“Oh, so?”
“My agency is handling the matter and—”
“Handling it how? You hunting for the doctor?”
“Even as we speak, Jake, I’m here in Mexico, heading up the search.”
“Meaning you don’t know where he and his daughter are?”
“We’re not actually that interested in Beth Kittridge—only insofar as she might be able to tell us where her father is if we found her.”
“Did he have it with him?”
“Did he have what, my boy?”
“His anti-Tek device?”
Winterguild laughed. “Not exactly.”
“But he has something you want.”
“We want Dr. Kittridge himself, Jake.”
“Before Sonny Hokori gets him.”
“Before anyone, you included, locates him.”
“So the crash was real?”
Winterguild laughed again, recrossed his legs. “Ah, four years on ice hasn’t modified you much, my boy. You still try to get more than give.” He rested his elbow on his knee, leaned toward Jake and gave him a searching gaze. “I’m requesting that you drop the Kittridge investigation.”
“Walt Bascom’d be the one I’d take that sort of request up with—were I you.”
“Our feelings have already been conveyed to him.”
“Yeah, and I can guess what he told you. Which saves me from telling you.”
“Reflect on my suggestions, Jake. I really don’t want to have to worry about your intruding in my investigation,” Winterguild said. “Keep in mind, too, my boy, that there can be a lot worse things than a stay in the Freezer.”
“And you keep in mind that if I ever meet up with something other than a projection of you—watch out.”
Laughing once again, the drug agent vanished and left Jake alone in the dark.
13
THE SLIM, DEEPLY TANNED man took a pack of marihuana cigarettes out of his jacket pocket. “Smoke, Jake?”
Jake shook his head. “No thanks, Jerry.”
It was a few minutes after six in the evening and they were sitting in candy-striped plaschairs beside a large oval swimming pool. Beyond the pool rose an impressive Moroccan-style mansion, rich with wrought-iron and bright red tiles, surrounded with thick foliage and bright flowers. This was in the exclusive Watts Sector.
“You implied on the phone I might be able to help you,” said Jerry Sundell. “Is it about a job? Because, much as I’d like to honor our old, deep friendship, Jake buddy, Sundell Productions isn’t as vast as it was before you—”
“I’m not looking for a job in the porno industry.”
Sundell lit his cigarette and then laughed. “Hey, I’m out of porno, Jake. Have been for three years, ever since the Supreme Court/West Coast Division ruled that showing sexual intercourse between lifelike androids was as filthy and obscene as when humans screw.” He sighed out smoke. “It ruined pornography as we know it.”
“What are you producing now?”
“Legitimate vidwall movies. In fact, I may be able to use you as a consultant on one of them. It’s going to be about the Tek Wars.”
“Tek Wars?”
“You know, the battles between the various Tek interests, the battles with the various anti-Tek government agencies. It’s, I’m telling you, Jake buddy, the stuff of high drama and excitement.” He leaned forward in his chair. “The movie will also have romance, a terrific subplot and lots of bimbos with impressive tits.”
“During that earlier phase of your career, you knew some important people in the Tek trade.”
“Only casually.”
“And you still have some contacts.”
“Not really, no. I mean, I’m making an important film attacking the bastards. I couldn’t still be—”
“Camouflage,” said Jake quietly. “What do you know about Leon Kittridge?” “Not much.”
“If you’re producing this Tek epic, you have to know about—”
“Jake, I’m commencing to be a bit offended.” Sundell stood up, tossed his marihuana cigarette into the pool. After its sizzle had faded, he added, “What I mean is, I’m a movie exec of substance now, a major vidwall producer. To come here and imply that—Oh, shit!”
Jake turned to look at what the producer was staring at.
The entire impressive mansion was starting to shimmer and shake.
“Another quake?” asked Jake.
“Shit, goddamn it, shit.”
The wrought-iron trim faded, grew dim and was gone. Next the thick, cream-colored stucco walls blurred and disappeared.
