“This is only my second day with the new makeup approach,” she said. “But so far three clients have confused me with the servomechs and a new ’bot on the custodial staff tried to dust and polish me.”
“There is a sort of mechanical aura.”
“The trouble is, see, you can’t just take the stuff off. You have to go have it done at the same salon where they slapped it on in the first place.”
“You considering doing that already?”
“I am, except right now I can’t afford having it taken off, since I haven’t even finished paying for having it put on,” she explained. “You’re the one who’s a friend of Gomez, aren’t you?”
“We’re friends, yes.”
“How is he? I just heard about his getting himself hurt.”
“He’s doing fine—except for the broken leg.”
“That’s good news.”
“Send him in, Marny,” said the emerald-green voxbox sitting atop her stark white desk.
Marny pointed at the box and mouthed the words, “That’s Bascom.” She next pointed at a white door across the room. “You can go in now, Mr. Cardigan.”
Grinning, Jake left the chair and crossed to the door.
Walt Bascom’s office was large and cluttered. Its wall’s were made of blind plastiglass that showed nothing of the Laguna Sector outside:
Bascom was a small, compact man of fifty-five, sunbrown and clad in an expensive and considerably rumpled suit. He was seated on top of a lucite desk in the middle of the office, cross-legged, noodling on a wheezy alto saxophone. There were piles of faxcopies, files, memos of many colors, printout sheets, summonses and assorted paper ephemera surrounding him on the clear desktop. Steepled over a stack of final-notice bills was a yellowed booklet titled BeBop Favorites of the 20th Century.
Jake wended his way through the sprawl of folders, bundles of papers, weapons, discarded clothes and abandoned dishware that lay between him and his new employer.
“I did,” said Bascom as he set aside the saxophone.
“Did what?”
“Slept in my clothes—you were probably wondering if I had.”
“I already knew you had. It’s one of your trademarks.” Jake took a plascarton of old lazguns off a tinchair, brushed off the accumulated dust with the pair of paisley panties that were beneath the carton and sat down, uninvited. “Did some research on you earlier in the day.”
“That’s only fair—since I’ve been researching you for several weeks.” Bascom wore his graying hair close cropped. After knuckling the top of his head, he commenced rummaging the piles of material on his desk. “How’s Gomez doing?”
“Well.”
Bascom opened the folder. “Jonathan Cardigan, Jr.,” he read from the topmost sheet of faxpaper. “You’ve been described as—insubordinate, sarcastic, irreverent, cynical, unpatriotic, disrespectf—”
“Maybe you shouldn’t have sprung me.”
“I trust Gomez. He says you’re okay.”
Jake leaned back in the chair. “And besides you don’t have anybody else who can get safely through Warbride’s territory,” he said. “You’ve already had three Cosmos operatives killed down there.”
“One killed.” The agency chief held up his forefinger. “Other two are simply missing.”
“All three of them are dead and gone. That’s another thing I found out this morning.”
Bascom scratched his head. “Gomez mentioned you had good sources of information,” he said. “Seems you really do—either that or you’re conning me.”
“I quit lying at job interviews my second year in college,” Jake assured him. “I’m fairly sure I can handle this assignment alone, since Gomez is laid up. I’ll get through to the crash site in the Selva Grande and I’ll determine if the Kittridges are dead or alive. If you still want to hire me, now that Gomez can’t team up with me, then fine. But don’t lecture me about my many failings. I’ve already got Captain Hambrick to take care of that.”
“Hold off, Cardigan.” Bascom held up one hand. “You haven’t allowed me to get to the part where I inform you that I actually, within reason, like fellows who’re insubordinate, sarcastic, irreverent and the rest. Particularly fellows of that ilk who know their way around down across the border.” Hopping free of his desk, he stood facing Jake. “If you want the job, it’s yours.”
“Yeah, I do want it.”
Bascom, smoothing at some wrinkles in his trousers, worked his way over to a four-foot-wide hologram projection stage, He side-armed the folders stacked there off onto the rug. “Can you see from where you’re perched?”
