Tek Net (22 page)

Except that that was Quadrill's specialty. Yeah, even back when Jake first encountered him, Quadrill had a reputation for being able to slip by just about any kind of security.

“Okay, let's say he smuggled his bomb aboard the Movie Palace and got it planted someplace before he was killed.” Jake leaned back against the arm of a rubberoid lounging chair. “So where is it?”

Kneeling again, he ran the gadget over the open suitcase.

There was no trace of a bomb.

Did that mean Quadrill hadn't actually smuggled an explosive device aboard?

Or had he concocted something that was undetectable and untraceable?

“Let's assume he came here with a bomb that can't be spotted,” said Jake thoughtfully. “Okay, so I don't follow the bomb—I follow him.”

He stood, aimed the sniffer at the carpeting.

“Yeah, Quadrill forgot to make himself untraceable,” he said.

He'd be able to follow the trail Quadrill had left earlier, and that would take Jake right to where the bomb was planted.

“What exactly I'll do after I find the damn thing—well, I'll figure that out later.”

With the gadget held in his right hand, he moved to the door.

It opened ten seconds before he reached it, and a slick, handsome man with a lazgun was standing out there in the hall. “Just stay right there, friend,” he advised.

39

Natalie stumbled. “They certainly don't keep these supply tunnels very well illuminated,” she complained.

Catching her and helping her maintain her balance, Gomez said, “Tourists don't usually stray into this part of the satellite.”

They were walking along a catwalk that bordered a gradually ascending ramp. A single track ran along the center of the ramp. Small floating globes every few feet provided a thin yellowish light.

The reporter again brought her pocket talkpad up to her ear to listen to her notes. “We're still going in the—”

“Back,
carita
,” warned Gomez, putting his arm in front of the young woman and pushing her back against the tunnel wall.

A string of five monowheel supply carts went rattling and chugging by, loaded down with 'ponic produce.

“Yikes,” said the camera robot as the edge of a metal crate protruding over the edge of the last wagon in line scraped at his metal chest. “Wouldn't you know it, more damage to my surface.”

“It would really be helpful, and don't think I'm trying to be overly critical, Sidebar, but adopting an attitude of looking on the bright side, would certainly be helpful on a mission like this one we're embarked on, because—”

“What bright side, Nat?” the bot inquired. “Thus far I've been disabled with a stunner, had my favorite leg lopped off, been scraped, scratched and—”

“
Por favor
, let's continue on our way,” suggested the detective.

“Oh, and thanks for pulling me out of the way of those overloaded wagons, Gomez.”

“
De nada
.” He patted her on the backside, urging her to move along.

Natalie frowned over her shoulder at him, but said nothing. She put the talkpad to her ear. Nodding, she dropped it into her pocket and started climbing along the narrow catwalk.

After a few moments, Sidebar remarked, “Lettuce.”

Gomez frowned back at him. “Now what?”

“I stepped in some lettuce.”

After a few more moments, Natalie listened to her notes again. “Okay,” she said. “Around this next bend there's supposed to be some sort of safety ladder. We have to shinny up that for quite a ways and then there's supposed to be an unlocked metal door.”

“How far,” asked the bot, “is quite a ways, Nat?”

“A thousand feet,” she answered. “And forgive me if I give the impression that I'm continually and constantly nagging everybody, but I believe I have, on more than one previous occasion, mentioned that I don't really favor being addressed constantly as Nat. My name is Natalie and, while I don't insist that employees of mine address me any more formally than that—although it wouldn't hurt you, Sidebar, to use the appellation Miss Dent now and then, especially when we're in public situations, why—”

“We're crawling through a sewer basically,” put in the robot. “It's not my idea of a public occasion.”

“
Vámonos
,” prompted Gomez. “Let's keep moving.”

“There's the ladder.” Natalie hurried along the catwalk to gaze up into the shadows.

Gomez walked over to the base of the metal-rung ladder, reached up to test the lowest rung with his hand. “I'll lead the parade, Miss Dent,” he told her, and pulled himself up until his feet were resting on the bottom rung.

