TekLab

by William Shatner

  “Nothing out of the ordinary on Dr. Hilda Danenberg,” the silvery mechanical man was telling him. “Her record seems to be, as always, spotless.”

  “Why’s she in Paris?”

  “Vacation, it says here.”

  “She’s hanging around with a lad name of Bram Wexler, who’s—”

  “Head of the Paris office of the IDCA,” supplied the infobot. “According to our sources they’re just friends.”

  “And she’s got no official reason for keeping company with Wexler? The IDCA didn’t send for her?”

  “Nope.”

  Pausing, Gomez took a sip of his ale. “Is the lady still in contact with Professor Kittridge?”

  “They’re no longer on friendly—Oops, wait now, Gomez. Here’s something,” said the robot. “Dr. Danenberg has made three visits to the Bay Area in NorCal in recent weeks. And—”

  “Yeah, that’s where Kittridge is at work on his long-awaited anti-Tek system. Any indication that she dropped in on the prof?”

  “None, but it’s still a possibility, isn’t it? Her activities, keep in mind, weren’t that closely monitored.”

  Nodding, Gomez said, “Okay, thanks.”

  “De nada,” said the robot. “That’s a little bit of Mexican lingo I—”

  “I noticed. Gracias.” Ending the conversation, he left the phone alcove.

  He was standing at the window, gazing out at nothing in particular, when the door announced, “A Miss Dent to see you.”

  “Oy,” observed the detective, turning to frown at the door. “Yeah, all right, let her in.”

  Natalie came in carrying a vidcaz clutched in her right hand. “I thought, since we’re allegedly working side by side and shoulder to shoulder on this mess, that you’d enjoy viewing what Sidebar has just shot.”

  “He’s not going to drop in, too, is he?”

  “No, he went over to the—”

  “Bueno. Make yourself to home, dear lady,” he invited with moderate enthusiasm. “My casa is yours and so on.”

  Ignoring the chair he was pointing at, the reporter walked over and thrust the vidcaz into a slot in the wall. “You’ll find, I’m near certain, that this footage is most interesting.”

  “Did you have something sour for dinner?”

  “I didn’t, truth to tell, manage even to have dinner, since I’ve been much too busy tracking down leads.”

  “You’re wearing a rather grim expression on your usually lovely puss, chiquita, and I thought perhaps you’d ingested something that—”

  “I tend to take on a glum look whenever I’m in your vicinity, Gomez. Now, please, shut your yap, and watch.”

  A familiar stretch of Parisian thoroughfare blossomed on the vidwall. Walking rapidly along it was Bram Wexler. The camera followed him down the street and up the steps of Dr. Hilda Danenberg’s apartment. The sound of his footfalls came out of the wallspeakers.

  “Nice bit of cinematography,” commented Gomez.

  Then, blown up large on the wall, appeared Gomez himself. He was hunched in the recessed doorway and watching the Danenberg apartment.

  “Some operative you are,” said Natalie. “You’re about as obvious as an elephant in a china shop, and you stick out, if you don’t mind my mentioning the fact, like a sore finger or a—”

  “Thumb.”

  “What?”

  “People tend to stand out like sore thumbs,” he said. “And it’s bulls, not elephants, who create havoc in china shops.”

  “Well, an elephant wouldn’t be all that inconspicuous either, but that’s not the issue at hand.”

  “You say Sidebar snapped this stuff?”

  “He did, yes.”

  “He’s very unobtrusive. I never suspected that he was—”

  “That’s what good surveillance is all about. The trick, and I should think you’d be aware of that by now, since you’ve spent untold years as an alleged snooper, the trick is not to allow anyone to notice you.” She watched the wall as Dr. Danenberg and Wexler drove away. “Simpleton that I am, Gomez, I persist in giving you the benefit of the doubt and therefore I’m assuming that you were intending, eventually, to share with me the insights you gathered from this clumsy shadowing job.”

