Montezuma Strip Read online

“Not surprising, really. I wonder if it would’ve made a difference if you or I had tripped it first. Because it wasn’t a psychomorph.”

  She gaped at him.

  “It wasn’t a psychomorph,” he said again. “It was a—let’s call it a manifesting resonance. A full-field projection. I asked you if you saw it. I asked you what it looked like. You had a ventral view. I saw it face on.” Now he found he was able to turn and look at the shepherd’s corpse.

  “It wasn’t a psychomorph. It was Charliebo.”

  She said nothing this time, waiting for him to continue, wondering if she’d be able to follow him. She could. It wasn’t that difficult to understand. Just slightly impossible. But she couldn’t find the argument to contradict him with.

  “Their last defense,” he was saying. “If you can’t lick ’em, make ‘em join you. You were right when you called it a reciprocal program. Vacuum the first intruder and use him to keep out anybody thereafter. That way you don’t expose yourself. Co-opt the first one clever enough to make it that far down the tunnel. It could’ve been you. It could’ve been me. They were luckier than they could’ve dreamed. They got Charliebo.

  “Noschek and Crescent. Couple of clever boys. Too clever by half. I won’t be surprised if they’ve learned how to manipulate their new environment. If so, they’ll know their reciprocal’s been triggered. Maybe they’ll try to move. Somewhere more private. Maybe they can cut the tunnel. We’re dealing with entirely new perceptions, new notions of what is and isn’t reality, existence. I don’t think they’d take kindly to uninvited visitors, but now Charliebo’s in there somewhere with them, wherever ‘there’ is. Maybe they’ll be easier on him. I don’t think he’ll be perceived as much of a threat.”

  She chose her words slowly. “I think I understand. The first key triggered the reciprocal program and Charliebo got vacuumed. When that bastard tried to go around it…”

  “He got Charliebo’s resonance instead of Crescent or Noschek. I hope they enjoy having him around. I always did.” He helped her stand on shaky legs.

  “What now?”

  As he held on to her he began to wonder who was supporting whom. “I could go back to Nogales, close the file, report it officially as unsolvable. Leave Noschek and Crescent to their otherwhere privacy. Or—we could dig in and try going back.”

  She whistled softly. “I’m not sure I can take any more of their surprises. What if next time they come out for us instead of Charliebo? Or if they send something else, something new they’ve found floating around down in the guts of otherwhere?”

  “We’ll go slow. Put up our own defenses.” He jerked his head in the flashman’s direction. “He seemed to think his people would know how to do it. Maybe with a little help from GenDyne’s box we can, too.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then we’ll see.”

  It took almost a month for them to learn how to recognize and thereby avoid the remaining tunnel guards. Crescent and Noschek failed to manifest themselves when the end of the tunnel was finally reached. There was a subox there, alright, but it proved empty. The Designers’ resonances had gone elsewhere. There were hints, clues, but nothing they could be certain of. Tiny tracks leading off into a vast emptiness that might not be as empty as everyone had once suspected. Suggestions of a new reality, a different otherwhere.

  They didn’t push. There was plenty of time and Cardenas had no intention of crowding whatever the two men had become. It/They was dangerous.

  But there was another way, clumsy at first. It would take patience to use it. What was wonderfully ironic was that in their attempt to defend themselves, to seal their passage, Crescent and Noschek had unwittingly provided those who came after with a means for following.

  First it was necessary to have Hypatia jumped several grades. GenDyne balked but finally gave in. Anything to aid the investigation, to speed it along its way. What the company didn’t know, couldn’t imagine, was what way that investigation was taking. And Senior Designer Spango and Sergeant Cardenas weren’t about to tell them. Not yet. Not until they could be sure.

  Besides which the additional salary would be useful to a newly married couple.

  There was uncertainty on both sides at first. Gradually hesitation gave way to recognition, then to understanding. After that there was exchange of information, most but not all of it one-way. Once this had been established not only GenDyne’s box was open to inspection but also that of Parabas S.A. and through the power of the Fordmatsu link everything one would ever want to access. Including an entirely new state of reality that had yet to be named.