In less than three minutes the entire vast house had vanished. A foundation and the floors and some furniture was all that remained. In what had been the master bedroom a naked redheaded young woman sat up in the oval bed and scowled over at Sundell.
“You putz,” she accused.
“Honey, I swear to God I paid the bill to Habitex, Inc.”
“Schlep,” she yelled. “This is really frigging embarrassing.”
“Honey, I’ll phone them right now to complain. The house’ll be back in less than an hour.”
“What was the house?” asked Jake. “A hologram projection?”
“Yeah, yeah. It’s a hell of a lot cheaper than actually building. This part of the Watts Sector is very much sought after and the lot alone set me back a million, four hundred thousand,” the unsettled producer explained. “So when Habitex, Inc., suggested a big socko house for just three thousand a month, I took it.”
“You behind on the rent?”
“Naw, not really. Only four months.”
“The epics aren’t paying?”
“Not as well as porno did,” Sundell admitted. “Now, Jake, I really have to—”
“Tell me what you know about Kittridge first,” suggested Jake, getting a persuasive grip on his nearest arm. “Tell me what you’ve heard from your contacts in the Tek trade.”
“All right. What I know is this, Jake buddy—this Kittridge was onto something, something that can foul up the business. A lot of them wanted Kittridge to give up what he was working on.”
“So they killed him?”
“I’m not sure, some of them only wanted to talk to him. Maybe negotiate something, you know.”
“Was Sonny Hokori one of those involved?”
“Him especially,” said Sundell. “Now, Jake, I really have to get—oh, shit!” He was staring up into the twilight sky, deepening sadness showing on his evenly tanned face.
A skyvan was chuffing down, obviously intending to land, on his property. Emblazoned across its underbelly in glowing neon was SEXIANDIES/RENTALS & REPAIRS.
“You schlub,” called the naked redhead. “You haven’t even kept up the payments on me!”
“Jake, can we continue this another time maybe?”
“Sure, Jerry, and thanks.” Jake started for the place where the gate to the street had been.
Jake double-timed up the steps of the Library/Social Centre that rose up in the exact middle of the SoCal Tech college campus. The wide plasdoors wooshed open for him and he entered the multi-floored lobby.
Students and a scattering of teachers were moving along the various walkramps, some aiming upward toward the voxbooks floor, others making their way down to the VidEd levels. Just to the right of the information desk a Prof Smartz robot sat in a plas armchair. Chrome-plated—his humanoid face reminding Jake of Winger—and husky, the ’bot wore a tweedy jacket and gray slacks. He was smoking a pipe and gazing intently at the slim young woman student who’d just inserted her Banx card in the slot in his pedestal. Just below the slot a plas placque announced—This is a licensed Prof Smartz (C)2118 by EdAid,Ltd. One of 162,000 serving universities and colleges around the world. For Service call Arcade Ent,Oxnard Sector, GLA.
“Still researching the Greenhouse Effect, Lana?” the robot asked her in his warm, avuncular voice.
“Yes, Prof, I need some more stuff on the Great Forest plan and how it’s policed,�
� she told the seated robot. “But, listen, I can’t afford more than a hundred dollars of info this week.”
Prof Smartz winked. “Well, we can slip you a little extra on the side, dear.”
Jake reminded himself he had a date and moved on.
An upslanting ramp had an arrow and the words STUDENT/FACULTY DRINKING AREA imbedded in its slick surface.
He started up the ramp.
Jake stopped just inside the silver-beaded curtain that masked the entryway to the High Technology Saloon. It was a few minutes past ten in the evening, and every light in the New Hollywood Sector of Greater Los Angeles could be seen glittering far below the curving viewalls of the crowded tower bar.
Down at the far end of the long chrome and ivory bar Jake spotted the pretty Chinese young woman he’d come here to meet.
A pudgy man in a candystriped suit was sitting too close to her, swaying on his ebony stool and steadying himself by clutching at her nearest knee.
Smiling in a seemingly cordial way, she touched his temple with the ring finger of her right hand.
