Still not looking up, Dr. Danenberg said, “It’s possible that Leon wants me dead.”
Jake sat up. “Leon Kittridge?”
She nodded slowly. “For a ... for a combination of reasons.” She raised her head, looking around the café. “Do you think I might have something to drink—a beer perhaps?”
Jake signaled Ramirez, who’d been leaning against the bar, and pantomimed the bringing of two beers. “What would be some of Dr. Kittridge’s reasons for wanting you dead?”
“We weren’t just colleagues,” she said. “There was a time when we were somewhat closer than that.” She paused, watching his face. “I know, you assume a man with a daughter as lovely as Beth must have had a lovely wife and would prefer lovely women rather than—”
“Nope, I was wondering why I think you’re more attractive than you do.”
She said, annoyed, “I’m not in any need of cheap flattery, Cardigan.”
Jake waited until Ramirez himself had brought them two bottles of Mexican beer and two chilled glasses, until he’d bowed to the doctor and smiled at Jake and gone politely away. Then he asked, “Kittridge doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who resorts to murder to get rid of old loves.”
“I wasn’t an especially good loser and I gave him a lot of trouble after we parted,” she said. “And, too, I know a good deal about his anti-Tek process. He wouldn’t want that knowledge to get out, especially if he may intend to sell it.”
“Obviously he always meant to sell it—to one government agency or another.”
“I mean sell it to someone like Sonny Hokori.”
“You have any evidence that Kittridge is planning something like that?”
“No, I have only suspicions.”
“What about Bennett Sands—would he be in on anything like that?”
She shook her head. “No, Bennett has always been an honest man—well, as honest as one can be at his level of success. Certainly, though, Bennett would never get involved in any deal with a man like Hokori.”
“But he was financing Dr. Kittridge.”
“He was a partner, yes, in the development of the new crystal.”
“New crystal?”
“I haven’t time—nor have you the knowledge probably—to explain the entire process. Suffice it to say that part of Leon’s system depends on his discovery of a new synthetic crystal. The crystal is essential in producing the high-frequency oscillation needed to destroy the Tek chips,” Danenberg told him a bit impatiently.
“Has he reached the point where he can actually destroy the chips?”
“Leon was nearly there at the time we parted company, Cardigan, and that was some weeks ago. I’m certain that he, especially with Beth helping him, has everything ready for the final testing by now.”
“Could that be what he came down here for?”
“I assume so.”
“So his notes, his equipment—all that would’ve been with him in the skycruiser that crashed?”
“If it crashed. It’s also possible that it was simply diverted,” Dr. Danenberg suggested. “Either with Leon’s cooperation or without it.”
“And if it was without it, you figure Sonny Hokori might be the one?”
“He or his many competitors.”
Jake asked, “You know Kurt Winterguild?”
“Yes, much better actually than I care to.”
“He knows what Kittridge is doing?”
“Initially Leon took both Winterguild and his agency into his confidence.”
Jake poured his beer into his glass, watching the foam for a few seconds. “You know Beth well, too,” he said finally.
“I do.”
“If Kittridge is selling out his system to Sonny Hokori or any of the Tek kingpins, would she be likely to go along?”
The doctor took a long swallow of her beer, directly from the bottle. “Do you know her yourself?”
“Not actually, no.”
“But you’ve—of course, as an operative for the Cosmos Detective Agency, you would have—you’ve seen her picture and possibly vidfootage.” She drank again. “Many men tend to become quite taken with her and, possibly to their misfortune, they idealize Beth some.”
“That could be, but do you think she’d be in cahoots with her father in anything illegal?”
“I’d say it was possible.” She finished her beer. “If you’d be so kind as to order me another. I have something else to mention to you.”
Jake signaled Ramirez again, holding up one finger. “About Beth?”
Her laugh was thin and nasal. “No, about them both, actually,” she said. “Decades ago a great many American and European companies—especially those in electronics—had modest-sized assembly plants all over Mexico. The wages here are—”
“They call them maquiladoras.”
“Yes, exactly, Cardigan, and the Tek runners have taken over many of them to produce Tek chips and assemble Brainboxes.” She smiled as Ramirez set down her second beer. “Something like two years ago Leon bought himself one of those maquiladoras in this area, not more than fifty miles to the west of us here. He turned it into a field laboratory and, I believe—though I haven’t visited it in over a year—that he was doing some anti-Tek work there as well.”
“Be a good place to visit then. Can you guide me to—”
“No, but I’ve drawn you a map.” She reached into a side pocket of her jacket, producing a folded sheet of tan paper and an electrokey. “You won’t have any trouble finding it—and you may indeed learn something of value, Cardigan.” She dropped the map and the key next to his glass.
16
THE AIRCAR, RENTED FROM a cousin of P. J. Ramirez, started to sputter. Jake was, according to the instruments that were still working on the control panel, approximately twenty miles from his destination and two thousand feet from the ground.
The rain was hitting at the windshield and the whole cabin was echoing from the drumming of the raindrops. Down below him, from what Jake could make out through the nightvision, seethru bottom of the cabin, there was nothing but dark, thick jungle.
