Tek Net (18 page)

Scooping up the stungun, Jake glanced around.

He pointed the gun at the sprawled Simmonds and fired. “That'll keep you unconscious for a few hours,” he said.

Tucking the weapon into a pocket, Jake knelt beside the fallen man. He searched him, his clothes and the other compartments in the metal leg. He didn't find anything he could use—no other weapons, no palmphone and nothing about who might've hired him to deliver Jake to them.

A moment later he was moving along the dark night trail.

There were dark trees and deep shadows all around Jake as he traveled through the forest.

He figured he had to get clear of the Wilderness Preserve by dawn.

Then he'd head for someplace where he could contact Gomez or Bascom.

The folks who'd had him brainwiped and dumped in storage at The Institute hadn't done a very efficient job.

Most of his memory was coming back to him.

Jake wondered who'd sent Simmonds to break him out.

“Got to be careful,” he warned himself.

The erstwhile Office of Clandestine Operations agent had been intending to turn Jake over to his employers.

Which meant he'd probably arranged a rendezvous spot here in this simulated wilderness.

Jake didn't want to run into the people sent to pick him up.

Off to his right now he became aware of the faint sound of movement.

It sounded as though something, or someone, was moving through the dark woodlands parallel to the path Jake was following.

Eyes narrowed, he scanned the forest as he kept striding along the trail.

He didn't see anything.

He covered another quarter of a mile, listening carefully.

There was still something following along beside him to his right.

Jake eased off the trail, stepping around a real maple tree on his left. He pushed further into the woodlands, making his way around authentic oaks and maples and right through projected pines.

He kept going in the direction that the trail was heading, hunched and watchful.

Then he heard a faint crackling noise behind him.

Before he could turn, the barrel of a gun was poked into his back.

“Stop right there, Cardigan,” suggested a thin nasal voice.

31

High up in the bright sunny midday sky a seagull produced a sudden strange bonging noise. Its wings folded in at its sides and it came plummeting down to land a few feet from Natalie Dent on the simulated yellow sand of Surf Beach.

“Shoddy workmanship,” commented Sidebar, aiming his built-in vidcam down at the fallen mechanical bird.

“Concentrate on the people out there frolicking in the fake ocean,” urged the reporter. “We don't want to give the impression that we're up here in the Movie Palace satellite preparing some sort of muckraking documentary.”

Ignoring her, the robot cameraman booted the gull with his metal foot. “Muckrakers don't waste their time on sweatshop bots,” he pointed out.

“Nevertheless, I've been feeling extremely uneasy ever since I discovered, with absolutely no help from you, Sidebar, those very sophisticated eavesdropping devices in my suite,” she told him, taking hold of his metal elbow and tugging him along the imitation beach. “What impressed me the most, and keep in mind that I'm noted for not going to pieces under pressure, was the quantity of the darn bugs. They must be deeply suspicious of me if they went through the trouble of concealing a whole stewpot of the things heather and yon in—”

“Hither,” corrected the robot.

“You may not remember this, Sidebar, but only last year I won a Congeniality Award from the Vidwall Reporters of the World Association,” said Natalie. “So, when I criticize you, as I feel obliged to do now, it isn't because I'm a habitual nag or have an inflated opinion of my worth. No, it's because I really think you're becoming increasingly uppity, and all these corrections of my vocabulary and use of the language are really not contributing to my morale.”

“A tin cup with your name scratched on it doesn't make you a pillar of virtue, Nat.”

Natalie concentrated on her breathing for a silent moment. Then she pointed at the very believable waves that were coming in from the imitation stretch of ocean. “Get me some footage of that big handsome chap on the surfboard.”

“Lad with the blue hair?”

She nodded, walking a few steps away from him and digging her bare toes into the sand. “He seems to be the most innocuous person hereabouts and that should convince them we're on a completely innocent mission.”

As his camera whirred, Sidebar said, “It's probable, Nat, that Marriner and his crew have already tumbled onto your real purpose. In which case, our wisest course would be to scram.”

