Montezuma Strip (8 page)

“Go ahead and shout, if you want to.” The flashman calmly touched the Scrambler to Hypatia’s exposed left breast.

She thrashed. Hard, but not hard enough to break the secrylic. She whined loud enough to penetrate the slightly porous gag.
The flashman showed the Scrambler to Cardenas again, ignoring the heavy, gasping form beneath him.

“See here? No safety. A simple modification.” Cardenas bit down on his lower lip hard enough to draw blood but he kept his
hands at his sides, his feet motionless. “You shout,
you move funny, and I’ll shove this between her legs. Maybe it won’t kill her, but she won’t care.”

“I won’t shout.” Only practice enabled him to reply calmly, quietly. His fingers were bunched into fists, the nails digging
into the flesh of his palms.

“That’s a good little sponger.”

“How long?”

Again the grin. “Since Crescent vacuumed himself. Since the investigation started.” He looked ceilingward, toward the low-key
incandescents. “One bulb up there’s got an extra filament. Records and holds. Can’t broadcast each pickup. Security would
track it. Just a five-second high-speed burst when a receive-only passes outside the door. Me. Just enough range to clear
the room. Not real noticeable, if you know what I mean. I walk by once a day, stop long enough to sneeze, move on. Hardly
suspicious. Then playback at normal speed when I’m home. Nothing very entertaining until you showed up.”

“You’ve been monitoring her place, too.”

The flashman chuckled. “Sure now. You think I knew she’d be coming here tonight via e.s.p.? Expected you to snore on. Been
getting some custom design work of your own?”

He took a step forward. The flashman lowered the Scrambler slightly. Cardenas saw Hypatia’s eyes widen, her body tense.

“Ah-ah. Don’t want to make me nervous, Federale.” Cardenas took back the step, his expression bland, screaming inside. “Glad
you started pushing your hypothesis here, man. I would’ve been in a world of hurt if you’d started down this tunnel over at
Parabas. Guess I’m just lucky.”

“What do you want?”

“Don’t games me. I want whatever’s at the end of this tunnel. A subox, resonance, miracle crunch. Access. Same thing you’ve
been after. ‘Morphological resonance’. That’s wild, man. Immortality? Wilder still. Relax. You’ll cramp your head.”

“And if you find it?”

The flashman nodded toward the side of the desk. Cardenas saw the metal and plastic plug-in lying there. He couldn’t see the
cable link but knew it must be present, running to jacks beneath the desk.

“One sequence. I finalize, then do a quick store-and-transfer. Anything valuable and there ought to be plenty.” He licked
his lips. “Never seen a tunnel like this. Nobody has. Construction crunch alone’s worth all the trouble this has taken.”

“But you want more.”

The flashman smiled broadly. “Man, I want it
all.”

“You’ll take it and leave?”

The man nodded. “I’m a thief. Not a vacuumer. Not unless you make me. I get what I’ve been after for months and I waft.” He
gestured with the Scrambler. Hypatia flinched. “I’ll even leave you this. Memories can be so much fun.”

“Assuming there’s even anything in there to steal, what makes you think you can transfer a resonance?”

“Don’t know unless you try, right? If you can get something in you ought to be able to get it out. It’s only crunch. Key the
box, key the transfer, and it’s off to friends in the Mid East.”

“Immortality for the petrochem moguls?” Cardenas’s tone was thick with contempt.

“That’s up to them to figure out. Not my department. I just borrow things. But they’ll have the subox, if there is one. Our
farseeing pinkboys are going on another trip. Suppose they can slip in and out of any box they’re introduced to? My employers
could send them on lots of vacations. A little crunch out of First EEC Bank, some extra out of Soventem. With that kind of
access petrochems will seem like petty cash stuff.”

Cardenas shook his head. “You
are crazy.
Even if they’re in there in any kind of accessible shape what makes you think you can force Noschek and Crescent to do what
you want?”

“Also not my job. I’m just assured it can be done, theoretically anyway. But then this is all theory we’re jawing, isn’t
it? Unless I find something to transfer.” He turned to the screen. “Starting to narrow. I think maybe we’re getting near tunnelend.
Stay put.” He rose, straddling Hypatia. He wasn’t worried about her moving. The Scrambler assured that.

The petitpoint pusher in Cardenas’s shirt pocket felt big as a tractor against his chest. The little gun would make a nice,
neat hole in the flashman’s head, but he couldn’t chance it. If he missed, if he was a second too slow, the man could make
spaghetti of half Hypatia’s nervous system. Thirty years teaches a man patience. He restrained himself.

But he’d have to do something soon. If there was a subox holding a resonance named Crescent and Noschek he couldn’t let this
bastard have it.

The flashman removed a vorec, still clutching the Scrambler tight in his other hand. He was trying to watch Cardenas and the
wallscreen simultaneously. Hypatia he wasn’t worried about. As Cardenas looked on helplessly the man spoke softly into the
vorec. Patterns shifted on the wall. The steady thrum of the aural playback became a whispery moan, an electronic wind. The
tunnel continued to narrow. They were very near the end now and whatever lay there, concealed and waiting. The flashman smiled
expectantly.

Teeth began to come out of the wall.

