TekWar

by William Shatner

  Sands murmured negatively, sighed, turned away from Jake.

  Jake prodded him again, this time in the region of his kidneys.

  Stiffening, Sands rolled over on his back and opened his eyes. Then he tried to rise, reaching out toward where his lazgun was supposed to be.

  “Not there,” mentioned Jake, showing the weapon to him.

  Sands’s face was pale and puffy; his eyes underscored with shadowy patches of skin. “How the hell did you get in here, Cardigan?” Pushing with his elbows, thrashing some, he grunted himself into a sitting position. His candy-striped nightshirt was wrinkled, twisted on his lean body. “I’ve got one of the best available secsystems in this damn villa and I—”

  “I’m pretty handy at circumventing security setups,” Jake explained to him. “And just to be on the safe side, I brought along a highly efficient tech housebreaker and three ordinary burglars. It helped that I was also able to bribe most of your servants.”

  “Jake,” said Kate, “it wasn’t very smart of you to—”

  “I’ll handle this, Katie,” Sands told her without taking his eyes off Jake. “Cardigan, you can’t just break into my villa this way. That violates all sorts of laws and—”

  “I haven’t been a cop for a long time,” he reminded him. “Besides, this is Mexico.”

  “It is, Cardigan, and it would do you well to keep in mind that I have considerable influence in this country. You’ve put yourself in—

  “Get up now, would you ...

  “I’m going to make considerable trouble for you, not only with the local law but—”

  “In order to do that, you’d have to be alive,” Jake pointed out. “And unless you start cooperating, you may not continue to be. Up—start dressing. We have someplace to go.”

  “Jake, it would be really very foolish to kill Bennett. I realize you’re terribly jealous, but—”

  “Jealousy doesn’t have a damn thing to do with this,” he assured his former wife. “Sands—get moving!”

  Swinging, slowly, out of the big bed, Sands asked, “Where exactly do you fancy we’re going together, Cardigan?”

  “To the Pleasure Dome for a chat with Sonny Hokori.”

  Sands’s red and white nightshirt fluttered when he gave a thin, nasal laugh. “You can’t really be serious? Sonny will simply destroy you should you venture anywhere near him.”

  “Better hope he doesn’t, because you’ll go, too,” said Jake. “It’ll be a good idea if you see to it that I stay alive during our visit to the Dome.”

  “This kind of thoughtless bravado is exactly what got you in trouble in GLA.”

  “Yeah, that and some help from you and Sonny,” amended Jake. “Now get yourself into some clothes, Sands—I’m not especially patient tonight.”

  “We could remain right here,” suggested Sands, “and discuss whatever it is you think you have to say to Sonny.”

  “Dress,” advised Jake. “I’d prefer to use you to get me into the place. It’s simpler, but it’s not the only way.”

  “All right, Cardigan, very well. But you’re being very unwise, extremely so.”

  From the bed Kate asked, “Jake, did anyone—has anyone—tried to hurt you?”

  “Yeah,” he answered, “but they didn’t succeed.”

  “Not so far,” said Sands.

  The robot was tall. It stood a good seven feet in height, and one of the small squares of red plasglass implanted in its white-enameled chest had begun flashing. With a shuffling step, it moved to block Entrance B to the Pleasure Dome.

  “No weapons allowed inside, gentlemen,” the guardbot told Jake and Sands while they were still climbing the broad white stairway to the arched entrance to the great white dome.

  “Too bad, Cardigan, but it looks like you won’t be able to get any closer than Sonny’s doorstep.” Sands halted two steps below the robot guard.

  “If you’ll just hand over your gun, sir, it will be returned to you when you depart from the Pleasure Dome.”

  Jake was just behind the other man, a spare jacket he’d borrowed from the bedroom closet at the villa draped over his arm and hand, concealing the lazgun. He jabbed at Sands’s back with the barrel. “Override the robot,” he instructed quietly.

  “I’m afraid I don’t quite understand what you’re—”

  “You and Sonny’s other henchmen come and go all the time carrying weapons. So give this guard the password.”

