Tek Net (6 page)

“Who exactly?”

“I'm at work on that aspect,” said Timecheck. “So far it looks like a local cartel got to her first.”

“A SoCal Tek outfit?”

“Almost certainly, yes.”

“Thanks for filling me in.” Jake nodded thoughtfully. “Anything more on what these European Teklords are really up to—or why they were planning to abduct Jill?”

“Not yet, but they're cooking up something mammoth,” answered Timecheck. “So, what are you following up at the moment?”

“Trying to locate Jeffrey Monkwood,” he told the phonescreen. “But Jill's professorial beau didn't show up to teach his Advanced Communications class today. Nor did he bother to notify the university that he wasn't going to drop in. Nobody has any idea where the hell he might be.”

“You try his house in the Glendale Sector?”

“I phoned and got no response. I'm heading there now to look around.”

“I've dug up a few more facts about the prof,” volunteered Timecheck. “The one that'll do you the most good right now is that he and his wife no longer reside under the same roof. She has a place down in the Palm Springs Sector.”

“If I don't find out anything at his setup, I'll try her.”

“And, Jake,” cautioned the Chinese, “now that we're getting even more Tek people coming aboard—be extra careful, huh?”

The home medibot was a cheap reconditioned model, all she could afford just now. It stood an inch or so under three feet in height and its white enameled surface had a yellowish tinge. “I'm coming, I'm coming,” the bot was saying in a fuzzy, rattling voice. “I'm not as spry as I used to be.”

“Hurry … please,” gasped Eleanor Monkwood. “Starting … to have … breathing trouble again.” She was a blonde woman in her early thirties, thin and pale, standing now in the doorway that led to the tiny sundeck of the three-room domed house.

“If you'd stay in here where the aircirc system provides breathable air,” the medibot told her as it waddled nearer, “you wouldn't have these respiratory problems, lady.”

“Wanted … some sun.”

“Smog's all you get when you stray outside on a day like this.” When the little white robot reached her, it poked at a button in its side. “Darn, this thing's stuck again.”

Eleanor held on tight to the doorframe with both thin hands. She could barely inhale at all now and she was growing dizzy. “Hurry …”

“I'm not a top-of-the-line mech,” the bot reminded, whappingitself in the side a few times with one metal fist. “There, that's popped her.” A panel swung open and the bot reached in to pull out an oxikit. “Here you go, lady.”

She hesitated, then carefully and slowly let go with one hand, bent and reached out to grasp the breathing mask/oxygen container unit. “Can you … help me … put it on?”

“You're going to have to tilt over a bit more.” The medibot's stubby arms didn't reach to her face, even though it was now standing on tiptoe.

Eleanor leaned, then started swaying. She suddenly started to topple forward.

The bot hopped aside, let her fall.

She hit flat out and facedown on the grey carpeting. Her mouth was open and she was trying to breathe in air.

“You're really a mess today, lady.” The bot squatted, picked up the oxikit. It rolled her over on her back, attached the mask and clicked on the oxygen.

Slowly, painfully, Eleanor's breathing improved. The dizziness passed and she sat up. “Thanks …”

“Now let's see if you can stand all the way up. That's it, hold on to me.”

Pressing her hand down on the metal shoulder of the mechanical man, she managed to push herself upright.

“Okay, we'll take a stroll over to your chair.” It managed to guide her across the living room to a metal chair that faced the viewindow.

From there you got a view of dozens of other small dome houses, patches of dry yellow desert and a good deal of cactus. There were also several holographic Joshua trees out there.

Leaving her in the chair, the robot wobbled over to shut the door to the deck. “There'll be a heck of a lot less trouble for the both of us, lady, if you'd follow the Medplan you were given.”

“I'm sorry.… It's just that I never had smog-asthma until I moved out here three months ago,” she said in a weary voice. “Takes some getting … used to.”

“Here we go again,” remarked the medibot, turning its back on the view. “Self-pity time in the desert. Going to blame your husband for dumping you and giving you such a trauma that you acquired this malady.”

