“Hey, I’m not even fifty yet.”
After she finished dressing, Beth slipped the gun into a belt holster. “Maybe now you can explain why you’re here, Mr. Cardigan,” she suggested, facing him. “As well as why you activated me.”
Jake studied her and then grinned slowly. “How much like the actual Beth Kittridge are you?”
“Exactly like her, since Father built me to be a dead ringer,” she answered. “But then they had to rush off to visit Bennett Sands before he had a chance to complete me quite.” She paused, frowning at him. “Has something happened to them? Is that why you’re here?”
“We’d better talk about it.”
18
BETH WAS SITTING ON the edge of the lab table with her long legs dangling down, watching Jake as he paced. Outside in the night thunder rumbled in the jungle. “Then they both might be dead?” she was asking.
“I don’t know. That’s what I came down here across the border to find out. Tell me where they were heading when they left here.”
The dark-haired android rubbed a hand along her thigh. “Keep in mind, Mr. Cardigan, that my memories stop several days ago,” she said. “At that time my father and I—and Beth, rather—were planning to visit Bennett Sands shortly at the home he has in the state of Chihuahua.”
“You mentioned earlier that an emergency had come up, causing them to leave ahead of schedule.”
“That was only an assumption. Since my father had been intending to take me and not Beth on the trip—well, something urgent must’ve occurred or else I’d have gone and Beth would be safely hiding out somewhere.”
“The emergency had something to do with Sands?”
She shrugged, spreading her hands wide. “I’m guessing it did, judging from where they were when the skycruiser went down.”
“How exactly is Sands involved in all this business?”
“He was financing my father in his development of his anti-Tek system.” A frown touched her forehead; she rubbed at her leg again. “I’ve never been as fond of Bennett as my father is.”
“Don’t trust him?”
“Well, he always manages to sound very upright and dedicated, eager to develop an anti-Tek system for the good of humanity and all that crap.” Beth shook her head slowly. “Very altruistic, you know, and swearing he’s only interested in minimum profits.”
“But you think he was out for something more?”
“It’s only a feeling. Although ...
“Although what?”
“The past few weeks my father has been getting increasingly—well, evasive. I suspect, really, that he’s been having communications with Bennett that he hasn’t told me about.”
“That’s unusual?”
“Oh, yes, we always discuss everything openly,” Beth told him. “No secrets—or very few—between us.”
“You’ve worked closely with him on this anti-Tek system, haven’t you?
“Yes, certainly.”
“Then you know all about the synthetic crystal and the specific oscillation required to destroy—”
“I know all about it. But how come you do, Mr. Cardigan?”
“Dr. Danenberg told me quite a—”
“Oh, yes. Poor Hilda.”
“Why did she and your father quit working together?”
She leaned forward. “What is it you’re actually after?”
“I told you—my detective agency has been hired to find out what happened to Dr. Kittridge and Beth. Our client is the Moonbase-Hartford insurance outfit.”
“Then it doesn’t seem my father’s anti-Tek system should be of any interest to you at all.”
“It is, though, since it could be the reason he and Beth disappeared. Plus which, I’d like to see it put to use eventually.”
“Okay, then there’s one more reason why I’m valuable to you. I can duplicate just about everything my father’s done thus far.”
He nodded. “Exactly why I want to get you to a safe place as soon as I can. After that, I’ll head for—”
“I intend to go with you—to help find my father.”
Jake quit pacing and shook his head. “I’m working on this one alone,” he told her firmly.
“But it makes more sense,” she insisted, “if we work together.”
“Nope. We’ll exchange information here and now, then I’ll see that you get safely stored someplace.”
“Is it because you don’t want to work with an android?”
“I’m not especially anxious to work with anyone.”
“But you started off with a partner—Gomez, you said his name was.”
“He’s in the hospital. So for now I—”
“I know the route my father probably took. I know Mexico.”
“So do I.”
“Yes, but I also know Beth.”
“Even so. You’re not going to tag—”
Up above them near the shadowy ceiling a bank of five red bulbs of light suddenly started flashing urgently.
Smiling at him, Beth dropped free of the table. “It looks like we’re going to be forced to team up.”
“What is it?”
“Trouble.” She went running to the door of another cabinet, pulling it open wide. She reached inside and brought out two powerful stunrifles. “Father prefers to stun intruders.” She came striding back toward him and tossed him one of the rifles.
Jake caught it and nodded up at the flashing lights. “That’s a warning of intruders?”
“Yes. Someone’s already inside the first building and coming our way.” She glanced toward the door Jake had used earlier. “We don’t have as effective a security system as we ought.”
An enormous rumble of thunder sounded outside; the walls of the old factory rattled. At that same moment the metal entry door began to glow a harsh, shimmering blue. In just a few seconds it ceased to be, turning to a flickering, glowing grit that collapsed to the floor.
Three large, rain-soaked men were framed in the doorway. They wore water-spattered plas ponchos, and their wet hair was plastered to their skulls.