The sputtering accelerated to a loud series of stuttering pops.
Jake leaned, scanned the panel and located the Status button. He jabbed it with his forefinger.
The voxbox blurted something in slurred Spanish.
Jake didn’t catch it. “Otra vez,” he requested.
“The engine,” said the Status voxbox in English this time, “having reached the guaranteed two hundred thousand airmiles, is about to give up the ghost.”
“Install a replacement,” he instructed the car.
“In this model aircar, that has to be done manually by the driver or a qualified mechanic.”
“Where are the spare engines housed?”
“There is an emergency engine, good for at least ten thousand airmiles, stored in the handy compartment beneath the driveseat.”
After punching out an automatic flight pattern, Jake got himself free of the seat and slid open the drawer beneath it. There was nothing in there but a picnic hamper.
He pried it open and found only the remains of a picnic lunch from some months ago.
“Where do we store the food?”
“Compartment to your rear, opening now.”
That was where the engine had been stored. It was a compact one, about the size of a brick. Jake carried it, listening uneasily to the explosive popping of the current engine, over to the floor compartment marked MOTOR.
He opened the lid, studied the dying engine for a few seconds and then, gingerly, removed it.
The aircar fell silent.
He connected the emergency engine.
The aircar remained silent.
Jake gave the newly installed device a moderate punch with the left fist.
It took hold and started working; the aircar bounced twice in the rain-swept air.
Back in the driveseat, he took over the control of the craft.
He looked below him again an
d saw the factory that Dr. Kittridge had converted to a laboratory. It was coming up directly below.
There were no lights showing, no sign that anyone was in or around the place.
Jake flew on to a small clearing about a quarter of a mile beyond and punched out a landing pattern.
The descent was relatively smooth, although a few treetops got clipped. The landing was only minimally jarring.
Jake sat there for a moment. “Nothing as comforting as rain on a metal roof.” He got out of the driveseat and went to the door.
He took his handlight out of his trouser pocket, opened the door and stood listening. He heard nothing but rain, rain hitting the treetops, rain hitting the tree trunks, rain hitting the brush, rain hitting the muddy ground circling his landed car.
He decided, after a bit more than three minutes, that there was no one around and that his advent had gone unnoticed.
Taking a deep breath, Jake clicked on his light and looked down. “That’s mud all right,” he observed and dropped clear of the cabin.
He stayed crouched in the brush some hundred yards from the maquiladora for five minutes after he located the place. He was already pretty well soaked, so the extra five minutes didn’t appreciably add to his dampness.
The factory consisted of three long, low, metal and plastiglass buildings linked together and looking like a row of greenhouses. There was not a single light showing. In the soggy minutes of his vigil Jake hadn’t spotted or sensed the presence of anyone at all in the vicinity.
“So this is probably not an ambush arranged for me by Dr. Danenberg.” Standing, he took a final look around and then went running across the mud and gravel that surrounded the old factory site.
The electrokey that the doctor had provided him worked on the rear door of the nearest glass and metal building.
The door whirred, clicked and swung open inward.
Jake hesitated on the threshold.
A smell that mixed damp ground, burned plas and some chemicals he couldn’t identify came pouring out at him.
He waited another minute, then stepped into the darkness.
Nothing happened.
Carefully and quietly Jake shut the door behind him. The darkness swallowed him up.
He stayed still, slightly hunched, for another minute before turning on his light.
This big room of the old factory had never been remodeled or refurbished. It was filled with dusty workbenches and a few rusty, defunct workbots. Several plaswood cartons were stacked in a corner, festooned with cobwebs and splotched with black mildew.
Jake walked on into the second room of the maquiladora. This had been partly converted and subdivided into living quarters. The floors, though, weren’t completed and had gaps in the planking. Several partitions were in place, but no new room had been completed.
The kitchen unit was the most nearly finished and the larder was stocked with freezedry and dehyde meals. There was a round metal table with three chairs. At one of the places sat a plasmug with a thick coating of greenish scum floating atop of whatever liquid it contained.
The night rain was coming down enthusiastically, pelting the walls and roof of the long building.
Leaving the kitchen, Jake moved on to enter the third and final building. The door was locked and he had to use the electrokey again.
The door opened inward and he followed it into the final room.
The door shut quietly behind him and soft white light blossomed all around him. The plastiglass walls had been blacked out and the whole large, long room had been converted into a thoroughly equipped electronics lab.
But what Jake paid attention to was the spotless white table at the exact center of the white room. Lying faceup on the table was the naked body of a young woman.
It was Beth Kittridge.
17
BUT IT WASN’T BETH Kittridge.
Jake knew that when he was still ten feet away from the softly glowing white table.
“Thank God,” he said. He didn’t want to find her dead.
What was lying on the table was an impressively realistic android simulacrum of Beth Kittridge. The mechanical replica of the missing young woman was not quite finished.
Jake noticed now the small rectangular gap beneath her left breast. Some inner circuitry showed, plus a few dangling and unconnected strands of varicolored wire.