Natalie slid her talkpad into her skirt pocket and stretched up both hands. “I'd appreciate a little assistance, Gomez,” she said.

He climbed a few rungs higher, twisted and dangled down his right arm. “Catch hold,
chiquita
,” he offered.

On her second try she managed to grab his wrist and was lifted up onto the narrow ladder. “Okay, I've got a perch on the darn thing. Thanks.”

“Don't worry about me,” called the camera bot. “I'll just climb up the wall somehow.”

“You're extraordinarily dexterous,” Natalie reminded him from above. “After all, being able to cover every sort of news story, to shoot, really, vidfootage that's almost always, at the very least, passable, you have to be able to get yourself into all sorts of odd and unusual places and positions. So catching hold of a simple little ladder ought not to present too much of a challenge.”

“I didn't imply it was a challenge,” answered Sidebar.

Gomez pointed a thumb at the darkness above. “I'll meet you guys upstairs,” he said, and commenced climbing.

Clearing his throat, Marriner rose at the head of the large oval plastiglass meeting table. He glanced around at the eleven other places and asked, “Where's Maurice Pettifaux?”

Lana Chen, clad in a crisp off-white lab coat and seated next to him, said, “An accident, so I'm told, prevents his attending.”

“What sort of accident?”

Anzelmo, at the opposite end of the table, answered, “Maurice got himself ambushed in a goddamned quaint little alley in the Left Bank Enclave in Paris.”

The plump, crimson-haired Mrs. Dooley said, “They used at least a half-dozen lazrifles on poor Maury.”

“Yeah,” confirmed Anzelmo. “The frog cops never were able to find all of him.”

From midtable Roger Giford said, “This sounds like a reprisal to me, Marriner.”

“Exactly,” added Mrs. Dooley. “Our less fortunate Tek brothers getting back at us because they've heard we're throwing in with you.”

“Nobody,” Marriner assured them, “nobody whatsoever knows anything of this plan.”

“Oh, yeah? Then what about …” Anzelmo began patting his various pockets with his gnarled hands. “What the frig is that name?” The old Teklord kept frisking himself until he located, in an inner coat pocket, a small yellow faxmemo. “Okay, here it is. What about Natalie Dent?”

“A minor nuisance,” said Marriner. “Nothing more. Certainly not anyone to worry about.”

Anzelmo leaned forward, both elbows smacking the tabletop. “Does she happen to be aboard this flapping satellite now?”

Marriner held up his hand in a keep-calm gesture. “Natalie Dent was apprehended soon after she arrived on the Movie Palace,” he told the angry Teklord. “She's not going to tell anyone anything. Not ever.”

Mrs. Dooley frowned deeply. “That's the broad who works for Newz, Inc., isn't it? Always poking her nose into things.”

“That sure as hell is who we're talking about,” said Anzelmo. “Are you trying to con us, Marriner, into believing that her bosses at Newz don't have a fricking idea why she came up here?”

“The few people at Newz who have any hint of this are being neutralized,” Marriner said. “Trust me. As for Natalie Dent herself, we have her safely locked away. After this meeting, steps will be taken to …” He'd become aware that Lana was tugging on his sleeve. Leaning down closer, he asked her, “What?”

Lana put her lips close to his ear to whisper, “Just before I came in I learned she's not in her room anymore.”

“Then where the hell is she?”

“We don't know, but she's being hunted,” replied Lana. “Change the subject, Leon.”

He straightened up. “Now that we've got this minor stuff out of the way,” he said, “we can move to the real business of this meeting. My gifted colleague Lana Chen will give you a demonstration of the just perfected TekNet system.”

40

Jake looked from the lazgun to the face of the handsome man who stood pointing it at him, and grinned. “Ramon Rodriguez,” he said, recognizing him. “This looks like a step up for you from being assistant manager at the Boardwalk Teenage Android Bordello down in the San Pedro Sector of Greater LA.”

“Do I know you?”

“Under these false trappings I'm Jake Cardigan.”

Rodriguez took a surprised step backwards. “When I got the call about trouble down here,” he said, “I didn't expect to find Jake Cardigan, ex-con turned private eye.”