Jake raised off his chair, moved aside the disabled bartender robot that had been in his line of vision and sat again. “Just fine.”
On all fours, the head of the Cosmos Detective Agency searched around on the floor. “Ah, here she is.” He’d located the. hologram cartridge he was after and, smiling, held it up toward Jake before inserting it in the base slot.
Upon the stage there appeared a life-size, full-dimensional image of Beth Kittridge. She was sitting in a lemon-yellow rattan chair, smiling at someone to her left and carrying on an unheard conversation. Her dress was of dark green neorayon.
Jake stood, moving closer to the projection stage. He was feeling an odd constriction across his chest.
“Something?” inquired Bascom, glancing over at him.
“Nothing, no.” He returned to the chair, trying to remember where he’d seen her before.
“This is Beth Kittridge,” explained Bascom. “Our footage was taken three months ago during a reception at SoCal Tech for a few scientific gents who were visiting from the Moon Colony.” He circled the platform. “According to our sources, she still wears her hair like this—long, down to the shoulders. A pretty young woman, if you like them on the slender side. You obviously find her attractive.”
“Do I?”
“Well, Cardigan, when a fellow jumps up, clicks his heels together and lets his tongue unfurl a foot or two—an astute detective such as myself deduces there’s an interest.”
Jake grinned. “Okay, she’s attractive.”
“Agreed. But don’t let that foul up your investigation. And keep in mind that all you may find down there is the young lady’s corpse.”
“Yeah, I know.”
Beth was suddenly gone from the stage, replaced by her father. He was standing, leaning against a section of neosteel railing and apparently conversing with someone out of camera range.
“Same reception,” said Bascom as he made another circuit of the hologram stage. “Supposedly Dr. Kittridge has lost approximately ten pounds since then and will appear even leaner than—”
“Why the weight loss?”
“We don’t know.” Bascom sat on the edge of the stage, merging with part of the image. “Could’ve been ill-health, worry or something else again.”
“Any of which might tie in with what happened to him down in Mexico.”
“Dr. Danenberg might know, but she remains among the missing.” He rose up and away from the stage. “Another fellow I want you to observe ... Kittridge vanished and was replaced by the image of a good-looking blond man of about forty. “Here we have—”
“Bennett Sands,” supplied Jake.
“You know him?”
Jake replied, “My wife—my former wife—worked for Sands for a while as a sort of private secretary and girl Friday. That was right before I went up to the Freezer. And for a while thereafter, I think.”
“She worked for him fourteen months all told.”
Jake said, “Then you knew I knew who he was.”
“Forgive me for being tricky when I don’t even have to be.” Bascom started another slow circle of the stage. “Sands remains a multimillionaire and the director of BioFoods, Inc. His late father it was who came up with the exclusive tissue-culture bioprocess system that allows BioFoods to manufacture what I still think of as artificial real food—meat, vegetables, whatever. They have plants and he
adquarters all over the world—and on the Moon.”
“When Kate—when my ex-wife—worked for Sands he was based in GLA.”
“He operates out of Mexico nowadays,” said the Cosmos chief. “We believe that Kittridge was involved with Sands in some way and may even have been en route to visit him in one of his Mexican hideaways when the crash occurred.”
“What does Sands say?”
“We haven’t been able to locate him since the Kittridges, father and daughter, disappeared.”
The stage made a clicking sound and Sands was gone.
“This case,” said Jake. “We’re really not talking just about a simple insurance claim, are we?”
Bascom busied himself with extracting the cartridge and then hunting for a place to set it. “What makes you say that?”
“For one thing, someone just tried to kill Dr. Danenberg when they suspected she was going to pass information on to us,” he said. “It could be that the Kittridge heirs are a violent bunch and they want to make sure they collect the insurance money. But I somehow doubt that.”