  Cardenas and Spango played with it for a while, kids enjoying the biggest toy that had ever been developed. Then it was time to put aside childish things and take the plunge into that otherwhere Crescent and Noschek had discovered, where existence meant something new and exciting and a whole universe of new concepts and physical states of matter and energy danced a dance that would need careful exploration and interpretation.

  But they had an advantage that could not have been planned for, one even Noschek and Crescent hadn’t had.

  They wouldn’t be jumping in blind because they wouldn’t be alone.

  Hypatia had pulled her chair up next to his. It was quiet in the office. The climate conditioning whispered softly. The walls and door were secursealed. Cardenas had checked every light bulb by hand.

  In front of them Crescent’s wallscreen glowed with symbols and figures and words, with rotating holo shapes and lines. The tunnel stretched out before them, narrowing now to a point. Only it wasn’t a point; it was an end, and a beginning. The jumping-off place. The ledge overlooking the abyss of promise.

  They knew what they wanted, had worked it out in the previous weeks. They knew where they wanted to go and how to get there.

  Cardenas took Hypatia’s hand in his, squeezed tightly. Not to worry now. Not anymore. Because they weren’t doing this alone. He raised the vorec to his lips.

  “Fetch,” he said.

  From the Notebooks of Angel Cardenas:

  Okay, so I didn’t lose a dog: I gained a program. You just have to be careful how you use programs. Handle With Dare. In the old days messing one up cost you some time, maybe a little money, maybe even a lot of aggravation. Programs have changed a lot. Now they can mess with you. Now one could cost you your life.

  Isn’t progress wonderful?

  I miss Charliebo, but then there are people I miss, too. Compadres who never made retirement, ladies who met guys involved in more stable professions, people I’ve met on the street. Funny thing, about the streets throughout the Strip. They eat people. Gobble them up, digest them, discard them so thoroughly you can’t even find the droppings. That’s because there’s way too much money around. Me, I always tell the ninlocos and the sararimen and the floaters that you can’t take it with you.

  I understand MegaMolly and Sapience France are working on that program right now.

  With so much credit abounding and so many diversions readily available, reality tends to get short shrift. I love that word, homber. You know the term? As in, “Do you got enough shrift?”

  Money drives the Strip. Lights it, feeds it, clothes it, runs it. Everybody wants the stuff. Abstract numbers. Extra zeros. Most people work for it, but some try to take. I try to brake those who take. They say break. You say tomato, I say tomahto, you say potato, I say patata. Let’s call the whole thing off, otherwise I got to read you your rights. Only, my rights come first, citizens second. Why? Because a dead cop’s not going to do you any good.

  I don’t have to intuit that, and neither should you.

  Thirty years on the Strip, you get a feel for people, for money, and for how they interact. Every once in a while you cross a situation where the money’s actually incidental to the incident, if you follow my meaning. This time I didn’t follow the meaning, and it cost. Not me. Some kids. It always costs the kids.

  Near as I can historize, that’s one thing that hasn’t changed in the la
st seven thousand years or so.

  Heartwired

  “CAN’ you do nothin’ about the little null, Paco? He makes me nervous, the way he lookin’ at me tonight.”

  Her neg glanced back down the street. Sure enough, the kid was still trailing them, his big puppy eyes focused forlornly on Paco’s main pos. But the monsoon had stopped for the noche, it was an under forty-d night, and he was feeling expansive.

  “Just ignore him, ‘Nita. All the guys stare at you the same way.”

  “Yeah, but they just look. They don’ follow me around.”

  He slipped his arm around her waist and pulled her close. “He’s harmless. Hey, if it’s really bothering you, I’ll get rid of him, but he’s handy to have around sometimes. Like a shorter in your pocket. Think of him like that; like a tool.”

  “I guess it doesn’t matter.” She smiled at her neg. Paco was big, almost as big as Contrario, and certainly the handsomest member of the Teslas. And he’d picked her to be his pos. She leaned against him, feeling the tautness of his body beneath the shirt, content as they splashed through the puddles deposited earlier in the day by the intense July storm, her charged boots keeping her feet and legs dry. Negs, and poses side by side, the gang marched cockily up the street, commandeering the sidewalk from regular citizens as they kept a wary watch out for other ninlocos.