The pudgy man sat suddenly upright, looking surprised in the few seconds before he toppled over facefirst into the bowl of soypretzels in front of him on the ivory bar.
“What’d you do to him, Patricia?” asked Jake as he stopped at her side.
Continuing to smile, Pat Wong showed him the simple silver ring. “Low-grade stunner. I worked it up myself. It won’t keep him out for more than an hour or so,” she explained. “It’s good to see you again, Jake.”
“Remind me not to fondle you.”
She eased off the stool. “There’s a table over there for us.”
“Leaving him here?”
“Good a place as any. I don’t like to be approached by strangers,” Pat said. “How are you doing?”
Following her to a chrome and ebony table, Jake answered, “I’m actually feeling not bad.”
She smiled. “That sounds a trifle better than rotten.”
He sat opposite her. “I need some information.”
“So I figured from your call. What sort of information do you need?”
“You’re still writing for Electronics Week and teaching part-time at SoCal Tech.”
“I’m in the same rut, yes. I’ve changed less than anyone while you were away.”
“I’m working for the Cosmos Agency now and—”
“With Gomez—you make a good team.”
“Except he’s sidelined.”
“I heard about that. You weren’t hurt?”
“A few bruises,” he replied. “We were assigned to find Dr. Kittridge and his daughter, Beth. Any idea about what happened to them?”
“They crashed, down in Mexico. Week or so ago.”
“What information do you have about that?”
“Only what came into the magazine by way of AP/MEX.”
Jake rested an elbow on the table. “What about their reasons for traveling down—”
“Each guest is required to order a drink within five minutes of arrival,” reminded the table’s voxbox in a cultured and polite voice.
Jake looked across at Pat. “Still drinking the same thing?”
“The rut is all-encompassing.”
“Two dark ales,” he told the table.
It whirred and two compartments opened in its dark top. Two glasses of ale popped up.
Jake ignored his. “About Kittridge?”
“About eleven months ago Leon took a leave from SoCal Tech,” Pat said, running a fingertip along the frosted side of her glass. “He started working in the lab he had in their home in the Woodland Hills Sector. I heard, though, that there’s also a laboratory someplace down across the border. I’m not sure where that one is. Beth has been working at home with him on his private project. I can’t confirm this next, but supposedly Bennett Sands is financing him—in part at least.”
“Sands again,” said Jake. “What are the Kittridges working on?”
“Kittridge has had two major interests. Robotics—specifically the building of superandroids, ones that can pass for human in every way. His other interest, a more recent one, has been to come up with a way to stop Tek. A brother of his, the ne’er-do-well that most families have at least one of—I’m the one in the local Wong clan. This brother died from using the stuff three years ago—a seizure.”
Jake tapped his fingers on the tabletop. “They say Kittridge has succeeded.”
“Who says?”
“My boss for one,” he replied. “This anti-Tek device—any notion what it is?”
“It involves RF waves—radio frequency waves emitted at a high oscillation rate,” said Pat. “At least, that’s what I suspect—based on various hints and clues I’ve pieced together. As yet I don’t have enough to try a piece for the magazine.”
“How’d you use that on Tek chips?”
She smiled at him. “Well, Jake, if you could set up just the right oscillation rate—you could shatter the chip.”
“How many of them at once?”
“If you worked it right—if you, say, broadcast your special high-frequency RF by way of a satellite setup—you ought to be able to access every single Tek chip on the globe at once. Maybe those on the Moon and in the various orbiting colonies, too.”
“Access and destroy them?”
“That’s it.”
“Christ.” He picked up his glass of dark ale and drank some. “It’s easy to see why several people are interested in finding Dr. Kittridge.”
“Somebody you really ought to talk to is Hilda Danenberg.”
“That’s what Gomez and I tried to do earlier in the day, Pat.”
“I know, Jake.”
“That simulacrum android of Dr. Danenberg—was that one of Kittridge’s?”
