Tek Secret

by William Shatner

  “Mr. Cardigan?”

  He turned and found himself facing a very pretty blonde young woman. “Yeah,” he admitted.

  “We’re sorry you’ve been kept waiting,” she told him. “If you’ll follow me, I’ll escort you to Myra Ettinger’s office.”

  “Thanks.” He trailed her across the wide reception room and along a curving blank corridor.

  “I’m an android,” explained his escort, “in case you were wondering. You’ll find me in the latest Mechanix International catalog under Receptionists/Companions. My name is Maxine/ 2140V/ELS. I was introduced only last year and have proven extremely popular.”

  “I don’t doubt it.”

  “Here’s Myra Ettinger’s office,” announced Maxine, halting before a wide neowood portal. “It’s been very nice meeting you, Mr. Cardigan, and perhaps we’ll get together again sometime. I retail for $146,000.”

  “Worth saving up for.” The neowood door slid slowly aside and he went into the office beyond.

  The room was nearly as large as the reception area and there was nothing in it except a single metal chair, a vidphone and a short, plump woman of forty-six. She had shortcropped silvery hair and deeply tanned, leathery skin. She was sitting, tan legs crossed, in the chair and smoking a cigarette.

  “It’s real tobacco, outlaw stuff,” she explained as Jake was crossing the thick purple carpeting to her. “I buy them a carton at a time from a bootlegger down in the Borderland.”

  “I wanted to ask you some questions.”

  She exhaled smoke. “Do,” she invited.

  Jake squatted on the floor. “What do you think has happened to Alicia Bower?”

  After a long drag on her illegal cigarette, Myra said, “Have you ever met dear little Alicia?”

  “Nope.”

  “Seen pictures?”

  “Yep.”

  “She looks very sweet and demure in most pictures. Cameras make her seem—what? Vulnerable.”

  “You don’t like her.”

  “Not at all, not a bit,” admitted Myra. “She’s a spoiled little whore.”

  “Subjective judgment.”

  “I know, personally, Cardigan, seven men who still work for us who’ve slept with innocent little Alicia.”

  “Recently?”

  “No.” She exhaled smoke. “I have to admit that she either reformed after moving in with Roger’s brother—or she learned to be a hell of a lot more discreet.”

  “Nobody hereabouts,” said Jake, “seems to be worried about the possibility that she might be dead.”

  “She isn’t dead.”

  “Any proof of that?”

  “Only my gut judgment of her character. In the past, whenever the little darling showed up among the missing, she was always found safe in somebody’s bed.”

  “Mechanix has several serious business rivals,” he mentioned. “You’re not afraid one of them has harmed her?”

  When Myra laughed, she snorted out swirls of smoke. “We have a very good intelligence system here,” she assured him. “We know just about everything our competitors are up to.”

  “Including kidnapping?”

  “Yes, even that.”

  Jake said, “You steered the police to the theory that she has simply run off with—”

  “No, you’re mistaken. I only confirmed the dominant police theory. Lt. Verbeck’s a longtime vet on the SoCal—”

  “I know Verbeck. Yeah, he’s been around awhile.”

  “The lieutenant has quite a fat file on her escapades. He’s of the opinion that this is one more of the same.”

  “But he doesn’t have any idea where she is this time around?”

  “Not yet, although I’m certain he’ll find her soon.”

  Jake got to his feet. “I’d like to talk with Owen Bower. Get his ideas on—”

  “Impossible, Cardigan.” She took another slow puff. “Owen is extremely ill, hospitalized. He can’t even be bothered about major Mechanix business just now.”

  “Which is more important than his daughter.”

  “To us, I’m being honest here, it is, yes.” She stood. “Let me add, in order to save us both time, that besides our own security people, we’ve hired a private investigation agency to look into this whole trouble over Alicia,” Myra told him. “I agreed to see you today as a favor to Roger and Bernard Zangerly. But it would be against our best interests from hence onward to discuss any of this with anyone but a representative of the detective agency we’ve hired.”

  “Which agency is it?”