“The beneficiaries under the Moonbase-Hartford policy are Kittridge’s two sisters. One’s married and lives in Seattle; one’s divorced and resides in Paris. Neither one is in need of money, and their activities over the past two weeks don’t tie them in with Dr. Kittridge or his daughter in any way.”
“Okay, then who is it who’s taking such an interest in Kittridge?”
Putting both hands behind his back, Bascom stared up at his off-white ceiling. “Well, there are a few others who may be interested in the present whereabouts of the doctor.”
“Such as who?”
“I can’t provide a complete list of names just yet,” said Bascom. “Though I’d certainly include Sonny Hokori.”
Jake stood. “Hokori—what’s a small-time Tek dealer got to do with Kittridge?”
“Hokori’s come a long way since you tangled with him four years ago, Cardigan. Fact is, he’s just about the top man in the business right now.”
Jake made his way over to the agency chief. “Is that why you’re really hiring me—because you think I was working for Hokori back then? That I got the investigation of him and his bosses killed?”
“No, I agree with Gomez that you never worked for Sonny Hokori—and that you were framed.”
“Hokori doesn’t owe me any favors, if that’s—”
“You’re not paying attention. Calm down and listen,” advised the compact detective. “I mentioned Hokori because he’s maybe involved in the Kittridge case. And also I figure you might want another chance at the fellow. Okay?”
Jake took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “Yeah, okay,” he said. “How do they tie together?”
“Supposedly Dr. Kittridge has been doing research on an anti-Tek device,” said Bascom. “Details on its exact nature are fuzzy, but quite a few people seem to believe that he’s succeeded in coming up with a gadget that can—well, neutralize Tek chips and render them useless. That would have a very negative effect on the future fortunes of Sonny Hokori and his colleagues.”
“How’s his system work?”
Bascom shook his head. “We’re still digging into that aspect of this business,” he said. “But the fact that Kittridge has apparently perfected this thing means we’re not the only ones who’re interested in what’s become of him.”
“It could be that Sonny had him killed—and that the crash wasn’t an accident.”
“There’s also the possibility that Dr. Kittridge had his anti-Tek device and his notes on it with him,” said Bascom. “Giving several folks a motive for locating that wreckage.”
“Did Gomez know about the Tek angle?”
“Not yet. I was intending to brief both of you this afternoon.”
“Maybe if you’d briefed him yesterday he wouldn’t be in the hospital now.”
“Maybe,” admitted Bascom.
“Any other items you’ve held back?”
“Nary a one,” swore Bascom, working his way back through the clutter to his desk. “I’ve worked out a sort of an itinerary for you—for the first part of your investigation, anyway.” He had to search through only three folders before finding the sheet of yellow paper he wanted. “You can’t, obviously, go directly to the crash site. So we’re routing you into Mexico by way of the Borderland. You’ll stop there and contact the Mexican Federal Police. Get from them whatever they have on the Kittridge crash.”
“Won’t be much more than you already have.”
“True, but it’s a formality we have to go through—makes the cops on both sides of the border happy,” said the Cosmos chief. “After that, Cardigan, you’re going to be pretty much on your own. I’ll supply you with your contacts down there, but you’re going to want to use your own, too. What you have to do is arrange yourself safe conduct to the scene of the Kittridge accident. Keep in mind that we’re not supposed to be interested in the anti-Tek aspects of the case. We get our fee for establishing whether the Kittridges are dead or alive. That’s all.”
Nodding, Jake said, “Finding Kittridge’s anti-Tek device might earn a bonus from someplace, though.”
“That’s very true, but just don’t get yourself killed trying for it. In fact, officially I can’t encourage you in the anti-Tek direction at all.” He leaned across his desk and held out his hand. “The starting salary, by the way, is seventy-five thousand dollars a year. Is that satisfactory?”
“For a start.” Jake shook hands and left the office.
The day was ending when he reached the street level. He walked across to an aircab stand and got into the only one there, a fairly new scarlet one.
“Where to?” inquired the robot cabbie.
