Montezuma Strip (9 page)

“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.

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 last seven thousand years or so.

“
C
AN’ 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 that,
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.