“A joint effort. He and Hilda worked together on the andies,” answered Pat. “And, initially, she helped him on the anti-Tek work, too. But once Kittridge got close to achieving his goal, he and Hilda parted company. That happened about a month or so ago.”
“Was there a romance, too?”
Nodding, she drank some of her ale. “More on her side than his, however.”
“Would she be likely to try to kill him? Out of anger at being—”
“No, Hilda doesn’t work that way. She’d be much more likely to consult a team of good attorneys and sue the man.”
“Any idea where she might be hiding out?”
“Across the border. She went down there a lot, with Kittridge and alone.”
Jake sipped his ale. “If Bennett Sands is financing the anti-Tek research—what’s he get out of it?”
“He sells it to the government when it’s perfected. Don’t even bother about the possibility of his planning to donate it to the world. Your wife didn’t tell you much about Sands, did she?”
“Not a lot, no. Mostly because I never asked.”
“You should’ve, Jake.”
“Why?”
“Because he isn’t exactly a decent man. He’s in this simply out of greed, which is never a very admirable motive.”
“Do you know where he is?”
“He has places all over—even a villa on the Moon.” Finishing her ale, she leaned back. “Be very careful,” Pat cautioned. “Something could happen to you—even worse than what happened to Gomez.”
“So I’ve been told.”
Jake sat straddling the white chair. He’d just given Gomez a concise account of what he’d found out during the day. “A lot more than insurance seems to be involved,” he concluded.
His injured partner was propped up in the wide white bed. His left leg was uncovered and in a white plasticast for about two-thirds of its length.
“Okay, there’s another obvious possibility that seems to be lurking behind the facts here.” Gomez’s curly hair was somewhat subdued tonight. “It must’ve occurred to you.”
“The possibility that Dr. Kittridge and his daughter aren’t dead—and didn’t even crash.”
“Yeah
, that the crash is a fake.”
“Rigged by who?”
“Could be the Kittridges themselves.”
Jake nodded. “To throw off the Tek kingpins who are anxious to halt their researches.”
“Or, amigo, they may want to elude Bennett Sands. He contributes millions to the perfecting of the anti-Tek gimmick. Then Dr. Kittridge appears to die. A few months later another scientist entirely introduces his anti-Tek gimmick and reaps all the profits. He’s a front for Kittridge, but Sands doesn’t know that. You’re making forlorn faces. You don’t like this scenario?”
“I don’t, even though it’s plausible.”
“You object because it would mean Beth Kittridge is a party to a fraud—and you don’t want to believe she’s capable of anything like that.”
“Her father could’ve faked the crash without telling her about it in advance.”
“She’s supposed to be smart. Wouldn’t she be likely to inquire—‘Gloriosky, Daddy, whyever are we landing here in the middle of this great big old forest instead of at the goddamn airport?’ ”
Jake said, “Another obvious possibility, with Sonny Hokori involved, is that they were shot down deliberately. And are dead.”
“Just as likely that he waylaid their skycruiser and grabbed them,” suggested his partner. “Because there’s another interesting possibility to this electronic Passover the doctor and his daughter have been planning. If that comes off, then all the Tek in the universe is going to go blooey.” He held up a forefinger. “But maybe not Sonny’s. Not Sonny’s if he gets Dr. Kittridge to provide his Tek chips with a defense against this high-frequency stuff.”
“Sure—that way Hokori would have a global monopoly on Tek,” said Jake. “In a way, I hope he is involved in this. I’d like to meet him again.”
“Revenge can be tricky,” cautioned his partner.
“You’ve got to depart, Mr. Cardigan,” the nurse said and withdrew.
Jake stood up and said, “I’ll be leaving for the Borderland early tomorrow.”
“Good luck, amigo,” said Gomez. “I hope you find them alive.”
14
THE BORDERLAND WAS A vast, miles-wide strip of land that ran between the United States and Mexico and stretched along the border from California as far as Texas. A wide-open territory, it was governed by Mexico and attracted tourists from all across the world.
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