“Pasadena Sector.” Jake gave him his condo address.
“Here we go.” The cab shuddered once, then rose up into the gathering twilight.
But instead of heading inland for the Pasadena Sector, it turned southward and down the coast.
“You’re flying the wrong direction,” warned Jake.
“That’s only your opinion.”
12
JAKE EASED OUT HIS lazgun. “Land this thing right about now,” he suggested to the robot cabbie. “Otherwise I’ll disable you and take over myself.”
“I got to warn you,” said the robot as the aircab flew southward through the dusk, “that I’m not your usual mechanical cabbie. You use that gun on me—or even make a jab at me with a screwdriver—and we’re both in the soup.”
With the barrel of his weapon pointing at the back of the mechanical man’s skull, Jake asked, “How so?”
“They got me rigged to explode—and I mean with a big bang—if I get diddled with in any way.”
“Drastic.”
“Whoever it is wants to see you, they want to see you bad.”
“Who might that be?”
The cabbie’s head rattled slightly when he gave it a negative shake. “That information I don’t possess.”
“What’s our destination?”
“The Anaheim Sector.”
Off to the right the Pacific was growing darker as the sun dropped further below the horizon.
Jake moved the gun down to rest on his knee.
After a moment the robot inquired, “You going to attempt any violence?”
“Not just yet.”
The wreck of a huge interplanetary spaceship was lying on its side in a stretch of pocked wasteland directly below in the deepening twilight.
The aircab dropped down through the dusk, skimming under a high, wide, rust-spattered arch that the words SPACELAND PARK spelled out across it in dead lighttubing. The cab touched ground, skimmed and skittered for several hundred feet, then settled down about a quarter of a mile from the wrecked ship.
“I’m not used to landing on a Martian desert,” apologized the robot cabbie.
“This amusement park’s been out of business for ten—make that fourteen years.”
“Nevertheless this is where they
rigged me to deliver you.”
The passenger door popped open.
Gun in hand, Jake climbed out into the new night.
“No hard feelings.” The cab huffed a few times, shimmied, went climbing up and away across the fresh darkness.
A tumbled-over metal sign to Jake’s right read—SPEND 15 MINUTES ON MARS!
Far across the simulated Martian landscape Jake noticed a pack of about a half dozen wild dogs foraging and fighting.
“Only sign of life,” he remarked to himself and started hiking in the direction of the fallen spacecraft a quarter of a mile away.
Dust swirled up around his boots as he walked.
When he was still several hundred yards from the wreck, lights went on inside the sprung-open doorway.
Jake slowed, brought up his gun.
A faint electric buzzing started up inside the fallen spaceship.
There was a faint wind and it came blowing across the night desert, scattering dust and tatters of paper. One of the wild dogs howled.
“Come on in, Jake. This isn’t an ambush,” invited a voice from inside the ship.
Jake kept his gun raised and ready as he climbed inside. There were two floating globe lights in the rusted husk of what had once been the ship’s control cabin.
Seated in a canvas chair was a handsome tanned man of forty-five. He was wearing a sky-blue fakesilk suit and was completely bald. Tattooed on the left side of his polished scalp was one bright-crimson rosebud. “Did you have a pleasant nap up in the Freezer, my boy?” he asked.
“You’re coming in a bit blurred, Winterguild,” observed Jake. “Your hologram remote projector needs tuning.”
“You’re the first to complain,” said Kurt Winterguild, smiling faintly.
“Still in business, huh?”
“As a matter of fact, my boy, I’ve risen in the International Drug Control Agency since you went into hibernation,” said the tattooed man. “I’m now Field Director for the Western United States.”
“We always knew you’d rise in your chosen profession. Congratulations.” Jake tucked his lazgun into his waistband. “Did you invite me out here to help you celebrate your promotion?”
“I was anxious for a private talk,” said the IDCA agent, crossing his legs. “What I’d really like to see you do, Jake, is forget all about Dr. Kittridge.”
TekWar Page 7