“Natalie Dent never scrams,” she told the bot. “Courage runs in the Dent family and … What is it?”

The robot had brought a metal hand up to his chest, pressing it to the lens of the camera. “I'm feeling … feeling …”

Sidebar's left leg gave way under him. He sagged, sat down hard on the yellow beach.

Natalie ran back to his side and reached down toward him.

He came falling sideways, the weight of his torso brushing her hand aside. The robot dropped down on the imitation sand and ceased to function.

“Sidebar, you just had a tune-up,” she said, kneeling beside the sprawled mechanical man.

“How unfortunate.” Someone put a hand on the young woman's shoulder. “You and your stricken robot better come along with us, Miss Dent.”

Turning to face the heavyset black man, Jake inquired, “Who you working for?”

“An organization you don't want to mess with, Cardigan,” he responded, moving the hand that held the gun a few inches from side to side.

“You're not from The Institute, come to fetch me back?”

“Those jerks, no.” He shook his head.

“Then you must be with the gang Simmonds was planning to deliver me to.”

“I'm with a gang, Cardigan, that you damn well better start showing some respect for,” he told him. “Using a stunner on Simmonds isn't going to make anybody too happy—and you'll regret it.”

Grinning, Jake said, “I'm awed and impressed. How many of your cohorts are in the woods here with you?”

“You've been a gumshoe too long,” suggested the black man. “It makes you way too inquisitive.” He gestured with the gun. “Now get your ass back on the trail.”

“Here's another inquiry. Where are we heading?”

“To meet my cohorts. Move.”

Jake shrugged and took a few steps in the direction of the pathway.

The man with the gun suddenly grunted in pain.

Stumbling over nothing, he sank to his knees and then went toppling over into a patch of real moss.

Jake lunged to grab up the fallen stungun.

“Leave it lay, mister.” A thin boy, not more than eleven from the look of him, stepped into view. He held a stunrifle aimed at Jake.

32

Two more ragged boys came drifting out of the dark woods. The one who was taller and about fifteen carried a lazrifle and the other, thin and not more than thirteen, clutched a stungun in his skinny left hand.

“Stand back some, mister,” suggested the eleven-year-old who held his stunrifle aimed at Jake's middle.

“Who are you lads?” he asked them.

The oldest boy squatted beside the unconscious man and commenced searching him. “Some Banx chits,” he answered as he pulled a wad of the yellow money chits from one coat pocket.

“He had that stungun too, Rufe,” mentioned the boy who was guarding Jake.

Rufe continued with his searching of the sprawled man. “Take it, Tunney.”

The thirteen-year-old bent and caught up the fallen weapon. “Got it.”

Jake grinned. “Bandits. That what you guys are?”

Rufe said, “Search him too, Tunney.”

The thin boy approached Jake and poked the stungun in his side. “You escape from the bin back there?”

“Yeah.”

“Shit,” he complained as he began searching. “That means that soon as they notice you're missing, they'll come hunting.”

“You live in the preserve?”

“Naw, in one of the Welfare Compounds over near the Bridgeport Redoubt.”

“We come over here once in a while to prowl around,” explained the boy with the rifle. “Sometimes we run into somebody who's wandering around like you and that other guy. But mainly it's because there are lots of animals roaming the woods. You know, you can sell them in the compounds.”

“Poachers,” said Jake. “Have you run into anybody else hereabouts tonight?”

“Three assholes over near the main control station.” Rufe stood up and away from the black man. “Part of this doink's crew I'd guess. They looking for you?”

“Apparently so, yeah.”

“Why?”

“He was about to explain that when oblivion caught up with him.”

“They cops?”

“No, more likely either government agents or just plain mercenaries.”

“You important then?”

“To them,” answered Jake. “How far from here did you spot this trio?”

“Couple miles at most.”

Tunney made a disgusted noise and moved back from him, holding the borrowed stungun in his hand. “He's got nothing on him but this,” he reported to Rufe.