  “Clumsy it wasn’t,” he corrected. “I was quite cunning and deft, considering that I had to improvise. Bumping into Wexler , purely by chance, I—”

  “Oh, really now. Don’t try to con me into believing that you didn’t even know—”

  “Es verdad,” he insisted. “Absolutely true that I encountered that hombre by chance and decided to tail him.”

  She eyed him up and down. “You really weren’t aware he was going to call on Dr. Danenberg?”

  “I wasn’t even aware the dear lady was in Paree. Last time I heard, she was in far-off Greater LA.”

  “But you worked on a case involving her. It was, in fact, the first case that Jake Cardigan handled for Cosmos. You teamed up right after he was sprung from the Freezer prison through the machinations of your boss, Walt Bascom, and—”

  “Nat, I don’t keep in touch with all the folks I’ve bumped into on cases over the years. We don’t have annual reunions, don’t even exchange Xmas cards.” He finished his ale. “Actually, you know, I never met the doctor herself but only an android sim. When the damn thing chanced to blow up, I executed an impromptu somersault off a sunny boardwalk and ended up with a busted leg.”

  Natalie gave him a brief look of sympathy. “Yes, I recall hearing about that incident,” she said. “Just one more example of how clumsy you can be at times. However, we’d better forget your past foul-ups and concentrate on—”

  “Do you happen to know why Dr. Danenberg’s in town?”

  “Not yet, though I expect we—”

  “You are aware that she used to be both an associate and a ladyfriend of Professor Kittridge?”

  Nodding, Natalie said, “Yes, and I’m trying to find out if she’s still in contact with him.”

  “Sí, that would be worth knowing,” agreed Gomez, studying the ornate ceiling.

  “What we also have to learn is why she’s seeing Wexler, a man who’s probably in cahoots with the Tek cartels.”

  Gomez smiled broadly. “I think I’ll drop in on the lady.”

  “That might be too obvious, a tipoff that we’re suspicious of her.”

  “Not the way I’ll handle it,” he assured her. “You’ve apparently never seen the subtle, clever side of my character at work.”

  “But I have,” Natalie said. “That’s what worries me.”

  22

  THE LEADER OF THE Westminsters had knocked Dan down. “I’ve got no time for this asshole now,” he’d told Ludd and Angel.

  Crouched against a pile of rubble, Dan asked, “Where’s Nancy Sands?”

  Angel dropped down next to him. “Shut up now,” he advised.

  “Is she dead?”

  “Take it easy. We don’t know who all’s dead yet.”

  He’d been brought inside the lofty abbey. Carved stone walls rose up high on three sides. The fourth wall of this section had long since fallen away, and you could see the weedy, potted field they’d just crossed.

  “Bastards,” the lean, black young man who headed the gang was saying. “Goddamn TKs. Swooped down, using all those freak tricks of theirs. Killing, smashing.”

  Sprawled across the wide expanse of mosaic floor were at least a dozen bodies.

  Dan, hunched, started moving from corpse to corpse.

  Nancy was not among them.

  “Buggers took stuff, too,” the black Jamaica told Ludd. “Looted us.”

  “They always do that.”

  “It was worse this time, goddamn it. They carried off the bleeding Coronation Chair—and the Stone of Scone.”

  “What the hell they want with that?”

  “Maybe they’re planning to crown some bugger king,” said the angry Jamaica. “Maybe they just want to take turns sitting on the fucker.”

  Dan made
his way back to where Angel was standing. “How can I find out about Nancy?”

  Angel caught hold of his arm. “They probably took the injured into the Cloisters,” he said quietly. “We can go look there first off.”

  They’d moved only a few steps when Jamaica noticed them. “Where you taking that bugger?”

  “I’m just going to—”

  “Who the hell is he, anyway?”

  “Outsider,” put in Ludd. “Tourist bloke. We caught him and brought him here to see what valuables he—”

  “Just kill him,” instructed Jamaica. “We’ve got no time for him. Later you can go through his pockets and—”

  “Wait now.” Dan broke free of Angel’s grip and walked up to the leader. “I’m not a damned tourist, I’m here looking for Nancy Sands. I didn’t come here to do you any harm or—”

  “Shut up right now.”

