Montezuma Strip Read online

“Sorted what out?”

  “What Crescent and Noschek were doing together. It wasn’t in the boxes and it wasn’t in their files. No wonder corporate Security couldn’t find anything. They never would have. The answer wasn’t in their work. It was in them. In their voices, their attitudes, what they had in common and what they didn’t. In what they didn’t commit to storage. They shared their work but they kept themselves to themselves.”

  “A cop shouldn’t be full of riddles.”

  “Have you got a terminal here?”

  “Does a cow have udders?” She slid off the bed, jounced across the room, and touched a switch. A portion of wall slid upward to reveal a small screen while the vorec popped out of a slot nearby, an obedient metal eel. He walked over and plucked it from its holder, studied the screen. They were both naked, both comfortable with it and each other.

  “Pretty fancy setup for a household.”

  “Think. I have to work at home sometimes. I need more than a toy.” She leaned against him.

  “Look, let me concentrate for a minute, will you?”

  She straightened. He saw her teeth flash in the dim light. “Okay. But only for a minute.”

  He activated the screen, filled the vorec mike with a steady stream of instructions. It was slower than the Designer units he’d sponged at Parabas and GenDyne but far faster than any normal home unit. Soon he was running the files he needed from both companies. Then he surprised Hypatia by accessing Nogales. The problem he set up was for the Sociopsycultural Department at the U of A. It didn’t take the University Box long to render its determination.

  “There it is.”

  She stared at the screen, then back at him. “There what is?”

  “Answers, maybe.” He slipped the vorec back into its slot. The screen went dark. “Let’s ambulate.”

  “What, now?” She ran fingers through her unkempt hair. “Don’t you ever give a lady a chance to catch up?”

  “You can catch up next week, next month.” He’d found his pants and was stepping into them. “I think I know what happened. Most of it, anyway. The data make sense. It’s what our two boys did that doesn’t make sense, but I think they went and did it anyway.”

  She thumbed a closet open and began rummaging through her clothes. “You mean you know who vacuumed them?”

  He fastened the velcrite of his waistband. The blue federales bracelet bounced on his wrist. “Nobody vacuumed them. They vacuumed themselves.”

  She paused with the velcrite catch of her bra. “Another riddle? I’m getting tired of your riddles, Angel.”

  “No riddle. They vacuumed themselves. Simultaneously, via program. I think it was a double suicide. And by the way, I’m no Angel. It’s ‘Ahn-hell,’ for crissakes.”

  “That’s Tex-Mex. I only speak anglo.”

  “Screw you.”

  She struck a pose. “I thought you were in a hurry to leave?”

  Security let them back into GenDyne but they weren’t happy about it. There was something wrong about cops going to work at three A.M. The guard in the hall took his time. His helmet flared as the scanner roved over both nocturnal visitors. Just doing his job. Eventually he signed them through.

  They went straight to Crescent’s office. It was the same as they’d left it, nothing moved, unexpectedly sterile-looking under the concealed incandescents. Cardenas found his gaze returning unwillingly to the bright family portraits that hovered above the desk.

  He flicked the vorec and brought the wallscreen online. He warmed up with some simple mnemonics before getting serious with the tactical verbals he’d decided to use. Hypatia caught her breath as the wall flared, but no psychomorph coalesced to threaten them. Cardenas was being careful, additionally so with Hypatia in the room. Charliebo cocked his head sideways as he stared at the screen.

  Five minutes later Cardenas had the answer to the first of his questions.

  “It’s tactile. Same kind of concealed setup Noschek had in his place.”

  “Jesus! You could warn a body.”

  “There’s no danger. I’m not sponging deep yet. All surface. There are ways. I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to trigger anything.”

  “Thanks,” she said dryly.

  He drove in, the words flowing in a steady stream into the vorec as he keyed different levels within the main GenDyne box. This time he went in fast and easy. He went wherever he wanted to without any problem—and that was the problem. After what seemed like fifteen minutes he paused to check his bracelet. Two hours gone. Soon it would be light outside.