  She laughed. “Being an excellent detective, you’ll find that out soon enough, Cardigan.”

  Seven and a half minutes after Jake left her office, Myra’s vidphone buzzed.

  Picking the laptop phone off the purple carpeting, she touched the answer key. “Yes, what?”

  “Has he talked to you?” asked the gaunt sixty-year-old man who showed on the small screen.

  “If you mean the private eye, Bernard, yes.”

  “I think I better come in and talk to you about this.”

  “I’ve no time.”

  Bernard Zangerly said, “Damn it, Myra, this is imp—”

  “Not as important as the other Mechanix business that has to be dealt with immediately.”

  “What did you tell Cardigan?”

  “Precious little.”

  “Does he have any notion about—”

  “Bernard, please. I really can’t take any more time to—”

  “Barry was nearly killed last night,” his father reminded Myra. “That was not supposed to happen.”

  “We did agree, however, that the dear boy was to be discouraged from hunting for that little bitch,” she said. “The fellows who were hired for the job were simply a shade too enthusiastic about their work.”

  “They could’ve killed my boy. As it is, Myra, they put him in the hospital.”

  “We don’t want anyone finding Alicia for at least another three weeks, not anyone,” she said evenly. “That’s important to me, it’s important to Mechanix. It should be important to you.”

  “Of course it is, Myra, or I’d never have consented to—”

  “I really have to get back to work.”

  Bernard said, “I’m warning you that nothing more had better happen to Barry.”

  Myra took a slow drag on her tobacco cigarette and then laughed. “I’m amused at your selective concern for human life.”

  “You’re, every damn one of you, to leave him alone from here on, Myra.”

  “He’s safely on the sidelines now.”

  “But he hasn’t given up, the beating didn’t discourage him. Barry’s still determined to find that girl.”

  Myra laughed again. “From now on we’ll concentrate on discouraging Jake Cardigan and his friends.”

  7

  A ROBOT TRIED TO SELL Gomez a souvenir.

  The detective was strolling along the Oceanfront Esplanade in the Venice Sector when the rainbow-hued bot hopped into his path.

  “Holoviews of the Venice Sec, chum?” he inquired, plastic eyes rolling enthusiastically in his metal head. The head had been painted a basic white, and then crimson asterisks, purple ampersands and golden exclamation points added. “Send ’em to your friends. Two bucks a pop.”

  “Do I, my good man, appear the sort who’d insult his cronies with views of this gaudy sprawl of mercantile real estate?”

  Two android delivery boys came roaring by on jetskates, each balancing a large carton of Moonfood on an upheld, gloved hand.

  The robot vendor said, “You appear, chum, to be a wiseass who probably doesn’t have a single friend to his name.”

  “You’ve hit it exactly.” Easing around him, Gomez continued on his way.

  Out in the rutted street to his left a bearded air artist was creating an abstract picture of the afternoon with colored streamers of light, a lady magician was juggling a half dozen glittering silver balls and two deeply tanned men in their seventies were wrestling over
the ownership of a plasliter of Sonoma Winepop.

  Most of the buildings down here near the sea were constructed of realwood and true glass, materials that had long ago been salvaged and scrounged from other parts of the sector. On the slanting shingle roof of the Oceanfront People’s Clinic three gulls were perched. Someone had dyed the one in the middle blue and gold.

  In the reception room a motherly robot in a flowered apron was sitting in a rocker, knitting. “Things aren’t as bad as they seem,” she assured him as he entered.

  “That’s good to know. However, my purpose—”

  “Even folks as obviously troubled as you, young fellow, can be helped.”

  “I’m not troubled,” Gomez assured her. “Nor am I, alas, a young fellow.”

  “I’m Moms 1-A.” She stood, placing her knitting on the cross-hatched seat of her rocker. “There’s no need to deny your troubles, dear. Why, I can tell just by looking you over that you’re carrying around a load of problems and concerns. Those shadows under your lackluster eyes, for example, and those care wrinkles etched on your sallow forehead—”

  “If there’s one thing I am not, mamacita, it’s sallow. Now then—”

  “Moms, back off.” A large, wide man with a full, grizzled beard had come shuffling into the small reception room by way of a side door. “Are you Gomez?”