  Wormy G hung five meters back, keeping close to the armor glass of the storefronts, savoring each glimpse of Anita up ahead. In his heart he knew he was the only one, the only male on the planet who truly appreciated her. To him, she was more than merely attractive; she was a logarithmic sculpture, the essence of beauty, a magnet for all that was good and fine and clean in this sordid world. He knew that his existence barely impinged on her consciousness, that she hardly knew he was alive. It did not matter. He was aware of her.

  She was the sun: intense, life-giving, pulsing with warmth and light. He was content simply to orbit her.

  And there was the little secret they shared.

  When by chance her gaze happened to encounter him, her expression invariably turned to one of disgust or indifference. He couldn’t understand why. Maybe he wasn’t a sinewy elemental force like Paco, but neither was he invisible or disfigured. Nor was he a spacebase junkie. It puzzled him how after having shared their secret for so long, she could continue to ignore him so utterly.

  He did understand why they wouldn’t let him into the gang. While he wanted desperately to belong, he didn’t fit the image of a ninloco. He was too sane, too respectful of reason and logic, if not convention. They let him hang around because his knowledge of locks and vorecs was sometimes useful, because he could build and repair the gadgetry and toys that the gang frequently acquired by illegal means. He was tolerated, but not liked. He ignored their snickering insults because it was the only way he could get close to Anita.

  There were at least a dozen gangs that called Puerto Penasco home. The Teslas and Newts, the Comenciados and Vitshines along with the Sangres and Orotoros were the best organized, the ones sane enough to hang together for more than a month at a time without self-destructing. The others disintegrated and re-formed regularly, sometimes under entirely new names. They lived in a condition of colloidal anarchy, battling among themselves as often as with rivals. This made it tough on the local federales, since a gang member one week might metamorphose into an independent skim artist the next.

  A blue cruiser went by, its powerful electric engine humming threateningly. Several members of the gang waved gaily at the feds inside. They knew they were invulnerable. You couldn’t arrest somebody for being a member of a gang. It would violate the Thirty-eighth Amendment, or some legal thing like that.

  Of course, they could hassle you. Nothin’ in the Thirty-eighth Amendment against hasslin’, homber. Maybe it was the heat, maybe they weren’t in the mood, but, for whatever reason, the feds chose not to bother the Teslas that night. Hassling in the heat was no fun, and it was the dead middle of the July Sticky.

  Wormy G did not hate Paco. Hate was a mature emotion to be visited only on worthy targets. It would’ve been wasted on a brain-damaged blob of steroidal mush like Anita’s misbegotten neg.

  He did envy him his gang tattoo; the electrified coil that danced across his tricep, spitting tattooed blood and sparks. It was too expansive to fit on Wormy’s thinner arm, but would look nice on his chest. He’d thought of getting one there and keeping it hidden, like the secret he shared with Anita. His own private gang emblem. A laser wash would take it right off if it were discovered.

  What stopped him was the knowledge that Paco and his fellow ninlocos wouldn’t allow him the luxury of a wash. They’d choose to remove it themselves. Slowly, with sharp knives, if they found the emblem on him or anyone else not anointed a member of the gang. So he continued to savor the idea while passing on the reality.

  He turned off the mike in his cap and fingered the vorec in the pocket of his shorts. If Anita would put on her Muse lenses, he could send her a song. He tried to gauge her mood. Sometimes she listened, but there were nights when she complained to Paco. Usually Wormy chose to take the risk. Because when Paco and the others were beating him up, he was closer to Anita. Such beatings were hardly ever dangerous. Only painful. It was no fun beating on someone who just hung limp in your hands and didn’t even try to get away. Weird. Almost weird enough to qualify for admission to the Teslas.

  They hung around Gordo Mike’s until late; snacking on ray satay, frijoles, and grouper mole, sneering at the cleanroomies with their oh-so-tricked-out dates. Tomorrow the cleanies would vanish, sucked as if by a giant corporate vacuum back into the hi-tech plants that lined the Bahias de Adair and San Jorge, there to labor churning out products and components for the multinats that were the reason for the Montezuma Strip’s existence.