  Hypatia had settled herself on the edge of the desk. She was watching him intently. “Anything?”

  “Not what I came for. Plenty Parabas would pay to get their hands on. I’m sure the reverse would be true if I was sponging their box like this.” He shook his head as he regarded the screen. “There’s got to be another box in there, somewhere. Or a section that’s reading out dead.”

  “Impossible. You need full cryo to keep the box wet and accessible. You can’t just set something like that up in the middle of an outfit like GenDyne without tripping half a dozen alarms.”

  “Alarms are usually set to warn of withdrawal, not entry.”

  “Any kind of solid insertion like that would have people asking questions.”

  “You can avoid questions if you can avoid notice. These guys were wizards at avoiding notice.”

  She crossed her arms. “I still say it’s impossible.”

  He turned back to the wall. “We’ll see.”

  He found it only because he had some idea what he was looking for. No one else would have glanced at it. There was no separate box. Hypatia was right about that. Instead it was buried deep within the basic GenDyne box itself, disguised as a dormant file for a biolight conveyor. When he sponged it Hypatia caught her breath.

  “My God. A subox tunnel.”

  “I’ve heard about them,” Cardenas murmured tightly, “but I’ve never actually seen one before.”

  “That’s as close to being invisible as you can get and still be inside a box.” She was standing close to the wall now, examining the holo intensely. “Whoever engineered this was half Designer and half magician.”

  Cardenas found himself nodding. “That’s our boys.” He studied the slowly rotating cylindrical schematic. “The key question is, where does it go?” He was set to start in when Hypatia stopped him, walking over to put a hand on his arm and block his view of the screen.

  “Maybe we better get some help. This is way over my head.”

  “And therefore mine, too?” He smiled. “You don’t have to know how to build a plane to know how to fly one. I can handle it.”

  “More psychomorphs? And who knows what else.”

  “I’m ready for it this time. Hypatia, I can intuit fast. Anything starts coming out of that tube I’ll just dry out.”

  “Man, I hope you know what you’re doing.” She stepped aside. Together they stared as he spoke into the vorec and started down the tunnel.

  They encountered no traps, no guards. Smart. Oh, so smart, he thought to himself. Make it look like an ordinary part of the box. Make it look like it belongs. Normalcy was the best disguise.

  They wouldn’t put him off the track with that. Because even though he didn’t understand the how yet, he knew the why.

  Hypatia asked him about it again. “I still don’t get this double suicide business.”

  “It’s what they were.” He spoke between commands to the vorec, waiting while the wall complied with each sequence of instructions. He was tense but in control. It was one lonnnng tube.

  “Noschek particularly. He was the key. You see, part of the tragedy was that they could never meet in person. Security would have found out right away and that would have finished both of them. It meant they could only communicate through the joint Fordmatsu link they established. Like in the old times when people sent information by personal messenger. It was too complex, too involved, too intense for it to just be business. Ther
e had to be more to it than that. And then when I couldn’t find any business at all, that clinched it.”

  “Clinched what?”

  “The fact that they had to be lovers. Via the Fordmatsu link. Crescent and Noschek were homosexual, Hypatia.”

  She went dead quiet for several minutes before replying. “Oh, come on, Angel! Crescent had a family. Two kids.”

  “He was latent. Probably all his life. That’s why I had to run double profiles together with what I suspected through the Sociopsycultural box up at U of A. It confirmed. I’m sure if we had time to go over their lives in more detail we’d find plenty of other clues.

  “You told me Crescent was a trueglue GenDyne man. I’m sure he was. GenDyne’s about as liberal as its multinat counterparts. Which is to say, not at all. Two Fundamentalists on its Board. Crescent knew if he strayed once it would put endo to his career. So he stayed in the closet. Covered himself thoroughly for the sake of his future. I’ve no doubt he loved his wife. Meanwhile everything proceeded the way he’d probably dreamed it might. Gradually his tendencies faded as he buried himself in his family and work.