  “Why should I help you to—”

  “I wasn’t kidding about having no more patience tonight. Do it, do it now or I’ll drop you right here.”

  After running his tongue over his lips, Sands nodded up at the robot and said, “Nijuu neji.”

  The small square of red in the row on the robot’s metal chest ceased flashing. “You should have identified yourselves earlier, gentlemen.” He bowed and stepped aside. “Go right on in.”

  “This is only,” reminded Sands as he resumed climbing, “the first barrier.”

  The large reception foyer of the Pleasure Dome was thick with noise, music and people. Beautiful young women, naked to the waist, were circulating through the crowd with trays of snacks.

  “Some of your biofoods?” asked Jake.

  “As a matter of fact, no. Sonny gets the stuff from a cousin of his in Rio.” Sands glanced around. “You should like the serving girls, though, since they’re all andies that ... Oof!”

  “Trot on over to the nearest upramp,” suggested Jake, after nudging him in the back with the lazgun.

  On an airfloat dais that hovered five feet above the mosaic, neon-trimmed floor a quartet of bewigged chrome robots was playing greatly amplified Bach.

  Beyond the foyer the wide, arched doorway to the dice and card pavilion showed.

  “Look it up in the guidebook, Arlen,” said a thin, blonde young woman who was pushing her way through the milling Dome customers at the side of a tuxed black man.

  “I already know it’s on Level 2, Charmaine.”

  “Then that’s where we go first. I’m determined to see at least one Death Wrestling match before we leave Acapulco.”

  “We’re moving a mite slowly,” Jake said. “Nudge more assertively, Sands.”

  “Sonny does such excellent business here that the establishment is always crowded,” said Sands over his shoulder. “Are you sure you wish to hurry this—since more than likely these are your last moments on Earth?”

  Eventually they reached an automatic ramp. It carried them smoothly and quietly up to the next level of the Dome.

  They skirted the packed rows of seats in the racing vidroom, where customers were watching and betting on horse races from all over the globe.

  A lovely Chinese girl in a plasleather dress suddenly jumped up out of her red-plush chair. “Get this blinking thing off me!” she cried, swatting at the bloody, bedraggled bird that had just landed in her trim lap.

  “One of the roosters from the cockfight lounge,” explained Sands with a faint smile. “The little devils get away from time to time.”

  A small, polite silver robot went rushing over to the screaming, flapping young woman. He grabbed the squawking rooster and deftly wrung its neck.

  “Something similar is going to happen to you, Cardigan.”

  “Onward and upward,” Jake advised.

  The next ramp transported them up to the third level and the soft-lit reception area for one of the bordellos. An efficient young woman behind an antique 20th Century metal desk looked up and inquired, “Do you prefer android or human companions, gentlemen—male or female?”

  “We’re just passing through, ma’am,” explained Jake amiably. “Head for that ramp yonder, Sands.”

  “You know, Cardigan, I think you’re actually doing all this just to get back at me for sleeping with your wife.”

  “I’m doing this because I’m being paid to find Kittridge and his daughter.”

  “Perhaps. Didn’t you actually know about our earlier affair?”

  Jake ma
de no reply.

  This ramp left them off in front of a blank gray door.

  After making a faint whistling sound for five seconds, the door slid open. “Good evening again, Mr. Sands,” said its voxbox. “We don’t seem to have your companion on file. Would you mind identifying him for us?”

  “Jake Cardigan,” said Jake, urging Sands across the threshold and into the long, gray corridor beyond.

  As the door rushed shut behind them, another opened at the far end of the corridor.

  Two men appeared, both of them large and one a cyborg with each of his arms made of gunmetal.

  “A bit of trouble, Mr. Sands?” inquired the cyborg.

  “Only for Mr. Cardigan here.”

  Jake said, “We’re here to see Sonny Hokori.”

  Sands added, “Without an appointment.”

  “If your buddy’ll put down the gun,” said the cyborg, “we can maybe see about—”

  “Explain to them,” suggested Jake as he prodded Sands with the barrel of the lazgun, “about how impatient and easily annoyed I am tonight.”

  “We’d best see Sonny,” said Sands.