“Jeffrey didn't dump me,” she corrected. “I left him.”

The little robot shook its ball of a head. “You're not living in the right century, lady,” it observed. “Why let a little harmless adultery bother you? Instead you should've used it to get more of what you want out of life. ‘You're rolling in the hay with assorted bimbos, Jeff—so now I want a bigger house, a skycar of my own and all the stuff on this list!' That's the way to handle things.”

Eleanor didn't reply.

After a moment the bot remarked, “If you can keep from having any more fits for an hour or so, I'll get back to tidying up your sloppy bedroom.”

She said, breathing mask muffling her voice, “I'm fine.”

“You sure don't look it.” The medibot took three steps toward the bedroom door and then ceased to function.

The aircirc system died at the same instant.

“What's wrong?” Eleanor started to stand up.

The door to the deck came slapping open. A large, wide robot, painted a pale green, came lumbering into the room. “Sit down,” he boomed.

Behind him came a small bald man with a frizzy moustache and a trace of a beard. “Afternoon, love,” he said, smiling and holding up his silvery stungun. “We thought we'd drop in for a bit of a chat, don't you know.”

10

Gomez hesitated on the threshold of the toyshop, frowning down at the fuzzy little mechanical puppy. “Hey,
perrito
, what are you doing to my boot?”

“Using it to teethe on, schlep,” replied the toy dog in a deep roughhouse voice.

“Your voxbox needs some urgent fine tuning.” With a terse kicking motion, the detective managed to send the pup sailing across the Wondersmith's Toyshop showroom.

“Cheezit!” cried a two-foot-high Fairy Princess who was occupying a little gilt throne atop a slowly rotating plaz pedestal. “It's some kind of perverted molester come to abuse us one and all.”

“Keep your knickers on, sis,” advised an overstuffed redheaded rag doll who was slumped in a slowly ticking little tin rocker. “I know this dorf. He's an old patron.”

“He looks like an
ancient
patron to me.” The puppy was huddled behind a toy white piano, glowering at Gomez. “He's got more wrinkles than a relief map of a senile prune.”

“
Niños y niñas
, it truly warms my heart to exchange all these pleasantries with youse,” the detective assured them. “But I actually dropped by in response to a summons from your boss.”

“Nertz,” said the princess.

“Don't let these little hooligans razz you, honey.” A large, fat woman with a good deal of crinkly silver hair emerged from the toyshop office, arms spread wide and smiling at him. Her three-piece sinsilk suit was a mixture of bright citrus hues. “G'wan, you imps, back to your posts. Look cuddly and desirable for our customers.”

“Corky, we haven't had any customers since those half-wits this morning,” reminded the rag doll. “Couple of aging dimbulbs from the San Berdoo Sector who decided I was too flamboyant for their pansy grandson.”

Corky Keepnews bent to give his chair a slap that set it to rocking at a more rapid rate. “You can't refer to prospective customers as ‘a pair of old farts' and expect them to ask me to gift wrap you, kiddo. Let's hole up in my office, Gomez, I want to talk to you.”

Her toyshop was up on the seventeenth level of the Westwood Sector Mall. From the one narrow viewindow you could see part of the University of SoCal Campus #26, where either a riot or a rally was in progress in the glade.

As soon as Corky had settled in behind her new pink neowood desk, Gomez asked, “Why the urgent need to see me,
calabaza?
” He settled into a tin rocker, a grown-up version of the one the rag doll occupied out in the showroom.

“We've been buddies and business associates for a heck of a long time, darling,” the fat woman told him.

“You're just about my most reliable informant.”

Corky's chair made small groaning noises as she shifted her weight and rested a plump elbow on the desktop. “I just came across some information that pertains to you and that reckless partner of yours,” she said, lowering her voice some. “It has to do with this case you're working on.”

His left eye narrowed. “What case would that be,
carat
”

“Hey, you don't have to be cute with me, honey. I know you're trying to find that hot-pants bitch that you used to—”

“What do you know about Jill's kidnapping?” He left the rocker, moved closer to her desk.