  “Then Noschek came along, possibly through a casual social hookup. A brilliant, wild young talent. Pretty to boot. And they got to know each other. Most relationships develop. This one exploded.”

  “So they ‘related’ through box links?”

  He nodded. “Try to imagine what they must have gone through. It’s all there in their voices, in the stuff I was able to sponge from the months before they vacuumed. They knew they couldn’t meet. Crescent knew it would ruin him. I don’t know if that bothered Noschek—he didn’t seem to give a damn for social conventions. But he cared about Crescent. So they built this Fordmatsu link out of stolen crunch.”

  “They wouldn’t need all that crunch just to maintain a private communication.”

  “Exactly. So they started discussing their problem, fooling around with all that excess crunch they had access to. Meanwhile their relationship just kept getting tighter and tighter at the same time as they were becoming increasingly frustrated with their situation.

  “Eventually they found something. Noschek was the innovator, Crescent the experienced constructor. They discovered a way to be together. Always.”

  “Through mutual suicide?” She shook her head. “That doesn’t bring people together. It doesn’t profile, either. Noschek sure, but Crescent was too stable to go for that.”

  “How stable do you think he would have been if his wife had ever found out? Or his kids? The only way to spare them the disgrace was to make it look like a murder. That way our boys would be able to slip away untarnished and untroubled.”

  “So they figured out a way to vacuum themselves? Papiermâiché wings and brass harps and the whole metaphysical ensemble?”

  “No. They’re vacuumed, alright, but they’re not gone. They’re together, like they wanted to be. Together in a sense no one else can understand. I wonder if they fully understood it themselves. But they were willing to take the risk.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  He took a deep breath. “Consider all the crunch they’d been siphoning from Fordmatsu. Then consider Noschek’s hobbies. One of them is real interesting. You ever hear of MR?”

  “Like in ‘mister’?”

  “No. Like in morphological resonance.”

  She made another face. “Gimme a break, Angel. I’m just a lousy Designer. What the hell is morphological resonance?”

  “The concept’s been around for decades. Not many people take it seriously. The scientific establishment has too much invested in existing theories. That doesn’t put off those folks who are more interested in the truth than intellectual comfort. People like Noschek. When I found out he was into it I did some reading.

  “A long time ago somebody ran a bunch of rats through a series of mazes in Scotland. The same mazes, over and over, for much longer than anyone would think necessary to prove a point. Each time the rats ran a maze they managed it a little faster.”

  “That’s a revelation?”

  “Consider this, then.” He leaned forward. “Some folks in Australia decided to run the same maze. Identical as to size, distance, configuration, reward at the end, everything. The first time they tried it the rats ran the distance just a hair faster than the first time their Scottish cousins ran it. Then they repeated the experiment in India. Same thing. The Indian rats got off to a quicker start than did the Australians. What do you get from that?”

  She looked bemused. “That Indian rats are smarter than Scottish or Australian rats?”

  He shook his head impatiently. “It wasn’t just done with rats and mazes. Other similar experiments were run, with identical results. For the scientific establishment that hasn’t been conclusive enough. But it hasn’t stopped theorists from making proposals.”

  “It never does.”

  “It was suggested that each time an intelligent creature repeats something exactly as previously done, it sets up a resonance. Not in the air. In—spacetime, the ether, I don’t know. But it’s there, and the more it’s repeated the stronger and more permanent the resonance becomes, until it spreads far enough to affect the identical pattern no matter where it’s repeated. That’s where the rats come in. The theory holds that the rats in Australia were picking up on the resonance set up by the maze runners in Scotland. Then again in India. Which is why they ran the maze slightly faster at the start and progressively thereafter for the duration of the experiment. The resonance gave them a head start.