The largest of the three was Frankie Torres, the cyborg who’d tried to kill Jake back at his hotel. He had a new hand screwed into the socket of his right arm, this one a blunt-nosed lazgun.
“Cabrón!” he shouted when he recognized Jake. Shedding water, making a blubbering, snarling noise, he broke free of the other two and came charging into the lab.
Jake had dropped to the floor some seconds earlier, gone rolling over the floor until he hit a wall, and then come up with his stunrifle aimed directly at the onrushing Torres.
Torres’ gunhand had been swinging wildly, trying to stay focused on the fast-moving Jake.
Beth had scurried to the lab table, swung it around and planted it between herself and the armed intruders.
The other two came in as a pair, then split and dived in opposite directions. Each held a long-barreled lazgun. Each fired into the laboratory. Their shots went wild.
Jake’s first bolt of fierce scarlet light out of his stunrifle missed Torres by a good six inches.
Torres fired and missed, too. The blast sliced a chunk out of a counter roughly three feet above Jake.
“My turn.” Beth popped to her feet and fired her stunrifle at Torres. She dropped back down behind the table.
Her sizzling scarlet stunbeam took the cyborg in the side.
He made a gagging noise and his head started to tick back and forth, as though there were something caught in his throat that he was struggling to get rid of. He lurched sideways, striving to raise his gunhand and get it aimed once again at Jake. But the gun seemed to weigh an enormous amount now, seemed to be pulling him downward.
Torres followed the gun toward the floor. It went off, cutting a wobbly circle in the tiles. Dust and jagged chips of plas came swirling up in a cloud. The cyborg fell into that and hit with a great thud. He twitched violently from head to foot, sighing out a long, sad breath. After that he lay stiff and still.
Jake mean
time had moved again. And, as he scattered, he fired at one of the other invaders.
The man, who had a mustache that looked too big for his lean face, fired his lazgun at Jake simultaneously.
He missed, but Jake didn’t.
The man’s arms went up and he started to flap them in a limp, disjointed way, like someone who felt compelled to complete some strange exercise.
While the second man was dropping down into unconsciousness, the third fired at Beth.
His shot sliced the lab table nearly in half.
But Beth was no longer behind it. She was running, in a low crouch, toward the opposite wall. Halting, she dropped to one knee, aimed the rifle and fired.
The beam hit him in the exact middle of his body. Beads of water flew from his poncho and it billowed up around him. He dropped straight to the floor, sat wide-legged. The poncho settled around his body and masked his last convulsive spasms before he passed out.
“Not bad,” said Jake to the young woman, getting to his feet.
Brushing back her hair, she stood up. Then she glanced up at the warning lights. “They’re flashing again. That means more visitors. We’d best get out of here.”
“Agreed.”
She hurried over to him and led him to the opposite wall. “There’s a concealed escape door. Let’s hope I really am an exact replica.” Shifting her rifle, she pressed her right palm to the recog panel.
It pinged; the door slid open. A corridor was revealed. They started along it and the door shut swiftly at their backs.
“There’s a spare skycar in the storeroom this passway’ll lead us to,” she explained as they ran along side by side. “We can use it to get clear of here.”
“Since we don’t know how many more of them there are, retreating is probably the best idea.”
Beth said, “I think this means, Mr. Cardigan, that we’re going to be partners—at least for a while.”
“Apparently so,” he admitted. “And you might as well call me Jake.”
19
THE DOORS OF THE hidden shed whipped automatically open. Beth guided the skycar out into the rainy night, taxied across a stretch of clearing and sent the craft climbing into the surrounding darkness.
Glancing over at Jake, she smiled. “You’re not used to riding in the passenger seat.”
“I’d feel more comfortable at the controls.”
“Then our partnership’s going to be an especially valuable experience for you, something that’ll expand your range of experience and build your character,” she informed him. “That’s how my father likes to describe anything that I initially turn my nose up at.”
“Yeah, my father handed out similar slogans.” Jake slouched in his seat. “Most of them, though, didn’t turn out to be true.”
“Is he still alive?”
“Nope.”
“You didn’t like him.”
“It was, actually, the other way around.”
“That’s too bad,” Beth said as the skycar rose above the trees and leveled off. “What’s our destination, by the way?”
“Right now just head in the general direction of the state of Chihuahua.”
The dark-haired young woman punched out a flight pattern on the control panel. “What was your father?”
“Military man—professional soldier.”
“Stationed where?”
“Mexico, Central America, Brazil.”
“So that’s how you got to know this country, traveling with him?”
“He usually didn’t take us with him, my mother and I. But after she died, he allowed me, reluctantly, to live with him here in Mexico.
“My father and I ... Damn!” She was frowning at the dash panel. A tiny rectangular screen there had come flashing to life; a bulb of red light beneath it was flashing. “We’re being chased.”
Jake saw a picture of a heavy black skycruiser on the little screen. It was coming up fast on their tail from the jungle below. “Let me take the controls.”
Beth shook her head, her long hair brushing at her shoulders. “I can outfly most anybody, Jake,” she assured him. “My father taught me originally, and there was also a professional skyracer I used to be fond of.”
