted his metal thumb, a picture appeared on the screen.

  “Oy,” remarked Gomez, grimacing.

  Lying on the white medtable were the four portions of Bouchon’s body. An android medic in a bloodstained smock was standing beside the table talking to a white-enameled robot who was holding a tray of liquid-filled vials.

  Limehouse twisted his forefinger and voices came out of the tiny speaker below the screen.

  “... no alcohol?”

  “None, sir,” replied the white bot.

  “What did you find?”

  “He’d been given, orally, a dose of vertillium. Approximately a half hour before he died.”

  “Hmrnm,” said the android thoughtfully. “What about—”

  The film ended.

  “Vertillium,” Limehouse started to explain, “is a fairly powerful—”

  “Disorienting drug, sí. I’m familiar with the stuff.” He slid his chair back a few feet. “Do you know who edited this snippet out of the official version of the autopsy?”

  Pointing at the ceiling with his silver thumb, the informant replied, “Somebody important. Don’t know who.”

  “Find out.”

  “Might be expensive.”

  “I’ve got a good budget.”

  “It could also, Gomez, be dangerous. To the both of us.”

  “I’d appreciate it, nonetheless, if you’d try, in your celebrated discreet and polite fashion,” urged the detective. “Do you have anything else for me?”

  Limehouse coughed into his real hand. “What I’ve supplied you thus far I’d like to have $1000 for.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “There is something else.” His voice lowered. “But on this I don’t happen to be the sole proprietor. If you want it, the whole story is going to cost you an extra $1500.”

  “Who’s your partner?”

  “Don’t explode when I tell you.”

  “I’ll make every effort not to.”

  “It’s Eddie Anguille.”

  “Shit.”

  “Eddie came to me when he got wind of what I was scrounging around for.”

  “That cabrón. If they gave out trophies for swinishness, Anguille would cinch permanent possession. If they took a poll to determine the ten most unreliable and untrustworthy louts on the face of the earth, he’d fill the spots from one to five. Maybe six, too.”

  “I don’t especially favor the bloke myself,” admitted Limehouse. “But he’s got this and if you want it—well, sir, it’s $1500.”

  “Do I get a sample of what I’m buying?”

  “I have a bit of audiovisual material, yeah. A conversation snippet about a certain artifact as it were,” explained Limehouse. “However, Gomez, to really find out what it all means, you got to go to Eddie.”

  “In what pesthole does he hang his hat these days?”

  “The Hotel Algiers.”

  Nodding, Gomez said, “A first-class dump for sure. Is this sample going to cost me extra?”

  Rubbing his metal hand along his leg, Limehouse said apologetically, “If it was up to me, you understand, I’d run this off for you for nothing. But Eddie, he doesn’t believe in free samples.”

  “What’s the tab?”

  “Two hundred fifty.”

  “Plus the $1500 when I go to him?”

  “That’s the blooming deal, I’m afraid, Gomez.”

  “You don’t usually work cons.”

  “This isn’t a scam. Leastwise I don’t think so.”

  Gomez left his chair. On one wall of the parlor hung portraits of past and hopefully future kings and queens of England. “Queen Victoria looks a trifle sexier than she did in my history class at high school.”

  “The artist, I expect, took a few liberties. What do you think of the latest portrait I’ve added?”

  “Which one?”

  “On the end of the lower row.”

  “King Arthur II? Who the hell is he?”

  “He’ll perhaps be the king of England someday.” Limehouse stood up, enthusiasm spreading across his thin face. “By all rights he should be sitting on the throne of England even as we speak.”

  “There isn’t any throne of England,” reminded Gomez. “England’s bee
n a democracy since the revolution some sixty years back.”

  “That there was the worst bloody thing that ever happened to Great Britain.” Limehouse sat down again. “Ousting the monarchy and putting in a president. I’ll never set foot back home again until—”

  “Okay, I’ll take you and Eddie up on this deal,” Gomez told him. “Here’s the $250. What does that buy me?”

  Limehouse showed him.

  Jake heard the fight before he saw it.

  Something was happening up in the narrow alley that ran alongside the Hot Club.

  Someone cried out in pain. Then came the sound of a body slamming into the ground. A plazcan hit the pavement, spilled coins clattered.

  “Don’t, please.”

  Jake went sprinting to the mouth of the alley.

  A flung crutch nearly hit him as he reached the opening. Dodging, he entered.

  On the rutted pavement a ragged man in an old Brazil Wars jacket and a pair of suit trousers was screaming and thrashing around as two large young men in skin-tight black clothing kicked at his ribs and groin.

  “What did we tell you, asshole?”

  “Not to ... ow!”

  “What? Speak up, cafard. What did we tell you?”

  “Not to ... beg around here ... ow ow.”

  “That’s right.”

  Jake said evenly, “I think he’s got the message, fellas. You can quit.”

  The larger of the two large young men stopped kicking the crippled beggar and took a step back. “This is none of your business, asshole.”

  “Skarf off,” said the smaller of the two. “Or you’re going to need a cup and a crutch.”

  “Quit,” advised Jake quietly.

  “Screw you.” The larger one kicked the fallen man again in the ribs.

  Jake moved fast. He caught the thug’s left arm, twisted it behind his back. Spinning him half around, he shoved. The force of the push sent the man all the way across the alley to smack into the sooty stone wall opposite.

  Jake nodded at the other thug. “Be a good idea to go away.”

  “Like hell, cafard.” He came charging at Jake.

  Jake sidestepped, kicking out.

  The man howled as Jake’s booted foot smashed into his kneecap. Cursing, he stumbled and fell against his rising partner.