  “Si, famous for my drooping morale.”

  “Well, young fellow, you look mighty hangdog to me.”

  “Moms was designed to be motherly, obviously,” explained Dr. Moreno. “At times she overdoes it.”

  Moms 1-A returned to her knitting. “Don’t mind me.”

  Moreno invited, “Come along to my office.”

  “Gracias.”

  “If you fellows want a cup of tea or some cookies, do give a yell, Doc.”

  Moreno led the detective along a narrow wooden hallway and into a small office that gave a view of the bleak afternoon beach.

  Gomez dropped into the fat armchair the doctor had nodded at. “I appreciate your taking the time to talk to me.”

  “I’m very concerned about Alicia.” The bearded therapist settled in behind his desk. “Your agency has a good reputation, and I’m hoping you can find her. That’s why, frankly, I agreed to this getogether.”

  “Do you think she’s still alive?”

  After rubbing at his whiskered chin, Moreno said, “I hope she is.”

  “Any notion where she might be?”

  “What have you found out thus far?”

  “The law as well as the crowd at Mechanix appear to share the theory that she’s done nothing more than skip off with some lusty gent.”

  “You don’t accept that;”

  “If she’s merely shacked up, why’d anybody bother to hire louts to beat up Barry Zangerly?” said Gomez, noticing a naked young woman outside, who went running along the beach and into the chill surf.

  “I wasn’t aware they had.”

  “Last night concluded the exercise with a warning to cease hunting for her,” said the detective. “This morning somebody attempted to kill my partner, which seems excessive if you merely want to keep us from finding the señorita’s lovenest.”

  Moreno rubbed again at his beard. “No, there’s more to this than a furtive romance.”

  “Before we leave the topic of romance—do you know Barry?”

  “I met him once.” The doctor smiled. “A very intense guy. He wasn’t all that charmed by the idea that Alicia was coming here.”

  “Would he harm her?”

  “I doubt it. I don’t think he’s the sort who would murder her, hide the body and then come to your detective agency for help in finding her.”

  “How about other romantic figures in her life, past or present?”

  “So far as I know, Barry’s the only one in her life right now. As for the past—” He executed a massive shrug. “There’s someone back there in Alicia’s past that she’s afraid of. But we haven’t found out who that is.”

  “Could it be an old beau, an hombre who’s come back to do her harm?”

  “At one time she was fairly promiscuous,” Moreno said. “There is, certainly, a possibility that one of the men she used to be intimate with has ... but this is all speculation, Gomez. Nothing like that came out in any of our group sessions.”

  “What did come out? In particular—what about Tin Lizzie?”

  The therapist shrugged once more. “As of now, only Alicia might know what Tin Lizzie means to her,” he answered. “And she doesn’t seem able to remember. It’s somebody—something, perhaps—that she’s afraid of, though.”

  “Did the name come up first in one of your sessions here or in her private nightmares?”

  Moreno leaned back in his desk chair. “It took place here,” he said, scratching at his beard. “Moms had popped into one of our group gatherings to pass around cookies. Alicia had been sitting with her eyes shut and, when she opened them, she saw Moms coming toward her. She sat up, put both hands up in front of her and cried out, ‘Tin Lizzie! Stay away from me.’”

  Gomez frowned. “But that wasn’t the first time she’s seen your robot, was it?”

  “No, Moms is the one who had Alicia fill out the forms when she first came to us. And she’s always underfoot.”

  “You’ve asked Alicia what Tin Lizzie means, of course?”

  “Oh, yes, but she hasn’t as yet come up with an answer.”

  “What’s your opinion?”

  “Only that it’s connected with something important that she can’t or won’t remember.”

  The detective asked, “Did anything else come up in any of the sessions—even some small thing—that might give a hint as to what’s become of her?”