He stopped beside the table, staring down at the android. Beth was very pretty and she looked so lost and vulnerable lying there in the white light.
Jake glanced around, seeking something to cover her with. “Hey,” he reminded himself, “it’s only an andy.”
He was feeling even more strongly that he had met Beth somewhere before. And that in the long, enforced sleep up in the Freezer she was one of the people he’d dreamed about.
Frowning, shivering slightly in his wet clothes, Jake slowly circled the body. High above, the rain drummed on the lab roof.
“This is a hell of a sophisticated mechanism,” he said. “As good as if not better than the one Dr. Danenberg sent to meet me and Gomez at the Boardwalk.”
Beth’s father must have intended this to serve as a stand-in for his daughter. Sure, he knew there was trouble coming from the Tek overlords and he wanted to have a decoy—wanted to protect her from the kind of danger that almost hit Dr. Danenberg. But for some reason they’d had to take off before the android was finished.
Jake halted near the skull of the simulacrum, leaned down and studied the young woman’s face. “They must’ve downloaded a dupe of the contents of Beth’s mind into the brain of this thing,” he reflected. “Had to, otherwise it could never do any kind of adequate job impersonating her.”
So it was likely this replica knew just about everything the actual Beth knew. At least up to the time she and her father had left here.
“Damn—if I could just get her to talk to me ...
And why couldn’t he?
The sim looked to be nearly completed, only a few final hookups were needed. The job shouldn’t take more than a couple hours at most.
Jake knew something about electronics and robotics. Obviously he could never himself build anything this complex, but he just might be able to get this one working. Get it functioning at least well enough to tell him something.
“I’m not all that anxious to sit around chatting with an android,” he said, moving back from the body. “But I definitely need more information about the Kittridges, and this gadget should be a good source.”
He prowled the laboratory and in less than fifteen minutes he’d gathered together enough tools and gear for his attempt to bring the replica of Beth to life.
“No, that doesn’t feel quite exactly right.”
Straightening, Jake took a quick step back from the lab table. He was staring at the android, who’d just spoken.
The sound of the heavy night rain seemed all at once to fade away.
Beth sat up on the table, touching at the gap beneath her breast. “You’ve done just about everything okay up to now,” she said, smiling approvingly at him. “Which is why I’m functioning. But you’ve put the wrong—Here, it’s easier if I just show you.” Deftly she inserted both her thumbs and forefingers into the hole in her chest. “You, see—have to hook this red wire to the green one. You’ve got it connected to the blue one, which is not going to work too well.” Smiling more broadly, she took a look around the lab. “The piece you need to close up this rent in my chest is sitting on that counter yonder.”
“Maybe you’d like to have some clothes, too.” Jake could hear the rain again.
The pretty, dark-haired young woman swung gracefully off the table, walked across to the counter and picked up her missing part. “Your reactions are interesting, you know,” she said as she fitted the fleshtone section in place and tapped at it. “Does that look all right?”
“A perfect fit.”
“What I’m getting at is—when I was dormant, you probably thought of me as just a machine. But now that
I’m—well, let’s call it alive—now you’re embarrassed.”
“Not exactly. I thought you might be cold.”
She brushed a strand of long dark hair back from her forehead. “No, actually when I’m too cold to function properly, a signal goes off inside my skull. One, of course, only I can hear.” She turned to him and held out her right hand. “I’m Beth Kittridge—well, you know what I mean. An android simulacrum of Beth, containing all her memories, feelings and so on.”
“I’m Jake Cardigan.” He hesitated before going ahead and shaking hands. Her flesh felt real and warm.
“You’re a human, not an android. I can tell,” she said.
“How?”
She shrugged her naked shoulders. “I’m not exactly certain, Mr. Cardigan. It’s just another of my built-in instincts. My father and Dr. Danenberg both design androids that are considerably more talented than anything else on the market today. But that sounds like I’m trying to sell you one, doesn’t it?” Laughing, she walked over to a wall cabinet. “Now I’ll get myself dressed—so you’ll feel more at ease.” Opening the cabinet, she started looking over the clothes that were shelved there. “Father spoke highly of you, by the way, which is why I won’t bother to use this on you.” She momentarily pointed the stunpistol she’d grabbed off a shelf in his direction. “Your record as a cop wasn’t all that admirable toward the end, but we concluded you’d been framed.”
“I didn’t realize that you and your father—that Beth and her father were aware of me,” Jake told her. “Had we met someplace or other?” She studied him for several silent seconds before shaking her head. “No, I don’t believe so. But father and I are interested in the Tek trade and the lawmen involved in combating it. And, after all, you were a well-known police officer in your day.”
“In my day.”
“Well, it was—what? Five years ago at least that they sent you up to the Freezer.” She placed the gun on a counter and started getting into a pair of neodenim trousers.
“Only four years actually.”
“That probably seems a longer time to me than it does to someone your age.” Beth was pulling a sweatertunic on over her head.
TekWar Page 10