“How well armed are we?”
“Just a disabler beam in the tail.”
“Nothing lethal?”
“My father doesn’t believe in that.”
“Okay, I’ll handle the tail-gunner job.” Unbuckling, he left his seat and double-timed flat-footed to the gunner chair at the rear of their skycar.
He could see the big cruiser climbing closer through the heavy rain.
“Hang on,” advised Beth.
She gunned the skycar and it shot ahead, climbed and then started to execute a zigzagging backward loop.
Jake found himself hanging upside down in the gunner seat.
They started to pass upside down over the pursuing skycruiser.
The bigger craft had a lazcanon mounted on each of its stubby wings. Two thick, crackling lines of purplish light came knifing through the night rain. They converged on the spot where the skycar would have been if Beth hadn’t gone into the loop.
Jake thumbed the trigger button of the disabler gun.
“C’mon, Jake,” urged the young woman, “you can do better than that.”
His first try had missed the pursuing craft entirely.
“Okay,” he said through clenched teeth and fired again.
The next intense burst of green light touched the tail of the black cruiser. All at once the whole craft glowed a sputtering green. It swayed from side to side in the rain-swept sky, its engine put out of action by the beam of the disabler. It dropped down in bouncing jerks, nosed over, dived toward the dark jungle below.
The skycruiser flirted with the dark treetops for a while, almost hitting them and then pulling up free in time to miss. Finally it had to give up and went into a sharp downward plunge.
“Not too bad.” Beth brought their skycar around and into an upright position again. “I suppose you’re rusty—which is only to be expected.”
“I hit the damn thing.”
She held up two fingers on her left hand. “Second try.”
He saw the skycruiser crash to a rough landing in the woodlands. Nodding, he left the gunner perch and came back to sit next to Beth. “How about a truce between you and me?”
She let her eyes go wide for a second. “Oh, don’t you and your other partners kid each other good-naturedly now and then?”
“Good-naturedly.”
She smiled at him, then tapped the dash panel. “Nobody else on our tail,” she announced, pleased.
“You fly pretty well.”
“Yes, I do.”
“I’m wondering how those goons knew we were here.”
“Mightn’t they have followed you?”
“No, nobody tagged me out of Casas Grandes.”
“Dr. Danenberg perhaps told someone.”
“I saw her to a safe hideaway before heading for here,” he said. “Who else knows about the lab?”
“A few others.”
“Including Bennett Sands?”
“He’s familiar with it, of course. He’s even visited us there,” she said. “You don’t trust him either, do you?”
“Not especially.”
For nearly five seconds after he awakened, Jake had no idea where he was. Sitting up, he mumbled a few words.
A new day was starting, the sky outside their droning skycar was a thin, pale blue.
“We’re almost there,” Beth told him, punching out a landing pattern on the dash.
“That’s the town of Cuidado down there?”
“It is, yes.”
The skycar started dropping down through the morning. Directly below was a large, domed structure with TORO PLAZA inscribed atop it in huge gloletters.
“I seem to have dozed off.”
“You were tired. A man of your age can’t, after all, expect to tangle with a band of louts and n
ot feel weary afterward.”
“Wait now.” He turned, studying her profile while rubbing at a spot on the back of his neck. “I recollect that you reached over and touched me, right after we got through discussing our destination. Yeah, and I felt a faint tingling and ... I fell asleep.”
She said, “It’s just one of the built-in knacks I have.”
“You stunned me?”
“Nothing so drastic, no.” She glanced at him, smiling carefully. “You looked as though you needed some sleep, but were—”
“Don’t,” suggested Jake, taking hold of her arm, “do anything like that again, Beth. For as long as we’re forced to be together, you let me make the decisions.”
“It’s not all that important, Jake. I simply—”
“It is, though. I don’t want you using any of your gadgetry on me.”
“All right, okay. I’m sorry.”
“How many other tricks like that can you do?”
“I have,” she admitted, “a few other knacks. My father decided he might as well build the best simulacrum possible. One that was better than a human in some ways.”
“That’s fine.” Jake concentrated on looking down at Cuidado, which was a medium-sized city along the border that separated the states of Sonora and Chihuahua.
“Truly, I won’t do anything like that again.”
“I’m just not fond of having anyone put me to sleep.”
“Yes, I should’ve realized.”
The skycar circled a public landing area, then settled down to a landing. Yellow dust came swirling up as the craft touched ground.
Activating the door release, Beth said, “Don’t sulk. Okay?”
“I’m not sulking.” He got free of his seat, dropped down to the yellow ground.
“What would you do if Gomez did something you didn’t like,” she asked, joining him, “to clear the air?”
“Punch him.”
“Oh,” she said, laughing. “Well, you probably can’t do that to me—at least not here in public. Would you like to stop for breakfast?”
They were walking along a narrow street, and most of the small shops and restaurants were starting to open for, the day. Already the scents of coffee and spices were in the air.
“Might as well,” said Jake. “Then we’ll see about our hotel rooms.”
TekWar Page 11