“The most important thing I know,” Corky said, “is that some people are going to do their damnedest to throw a spanner in your works. They want you to quit—and if they have to they'll do you some serious harm.”

“How serious?”

“You might end up graveyard-dead, dear.”

Perching on the edge of the pink desk, he leaned toward her and studied her plump face with narrowed eyes. “Who are these
pendejos
?”

Corky's voice dropped even lower. “You're messing with a big Tek cartel here.”

“I already know that—a combo of European outfits who seem to—”

“Nope, that's not what you have to worry about, Gomez,” she assured him. Then held up a hand in a wait-a-minute gesture. “Well, let's amend that. Sure, you've got to worry about them, because they want to get their hands on your ex, too. But there's danger much nearer to home.”

“Somebody else got to her first, somebody local?”

Corky nodded, her chair jiggling. “Way I hear it, honey, it's that runt who calls himself Johnny Trocadero.”

“
Sí
, the little
hombre
who runs the San Diego Sector Tek cartel,” said Gomez, frowning. “So what do we have here, Cork, Teklords going up against each other?”

“All I know is that dear little Jill must know something that several nasty bastards are anxious to find out about.”

“Trocadero grabbed her?”

“He hired the goons who did the job.”

“And they are?”

She glanced toward the closed door of her office. “I think it was a weasel named Dunkirk. He usually works with a rumdum robot that he built himself.”

“Skinny
pendejo
who doesn't even know how to grow a decent moustache?” Gomez fingered his own moustache.

“That's him, hon,” she answered. “And before you bother to ask—no, I don't know where they took her.”

“This Dunkirk—is he also the one who's planning to do me and Jake harm?”

“That's what I've picked up, kid.”

“Anything else you've come across that I ought to know?”

Corky said, “You better watch out for a lady called Yedra Cortez. Very nasty critter from your homeland who is the brains
and
the muscle of Trocadero's whole setup.”

“I've seen that
puta
before,” Gomez said, standing up. “How much do I owe you for this wealth of information, Corky? It's enough to make a paranoid of any man and ought to be worth a tidy fee.”

“So far it's on the house, lover. For old time's sake and as a little gift to a damned good customer.” She stood, too. “If you want any more—it's going to be a thousand dollars.”

“Top price, huh?”

“It wouldn't take much for any and all of these lowlifes to put my name on their shit lists right next to yours, Gomez,” sheexplained as she came around her desk and took hold of his arm. “If I'm going to get killed, I ought to make as much as I can off it.”

“Sound business philosophy.” He allowed her to escort him out of the toyshop.

The small bald man smiled sweetly as he tightened his grip on Eleanor Monkwood's upper arm. “That's a terrible bad wheeze you got there, love.”

The big green robot was looming on the other side of her chair. “It's the bloomin' air in these parts,” he rumbled, tapping his broad metal chest with a fist. “Affects my breathing setup something awful at times.”

The thin woman said, “What … do you … want?”

“Now, dear, you'll have me believing that you're not paying close enough attention.”

“We already told you,” reminded the big bot, “what we want.”

“That's absolutely true,” seconded the bald, sparsely whiskered man. “I informed you soon as we arrived that we'd popped in for a bit of conversation.”

Eleanor said nothing, concentrating on letting the oxikit help her to breathe.

“To continue.” He increased the pressure on her thin arm. “What we came to talk about is this—where's your damned husband?”

“I don't know,” she answered. “Probably … the university.”

“Naw, not so,” the robot informed her, tilting toward her some. “He's not on campus where he's supposed to be. Nobody at the school knows where he's gotten to or what's become of him.”

She took a few slow, shallow breaths. “If you know … where my husband works … and you know where I live,” she said, “then you … must know … that we're separated.”

The bald man cocked his head to the right, frowning. “I don't know about you, mate,” he said to the green robot. “But I'm having the devil's own time understanding what this dear lady is saying.”