“You've found a hell of a lot more than that, Ramon,” Jake told him. “Take a look inside while I get on the track of—”

“You're not going much of anyplace, Cardigan.” He made a shooing motion with his gun hand. “Back inside so I can have a look around. I understand something pretty serious took place in this joint.”

Jake preceded him back into the room. “You must know this lad,” he said, stepping aside and nodding toward the sprawled corpse. “There's a strong possibility that—”

“Holy Christ, is that—what the hell is his name?—Quadrill? Yeah, Austin Quadrill.”

“That's exactly who it is, yeah,” confirmed Jake. “I'm near certain he brought a bomb aboard.”

Rodriguez took a few reluctant steps nearer the body. “I never can get used to the smell,” he admitted. “What's that about a bomb?”

“It's Quadrill's specialty, sneaking explosives into—”

“Naw, he couldn't have,” insisted Rodriguez. “We got too good a secsystem. Hell, I supervise that myself.”

“Even so, Ramon”—Jake jerked a thumb in the direction of the corpse—“the odds are Quadrill was hired to take care of Marriner and—”

“What are you talking about, Cardigan? Marriner's nowhere near the Movie Palace.”

“It was most likely Johnny Trocadero who hired Quadrill to take care of everybody attending Marriner's meeting with Anzelmo and company tonight.”

“You're not supposed to know about that.”

“Point is, I do,” Jake said. “I also know Quadrill was scheduled to take off from the Movie Palace just under three hours from now. That means his bomb can go off anytime after that.”

“This is all bullshit,” said Rodriguez. “You more than likely killed this poor bastard and now you're trying to con me with some—”

“Three hours isn't an especially long stretch of time, Ramon,” he cut in. “I think I can backtrack along Quadrill's trail and find out where he stowed the bomb. After that we're going to have to—”

“No, what you're going to have to do is get your ass into a detention area until I can—Oof!”

Not betraying his intention, Jake had all at once feinted to the right and then sidestepped and kicked out at Rodriguez. His boot took the surprised man in the crotch and he howled.

Jake dived forward, caught the gun arm and snapped it down.

The lazgun went off and dug a deep smoky zigzag rut across nearly two square feet of carpeting.

A fire warning alarm started hooting.

Two punches to the already groggy Rodriguez' chin and the handsome man lost consciousness. He stayed upright for about ten seconds before falling over and landing flat out next to the dead man.

Skirting the newly splashed blood, Jake headed for the way out.

Yedra Cortez was walking along the oceanside when twilight started to arrive.

Gulls, dark shadows across the greying sky, came gliding in low over the sea to land on the damp sand.

They began to look strange to the young woman, distorted. With immense wings and thin elongated bodies, and all of them colored a pulsing, glittering black.

A moment later the pain exploded in her head again. It was worse this time, throbbing in her skull and then shooting through her body. A cry came spilling out of her and she fell, knees jabbing hard into the darkening sand.

The gulls cried out like giant crows as they changed colors and started to wheel and whirl overhead, circling ever closer to her. They changed colors, too. Crimson, gold, dead white, silver, yellow, crimson, gold.

Then they went swirling away and night suddenly hit. She was aware of nothing but the pain.

Gasping, whimpering, she yanked her palmphone out of her trouser pocket. Yedra had to bring the damn thing right up to her eyes to see it. Bracing herself against the pain, she managed to punch out a number.

The phone couldn't have taken as long to answer as she thought it did.

Finally the face of a tired-looking, pale man showed on the tiny screen. “Jesus, Yedra, what the hell's wrong with you?”

“Nick?”

“Yeah, it's me. Where are you? I'll send somebody to—”

“I'm okay. Okay,” she said. “I thought you. Told me that the guy you sent up. To the Movie Palace to take. Care of Quadrill and. Kill him soon as the bomb. Was planted succeeded?”

“I did, honey. He took care of it for you, just like you asked me.”

“But the damned. Gadget that Quadrill had and. Was using to give me these. Damned headaches, you said he got. That and was bringing it back here. Nick.”

“He did get what you wanted, Yedra, right after he took care of the guy,” said Nick, concern showing on his pale face. “The trouble is …”