  A third man appeared in the doorway. He was plump, about thirty-five and Japanese. His suit was a silky black and had dozens of small golden birds in flight across its jacket. “I’ve been wanting to meet Cardigan for a heck of a long time,” he said, smiling cordially. “Hiya, Jake. C’mon in.”

  “After your goons retreat.”

  Chuckling, Sonny Hokori nudged the cyborg. “Hear what Jake called ya, Leon? Apparently that nearly two years at Harvard didn’t help ya much.”

  “Cardigan’s fucking opinion of me doesn’t—”

  “You and Brew go wait in the rumpus room, Leon,” suggested the smiling Japanese.

  After glaring at Jake, rubbing the metal fingers of his left hand along the back of his right, the cyborg withdrew. The other man followed.

  “Goons.” Hokori chuckled, shook his head. “Ya can both come in now, Jake.”

  Hokori’s office was large, its curved off-white walls covered with rows of vidscreens that monitored the goings-on in every sector of the Pleasure Dome. There was no desk, only a white armchair next to a bank of computer terminals.

  Seating himself in the armchair, Hokori nodded toward a nearby sofa. “Ya can share that, guys,” he said. “Jake Cardigan. Jake Cardigan. Ya realize how many years our effing lives have been intertwined—and yet we’ve never met face to face. Funny. Life can be funny as heck at times.” Chuckling, he turned to Sands. “Asshole, I thought ya told me ya were smarter than Cardigan.”

  “I’ve still no reason, Sonny, to believe I’m not.”

  Still standing, Jake said, “Here’s what I have in mind, Hokori. If you don’t have Kittridge and his daughter here in this office within five minutes—I’ll start using this lazgun. First on Sands, then on you.”

  The Tek lord chuckled. “I tell ya, Jake, the way I feel about this asshole right about now, you could slice him up into sixteen mismatched chunks and I wouldn’t give a darn,” he said. “My own person I’m somewhat fonder of.”

  “Order the Kittridges brought here.”

  “Were I planning to go along with ya, Jake, I could only produce the prof,” said Hokori. “But that feisty daughter of his—”

  Just then five of the wall screens started flashing red. A loud hooting filled the big office.

  The five screens were flashing new pictures now. Of unmarked skycruisers hovering around the Dome out there in the misty night.

  The hooting was joined by siren wails.

  Then most of the far wall of Hokori’s office began to glow an intense sizzling orange. In less than ten seconds the whole stretch of wall turned to gray, gritty dust and fell away into the fog outside.

  33

  ONE OF THE HOVERING black skycruisers had attached itself to the side of the Dome. Its nose fell open and four dark-clothed men carrying lazrifles came scrambling into the office through the wide, new gap in the wall.

  Foremost in the charging wedge was Kurt Winterguild, the bald-headed Field Director of the International Drug Control Agency. There was a look of intense satisfaction on his deeply tanned face, and the single rosebud tattooed on his polished scalp glowed especially red.

  While half of his office wall was still in the process of disintegrating, Sonny Hokori had, nimbly, somersaulted out of his chair and gone scurrying behind the bank of computer terminals.

  As the quartet of raiding IDCA agents fanned out across his office, the plump Japanese popped briefly to his feet. He was clutching an ebony needle-gun.

  A blast of thirty silver darts came spurting out of the weapon. Almost every one hit the agent to the left of Winterguild.

  The lean blond man howled as he was carried back across the gritty floor by the force of the metal darts stitching into his body.

  Had the wall been intact, he’d have slammed into it. Since it was no longer there, however, he kept going. He fell out into the mist, screaming, twitching, blood throbbing out of his multitude of tiny wounds.

  Before Hokori could duck back down, Winterguild had swung his lazrifle and fired.

  The beam, quickly and efficiently, sliced the Tek lord’s head clean off his body.

  Meantime Jake had caught Sands’s arm, hustling him toward the nearest doorway. “Where’s Kittridge?”

  “Through here.” Sands slapped at the recog panel and the door slid away.

  “Halt!” ordered an agent from across the room. “This is an official IDCA raid. Nobody leaves.”