The flashman retreated until he was leaning against the side of the desk, but it was an instinctive reaction, not a panicky
one. Clearly he knew what he was doing. Now he would use the key Cardenas had concocted following his own previous confrontation,
use it to dry up the power to the psychomorph. Then he could continue on to the end of the tunnel, having bypassed the psychic
trap. Cardenas watched as he spoke into the vorec.

The teeth were set in impossibly wide jaws. Above the jaws were pupilless crimson eyes.

The flashman spoke again, louder this time. A third time. The psychomorph swelled out of the wall, looming over Hypatia. She
lay on her back staring up at it. It ignored her as it concentrated on the flashman.

“No. That was the key.” He turned toward the federale and Cardenas saw stark terror in the man’s eyes. “I took it off the
filament. THAT WAS THE KEY!” He screamed the words into the vorec. They were the right words, the proper inflection. Then
he threw the Scrambler at the opaque shape and turned to run.

The psychomorph bit off his head.

As a psychic convergence it was the most realistic Cardenas had ever seen. The decapitated body stood swaying. Blood appeared
to fountain from the severed neck. Then the corpse toppled forward onto the floor.

He stood without moving, uncertain whether to run, shout for Security, or reach for the petitpoint. The psychomorph turned
slowly to face him. It was a thousand times more real, more solid than any convergence he’d ever seen. He thought it stared
at him for a moment. Since it had no pupils it was hard to tell. Then it whooshed back into the wall, sucked into the holodepths
that had given it birth. As it vanished, the tunnel collapsed on top of it.

It was quiet in the office again. The wallscreen was full of harmless, flickering symbology. The speakers whispered of mystery
and nonsense. On the floor behind the desk the flashman lay in a pool of his own blood, the expression on his face contorted,
his eyes bulged halfway out of their sockets. His ragged nails showed where he’d torn out his own throat. Cardenas searched
through bloodstained pockets until he found the applicator he needed. Then he turned away, sickened.

The applicator contained debonder for the secrylic. First he dissolved the gag, then went to work on Hypatia’s wrists. She
spat out tasteless chunks of the pale green putty. She was crying, brokenly but not broken. “Jesus, Angel, Jesus God, I thought
he was going to kill me!”

“He was. Would have.” He ripped away sagging lumps of putty and carefully began applying debonder to her bound ankles. “After
he’d finished his transferring. Nothing you or I could have said would have mattered. He couldn’t leave
any witnesses. He knew that.” He glanced up at the innocuous wallscreen. “You saw it?”

“Saw it?” She sat up and rubbed her wrists, then her chest where the Scrambler had been applied. There was a painful red welt
there but no permanent damage. She was breathing in long, steady gasps. “It was right on top of me.”

“What did it look like?”

“It was a psychomorph, Angel. The worst one I ever saw. The worst one anyone ever saw.” She was looking past him, at the torn
body of the flashman. “Talk about tactile. It really got inside him.”

He finished with her ankles. “Don’t try to stand yet.”

“Don’t worry. Jesus.” She moved her legs tentatively, loosening the cramped muscles. Behind her was harmless holospace. If
you put out your hand you’d touch solid wall. Or would you? Could they be sure of anything anymore? Could anyone?

“Another trap.” Cardenas too was studying the wall. “The last trap. Why’d he kill Charliebo? He said he didn’t.” He found
he couldn’t look at the pitiful gray shape that lay crumpled alongside the desk.

Hypatia inhaled, coughed raggedly. “He didn’t.”

That made him look down at her. “What?”

“He was telling the truth. He didn’t kill Charliebo. The tunnel did. Or the subox working up the tunnel. I don’t know.” She
rubbed her forehead. “The psychomorph was the last trap, but there was one inserted in front of it. It—it was my fault, Angel.
I thought I knew how to protect myself. I thought I was being careful, and I was. But there’s never been a tunnel like that
one. Part of the tunnel, before the psychomorph.

“I was worried about you, Angel. I thought maybe you were working too hard, too long. You don’t see yourself, sitting there,
reciting in that unbroken monotone into that damn vorec. It’s like it becomes an extension of your own mouth.”

“It does,” he told her softly.

“So I thought I’d do some tunneling myself. Before the
psychomorph there’s… I don’t know what you’d call it. Not a psychomorph. Subtler. Like a reciprocal program. It vacuumed the
first thing it focused on.” Maybe he couldn’t look at the shepherd’s corpse, but she could. “If Charliebo hadn’t been where
he was it’d be me lying there instead of him. The tunnel, the program—it vacuumed him, Angel. Sucked him right out. It was
quick. He just whimpered once and fell over on his side. The look in his eyes—I’ve seen that look on people who’ve been vacuumed.
But I didn’t know you could do it to an animal.

“The crunch consumption figures went stratospheric. Maybe it was the same program Crescent and Noschek used to vacuum themselves.
I guess they figured that’d be one way to make sure anybody who got this close to them wouldn’t bother them.”

“Charliebo wasn’t an animal.”

“No. Sure he wasn’t, Angel.” It was quiet for a long time. Later, “I cut power and figured out a key to get around the trap.
I thought it was the last one. That’s when he came in.” She indicated the flashman. “But it wasn’t the last one. The psychomorph
was. There were no warnings, no hints. I never would’ve seen it coming. Neither did he.”

“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.”