  “Is Silverhand Sally around?” asked Dan.

  Jamaica was sliding a snubnosed lazgun out of his thigh holster. “You know Sal?”

  “Nancy does, and so—”

  “Jamaica, it won’t hurt to let him chat a bit with our Sal,” put in Angel. “After that, if she doesn’t know him, then we can kill him off. Okay?”

  Jamaica dropped the weapon back into its holster. After rubbing his palm across his crimson tunic, he said, “All right, okay. She’s in the nave. Take him there and if he makes any trouble on the way, he’s dead and done for.”

  “All I want is—”

  “He won’t make any trouble,” promised Angel, tugging at Dan’s arm. When they were walking along a dim, vaulted corridor, he said, “That was very risky, getting beaky with Jamaica. He’s not a chap who’s too awfully fond of debating.”

  “Yeah, I know that, but—”

  “You on the other hand truly love to argue.”

  Dan nodded. “Guess I do, yeah.”

  There were seven or eight young people in the large, stonewalled room Angel brought him to. Three of them had been wounded and were bandaged. None of them was Nancy.

  Silverhand Sally finished bandaging the third and turned toward Angel. She was a slim girl of about seventeen, blonde, wearing tan trousers, a gray tunic, and a gunbelt that held two lazguns. Her right hand and arm to the elbow were of silvery metal. “Who’s that with you?”

  “I’m Dan Cardigan.” He crossed the mosaic floor to her. “You’re a friend of Nancy’s and—”

  “Dan Cardigan.” She stood. “Sure, she told me about you.”

  “I figured she might be staying with you, so I came to find her,” he explained. “Where is she?”

  Sally shook her head. “I’m sorry, Dan. The Tek Kids took some prisoners,” she said quietly. “Nancy was one of them.”

  Sally, her chill metallic hand holding his arm, was leading Dan along a shadowy, vaulted corridor. They were moving away from the cookfires, and darkness started to close in. The intricate carvings on the stone walls and the ornate wooden ornamentation were barely discernible. “You should’ve eaten,” she told him.

  “Not very hungry.”

  “Dog meat’s not bad,” the blonde young woman said. “Takes a bit of getting used to. Mostly, though, that’s because in the world you and I come from, we think of them only as pets.”

  “You ever going to go back?”

  “Mind that fallen masonry, scrunch over close to this wall,” she cautioned. “No, I’m here for life.”

  “Why?”

  “Because this is better than that was.”

  “Parents?”

  “Father mostly.” She guided him through an arched doorway. “After my accident, after I got my imitation arm, he turned much worse. Not that he was ever a very good dad.”

  Dan asked her, “The arm you have now—that’s not the one they got you originally, is it?”

  “Oh, no, not at all. No, they bought me a very proper, very conventional one. Highly believable and looking just exactly like flesh and blood. Duck your head for a minute along here and keep an eye cocked for bats,” she warned as they entered another long, partially ruined corridor. “Might be a few rats underfoot, too.”

  “So why the silver arm?”

  “Well, I simply grew tired of the bullshit,” she replied. “Seemed like every time I’d touch anybody with the replacement, they’d cringe or look all nervous. I decided, why hide the damn thing? I got me a nice shiny robot arm and now there’s no question as to whether it’s real or not. If I touch you, you know damn well what I touched you with and fuck you if you don’t like it.”

  They’d reached a room that was nearly intact. Statues and carvings ringed it.

  Sally let go of him. “You can bunk safely here for tonight,” she told him. “On one of those straw mats yonder.” From under her tunic she produced a squat chunk of tallow candle. “Probably have the place to yourself, since most of them think it’s haunted hereabouts. This used to be called the Poets’ Corner.” Lighting the candle, she stuck it down on a stone bench.

  To his right Dan noticed a wall carving of someone referred to as “O rare Ben Jonson.”

  He asked, “What’s likely to happen to Nancy?”

  “Best not to think about it, Dan.”

  “I can’t just let them—”

  “It’s tough, I know. But believe me, the TKs will kill you dead if you try to go near their digs at Buckingham Palace.”