“Sure, they must've taken all his stuff away from him back at The Institute.”

“That they did,” confirmed Jake.

Rufe said, “We better decide what to—Christ.”

The trees had started to vanish, shimmering for a few seconds before they were gone. Everything that was a holographic projection went away at once.

They were now in the middle of a wide field that contained only two oak trees and a few scatterings of low real scrub.

Then the ground started to glow. Litepanels that had been hidden by the pastoral projections came to life and an intense yellow brightness rose up and went spreading across acre after acre of blank ground.

“Jesus,” said Tunney, “they're going to come hunting you, mister.”

“They turned off the wilderness,” added Rufe. He thrust the things he'd taken from the unconscious man into a tattered pocket, spun and started running from there.

The other two boys followed, losing all interest in Jake.

Bascom, legs dangling, was sitting on the edge of his desk in his tower office. He was playing a twentieth-century bebop tune, “Un Poco Loco,” on his sax.

The vidphone atop his desk spoke. “Important call.”

“Pertaining to what?”

“A large fee. And possibly the case Gomez and Cardigan are engaged with.”

“Who's calling?”

“Madeline McHambrick of Newz, Inc.”

“We'll talk.” Abandoning his saxophone and dropping to the floor, the chief of the Cosmos Detective Agency went scooting around to settle into his desk chair.

Madeline McHambrick was a blonde woman in her forties. “Sorry to bother you at this hour, Bascom, but—”

“We never sleep,” he assured her. “You're the associate CEO at Newz, Inc., are you not?”

“Hell, I run the whole damn shebang. In spite of what our half-assed publicity staff says.”

Bascom asked, “Why do you want to hire Cosmos?”

She said, “I've heard you're something of a scoundrel.”

“Not something of, I am a dyed-in-the-wool, certified one hundred percent scoundrel.”

“Good. That's what we need,” said McHambrick. “You know Natalie Dent, don't you?”

“Not well. She is, however, the dear and revered chum of one of my most admirable operatives, Sid Gomez, and he—”

“Spare me the bullshit, Bascom. I know all about Gomez,” cut in the Newz executive. “Now, here's what I want you to do.”

“Proceed.”

“Natalie, along with that odious cambot of hers, has disappeared.”

“Give me some details,” he requested.

“I assume you won't go blabbing any of this to our vidwall news rivals.”

“Not unless they offer me more money then you're going to pay us.”

She told him, “Natalie had a tip, from one of her most reliable informants, that an important meeting between certain important European Teklords and a very influential electronics tycoon was going to take place on—”

“Anzelmo and Marriner.”

McHambrick blinked. “You know about that?”

“Pretty much, sure.”

“Then you also know that Marriner and those Tek thugs are meeting tomorrow evening up in the Movie Palace satellite?”

“Knew that, yes,” lied Bascom.

“Well, we shipped Natalie and her camera robot up there yesterday. Her cover was that she was simply doing a travel report on the Movie Palace,” continued the blonde woman. “But when one of our producers tried to phone Natalie today, she was told that Natalie wasn't there. Wasn't registered at any of the hotels, had never arrived.”

“How come you just don't send more of your own people up there to hunt around for her?”

“I don't want to risk losing any more of my staff, Bascom.”

The agency head smiled. “We'll accept the assignment.”

“What's the fee?”

He told her.

She said, “That's outrageous.”

“It does border on the outrageous,” he agreed. “But, according to you, my operatives will probably be risking death up there.”

“All right, very well,” she said. “I accept your onerous terms.”

“We'll vidfax you a contract,” he promised. “I'll put some of my best ops on it at once.”

“Will one of them be that rascal Gomez?”

“It just,” answered Bascom, “might be.”

Flying at an altitude of 10,000 feet, Gomez was leaning back in the driveseat of his skycar and, with tongue pressed to the back of his teeth, whistling faintly.

The voxbox below the scanner screen mounted on the dash said, “We're approaching the Wilderness Preserve in question.”