  “MR’s been used to explain a lot of things since it was first formulated, up to and including mankind’s exponential progress in science and technology. According to the theory we’re working on one hell of an expanding resonance. Each time we come up with something new it’s because we’re building on thought patterns or experimental methodology that’s been repeated in the past.”

  “What’s all this got to do with our departed Designers?”

  “You told me what a supercooled Cribm can do. Trillions of crunch a second. Unthinkable quantity in an hour. Incalculable content in a day. Cribms are used to crunch whole bushels of problems. Suppose you set it to process just one problem, instead of hundreds. Set it to run the sequence over and over, trillions upon trillions of times. Think of the resonance you could set up. Enough to last a long time without fading. Maybe even enough to become permanent. “He nodded toward the flickering, flaring wallscreen.

  “You could set it up in there.”

  She followed his gaze, found herself whispering. “Crescent and Noschek?”

  “Safe, together. As a dual resonance. Patterns of memory, electrical impulses: what we call memory. Reduced to streams of electrons and run over and over until brought separately into being as a floating resonance inside a box. Not in formal storage, exactly. Different. Independent of the box systems and yet localized by them. So they’d hang together even better. They reduced themselves to a program the Cribm could process and set it to repeating the designated patterns, using all that stolen crunch. They’re in there, Hypatia. In a box built for two.”

  “That’s crazy.” Her mouth was suddenly dry. For the first time she felt uncomfortable in the cool office. The door, the unbreakable window, were keeping them in instead of others out. “You can’t box a person.”

  “Resonance, Hypatia. Not a program as we conceive of one. Repetition creates the pattern, brings it into existence. You vacuum yourself into the Cribm and it repeats you back into existence. As to whether that includes anything we’d recognize as consciousness I don’t know.”

  “If it’s a pattern the Cribm can repeat, maybe it could be—accessed?”

  His expression was somber. “I don’t know. I don’t know how they’re in there, if they’re just frozen or if they have some flexibility. If they’re anything more than just a twitch in spacetime, Hypatia, they’ve found immortality. Even if the power to the box fails the resonance should remain. It may be restricted in range bu
t it’s independent of outside energy. The resonance maintains itself. Don’t get me started on thermodynamics. The whole thing’s cockeyed. But it’s not new. People have been discussing it for decades.”

  “Easier when they’re talking about rats,” she murmured. “You say they’re restricted by the confines of the box. Can they move around inside it?”

  “You’ve got the questions, I haven’t got the answers. We’re dealing with something halfway between physics and metaphysics. I don’t know if I should consult a cyberneticist or a medium.” He indicated the tunnel on the screen. “Maybe when we get to the end of that we’ll find something besides a dead end.”

  She joined him in monitoring their progress. The tunnel seemed endless. By now it should have pushed beyond the confines of the GenDyne box, yet it showed no signs of weakening.

  “They took a terrible chance. They worked awfully hard to hide themselves.”

  Cardenas stroked Charliebo. “Maybe all to no end. The theories I’ve enumerated might be just that. It’s more than likely they’re as dead as their physicalities.”

  “Yeah. But if there’s anything to it—if there’s anything in there—they might not like being disturbed. Remember the psychomorph.”

  “I’m pretty sure I can handle the screen if it goes tactile again, now that I’ve got an idea what to expect. I can always cut the power.”

  “Can you? You said this resonance, if it exists, would remain whether the power was on or not.”

  “Their resonance, yes, but cutting the power would deprive them of access to the system—assuming they’re able to interface with it at all. They could have inserted traps like the psychomorph before they vacuumed themselves.”

  “And you think you can access this resonance?”

  “If it exists, and only if it’s somehow interfaced with the GenDyne box.”

  Three hours later the rising sun found them no nearer the end of the tunnel than when they’d begun. Thirty years earlier Cardenas could have hung on throughout the day. Not anymore. There were times when mandatory retirement no longer seemed a destination to be avoided. This was one of them.