  “But she’s a friend of yours, too. How can—”

  “Living here, being part of a gang, that means you can’t afford to be sentimental.”

  “We’re not talking about making stew out of dogs,” he said to her, angry. “This is a girl who may be raped or tortured or even killed.”

  Sally touched his arm with her real fingers. “I’d like to help, but there’s nothing to do,” she said. “You saw what happened here, how many of us they hurt and killed.”

  “I thought gangs like yours believed in revenge.”

  “Sure, but not in suicide.” She walked over, kicking at a sleeping mat with her foot. “Eventually we’ll do something, you can count on that, but it’ll be carefully planned.”

  “Meantime, Nancy’s in danger.”

  “Yes, but that can’t be helped,” Sally said. “You’d best turn in now. I have to get back.”

  “Why’d she come here?”

  “You already know that. Nancy was looking for some kind of sanctuary.”

  “No, I mean why did she run away from the McCays?”

  “She didn’t like them much.”

  “Maybe not, but her life wasn’t in danger there and it sure as hell is here.”

  Sally said, “Well, she overheard some conversations.”

  “About what—her father?”

  The girl nodded. “It’s funny, you know, some girls take one hell of a long time to see through their dads,” she said. “Nancy, in spite of everything, had been going along thinking that Bennett Sands was an innocent chap who’d been maligned and framed by the authorities.” She laughed. “And him one of the Tek kingpins. But, you know, you couldn’t get her to believe that.”

  Dan moved closer to her. “Why’d she change, what did she find out?”

  “She didn’t confide all that much in me, Dan. But I know she happened to overhear the McCays talking about a business venture that was going to involve her father.”

  “A Tek business venture?”

  “Exactly, and something quite big and important,” answered Sally.

  “How’s he going to run Tek business from prison?”

  “Maybe he’s not planning to stay in prison. I’m not sure,” she said. “All I know is that whatever Nancy overheard upset her a good deal. She had to get away from there for a while to think everything over.”

  “She could’ve come to me for help.”

  “I think eventually she was going to,” said Sally. “Confide everything she’d learned to you and your dad. But, see, she still had a feeling that doing that would be betraying her father. That’s why she wanted some time to
make up her mind about just what to do. Of course, dear old pop had betrayed Nancy for years and thought nothing of it, but she didn’t see things that way.” Patting his arm, she leaned and kissed him on the cheek. “Bed down. I’ll fetch you early in the morning and we’ll see about getting you safely back to your own.”

  After a few seconds he answered, “Yeah, that’ll be the best thing, I guess. Thanks, Sally.”

  She left him.

  He looked around the Poets’ Corner, at the statues and carvings. “Longfellow, Chaucer,” he recited absently. “Milton, Gray.”

  He sat on a straw mat for a while, watching the flickering flame on the fat candle.

  When he figured it must be past midnight, he took up the candle and started back the way he’d come.

  Soon he reached a break in the wall. Beyond showed foggy night. Extinguishing the candle, he set it carefully down on the stones. Then he slipped out into the darkness.

  He was heading for Buckingham Palace.

  Behind him in the fog a solitary figure followed.

  23

  A SLEETY RAIN WAS hitting against the leaded windows of the small cozy restaurant. A very convincing hologram fire seemed to be blazing cheerily in the simulated stone fireplace near their table.

  Marj mentioned, “You’re not eating.”

  Jake glanced down at his soup. “I don’t seem to be, do I?”

  Reaching across the table, she put her hand briefly on his. “I know you’re anxious to get going, Jake. But, keep in mind, decent meals will be hard to come by over there.”

  “Is this part of some deal you made with Beth?”

  Her eyes went wide. “You think she told me to look after you and make certain you ate at least one meal a day?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, yes, she did,” admitted the young woman. “Detective work, after all, doesn’t require fasting.”

  “I know, but I’m eager to get going.”

  “We’ll find your son, don’t worry.” She reached down to pick up the shoulder bag she’d deposited on the imitation hardwood floor. “Here’s a little gadget you’d better carry with you.”