  “Tell you what, Gomez.” He stood up. “I’ll let you look at the three vidcaz recordings we have of sessions that Alicia attended. Because of our budget, I’m afraid we don’t keep a visual record of all of them.” He inched around his desk, moving to a small, jampacked bookcase. “I haven’t had a chance to review any of this material since she disappeared, but you’re welcome to.” He picked up the three cassettes and handed them to Gomez. “I know I can trust you not to give away any of the other members’ secrets.”

  “I won’t give anything away, no.”

  Dr. Moreno shuffled to the door. “Come along, I’ll install you in our viewroom and then get back to my work.”

  The room was small, wooden and poorly ventilated. Whistling quietly, Gomez popped the first of the trio of cassettes into the wallslot and then went back to his chair and sat.

  On the three-foot screen in front of him appeared a longshot of the therapy session room.

  Seated in individual chairs were Moreno, Alicia and three others. There was a lean, greyhaired man in his middle seventies, an extremely thin black young woman of about seventeen and a tanned blond man in his thirties.

  Brow wrinkling, Gomez hunched in his rickety chair and leaned closer to the wallscreen.

  “For the record, since we’re cazing this,” began Dr. Moreno, “let’s intro ourselves. I’m Harry Moreno.”

  “Alicia Bower,” she said, looking away from the vidcam. Her voice was soft, quiet.

  “Ford Jaspers.” That was the greyhaired man. He had the deep, trained voice of an actor.

  “Everybody just calls me Slimjim,” said the black girl, folding her arms.

  “You don’t have to call yourself that, Jimalla,” the doctor told her.

  She lifted her narrow shoulders. “It’s okay, Doc.”

  The tan young man said, “Guy Woodruff.” Smiling across at Slimjim, he added, “Hey, I like Jimalla better.”

  “I don’t like Guy Woodruff as a name for this hombre,” said Gomez, his frown deepening. “He looks familiar—who the heck is he?”

  Behind the frowning detective the floor creaked once.

  He started to rise, to turn.

  But the crackling beam of a stungun hit him high in the side. Gomez gasped, made a dry, gagging sound and
then fell over.

  8

  JAKE WALKED CONFIDENTLY ACROSS the Service Landing field, which was at the rear of the multilevel metal and plastiglass Salkin Private Hospital.

  Stationed on a stool near a door marked nutritional supplies was a gunmetal robot. He wore a white smock, and built into the left hand that rested in his lap was a stungun. “Who’re you?” he inquired of Jake. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “Soyteen Food Products.” Jake passed the guardbot a coded ID card.

  “New?”

  “To this marketing area, yeah.”

  The robot inserted the card into a slot in his metal forehead. His right eye flashed briefly green, the card slid out. “You’ll find, Mr. Maxwell Arnold on Level 2. He’s the one handling the Soyteen account today.”

  “That’s right next to the Control Center, isn’t it?”

  “Two doors down,” answered the robot, returning the card Jake had paid one of his contacts $100 for a little less than an hour ago.

  He entered the hospital where Alicia Bower’s father was staying, walked along a blank, grey corridor to an upramp.

  He got off at Level 2, went striding right on by the office of Maxwell Arnold, and entered the Control Center. The vast room was rich with rows of computer terminals, banks of monitor screens and at least a dozen servobots manning various control stations.

  At a silvery metal desk near the doorway sat a human young woman. “Who’re you?” she asked, eyeing him. “What do you want?”

  Grinning amiably, Jake handed her a different ID card. This one had cost him $250. “I’m with Security Teletronics.”

  “What happened to Arnie?”

  “Ailing. I’m filling in for him.”

  “Arnie’s sick? What’s wrong?”

  Jake tapped his chest with his thumb. “Something internal.”

  “Poor guy.” She pushed the card into a desktop slot. The desk produced a pleased ping. “What is it you came to do? Arnie just did the annual checkup last month.”

  Taking back the card, Jake explained, “A complaint came in to some of your people from Mechanix International. They’re having trouble receiving the monitor pictures from Owen Bower’s room.”

  The young woman furrowed her brow, wrinkled her nose. “That room’s blanked.”