Tek Net (19 page)

An image blossomed on the small rectangular screen.

“
Qué pasa?
What's going on down there?” inquired the detective.

The screen showed flat empty fields that held only a few trees and were glaringly illuminated from below.

“They've shut down all the holographic projections,” said the voxbox.

Gomez touched the controls and the skycar began descending. “Find me some human beings down below,” he requested of the scanner.

“Three raggedy boys, running like blazes,” said the voxbox.

He glanced at the screen. “I'm looking for somebody more closely resembling Jake.”

“Think we got him.”

Jake, crouched low and surrounded by light, appeared on the screen.

“
Sí
, that's him,” said Gomez, smiling. “Let's come to earth on that spot.”

“Landing pattern arranged,” said the voxbox after a few seconds.

As the skycar dropped down through the night, Gomez kept his eyes on the screen most of the time.

“Here's something else you ought to take notice of.” The screen showed him two men, armed with lazrifles, moving rapidly along a path between fields of light.

“How far from Jake?”

“Half a mile.”

Gomez touched a key on the control pad and the speed of the descending car increased. “We have to get to him
muy pronto
.”

33

I suppose complaining about the accommodations in what is, for all practical purposes, a detention cell is somewhat on the ludicrous side,” Natalie Dent was saying in the direction of the spread-eagled camera robot. “Still and all, this is an awfully tacky room they've dumped us into and there isn't even a window, let alone a view. You'd expect that a satellite that boasts of being both a posh resort and a first-rate production facility would toss even abject prisoners into better quarters than this.”

She jiggled a few times in the metallic chair she'd been tied to with plazrope.

Sprawled on the stained carpeting, Sidebar now made a ratcheting, groaning noise. “Where am I?” he asked, eyes clicking open.

“Flat on your back in a shabby hotel room.”

The bot, eyes blinking rapidly, sat up. “Some phud used a disabler on me.”

“Yes,” the reporter confirmed. “Then a large brutish man forced me here, while two unkempt goons hauled you along.”

Sidebar rubbed at his side. “Looks like they let me drag on the pavement for a while. I'm all scuffed.”

“I'll have you burnished soon as we get out of this.”

“Oh? And when do you plan to depart this hole, Nat?”

Giving a sad shrug, she answered, “Well, Sidebar, I'm not exactly certain.”

“I warned you that we were bound to annoy Marriner. Tycoons are very touchy people.”

“That well may be, but I have a very pervasive reputation around the globe—and Newz, Inc., isn't an organization even tycoons want to dare messing with.”

“Not exactly so.” Part of the wall had slid aside and Lana Chen stepped into the room. As she passed the seated robot on her way over to the bound reporter, the heavyset Chinese woman kicked him in the backside and said, “You can be disabled again in a flash, big boy. So maintain something approaching good behavior.”

The robot rubbed again at his scratched metal side.

Natalie said, “Just who might you be, miss, and why in the world have I been treated so badly? Freedom of the press is, after all, a basic right that is guaranteed by—”

“If you'll, please, shut the hell up for a moment, Miss Dent,” said Lana, “I'll be able to explain to you what's going on.”

“I'm fully aware of what's going on. I've been abducted in broad daylight—well, I suppose that's redundant, since it's always broad daylight up here in the Movie Palace. Let's simply say that I have been kidnapped against my will and shoved in this dismal—”

“Quiet, please.” Lana made her right hand into a fist and hit Natalie in the upper arm, hard. “Listen to me. That's all you have to do, Miss Dent. We don't require, at the moment, any commentary.”

“Physical abuse just adds to the offense.”

Lana hit her again and leaned closer. “What we want to know is what prompted you to come nosing around up here at the Movie Palace.”

“That's quite simple,” answered Natalie. “In fact, your publicity office already has a fully executed request for permission to do a travel report on—”

“Who told you about the meeting?” Lana put her face even nearer to the reporter's.

“What meeting?”

“The meeting, dear, that you're here to spy on.”