  Big money, hi-tech, cheap labor. The Strip drew people from all over Namerica and points south; anybody who could fly, ride, walk, or crawl to The Border. Nursing a crop of doped gallium arsenide or microbio storage proteins paid a helluva lot better than growing corn and potatoes.

  Beneath the immense service sector that kept the cleanies happy were the parasites, and below them the undefinables like the ninlocos. The crazyboys. Wormy G brushed stringy black hair off his eyes. Maybe he couldn’t match Paco’s strength, but at least he kept himself clean.

  They didn’t have to get rid of him. He knew when it was time for him to fade into the shadows, when his presence began to become an embarrassment to them. He didn’t much feel like taking a beating, either, so he left early, frustrated at having been unable to gift Anita with one of his compositions. But she’d never donned her Muse lenses, the thick glasses that delivered vits and sound to eyes and ears. Not in a musical mood tonight. So there would be no sharing of secrets, no interruption of regular programming by the arduously constructed broadcast unit he carried in his pocket.

  Sometimes, out of curiosity, she listened. His lyrics were platitudes, uninspired if feverish. He was better at the music, good enough to hold her interest if she was sufficiently bored or indifferent.

  Those brief moments, however impersonal, were a form of contact. Wormy playing, broadcasting just for Anita. It was what he prayed for, what he lived for, every day.

  He made his way through the night lights and the screaming laser ads and drifting holos that implored him to buy, try, don’t be a null-lined guy, down to where the towering codos lined the beach. The factories and assembly plants and research facilities lay to the north and east, the beach having been reserved for the cleanies who could afford to live facing the waters of the Golfo Californio instead of the dry inland desert.

  The surrounding security gates kept out the likes of thieves and muggers, but not Wormy G. It wasn’t hard to get in. The system was verbally cued. The voices of individual codo owners keyed the gates. Wormy had spent a couple of days with an absolutely faz specially rebuilt Siemens modified directional mike recording the voices of codo owners as they came and went. After tha
t, it took no time at all to install selected settings in his voice-recognition unit.

  He approached a side gate, checked to make sure the night patrol wasn’t around, and keyed the vorec. Out came the voice of a plump, middle-aged mask sculptor. The gate analyzed, acknowledged, and popped. He made sure to close it tight behind him.

  Down under the massive concrete pilings where damp sand stunk of dead sea-things, paint cartridges, spraywall buckets, and salt-resistant polycarb binders, his boat lay concealed beneath a tarp stained with crusted liquid waterproofing. He hit the battery-powered pump and waited for it to inflate. Two minutes later he was dragging it out onto the beach, gazing at the Christmas lights of the towering codos that lined the coast all the way down to Guyamas.

  There was little wave action this far up the Gulf. Salt water slapped his legs as he pushed the inflatable into the water.

  Jumping aboard, he turned to activate the tiny electric motor. It wheezed to whispery life and pushed him seaward. It wouldn’t make much speed, but he was in no particular hurry. His destination lay more than a hundred kilometers nearer than the cross-Gulf town of San Felipe.

  Like a fiery medieval fortress, the Puerto Peñasco desalinization plant loomed out of the dark water on immense pilings, adrift on an onlooker’s imagination like something from another world. It groaned and complained, the vast metallic guts emitting prehistoric sonorities. It looked as if at any minute it could abandon its footing deep within the sands of the Gulf to stride toward the land, like some monster from an ancient entertainment vit, to smash the codos and their inhabitants to pulp and rip apart the factories that stretched north along the highways.

  The plant and others like it supplied fresh water to the states of Sonora and Arizona and the industries they supported along the southern portion of the Strip.

  Beneath the plant itself, clinging to the near impenetrable jungle of intake tubes and valves, switching pumps and cleaning stations and filtration tanks, were isolated habitats. Thrown together out of scavenged wood and metal and plastics, they were home to those few individuals independent and resourceful enough to eke out an existence underneath the facility.