  Dropping into a low crouch, Jake went diving through the freshly opened doorway.

  Sands started to follow, but a lazrifle beam found him and cut off his left arm just above the elbow.

  His keening screams of pain were cut off when the door shut behind Jake.

  Gun in hand, he started, cautiously yet rapidly, along the pale, peach-colored corridor.

  He’d covered about a hundred feet when a door on his right started to whisper open.

  Jake halted, gun pointing.

  A sleepy-eyed, redheaded young woman in a rumpled suit of polka-dot pajamas came shambling out into the hall. “What the fuck’s going on?” she asked in a drowsy murmur.

  “Trouble,” he told her. “Just stay right there—don’t try to run.”

  “Shit.”

  “Where are the Kittridges?”

  “Who?”

  “The professor.”

  “Oh.” Dreamily, she raised her hand and pointed. “Second door down that way there. Where’s Sonny?”

  “Dead and gone.”

  “Shit.”

  Jake ran along the corridor. The second door was standing open, making uneasy clicking noises. Thick greenish smoke was rolling along the hallway beyond.

  Taking a deep breath and holding it, Jake headed into the smoky corridor.

  A thickset man came running at him out of the smoke, his clothes aflame, screaming. He passed right by Jake, staggering more and more, bumping into the walls.

  Jake kept moving ahead.

  There was a large rectangular room at the corridor’s end. About half of its outer wall was gone. Another International Drug Control Agency skycruiser was attached to the Dome here, nose gaping open. Two agents, each carrying a lazgun, were standing over the thin man who was sprawled on his back near a cot.

  It was Professor Kittridge.

  Winterguild arrived before his two agents got around to shooting Jake.

  They both had their lazguns trained on him, though, and the one who was as bald as his boss was saying, “Stand back away from the professor, mister.”

  “Did you halfwits kill him?”

  “He’s only out cold, conked on the head by a chunk of debris or something. But suppose you explain just who in the hell you—”

  “My boy, you’ve been doing a lot better than I expected.” Winterguild came strolling into the room, signaling his men to lower their weapons. “We had a considerable head start on you, yet you
arrived just about simultaneously.”

  “Jesus, Kurt, why’d you pull a grandstanding raid like this? You practically burn the Dome down, kill Hokori before he can even be questioned and—”

  “We’re flamboyant, my boy, granted. But that’s what you need to scare these bastards.”

  Jake knelt down next to the unconscious Professor Kittridge. “You nearly knocked off the professor, too. And Sands is probably dead by now, too.”

  “Sands is alive.” Winterguild rubbed once at the rosebud tattooed on his skull with bloody fingers. “He was quite talkative before he passed out. Instructing my medics to withhold the painkillers until he decided to cooperate did the trick.”

  Jake asked him, “Where’s Beth Kittridge?”

  “Not here, alas.”

  Jake felt suddenly cold. “Did they kill her?”

  “Not at all, my boy. The young lady managed to escape sometime yesterday.”

  “Yesterday? Did she get in touch with you—or with the local cops?”

  “She contacted no one, and Sands had no notion of where she went.”

  Jake rose up. “If she got free yesterday—why didn’t she get help for her father?”

  “She’s apparently unhappy with him, Jake.”

  Looking down at Professor Kittridge, Jake said, “So he was planning to sell out to Hokori?”

  “Apparently so, according to Sands. That upset Miss Kittridge and she went into hiding.”

  “I’ll have to find her.”

  “I’d rather you didn’t try, my boy,” suggested the IDCA man. “Kittridge, after all, has been located and is alive. Cosmos and its client should be gratified at that news.”

  “Job’s not over until I locate them both.” Turning away, Jake started for the door.

  Snapping his fingers before he got there, he stopped and retraced his steps.

  Grinning, he punched Winterguild square on the chin.

  The bald man stumbled back three paces, rolling from side to side to maintain his balance. “It’s all right, boys, don’t shoot him.”

  “That’s the one I promised you back at Spaceland Park,” explained Jake and left.

  34

  HE WAS AWAKE WHEN the robot came to get him.