Natalie cleared her throat. “You obviously have very little notion as to what sort of code reporters operate under,” she said. “I can't possibly reveal my sources to you or anyone. I simply will not do that.”

Lana stepped back and smiled. “Oh, you will. Trust me, you really will.”

Looking up, Jake recognized the skycar that was speeding down through the night in his direction.

The flying vehicle leveled off a few feet above the bright-lit ground and hovered. “Hop aboard,
amigo
,” invited Gomez.

The door on the passenger side popped open and swung out.

Sprinting, Jake ran for it.

“Not yet, Cardigan.” A big man carrying a lazgun was trotting across the flat glaring field on the right.

Paying him no mind, Jake jumped for the skycar.

He landed in the cabin and the door snapped shut just as the beam of the lazgun went crackling across the space Jake had been occupying outside.

“Who's that
cabrón?
” inquired his partner.

The skycar rose rapidly up.

Jake answered, “I'm not certain. He's probably affiliated with a onetime OCO agent named Simmonds.”

Gomez turned the skycar to the south. “Would that be Andrew Simmonds?”

“Yep. Know him?”

“He works for, last time I heard—”

“Hold on a minute, Sid. Something I want to check on.” Toward the dash scanner Jake said, “Seen three kids down there anyplace?”

“Spotted them a few minutes back. Hold on—Yeah, here they are again.”

The screen showed the three ragged boys running. The smallest tripped, fell, landed flat out. Rufe stopped, came back and helped him up.

“Like to give them a lift out of here,” said Jake. “If nobody minds?”

“
Sí
, we can do that,” agreed his partner.

The skycar started to drop down again.

“Who are these three
niños?
”

“Poachers who tried to hold me up.”

“Oh so?”

“Don't want to see them picked up by Simmonds' cronies or any goons from The Institute.”

Gomez nodded. “As for the defrocked OCO agent—my sources say he is now employed by a DC outfit that calls itself the Friends of Electronic Research.”

“Lobbyists?”

“Among other things,” answered Gomez. “They're a bit more active than that in the political life of our great nation.”

“And they might be interested in what Marriner is up to?”

“The dues-paying members are all rivals of that bright lad.”

“Ragamuffins directly below,” announced the voxbox.

“Set us down a few yards ahead of them,” instructed Jake.

When the skycar was hovering directly in the running boys' path, Jake leaned out the open door and called, “Care for a lift, fellas?”

“Screw you,” said Tunney. “You'll turn us over to the law.”

“Nope, you have my word,” Jake assured him. “C'mon. We want to get clear of here.”

Rufe said, “Okay, we accept. But no lectures, no sermons.”

“Not even a request for an apology,” Jake promised.

Rufe nodded and the three of them came scrambling aboard.

34

You could see the flames and the black smoke spiraling up into the greying night sky from a long way off.

Rufe said, “Better land on the outskirts of our Welfare Compound.”

“What's that burning?” inquired Gomez, guiding the skycar groundward.

“Nothing special,” answered Tunney, who was hunched near a window at the rear of the compartment. “We have lots of fires down there.”

“No use,” said Rufe, “you getting too close.”

It was an apartment building, one which looked to be over a century old, that was burning in the coming dawn.

“Can you guys get back into the compound okay?” asked Jake as the car landed in a weedy lot a good half-mile from the high neowood fence surrounding the compound.

The skycar bounced twice, swerved slightly to the left. “Oops,” remarked Gomez. “I think I hit something.”

“Just a dead dog,” said Tunney. “Nothing to worry about.”

When the door on the passenger side flapped open, the mingled smells of burning, decay and offal came rushing inside.

Jake passed Rufe a handful of Banx chits. “Thanks for taking care of that lout who was trying to waylay me.”

“We would've taken care of you too, probably, if they hadn't shut down the forest and come hunting.” Rufe took the money and dropped clear of the skycar.

The other two boys, saying nothing, followed him.

“
Adiós, muchachos
,” called Gomez.

The door shut, the skycar climbed up into the beginning day.

“Have you noticed,” asked Jake, “that there are still several problems of our society that don't seem to have gotten solved?”

“
Sí
, that very thought occurred to me the last time I went slumming,” replied his partner.

The voxbox under the phonescreen said, “It's the boss man, fellas.”

“He's probably anxious to know your fate, Jake,” said Gomez. “Let's have the call.”

“What's your current work schedule, Sid?” asked Bascom three seconds after his lined face showed up on the screen. “What I mean is—do you only report in to me every other day? Or is it—”

“It's difficult to report promptly,
jefe
, when one is being pursued by crazed killers, social misfits, women who were ill treated in their youth and thus seek—”

“You got Jake out of that joint?”

“We collaborated on that,” put in Jake, leaning toward the dash phone.

“Good,” said the head of the Cosmos Detective Agency. “Get over to the Stamford Enclave there in Connecticut. Check in with our special field operative Paul Moonjohn. He'll have your phony passport cards and he'll work on your mugs until they—”

“Whoa,” requested Jake. “Where are we going that we need fake IDs and new faces?”

“I wish I had time to make the smartass remark that you've just set yourself up for,” lamented Bascom. “However, you two are traveling up to the Movie Palace satellite. You'll leave from the Westchester spaceport in—let's see—three hours and forty-seven minutes.”

“Marriner owns that satellite,” said Jake. “So is that where the famous get-together is taking place?”

“It is. On top of which—Sid's old ladyfriend the notorious Natalie Dent has gone missing up there and her bosses—and Lord knows why they want her back, but they do—have hired Cosmos to locate her.”

“
Dios
,” muttered Gomez, slumping in the driveseat. “That
mujer
is back to blight my life.”

Bascom made an impatient noise before giving them what details he'd obtained from the client and his own researches. He concluded, “Since Marriner and several of his people know what you gents look like—a mild disguise and a change of identification is in order.”

“Is Newz, Inc., paying an enormous fee for this caper?” inquired Gomez.

“Not only enormous, but outrageous.”

“
Bueno
,” said Gomez. “Then my sacrifice in having to encounter Natalie again won't be entirely in vain.”

“You damn well better encounter her,” said Bascom. “And while you're up there on the Movie Palace, find out everything there is to learn about TekNet.”

“That won't give us any time to buy souvenirs,” complained Gomez, ending the call.

Paul Moonjohn said, “I can't do all that much in the short amount of time you and Bascom are allowing.” He was a large grey-bearded man, pale and wide.

“All we have to do, Pablo,” Gomez told him, “is resemble the people on our passport cards a trifle more.”

“The smartest way to have done this,” complained Moonjohn, shuffling across his grey-walled little lab, “would've been to let me remodel you first. Then we take the damned triop photos.”

“Bascom,” reminded Jake, “works in mysterious ways.”

“Okay, Sid, I'll do your face first.” The big man pulled on a pair of plyogloves as he approached the chair the curly-haired detective was occupying. “That's a lousy nose whoever whipped up these passport pics stuck on you.”

“
Sí
, it's nowhere near as handsome as the one I now possess.”

“Only thing I can use on you is sinflesh,” said Moonjohn. “It's not as convincing as some of the materials available, but because of the time factor—”

“Bascom's got us booked to catch the Movie Palace shuttle in less than three hours,” reminded Jake, who was sitting in the chair next to his partner.

“Okay, fine, I'll do a rush job,” said Moonjohn. “But if anybody spots that either one of you guys is a fraud—well, don't blame me.”

“If somebody spots us,” said Jake, “we aren't going to have time to file a complaint.”

The elderly Anzelmo spat on the golden carpeting. “And they got the trapping nerve to call this the Imperial Suite?” he said in a loud, angry voice. “This shithole?”

Across the wide living room Julie was making nervous bequiet gestures and waving the bug-detector he held in his left hand. “Mr. Anzelmo, remember what we discussed earlier about not having any conversations until—”